The Vineyard (18 page)

“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.”

O
LIVIA 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
 

E
VEN 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 and 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.”