Amanda in the Summer Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Praise for Brenda Whiteside and…

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  August 5, 1947

  August 13, 1948

  June 1, 1956

  July 5, 1956

  July 20, 1956

  July 26, 1956

  July 5, 1968

  July 28, 1968

  August 24, 1968

  July 3, 1969

  July 5, 1969

  July 8, 1969

  July 3, 1970

  July 5, 1970

  August 12, 1972

  July 23, 1984

  August 2, 1996

  June 7, 2004

  Other Books You Might Like

  Thank you for purchasing this publication of The Wild Rose Press, Inc.

  Amanda

  in the

  Summer

  by

  Brenda Whiteside

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.

  Amanda in the Summer

  COPYRIGHT © 2013 by Brenda Whiteside

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author or The Wild Rose Press, Inc. except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  Contact Information: [email protected]

  Cover Art by Rae Monet, Inc. Design

  The Wild Rose Press, Inc.

  PO Box 708

  Adams Basin, NY 14410-0708

  Visit us at www.thewildrosepress.com

  Publishing History

  First Mainstream Edition, 2013

  Digital ISBN 978-1-62830-011-6

  Published in the United States of America

  Praise for Brenda Whiteside and…

  AMANDA IN THE SUMMER

  “Evocative and thought-provoking. AMANDA IN THE SUMMER exposes love’s inexplicable complexities.”

  ~Tamara Hogan, author

  “Captivating and lovely. Whiteside knows how to capture an era and writes compelling and fresh characters we can all relate to.”

  ~Joyce Proell, author

  ~*~

  SLEEPING WITH THE LIGHTS ON

  “Cheers to Whiteside for writing a heroine who exists outside of conventional romance novels...written with a pleasantly light sense of humor...”

  ~RT Book Reviews

  “Brenda Whiteside writes with a voice that keeps the reader coming back for more...as well as the melt your heart romance.”

  ~Coffee Time Romance & More

  ~*~

  THE MORNING AFTER

  “This is a really fun read that is based on falling in love at first sight. I even held my breath towards the climactic scenes near the end.”

  ~Coffee Time Romance and More

  “If you like contemporary, down home western romances blended with laugh-out-loud humor, you simply must check out THE MORNING AFTER by Brenda Whiteside.”

  ~The Romance Reviews, Top Pick

  Dedication

  For grandmothers, mothers and daughters

  who have known the deep bond of female friendship.

  Acknowledgments

  Thanks to the staff at The Wild Rose Press

  (you know who you are) who felt the same way

  about Amanda when they read it as I did when I wrote it.

  August 5, 1947

  Dear Tilly,

  How wonderful to hear from my best friend, although I should be quite upset with you for such a short dissertation. You tell me you saw “Pollock’s” as if he’s painted only one canvas. More information would have been greatly appreciated for your poor isolated friend. Then you somehow relate the atomic bomb and the direction of the scientific community to the degradation of art into the abstract. How can you leave me with that? I’m left hungry for a real debate with you. You were short and bleak. Have pity for me, Tilly, and give me more information.

  Perhaps you are sour for having to work the summer while I lie in the sun like a beached whale. Tilly, my dear, you are free to touch your toes, drink a Manhattan and dance until dawn. On the other hand, I know it won’t be long before I can’t see my toes, still throw up most days at two, and in bed by nine every night. You are working on a budding career while I traded my wonderful lab tech job at the university for housewife and mother-to-be. You wouldn’t want to exchange places with me.

  Ha! I can hear you now. You need not lecture me. You know perfectly well that I honestly feel grand about being preggers. But I could use you here to form a front against Mother. She is silently protesting my lying out in the sun…exposed! Rather undignified in my “condition.” And at night when I sit on the deck, feeling glorious in the ocean breezes, she frets about me catching a “draft.”

  If there were a phone in this old house, I would call you and have a good chat. It would pick you right up. But then, I know by the time you get this letter Robert shall have arrived and taken you for a grand lunch while he’s in the city handling some pre-registration papers at Columbia. The ever-thoughtful one, your friend, and my husband, promised he would amuse you at least one day while he was there. He’s quite good at amusing you. I’m sometimes jealous he’s been your friend longer than I have, but then, we might not have met if not for him. Robert is excited to get back to classes. Thank God for the G.I. Bill. He’ll be back at Columbia in September and finish what the war interrupted.

  Now, back to your morose view of the state of affairs. Maybe it’s the beautiful sea or maybe it is Amanda kicking inside of me, but I can’t believe the state of America is as depressing as you paint it. Although, you do make me think. Perhaps the closing of our little Beach Theatre is an indication of what you mean. I’m sure you would say, “Aha! Just look at where America is going!” When the sign announcing the last performance was tacked in the window, I felt quite stricken, as did Mother. We attended the town meeting to lodge our protests, but money was the only voice heard. It seems the cinema is taking all the business away. This is such a small town, and really only populated in the summer with us city folks, but the outcome is still so disappointing. The youngsters prefer watching movie stars on the big screen to locals on the stage. It’s a sad statement on the cultural tradition of any community when the theatre falls into decline and abandonment.

  Of course, I too have concerns about the atomic bomb. I’m bringing a child into this world. But I have faith in the scientific community. Unlike you, I was a part of that community and do not see it as a self-involved, self-perpetuating, abstract sterile environment. Which brings us back to Jackson Pollock. I don’t believe abstract art is a retreat from reality. Isn’t it more of a creative response to signify our freedom and liberalism?

  Tilly, pack it up and come and visit. This one-sided debate is too difficult. I want you to feel Amanda kick. How do I know it’s Amanda and not John I’m carrying? I just know. Mother agrees. And no, I have chosen no other name than Amanda. After all, it is a grand tradition. I am Amanda, my mother is Amanda and my grandmother is Amanda. I wouldn’t get into this debate with you if you were here. We have had it already, but since I can have the last word, I shall state with conviction and without retort from you that an individual is not determined by whether or not she has her own unique name or shares it with her mother before her. I can guarantee you, any name I might come up with will not be unique to this world. And then what? She shares a name with some unknown woman with no history between them, no connection, no pride in tradition? So p
ooh-pooh tradition all you want. My Amanda will be quite the individual; so much the more with the influence of her mother and her adopted Bohemian Spinster Auntie Tilly. Yes, you shall be known as Auntie Tilly, Amanda’s Spinster Aunt. So sad for Tilly—twenty-four and already a spinster. Are you laughing yet? Perhaps Robert will meet someone at Columbia and introduce you. Now I laugh imagining that you, of all people, need help in that department.

  It’s time for me to lather on more sun tan lotion (another good thing to come out of the war) and start reading. I am going to see what Dr. Benjamin Spock knows about raising Amanda.

  Please write soon and tell me about all those wonderful nights dancing until dawn, drinking Manhattans and teasing all the eligible men of New York. And watch over my handsome husband adrift in the big city.

  Love, your friend,

  Amanda

  August 13, 1948

  Dear Tilly,

  You’re due to arrive two long weeks from now, but I need to talk to you. I so wish you could have driven out with us and wish it even more so today. Robert suggested this vacation from the city. He promised three glorious weeks away from the rigors of New York City life, of his constant pursuit of a graduate degree and his ten-hour workdays. I know he won’t be long from Amanda who is the center of his universe. But honestly, Tilly, I can’t believe the office had to call him back before his vacation had barely begun. If only I had you here to enjoy this magnificent beach, I wouldn’t miss the wretched man at all.

  I almost erased that last sentence. If you were here, I’d have blurted it out and felt the better for it, that is, before the guilt set in. He’s a darling husband. You know that. Mother had the nerve to tell me that once a child enters a marriage, the relationship changes, and I should just grow accustomed to it. Nonsense. Amanda is pure enrichment for our lives. I know perfectly well to what Mother was alluding. She’s so old fashioned. If she was a fly on the wall of our bedroom, the poor woman would be shocked. The problem is, he seems to be fitting me in. He’s so busy with graduate work and his long workdays entertaining clients outside of work hours, that when he does enter our bed, he devours me without forethought.

  You must burn this letter after you have read it!

  So I brood. Although you aren’t here to join in my complaining girl talk, I can at least take comfort you are there to keep an eye on my darling. I made him promise to have dinner with you by his second night. Of course, my insistence is purely selfish. You’ll be appalled to see him at your door instead of here with me and will berate him for abandoning his wife and daughter. He’ll be shamed into hurrying his work along to return. Perhaps he’ll talk you into an early arrival. As his oldest friend, you do have a way of lighting him up, so light a fire under him. Unless of course you’re busy with those new friends we met last month at your apartment.

  Here I must interject an apology since we’ve not seen each other since. I hope we did not insult anyone by excusing ourselves in the middle of the rather heated discussion.

  To tell you the truth, Tilly, I found Janet Smite (sorry if I got her last name wrong) melodramatic and totally monopolizing the conversation. That Jack Kerouac fellow had my attention. Is he merely a friend?

  Mother is yelling from the door to have some lunch so I’ll close. The breeze is luscious and the water is exhilarating. Amanda is delighted with trying to stand in the sand and falling gleefully. She claps with excitement when she watches the waves hit the beach. We both miss and love you. See you soon.

  With love,

  Amanda

  P.S. Please bring the makings for Manhattans. I am done with nursing and dying for a good stiff drink. Mother will consider me a boozehound if I drive into town for alcohol. You can get away with bringing it in, and she’ll still adore you. Don’t we all, you wild and wicked spinster!

  June 1, 1956

  Dear Tilly,

  Where to begin? Even if we had a phone at this old beach house (Mother still stands firm on that), I’m not sure I could speak my feelings as well as I can write them. If you so much as said a word, I would crumble. Why? Because my dearest, Tilly, as your friend, I feel what you feel and would hear it in the simplest of words you might utter. You must feel the same or you wouldn’t have broken this news to me in a letter. Now it’s clear why you have not dropped by the apartment for the last month. I should be upset with you for shutting us out.

  You should be here with us. The beach breezes, salty ocean and unrelenting sun would renew you and heal your womb. Oh, I can hear you say, “I’m just fine, Amanda the third,” like you do whenever you want to hide your true feelings. But I know better. We love you and do not judge. Surely you’re not concerned with the latter.

  Why did you want to keep your condition a secret anyway? Maybe you think because I’m a mother, I wouldn’t understand your predicament. Surely, Tilly, you know I sometimes envy your free and easy lifestyle. You are the opposite of everything I’ve become. You strive for the nonconformist ideals. Oh, I do overstate that because you don’t have to strive—you just are. I read quite a lengthy article in our weekly town paper, Beachside Gazette, about the Beat Generation and their recent discovery of our pristine existence so close to the city. Oh yes, a few self-proclaimed poets throwing Ginsberg’s name around has this seaside town scared. I do think the old fogies that have been coming here forever are afraid of being overrun. I had to laugh. Recent discovery? My bohemian friend has been “Beat” and coming here for years.

  I live vicariously through you, my friend. And more importantly, I love you.

  Okay, I do digress. Back to the matter at hand—or no longer at hand I should say. I still have a network of friends in the medical community and could have helped you find a trusted and competent doctor. I’m just glad you managed that on your own, and although you’re sorry word got round to me, I’m not. Would you have even told me if I hadn’t stumbled on your name at the hospital? So, stop being so ridiculous and come visit us, to relax and recoup.

  I do have to warn you, Robert is quite upset. He isn’t saying much. In fact, he won’t speak to me at all about you. I can only imagine he’s actually worried and not angry that you did not confide in us from the beginning. He would have helped you, you know. He’s one of your biggest fans, dear Tilly. I am again in awe of my darling husband for the deep feelings he abides. You two have something special that started before I ever entered the picture. He cares deeply for you.

  Don’t let the summer get away without lying on this lovely beach. When the hospital offered their occasional staffers a chance for the summer off, I couldn’t refuse. I’ll not set foot in the hot city until September, so you must get here. Although, I can guess that Robert will have to make several trips back and will wait upon you. I think he’ll want to check on you. You know how men are, my man anyway.

  Write soon. Much love,

  Amanda

  July 5, 1956

  Dear Tilly,

  You missed an amazing fourth. Amanda kept asking where Auntie Tilly was.

  You’re not going to visit this summer are you?

  I do understand your involvement with your circle of friends, so intrinsic to your budding writing career, keeps you occupied, but I fear there is more to your absence. Maybe you think we’ve grown staid and bought in to the materialism and consumer culture the way the rest of America has? You should know me better than that. My motherhood, part time working and husband tending may keep me out of the current, but I’ve not changed so very much. We’ve been like-minded, you and me, from the moment we met at the first annual Midnight Poetry reading. That was my first date with Robert, if you remember. He introduced you as his best friend. Little did we know we’d be the Three Musketeers from there forward—only two of them didn’t fall in love and marry like two of our threesome.

  I’m hungry for news on the latest jazz ensemble you’ve discovered. I’ll gladly listen to your work in progress and give you honest feedback. Come visit me, Tilly. This will prove to be a beautiful summer, and altho
ugh I do get a bit bored with no intellectual or cultural activity, there is much enjoyment in taking a break to reflect inwardly.

  Robert told me not to nag you. He seems to think you need time alone. Now, that is funny. Since when has our Tilly cried, “I want to be alone!” I do hope I’m not being crass, but I think I can understand you better than he does in this instance. Your predicament a couple of months ago will be long gone from your psyche. His sentiments are harking back to that. He seems to be having trouble letting go of the incident, and I have no doubt you are past it. For what reason he’s haunted, I do not know, but he is. He’s a sweet, caring soul.

  Speaking of Robert, he’s not made a run for the city since we’ve been here. He bought Amanda a transistor radio and has great fun teasing her about listening to Elvis. They romp in the surf everyday, and then go for an ice cream cone at Culver Soda Fountain. He seems a bit distracted now and then, but he’s lavishing so much attention on Amanda that I don’t wonder if he’s reflecting on how fast she’s growing up. You haven’t seen her in months and will be surprised how tall she’s grown.

  In spite of Robert’s pensive moments, he’s been quite affectionate. Or should I say more than normal. I can’t really write about that, now can I?

  I do have to tell you, he was quite comical yesterday. We all do a great deal of reading on these long summer days. Robert noticed Mother reading T. S. Elliot and sputtered to me at length. He railed on about how since my mother found Elliot good reading material, it only proves what an elitist he is, and how removed his writing is from real life. Poor Mother is just horribly old fashioned. At least Robert keeps his opinions between us. He is reading two volumes of collections by Shelley and Blake. He’s ordered Ginsberg’s Howl from the local bookstore to round out his summer. See what an influence you are? For me, I think you might approve of The Mandarins, which I started this morning. And if you don’t, then we might have a rousing debate on why.