Villa America by Liza Klaussmann Read Free Book Online Page B

o’clock in the afternoon watching the September sun illuminate the outline of Sara Wiborg’s legs beneath her white muslin dress, the swell of her breasts stamped against the horizon. The Wiborg women had only just returned from Europe, and Sara, lying on her back, hands under her head, ankles crossed, was talking about London, about the Ballets Russes and art and the people she’d met. He liked the way she recounted things. She didn’t gossip, but neither did she leave out any of the story.
    Earlier in the day, Gerald had driven to the Dunes from Southampton to see the Wiborgs. But really, it was to see her. He’d written to her while she was abroad for the season, but when he was finally confronted with her this afternoon, he found he’d gone quiet. After some fairly formal greetings, Gerald, at a loss, had wandered into the dark-paneled library that looked over the lawn to the sea and carelessly picked out a book. Only when he’d settled in one of the Westport chairs on the terrace did he take in the title: Camping and Tramping with Roosevelt. Not exactly scintillating stuff. He knew he couldn’t very well go back and get another without being noticed, so he pretended to skim through a chapter about the Mammoth Hot Springs. It didn’t matter. His mind, his ears, and even his eyes, when he could manage it, had been on her as she worked only a few feet away in the garden, chatting to her father.
    “What’s this?” She showed her father one of the string beans, running her gloved fingertip along its unnatural curve.
    “Tomato thrips,” Frank Wiborg had said, taking it from his daughter and throwing it into a refuse basket next to him.
    From where Gerald sat, they seemed, at times, to be whispering, but he knew it was just the wind carrying their words away from him. Under the mass of Sara’s hair, moisture gathered at her nape, dampening the starched collar of her dress. After a while, her father had gone inside and she’d looked up to the terrace, unpinning her sun hat. “Shall we go down to the beach for a while?” She’d smiled.
    Gerald knew that if he was considered a natural companion for any of the three girls, it was Olga, the closest to him in age. But it was Sara he’d missed while she was away, Sara he’d longed to talk to. As they lay together now, looking out over the ocean, she told him about the Rite of Spring.
    “I wish I could describe it better, how it made me feel,” she said. “It was so…primitive. No, that’s not it. That makes it sound like it was all chickens pecking at the earth and ugly peasants. It was ugly, but not in any kind of simple way. Do you have any idea what I’m talking about?”
    “Animal,” Gerald said.
    Sara turned onto her side and looked at him, hatless, squinting in the orange blowout of the sun. “Animal?”
    “I mean, maybe that’s what it was. Something that’s primitive, but also…physical.” He didn’t dare say sexual.
    “Yes, that’s exactly it. Animal.”
    He liked how she rolled the word around in her mouth as if that’s what she was doing with it in her head.
    “You should have seen it. You would have understood it.” She settled back again.
    “Yes,” he said, nodding, but really, he was thinking about last summer, when they’d lain on the beach together almost like this, except it was dawn and they had slept there all night.
    It had been after the last of Adeline Wiborg’s summer parties at the Dunes, and Gerald Murphy had come over to be Olga’s date. The three girls had sung and then the evening had grown into night and the rest of the guests had gone home and the family to bed, all except Gerald and Sara and Frank Wiborg. He’d watched as she’d risen from the sofa where they’d been sitting and gone to the window and looked out at the sea, illuminated by a sliver of moon. Then she’d come back and put her hand on Gerald’s shoulder and said: “Let’s go sleep on the beach.”
    He’d nodded, but her father had