Page 28

Sarah

July 18, 1992

Capri

Sarah and Marcus sat under the awning at the Bar Tiberio. They watched the waiter stand at the edge of the fray that had engulfed the Piazzetta. At seven, the sea of bodies was too thick for him to walk easily between the tables. Sarah signaled for some water, then said to Marcus: “I’m not going to come after the money, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

They had a prenup anyway. It wasn’t stingy, but it wasn’t lavish.

It would be an adjustment. Sarah hated to admit that. Hated to admit that money played any part in her actions over the past few years, but of course it had.

Marcus sipped his wine and watched the crowds move through the Piazzetta the way one might watch clouds scurry across the sky.

“No one has ever thought you were after the money, Sarah,” he said.

“I promise to make it easy and clean. Quiet. Private. No fighting it out in the press. I won’t even ask for child support.”

“You should ask for child support,” Marcus said. “And in any case, the court will insist on it.”

“I’ll sell the play,” Sarah said, and Marcus looked up at the awning, a sadness gathering at the corners of his eyes and his mouth.

“He should have just let you sell it,” he sighed. Then: “You must know by this point that there’s jealousy there. Of you.”

Sarah laughed, but she knew that was part of the problem. She had felt it, that he was thrilled to ask her to shelve something. It was a feeling that kept gnawing at her, that it wasn’t about the work itself, it was about her. Or about how she saw him. He didn’t like the reflection.

“I used to think people like you didn’t get jealous,” she said.

“No. We get it the worst, actually. When you think you have everything, it’s impossible to imagine someone having more.”

“Even if that more is actually less?”

He nodded. “Especially then.”

Sarah reached for the pack of cigarettes Marcus had left on the table. She didn’t smoke anymore, hadn’t in years, but she always smoked when they traveled in Europe. It was the smallest of evils that week.

They sat there, smoking. Sometimes Sarah would tap the ash from her cigarette into the tray on the table, other times onto the ground. They didn’t speak again until the sun had begun to cut under the awning, moving inch by inch across the marble tabletops as it dropped closer and closer to the rim of the Mediterranean.

She would miss this. Not the family, but the island.

She would miss him.

—

It wasn’t an affair.

At least, Sarah didn’t think of it in that way.

It was a decision made easier by the fact that she and Marcus never planned to have sex. There were no hotel rooms or invented work trips. There were no phone calls or furtive love notes. There were only dinner parties at which they were the last two awake, casual afternoons when their spouses weren’t home, and occasionally, very occasionally, the back seat of a car parked on a side street off Mulholland.

I can stop anytime.

That’s what Sarah liked to tell herself.

What she should have told herself was that it was time to leave. That she and Richard had tried, but ultimately weren’t a fit. Marriages fell apart, even the best ones. Which maybe hers never had been. But on the day she ginned up the courage to pack a bag, on the very day she had a flight back to New York, she found out she was pregnant. A wave of nausea foretold the outcome of the test.

A child should have a family, she told herself.

Without discussion, the affair stopped. Helen, as far as Richard knew, was simply born early.

Sarah had always imagined, when she was younger, that she would be the kind of woman who walked out if things got bad. But the reality was more complicated. Marriages gathered a momentum of their own, they tumbled forward over obstacles and past off-ramps with an alarming speed, until suddenly, years later, all the exits were behind you. Your entire life—the things you loved, the work that defined you—in the rearview.

Even worse, somehow she got used to it. Watching every opportunity slip by, every almost, every next time. It wasn’t apathy. She thought about it—the way things seemed within her control and yet never were—it was all she thought about. The truth was, the strength required to tear apart the fabric of her life was in short supply. Shorter still with a toddler, without resources, without her family.

It was embarrassing to be so weak. Her strength didn’t come back for years. But now that it had returned, now that Helen was three and she was working, now that she knew they could be their own family, that they could find a way—she realized she was strong enough, finally, to leave.

That was the other thing about marriages: at a certain point you cared less about burning them down. The rubble preferable to a pretty facade.

—

When Sarah and Richard originally left New York for Los Angeles, they agreed it would only be for two weeks, maybe a month. They had tickets. Return dates. The dates came and went without any discussion.

“The doctor doesn’t know how much time he has,” Marcus told them when they arrived. The stroke had been small, but bigger than the first, which had happened six months ago. No one had told Richard.

“It’s just like my brother,” Richard said, “to keep it to himself. That way he can play the hero.”

Sarah had never met this Richard. The jealous Richard. The younger brother, his ailing father repeatedly pointed out.

After a month, they moved into a house in Bel Air.

“We can’t stay in a hotel forever,” Richard had said.

There were no conversations about the decision. Richard never came to Sarah and said: It’ll only be through the spring or Let’s set a limit on this. At the time, the decision was easy—she was doing what she needed to support him. And what he needed was a chance to show his father that he cared. That, like his brother, he could be counted on.

The townhouse in New York sat empty and unused. Sarah never expected it to stay like that for years. But time slipped through her fingers, and the harder she tried to hold on to it, the faster it seemed to move.

“It’ll give you a chance to get to know us better,” Naomi said.

At first, Sarah liked that idea. Then Richard’s father held on and another three months passed.

“I’ve set up a meeting for you with the theater department chair,” Marcus explained over dinner one night. The rolling, open dinner parties of New York such a distant memory that Sarah couldn’t even be sure they had ever happened. “He’s familiar with your work. I thought it might be fun for you to”—Marcus sipped from his glass of wine—“dip into something while you’re here.”

“That’s kind of you,” Sarah said. And she meant it.

“Wonderful idea.” Richard didn’t look up from his plate, only sawed at the white asparagus, the flaky halibut. “But I don’t think you should accept anything long term.”

Sarah waited for him to tell her that he was already planning their return to New York, but instead he said:

“With our travel schedule, you know, Capri, Aspen, Lech”—he waved his hand, the fork still in it—“you wouldn’t want something that you feel obligated to, right?”

But Sarah missed being obligated to things. Desperately.

“They haven’t offered me anything yet.” She kept it light, laughter in her voice.

“Right, but you have to admit it’s kind of nice not having to worry about work anymore.”

Sarah didn’t say anything, because it was complicated—there wasn’t any work for her to go back to. She’d extracted herself from every commitment for Richard. She’d declined every opportunity. In the meantime, she feared her skills had grown rusty and her brain spongy. She wanted to work, to be needed, but life as a Lingate had nearly convinced her she couldn’t. That she no longer knew how.

“It’s just a meeting,” Marcus said.

At the meeting, the chair of the USC theater department asked her to come back and talk with students, to give a guest lecture, to do some small things, to see how it went. Afterward, the chair had shaken Marcus’s hand and told him how glad he was that Marcus had let him know a luminary of contemporary theater was in town.

Marcus smiled. “I’m afraid my brother has been keeping her a secret,” he said.

“You won’t be a secret for long,” the chair said to Sarah.

After the meeting, she felt flushed and realized the feeling was hope. She and Marcus descended a set of stairs and walked out onto the flat, grassy campus of USC, crisscrossed with concrete pathways. And as they walked, their shoulders kept rubbing together, as if their bodies were magnetized.

She didn’t try to pull away.

“Thank you for that,” she said, looking up at Marcus.

She had noticed it before, but now she was reminded of how attractive Marcus was. How easily he seemed to exist in the world, in a way that could be attributed to money, but more so to an expansiveness Richard seemed to lack. Or lacked here. Marcus swung an arm around her shoulders.

He led her under a long, darkened loggia. It was empty, and their footsteps echoed off the walls. He stopped in the deepest shade and said, “I don’t think you’ll be going back to the life you had. There will be too much for him to do here when our father dies. We aren’t the kind of family that you can just leave. So maybe this is a way—”

He looked down at her with a sad smile. He squeezed her close for only a moment before letting go. But she kept her body there, next to his. Sarah liked the way he waited for her reactions, the way he watched her. He was the only one, she thought, in all of Los Angeles who had been paying attention. He brushed some of the hair out of her eyes, tucked it behind her ear. “I think you should find something here that you’re passionate about. A way to occupy your time. It will get easier,” he said. “You just need to find your place.”

He was almost a foot taller, and when she looked up at him—his big, broad, easy face—she couldn’t fight the impulse. She rocked up on her toes and kissed him. Just a light brush of her lips on his. A thank-you, an invitation, a mistake. She didn’t know.

And then, after her feet were back on the ground, he reached a hand behind the back of her neck and kissed her again.

Only this time, there was no mistake.

—

Somewhere around eight, the crowd on the Piazzetta shifted. Sarah and Marcus had outlasted the afternoon coffees and tourists gathered to gawk and were now joined by people who would spend the night on the island. People who had slipped out of their villas and off their sailboats to dip into their first aperitif of the evening—the scents tangy and fruity and distinctive.

Sarah ordered them both Campari and sodas before Marcus could object.

“We need to go back soon,” he said. “The party—”

“It’s not till ten,” she said, pushing a glass at him. That, and she wanted to spend as little time with Richard as possible. They would leave on Monday, and she could spend tomorrow in the flurry of packing and folding and preparing.

“You know,” he said, “I still don’t know what the play was about. I have no idea what Richard found so objectionable.”

Sarah laughed. “You didn’t read it?”

He shrugged. “I let the attorneys do the reading.”

“Just like Richard, then. I don’t even think he managed to finish it.” Sarah paused. “It was about a family,” she finally said.

“Our family?”

“No. That’s what I kept telling Richard—no. It’s not about your family.”

It was a lie. But that didn’t matter anymore.

“Okay, so it’s about a family…” Marcus made a circular gesture with his hand like he wanted her to hurry up.

“It’s about a rich family who has, for years, through various means and crookery, managed to keep up appearances despite slowly losing every cent they had.”

“That’s it?” Marcus said.

“What? You don’t think that’s good?”

“No. Of course I do. People are always rooting for the rich to get fleeced. But that’s what Richard lost his mind over?”

“Sometimes,” Sarah said, taking a sip of her aperitif, “I think he lost his mind just because it was mine, and because it was good.”

Marcus snorted, but then was silent.

“What were they like—this family?” he asked.

“Old money,” Sarah said, “three siblings, two brothers and a sister, who are paralyzed on vacation abroad during a banking collapse. Instead of reaching a consensus about how to proceed, they argue, jealous of one another’s ideas. Because of the familial conflict, they’re unable to move any of their money until it’s too late. The crisis has exploded and they’ve lost everything. But they’re too ashamed to let their friends know, so they begin the long con to keep up appearances.”

“What part of it do you think Richard was most worried about?” Marcus asked, scooting his chair closer to hers as the sliver of setting sun finally cut under the awning and worked its way up his leg.

“What do you mean?”

“The financial crisis or the family infighting?”

Sarah almost laughed. “Both,” she said.

Sarah drained what was left in her glass and flagged down the waiter for the conto. Otherwise, he would let them stay the whole night.

“I’m sorry,” Marcus said, covering her hand with his.

She wanted to shake him off.

It’s fine. I’m fine.

“Thank you,” she said.

They walked back to the villa as slowly as Sarah could muster, a zigging and zagging wander that took them from the window of a gelateria to those of Ferragamo. She read the menus posted at the restaurants along the way, and paused, once they were on the Via Marino Occhio, at every vista that peeked between buildings.

“You have to face him, you know,” Marcus said when she stopped less than three hundred feet from the entrance.

“I just wish we weren’t here,” she said. “If we were at home—”

“The island.”

“Yes, the island just makes me feel…” She looked out across the Mediterranean, its vast expanse isolating. “Especially trapped.”

Marcus nodded.

“Forty-eight hours,” he said.

“Why are you being so nice about all this?” Sarah asked.

Marcus considered the question and sat on the low stone wall that lined the pedestrian street.

“Because it’s worse if we fight it. I know Richard doesn’t see it that way yet, but it’ll be easier in the end—for us, for Helen—if we keep it together. Keep it friendly.”

Keep it friendly.

“Just get through this dinner,” Marcus said. “Then tomorrow—”

She owed Marcus that much. She could make it till tomorrow.

“Okay,” she said, “we’ll get through your dinner tonight. And then tomorrow I’ll call the lawyers and look for a place.”

They had taken a few more steps toward the entrance of the villa when Marcus stopped and faced her.

“But promise me…,” he said.

He didn’t have to finish.

“He’ll never know,” Sarah said. “Never.”