Villa America (10 page)

“Oh, Hoytie,” Olga said. “How can you be so calm? This is Sara’s whole life we’re talking about.”

“I feel sick,” Sara said.

Hoytie rose. “I’ll get some sherry.”

“Oh, yes, good idea,” Olga said. “I think we could all use a little Dutch courage.”

Hoytie returned with the decanter and poured them each a glass. “To success.”

“Yes.” Olga raised her glass.

“Oh God,” Sara said.

They were on their second round when they heard the front door open, murmurings in the hallway, and then the snap of their father’s study door.

“It’s time,” Hoytie said.

“I don’t want to,” Sara said. “Can’t you just do it?”

“Don’t be a little idiot.”

“Come on,” Olga said, “we’ll come with you.”

Hoytie pushed Sara down the hallway to their mother’s bedroom. Quietly she opened the door. She could hear her mother humming, strangely, “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” as she splashed around in the adjacent bathroom.

Sara stood in the middle of the room and Hoytie gave her a sharp shove.

“‘He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword. His truth is marching on.’”

Sara could imagine her mother’s rounded body floating and plunging in the bathwater, like some kind of glorious, avenging porpoise.

“‘Glory, glory…’”

 “Sara, do it,” Hoytie hissed.

She knocked on the door and heard the splashing and singing go quiet.

“Who is it?”

Sara opened her mouth, but nothing would come out. She looked helplessly at her sisters. Olga smiled weakly.

“Yes? Who’s there?”

She tried again, but again, she had no words. Finally, Hoytie administered a swift, mean kick to her ankle, and Sara, in a cry of pain and slight insanity, yelled “I’m marrying Gerald Murphy” at the bathroom door and then turned and ran, her sisters in tow.

“That was the best fun I’ve had in ages,” Hoytie cried as the three of them streamed back down the hallway to the relative safety of Olga’s bedroom.

“How could you? How could you do this to me?” Adeline Wiborg, dressed in black as if in mourning and lying on her chaise longue, threw Sara an accusatory look.

“Mother,” Sara said. “But you love Gerald.”

“I do not, I do
not
. Why should I love Gerald Murphy?”

“What did Father say?”

Sara’s father was out, lunching with Patrick Murphy, presumably trying to come up with a plan to control the damage. Gerald himself had stormed out before she’d had a chance to confer with him.

“What do you think he said? He doesn’t want to sell his daughter and break up the family any more than I do.”

“Break up the family?” Sara paced, exasperated. “But we’ve been together so much longer than most families.”

“It doesn’t seem that long to me,” Adeline said, real sadness in her voice.

“And we wouldn’t be far. We’d find a place in the city, of course.”

“Find a place in the city? You’d move out?”

“Oh, dear,” Sara said.

Adeline sat up, brushing aside her tears. “Sara, dearest, be reasonable. He’s a Catholic. What do you know about being a Catholic? About raising Catholic children?”

“I don’t know. It’s never seemed that important.” Sara put her hand to her head and went and stood by the small bay window in her mother’s dressing room.

“Well, this is just it. You haven’t thought any of this through.”

“We love each other and we want to make a life together. That’s all,” Sara said, but she was beginning to feel the weight of her mother’s question pressing on her.

“And what will you live on? A place in the city, indeed. Who’s to pay for this place? Your father?”

“I—”

“No, no. This is all too much. It’s out of the question. It’s untenable, impossible, it’s…I can’t do without you, anyway.”

“Mother—”

“I can’t talk about this anymore; I’m ill. Let me rest.”

Things hadn’t gone much better with her father, who’d accused her of naïveté and indolence and profligacy with money.

“I’ve spoken with Patrick Murphy,” her father began when she’d seated herself in his study. “While we’re both very fond of you and Gerald, this does not seem like a sound plan. Mr. Murphy seemed extremely doubtful in particular on the subject of Gerald being able to provide for you in any meaningful way.”

 “Mr. Murphy has never been exactly…”—she searched for the right word—“favorable to Gerald.”

“Well, I think he should know,” her father said hotly. “Gerald is his son, after all.”

That afternoon, Sara received an invitation from one of her cousins, Sara Sherman Mitchell, to take tea at her house.

Sara Sherman had lived with the Wiborgs for a time, after her parents’ death and before marrying her husband, Ledyard. If anyone would know about the difficulties Sara now faced, it was her cousin, who had managed not only to marry a Roman Catholic but to do it with Sara’s parents’ benediction. Also, Sara was sure—and this was what made her heart beat a bit faster in her chest—that the invitation was no coincidence; Gerald must be behind it.

When the Mitchells’ maid opened the door, Sara Sherman was already there, and she practically pushed the poor girl aside to get to her cousin and clasp her hand, her eyes bright beneath her frizz of dark hair. (Why did Sara Sherman’s hair always look like she’d been beekeeping in the hot sun?)

“Come, come. Tea’s all laid out,” she said, dragging Sara behind her.

Once in the upstairs parlor, Sara looked around to see if Gerald was lurking somewhere, but the room was empty.

“So,” Sara Sherman said, patting the cushion next to her. “Gerald Murphy. I’m so glad for you, Sara. Really.”

“Well, don’t be too glad,” Sara said. “It’s not on, as it turns out. At least not according to the parental council. There are so many…complications. I don’t know,” Sara said, “I’m beginning to get slightly afraid.”

“What are you afraid of? Let’s think this through logically.”

“Well, first, there’s the Catholic question. As Mother pointed out today, what do I really know about it? About raising Catholic children?”

“Yes,” Sara Sherman mused. “Well, it is hard—terribly hard at first—to get used to all that. But it works itself out, eventually. Ledyard was quite fierce about it in the beginning, but we’ve found a rhythm, if you will. You just sort of get along with it.”

“I don’t know…” This did not seem very clear to her.

“What else?”

“I’m rather ashamed to admit this, but there’s the age difference.”

“Are you afraid that he won’t find you…” Sara Sherman seemed to be searching for the delicate phrase. “Feminine enough?”

Sara colored, thinking of herself lying back for Gerald, offering herself to him too quickly, so easily, like a bitch in heat. “No,” she said sternly. “Only, what will it be like in ten years, in twenty? And what will people say? ‘Poor Gerald Murphy, caught by the old spinster Sara Wiborg’?”

“Now you’re just being ridiculous. I can’t see that age makes any difference at all. And if it’s just other people you’re worried about, let Gerald worry about it for you.”

“I know you’re right—” She was interrupted by a knock at the door.

Sara Sherman rose to answer it and, after conferring with her maid, came back and sat down.

“Now,” she said, “there’s someone here to see you and I must make myself scarce.” She squeezed Sara’s hand. “What was it the Romans said? Fortune favors the bold? Be brave, darling Sara.”

Then there was Gerald’s dear, dear face at the door: the long, aquiline nose and serious brow, currently furrowed; the lovely bowed lips, just a bit too full, that kept his expression from looking too ascetic.

Sara was scarcely aware of her cousin’s exit as she met Gerald across the room and put herself into his embrace.

“What a day,” she finally said, pulling away from him.

“An autopsy and coroner’s inquest in one,” he said darkly.

They sat close together on the sofa.

“What did your mother say?” Sara was thinking of her own mother.

“She seems to think we’re playing a scene from
Romeo and Juliet.
Never mind her. It’s my father that’s the real problem. I was told in no uncertain terms what a disappointment I have been and continue to be and that he blames himself for my lack of any fundamental grasp of my duties in this world.”

“Oh, I got that too—a little less harshly, perhaps—from both of my parents.”

“The trouble is, how is one able to live up to one’s duties if one isn’t given any?”

She traced a fine line in his brow, trying to smooth it away. “Do you think…” She wanted to say this carefully. “I’m beginning to wonder if perhaps…perhaps I may not be the best wife for you.”

He looked at her sharply. “Do you want to get out of it?”

“No. No, I don’t. But…well, do you?”

“My God, I do not.” He held her gaze.

“We’ve never talked about religion.” She toyed with her tea doily. “Yours, I mean.”

He let out a sigh. “Is that all? I was afraid you might be beginning to agree with my father.”

“I don’t care one bit what your father thinks about you,” she said fiercely.

“And I don’t care one bit about the Catholic Church. The only thing it has given me is cold, distant parents and floggings in the woodshed by nuns too dense to know when a young boy misses home, such as that home may be. You will never have to set foot in one if I have anything to do with it.”

Sara laughed.

“Well, I’m glad you find it funny. You wouldn’t have found Sister Martha and her nasty switch all that amusing, I can tell you that.” But he smiled at her.

“No, it’s just…” She felt relief, not just because of his words, but also because they were them again, together against the world.

“Sara,” he said, his face serious, “this is important: the only life I want is the one we invent for ourselves. I don’t want what my parents have or what your parents have. I want something entirely of our own creation. I’ve felt inauthentic for most of my life and I want to be finished with that.”

She took his hand: “You will never, ever have to be other than you are with me.”

“Truly?”

“Truly.”

“My God, Sara, we’re really going to do it.” He laughed, a bit crazily. “I feel slightly hysterical.”

“Well, don’t get too hysterical. We have to come up with a new plan now. I’m afraid you’re going to have to become a serious businessman, at least for a little while, if we’re going to convince them.”

 “I can be anything you want. Anything.”

In the days and weeks that followed, their parents showed little sign of relenting. Gerald was working hard at Mark Cross to prove to Patrick Murphy that he was deserving of promotion, or at least favor, but to Sara, he seemed to grow more and more depressed, suffering bouts of what he called the Black Service. She wasn’t happy either about keeping their secret when what she wanted to scream was
I am loved; I am lovable.
But she had decided: she was not going to be at the mercy of fate one minute longer.

So, in between private lunches at La Goulue and tea at Sara Sherman’s and evenings out under the veneer of family chaperones, they wrote to each other.