Villa America (28 page)

The next morning, Gerald woke with a start. Something was wrong. Only when he had been awake for five whole minutes did he realize what it was—Owen, the dinner invitation.

Sara had already risen, and he looked at his watch. It was eight o’clock. She must have let him sleep in. He dressed and went down to the terrace, where breakfast was already in full swing.

Sara was expounding on her theories on fresh foods and germs, while Monty sat there nodding.

“You have to wash the children’s coins, they carry germs,” Sara said. “And on trains, gloves are a necessity. Also, I put disinfected sheets around the compartment.” She took a sip of her coffee. “I believe in fresh milk, it’s so important. That’s why we have the cows.”

“
Basta, Violetta,”
Baoth, his mouth full of cereal, yelled, doing his imitation of Amilcar.

“Germs,” Monty said, slicing into a melon. “You don’t say.”

“Good morning,” Gerald said primly, then hated himself for it.

“There you are,” Sara said. “I didn’t want to wake you. Your face was all mashed against the pillow.”

“Well, now I won’t have much time for work,” he said, pulling out his chair loudly. “And I really do have to keep at it.”

Sara poured him a cup of coffee. “Don’t forget that Monsieur Trasse is coming at nine. The barber,” she said, turning to Monty.

Monty rubbed his beard. “I could use a little attention from Monsieur Trasse myself.”

Gerald would have liked to pull that pointy beard right off his face.

“Why is your beard so red?” Baoth asked.

“Because I drink the blood of small children,” Monty said, making crazy hands.

“And adults,” Gerald said. “They call him the bloodsucker.”

“Well, well,” Monty said. “Looks like someone got up on the wrong side of the bed.”

Gerald could feel Sara’s eyes on him, but he avoided her gaze.

“All right, children,” Sara said. “Time for lessons. Don’t keep Mam’zelle waiting.” She rose. “I’m going too.”

“To putter,” he said. “She’s a great one for puttering, my wife.” He said this last to no one in particular.

“Yes, to putter, Gerald.” She gave him a look. “Also called chores.”

Gerald drank his coffee, not looking at Monty. He thought about Owen, about seeing him the night before. He felt his face go hot thinking of himself all dressed in his dinner clothes and wearing that foolish top hat. He thought about Monty’s theatrical desire and about his own…what? He thought about the morning, almost a year ago now, in Owen’s rooms, the body in the bed behind him.

He’d meticulously avoided Owen this summer, or meticulously tried to, sending Sara alone on errands to the airfield for things she wanted and making excuses to leave any place he turned up.

If he interrogated himself on this subject, the only conclusion he came to was that in some way, somehow, he felt Owen had made a fool out of him. But when he asked himself why he felt that, his mind would wander, and he couldn’t answer.

The work, their life together—the realization of all that he and Sara had dreamed of, had talked of, had planned for during their courtship—that was everything. That was all that mattered. That was what he told himself.

“I think I’ll go for a stroll before your barber arrives,” Monty said, wiping his lips carefully with his napkin. “Call me when he’s ready for me.”

Gerald watched his friend’s back as he retreated down the stairs into the garden. He sat there awhile, being as still as he could be. Finally, he stood. With one violent movement, he kicked over his chair. He looked at it and then just walked away.

It was Sara, not Gerald, who called him when the barber arrived. From the bottom of the garden, Monty saw her leaning out of one of the second-story windows, framed by the yellow shutters, waving a handkerchief with comic distress.

He made his way back to the house, still pondering Gerald’s mood. Of course he hadn’t intended to hurt Gerald’s sense of propriety, but the man was being a dunce. He himself knew what it was to hide; they all did. A few giddy postwar years weren’t going to change that.

The line between public and private was still clearly delineated, at least for most of the people he knew, the ones who lived in the real world and not in some garret in Paris or cabaret in Berlin. But that was the point of having friends. And, more important, one shouldn’t hide from oneself. Monty sighed. Perhaps, though, he had been a little too cavalier. More sensitivity might be required.

He found them on the terrace, the barber setting up his tools neatly on a tray. When the Frenchman saw him, he clapped his hands in approval.

“
Une vraie barbe,”
he said.

Monty smiled. “
D’abord
Monsieur Murphy.
Après, la vraie barbe.
”

The barber nodded and opened a bottle of some kind of lotion that he began applying in a circular motion to Gerald’s head.

“What is that strange elixir?” Monty asked.

“I’m going bald,” Gerald said tersely. “It’s supposed to help.”

“Look,” Monty said, settling himself into one of the chairs. “Does he speak English?”

“Not really,” Gerald said. “But that doesn’t give you license to say whatever idiocies you have in your head.”

“My God, you could join my graduate dramatics class,” Monty said. When Gerald didn’t answer, he continued: “It’s probably none of my business—”

“It’s not your business.”

“—but I’m going to say it anyway. There are many ways to live one’s life, Gerald. It doesn’t have to be one thing or the other. You know how much I love Sara. I adore that woman. And I understand what you have here…but you’re allowed to have something for yourself also. Not like Cole, perhaps; that hasn’t exactly been a recipe for happiness,” he conceded. “But there may be a way without hurting anyone else.”

Gerald looked at him with no anger but with no warmth either, it seemed. Then he said: “I care for you, I do. You’re an old friend and I don’t want to argue or hurt your feelings. But you don’t know me, Monty. Don’t presume to.”

There was a scene unfolding at the house. Sara didn’t know if she was coming or going. Hoytie was upstairs packing noisily and apparently breaking things. The children, who’d been terrors all day, had been sequestered in their rooms. Dos and Noel and Esther had taken refuge at the
bastide
. The cook was in the kitchen panicking about the changing numbers for a dinner party that was supposed to happen in less than an hour. And God knew where Gerald was.

The day had started off in a perfectly lovely fashion, and the afternoon at La Garoupe had been one of the best she could remember all summer. They’d had a Far East costume party on the beach with their houseguests as well as Zelda and Scott, who’d been on their best behavior; and the Picassos had come down, and the Barrys had been there.

Admittedly, Hoytie, who’d arrived that morning by train, hadn’t wanted to wear a bathing costume or a Far East costume and had sat superciliously under an umbrella on an impossibly high mound of cushions. She’d spoken only when spoken to except for muttering occasionally to no one in particular: “Sara did always like the beach. Heaven knows why.” And she’d refused to take the photo of all of them in their outfits in the canoe.

But other than that, it had been such fun—even Gerald’s black mood seemed to have lifted just a little—and Sara had been looking forward to the dinner party that evening. That is, until they’d returned home, and Hoytie had cornered her in the upstairs library.

“This crowd of yours,” her sister had begun. “Well, I’m not sure really why you bother. But that’s neither here nor there. I have some very good people—whom I know intimately—staying in Cannes. And I’ve invited them to come stay here at Villa America…” She stopped and looked around the room as if it were impossibly preposterous. “Well, to come to dine and then stay on.”

“Hoytie,” Sara said, shocked. “How could you? First, there’s no room. Second, that’s not your invitation to give. And finally, I will not have you turn my dinner party into one of your holocausts.”

“Holocausts? Holocausts?” Her sister’s face turned beet red.

“When did you invite them anyway?” Sara stormed to the window as if they might already be banging on her door.

“I just sent your chauffeur with an invitation,” her sister said, a look of smug satisfaction on her face. “The day at the beach convinced me your table needed a little finessing.”

“Well, I’ll have to send Vladimir after him, then,” Sara said. “You know, you’re more trouble than you’re worth. Are you really so blind to other people’s feelings?”

“Ha. That’s the pot calling the kettle.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“Oh, you’ve always been selfish. You and Olga. The only thing you care about is what’s going on in the middle of your own little world. All this…” She spread her arms wide.

“Oh, really? My God, Hoytie, you’re the most selfish person I know.”

“You think you have it all figured, don’t you?” Hoytie put her hands on her hips. “Well, you don’t. You know, there’s great curiosity in Paris about what Gerald’s true
nature
might be. Not that you’d notice anything, of course.”

“How dare you talk about my husband.” Sara absolutely seething now. “What about your little infatuation with Misia Sert? Although
infatuation
may be too delicate a word for you to grasp. I believe
lovesick puppy
is the term I heard used.”

Hoytie slammed her palm against a side table. “She adores me.”

“I hear she calls you
l’emmerdeuse,
” Sara said triumphantly. “God knows what her husband calls you.”

“I will not”—Hoytie was shouting now—“stay in this backwater house one minute longer. If you won’t do anything to keep up your station, I certainly won’t let you bring me down with you.”

And with that, her sister had stomped to the guest bedroom across the hall, and Sara had stomped downstairs, where she found the children conducting their own Salons de Jeunesse on one of the white satin armchairs.

Now, after dispatching Vladimir to intercept the chauffeur, upbraiding Mam’zelle for not controlling the children, and informing Tintine that she had to take the dinner numbers down or, perhaps, bring them up if Hoytie’s infernal guests arrived anyway, Sara stood in the hall shaking with anger.

She heard another crash from upstairs and rushed back to the guest room. Hoytie was tying up her small case, and the remnants of what had once been a lavender pitcher—one that Gerald had bought for her on his way to training camp in San Antonio—lay on the floor.

“How could you?” Sara asked, pointing to the broken china.

“Things, things,” Hoytie said, lifting her case. “All you care about is things.” She marched past Sara, who followed her down the stairs.

Hoytie swung the front door open. “I’m going back to Paris,” she said. “You can send my trunk on later.”

“There’s no one here to drive you,” Sara said sweetly.

“
I’ll walk,”
Hoytie screamed at her face.

“Fine,” Sara said, slamming the door.

It took all her efforts not to cry. There were other guests to think about, and she had to dress for dinner.

She walked to the stairs, past Tintine, who was standing in the doorway of the dining room.

“
La famille,”
Tintine said, shrugging her shoulders.

Sara nodded. “Yes,
la famille
.”

She bathed and dressed, but when she was done, there was still no sign of Gerald. Sara sat down in a chair near the bed and tried to calm her nerves. It was rare that she became this shaken, and she knew it wasn’t all about Hoytie. She was worried about Gerald. She’d hoped that Monty’s visit would cheer him up, but they’d had some kind of quarrel. Gerald had said it was about Cole, but she didn’t entirely believe him.

Every couple had a dance, Sara knew, one that had to be performed when times got tricky. Gerald didn’t like to be confronted, and lately she’d been trying hard to ignore his increasing distance from her. It wasn’t always there, but when it was, it was like a big hole opening in the earth, threatening to swallow them all up.

She knew things about Gerald that no one else did—although she was aware some people doubted this—and he was schooled in all her deficiencies. She believed, or had come to believe, that in a marriage you uncovered these hidden imperfections, maybe not all at once, maybe little by little, and then you had to make a choice: you could see them as ugly, as betrayals, as sheer weakness, and gradually come to feel contempt for the person, or you could understand them as vulnerabilities in the person you loved, soft spots that had to be protected from the outside world.

She’d chosen the latter. And she loved him more, and fully, because of it. And never, for one minute, in all the time they’d been married had she doubted his love, his loyalty to her. But Gerald was unhappy and she knew it. And she wanted that to stop. The keel of their life depended on it.

Gerald looked at his watch and realized he’d lost track of time. He didn’t know how long he’d been standing in his studio staring at the painting.

He’d also been hiding from Hoytie, whose tactics of domination and subjugation exhausted him. Her performance on the beach had been enough to make him ask Sara if it was possible to disown siblings. But he couldn’t leave Sara to deal with everything alone. Although he would have liked to. Especially the dinner party. He felt entirely too keyed up to think about that.

He would be polite to Owen, but that was all, he decided. He didn’t want to draw attention to the situation, but neither did he want to encourage a repeat of this dinner invitation.

He walked back to the house, where he found Sara on the terrace fussing over the table settings.

“I’m late,” he said accusingly, as if it were her fault.

She looked up. “Where have you been? Hoytie’s gone off in a fit. She’s left,” Sara said.

“Well, thank God for that,” Gerald said.

“Gerald…I don’t think I can stand this much longer.”

He heard the desperation in her voice and it stopped him cold. He went over and put his arms around her. “I’m sorry,” he said. “What happened?”