Free Villa America by Liza Klaussmann

where the family had stopped to spend Christmas. They’d stayed at Belvoir Castle with the Duchess of Rutland, whom Sara seemed to worship, and her daughter Diana, whom she loved. They’d ridden to hounds, she informed him, and dined outdoors, and been forced to eat burning plum pudding at every meal, even breakfast. In short, she’d written him, he wouldn’t believe just how picturesque she’d been. Although Sara mocked the experience, Gerald felt slight panic at the thought of all the things she had done and seen, all the people she knew, that he had not and did not.
    Still, the thought of her hand, its pressure in his grasp, pushed him to persevere.
     
    New York
January 1, 1914
    Dear Sara,
    However picturesque you may have been on horseback, it is nothing compared with the vision I would like to present to you of young Gerald Murphy sitting useless at his large, dust-covered desk at Mark Cross, endlessly trying to make heads or tails out of sums and papers. Sometimes, he even goes so far as to sketch something that will no doubt wind up in a wastebasket hidden in a closet at the farthest end of the building. From there, he may go to Delmonico’s or Rector’s for dinner, perhaps on to the theater, with other equally distinguished young men with whom he will be forced to discuss nothing but sums and papers. Talk about picturesque; it is truly a glorious sight.
    Sometimes, just sometimes, he catches a glimpse of a painting illuminated from the inside, the hoof of a horse so shiny it looks like it’s been treated with polish, a woman with heavy hair, pressed in a doorway in the sleet, and is reminded that all is not lost.
    Tell me more of your adventures.
    Sending love and New Year’s wishes to everyone,
Gerald
     
    Port Said
January 15, 1914
    Dear Gerald,
    We have reached Port Said, where this letter will begin making its journey to you. Lights, lights everywhere as we crossed that invisible line between Europe and the Orient. The smell of something black and burning—rubber?—fills our nostrils, and while Father complains dreadfully, it excites me. When the sun comes up, what shall we see? Even the air feels different here. I will try to get another letter off before we make for the Suez Canal so that I can sketch these thin lines in.
    I’m sure work is a bore, but you must persevere. Your father is wrong about you—you have an eye, Jerry. Laziness is having a gift and not using it. But you are using it.
    As for the company you’re keeping, well, it does sound dull. Perhaps some new companions who share your excitement about even the smallest thing are called for.
    Hoytie and Olga send their love, as do I,
Sara
     
    New York
February 3, 1914
    Dear Sara,
    After your last letter, I waited patiently for the suite. I imagined your Port Said full of markets of silk and camels and turbans, covered in a black mist. Sadly, it seems your missive is an orphan.
    I don’t know why I can’t get on as other men do. Even Fred, who loathes the work perhaps more than I, seems content to go about his life, while I feel like there must be something out there that I’m missing. Something more…complete. I am going to stop writing. If I go on, you’ll only think of me as weak-minded and complaining.
    Somewhat foolishly, but not without fondness,
Gerald
     
    New York
February 15, 1914
    Dear Sara,
    It is a beautiful, soft day in New York, the kind that mercilessly fools you into believing that spring is just around the corner, and the cherry trees are busily making their buds. Or so I like to imagine.
    A woman passed me in Central Park yesterday in a dress nearly the same color those blossoms will be: delicate, warm pink, almost fading to white. As if she herself were spring, or trying to tell me something of it. And I thought: I wish you were here to talk this over with. I can’t very well chat about such a small thing with the men I know without being thought effeminate. About Wilson, Panama, and the Cadillac 1914, yes. But