Page 31

Sarah

July 19, 1992

Capri

Sarah could hear Richard’s uneven gait in the darkness. A lopsided beat that followed her to the Casa Malaparte, which stuck out like a red, flat finger on the Punta Massullo, two hundred feet above the sea. When the Giorgio Ronchi Foundation reached out to the Lingates for additional funds to complete the restoration of the 1930s modernist home, they had emphasized the family’s generational attachment to the island. Their generosity.

But Sarah knew what it really was: an appeal to their vanity. Tonight was another dinner, another celebration of what the Lingate money had accomplished.

Marcus did love an opportunity to step in. And for so long, Sarah had let him.

The house was lit from within. Every window poured yellow light out into the darkness. The roof of the house, which also served as a sundeck, was strung with lights and dotted with dining tables anchored by tumbling white flower arrangements. Sarah plucked a glass of champagne off a passing tray and took a long sip. After the drinks on the Piazzetta, a cocktail at the house before the walk, and now the dinner, she was verging on drunk. She could feel it, the way her tongue didn’t quite fit against the roof of her mouth, the slipperiness of her s ’s.

Still, she drank the champagne. It made the hours go by more quickly, or if it didn’t, it made her notice them less. She drained her flute and picked up another. She waved at Stan, who was locked in an argument with someone she didn’t recognize. For a minute, it seemed like he might pull himself free and join her, but then a voice said from behind her:

“You’re Sarah Pratt, aren’t you?”

The woman was older, with a shock of white hair and enormous gold earrings. Sarah liked her immediately because she hadn’t started with that most familiar refrain: Are you Richard Lingate’s wife? No one used her real name anymore. She had never changed it, but that didn’t matter. People had turned her into a Lingate immediately.

“I am,” Sarah said. She tried not to slur, but it was getting harder.

“I was hoping you would be here tonight.” She gestured to another woman. “Julia, it is her.” Then she turned back to Sarah. “I’m sorry, it’s just that we’ve been trying to get ahold of you through the Lingate Foundation, but maybe…” She searched Sarah’s face. “Maybe the message was never passed along?”

“I’m sorry,” Sarah said. “How long ago did you try?”

“Oh god.” The woman still hadn’t introduced herself, but that didn’t stop her from continuing. “We started trying a year ago? At least.”

Before she had even begun Saltwater.

“We’re just so excited to meet you,” Julia said. “We think we have the perfect thing.”

Sarah was still trying to catch up, to place these women, to figure out what they wanted, when the first said, “Julia and I have been providing funding for Broadway shows for almost a decade now. You know, ‘producing.’?”

Julia nodded enthusiastically as the first woman put the word in air quotes.

“We just bought a theater space off-Broadway. It’s very nice”—she reached out and put a hand on Sarah’s arm—“I promise. And while we love musicals, we’ve been wanting to branch out into drama. We want to take on a project from the very beginning. Julia had seen one of your plays—”

“It was Three Sisters. ”

“Yes. She saw Three Sisters and remembered being so impressed that we thought you would be the perfect person to launch the new space. We sent a message to that effect a while back through the Lingate Foundation but never heard anything. We assumed you were booked, but now that you’re here, we can ask you directly.”

Booked. Sarah hadn’t been booked in years. Through the haze of champagne, she focused on Julia’s nodding head.

“I would love to do something like that,” she said. “What’s your timeline?”

The women shrugged.

“Do you have something new?” Julia asked. “We were hoping the space might be more experimental. We’d offer it to you with financing for the production. Everything else would be up to you: casting, if you want to hire a director, staffing, all of it.”

There was some part of Sarah, no matter how small, that regretted it would be her last Lingate dinner. Standing on the roof, surrounded by the Mediterranean and the flickering lights, a sea of white flowers, she knew she hadn’t married Richard for this. For casual encounters with money. But she wasn’t a fool. There were opportunities that came with the Lingates.

Which was why she wanted to grab this one with both hands. And she almost did, until Richard appeared at her elbow.

“Would you excuse us, Julia, Laura?” he said.

His voice was so smooth, the way it had been back at the brownstone overlooking Turtle Bay Gardens. Only now Sarah could hear what lurked underneath. Had it always been there? That edge?

“I’m so sorry,” she said to the women, “I’ll be right back.” She followed Richard, who walked to the edge of the roof. Sarah noticed that here, the limp was gone. It was a reminder only for her.

When Richard turned to face her, he was flushed. Sarah braced herself for a torrent of words, but instead she heard Stan asking:

“Is everything okay?”

He had trailed them. Stan had an uncanny way of tracking her at parties. Sarah noticed how his eyes followed her. Richard made fun of him for this. For how obvious it was.

“Everything is fine,” Sarah said. She squeezed his arm. “Right, Richard?”

Stan looked between the two of them, unconvinced. Eventually, he nodded, left them alone. But Sarah could see him lurking only a few feet away, in case she was lying.

“We were just talking,” she said to her husband, her voice low.

She was already thinking about calling her agent, if she still had one. About how long it would take to get something into production. About how she might rework Saltwater and still use it. She could write something entirely new if she had to. She had options.

The relief was immediate.

Options.

Richard rubbed the back of his neck. He held up his hands.

“Look. I get that things are bad between us, but when we go home, we can work on it. We can work on us. I know I haven’t said it, but I’m sorry. Isn’t that what you want to hear? I’m sorry. I overreacted. To the play, to everything. I’m just trying to protect Helen. It’s her name, too. I don’t think you realize how much you’re jeopardizing. You just don’t.”

He had to know it was too late, that he had gone too far, but she hesitated. Because they were still there—the filtered scenes of their life together. The day Helen was born, the three of them clustered around the table in the house, strewn with papers and baby food and plans, the two of them lying together in bed, listening to the chorus of crickets, a half-read book tented on Richard’s chest. Like all marriages, theirs had been happy once.

“Let’s talk about this later,” Sarah said.

She looked over his shoulder to make sure the women were still there.

“All right,” he said. “How about after dinner? I mean it. Sarah, we can fix this.”

Before Sarah could tell him that wasn’t the kind of conversation she wanted to have, the director of the Ronchi Foundation began to clink a knife against his wineglass. Would they all be seated for dinner?

—

After four courses, Sarah found herself knotted into a group walking back to the town of Capri. Everyone, it seemed, was on the island that week: old school friends and business acquaintances, ex-wives and future mistresses, the professional hanger-on and occasional artistic luminary. People kept joining them for a few minutes before peeling off, heading to a private party at a villa, a yacht, a bar for a nightcap.

When they reached the Piazzetta, the group stalled. Sarah stayed on the fringes. She kissed half a dozen cheeks a dozen times goodbye. She wished it were that easy with Richard. He was there, too. Watching her.

Let’s talk about this later.

She could see it: both of them up all night at the villa, dissecting every aspect of their marriage, of her career. No. On the walk back, she had decided, she wouldn’t go home. She would go to the gardens near the Villa Jovis, where a scrubby little hillside took in the sweep of the Italian coastline. There, she would wait. Wait for the sun to come up, wait for them to leave, wait for her life—the next act, at least—to begin.

There was nothing to talk about. He’d said it all already.

When another large group walked through the Piazzetta, she tucked herself into it and left without a word. She must have been walking for ten minutes when she noticed Richard was behind her. By then, she had worked her way up into the empty, rural streets of the island, where fields of tomatoes and heads of lettuce grew, where they looked like brambles in the moonlight.

Let him follow.

Sarah reached a low point in the stone wall that ringed the gardens and pulled her dress up so she could climb over. The gardens were locked at night, but four years ago, Richard had shown her how to break in. It wasn’t even really a transgression, climbing up the short wall, and Sarah half hoped to find people there, enjoying the way the soft orange cloud of light spread out from the mainland.

“Wait—” Richard called from behind her, but she didn’t. She heard him trot the last few steps to the wall, before the sound of his shoes on the dry pine needles followed. “Sarah,” he tried again.

“Your leg must be feeling better,” she said, slowing.

“The pain medication,” he offered.

Sarah didn’t say anything.

Finally Richard said: “I don’t want it to be like this.”

She hated that line. It was a line said by people who had happily followed a path as far as they could, only to discover they didn’t like the destination. He had made it like this.

“Let’s just take a step back,” he said. “Let’s talk to someone. I know Naomi had a name. Let’s not throw this away over a few bad days.”

“A few bad days ?” she said quietly.

“Yes,” he said. And she could hear it then, the challenge in his voice. Richard wouldn’t admit it, that they had been crumbling for years.

“I want a divorce,” she said, her voice low. Maybe it was almost a whisper. She was still testing out the words. I want a divorce.

She could make out his outline in the darkness, shaking his head.

“No,” he said. “No divorce.”

“It’s not up to you, Richard. I’m filing when I get home. Our attorneys can work out the details.” Her voice was firmer now.

“No. We can go to counseling. We can move to New York. We can figure this out—”

“It’s too late,” Sarah said. Because it was true.

It was too late.

“We can’t get a divorce, Sarah.” He sounded tired.

“Of course we can. People do it all the time. We have a prenup. There’s nothing to discuss.”

“It will be too public. Everyone will talk. There will be custody battles and financial filings and—”

She cut him off. “I want to keep it quiet, Richard. I do.”

“Sarah—” Her name was a plea.

“I want a divorce,” she said. “I won’t accept another outcome. Not anymore.”

Saying it out loud released something that she hadn’t known she’d been holding on to. Not a heaviness, no. An anger. A fury.

“We just can’t. I can’t put the family through that.”

“Through what? We can simply sign and be done with it. We probably should have done it a year ago if I’m being honest.” Sarah didn’t understand why he kept pushing back. She wasn’t allowed the play, but she also wasn’t allowed a divorce. Somehow, the two were related, but Sarah couldn’t quite put the pieces together. The exhaustion of the day and the drinks had dulled her, made her slower.

“There are so many filings,” Richard said. He took a step closer to her. “Maybe we could just separate. Live apart. There’s no need to go through every part of a divorce, is there? People will scrutinize all of it. Every paper that gets submitted to the court—”

“Why do the filings matter, Richard? It’s just a formality.”

Through the darkness, Sarah could see his body stiffen.

“I can’t,” he said. It came out strangled, desperate.

“Of course you can!”

It didn’t make sense. Richard knew there was nothing to save. Today alone she had shot him with a speargun, rehashed her affair with his brother, been told by her agent that he was trying to sue. The facts washed over her, settled into place. Sarah realized it wasn’t them Richard was trying to save. It was him.

The play, the divorce filings, the publicness of it all: he was protecting himself, he was protecting the family.

“The play,” she said, taking a step back. “The divorce. You don’t want them because they’ll reveal the truth. Isn’t that right?”

Richard positioned himself above her; they were standing on the steep slope just below the view.

“The truth is that a Lingate has never gone through a divorce. You don’t understand. And now…” The words fell away but came back with even more force. “Now is not the right time.”

Sarah took another, instinctive step back, but he closed the distance. He was lying. She could hear it in his voice, the way it was thin and high and urgent. Like he needed her to believe him. But she didn’t.

“That can’t be the whole truth, Richard,” she said.

Through the shadows of the pines, he reached for her. She tried to move away, but he managed to get a hand around the necklace she was wearing. There was a tug on her neck, as if he was trying to bring her to heel like a dog. But just as quickly, he let go, like he had been burned.

“You cut me!” he cried into the darkness. “That fucking necklace cut me!”

Then he leveled his eyes on her.

“You’re the snake,” he whispered. “Not us. You’re the fucking snake!”

Men like Richard, Sarah had learned, believed they had the upper hand. And maybe they did. Trading a life like this, with its blasé comforts and cosseting, might seem unimaginable to anyone else. But to Sarah, it was a bargain. She didn’t need it the way he did.

“I was right,” she said. “That’s why you became so angry when you read the play. Because I stumbled onto the truth, but you couldn’t let people know.”

“Please,” he said. And for the first time she heard it: true desperation.

He had inched closer to her as they spoke. She had an animal urge to get away from him, from this family, like a rabbit sensing the presence of a predator. But when she moved backward again, he matched her. He kept doing so until he was almost on top of her. Then he grabbed her shoulders with both hands. She tried to wrest free, but he held on tighter, his fingers pressing deep into the bone. She tried to lift her arms, to push him away, but she was below him. She didn’t have the leverage.

Finally, she kicked out, aiming for his injured calf. He screamed.

But still, he held on.

She managed to get her hands onto his chest, and when she pushed against him, he just—let her go with the lightest push. It was that simple. The steep slope below her swallowed her footing. Unable to catch her balance, she fell. Fell into the night until— crack —there was only darkness.