Villa America

by Liza Klaussmann

  As if she’d read his mind, Sara said: “Come with me. I have something for you.”

  They walked together into the cool of the house and he felt his mind hush a little. He followed her up the stairs and into a library.

  “It smells nice in here,” he said.

  “It’s eucalyptus,” Sara said, turning, obviously pleased. “The smell always reminds me of big airy rooms and gentlemen’s soap.”

  He watched her as she walked over to a small, straight wooden desk, saw the outline of her hips through the gauzy material of her dress as she bent forward and retrieved something. He wouldn’t mind sinking into those thighs, drowning in them, all quiet and calm and untroubled.

  She handed him a small, black leather-bound diary. He opened it; elegant Spanish script covered the pages.

  “The dealer on the rue Saint-Sulpice said it was the authentic diary of le grand matador Pedro Romero Martínez,” she said. She laughed. “Although I don’t know if that’s really true.”

  He turned it over. The leather was very worn and soft.

  “It doesn’t matter, it’s a wonderful present.” He pulled her into his arms. “You’re so lovely.”

  She laughed and drew away. “Come along now,” she said. “I can’t keep you all to myself.”

  When the Hemingways and Pauline had left, Sara walked Ada to the bastide and said good night, then decided to take a stroll in the gardens. She walked down to the farthest edge of the property and looked out into the darkness, listening to the sound of the tide coming in far below.

  She thought about the day, about the feel of the leather diary in her hands, of Ernest’s body against hers, of the smell of the inside of Owen’s plane. There was something about Owen. Something between them that she couldn’t yet give voice to but that hung in the air like a musky perfume. She would have called it attraction except it was closer to the intensity she used to feel for some older girls she admired at school. It wasn’t the same thing that she felt when she touched Ernest or sensed him watching her. That special kind of electricity, the kind that led people to make big mistakes.

  Ernest. Sara toyed with her pearls, feeling the silkiness of the beads between her fingers. Thinking of being so near him in library. No, she decided, the fact that nothing could ever happen between them didn’t mitigate the pleasure she experienced when she was close to him, a sort of perpetual anticipation that might never be fulfilled. That had its own kind of thrill.

  But with Owen it was more complicated than that. Of course. Despite all the reasons why they might not be friends, there was nonetheless an understanding between them. She loved the way that he’d accepted her unexpected arrival today as natural. More than that—as welcome. She never needed to explain herself around him. That was a rarity. He allowed quiet unspoken things to happen between people, and she didn’t know a single other person like that. He was special, and not just to Gerald.

  She wondered about Gerald and Owen and Arcadia. About why she’d invited him to stay at their little farm. It wasn’t that she felt sorry for him because of where he was living. It was something else. She wanted to have him here at Villa America, to have him inside the circle rather than dangerously battering down the gate from the outside.

  Intimacy was difficult to talk about, especially for her, someone who had so very little experience in articulating it. She knew she had to protect her marriage, her family, from life’s vagaries and that to do so, she might have to allow for complications. And for love. For love to expand, she supposed. She wasn’t sure if she could do it, but she knew she had to try.

  After Sara had gone to bed, Gerald took one of the bicycles and rode to Owen’s field. He found him in the barn reading by the gas lamp.

  He looked up and smiled at Gerald.

  Gerald leaned his bike against the wall. “I loved you more this evening than I ever have.”

  And it was true what Owen had said about the sound of the grass growing and the smell of the dust and the sea. And the happiness of being with your heart’s desire on a late-spring night in the South of France. And how no one else knew you were there, and no one else cared.

  Ellen Barry was leaning against the terrace wall of the Casino Cléo in Juan-les-Pins with Ada MacLeish, surveying the party. She adored the out-of-season season here. All the passions and rows and fun that lay ahead this summer, she thought with a smile; life was too dull if someone wasn’t sparking off about something.

  It had turned out neatly, Sara and Gerald’s soiree for Ernest, not least thanks to the surprise of caviar in the summer. Nobody, absolutely nobody, ate caviar this time of year, as it spoiled on the long train ride from the Caspian Sea. But leave it to Sara to find some pilot willing to lug it back here for Ernest. And then bottle after bottle of crisp, beautiful champagne.

  It was a fine warm evening and the casino owner was hovering around the table where the Fitzgeralds, the Hemingways, and Sara and Gerald were sitting.

  “He’s like an excited gnat,” Ellen said, eyeing the owner.

  “Well, if this is a success, it will be a boon for him, won’t it?” Ada said.

  “You can say that again.”

  “Speaking of gnats.” Ada waved a plump, smooth arm over her head, clearing a swarm of them. She looked at her glass. “Empty,” she said. “Oh, I wish Archie were back already. All this coupledom is wearisome alone. Where’s Phil?”

  Ellen jerked her chin towards the fountain, where her husband was talking and talking to one of Hadley’s friends, the lovely and shockingly thin Pauline Pfeiffer.

  “Speaking of coupledom.” She laughed.

  “Oh, I wouldn’t worry about that,” Ada said. “Pauline has bigger fish to fry.”

  “Mmm,” Ellen said. It was what it was, but she thought the fact that Pauline was supposedly Hadley’s friend made the whole thing in poor taste. “I blame Ernest, though, really.”

  “I’d blame whoever you’d like if I thought it would do any good,” Ada said, smoothing down her yellow evening dress. “I said something to Sara about it, how strange the three of them are together, you know—the looks, the silences, the flirting—and she just stared at me like I was off my head.”

  “Sara likes a very male animal,” Ellen said.

  “And then there’s dear Gerald,” Ada said.

  Ellen shrugged. “Well, some women like to eat an elegant slice of lamb all week long but dream of a bloody steak on Sunday night. Nothing wrong with that.”

  “I think Archie’s more like a drumstick,” Ada said.

  Ellen looked at the table full of their friends and had to laugh. There was Ernest, big and dark and smiling and chatting to Sara, who was obviously delighted and scooping up spoonfuls of caviar. And on her other side there was Scott, looking like an apoplectic puppy, his head about ready to explode. “Scott’s going to have a breakdown if they keep on like that,” she said.

  “Scott,” Ada said, laughing her silvery laugh and shaking her head. “He’s always trying to make love to her. I saw him do it in a taxi once. And you know what she said to me later? ‘Oh, Scott’s in love with everyone. What’s a little kiss between friends?’”

  “Ha,” Ellen said. “I love Sara.”

  “Madly,” Ada said.

  At the table, Sara turned away and said something to Gerald while Ernest continued to look at her. And he wasn’t just looking, Ellen realized, he was observing, calculating. “It’s not just Scott trying,” she said.

  Ada looked too. “No,” she said. Then she sighed. “But the thing about Sara is, she’s just incorruptible.”

  “Ah,” Ellen said, as a waiter appeared at their side carrying a fresh bottle. “Please, sir, may I have another?”

  Scott watched Sara. He felt sick in his bones, in his heart. How could she? There was Ernest, all flattery and smiles and stories, but Sara was better than that. He loved her. Ernest was just an interloper in this love that existed between himself and Sara and Gerald and Zelda. Though Zelda—he felt distanced from her lately. T
here was darkness in her, and sometimes he thought she was trying to kill him. Zelda said he was drinking too much, but what the hell? That wasn’t the point; that was a ruse.

  Sara in her shimmering gown with her hard and lovely face and golden bob and rope of pearls and silver spoon. He wanted to write her, to draw her, to show what it felt like to be near her and adore her. He would, he would. If only Ernest would stop talking to her.

  He was talking about Pamplona, and Sara was enraptured. Ernest described the nobility of the matador, and she said: “I can’t wait to see it with you.”

  He hated that they were all going to Pamplona together. He hated that Ernest read his manuscripts to Sara and Gerald, and they said: “Oh, how new. How fresh. How exciting.” They never said that about Scott’s work. Ernest’s work was good; it was fresh and new. And Scott wanted the world to know that. But that didn’t mean they had to love Ernest more.

  Scott turned to Gerald, sitting on his right, and said: “Sara’s being mean to me.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Gerald said, and Scott didn’t like his tone.

  “Don’t talk to me like that,” Scott said, but Gerald looked beyond him, concentrating on Ernest’s story. Scott looked away, hummed a little tune to himself. But it didn’t work.

  Ernest had Hadley and Pauline; what did he need Sara for? Just to take her. That was the way he was.

  “So.” Scott turned back to Gerald. “I suppose you have some special plan for all of us tomorrow, do you? Something special that includes costumes and a hat and dancing and a flying elephant and…something that no one’s ever seen before, and we’re all going to be amazed and in awe of you?”

  Gerald ignored him.

  “Sara,” Scott said. “Look at me.” But she didn’t.

  “There are all sorts of reasons a matador can be second-rate,” Ernest was saying. “But the good ones, the ones that are second-rate not because of cowardice or weakness, they’d rather die than live that way.”

  “Is second-rate so bad?” Sara asked and Scott could tell she was teasing, and he hated it.

  “Not if it’s just bad luck,” Ernest said. “But any other way, yes.”

  “Well,” Sara said, pushing her hands through her hair. “I suppose then we must all be very careful not to slip into that status.”

  “I don’t think you’ve ever had a second-rate moment in your life,” Ernest said, smiling at her.

  “Don’t make my pedestal too high.” She was smiling too.

  “Sara,” Scott said, but too quietly for anyone to hear.

  Then that American pilot was there and Scott’s head felt heavy as he lifted it up to look at the man’s face. “It’s you,” he said. “The man from the mystery place. The pilot who knows pilots who steal people’s wives. Owen. That’s the name.”

  “Hello, Scott,” the pilot said, but then he turned away too.

  Well, that was it. If even nobody pilots were pretending he was invisible, something had to be done. Scott pushed back his chair and managed to get himself upright.

  He stumbled through the terrace doors and into the casino, where he tripped on a small rug. He managed to catch himself on the doorframe and stared down at the offending object. “You,” he said to the rug.

  Then he picked it up and put it over his head. If he was going to be forced into the role of supplicant, then supplicant he would be. He got down on his hands and knees, rug over his head, and began crawling back to the table.

  When he reached what appeared to be Gerald’s legs, Scott grabbed one. “Hello, I’m just a poor supplicant. I’ve come to beg for attention.”

  Gerald looked down, and Scott felt that icy coldness that Gerald used so effectively sometimes. “Get up.”

  “Sara’s being mean to me,” he said to Gerald. Then louder, to the whole table: “Sara’s being mean to me.”

  “Scott, get up.”

  “I won’t,” Scott said, clutching the rug tighter around his head.

  “I don’t know why, but you’re trying to wreck this for us. Stop it.”

  “Fine,” Scott said, standing and throwing off his headdress. “But the only thing I’m trying to wreck is a champagne-and-caviar party that is beyond a doubt the most affected piece of nonsense I’ve ever seen. I, sir, am doing you a favor. Saving you from your own ridiculousness.”

  Gerald stood. “You stay if you want. I’m leaving.”

  Scott wasn’t aware of anything after that until the next morning when, in the bright sunshine, he awoke in the back of his car next to Zelda. Looking around, he saw they were parked in the middle of a trestle bridge, the one used for the streetcar, the sea glinting far beneath them. At the end of the bridge a peasant-type person was waving his hands frantically at them. Scott tried to clear his head. And then, from somewhere behind him, he heard it. It was growing louder: a rumbling on the tracks.

  The evening after the party for Ernest, Sara was alone in the library. The children were long asleep, Ada and Pauline had been fed and sent off to the bastide, and some kind of order had been restored.

  “There you are.”

  She turned to see Gerald crossing the room.

  “I’ve just written Scott a very tough letter,” she said. “I think it should set him straight.”

  “Better you than me,” Gerald said, sitting in one of the chairs.

  “You were absolutely right to leave, and I told him so.”

  “Thank you,” Gerald said. “I’m sorry I abandoned you. I just couldn’t.”

  “No,” she said. What Scott had said about Gerald being ridiculous had been unnecessarily cruel. She could have clocked him.

  She went over and sat in the chair across from Gerald. “Are you tired?”

  “A bit.” He held his hand out to her and she took it.

  “You know,” she said, “I talked to Owen about him moving into the little farm.”

  “You did?” He let go of her hand.

  “It seemed awful to have him camping in that falling-down barn when we have so much space.”

  “I suppose,” Gerald said, but he didn’t say anything else.

  “And I saw his new plane.”

  “Oh?” He picked at something on his trousers.

  “Arcadia,” she said.

  “Mmm.”

  “I didn’t want to mention it to him, but I wondered if it wasn’t a rather dangerous name for a plane.”

  “Dangerous?”

  “Gerald,” she said, a little sharply. “Don’t be obtuse. An unattainable paradise? Anyway, it struck me as odd.”

  “He probably doesn’t know what it means, not in that way, at least,” Gerald said.

  “I wonder,” she said, looking at him and thinking of the Poussin painting, the one with the tomb that her husband admired so much. “Shockingly,” she said, “I could use a nightcap. I feel quite awake.”

  “A sherry?”

  “Yes. Why don’t you bring one up to bed for me.”

  “I’d be delighted,” he said.

  She went upstairs but didn’t put on her nightgown, just lay naked under the covers. She couldn’t say why she’d done that; she’d just felt like it. Why was she doing anything these days?

  When Gerald came upstairs with the little glass of sherry, she didn’t sit up, only continued to lie on her side, her head on the pillow, watching him.

  He placed the glass on the nightstand next to her. He looked at her.

  “Get undressed and turn out the light,” she said softly.

  And while they made love, Sara thought of first-rate matadors with rough hands and red capes who slaughtered bulls with enormous care.

  Sara woke up early, before anyone else, and longed to be out by herself. She’d been dreaming about her mother and her sisters and her father and their trip to India. She felt wonderful, and she didn’t want to share it with Gerald or the children or Ada or anybody. She wanted only to savor it before it disappeared into the routine of the day.

  She dressed quietly and slipped out o
f the bedroom and down the stairs. She took the touring car and drove herself, which she never did anymore. Her driving had never been very good, and after a few run-ins with bushes, she’d all but given herself over to their chauffeur.

  She made her way through the town, asleep except for a few women hanging washing. The June air was cool and she wished she’d worn something warmer. After climbing up the Roman road, she drove through a small village and turned onto the allée des Cigales. She was going to see the one person she knew who never required any explanations.

  When she pulled her car to a stop on the edge of the field, she could see a man in front of the hangar watching her, the mechanic, she supposed, and on the other side of the runway, Owen emerging from the barn, already dressed.

  She walked quickly across the field and met him at the barn door.

  “Hello,” she said.

  “Hello,” Owen said. “Would you like a cup of coffee?”

  Sara nodded and followed him inside. She saw the sagging camp bed and old blanket, that desk he’d brought from the air base. He pulled out the chair for her and then poured a cup of coffee from the speckled enamel pot sitting on the gas warmer.

  She knew why Gerald had been worried about Owen’s living situation, but this morning his arrangement looked like heaven to her. Simple, clean, just for one person.

  “No milk. I’m sorry,” Owen said, handing her a sort of camping cup that matched the pot.

  “Oh, I don’t care,” Sara said. Then: “I’ll bring you some from our cows, if you like.”

  “Sure,” he said.

  He lowered himself onto the camp bed and they sat there together in silence, sipping their coffee. After a bit, she could hear doves and the creak of the barn shifting. She put down her cup.

  “Will you do something for me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Will you take me up in your plane?”