Jewels (6 page)

“I don’t want to go back to New York, Jane. I’m perfectly happy here”.

“With Charles and three old servants, freezing to death on the Long Island Sound all winter? Sarrie, don’t be stupid. Come home. You’re twenty-one years old. You can’t give up your life now. You have to start over.”

“I don’t want to,” she said quietly, refusing to pay any attention to her sister’s baby.

“Don’t be crazy.” Jane looked exasperated with the stubbornness of her younger sister.

“What do you know, dammit? You have a husband who loves you, and two children. You’ve never been a burden, or an embarrassment or a disgrace to anyone. You’re the perfect wife, daughter, sister, mother. What do you know about my life? Absolutely nothing!” She looked furious, and she was, but not at Jane, and she knew it. She was furious at herself, and the fates … and at Freddie. And then she was instantly contrite as she looked at her sister sadly. “I’m sorry, I just want to be alone out here.” She couldn’t even really explain it.

“Why?” Jane couldn’t understand it. She was young and beautiful, and she wasn’t the only woman alive to get divorced, but she acted as though she had been convicted of murder.

“I don’t want to see anyone. Can’t you understand that?”

“For how long?”

“Maybe forever. All right? Is that long enough? Does that make it clear to you?” Sarah hated answering all her questions.

“Sarah Thompson, you’re crazy.” Her father had arranged for her to take her own name back as soon as he filed for the separation.

“I have a right to do what I want with my life. I can go be a nun if I want to,” she said stubbornly to her sister.

“You’ll have to become a Catholic first.” Jane grinned, but Sarah didn’t find it amusing. They had been Episcopalians since birth. And Jane was beginning to think that Sarah was a little crazy. Or maybe she’d come out of it after a while. It was what they all hoped, but it no longer seemed certain.

But Sarah remained firm in her refusal to move back to New York. Her mother had long since picked up her things from the apartment in New York and stored them all in boxes, which Sarah insisted she didn’t even want to see now. She went to her divorce hearing in November wearing a black suit and a funereal face. She looked beautiful and afraid and sat through it stoically until it was over. And as soon as it was, she drove herself back to Long Island.

She went for long walks on the beach every day, even on the bitterest cold days, with the wind whipping her face until it felt as though it were bleeding. She read endlessly, and wrote letters to her mother and Jane and some of her oldest friends, but in truth she still had no desire to see them.

They all celebrated Christmas in Southampton and Sarah hardly talked to anyone. The only time she mentioned the divorce was to her mother, when they heard a news story over the radio about the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. She felt an unhappy kinship with Wally Simpson. But her mother assured her again that she and the Simpson woman had nothing in common.

When spring came, she looked better again finally, healthier, rested, she had gained back some weight, and her eyes were alive. But by then she was talking about finding a farmhouse on Long Island somewhere, in the remoter parts, and trying to rent it, or perhaps even buy one.

“That’s ridiculous,” her father growled when she suggested it to him. “I can understand perfectly well that you were unhappy over what happened, and needed some time to recover here, but I’m not going to let you bury yourself on Long Island for the rest of your life, like a hermit. You can stay here until the summer, and in July, your mother and I are taking you to Europe.” He had decided it just the week before and his wife was thrilled, and even Jane thought it was a splendid idea, and just what Sarah needed.

“I won’t go.” She looked at him stubbornly, but she looked healthy and strong and more beautiful than ever. It was time for her to go back out in the world again, whether she knew it or not. And if she wouldn’t go of her own accord, they were prepared to force her.

“You will go, if we tell you to.”

“I don’t want to run into Freddie,” she said weakly.

“He’s been in Palm Beach all winter.”

“How do you know?” She was curious, wondering if her father had spoken to him.

“I’ve spoken to his attorney.”

“I don’t want to go to Europe anyway.”

“That’s unfortunate. Because you can go willingly, or unwillingly. But in either case, you’re going.” She had stormed away from the table then, and gone for a long walk on the beach, but when she returned, her father was waiting for her just outside the cottage. It had almost broken his heart to see her grieve over the past year, over the marriage that never was, the child she had lost, the mistakes she had made, and her bitter disappointment. And she was surprised to see him waiting for her, as she came up off the beach, through the tall dune grass.

“I love you, Sarah.” It was the first time her father had ever said that to her, in just that way, and it reached her heart like an arrow covered with the balm she needed to heal her. “Your mother and I love you very much. We may not know how to help you, to make up to you for everything that happened, but we want to try … please let us do that.”

Tears filled her eyes as she looked at him, and he pulled her into his arms and held her there for a long time as she cried on his shoulder. “I love you too, Papa. … I love you too…. I’m so sorry….”

“Don’t be sorry anymore, Sarah…. Just be happy…. Be the girl you used to be before this all happened.”

“I’ll try.” She pulled out of his arms for a moment to look at him and saw that he was crying too. “I’m sorry I’ve been so much trouble.”

“That’s right!” He Smiled through his tears. “You should be!”

They both laughed, and they walked slowly back to the house, arm in arm, as he silently prayed they would be able to get her to Europe.

Chapter 4

HE
Queen Mary
sat proudly at the dock, in her berth at Pier 90 on the Hudson River. There were signs of festivity everywhere. Large, handsome trunks were still being taken on board, huge deliveries of flowers were being made, and champagne was liberally being poured in all the first-class cabins. The Thompsons arrived in the midst of it all with their hand luggage, their trunks having been sent on ahead. Victoria Thompson was wearing a beautiful white suit by Claire McCardell. The large straw hat she wore went perfectly with it, and she looked happy and young as she stepped onto the gangplank just in front of her husband. This was going to be an exciting trip for them. They hadn’t been to Europe in several years, and they were looking forward to seeing old friends, particularly in the South of France and England.

Sarah had made a terrible fuss about going with them, and had flatly refused to go, almost until the end. And finally, it was Jane who had made the difference. She had gotten into an out-and-out shouting match with her younger sister, calling her names, accusing her of being cowardly, and telling her that it was not her divorce that was ruining their parents’ lives, but her refusal to pick up the pieces again, and that they were all damn sick of it, and she’d better pull up her socks, and quickly. The motives behind the attack didn’t really occur to Sarah as she listened to her, but she was overcome with a wave of fury at what Jane said to her, and the very anger she felt seemed to restore her.

“Fine, then!” she shouted back at Jane, tempted to throw a vase at her. “I’ll go on their damn trip if you think it’s so important to them. But none of you can run my life for me. And when I come back, I’m moving to Long Island permanently, and I don’t want to hear any more garbage from anyone about what it’s doing to their lives. This is
my
life, and I’m going to live it the way I goddamn well want to!” Her black hair flew around her head like ravens’ wings as she tossed her head, and her green eyes flashed angrily at her older sister. “What right do any of you have to decide what’s good for me?” she said, overwhelmed by fresh waves of outrage. “What do you know about my life?”

“I know you’re wasting it!” Jane didn’t budge an inch. “You’ve spent the last year hiding out here like a hundred-year-old recluse, and making Mother and Father miserable with your gloomy face. Nobody wants to watch you do that to yourself. You’re not even twenty-two years old, not two hundred!”

“Thank you for the reminder. And if looking at me is so painful for all of you, I’ll be sure to move out even faster when I get back. I want to find my own place anyway. I told Father that months ago.”

“Yeah, right, a falling-down barn in Vermont, or a collapsing farmhouse in the wilds of Long Island. … Is there any other punishment you can find to heap on your head? What about sackcloth and ashes? Had you thought of that, or is that too subtle for you? You’d rather go for the big time, something miserable, like a house with a hole in the roof and no heating, so Mother can worry about your getting pneumonia every year. I have to agree, it’s a great touch. Sarah, you’re beginning to make me sick,” she raged at her, and Sarah had answered by sweeping out of the room and slamming the door so hard that some of the paint fell off the hinges.

“She’s a spoiled brat!” Jane announced to them afterwards, still fuming. “I don’t know why you put up with her. Why don’t you just force her to go back to New York and live like a normal human being?” Jane was beginning to lose patience with her by spring. She had suffered enough by then, and she felt that Sarah owed it to all of them to at least make an effort to recover. Her estranged husband certainly had. There had been an announcement in the
New York Times
in May that he was engaged to Emily Astor. “How nice for him,” Jane had said sarcastically when she’d heard, but Sarah had said not a word about it to anyone, although her family knew it must have hurt her deeply. Emily was one of her oldest friends, and a very distant cousin.

“What do you suggest I do to make her live like a normal human being?” her father asked. “Sell the house? Take her back to New York in a straitjacket? Tie her to the hood of the car? She’s a grown woman, Jane, and to a certain extent, we can’t control her.”

“She’s damn lucky you put up with her. I think it’s high time she pulled herself together.”

“You have to be patient,” her mother had said quietly, and Jane had gone back to New York that afternoon, without seeing Sarah again. Sarah had gone off for a long walk on the beach, and then had driven off in the old Ford her father kept there for Charles, the butler.

But in spite of her determination and stubbornness about remaining apart from society, Jane’s words had obviously reached her In June she quietly agreed to join her parents in Europe. She told them at dinner one night, and tried to pass it off casually, but her mother stared at her in amazement. And her father clapped his hands when he heard the news. He had been just about to cancel their reservations, and give in to her refusal to go with them. He had decided that dragging her around Europe as an unwilling prisoner would have been no treat for anyone, not for them, and certainly not for Sarah.

He didn’t dare ask her what had convinced her finally. They all credited Jane with Sarah’s change of heart, although, of course, no one said a word to Sarah. As Sarah stepped out of the car at Pier 90 that afternoon, she looked tall and slim, and very serious in a plain black dress, and a very severe black hat that had once been her mother’s. She looked beautiful but austere, her face pale, her eyes huge, her dark hair pulled tightly back, her perfect features free of makeup. And as people looked at her, they noticed how beautiful she was, and how sad she looked, like a strikingly pretty, much-too-young widow.

“Couldn’t you have worn something a little happier, dear?” her mother said to her as they left the house, but Sarah only shrugged. She had agreed to go to humor them, but no one had said she had to have a good time, or look as though she were going to.

She had found the perfect house on Long Island before she left, an old deserted farm, with a tiny cottage sorely in need of repair, near the ocean, on ten untended acres. She had sold her wedding ring to put a deposit on it, and she was going to speak to her father when they got back about buying it for her. She knew that she would never marry again, she wanted her own place to live, and the farmhouse in Glass Hollow suited her to perfection.

They had ridden to Pier 90 that morning in silence. She was thinking about the trip, wondering why she had agreed to come. But if going with them made them feel that she had at least tried, then maybe her father would be inclined to help her buy the little farm when they returned If that was the case, then it was worth it. She loved the idea of fixing up the old house anyway, and she could hardly wait to do it.

“You’re very quiet, dear,” her mother had said, gently patting her arm in the car. They were so pleased that she was going with them. It had given them all hope, mostly because none of them had an idea how determined she was to resume her solitary life as soon as she got back. Had they known, it would have saddened them deeply.

“I was just thinking about the trip.”