“We went right into rehearsals and I loved every minute of it. I shared a tiny fourth-floor walk-up apartment way downtown with the girl playing Jane. She was from a small town in Nebraska and we were hungry for everything New York had to offer. It was a truly marvelous time and I thought my life would be like that forever.
“But then, the theater caught fire from old, worn-out wiring and was shut down for a complete overhaul. Actually, the theater needed a full remodel. The show was put on hold until September. I couldn’t afford to stay in New York with no job so I had to go home.”
Olivia paused. “As I said, I was obnoxious. My parents had liked the quiet of their lives while I was in college. But I returned full of New York energy, critical of boring little Summer Hill, and angry that ‘my’ show wasn’t opening immediately.”
She smiled. “I didn’t know it then but my mother was a very wise woman. She and Dad put up with me for three whole days. But Mom had so accurately foreseen what I was going to be like, that she’d found me a summer job. She told me I was to be the live-in cook-housekeeper for two old men.”
“What did you say to that?” Elise asked.
“I very dramatically said that I’d rather die than spend my last summer as a normal person cooking for some old men.” Olivia shook her head. “You know, my last remaining time before I became an internationally renowned star.”
She laughed. “It’s hard to think about now, but I was the spoiled only child of older parents and you can’t get much worse than that. But my mother knew that it was time for me to grow up. She handed me my packed bag and told me that Mr. Gates would pick me up in ten minutes. I was shocked! But I told myself that if all I had to deal with were two old men, both of whom I knew to be sweet tempered, I’d have time to go over my lines and perfect them.”
Olivia drank of her wine. “It was on the drive over that Mr. Gates told me the job was open because Mrs. Tattington, a relative who usually cooked for them in the summer, had broken her arm. She was there with her husband and five-year-old daughter. And Dr. Everett’s five-year-old son was staying with them in the Big House. Mr. Gates said it would be nice if I helped with all of them too.”
“How many people is that?” Kathy asked.
“Two old men, one of whom was in a wheelchair, three in the Tattington family, and a young boy. It was six people I was supposed to take care of.”
“But wasn’t Kit there too?”
“Not for the first few days. The night he arrived I was so exhausted from cooking and cleaning that I slept through the turmoil. The next morning, when I was told that a nineteen-year-old boy had been added to my workload, I was furious. Volcanoes were less angry than I was.” Olivia was smiling.
“I guess something changed your mind,” Elise said.
“Think of the way Alejandro dresses.”
“Yes,” Elise said. “Shirtless.”
“And nearly pantless,” Olivia said in a dreamy way. “In 1970, I’d never seen a man with less clothing on than he was wearing. And I’d never, ever in my life seen a body as beautiful as his.”
She grinned. “Nor have I since.”
Chapter Fourteen
Summer Hill, Virginia 1970
Olivia put the dishcloth onto the big porcelain sink and looked out the window. It was beautiful on the grounds of the old plantation, but when you were as angry as she was, nothing looked good.
Behind her at the kitchen table were Uncle Freddy, Mr. Gates, and the two little kids.
Uncle Freddy’s wheelchair was beside Mr. Gates’s old cane-backed seat and the children’s legs dangled off the bench. They were eating the Campbell’s soup and grilled cheese sandwiches she had fixed for lunch. Again.
Olivia knew she should get her anger under control, but at the moment, life seemed too unfair for her to think clearly. Everything had been so perfect. She’d had Broadway and a future that held nothing but promise.
Turning, she looked at the four of them, their heads down and eating in silence.
Damnation! How did she get out of this job? She was totally unsuited for it. She’d never cooked much and wasn’t interested in learning how. These men and the children—especially little Ace—deserved better. Last night she’d called around and found an opening at Abigail’s Dress Shop. If she could find a replacement here, she could have that job.
Olivia looked at Uncle Freddy’s bent head. He was an old man and she didn’t want to hurt him. Beside him was his lifelong companion, Mr. Gates. The two men often told how they’d been born on the same day. “And that makes us twins,” they’d say, and laugh every time. Uncle Freddy was blond and fair skinned; Mr. Gates was African American.
Same birthday but very different worlds, and everyone in Summer Hill knew the story.
Frederick Ethan Tattington had been the youngest of four sons born to an old, rich, hardworking, humorless family in Philadelphia. On his twenty-first birthday, his father did what he’d done to each of his children: He asked Freddy what he most wanted. His older brothers had each said a variation of “Own the world.” Their father had set them up with businesses they could rule.
But young Freddy, handsome to the point of prettiness and beloved by them all, said he wanted Tattwell, the plantation in Virginia that the family still owned. The family’s ownership in a Southern state was still an embarrassment to them. Not because of the humanity involved, but because they’d been on the side that had lost a war.
Gladly—for his father had run out of businesses to give away—he turned over the decaying plantation to his son, along with the money needed to bring it back to life.
Freddy had always been a happy person, but on his twenty-third birthday his joy was severely tested. He had three glasses of champagne as he toasted the good that was his life. Then he mounted his horse and decided to see if he could jump over a hay wagon. Everyone begged him not to do it.
He made it over the wagon but just as his horse hit the ground, one of the barn cats ran past. Rather than hurt the creature, Freddy jerked the reins to the right. The horse tried to turn but couldn’t. Freddy went flying off and hit the old stone well in the small of his back. He was paralyzed from the waist down.
His beautiful fiancée left him and his family ordered him to return to Philadelphia. But Freddy stayed where he was, and he never lost his love of life. About a year after the accident, after he’d very kindly fired three highly qualified men his family had hired to help him, a tall, thin, African American young man came by looking for work. He glanced at the entry gates and said his name was Gates, just the one name.
Freddy hired him, added the Mr. to his name, and two weeks later they were inseparable companions.
Over the many years, Uncle Freddy—as he became known to everyone—had helped a lot of people. He gave them jobs on the old plantation that seemed to devour money. And he listened to them. In fact, he lived by the belief that most problems could be fixed by people genuinely listening to each other.
He developed contacts in law enforcement, social services, with clergy. He learned who to ask for help with any problem.
The only aspect of his life where he wasn’t successful was in keeping a housekeeper-cook. No one lasted very long. The house was too big, there were too many mouths to feed, et cetera. The longest anyone had lasted was three years. That was Margaret and she had stayed because Uncle Freddy gave her the summers off.
Three years ago Uncle Freddy’s distant cousin William, his wife, Nina, and their two-year-old daughter, Ruth, came for the summer. Bill taught physics at an eastern college and Nina was a housewife. The idea was that for the whole summer, Bill would work with some local boys in cleaning up the acres around the old house and tending the orchard and vegetable garden. Nina would cook, can, and freeze anything that grew. In the fall, they’d go back east and Margaret would return from her sister’s place in Alabama to a pantry full of food that she didn’t have to prepare.