“Nothing. The kids were hanging off of him and he looked at me as though he expected me to praise him. Thank him. But I wanted to smash him on the head with the shields. Or run the tractor over him. Instead, I said, ‘Go away.’”
She looked at Kathy and Elise, who were waiting for her to go on. “Kit put the children down and said, ‘As you wish,’ then climbed back up on the tractor and drove away.”
“Like in The Princess Bride,” Elise said with a sigh.
“Only Kit said it before that movie came out.”
“And his voice gave you chills,” Elise said.
“How does the voice of your young gardening Adonis affect you?” Olivia asked.
“Like hot champagne pouring over me,” Elise said, sighing. “He sounds even better in Spanish.”
Olivia smiled. “Like when Kit speaks Arabic! But t
hat first time, Kit’s deep, gravelly voice sent an electrical charge through me.”
“And that made you even more angry,” Kathy said.
“Very much so. I genuinely and truly hated that worthless boy.”
“Who was far from being a child,” Kathy said.
“Right. I was the adult but he...he was outdoing me. His work was applauded while mine was ridiculed. The children adored him but they tolerated me. My shield was bad. His was perfect. In my mind, war had been declared. I had to prove that I was better than he was.”
Kathy opened a bottle of wine. “What did you fight with? Cooking and what else?”
“Everything. Anything.” Olivia closed her eyes for a moment. “For three weeks I nearly killed myself. Remember the movie about the woman who cooked everything in Julia Child’s book? I almost did it before she did. Duck a l’orange and coquilles Saint Jacques and Bavarian crème. I canned grape jam and marmalade and gallons of apple butter. I made huge pots of soupe au pistou and vichyssoise and froze them.”
“I bet the old men loved that,” Kathy said.
“They certainly did! Mr. Gates went to the grocery nearly every day. They began talking about food like they were writing critiques for the New York Times.”
“And the children?” Elise asked.
Olivia smiled. “Something I could do that Kit couldn’t was sew. I rummaged in the attic and found an old treadle machine and my mother cleaned out her fabric storage. I made the kids medieval-looking outfits to go with the shields Kit had made—which, by the way, I coated in silver paint. Thanks to lessons in set design, I put a blue dragon on Ace’s and a white unicorn on Letty’s. I got hugs and kisses for that one.”
“What did Kit do?” Kathy asked.
“Worked as hard as I did. Every day, Bill, Letty’s father, came by and told us what Kit was doing. He single-handedly cleared up the old cemetery. Bill told us how Kit lifted big marble headstones and reset them in concrete, and how he cleaned off the moss. And he repaired the old fence, then planted rosebushes around the whole place. Bill said that Kit had slithered on his belly through the wild blackberry vines to reach the old well house and repair the roof.”
Olivia took a breath. “Bill said that between Kit and me doing so much work, he and his wife were having time for a second honeymoon. ‘Nina really wants another baby,’ he said. The old men laughed at that, but I was embarrassed.”
“Who won?” Kathy asked.
“Neither of us,” Olivia said. “It ended when we slept together.”
“Ah...good ole sex,” Elise said with a sigh.
“No, not sex. Sleep. And we didn’t know we were together. We’d had weeks of no rest and masses of work. We were exhausted. We didn’t know it, but we both collapsed under the big magnolia tree, one of us on each side, and fell asleep. Everything would have been all right if the kids hadn’t seen us.”
Olivia laughed. “By that time I’d fed all of them so much butter-laden food that they were having digestive problems. They were getting homesick for the bland food they usually ate. And the kids were refusing to eat anything with anchovies or garlic and absolutely no chicken livers. They wanted canned tomato soup and grilled cheese—and nothing green added to either one. ‘Like the old days,’ they said.”
Olivia smiled. “Years later, Dr. Kyle—that’s who Ace grew up to be—told me that Uncle Freddy said that if Livie and Kit didn’t stop fighting his heart was going to burn up. Poor softhearted Ace started to cry. He’d never heard of heartburn and didn’t know it wasn’t fatal. He just thought Uncle Freddy was going to be taken to the hospital where his mother was.”
“What did they do to get you two together?” Kathy asked.
“Weaving.” Olivia’s eyes were sparkling in memory. “While we were asleep, those loud, boisterous children tiptoed around Kit and me on fairy feet and tied us inside spider’s webs. I think they thought that if they tied us to one spot we’d talk and become friends. At least that’s my guess. Shall we go sit in the living room?”