Villa America (23 page)

That was what Gerald must have felt, too, when he went up in the plane with him. That unexpected vulnerability.

Sara supposed she shouldn’t be surprised to find something softer—broken even—in Owen. She’d heard from Tristan, who’d heard from God knows who, that Owen had been in some dangerous and tragic accident during the war. Apparently saw his best friend burned alive. But she’d also heard that his nickname had been La Chance, which she regarded as foolhardy. Perhaps, she thought now, she’d expected to find a man more like Edouard Jozan. Not that she minded a man like that; in fact, some part of her found that kind of virility exciting. Clearly, Zelda did too.

When she and Gerald and the children had gone to Saint-Raphaël for the day at the beginning of the month, it had already been evident that something was afoot between Zelda and Edouard. At least to everyone except Scott, it seemed.

There’d been too much liquor, as was always the case with Zelda and Scott, and the nannies had been left to amuse the children, although little Scottie Fitzgerald, who’d only just arrived from Paris, seemed pleased as punch to have playmates.

Zelda had been gay, a crown of roses on her head, speaking to everyone. But most of her attention had been fixed on Edouard, and their physicality had attracted Sara’s notice. The two spent a lot of time swimming together, racing and splashing and pushing each other. Later, as Zelda lay on her blanket, quite close to Edouard, her eyes closed, Sara noticed her pinkie reach out and twine around his.

Scott, meanwhile, had sat under an umbrella, his skin greenish white, drinking from a bottle of gin.

Gerald told her later, on the ride home, the children asleep in the back, that Scott was having an awful time with the book and that being away from it, even for a day at the beach, made him feel anxious.

“But did you see Zelda?” she’d asked.

“Yes,” he’d said. “I think you’d have to be blind not to have noticed that display.”

“Scott didn’t seem to notice,” she said.

“No.”

“I suppose if it’s not about Scott, he wouldn’t,” she said. She’d begun to tire of Scott’s antics, his ferocious sociability. She’d thought he might drop some of it once he and Zelda left the melee of Paris, but he seemed to have packed it along with everything else in his trunk.

“That’s a bit tough,” Gerald said.

“You’re right.” She sighed. “They’re young.”

“Still,” he conceded, “I wouldn’t want to be in Zelda’s shoes.”

Since that day, they hadn’t replied to her invitations or correspondence. She and Gerald had both assumed, or wanted to, that it was because Scott was hard at work and Zelda busy with Scottie. But now, after what Owen had said, she wondered.

Clearly, she’d have to try something else. She asked Tristan to bring her some writing paper and when it arrived, she set about penning two letters. The first was to Scott and Zelda, inviting them to a party on the grounds of Villa America in two weeks. The second was to Owen, telling him she hoped he’d join them “because no one should be alone all the time.” At the bottom of each letter she wrote
Dinner-Flowers-Gala
and underlined it twice.

The evening of the party was dry and warm, with just a hint of a breeze rustling the plantings on the grounds of Villa America. Sara could name them all now: Arabian maples; persimmon; white and black fig trees; phoenix palms; date palms; cedars of Lebanon; desert holly; mimosa; pepper trees; lemon and orange and olive trees. Their most precious, though, was the linden tree that grew close to the house, high above the tiered terrace gardens. The large old tree with its silvery leaves would eventually shade the gray and white marble terrace that would run along the back of Villa America, and they’d given specific instructions to the architects and builders to take the utmost care with it.

The construction on the house was coming along; the pitched red-tile roof had been removed and the third story erected. Still, the flat sunroof they’d wanted had yet to be built, and all along the perimeter of the house, the earth was turned up and untidy.

The gardens, though, were in perfect condition, if a little dry, and that’s all the space they needed for the party. They’d had furniture brought from the hotel and set everything up on the first three terraces, each separated from the next by a small flight of stone steps.

On the highest tier, closest to the house, was a series of small tables and wicker chairs covered in bright beach cushions, and off to the left, the gramophone and the records.

On the next tier down, they’d set up a banquet. Sara checked the dishes—cold sliced duck with fresh plums,
courgettes tartes,
wild lettuce, stuffed artichokes, a few lovely fresh cheeses, and, for dessert,
millasson
sprinkled with castor sugar. There was also a large bar table with champagne, anisette, peach wine, and a rhubarb cocktail that Gerald had spent two days perfecting in the kitchen of the Hôtel du Cap.

The guests had been asked to come at five p.m. for cocktails and the Salons de Jeunesse, a show of paintings produced by Honoria, Baoth, and Patrick under the tutelage of Vladimir. The children would stay for an hour and then be ferried back to the hotel for supper and bed. Sara saw them crowding around Gerald now as he arranged their artworks against a stone wall.

Sara walked over and placed her hand on Gerald’s back. He looked beautiful in his bone-colored linen suit. He’d had it made for him in Paris in the spring, saying he didn’t want to fuss too much with dinner clothes in Antibes. “We’re not going down to mix with
sheer society,
” he’d said.

Sheer society, holocausts;
she smiled to think of the private language that they’d been inventing between themselves over the years.

“What do we have here?” Sara asked now, putting her hand to Honoria’s head. She loved the feel of her daughter’s soft, cropped hair beneath her palm.

“This one’s mine,” Honoria said, pointing to a purple and blue canvas with mounds of green dotted through it.

Sara bent down. She could see that small flowers and bits of leaves had been pressed into the green paint. “My goodness,” she said. “That’s beautiful. What do you call it?”

“I call it
Fleurs in Antibes,
” she said proudly.

“Very ambitious,” Sara said, trying not to smile.

“Mine’s here,” Baoth said, pulling her hand.

Sara exchanged a look with Gerald; their middle child’s painting looked like a muddy, gloopy nothing. This one was not going to be an artist. “Very manly,” she said. “What is it?”

“Beef stew. The way Mam’zelle makes it.” He guffawed when he saw her expression.

Patrick was sitting in front of his piece playing with a tin soldier, marching it up and down the canvas. Sara had to squint at it. It was just a small pen drawing of a stick figure—a man, she assumed from the hat—on what might be a beach, given that the squiggly lines resembled seaweed.

“Who’s this, my love?”

“Monsieur Picasso,” he said, not stopping the march.

“Oh, I think he’ll be honored. Would you like to give it to him when he comes tonight?”

“All right,” Patrick said, seemingly unconcerned.

“I think you’ve all done splendidly,” Sara said. “Some more graciously than others,” she added, eyeing Baoth.

“Yes, I think tonight you can be spared the switch,” Gerald said.

All three children laughed and shrieked a bit at the thought, Honoria crying: “Dow-Dow, no.”

“Well, you never know,” he said. “The switch might be produced at any time.”

“Children, I want you to go up to the gate now,” Sara said, restoring order. “And be ready to greet our guests. Honoria, you may ask them when they come in what they’d like to drink and then tell Dow-Dow. All right?”

“Yes, Mother,” she said.

“Maybe they’d like the switch,” Baoth said.

“Enough of that. Get along.” She shooed them off, then turned to Gerald. “Really, you and that switch.”

“They must be aware of the harsh realities of life.”

She linked her arm through his. “As if you’d ever teach them that.”

“No,” he said, serious now. “I would never teach them that. You look marvelous, by the way.”

Standing on her tiptoes, her Louis heels lifting off the ground, Sara put her mouth to the hollow of his neck and kissed him.

At eight o’clock, the sun had just begun to set. The clouds at the far edge of the horizon were a shocking coral, and the date palms made dark fingers against the sky. Nightingales competed with the sounds of Clara Smith, her indolent voice stretching against the scratch of the gramophone.

A warmth had risen in Gerald, the kind he felt when he was glad about all the people around him and with his efforts to make them happy.

The children, long since bundled off, had displayed their paintings proudly and he’d photographed them next to their works, promising a Villa America art magazine later on.

Now, amid the music and birdsong, there was the pleasant hum of the guests. Dos, who’d joined them at the Hôtel du Cap last week on his way back from Spain, was here, as were the Picassos and the comte and comtesse de Beaumont, who’d brought along their very decorative but drunk houseguests. By the banquet table, Gerald saw Philip Barry and his wife, Ellen, beautiful in a salmon-colored gown, talking with his sister, Esther, and next to them, Don Stewart in conversation with Vladimir and a young writer whose name he’d forgotten. In the middle of it all, Sara, in a white draped linen dress, backless and shot through with silver thread, her long pearls spilling down her spine.

The only ones missing were Owen and the Fitzgeralds. But as he’d told Sara, he doubted that anything short of murder would keep those two away from a party billed as Dinner-Flowers-Gala.

He walked over to the banquet table and joined the Barrys and Esther, catching the strand of their conversation.

“Yes,” Phil was saying, “but what interests me is whether in order to have—and maintain—a happy family, one must give up art and seek money.”

“I’m surprised,” Esther said, towering over the playwright. “I didn’t think money would be a question for you at all.”

Ellen laughed, throwing her dark head back. “She’s got you there, Phil.” Gerald loved her throaty chuckle, her sardonic temperament.

“No,” Esther said. “I think the more interesting question is whether an artist can truly make such connections, such intimacies, as a family. An artist will always be an artist, whether she sublimates it or not.” She waved her hand—ragged nails, Gerald noticed—as if to dismiss Phil’s thought. “But can a true artist be part of a collective, or will she always end up striving for individuality? That is what we must focus on. All we know is—”

Gerald could tell his sister was gearing up for one of her blue streaks and he interrupted before the monologue took on epic proportions.

“Aren’t you in a collective?” he said, putting his hand on her arm.

“A circle,” Esther said, “is different than a collective. A collective—”

“I see,” Gerald said before she could continue. Esther had a monumental intellect, but party conversation wasn’t her strong suit.

“Ah,” Phil said, turning to Gerald. “Here’s a man who’s an artist and a family man, and successful at both.”

“Yes,” Esther said. She moved unconsciously closer to Gerald. “But that’s because Sara doesn’t go tinkering around inside his head. She doesn’t play Dr. Freud with his motivations. Thus, in a way, he is able to live both the examined and the unexamined life.”

“Is that true, Murphy?” Phil seemed highly amused. “No Dr. Freud at bedtime?”

“If Dr. Freud came to our bedside,” Gerald said, “we’d offer him a warm milk and brandy, have a nice little chat, and send him back to his own room, like we do with all naughty little boys.”

“Even in that comment—” Esther began, but she was cut off by a commotion coming from behind them.

Dos had been half listening to Esther Murphy from his spot a few feet away near the peach wine. Esther was one of those talkers who could leave you both irritated and spellbound at the same time. Ditto her appearance, with that ungainly figure and lazy eye and bad smell. He knew not all lesbians were like that. In fact, Esther’s circle included some positively elegant women, not to mention young nubile girls.

But whatever her looks, Esther was terrifyingly bright. He just couldn’t stand the way she talked
at
you instead of with you. This was what he was thinking, anyway, when Scott and Zelda arrived, bringing all that drama and staginess with them.

They were noticeably stumbling and arguing loudly as they entered, and of course everyone turned to watch.

Scott was trying to take Zelda in his arms and she was pushing him away. “You almost killed us,” she hissed loudly. “Don’t talk to me.”

“Fine,” he cried. “Although it was you asking for a light for your cigarette when you knew that turn was coming up.”

Dos saw Sara walk over quickly, but not too quickly, and take Scott by the arm. Smiling and speaking softly, she led him away. Then Gerald did the same with Zelda. Like referees separating boxers. Afterward, the rest of the guests began to resume their conversations, but halfheartedly, as if they were disappointed that the match had ended so soon.

With Zelda and Scott off in their respective corners and the spectacle cleared, Dos noticed someone who had come in behind them, a tall blond man with just the hint of a limp. War vet, he surmised.

The man walked over to the banquet table as if nothing unusual had just happened and picked up a glass. He poured an anisette and lit a cigarette. He didn’t greet anyone or even really look at any of the other guests. His eyes seemed to be fixed on the horizon. Dos had to laugh a little; the man seemed so much like a decorative extra in a play.

He picked up his own glass, along with the bottle of wine, and walked over to the other end of the table, where the man was standing.

“Hi,” he said. “That was quite an entrance. You part of the act?”

The man looked at him, smoking his cigarette. “I was the driver. They had a little car trouble.”