“How far?”
“Three miles. We picked up others as we went along. Carl was like the Pied Piper. He was the tallest and the least talkative, but he had a certain”—she searched for the word—“a certain charisma. He never looked for attention, never wanted it, but people gravitated toward him. It was a classic case of the mystique of the one who is most aloof. Carl passed by, and people looked; and when they looked, they saw Brad and me, too. We were his sidekicks. It was because of him that we were accepted as quickly as we were.”
Olivia was smiling along with her now, picturing the daily procession to school. “That sounds so neat.”
“Neat?”
“Fun.”
“Walking three miles through driving rain wasn’t fun.”
“But all of you doing it—following the Pied Piper—it’s a wonderful image. What else did you do?”
“Do?”
“For fun.”
“Oh, little things.”
“Like what?”
Natalie gave a half shrug. “You know. What all kids do.” She blushed. “Time hasn’t changed some things.”
“Sex?” Olivia asked in surprise, because she’d thought time had changed that—at least, in terms of age and savvy. When Natalie’s cheeks remained pink, she said, “I’m sorry. That’s private. I shouldn’t be asking about it.”
“I hired you to ask about private things. I won’t necessarily tell all, but I want you to ask.” That said, she had regained her composure. “The age factor did come into play there. When Carl was fourteen, I was only ten. When he was sixteen, I was only twelve. We weren’t boyfriend and girlfriend. We didn’t smooch in the back row of the movie theater.”
There was a pause.
Olivia helped her out. “But you wanted it.”
Still blushing, Natalie nodded. “Carl was the only one I could imagine being with. I used to dream about that.”
Her voice stopped, but her facial expression continued to speak of beautiful things. Olivia watched her until she couldn’t bear the suspense any longer.
“Did you dream of marrying him?”
“We danced together,” Natalie said.
“You dreamed of that?”
“No. It was real. Dancing was big during the Depression. It was the cheapest form of entertainment.”
Olivia knew something of that. “Did you and Carl do marathon dancing?”
“No. But we knew people who did. Some of them went on and on for months, some with good reason. As long as they remained on their feet, they had a roof over their heads, food, and the promise of prize money.” She smiled. “No. Carl and I didn’t do anything like that. But we’d seen enough of it on the newsreels to know some of the dance steps. Carl had a little crystal set—you know, a little radio. We’d go back behind the shed and find a little music, and we’d dance.” Her eyes went wide. She had thought of something else, another good memory, judging from the excitement in her eyes.
“What?” Olivia asked.
Natalie looked at her, then looked away and laughed. “It’s silly, really. But it was so nice.”
Olivia laughed along with her. “What?”
“January, February, March—those are important months in a vineyard. That’s when the vineyardist cuts back the vines. It sets the entire tone for the next season’s growth. My father insisted on doing it himself in those early days. Our job was to collect the discarded canes. They would eventually be burned, but before that, we used them to build huts.”
“Huts?” Olivia asked, entranced.
“Carl knew how to tangle the branches so that they would hold together. The finished product wasn’t anything fancy, and since there weren’t any leaves, you could still see out. But those walls cut the wind and the cold. They made a nice little place.”
“And you danced there?”
“We did, indeed. Oh my. I’d be looking up at him, dancing the way I’d seen in those films. Carl wasn’t much of a dancer. Still isn’t. His feet wouldn’t quite behave, but he had a way with those arms.” She inhaled deeply and, mouth closed, hummed an ecstatic pair of notes.
Olivia didn’t write down a thing. There was no need. She could see that hut clear as day, could see through the holes between those branches. The inside would be lit by a candle, illuminating two gently swaying bodies. She could hear a tinny echo of the big band sound, right down to the static of the crystal set. It was so incredibly romantic.
She sat back in the chair with a sigh. “Those were the good old days. I would like to have lived back then.”
Natalie looked at her strangely, much as Otis had not so very long ago. “No, you wouldn’t. Times were hard. The future was precarious. By the end of the thirties, war was in the air. You can’t begin to know what that was like.”
“But families were closer back then. They gave each other support.”
“That doesn’t mean they were happier.”
“But life was simpler back then,” Olivia insisted. “There are times I would give my right arm for less responsibility.”
“Is that what you think we had?”
“I think that the division of labor was more defined. Men did the work, kids did the chores, women kept the house. Nowadays, it’s all mixed up and overloaded.”
Natalie gave her a chastening smile. “You have an idealized view of the past. You’ve made things more simple than they were. The division of labor may have been more defined, but the labor was harder. We didn’t have the technology back then that we do today.”
“Maybe not,” Olivia said, standing her ground, “but technology has its limits. I don’t care what claims a fabric softener makes about leaving clothes smelling like the great outdoors, there is nothing like the smell of sheets that have dried on the line.”
“Well, I can’t argue with you there,” Natalie replied good-naturedly. “But I still think you’re wrong about the other. Times weren’t easier back then than they are now. They were—well, different, that’s all.”
OLIVIA DIDN’T BELIEVE Natalie any more than she had believed Otis. Life may have been physically harder in the thirties, but she would take physical hardship over emotional stress any day. Yes, the thirties were still the good old days. Life was simpler. Needs were better defined and people more honest. When survival was the issue, choices were clear.
Survival was not the issue today, which made choices more murky. Today, people left home and wandered. They did different things. They wore more hats. Olivia wore so many at the same time that sometimes her head wobbled on her neck—and each hat came with its own awful set of responsibilities. She knew what it was to feel alone and overwhelmed when those responsibilities clashed.
She hadn’t expected that to happen to her at Asquonset. She had expected that life under Natalie would be a throwback to those older, simpler times. Certainly, she and Tess had been made to feel cushioned in the days since they had arrived.
A throwback to simpler times? Life at Asquonset during the week that followed was to be anything but.
Eleven
EVEN HERE, Olivia wore many hats.
She was a mother—that never stopped. She was a chauffeur when Tess needed transportation to the yacht club and back; a teacher when she needed help with Sandy’s assignments; a therapist when the child was down on herself, which was still far too often for Olivia’s peace of mind. Where Tess was concerned, she was a maid, a laundress, even a cook, too.
She was a job hunter for herself, and a private-school hunter for Tess.
She was a fugitive when Ted called the business office and the receptionist, forewarned, put him off.
Not even as Natalie’s memoirist were things simple, despite Olivia’s best intentions. She was organized. Natalie had given her an alcove in that heavenly third-floor loft, with her own desk and a computer, and Olivia had set up a filing system for her notes and the pictures that would coincide with them. At night she lay in bed envisioning hours in the quiet solitude of that office, fleshing out her notes an
d organizing Natalie’s life story just as a renowned biographer would. Elaborating on the renowned-biographer theme, she imagined walking into the snobbiest of bookstores in Cambridge and delivering a reading to a house packed with the intellectual elite. She imagined being hired as the memoirist for other luminaries. She imagined doing the talk show circuit and being invited to lead a theme cruise.
Reality was less idyllic. Much as Natalie’s narrative flowed, finding the exact words and their exact order was hard. Olivia could spend half an hour on a single sentence, and then it was usually at night. During the day, there was neither quiet nor solitude in the loft, what with the phone ringing all the time. Natalie was no shrinking violet, it seemed. She ran the marketing department at Asquonset, and was constantly getting calls about that. She got calls about the local voter registration drive, which she headed, and calls about the church bazaar, which she chaired. Between those calls were ones to do with the wedding. She had sent out over a hundred invitations, and although a response card was included, many people insisted on calling.
“They want dirt,” she told Olivia, a tone of pique in her voice after she had taken two such calls in quick succession. “They want salacious little details—as if Carl and I have been carrying on for years—which we have not.”
Olivia had been wondering about that herself. “They don’t come right out and ask it, do they?”
“Well, no. But that’s what they’re thinking. They’re evasive—you know, say things like, ‘You’ve been with Carl a long time, haven’t you?’ Or, ‘It must have been a temptation having him near all these years.’ Or, ‘You’re a foxy lady, Natalie Seebring.’”
“Do they really say that?”
Natalie pointed to the phone, indicating the call just ended. “This one said, ‘We always suspected Carl was closer to you than he was to Alexander.’ Well, I take objection to that. In the first place, I don’t like the idea that they’re talking among themselves. In the second place, the fact is that Carl was Alexander’s right hand. He worked his heart out for the man. He covered for him constantly.”
“Covered for him?”
Natalie erased the thought with the wave of a hand. “Not a day has gone by in the past two weeks when someone hasn’t called wanting to gossip, but I don’t have the time. I’m due over at the office in forty-five minutes. The company that does our ads is coming down from Boston to make a presentation for next spring’s campaign.” She looked bewilderedly at the photographs spread over her desk. They were the ones from the earliest days. Olivia had wanted her to identify each one with names and dates.
But that seemed secondary even to Olivia now. “Who have you invited to the wedding?”
“Mostly friends and business associates. I limited the list.”
“Is there extended family? Cousins, maybe?” Perhaps even the mystery woman? Wouldn’t that be a hoot? Seeing someone who looked like her mother—or like herself, or like Tess—would be an amazing thing!
“I have cousins, but it wasn’t appropriate to invite them. We were never close. Alexander has a sister. I did invite her family and her—how not to, her being my sister-in-law all these years—but she sent back an immediate refusal. She’s offended. Well, fine. We want this to be a small affair.”
The phone rang again. She shot it a helpless glance, then looked to Olivia.
“Why don’t I take it?” Olivia said and drew up a pad of paper. “I can easily enough keep track of yeses and nos.”
“Would you mind?” Natalie asked on such a sweet note of relief that Olivia’s heart swelled.
Of course I wouldn’t mind, she thought. This is what family is for.
With a smile for Natalie, she picked up the phone. “Seebring residence.”
“Hello. This is Lucy McEnroe.” Olivia wrote down the name. “I’d like to talk with Natalie, please.”
Natalie had taken one look at the name and given a single definitive headshake.
“I’m sorry,” Olivia said, slipping with relish into the role of trusted insider. “She’s out of the office for the day. This is her assistant, Olivia Jones. May I help you?”
Her husband has a restaurant in New York, Natalie wrote on the pad. They stock our wines.
“I just wanted to say hello to Natalie,” Lucy replied. “Henry and I returned from Paris to find the invitation to her wedding. Well, that was a shock.”
“Isn’t it wonderful, though?” Olivia said, staring at the name of the restaurant as Natalie jotted it down. She had heard of it. Hadn’t she just read something about it in People magazine?
“All things considered,” Lucy mused as though she were considering it for the first time right then, “yes, I guess it is. Carl has been our contact with the winery for the past few years. He’s a good man.”
Olivia played on that. “It would mean so much to Natalie and him if you and your husband would come to the wedding. May I put you down as a yes?”
“Well, we’re a little unsure. The Labor Day weekend is always a busy one for us. If the wedding is going to be huge, we won’t have much time with Natalie and Carl.”
“Actually,” Olivia confided, “it’s going to be fairly intimate. They’ve limited the list to those people who mean the most to them. You and your husband have been loyal friends. We all take great pride knowing that Asquonset wines are available at the Dome. It’s such an important restaurant. Didn’t I see that Prince Charles and the boys were just there?” The words were barely out of her mouth when she had the awful fear that she’d remembered wrong.
But Natalie was nodding in delight.
“You certainly did,” Lucy confirmed, seeming as impressed as Natalie that Olivia had mentioned it. “We were thrilled. People eat up every little detail about those boys. How do you put a price tag on that kind of publicity?”
“You don’t,” Olivia acknowledged as she read Natalie’s latest scribble. “I’m afraid we can’t promise publicity like that at the wedding. Natalie has friends in the press, several of whom will be coming, but she’s asked that they respect the privacy of the day. Whether they do is anyone’s guess.”
“You know,” Lucy decided, “I think that we would like to come. Yes. We would. I’ve always loved Natalie, and that Carl … a gorgeous man, there. It sounds like it’s going to be a special time. Consider this an acceptance. We’ll plan ahead and get someone to cover the restaurant for us.”
“Y-E-S,” Olivia wrote on her pad. Ending the call as though Lucy were an old friend of hers, too, she looked at a grinning Natalie.
“Thank you,” Natalie said. “You did that very well.” When the phone rang again, her grin faded. “Oh dear.”
But Olivia was into it now. She held up a not-to-worry hand, picked up the phone again, and said a jaunty, “Seebring residence.” She listened for a minute, then put the caller on hold. “It’s the caterer,” she told Natalie. “He’s wondering if you’ve chosen the menu from the list he sent.”
Natalie pressed a spot between her eyes. “I was supposed to call him last week.” The hand left her eyes. She extracted a folder from the desk drawer and set it open in front of Olivia. “I’ve checked what we want. It’s early to be doing this—we can always make changes later—but this man is a stickler for getting something tentative down on paper. He’s affiliated with Johnson and Wales, though. He’s the best in the state. In truth, I could close my eyes and blindly point to ten things on this list, and every single one of them would be incredibly delicious. Would you be a dear and run through this with him, while I head over to the office? I think my notes should be clear.”
HER NOTES WERE PERFECTLY CLEAR. Olivia went through the menu course by course, playing the role of the hostess, asking all of the questions she would want answers to if she were giving the party herself—and Lord knew, she had played that game often enough. It was great fun.
She had no sooner hung up the phone when it rang again. This time it was Anne Marie, the receptionist at the office, calling to say that an applicant for
the position of maid was on the line and that Natalie had suggested she put the woman through to Olivia.
Olivia had never hired a day cleaner, much less a full-time maid. But some things were obvious enough. Taking the call, she asked about those, made notes for Natalie, and put them in a file marked MAID. She was readying to return to the photos of the early Asquonset years when Carl arrived.
“Let’s take a walk,” he said. “I’ll show you the winery.”
THEY DIDN’T ACTUALLY WALK, but took one of the golf carts used by the staff to shuttle from one part of Asquonset to another. “We cover sixty-five acres in all,” Carl explained in a deep, slow, confident voice as he deftly steered the cart along the gravel road. Olivia could understand how Natalie had found that voice a comfort during her earliest days here. It flowed in a richly masculine way.
“Fifty are planted with grapes,” he said. “A few have corn and potatoes, but the rest are either forested or devoted to buildings.” As he turned off onto a dirt path that wormed through the trees, he shot her an amused glance. “So here we go, riding through the forest, and you’re wondering why in the devil we didn’t put the buildings closer together.”
Olivia smiled. “That thought did cross my mind. But what do I know about wine making? I’m sure there’s a good reason.”
“Good?” He was indulgent as they rounded a turn. “Actually, it’s more for looks than anything else. Natalie wanted the Great House to be special. She wanted it to stand alone, up there at the top of the vineyard. She wanted people visiting to have a taste of what it was like when the vineyard was just a vineyard.” He chuckled. “’Course, it hasn’t been ‘just a vineyard’ for years. But it’s only in the last twenty or so that we needed more buildings. When that happened, Natalie took to the idea of having distinct activity centers. She feels that each one can have an importance all its own that would be lost if they were grouped together. So she put the business end in a converted garage by the road and the winery up here by the river.”
“What about the shed?” Olivia asked. It was a three-minute walk from the house. No golf cart was needed at all.
The Vineyard Page 13