Villa America

by Liza Klaussmann

Genres: Historical Fiction; Biographical; Family Life

Synopsis

Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, Pablo Picasso, Cole and Linda Porter, Ernest Hemingway, John Dos Passos - all are summer guests of Gerald and Sara Murphy. Visionary, misunderstood, and from vastly different backgrounds, the Murphys met and married young, and set forth to create a beautiful world. They alight on Villa America: their coastal oasis of artistic genius, debauched parties, impeccable style and flamboyant imagination. But before long, a stranger enters into their relationship, and their marriage must accommodate an intensity that neither had forseen. When tragedy strikes, their friends reach out to them, but the golden bowl is shattered, and neither Gerald nor Sara will ever be the same.

Ravishing, heart-breaking, and written with enviable poise, Villa America delivers on all the promise of Klaussmann's bestselling debut. It is an overwhelming, unforgettable novel.

Release date: August 4, 2015

Publisher: Little, Brown and Company

Print pages: 432

Sample

1898

Gerald thought about Pitz all the way home from school—he thought about him from the moment the bell rang at the Blessed Sacrament Academy, during the long walk through Central Park, Nurse’s hand clamped painfully on his wrist, all the way to his house on West Fifty-Seventh Street—so by the time they reached his brownstone, his excitement was so great that he felt he might pee in his pants a little at the thought that the dog would be waiting for him behind the heavy black door.

Pitz had been his special birthday present when he turned ten, almost a year ago now. Mother had been sick with Baby, whatever that meant, and Gerald had been given Pitz. To teach him responsibility, his father had said. Gerald had heard the words, but they’d barely registered, because at the same moment, the wiry-haired fox terrier had bounded through the door into the drawing room.

Today his friend was exactly one year old and Gerald had smuggled him two butter biscuits from his lunch. He’d been very careful not to let the biscuits crumble in the pocket of his wool coat or to let Nurse find them.

Nurse hated Pitz. She said he was dirty and that he would bite them all one day and might even smother Baby in its sleep. Gerald knew this was a lie. Pitz was special. He had been his special present and now he was his special friend. Pitz was all-around special. Best of all, the dog could read his mind. Gerald had seen him doing it; Pitz would cock his head when Gerald was thinking something secret, and Gerald would know that Pitz knew what he was thinking.

  

Now, as the black door was opened at last, Pitz was waiting and Gerald almost cried with relief. He didn’t know why, but he feared that one day the door would open and Pitz wouldn’t be there.

“If you want to play with that filthy beast, it will be out in the garden,” Nurse said.

  

Gerald looked at Pitz, gingerly feeling the biscuits in his pocket. It was January and the wind bit into his nose, but he’d rather be freezing outside with Pitz than warm indoors with Nurse. He moved towards the back door.

“Gerald Clery Murphy.” Nurse could make her voice tower. That was the only word Gerald could think of for it, the way it seemed to grow bigger and bigger until it was looming over him. “What do we do first?”

Gerald reluctantly turned and headed for the stairs to change out of his uniform. Pitz just looked at him. He knew better than to try to follow Gerald upstairs when Nurse was around.

The house was chilly and the curtains were drawn against what was left of the day. His father said only invalids lived in warm houses. Murphys, he said, didn’t get sick, although Mother had been sick with Baby. Gerald had seen Baby, and Baby looked fine to him. Mother was very white, though, and would call out often for Nurse in a high voice, saying Baby was unwell or that Baby was strange.

On the second floor, Gerald had to be very quiet when he passed Mother’s door and the nursery so that Mother wouldn’t get upset. Nurse was marching behind him and he hoped she wouldn’t try to take his coat, with the biscuits, because then he would be punished and Pitz would be banished to the cellar again. Pitz was supposed to sleep in his basket in the little room off the kitchen. But it was so very cold there; it seemed cold even in summer. At night, if it was quiet, Gerald would sneak downstairs after his prayers and spirit the dog back to his own bed on the second floor.

Sometimes Nurse checked, and if she found Pitz, his friend would be locked in the cellar. Sometimes Nurse wouldn’t let Pitz out until the following afternoon, and Gerald would see his friend’s eyes, haunted after a day down in the dark with no food or water. When this happened, Gerald knew it was his fault and he wouldn’t try to smuggle Pitz upstairs for a while. But inevitably, after a week or so, he would chance it again.

“Give me your coat,” Nurse said, holding out her strong hand to Gerald. “You can wear the play coat outside in the muck.”

Gerald was trying to think of an excuse to hold on to it when he heard his mother’s voice from behind the nursery door.

“Nurse,” his mother cried. “Nurse. Come see to Baby. She has a color on her. A most unnatural color.”

“Now, we must stay calm, Mrs. Murphy,” Nurse called out briskly, turning from Gerald. “Baby is well. I will be with you directly.”

“Nurse, come. Do,” his mother said, but her voice was less agitated. Then, a few moments later: “Yes, yes,” as if she were talking to herself.

Gerald didn’t wait to hear any more and raced up the next flight of stairs, his coat and its precious cargo safe from Nurse’s grasp.

He took off his uniform, laid his knickerbockers over the chair, and folded his shirt and sweater for the morning. After changing into his play clothes, he slipped his wool coat on again and made the perilous journey back down to Pitz.

Kneeling on the floor at the foot of the stairs, Gerald wrapped his arms around the little fox terrier and laid his cheek against the dog’s neck. There was the earthy, animal smell—fresh bread and leaves—and Pitz’s coat, coarse like his hairbrush, pricking his nose.

The dog let himself be held by the boy, patient, unmoving, despite the smell of the biscuit in the boy’s pocket. The boy made a small sighing noise, like a prayer.

It was the first warm thing Gerald Murphy had touched all day.

  

Gerald ate his supper alone at the small table in the nursery. Besides the table, the room had one little chair, a board to do sums on, a rocking horse with an uncomfortable seat (a present from his uncle), and a couple of ledger books in which Gerald was supposed to practice his handwriting before meals.

There used to be two chairs in the nursery, but the companion had been removed when his brother, Fred, had gone away to school. Gerald didn’t really miss him; Fred had never been unkind, but he spoke to Gerald the same way the streetcar conductor did. Politely, as if he were there but not there, somehow. As for Baby, she was too small to eat in the nursery with him, but Gerald hoped she might get big enough soon so that he would have someone to talk to.

The one good thing about the nursery was that it had a large window, rounded at the top, that looked out over Fifty-Seventh Street, and Gerald could watch the people go by and wonder about them while he ate his boiled beef.

Tonight, as he was halfway through a particularly tough nugget of meat, a hansom cab drew to a stop two doors down. Gerald shifted his chair around the table so he could keep his eye on it. A man in evening clothes alighted, followed by a woman in a dark blue dress, her gloved hand resting lightly on his. A single brown, wrinkled oak leaf fluttered down onto the man’s hat. The lady tipped her head in slightly towards her companion, and Gerald thought he could see her smiling at something the man had said. The way she smiled reminded him of Father’s friend in Atlantic City.

Father had taken him there last spring so that he could see the boardwalk and also to get some fresh air. Mother had said that she didn’t like the look of Gerald’s pallor, which she put down to a bilious nature. This frightened Gerald a little, because he didn’t know what it meant, and it sounded dangerous. He wanted to ask Father about it and almost did when they were on the streetcar on their way to the ferry slip. But once on the steamboat that would take them across the North River to the train at Paulus Hook, he forgot all about it.

At first, before the boat blew for departure, Gerald was absorbed by the advertisements in frames hanging on the walls of the long mahogany cabin. He knelt on the bench to get a better look until Father rapped him slightly with his cane. Gerald quickly righted himself, but it took all his effort to keep from swinging his legs.

When the ship set off, Father rose and, beckoning him, strode out to the deck. It was a raw morning and the sky hung very gray over the harbor, the Manhattan piers like tentacles reaching out through the mist, saying, Don’t go, don’t go. There was a huge steam liner docked at one of them. There was also a thrilling tugboat with a big, fat C painted on its stack that passed so close to them that Gerald thought if he reached out he might be able to touch it.

He wanted to lean into Father’s side, to feel the gray, lightweight wool of his suit. Father always wore the same kind of suit, but Gerald could never remember actually touching it. He thought he might risk it, it was so cold. He inched slightly closer, but Father moved away at the same time, his arm extended, his finger pointing at something.

“Gerald,” Father said. “Do you see that big building there? If you walk up six blocks, that is where I work.”

The Mark Cross Company, Father’s company. They made leather goods and saddlery, Gerald knew, for the discerning gentleman.

“What is that big building?”

Father looked at him, annoyed at the question.

“That is the American Surety Building.”

“Why is it so much bigger than the others?” Gerald asked, chancing it.

“It just is,” Father said.

“How did they get it to go so high?” He knew he was on thin ice.

“It’s called a skyscraper. They could build it so high because they wanted to.”

Gerald looked at his father. He was staring out at the big building. Gerald could tell he was thinking. He saw that expression sometimes when he was brought into Father’s study to say good night and his father would be reading, his hand resting on top of his smooth head.

“That is something you must learn, Gerald,” his father said now. “You and your brother. To decide to do something and then follow it through to its end. That’s how they built that. That’s how anything worth doing gets done.” Father tapped his cane against the railing and then turned and walked back inside. Gerald followed, still wondering how they had built that big building and who had climbed that high into the sky without falling.

After the boat, there’d been a long train ride, during which Father read the quotations of a man called Ralph Waldo Emerson to him at great length (Gerald knew this was the man whose bust sat in Father’s study giving him the beady eye every time he snuck in when he wasn’t supposed to), and then they’d arrived in Atlantic City.

Gerald had been to the seaside before, but never one that looked like this, with its enormous hotels and busy wooden sidewalk right next to the sand, and piers standing high like clowns on stilts, stretching for miles out into the water. Also, there were shops selling all sorts of things Gerald couldn’t make out, and couples whizzing by in rolling chairs made for two. There was a huge ice water fountain at the entrance of Young’s Pier. Gerald got a pickle pin from the Heinz Pier, which had just had what Father called a “grand opening.”

He stayed very close to Father on the boardwalk, but then Father pointed to a large building with a giant flag on top and told him that was their hotel. It was the United States Hotel, which sounded very impressive to Gerald.

In the evening, Father said he was going to the theater to see a famous French actress in a play. Gerald didn’t want to be left alone in the room by himself, but Father never liked fuss, so Gerald didn’t say anything when his father left the room in his evening clothes, extinguishing the light as he went.

Gerald lay in his bed in the darkness and thought about another game, one he was teaching Pitz to play. Gerald would line up his toy soldiers, the ones he’d gotten in his stocking for Christmas, and the dog would knock them over with his nose, one by one. Gerald shut his eyes and tried to picture his friend. Then he rolled his pillow up next to him and put his arm around it, pretending it was Pitz, and went to sleep.

The following morning when Gerald woke, he heard laughter coming from the sitting room that separated his bedroom from Father’s. He opened the door and wandered out. In the fresh light, he saw a dark-haired lady in a mauve dress lying over Father’s knee, laughing. She immediately went quiet when she saw Gerald, but Father’s expression never changed. For a moment he wondered if Father was Father; he didn’t look like himself. He looked lighter somehow, nicer.

“Miss Church was just looking for her glove, Gerald,” Father said, giving the lady a gentle push off his lap.

“Oh,” said Gerald, rubbing his eyes. He stole a glance at his own pajamas; they were rumpled.

He looked back at the lady. She had a nice face and a very nice smile, and Gerald wondered if she was to spend the day with them. But then Miss Church gathered her cloak and, holding up a glove, said: “Well, I’ve found it. Good-bye, Patrick.” And then: “Nice to meet you, Gerald.”

Gerald smiled. “Good-bye,” he said.

“We’re leaving,” Father said after Miss Church had gone. “The bellboy will be here soon. Pack your case.” Whatever joke Father had been sharing with Miss Church he seemed to no longer find funny, his face set back in its usual expression.

“May I have breakfast?” Gerald asked, suddenly feeling very hungry.

“Breakfast is for ladies and invalids,” Father said, “and people who miss trains.” Then he rose and went into his bedroom, shutting the door with a small clack.

Gerald looked at the door. He liked closed doors, liked the way they looked, so neat and quiet, and so smooth.

  

He had finished his boiled beef, and the lady and gentleman from the hansom cab had long since disappeared inside the house two doors down. Gerald rose from the small table, retrieved one of the ledger books and a pen, and began to draw—a door, with panels for eyes. But he couldn’t make it come out right, so he drew a leaf, trying to capture all the small bones in it. That’s how he thought of dead leaves, like small brown skeletons but made from lace. Finer even than the lace his mother wore to church.

The light from the lamp near him had dimmed a little by the time he finished. He looked out and realized that it had begun to snow, big heavy flakes covering the branches of the trees like white moss. He wondered when Nurse would come to get him to say good night to Mother and Father. Perhaps she had forgotten. Out the window, another man, this one with a dog, strolled past, and Gerald imagined himself and Pitz one day, walking together on a January evening, snow falling on them, exchanging their thoughts about the world.

Gerald hadn’t brought Pitz upstairs for a while, but when Nurse came to fetch him from the nursery, she complained of a cold, and Gerald saw his opportunity. After saying his prayers, he tiptoed downstairs, scooped up Pitz, and, heart hammering, took him to his bed.

He lay there with his dog’s body curved against his. He put his face to Pitz’s neck and breathed in and out. He listened for the sound of Nurse’s footsteps, and when he was sure it was all quiet, he relaxed his grip and closed his eyes.

It must have been very late, and Gerald had been dreaming he was a pirate. Or he had been dreaming he was on the streetcar with Father and then he was a pirate. Then his arm hurt and he opened his eyes and saw Nurse, her face twisted in the light of her lamp. She was pinching him. Then it was loud and Nurse was screaming about the devil and his ways and dirty beasts, her spittle flying on his face, and Gerald sat up and saw Pitz cowering in a corner near his bureau, his back curved and his tail tucked under, making himself as round and unnoticeable as possible. His friend looked so very small. Gerald cried out and tried to get off the bed, but Nurse pushed him back, flew at the dog, and struck him. And then again, and again.

Then Father came in and Nurse was talking and Gerald couldn’t say anything. He didn’t say a word to save his special friend. Father picked Pitz up and left the room. Nurse pointed one big horrible finger at Gerald. “You could have killed Baby” was all she said, and then she left, slamming the door behind her.

In the morning, Father called Gerald into his study before breakfast. Gerald scrubbed his face hard before he went downstairs because he knew Father would be angry if he thought Gerald had been crying.

“You have not shown responsibility, Gerald,” Father said. “Since you are unable to manage the dog, it can no longer stay in this house. Animals have a place and once they are elevated beyond that place, it not only makes them dangerous but reflects poorly on the master. From this day on, you are not to go near that dog. It will live in the yard. It can make itself useful by catching rats. You can make yourself useful by learning to live up to your responsibilities. Is that understood?”

“He’ll die outside,” Gerald said.

“Nonsense,” Father said. “It will have a shelter; I’ve already instructed Harold to make one. The dog, Gerald, will be a dog.”

“No, please. Pitz. He’s…”

“Enough. Don’t blubber. You look like Nurse. Do you remember what I told you about seeing something through to the end? Well, this is just one of those times. You must be a man, accept this as a lesson, and see it through to the end. That’s the last I want to hear on the subject. You will eat your breakfast in the nursery this morning. Good day, Gerald.”

For the next week, every night, Gerald would open his bedroom window and speak softly to Pitz, who sat looking forlornly up at the house. For the first few days, Pitz waited until Gerald couldn’t stand the cold any longer and was forced to shut the window before creeping to the wooden shack Harold had built in the corner of the garden. By Friday, though, the dog no longer waited for Gerald to finish telling him about his day, and by Sunday, he didn’t even come out of his shelter at the sound of the sash going up.

When Pitz didn’t appear Monday evening, Gerald opened the chest-on-chest in his room where they kept spare blankets. He pulled out the oldest one he could find and went and lifted the window.

“Pitz.” He kept his voice low and hushed.

The sky was so dark that it was a kind of black-blue.

“Pitz,” he called again, a little louder.

Finally, Gerald could make out a small head appearing from the shelter.

“Pitz. Come.”

The dog moved warily towards the sound of Gerald’s voice.

Gerald dangled the blanket out the window and then tossed it as far as he could.

Pitz moved slowly towards it and sniffed it. He looked up at Gerald, and Gerald knew what his friend was asking.

“Go on, Pitz. Go on and take it. It’s for you.”

Pitz looked at him a moment longer and then grabbed one end of the woolen cover, dragged it back to his shack, and pulled it in after him.

 “I love you, Pitz,” Gerald called across the garden. “I love you.”

  

By the beginning of February, Gerald had thrown three blankets, a couple of pairs of winter socks he thought Pitz could make a pillow with, various tidbits from his lunches and suppers, and a box of sweetmeats that he had stolen from the drawing room. But one night, he had nothing useful to throw down to his friend—he had been so very hungry at lunch that there was nothing left over. So, in desperation, he threw down one of his toy soldiers. Pitz came out and snuffled it, then gazed up at the window. For a moment Gerald thought Pitz was disappointed because it wasn’t food, but then the dog nudged the lead figurine with his nose and looked up at Gerald, letting out a small bark. Gerald began to cry.

The next day, after school, when Nurse was busy with Baby, and Cook was running errands, Gerald decided to brave punishment and went out into the garden.

He stood in the doorway and called Pitz’s name. At first there was no movement, and then a small head popped out of the shelter. Gerald, afraid and elated, moved across the hard ground towards his dog. Pitz emerged slowly and Gerald knelt down and held out his hand. He had brought a bit of biscuit.

“Come, Pitz,” he said.

The dog moved closer and Gerald saw that his coat had grown quite matted and was also coarser than he remembered. Pitz smelled the food and cautiously approached, first sniffing from a little ways away, then darting in and scarfing the tidbit from Gerald’s palm.

The pink slip of the tongue, the heavy fur; Gerald couldn’t wait one second longer to touch him and feel him and smell him. His friend, his special, best, brave friend. He reached out his arms, and as he did, the dog turned slightly and got low. In his rush to get to him, though, Gerald didn’t notice or really know what the strange noise meant. He reached out and the dog whipped around and sank his teeth deep in Gerald’s hand.

“No, Pitz. No,” Gerald cried softly. He tried again to hold him, to touch him, despite his bleeding hand and the pain, but the dog just growled and bared his teeth.

Not knowing what to do, Gerald ran back to the house to look for a place to hide his tears. But it was no use. His hand swelled to the size of an onion, and Nurse saw it and knew it for what it was. She reported him to Father, and finally, the judgment came down: Pitz was to go. Where, Gerald didn’t know, and Father wouldn’t tell him. He said only that Gerald was to be banished to the nursery at all hours that he wasn’t in school.

When Nurse came up to the nursery later to bring his dinner, Gerald couldn’t even look at her.

“At least that’s settled once and for all,” she said, placing a baleful piece of lamb pie down in front of him. “And you, you got nothing less than you deserve, Gerald Clery Murphy. I warned you about that beast. Dirty, vicious thing.” She tapped her fingers next to his plate. “Your father showed too much mercy from the beginning, in my opinion.”

“You hit Pitz,” he said, staring down at the table, balling his fists in his lap. “You hit him and then made him go outside and hate me, and now he’s gone. My only friend in this whole world. And now I hate you.”

Nurse dug her fingers into his shoulder and forced him to look up at her. Her eyes were like the shiny gray pebbles on the beach in Southampton that looked smooth but hurt to walk on. “If it had been up to me,” she said, “I would have made a hearth rug out of that filthy animal. Something to keep my feet warm.”

The memory rose of a terrified Pitz desperately showing his soft belly to Nurse before she beat him, and in that moment Gerald Murphy made the first real decision of his life.

The boy turned in his seat and, in the coldest voice he could muster, said: “You are a wicked woman and I don’t care what anyone says. From this moment on, I will never, ever speak to you again.”

And, despite his parents’ exhortations, he kept his word. Like the men who built the skyscrapers, he decided to do something and he followed it through to the end, because that’s how anything worth doing got done.

Three weeks later, Gerald was shipped off to boarding school.

 

  

Sara Wiborg loved the feel of earth in her hands, the humid texture of it between her fingers. She was in the garden of their home in Clifton, Ohio, selecting grasses and bits of things for a diorama she was making for her class at Miss Ely’s.

This was to be her and her sisters’ last month at Miss Ely’s; their family was moving to Germany in July. Her father had become great friends with the kaiser and they were to spend a year there while he expanded his business abroad. At fifteen, she was too old, really, for Miss Ely’s anyway, and if it weren’t Germany it would have been some other school, although her mother refused to send the girls away. She loved them too much, she said.

For the diorama, Sara had decided to make a farm. Her middle sister, Hoytie, was a few feet away, staring up at 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

It 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 round. One of their cows, Lettuce, had to be dried off soon, so the deliveries would be much smaller for a couple of months, until she could be milked again.

Lettuce was Owen’s favorite, a Jersey cow, caramel-colored. He’d been the one to pick her out two summers ago. His mother hadn’t wanted to buy her—all that difficulty calving such a small thing. They were smaller and more sensitive than other breeds, the Jersey cows, but, as he’d argued, they ate less and produced such fine milk. They were also soft to the touch, although he didn’t say this to his mother; softness was no reason for keeping a working animal.

The other thing he didn’t tell his mother was how he talked to Lettuce. It had started off as something he did before milking in the hope that it might make her less anxious. But over time, he’d begun to believe that she wanted him to do it, that she understood, that she waited for their conversations. She seemed to produce more milk, and Owen became convinced that there was a real connection there despite his shame in believing it. He didn’t like to think about it; he just did it.

If all went well, Lettuce would calve in May. Hopefully, they could get a good price for the calf, either for veal or for dairy. But, meanwhile, it meant the coming month would be lean.

Then it would be planting season. Because of the sea air, they had a long fall, but spring came late, the beginning of April, when they would plant corn, as well as some sugar and shelling peas. In May, he’d skip school because there would be so much to do: turn the vegetable fields and plow down the winter rye and gather the first potatoes. The hay harvesting would be done in June. The real backbreaking work. But it also meant lovely soft summer evenings, tired, driving the hay back to be baled. Letting the working steers plod along while he stared up at the chang