Villa America (42 page)

Owen woke up late that morning. He wasn’t sure why; he was always up with the sun. He hadn’t slept well, though. Maybe it was Gerald’s visit. He bathed and went outside. The field was spongy from the rain the night before. It was one of those warm March days on the Riviera when it seemed spring had already arrived.

Eugene was already there, outside the hangar, as usual. He’d put on the gramophone, his second great love, next to airplanes, and was listening to a Mozart piano sonata and smoking a cigarette.

Owen looked up at the sky, clear blue. The soft notes of the music rising and falling in the air. He closed his eyes. Just for a moment. He was late. He’d left a note for Gerald, saying that if he got there before Owen was back, he should wait for him.

She was outside the hangar, patient, still. Just one last time in
Arcadia
before the Spanish buyer came to collect her. She wasn’t worth much anymore, but she’d do if you needed a plane. And Owen needed to pay Eugene something since the bank had taken everything else.

Owen opened his eyes. He made his way to the plane. Eugene looked skyward.

“I know, I know, I’m late,” Owen said, fastening his old flight jacket.

He would have talked to her, run his hand down her body, like he used to do. But he was late. He didn’t want Gerald to get the note. He wanted to be there when he arrived. So he pulled down the ladder and climbed into the cockpit.

Eugene began cranking. They didn’t have to call to each other anymore; slight head movements were all they needed, they knew each other so well.

As
Arcadia
crossed the field, bumping along the track, Owen looked back and waved at Eugene. Then she was off, up into the sky. Her noises, her reactions to his touch, so familiar to him.

The air was colder up here, the softness of the morning lost below. Beneath him, he saw green things beginning to grow again, and he remembered his dream from the night before, which had woken him when it was still pitch-dark and he was alone. The same one. Always the same dream. The wheat, the sun.

He thought of Gerald as he crossed out over the sea. Thought of his face, so loved, his lean body. Thought of the warmth of his hand. There had never been anyone else. There never would be.

Before him, the expanse of blue-gray water disappeared and it all rose up before him, the past. Like the piano music had risen in the air of the field in the warm springlike morning.

Was it because of this that he didn’t hear the changes in
Arcadia
? Was it that face in front of him, so dear, so lost to him, that kept Owen from realizing that her engine was failing, that he was falling, that his outstretched hand was touching air and not another human being who was reaching for him so clearly in his mind’s eye?

When the plane hit the open water, she broke all up. The fuselage floated a minute, resting on the waves like a bright blue buoy. And then, all at once, what remained of
Arcadia
and its pilot was gone, sucked down into the sea.

The room at Massachusetts General Hospital was kept dim, because the light made Baoth scream. His body, the body she had made and loved and held, was now smattered with purple welts, his neck twisted to the side, his head covered in bandages from the five brain operations, the seizures that racked him coming without warning, shaking him, until they passed and all that was left were the tears of pain streaming down his face.

Sara held his hand.

“Breathe, Baoth. Breathe.”

There was no sign that he heard her but his will to live came through. And he went on. If she could have breathed her own life into him, she would have.
Her
child. Fifteen years old and not yet a man. Still had the scent of a boy on him sometimes. And the naughty smile of the child who had played the guitar for her on the terrace of Villa America. That smile, the solid feeling of him when he hugged her hard and then pulled out of her grasp. She could have held him forever.

Disaster had come through the back door while she had been guarding the front. Small and insidious: just measles. Then: just an ear infection, and an operation to relieve the pressure.

Some minuscule bacterial organism, too insignificant to be seen by the naked eye, had snaked its way in, floated on his blood, torn a path straight through her son to his spine and into his brain. Meningitis.

Where had she been? Key West. Taken in the middle of the night to the mainland by Ernest, on the plane with Ada, still unable to believe that what Gerald said could be true. But he hadn’t gotten on the boat to Europe. So she’d known, no matter how much she hated him for telling her, that he wasn’t lying. Because for a moment, she’d hoped he might be.

Baoth could not die. She would not let him die.
He would not die.

“Breathe, Baoth. Breathe, Baoth.”

She could feel Gerald next to her. He was quiet. He didn’t say anything to Baoth. He was calm, resigned, as if all this were inevitable. She wanted to scream at him for giving up. She wanted to shake him and call him a coward for laying down his arms so easily.

Honoria was shrinking against the wall. Part of Sara knew it was her job to hold that child as well, but she couldn’t. Not yet. Everything had to go to Baoth. Until he was saved. Until they were all saved from what it would mean to lose him.

Baoth’s face. That face so like her own. Twisted into a silent scream. Why was it so still? Why wouldn’t he look at her? Oh, Baoth.

“Breathe, Baoth. Breathe, Baoth. Breathe, Baoth.”

No one moved. And then Gerald did. Gerald, who had made Baoth too. She felt his hand on her shoulder.

She shook him off. Angry. She put her face into Baoth’s neck, warm. And smelled him. Antiseptic, sweat, decay. She inhaled as deeply as she could and there was, beneath all that, a trace of him, of the living boy.

Another hand on her shoulder, the doctor. He held a needle in his hand.

“Mrs. Murphy.”

She took Baoth’s face in her hands. “Breathe, Baoth, please breathe.”

She felt the shot in her arm, Gerald’s hand still on her shoulder.

Where, she wondered, would all her love go?

T
he
Honoria
was making her way down the coast. It was midday and they’d already cleared Cannes and were approaching Saint-Raphaël. It was the apex of summer, the heat making the water shimmer, and below them, schools of brightly colored fish, gold and silver and blue.

In the distance, off the starboard side, they could see the Riviera, the craggy cliffs, the flashes of white cove, the scrubby pines, all below a perfect blue sky.

Sara was cranking up the gramophone, a Stravinsky record in her lap. Vladimir was at the wheel while Owen and Gerald stood nearby to help the mate, Henri, who’d been hired to crew.

Baoth stood on the port side, his body leaning against the rail, a small, makeshift harpoon held aloft in his hand.

Lying on his stomach on the deck, his chin on the edge, Patrick was counting the fish and keeping a tally.

Honoria sat next to her mother, her head on Sara’s shoulder. When the music started to play, Sara twined her fingers through her daughter’s hair.

“When your father and I were young, this ballet caused a riot in Paris,” she said.

“Why?” Honoria asked, tipping her face towards the sun.

“Oh, I don’t know. It’s hard to explain, but it was
new
.”

Baoth ran past Owen, knocking him back.

“There’s a big one, maybe a small shark,” Baoth said by way of apology. “He’s gone under us. I might be able to get him.”

“Don’t run on the boat,” Gerald said.

“Dow-Dow, a shark,” Baoth said, exasperated.

“I’ll feed you to the shark if you don’t stop running.”

“I know a story about a big whale,” Vladimir said.

Owen smiled.

“I’ll just bet you do,” Gerald said. “A white whale, by any chance?”

“Ah,” Vladimir said. “I’ve told you this one before?”

“Vladimir, honestly,” Sara said, leaning back, propping her heels against the deck to get sun on her legs. “What are we going to do when they get to school and tell everyone all these stories you’ve ‘made up’?”

“What do you mean, Mother?” Patrick asked. He was like that, always listening while the others were off in their own worlds.

“I…” Sara looked at the men.

“Your mother means that Vladimir is a teller of tall tales,” Gerald said.

“I’m never going to school,” Baoth shouted, the shark lost somewhere under the sea.

“Dow-Dow,” Patrick said. “Can I look at the map again?”

“Yes, Dow,” Baoth said. “We need to be prepared.”

“I think Owen has the map,” Gerald said.

“It’s in my bag, below deck,” Owen said.

Gerald watched Owen as he moved slowly to the hatch, his shoulders set against the cliffs in the distance, his blond hair bleached almost white from the sun.

When Owen reemerged, he sat down on the deck and the boys closed around him. He pulled out the small rusted metal box, opened it, and removed the piece of parchment with a map of the coast of France drawn in faded ink. In one spot, above a cove in Saint-Tropez, there was an
X
marked in what looked like dried blood.

Baoth quickly took the map from Owen but allowed his brother to look at it over his shoulder.

Above their heads, Owen smiled at Sara.

The seeds of this trip had been planted in the children’s minds a week ago, when Gerald had gathered them round one morning to say he’d received a mysterious letter in the post informing him that there was an old map buried in the garden of Villa America that showed the location of buried pirate treasure.

The children, mad with anticipation, had dug in the indicated spot, killing a few of Sara’s peonies in the process, and found the box and map.

“Hopefully, Vladimir will know how to navigate us to the right spot,” Gerald had said when they’d presented him with their discovery. “And we might get Owen to fly over the area beforehand, for reconnaissance.”

They’d spent a week preparing for the voyage, Sara buying special foods and camping kits, Gerald finding tents that they could pitch on the beach. The children had been exhorted to “say nothing to anyone. We don’t want to arouse suspicion.”

Then, very early that morning, when it was almost still night, they’d left in search of treasure buried somewhere in the hills of the Riviera.

“Do you think there’ll be jewels?” Honoria asked now, going over to inspect the map with her brothers.

“Nah,” Baoth. “Spanish bullion, most likely.”

Owen laughed. “Sounds like you know a lot about buried treasure.”

“I read about it. That’s the kind of treasure pirates carried,” Baoth said, as if everyone knew this.

“There might be jewels,” Sara said, laying out brightly colored linen towels in the cockpit. “From beautiful women captured by the rogue pirates.”

“See?” Honoria said, shoving Baoth a little.

Sara opened the picnic basket. “All right, children, Dow-Dow, Owen. Lunch
est servi
.”

They gathered round, the children wrapped up in the linen towels to protect them from the sun, and ate: gnocchi, salad, and fresh peaches with cream. Sara cut a pear in half and placed it on the deck, and Gerald watched as a wasp landed on it and pierced it with its proboscis, trying to drain the fruit of its sweetness.

“Isn’t that just like life,” he said, watching the wasp eat the pear.

“Isn’t what just like life?” Sara asked.

But Gerald only shrugged, unable to articulate it. Instead, he went over and picked Patrick up and held him for a minute, the notes of the
Rite of Spring
speeding them along on their journey.

It was evening when they reached the cove. After anchoring, Vladimir rowed Owen and Gerald and the supplies ashore, then went back for the others.

Owen and Gerald hauled the tents and food and gramophone and records and all the other necessities farther inland to escape the tide. There was a cave carved into the rock surrounding the half-circle of beach, and they put the supplies inside and pitched the tents nearby. There were two tents: one for the children, and one for Vladimir and the mate. Sara and Gerald and Owen would sleep outside under the stars, they’d decided.

Once the two of them had finished the setup, Gerald poured them each a glass of wine and they sat watching Sara and the children coming over the water in the dinghy.

“Thank you for coming with us,” Gerald said. Then, more softly: “Thank you for coming back.”

Owen nodded, not looking at him.

When they were all together, they built a fire for Sara to cook over and sat around it as the sun dipped below the horizon.

“I think it’s time for some pirate stories,” Gerald said.

The children’s faces, flickering eerily in the light of the fire, turned towards him.

“Wait,” Sara said. “We have to set the mood.”

She went inside the cave and cranked the gramophone and put on Debussy’s “Engulfed Cathedral”; its deep, haunting notes swelled inside the cave and echoed out over their camp.

“We think this treasure that we hope to find tomorrow may have been part of Captain Kidd’s loot,” Gerald said. “And that cave was most likely used to shelter the captain and his villainous crew.”

“Why were they so villainous, Dow-Dow?” Patrick asked.

“Because they were a band of vicious men. All pirates lived by a code,” Gerald said. “And the penalty for breaking that code was brutal. One of Captain Kidd’s crew was strung up by his arms and drubbed with a drawn cutlass for helping himself to a huge ruby. For others, it was the plank.”

“What was the code?” Baoth asked, chewing the cuticle of his thumb.

“A code of how to behave aboard the ship. And how much treasure each man was allowed for himself.”

“What happened to Captain Kidd?” Honoria asked, her voice trembling a little as she moved closer to her mother’s body.

“Well, that’s a good question, Daughter. By all accounts, Captain Kidd was a savage pirate, and when he knew that he was close to being captured, he began burying his treasure, either so that he could return later for it or so that he could use it as bribes to get out of punishment. But when he was tried and convicted and sent to the gallows, the whereabouts of his treasure was lost forever.”

“And this is
our
treasure?” Patrick asked.

“It may well be,” Gerald said. “That’s why we have to be careful not to let anyone see us when we find it.”

“Will we be sent to the gallows?” Patrick asked.

“No,” Gerald said. “But like the pirates, we must live by a code of secrecy about what we find buried. It’s
our
secret now.”

When the children had been put to bed in the tents and Vladimir and Henri had retired, Gerald and Owen, Sara in the middle, sat wrapped in their blankets on the sand, drinking the wine.

“The story I heard about Captain Kidd when I was a boy was a little more bloody,” Owen said.

“Really?” Sara said.

“Mmm. We used to go camping out by these swimming holes up-island and tell pirate stories. The way I heard it, when they hung him, the rope broke, and they had to do it all over again. Then they took his body and nailed it to a post and hung it over the Thames for three years, as a warning to other pirates. First it rotted and swelled, and birds pecked his eyes, and then his skin and muscle started to drop off, and rats ate it. You know, it went on like that.” Owen took a sip of his wine, laughing.

“Heavens,” Sara said, grasping Owen’s hand. “That would be enough to put me off pirating.”

“I know,” Owen said, turning to her, smiling. “You would think so. But you know how it is, somehow those stories make it even more exciting to boys. The worse they are, the more you think you’d like to be a pirate.”

“I never heard any pirate stories,” Gerald said. “At least, none that I remember.”

“Did you hear
any
stories, my love?” Sara said, running her hand down his arm. “I can’t see either of your parents or that horrid nurse of yours telling you anything beautiful or magical.”

“No,” Gerald said. “They weren’t ones for that kind of thing. I had a dog, and I told
him
stories.”

“Well, now you have us. And you can tell
us
stories.” Sara turned to Owen. “You know, we’re so glad you came back.”

Owen smiled at her. “Thank you.”

“It’s like something’s missing when we don’t have our friends around us. Promise me you’ll never stay away so long again.” She squeezed his hand.

“Your very own pirate code,” Owen said.

The next morning, the children were up before anyone else. At first they sat in their tent whispering.

“I hope we find the very large, red ruby,” Honoria said.

“Gold bullion,” Baoth said. “I’m telling you.”

“Whose blood do you think was used to make the
X
on the map?” Patrick asked.

“Maybe the man they killed with the cutlass,” Baoth said.

“What’s a cutlass?”

“You don’t know what a cutlass is?” Baoth laughed. “You don’t know anything.”

“It’s a sword,” Honoria said. “And
you
don’t know anything, Baoth. Mother said there would be jewels.”

“She said there
might
be.”

“Shhh,” Honoria said. “I hear something outside.”

“Do you think the pirates are here to kill us?” asked Patrick.

Baoth picked up his small harpoon. “I’ll kill
them,
” he said.

Honoria peeked out. “It’s Dow-Dow,” she informed her brothers. “He’s getting firewood.”

“Breakfast,” Baoth said triumphantly.

“Breakfast,” Patrick repeated.

They sat out on blankets while their mother boiled milk for their cocoa in a pan and coffee for the adults in a dented metal coffeepot.

“That coffeepot looks as old as the pirates,” Vladimir said.

Owen smiled. “It’s getting there.”

“But it’s so useful,” Sara said. “Thank you for bringing it.”

The children ate bread and jam and fruit for breakfast while their father pored over the map.

“All right, children,” he said when they had finished eating. “It’s time.”

They crowded around him while, with his finger, he traced a line on the map leading from the cove into the hills.

“We have to take this path. Everyone ready?”

Leaving Vladimir behind to “defend against marauders,” they walked up the beach and started climbing the path. Their mother held Patrick’s hand to keep him from stumbling over the rocks and roots along the way. Baoth ran ahead.

After a while, their father stopped suddenly. He pointed to the parchment map.

“I believe this is the spot.”

Owen, shovel in hand, began to dig in the sandy soil, the dry top layer skittering away. They heard a chink as his shovel hit metal. He dug around to reveal a metal box.

“That’s too small,” Baoth said. “That can’t be a treasure chest.”

“I hope we haven’t been led on a wild-goose chase,” Gerald said.

“Oh, that would be a shame,” Sara said, her face a mask of disappointment.

“Well, maybe we should just open it,” Owen said.

“Maybe it’s just one large ruby,” Honoria said, kicking dirt at her brother.

“I think Patrick should open it,” Sara said.

Owen handed the small box to Patrick, who sat down on the ground to get a better hold of it.

Patrick finally managed to pry the box open, and he put his small hand in and pulled out a skeleton key with a parchment tag attached, a skull and crossbones drawn on it.

“The sign of the pirates,” Gerald said.

“There’s more,” Patrick said.

“Really?” Sara said.

“Let me see,” Baoth said, crouching down next to his younger brother.

Patrick pulled out another piece of parchment paper.

“‘Walk two feet uphill from this very spot,’” Baoth read aloud. “‘Then five paces to the west. Then ye shall be standing directly over the spot where ye should begin digging again.’”

They carefully made their way as directed. Then Gerald handed Baoth the shovel, and the boy attacked the ground, throwing soil in every direction.

“Baoth, do be careful with all that dirt,” Sara said.

“Pirate treasure, Mother. No time for niceties.”

Sara laughed. She leaned over to Owen and said quietly: “I’m so excited I can barely stand it.”