The Beautiful American Read Online Free

transfixed by all that shimmering green. It was Dahlia’s favorite color.
    She had a beret that color, and a matching scarf. All her schoolgirl friends had chosen different colors. They had gone hiking together on Saturday afternoons, arms linked, each girl in her chosen color, a bouquet of pinks, greens, blues, and magentas, bobbing and laughing down the cobbled streets of Grasse. That had been before the war.
    “Would you like to try it on? I’m sure we have your size.” A saleslady broke the memory.
    An hour later, back in my small hotel room, I opened my purse and let the bills and coins spill out onto the bed. I shouldn’t have bought the dress. But I saw myself wearing it, showing it off for Dahlia. It was another talisman. I let the dress drop back down onto the bed and thought about prewar things . . . Jamie, those long afternoons in Paris, the all-night parties in artists’ studios, Lee and Man Ray presiding over the scene like a goddess and god descended from Olympus, my first tastes of pâté and escargots and rich café au lait, the yeasty smell of the boulevards just after a rain. They seemed to be from a different lifetime. Before Dahlia.
    •   •   •
    B y Friday the London sky had cleared, but I had entered a new state of mourning for my daughter. I had not found her inLondon, not in the homes and orphanages set up for lost children; not in any police records; not, thank God, in morgue descriptions of unclaimed bodies.
    My feet were blistered from wandering the streets, but I felt nothing. For the first time I faced the possibility that she might be gone forever and it was like staring into the mouth of a beast ready to swallow me whole. I would let it. Without Dahlia, there was no point in going on. I might as well be dead and buried.
    I purchased a train ticket for Lewes in the morning for one simple reason: I was afraid to be alone any longer. I did not expect comfort from Lee, or help of any sort, merely distraction. Somehow, I had to find the will to return to Grasse, to my home, my empty home, and decide how to survive the next thirty years; if I was to survive.
    I wondered what had driven Lee to take the chances she had during the war. Perhaps I just wanted to round off some of those jagged-edged, piercing fragments of our personal history, perfume them with nostalgia to hide the old odor of regret and blame.
    When the train arrived, a porter helped me find a seat. It was jammed full. All trains were, all buses, since gas was still strictly rationed. I shared a compartment with a large family that seemed to be going on holiday. The mother was surrounded by satchels and valises, so many that they filled the overhead rack and spilled onto the floor. Her many children ran excitedly back and forth in the passageway. There would be no more holidays for me. This was just another trip, backward, into the past. What for?
    Not forgiveness, I reminded myself. The war had made that word meaningless. Acceptance. Simple acceptance. The simplest things are the hardest to achieve.
    Lee met me at the train station, as promised, jogging toward methrough misty steam and again balancing parcels, this time baskets of eggs, a recently butchered chicken, some spring peas.
    “I’ve been scavenging,” she announced proudly. “The ration card was used up days ago. Thank God for the black market. Things are still a bit basic at the farm, but we won’t starve. This way.” And she pointed to the station exit with that straight, elegant nose of hers. She wore trousers and combat boots and an old sweater with holes in the elbows, and I could see how pregnancy and childbirth had softened her body, though she was still slender enough to model for Vogue , if she wanted.
    Roland Penrose, her husband, waited for us beyond the gate and helped Lee carry her packages to the car. He was a solemn, dark-eyed man, older than Lee but not by much, well dressed in country tweeds with slightly frayed cuffs on the jacket, just