Villa America (26 page)

She went back into the bedroom and found her dressing gown.

“What is it?” Gerald was half sitting up.

“Something’s wrong with Zelda,” she said.

“Wait. I’ll come too.”

She waited as he rose and searched for his own bathrobe. Then they made their way down the hall.

When the party had ended, Sara had managed to convince Scott and Zelda to stay over instead of driving home, and the couple had been relatively quiet on the car trip back to the Hôtel du Cap.

They hadn’t even waited with Sara and Gerald on the terrace to take a nightcap with Dos and Don Stewart, who were walking back from Villa America. It had surprised her a little at the time—she’d never known the Fitzgeralds to leave when some amusement might still be had—but she’d also been relieved. She wondered now if that hadn’t been a portent of some kind.

When they arrived at the Fitzgeralds’ room, Sara knocked softly. Scott opened the door. She could tell he was sweating through his clothes, and he stank of booze. Over his shoulder she could see Zelda lying motionless on the bed.

“What’s happened?” Sara asked, moving past him to his wife.

“She took some sleeping pills,” he said, following her.

“How many?” She slapped Zelda’s cheek lightly, but her eyes remained closed.

“Well, all of them, I think. I don’t know how many were left,” he said. “I don’t think she did it on purpose. Oh God.”

Sara turned to Gerald. “You two get her on her feet. I’m going to get some olive oil.”

Gerald nodded, and he and Scott began to lift Zelda up.

Sara ran through the hall and down the main stairs to the lobby. Not wanting to wake the staff and cause gossip, she made her way through the formal rooms to the kitchen herself. She was out of breath and panicky as she opened and shut cupboards, looking for oil. She’d heard somewhere—where?—that it counteracted the effects of poisons in the stomach.

She finally located a bottle and rushed back as quickly as she could. Zelda was awake, barely, and Gerald and Scott were supporting her, practically dragging her around the room.

“I found some,” Sara said. “Sit her down.”

She poured some of the oil into a water glass. Zelda’s head kept lolling onto her chest. Scott turned his face to the wall and started sobbing.

“It’ll be all right,” Gerald said, but Scott just kept on.

Sara knelt down by the chair, taking Zelda’s hand. “Zelda, darling? Drink some of this.” Sara lifted Zelda’s chin and held the glass to her lips.

“Mmm?” Zelda’s eyes slid down, trying to focus.

“Come on,” Sara said.

She took a sip and then spluttered. “No,” she moaned.

“It’s olive oil. It’s going to make you feel better, I promise,” Sara said.

“No, Say-ra, no,” she said.

“Yes, darling.”

“No,” Zelda pleaded. “Don’t make me drink that, Say-ra, please. If you drink too much oil you turn into a Jew.”

Sara tried to put the glass back to Zelda’s lips, but she knocked it out of Sara’s hand. It fell to the floor, the oil seeping into the rug.

Zelda started crying. “I’m sorry,” she said.

Sara looked up. “Scott, fill the pitcher with water. Gerald and I will walk with her.”

She and Gerald each took an arm and hauled Zelda up.

“Maybe the hall?” she said.

Gerald nodded and they took her out of the room and began walking her up the long corridor.

“If she doesn’t stay awake, we’ll have to go find a doctor,” Gerald whispered.

Sara nodded, but Zelda said: “No doctors. They molest you with wrenches.”

She looked at Gerald and he shook his head.

“Just keep walking, darling,” Sara said.

In his rooms above the Café d’Esterel, Owen could hear the wind beating against the bay.

On his bed was the yellow chenille coverlet and so much radiant skin, hard and smooth and curved. Kneeling, he placed his hand against the back of the neck and felt the spot where the barber’s blade had mowed down the hair, sharp under his fingers. He ran his hand down, down the spine that bent in, a line of pebbles extending in order of size. Over the ass, his palm following the sweep, hesitating at the small dip before the rise of muscle. Then the spot where the back of the thigh began, between the legs, so soft; fine hairs, the calves like bows. All the way to the sole of the foot, its arch, the tough skin of the heel.

He brought his hand back to the shoulder and turned the body over. He put his lips to the waiting lips. Felt the tongue push into his mouth, brushing the inside. He closed his own lips around it, felt it slip out. He braced himself, looking into the green eyes, at the wavy hair framed by the pillow. He pushed the thighs apart.

He reached down, took one thigh in his hand, lifted him up, positioned him. Owen was ready.

Sara had gone back to bed at dawn, but Gerald couldn’t sleep. They’d walked Zelda up and down that damn corridor until the sun began to throw light through the window at the end of the hall, casting a rectangular patch on the crested runner.

Zelda had seemed all right, or as all right as she was going to be under the circumstances, and Scott had quietly gathered up their things, solemnly shook Gerald’s hand, and bundled her into the waiting hotel taxi, Tristan at the wheel.

Now Gerald sat on the terrace drinking a coffee, the early-morning sky hazy with smoke blown down the hills by the mistral. His brain felt viscous, stunned. It didn’t seem to have the power to form any real thoughts, only to shutter through a collection of images: the oil-paint sunset; the unfinished house rising above the grounds; Sara, in silver and white, in the middle of their guests; Owen’s face when he’d held his hand so tightly; Zelda, swirling, black underwear exposed; Scott sobbing against the wall, crumpled and terrified.

He rubbed his face. He’d wanted the party to be perfect, to be complete. To show a glimpse of what their life at Villa America was going to be like, not so much for their friends as for himself. But it had turned, somehow, real life poking in, darkness blurring the edges. He wondered how high you had to build the walls to keep the barbarian hordes out. Higher, perhaps, than he was capable of.

He thought of Owen. “I don’t want to be a coward anymore,” he’d said. Was he, Gerald Murphy, a coward? Perhaps a little. But mainly, he wanted to build a beautiful castle, an idyll with high walls, to keep his children safe, to keep his love for Sara safe. To keep their life safe. From ugliness, and violence, and desperation. But, mostly, from confusion. And to do that, he had to scotch some of the defects in himself. As best he could.

It suddenly seemed very important that he tell Owen that. Explain his side of things. He rose, leaving the coffee half drunk, and went to his car. He started the engine and began his journey to Agay.

On the drive he rehearsed his small speech, convincing himself that this was not a strange thing to do, not overly intimate. He managed to keep his conviction even when confronted with the
patron
of the café who pointed him in the direction of Owen’s rooms. But when he reached the door at the top of the narrow flight of stairs, he faltered, unsure. What was he doing at seven o’clock in the morning coming to the rooms of a man who was barely a friend to answer a question that hadn’t even been asked during a drunken party?

He tried to think of his speech, the importance of it all, but it seemed mad now. He stood in front of the weather-beaten wooden door. Then he reached into his pocket for the red fountain pen that had belonged to Fred. He took out one of his calling cards. He would write a note, something casual, in case the
patron
told Owen he’d come by. Then he would leave.

He braced the card against the wall and unscrewed the cap. But his hand was shaking and he dropped the card, which fluttered down the stairs, and then the pen, which rolled against the door. He bent down to retrieve it and banged his head against the knob. He heard footsteps and knew there wasn’t enough time to make an escape.

The door opened and Owen stood there, bare-chested, a yellow coverlet wrapped around his waist.

“Gerald?” He looked confused.

“Hello,” Gerald said. “I was just passing by.”

Owen nodded.

“I’m sorry. I was just going to leave a note. The
patron
said you weren’t up yet.”

“No,” he said. “It’s all right.”

Gerald felt an insane kind of relief, joy even.

“Why don’t you wait for me downstairs. We can have a coffee. I’ll just…” Owen looked down at the coverlet. Then he looked over his shoulder.

It was only then that Gerald saw him: the young man from the party whose name he didn’t know, naked, asleep, tangled amid the sheets of Owen’s bed. He looked back at Owen, and Owen held Gerald’s gaze without flinching.

“I’m sorry…” Gerald began. Unable to say anything else, he shook his head and retreated to the stairs. “I shouldn’t have…I’m sorry.”

He fled, but the image wouldn’t leave him. The white cotton curtains being sucked through the open window above the bed, the razor and box of Three Stars safety matches on the bedside table, the young man’s smooth body curved like a seashell. And in the foreground of the tableau, Owen, half naked, standing there. Owen.

When Zelda awoke at six p.m., the villa was quiet. She checked Scott’s study but it was empty. She rifled through his papers a bit, looking at the handwritten notes, picking up a list of his ideas for a title:
The High-Bouncing Lover?
Trimalchio?
Trimalchio in West Egg?
Gold-Hatted Gatsby?

She found a slumbering pen, uncapped it, and wrote beneath these
The Great Gatsby.

Then she took a piece of Scott’s correspondence paper and wrote:

S
ara sat at the small table in Honoria’s playhouse listening to the ticking of the timer and watching the concentration on her daughter’s face. In the ten minutes since they’d put the Barney biscuits in to bake, Honoria had tried countless times to open the door of the miniature wood-burning oven to check their progress. Each time, Sara had stayed her hand.

“They’ll fall if you open it too soon,” she’d explained. “Wait for the timer.”

Still, despite having to repeat herself, she took an exquisite pleasure in Honoria’s efforts at patience, her inability to delay gratification.

Sara’d given Honoria
A Little Cook Book for a Little Girl
at Christmas, and they’d spent the whole summer trying out the recipes in the playhouse that she and Gerald had built for her on the grounds.

The work on the house had finally been completed at the beginning of June and they’d moved in immediately. As the weeks and then months passed, life had taken on a routine at Villa America. Mornings began early, with the sound of Amilcar, the farmer they’d hired to deal with the livestock and the cash crops, swearing at the cows, which seemed to delight in kicking him while being milked.

They would all breakfast together, then Gerald would go to his studio to paint, assisted by Vladimir, while the children had lessons with their governess. For her part, Sara would plan meals with their cook and maid, Tintine, arrange the flowers brought in by the gardener, and give instructions to the chauffeur for errands or go with him herself if the shopping list was complicated.

Sometime before noon, Gerald would finish his work and round them all up with the call “Come on, children. To the beach,” and they would set off with all their accoutrements.

After a swim and hors d’oeuvres, it would be time to go home for lunch on the terrace under the silvery linden tree, the dry sound of cicadas filling the air. Gerald had found a collection of iron bistro tables and chairs and painted them in silver radiator wash, giving their alfresco dining area the look of an elegant stage set.

Afterward, nap time for the children as well as the adults. Then in the late afternoon, when the heat of the day had passed, they would drive to the Hôtel du Cap to swim off Eden Roc.

The only thing that marred Sara’s pleasure was a growing anxiety over Gerald. He hadn’t really been himself lately; he’d been impatient with her, with the children. And his painting didn’t seem to be giving him any pleasure either. There were many times he’d emerged from his studio more frustrated than when he’d gone in.

She couldn’t pinpoint exactly when this dark mood had begun to descend, but she’d felt it in Paris over the winter and into the spring. She’d hoped the sunshine of Cap d’Antibes would help lift it, but nothing had changed.

They had a round of guests coming their way this week to stay in the
bastide,
the little stable they’d converted into a guesthouse: first Monty Woolley, a friend of Gerald and Cole’s from Yale, followed by Esther, Dos, and Fred’s widow, Noel, who were stopping together on their way back from Pamplona. And to top it all off, Hoytie, who’d invited herself down out of sheer curiosity about the new house.

It would be either truly gay or an absolute disaster. But she hoped it might be a distraction for Gerald, might bring him back to them a little.

The timer went off and Honoria leaped out of her chair, reaching for the oven door.

“Careful,” Sara said, taking a dishcloth and pulling out the muffin pan.

Honoria let out a little gasp, marveling at her first very own biscuits.

“We should wait until they cool down a bit,” Sara said, but one look at her daughter’s face told her this was futile, so she gently removed them and placed the biscuits on a china plate from the shelf.

Honoria took one and then quickly dropped it. “Hot,” she said, smiling up at Sara.

“Shall we put some butter on them?”

“Yes, please,” Honoria said but wanted to do it herself.

Sara sat watching her daughter munching away. She felt that they were finally home, in the real sense of the word, and the ebb and flow of people, of their life, was as natural and irrelevant as the tide.

Gerald was in his studio working on
Razor,
Vladimir over by the workbench mixing a new batch of red. Gerald had planned on finishing the painting that spring and showing it at the Salon des Indépendants. But it had kept nagging at him, that sense that something wasn’t quite right, and he’d pulled it from the exhibition. He’d been retouching it ever since. This morning it had come to him that the shade of red was too orange. It should be more the color of blood.

He could hear the Russian sighing in the corner. Vladimir was tired of this, Gerald knew. In fact, Vladimir had hinted last week that perhaps Gerald should move on to something else, which threw him into a cold rage that he later regretted.

He didn’t understand what was wrong with the damn canvas.
Watch,
which he’d started around the same time, hadn’t been a struggle, and that piece had been much more intricate.

Maybe it was that
Watch
grew naturally, organically, from his experience. When they’d returned to Paris in the autumn, it had seemed like an eternity before he would see the Riviera again, and he’d found himself constantly checking the gold pocket watch Sara had given him as an engagement present. As if it kept time in months instead of minutes and hours.

He’d become fascinated by the moving parts. He’d been reminded of his father’s railroad standard watch, which Patrick Murphy had also checked constantly when Gerald was a boy. His father had explained, loftily, that his was a railroad watch, which meant a railroad company had certified its precision, down to the second. Just one more way, Gerald thought ruefully, that his father asserted his superiority over everyone else: his timeliness.

So, in his studio on the rue Froidevaux, gray, flat light streaming in, he’d sketched the painting. Much of it was occupied by the inner mechanism, its movement deconstructed into parts: the winding wheel, the crown wheel, the jewels, the regulator, the barrel bridge, the hairspring. But also the case and the crown and half-moon slivers of the face.

Then he and Vladimir had mixed the colors, echoing the same winter light he was working in, highlighted with golds and honey browns, the shades of his floorboards. He’d felt satiated by this nitpicky work, its ordered chaos, its almost monochromatic neatness.

But
Razor
was another matter.

Gerald walked over to the workbench and surveyed the color Vladimir was mixing.

“Too brown,” he said.

Vladimir looked at him and sighed again but nodded.

Gerald returned to the large H-frame easel. “Leave it,” he said irritably. “I need to do some more sketches. We’ll start again tomorrow.”

Vladimir, who’d clearly had more than enough already, walked out, stretching his arms into the sunshine outside the studio.

Gerald pulled up a stool and sat down in front of the canvas.

There was a peace in acceptance, he’d been telling himself all summer, but he’d found his temper was occasionally worse than ever. The Black Service. He feared it and this made him even more angry. At times, the routine of their life here smoothed out his edges, and he felt a sort of beneficence towards his friends, towards his children. But even then it was like he was outside it looking in.

He’d spoken of it with Scott.

“There are times,” Scott had said one afternoon at La Garoupe, “where the pleasure in the writing—in my own, but also that of people I admire—is enough. Really, I feel like that’s enough. But then I think:
My God, all this work, all the control it requires, and no one’s understood what I’ve been trying to do. Am I a failure?
”

Gerald knew that the reception and sales of
Gatsby
were breaking Scott’s heart. Many critics had been glib or even unkind, and Scribner’s had informed him that it didn’t expect the figures to come even close to
This Side of Paradise
or
The Beautiful and the Damned.

“I don’t know. Maybe work is just one long process of hiding one’s deficiencies,” Gerald said. “Sometimes it’s as if even I don’t understand my own work. As if I’m completely lost in some tunnel, not knowing which way to turn. Which path to take, or how I’m ever going to get out.”

“The darkness,” Scott said, shaking his head. “And all you can do is keep running so that it doesn’t eat you alive.”

“The darkness,” Gerald said.

They’d sat there, squinting into the sun, each thinking his private thoughts.

None of them had spoken of Zelda’s overdose after that morning, not once. It was a closed subject. The four of them had continued to see one another all through the fall and winter in Paris, and it had been business as usual: grand, playful evenings mixed in with mawkish and sophomoric displays that left both Gerald and Sara irritated.

This summer, however, Scott seemed more introspective than anything else. Dreamy, almost. More like Zelda, actually.

One evening last week, when the Fitzgeralds had arrived for dinner at Villa America, Scott had beckoned the children over and taken Honoria onto his lap.

“Reach into my pocket,” he’d told her.

Gerald watched as she put her little brown hand in his suit pocket and emerged with two lead soldiers, one painted red and gray, one painted blue and black. Scott took them from her and held them up for Baoth and Patrick to see too.

“I have something terrible to tell you that concerns these soldiers,” Scott had said conspiratorially. “There is a princess who’s been locked in a castle by an evil witch, and she’s guarded by a fierce dragon.”

Three pairs of very wide eyes looked back at Scott. Gerald smiled. He felt Sara’s arm go around him.

“And one of these soldiers is a secret prince,” he said. “But the other is the head of the witch’s evil army.”

Baoth nodded as if this made complete sense to anyone with a brain.

“Now,” Scott said, “Scottie is having a party, and at this party…” He stopped. “Wait, I’ve forgotten if you Murphys like parties.”

“We do,” Honoria said breathlessly.

Baoth laid a hand on Scott’s leg and pinched him lightly.

“Oh, I see. Oh, right,” Scott said. “Well, at this party there is to be a battle royal, where the secret prince will attempt to rescue the beautiful princess. Would you like to come and see it?”

“Now?” Baoth asked.

“No, not now.” Scott laughed. “Tomorrow.”

They’d gone the next day, of course, the children nearly hysterical with anticipation. Scottie, almost four now, with beautiful plump arms, had led the way out to the Fitzgeralds’ garden, where the children found an elaborate papier-mâché castle, all turrets and towers.

“I made that,” Zelda had whispered to Gerald and Sara. “Don’t the stones look real?”

“Oh, Zelda, very,” Sara had said.

Around the perimeter of the castle, on a small moat that had been dug and filled with water, rubber duckies floated placidly. A foot away two armies of lead soldiers faced each other, ready for combat. And next to all this was Scott, his hands clasped behind his back.

“Look,” Honoria said, pointing to a doll with flowing blond hair standing at one of the windows in the tower. “The beautiful princess.”

“Yes,” Scott said sadly. “She is in great distress. The prince must defeat the evil army to rescue her. Which one do you think is the head of the evil army?”

Baoth marched over, his stolid little body mimicking Scott’s stance, hands behind his back. “The blue and black one,” he said. “And that fellow,” he said, pointing to the gray and red figure Scott had brought to dinner, “he’s the secret prince.”

“Correct,” Scott said. “Well spotted. But that’s not all. There is also a dragon that must be vanquished.” From behind his back, Scott produced a small wooden cage. The children rushed to him and peered inside.

“A beetle,” Baoth said joyfully. “It’s a beetle, Dow-Dow. That’s the dragon.”

“Ahhh,” Gerald said, nodding.

Scott put the tiny cage in front of the castle and began to narrate the battle, moving the soldiers hither and thither, enlisting the children’s help, until finally the gray and red army were able to rush the gates. As Scott had the secret prince open the wooden cage, Zelda cracked two rocks together to simulate the sound of the breaking of the lock. The children jumped at the noise.

The beetle, clearly ready to escape, moved in the direction of the secret prince.

“Now,” said Scott, “we’ll just turn him over on his back, which makes beetles helpless, you know.” He flipped the beetle, and its legs wiggled in the air. “Now the prince can rescue the princess.”

While the four children were busy marching the prince up the side of the tower, arguing over how exactly the princess was to be extracted and where exactly the evil witch was lurking, Gerald watched Scott.

Scott, with a gentleness that Gerald would never forget and that continued to pain him long afterward, ever so carefully turned the beetle back over, cradled it in his palm, and placed it tenderly under a mound of lavender.

Monty Woolley was having a grand time. “Honk the horn,” he instructed the Murphys’ chauffeur as they drove through the gates of Villa America.

The chauffeur, whose name Monty had immediately forgotten at the train station, gave him a weary look but obliged.

“Again, if you please,” Monty said, only for the thrill of annoying the man.

On the second sounding, Sara glided out of the house wearing some sort of gorgeous creation that would have looked well on Madame Butterfly, all silk and delicate printed flowers with wide, bell-like sleeves.

“Ah, my beautiful Sara, do you come to us from the Far East?”

He smelled her nutty perfume as she wrapped her arms around him.

“Oh, you don’t know how glad we are that you’re here. We’ve been desperate for you,” she said. Her tan face and lovely almond eyes looked up at him. “Gerald in particular,” she said, taking his arm and walking him towards the house. “I think he needs a little cheering up.”