The path was smooth, newly hewn, and the cart barely rattled as he drove on it. After a bit, the trees disappeared and an oversize barn came into view on his right. Behind it ran a large, cut field, covered in snow. He stopped a moment, thinking about the flying machine hidden away in there like treasure. Then he continued until he saw the house, perched on the edge of a small cliff. At the top of the circular drive, he pulled the horse up in front of a grand-looking porch.
There was no sign of the help, or of anyone, for that matter. He pulled out the baskets of eggs and made his way around the side of the house to a door with a small portico. He set the baskets down on the path and looked out to the sea, slate winter-gray in front of him, and then returned for the two cans of milk the mainlander had ordered and left those too.
When he came abreast of the barn on his way back up the road, he couldn’t help himself. He pulled over. He glanced around and at the house; everything was still, the snow on the field muffling the noise of the sea.
He decided to chance it. He opened the barn door a crack and peered inside; it was too dark to see. He pulled the door wider and stepped in, just a little ways. He still couldn’t make out very much, so he went in just a bit farther, and then a little more, and a little more.
It took shape gradually as his eyes adjusted. An enormous monster of a thing, all white fabric and shiny wood and glinting, cold wire. Aeroplane, that’s what some of the newspapers called it, but Owen thought flying machine was a much better description. It was shaped like an arithmetic problem: all rectangles, isosceles triangles, half-moons, right angles, straight angles, and curves. And the wings. Two sets of them, one on top, one on bottom. Altogether huge, spanning at least the length of six men. And in the center, like an ugly heart, was a mass of metal, with chains and other twisted things, and two shining propellers behind it. In front, a pair of impossibly small seats that reminded Owen of the ones he’d seen in the theater in Boston. The whole apparatus sat atop a pair of long, slender pieces of wood curved like skis.
How many eggs would someone have to sell to buy a thing like this?
“It came in boxes,” said a voice from behind him.
Owen turned to see a man standing in the doorway, his broad thick body dark against the sun.
“Pretty big boxes too.” The man adjusted his britches and began striding towards him. Owen was rooted to the spot. “And who might you be?”
“I’m Owen,” he said. “Chambers. From the farm.”
Up close, he could see the man had a crimson tinge to his buffed skin, and his hair was slicked back, like in an advertisement; a big full mustache dominated his face. His head reminded Owen of a horse’s, sinew and bone and meat. A strong head. A rich man’s head.
“Aha. So you’ve heard about my plane. News travels fast, I suppose.”
This was Mr. Glass. “Yes, sir, I’m sorry. There was no one—”
“Thought you’d sneak a look, did you?”
Owen wondered what the penalty was for breaking into someone’s barn to look at a flying machine.
“Don’t look so stricken, Owen Chambers, boy from the farm. I’m not going to report you.” Mr. Glass turned his gaze to the machine. “She’s something to behold, all right.”
“Does it fly?”
“Does it fly?” Mr. Glass snorted. “Of course it flies. Why in tarnation would I have it, otherwise?” He looked at Owen as if he were sizing him up. “Would you like to touch her?”
He nodded.
“Go on, then.”
Owen approached it carefully, like he would a snake. Tentatively, he stretched his hand out and touched the material on one of the bottom wings. It looked like heavy canvas, and he’d expected it to feel like a sail. Instead, his fingertips met with something spongier, tackier. He pulled his hand away, surprised.
“It’s rubberized,” Mr. Glass said. “Clever, isn’t it?”
Owen looked at him and, at that moment, realized all the things this man must know and, by extension, all the things he himself did not.
“This is Flora,” Mr. Glass said. “Named after my daughter.”
“Like a boat,” Owen said.
“Ha. Like a boat that flies.” The man ran his hand over one of the wooden poles that separated the lower wing from the upper.
“How does it…” He couldn’t imagine getting this complicated giant of a machine from where it sat into the sky.
“Come with me.” Mr. Glass led him to the doorway and pointed to a conical structure across the field. “You see that derrick out there? You push her out and get her on those rails, attach that weight, and when it drops: whoosh”—he made an upward movement with his hand—“she rushes forward and up, up, and away.”
“Have you flown it…her…here?”
“Well, now, you need at least six men to get her going. And the right conditions.” Mr. Glass scratched his chin. “But in spring, when the weather gets finer, I’m going to rally some troops for a maiden voyage.”
“So you’ve never flown her?”
“Oh, I did. Went with Orville Wright himself when I bought her.” The older man’s eyes were fixed on some unknown point in the distance. “Quite a man, that Orville Wright. And when you’re up there…Couldn’t get my son to go up, though. He wasn’t scared, you understand. Just…well, Charlie’s more of a scholar. Interested in books and such.” He scratched his chin again.
“I could help,” Owen said. “When you decide to do it, I mean.”
Mr. Glass shifted his gaze to Owen, almost as if he’d forgotten he was there. “We’ll see.” He suddenly seemed to have lost interest. “I’m sure you must be off now. Have a farm to run, don’t you?”
“Yes, sir.” He flushed.
Still, he found it hard to leave the sight of the glorious monster—to get back in his cart, do his chores, go to school. The idea seemed impossible as he stood there, then slowly edged out of the barn backward, his eyes riveted to the whiteness of the wings, the cruel, graceful propellers.
He didn’t tell any of the boys at school about the machine, guarding his secret jealously. But he wanted to talk about it to someone, so after his evening chores, he sat in the warm kitchen, the island dark and hushed outside, and said to his mother: “The mainlander has a flying machine.”
“Does he, now.” His mother didn’t turn away from the stove.
“In his barn. He’s going to fly it in spring.”
“It’s spring now,” his mother said.
“Later, when it’s warmer,” Owen said.
“When it’s warmer,” his mother said, “it will be summer.”
“Well.”
“That’s not the same thing.” She looked at him. “People don’t always mean what they say. In fact, it’s often not what they mean at all.”
So next Owen talked to Lettuce about it.
“It’s like a giant bird skeleton,” he told her, running his hand down her back. “And in the center is metal.” His hand reached her thurl. “But really, it’s mostly wood and cloth.” He traveled down her rear flank. “But it’s not like any cloth you’ve ever seen. It’s gummy.” His hand reached her teat. “I wish you could see it. But then, maybe you wouldn’t like it. Maybe you’d be afraid.” Her milk came out, pale yellow, thick, like honey, into the pail.
That night he would dream of Flora, of flying in the air, of rising. He would dream of sticky fabric and men with large rectangular mustaches the color of spruce. Owen would dream of all the things he didn’t know, all the things he might.
1913–1914
They had been in London since the beginning of June, Sara, her two sisters, and her mother. The “Three Wiborg Girls,” as the sisters were tiresomely known in the columns. Sara was “the chic one,” Hoytie “dark and refined,” while the youngest sister, Olga, was “the delicate beauty.” These words felt like intricately made corsets, squeezing them into arranged shapes, pinching at the sides where they met resistance.
Sara pressed her finger to her eye, seeki
ng out the soft spot on the lid that had been leaking infection on and off since their arrival in Europe in March. A maid, fitting the gown Sara planned to wear that evening, stuck a pin into the light green silk, and it pricked her right beneath her armpit. Sara felt the pain like a tiny streak of lightning. She remained still. A stray drop of rain hit the pane of the large window overlooking Hyde Park.
Tonight would be her mother’s final victory in the long march through the European season. The Vegetable Ball at the Ritz. The cream of society had lobbied Adeline Wiborg for invitations to the event, first politely, then a little less politely. Sara’s mother received bribes daily in the form of invitations to dîners or offers of a place in someone’s box at the opera, each one causing Adeline to smile and hum to herself.
Sara looked at the wreath of carrots, tomato vines, and sprigs of mint lying on the chaise longue next to her. It was absurd, decorative, useless. Like me. She felt very tired.
She consoled herself with the thought that this evening, at least, she wouldn’t be expected to participate in any tableaux vivants or sing with her sisters—both staples in her mother’s arsenal. They had been doing these performances for years at their houses in Ohio, New York, and East Hampton and at drawing rooms all over the East Coast and Europe. Last night, they had done their rendition of the Rhine Maidens’ lament from Das Rheingold for guests of the Duchess of Rutland. This particular act stood on the fine line between decorum and titillation, but her mother had said: “This is London, after all. Tastes are generally more piquant.”
The lights had been dimmed, the room thrown into near darkness. Then gasps from the audience when the lamps were slowly turned up and their eyes adjusted to the sight of Sara and her sisters standing bare-shouldered and motionless behind a gauze curtain. Ever so slowly, the three Wiborg girls began to undulate their arms, the backlight catching their exposed skin like pale water and throwing rippling imitations of their figures across the translucent fabric. They started to sing the song of the nymphs, a lament of loss and reproach, their torsos swaying gently from the waist, forward and back. It wasn’t exactly shocking, but it had a languid sensuality that was unexpected and obviously slightly thrilling. Which is exactly what their mother had counted on.
But something had happened last night: Sara had let her mind wander, just a little, then a little more, until there was only the gently flowing curtain, her sisters’ familiar voices, a remembered scene from the nursery, the gaslight warm on her back. For some reason she couldn’t fathom even now, Sara had tipped her head onto Hoytie’s shoulder, breathing in her sister’s perfume. And then Sara was gone, back to her childhood home in Clifton, Ohio, and it was spring and she was comforted by all the small things she knew: the place in the hedge where the rabbit with the missing ear lived; the dark patch under the yew tree where the ferns were shyly uncurling themselves, green and fuzzy and new; the spot next to the cellar door that smelled like violets.
Then, all at once, Hoytie was elbowing her, pointy and cruel, and she was brought back to the drawing room and the smell of moldy carpets and half-eaten beef on the sideboard, and Sara realized she had fallen into a deep sleep. Only for a few moments, just a few, insignificant moments.
Yet, if they were so insignificant, why was she still thinking about them now, as she watched the maid reach for a bit of cloth to wipe the blood from her side?
She was twenty-nine years old and most of her friends were already married, setting up their own households, running their own lives. For a while, on the cusp of womanhood—and for some time afterward—Sara had felt like she was living in a state of suspended animation, waiting for life to really begin. Waiting for the pivotal moment when, like the fairy tale, a kiss would awaken her and she would stir her frozen limbs and everything would be set in motion. Eventually, however, it had dawned on her that this was life, what was happening right now. And with that revelation, she had just gone back to sleep. No, not sleep, exactly. It was more precise than that; it was the kind of dozing where you think you’ve been awake the whole time only to realize that hours have passed and that, after all, you must have been asleep.
But things—well, she—had gotten worse over the past year. It had started last summer. She found it harder and harder to get out of bed, and sometimes she didn’t bother at all, instead spending the mornings staring out the bay window of her bedroom in the beach house in East Hampton. She would squint her eyes to blur the line between the lawn and the ocean beyond. Squint, release, squint, release. Until blue became green and green, blue.
In the fall, she’d gone to see the Whistlers at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Sara could remember those paintings, Mother of Pearl and Silver: The Andalusian, that dark swath of hair, her swirl of silver skirt brushing the floor, the sliver of face turned towards the viewer. But it was the Nocturne: Blue and Gold—Southampton Water that had made Sara’s breath catch in her chest. The smudgy, luminous harbor seen only by the light of an orange moon (or was it a setting sun?). The painting was obscured, melting, light drowning at the edges.
Sara felt like the light in that painting, always sinking, never rising. Her feelings had not escaped her mother.
“This oppression of yours, Sara. It’s unbecoming and it’s straining my nerves,” her mother had told her one day over breakfast. “And when I say unbecoming, I mean untoward.”
“Indecorous?” Sara had helpfully offered.
“I mean stop it,” her mother had said.
Only Olga had been kind. On the days when Sara didn’t come downstairs, the youngest sister would come up and sit on Sara’s sleigh bed and plait and unplait her hair for hours, the two of them watching the waves outside the bay window. “You have such lovely hair,” Olga would say. “So heavy.”
“I think that’s it, miss,” the maid said to Sara, bringing her back to the hotel room, the London rain, her throbbing eyelid.
“Yes,” Sara murmured.
She walked over to the glass and looked at herself. Staring back was a youngish woman in a cucumber-green dress with heavy hair and sleepy eyes. Decorative. At least that.
The ball was a success. Sara saw that almost instantly, having learned over the years to judge her mother’s hits and misses by the telltale signs. In the case of a failure, there would be whispers, and the whispers could grow so loud that the whole room hummed like a grist of bees caught in a glass box.
With the Vegetable Ball, though, her mother had outdone herself. The main ballroom was swathed in vines with squashes, miniature eggplants, or zucchini sprouting from their tangled arms. The enormous crystal chandelier hanging in the center had also been covered with growing things: tomatoes, carrots, corn, all arranged from smallest to largest. The Ritz’s livery stood against the walls holding trays of champagne with apples and pears dipped in gold paint. It was opulent and imaginative and grotesque.
Sara was standing off to the side of a group that was jostling for her mother’s attention, talking with the Duchess of Rutland’s daughter Diana.
“Well,” Diana said, giving Sara a sly look.
Sara laughed. “Yes, well.”
“I think your mother may have made a few enemies tonight. There’s nothing these women hate so much as a succès fou. Or being made to come on bended knee to America. This isn’t 1905, after all.”
That had been the boom year for conquering British titles. America, swelling with heiresses of ink, paper, coal, and steel, had seen no fewer than twenty-five members of the House of Lords take its daughters to the altar. Sara remembered her mother putting down the newspaper in disgust after reading about one or the other of these matches.
“Imagine,” Adeline had said, “selling your daughters into serfdom. No running water, no money, only cows and horses and dogs. They should be ashamed of themselves.” Adeline had never liked the idea of one single marriage, let alone twenty-five of them.
Diana scanned the room, then turned her attention back to Sara. “Let’s talk about something infinitely more interesting,
” she said. “Me.” Her friend smiled. “What do I remind you of?”
Diana was clad in a sleek white ball gown with thick seams of red, green, and yellow.
“I don’t know,” Sara said, feeling weary. “A vegetable patch?”
“A vegetable patch indeed. That might be all right for some.” Diana eyed Sara’s light green dress and preposterous wreath. “No. These, lovely Sara, these are racing stripes. I plan on winning your mother’s vile ragtime potato race.”
“Oh, Diana,” Sara said, laughing. “Don’t.”
“Why not?”
“You know why not. It’s just one of Mother’s antiquated games. The joke is always on someone else.”
“Oh, it’s all how you look at it. There’s art in everything.” She winked at Sara. “Even antiquated games.”
Olga opened the ball with Prince Colonna, who, rumor had it, was as ridiculous a gambler as his father. They were trailed by a servant in blackface dressed in the garb of a Southern plantation slave frantically pushing a wheelbarrow full of vegetables.
The guests laughed uproariously at the spectacle, and Sara saw her mother’s face shining in triumph. From the sidelines, more faux slaves blew green and gold dust out of small handmade cornucopias. Her eye began to throb again. As the guests pushed forward to join in the ball, she was claimed like lost luggage by the first gentleman on her dance card. He introduced himself, but although his lips moved, no sound reached her. She nodded anyway and gave him her hand. He swept her into the crowd and turned her round and round, his arm close at her waist, his breath champagne-sour.
Her eyes wouldn’t focus, so the room spun, a whirl of color over her partner’s shoulder. She felt panic rising up, couldn’t remember her steps. What was this? Yes, a hesitation waltz, that was it. She was reminded of the story of Little Black Sambo, how the vain tigers stole the child’s clothes and then chased one another jealously round and round a tree until they melted into butter.
Villa America Page 3
