“Don’t think these babies would solve your problems!” Kathy said. “I live on lettuce and broiled chicken, but even if I were as skinny as you, I don’t think that spark would be between Ray and me.”
Elise looked at Olivia, her eyes questioning. Should they tell Kathy that Ray was planning to leave her?
Olivia gave a curt nod and opened her mouth to speak, but a loud knock on the door startled them. She got up to answer it.
It was getting dark outside and Young Pete, his wrinkled old face scowling, had on a yellow slicker with raindrops on it. “I told those two to get out. They did, but they left the windows open.”
Elise and Kathy were behind Olivia and looking at the old man.
When he saw Kathy, his deeply wrinkled face wadded up into a smile. “Didn’t see you here.” His voice was soft as he looked her up and down in a lustful way. He held out an umbrella. “For you.”
“Thank you.” Kathy took it and smiled back warmly.
With that, Young Pete turned away, seeming to be pleased by the encounter.
Olivia closed the door. “I take it that he told Kevin and Hildy to leave. I better go close the windows.”
“We’ll go with you,” Elise said. “Someone has to protect Kathy from lecherous Young Pete.”
“No! Don’t! He’s the best offer I’ve had in years,” Kathy said, and they laughed. Kathy lent Elise a jacket. It was Prada, too big, but the buttery leather felt divine. “Kathy and I will close the windows,” Elise said as Olivia got the house keys out of her handbag. “You don’t have to go in.” She explained that Olivia wanted to wait until Kit was there so they’d be together when they first saw the house.
“No,” Olivia said. “I think I would like to see it. You two have made me feel good about having a man who actually wants me.”
When she turned away to the door, Kathy and Elise looked at each other. Maybe Olivia had found the man, but what about the forty-some years she’d missed out on? And didn’t the current problem have to do with that? Kevin and Hildy were part of her late husband.
But they said nothing. Kathy found a flashlight in a kitchen drawer and they followed Olivia across the drive to the fence that enclosed the River House. Elise made jokes about using the flashlight as a weapon to fight off Young Pete when he came after Kathy.
“Are you kidding?” Kathy said. “I’m encouraging him. Point out his house so I can sneak away later and meet him. He’ll be my own personal gamekeeper.”
When they reached the house, they were laughing.
Olivia had expected that when she first saw the interior of the house she and Kit were to live in, she’d feel only joy. On their long honeymoon they’d bought many lovely things. Laces in Spain, native sculptures in the Marquesas, antiques in China.
Stacy Hartman, their designer, had told them what was needed. “A chest of drawers for the linens,” she’d written, then given the measurements. She would add a note about the color, a hint of blue or silver, or a red lacquer to go with a rug Kit had bought twenty years before in a market in Egypt.
It had all been fun as they’d searched for beautiful things. When what they found didn’t fit Stacy’s measurements, they’d send her a photo and ask her to find a place for it. She always did.
At first, Stacy emailed them photos of the fabrics she thought would work, but she soon found out that Olivia and Kit could get something comparable in whatever country they were in. Their whole trip down the length of Italy had turned into a fabric-buying journey. They bargained for remnants of cloth that had been used in palaces. One day Olivia pulled a piece of brocade off a pile of old rugs and said she wanted it for the headboard in the guest bedroom. The fabric was dirty and faded in spots but there were no holes in it. Kit had bargained—in Italian—and they’d come away with the fabulous piece for a good price.
Two days later they went back to the store and saw that the wily old owner had tossed another gorgeous tapestry weave over the pile of rugs. Grinning, he told them that anytime he had a piece that he couldn’t get rid of, he threw it on the rugs and covered it with the floor sweepings. It sold immediately. “Usually to Americans,” he said, his eyes dancing in merriment.
There were a lot of things in the house that were from the years when Kit and she hadn’t been together, but there was enough of what they’d bought to make Olivia feel it was her home too. But she couldn’t help thinking about what she’d like to change. If she’d been with Kit through the eighties, she would have vetoed the African masks. If they’d been together during the nineties, she would have chosen different rugs. If, if, if, she thought. She followed the women into the kitchen.
Stacy had filled the pantry and the fridge. They made salads and threw two big pizzas in the oven.
“I want to hear about you, about the summer of 1970, when you and Kit were together,” Elise said to Olivia.
The rain was coming down hard outside, making them feel isolated.
“I don’t know...” she said. It was a story that she’d spent over forty years trying to forget, or at least to bury under the reality of her life. Kathy and Elise were staring at her. “I’m not sure I even remember it clearly.”
Neither Elise nor Kathy spoke, but their eyes said that they didn’t believe her. Olivia looked in the oven window to check the pizzas. Who was she trying to kid? Herself? If so, it wasn’t working because she remembered every second of that summer.
She used the big wooden paddle to remove the pizzas and they all went to the dining room. “This table came from England and was said to have been owned by—”
She stopped talking because Elise and Kathy were still standing, waiting for her to begin the story of her life.
“It’s your turn,” Kathy said.
“Not yet,” Olivia said. “We haven’t heard enough about your life with Ray. Didn’t you say you worked with him?”
“We were like business partners. He ran every idea past me and we discussed each of them. Nothing interesting. No dark-eyed gardener came to save me. And I rarely got credit for what I did. So there! That’s it. I want to hear about you and Kit and the summer to remember.”
“I agree.” Elise sat down next to Kathy. “I want to hear all of it. From the beginning.”
Olivia took the chair across from them. “The whole story would present me in a very bad light. I was obnoxious.”
“You?” Elise said. “But you’re perfect. You are calm and thoughtful and have great insight into people. You—”
“So help me if you say you hope to be like me when you’re my age, I’ll throw you out into the rain and let Young Pete have you.”
“I would really like to hear,” Kathy said. “And please tell us the truth about yourself. About everyone.”
Olivia closed her eyes and seemed to be trying to make a decision. “I tried so hard to forget, but I never could.”
She was silent for a moment. “It was 1970,” she began. “Nixon was in the White House and young men were dying in Vietnam.” She held up her wineglass and looked at it. The expression on her face wasn’t happy. “And the Food and Drug Administration had issued a warning that birth control pills might cause blood clots, so we were reluctant to use them.”
The women began to eat as Olivia talked.
“I graduated from college in the morning and took a plane to New York that afternoon. My drama teacher had arranged for me to audition for Elizabeth in a new Broadway production of Pride and Prejudice. I’m ashamed to say that when I got the role I felt more ‘of course’ than grateful. I had never had a bad thing happen to me so I had a feeling of being invincible. Nothing bad was ever going to happen to me!