Villa America Read Free Page B

the sky and neglecting her work, while Olga, the youngest at nine, was with their nurse in the hothouse picking flowers for her tropical scene.
    Carrying a celadon bowl full of pebbles, Sara found a shaded spot under an oak tree where the moss was growing dark and wet, making it malleable. Carefully, she peeled it off in strips and placed them over the pebbles until she had created a miniature, glistening green hill. She believed the perfect home should be on a hill, but it should also be near the sea, so she had dug a small moat that would serve as the curve of a seashore.
    Next she selected small tips of pine and black maple and dogwood and witch hazel to make a copse for her farm. Then she collected tender heads of Indian grass and planted them in rows in the moss: her wheat field.
    She was collecting violets when the storm came. It swept with a sudden violence over the stables and the sunken garden and the hothouse and the pasture beyond, clattered across the house like horses’ hooves hitting the ground.
    Sara quickly picked up the bowl as well as the violets, which she held lightly in her hand so as not to crush the petals, and hurried towards the house. When she looked back to make sure Hoytie was behind her, she saw that her middle sister was standing, staring up at the deluge.
    “Hoytie,” she called out. “Hurry up. You’ll be soaked.”
    Hoytie turned to her. Then she stamped her foot angrily and, raising her eleven-year-old fist to the sky, cried indignantly: “It’s…raining…on… me. ”
    Sara laughed. “Oh, Hoytie, it’s raining on all of us. Come on.”
      
    When the girls reached the entrance hall, one of the maids came running with towels. Sara took them and began drying her sister off, catching glimpses of the two of them in the flashing mirrors that hung on the walls.
    She wondered at her sister’s declaration, how it was some people seemed sure of their place in the world. For her part, she had no idea where she belonged or where she would end up.
    When she’d dried off a bit, Sara retrieved the small farmhouse she’d painted—wooden sticks brushed white, the windowsills yellow—and placed it atop her green hill. Then she took her diorama into the Turkish smoking room, where her parents kept all their Middle Eastern treasures.
    She set the bowl down on the polished wooden floor, went to one of the glass cases, and pilfered two gold Egyptian figurines: Ramses II and his wife Nefertari.
    She placed the king and queen in front of the yellow and white house. They sat there solemnly presiding over their beautiful, lush farm.
    Then, as the last touch, she took the delicate purple flowers she’d carried through the storm and floated them on the moat she’d carved out. A perfumed violet-blue sea.

1910
    I t was still dark when Owen rose and collected the eggs, warm from the henhouse. He milked the two cows, loaded the aluminum milk vats onto the cart along with the potatoes, butter, and cheese, harnessed the mare, and began the journey into town. His hands on the reins were stiff from the cold. His balls had shrunk back towards the heat of his body. He shifted on the wooden seat watching the lantern lighting his way, willing its flame back to him.
    He thought about breakfast. The faster he delivered, the faster he would be home and the faster his mother would put that plate in front of him. He urged the horse on. He could smell the fallen pine needles as her hooves hit them, but it was a thin smell; the March air was still too cold.
    He went over the names on his list of deliveries. Mrs. Violet Pease, Mrs. Camilla Thurston, the Drakes, the rectory at St. Andrew’s, the old schoolmaster Mr. Cushing. There was one more; who was it? His head was still thick with sleep and stunned by the cold. His feet had long since lost any feeling and he tried to scrunch his toes in his boots, but he couldn’t tell if they were even moving.
    To distract himself, he counted how much they would make from this