Page 1 of Saltwater

Part I

Pulitzer Prize–Nominated Playwright Missing on Capri

International Herald Tribune

Sunday, July19, 1992

Capri, Italy—Police and volunteersare searching for Sarah Lingate, who was reported missing Sunday afternoon.

The playwright and her husband, Richard Lingate, have been vacationing on the island with Richard’s older brother, Marcus, and his wife, Naomi. At 1:07p.m., police were notified that Lingate could not be located on the grounds of the villa where she and the family have been staying.

Lingate was last seen Saturday evening during a dinner held to celebrate the renovation of Casa Malaparte, an effort funded in part by the Lingate Foundation. Following the party, invitees walked to the Piazzetta for a round of drinks. Neither Richard nor Sarah Lingate was seen again after the group reached Bar Tiberio. An eyewitness noted there had been a disagreement between the couple prior to dinner but declined to elaborate on the nature of the conflict. Richard reportedly returned home without his wife around 2a.m.

Richard and Marcus Lingate are best known as the heirs to DVH Holdings, a privately held energy firm founded by their grandfather, oil magnate Aaron Lingate. The firm was liquidated by their father in the mid-1980s, and the brothers have used the proceeds to pursue personal interests: Marcus as an early-stage tech investor and Richard as a supporter of thearts.

Sarah Lingate is a Pulitzer Prize–nominated and WhitingAward–winning playwright. Her work has been staged at experimental venues, such as the Lexington Conservatory Theatre, as well as established performing arts centers, including Lincoln Center. She is 5 feet, 10 inches tall, of medium build, with long, thick, blond-brown hair. She speaks fluent Italian.

This will remain a missing person case until further notice. To report tips or sightings to the Carabinieri, please call 081-555650. Visitors and residents of the surrounding region, including Naples, Sorrento, Portofino and Ischia, are encouraged to remain vigilant.

Helen Lingate

Now

Money is my phantom limb.It was part of my body once. I know this because I feel its loss like an ambient current that runs up my spine, an occasional, sudden shock. Money is metabolic, a universal part of our constitution. Lorna taught me that.

Before her, I didn’t have the vocabulary for money. I changed the subject, I demurred, I shifted my weight, brushed my hair behind my ear, smiled. I twisted the Cartier bracelet on my left wrist again and again until the skin turned strawberry.

What I’m saying is,I lied.

Money has always made me uncomfortable, both having a lot and not enough.

That ends now. I saw how heavy the bag was when Lorna lifted it. Bulky with our cash. I still don’t remember whose idea it was. Hers or mine, it doesn’t matter. After today, we’ll whisper the story to each other like an incantation.Do you remember?They never knew.Then, I hope, we will laugh.

Good stories are like that. They become a reflex, as automatic as breathing. I know this because my body was built—bone by bone—out of stories like that.

Stories about money.

They were also lies.

Every week my father recited them to me, their outlines as familiar as my own hands. That my great-grandfather had struck oil whileprospecting for gold. That it had happened not far from our house in Bel Air. That the exact site had been paved over but was near the intersection of Glendale and Beverly Boulevards.

My great-grandfather never wanted the oil. That part, my father emphasized, was a mistake. All hewantedwas gold. What he got was better: property, mineral rights, imported hand-painted French pillows. A name—Lingate.

What a mix-up! A surprise! A moment of aw-shucks luck. It could have happened to anyone. That’s America’s promise—that it still could.

It’s a good story, right?

But even in my childhood, the contours of the lie were visible. The landscape of that Los Angeles couldn’t be occupied by mortals. It was prelapsarian—tangled bean fields and sweet orange blossoms, oil running like foamy soda up to meet the derricks, streams that could still be panned for gold.

In college, I learned the truth. For twenty years they kept it from me. I don’t blame them. To us it was more than a story; it was a myth. Our own family heirloom. We passed it down the way some families hold on to a piece of silver, insisting to each subsequent generation that it’s early American. Maybe forged by Paul Revere himself. A sign of the family’s ancient, unshakable commitment to the Revolutionary cause. They show it off at DAR luncheons, they’re aMayflowerfamily. Only later, when they go to sell it, do they discover it’s from the nineteenth century, a reproduction.

In the end, it’s just a story.

The truth was, my family had swindled their way into the largest oil lease in California—the Wilson Oil Field—at the dawn of the twentieth century. We had done so by promising the original leaseholder, a wildcatter’s widow, that the family would split the profits if oil was found in the first five years. Five years and one day later, the first oil derrick was drilled.

She sued, but lost.

You can understand why they preferred the story.

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