Saving Grace (3 page)

Now, as she lines up her knives, starts to peel the carrots, her mobile phone rings. With a sigh she wipes her hands on the cloth and picks up the phone, squinting to see the name on the screen before deciding to pick up. Ellen.

‘Is everything okay?’

‘It’s fine,’ says the voice on the end of the phone. ‘I just wanted to let you know the driver will pick you up tonight at five thirty, and Ted’s tuxedo is being returned from the dry cleaner’s this afternoon.’ Ted’s recently ex-assistant is as efficient and organized as ever, even though she no longer works here.

‘You don’t have to do this,’ says Grace. ‘I’m handling all of it. Really, Ellen. You need to concentrate on looking after your mother, not on organizing us.’

‘Until we find someone to take my place, you know I’m going to keep doing it. If I left it up to you, you’d be hitchhiking.’

Grace laughs, for it is true. Organization has never been one of her strong points – hence her need for cooking school – and she had meant to organize a driver for tonight, but, as Ellen well knows, it had slipped her mind, and had it not been for their former assistant, Ted would probably have ended up having to drive himself, which would have upset him, because when he is a keynote speaker, he uses that valuable time in the back of his chauffeur-driven car to fully memorize the words.

‘How are you, though?’ asks Grace. ‘Really?’

‘I’m fine,’ Ellen reassures, although Grace knows this cannot be true. Ellen’s mother is now struggling with Alzheimer’s. Ellen is moving to Florida to take care of her. The strain is enormous, even though Ellen is loathe to let it show.

Ellen has been part of their lives for fifteen years. She is the kind of assistant you dream about, the kind of assistant people usually only dream about: efficient, kind, thoughtful, discreet and loyal beyond anything Grace had ever known.

Ellen can handle Ted. However bad his mood, Ellen has a way of calming him down, of making him feel that everything would be fine, and it is the loss of this, more than anything else, that has been so difficult since she stopped working for them.

She worked in the small office at one end of the barn, Ted in his large, book-filled library at the other end. All he had to do was bellow her name – no time, no patience for emails, or texts – and Ellen would appear, framed in the doorway, notebook and pen always in hand, ready to do whatever Ted wanted: research a lobbyist; fix the damned screen in the library; get rid of the yapping dogs outside before I kill them.

She headed off his moods before he had a chance to take them out on anyone else; on Grace. She masked how temperamental he had become. She had a way of calming him down, of giving him a semblance of peace.

Their author friends in New York all had assistants, but none of them were like Ellen. Everyone wanted to find an Ellen, but instead found themselves drawn to young, glamorous women, fresh out of grad school, who were starstruck and eager, unable to believe they would now be working for someone famous.

Out here, in Sneden’s Landing – it may have been renamed Palisades, but Grace and Ted have been here too long, and it will always be Sneden’s to them – the pool was smaller.

The glamorous literary chicks didn’t want to cross the bridge and work in a quiet hamlet in Rockland County, and truth be told, Grace wasn’t sure she would have particularly wanted them anyway.

The other authors they knew went through a revolving door of young, pretty assistants. However good they were, it was only a matter of time before they left to work for someone bigger, or because they were getting married, or had decided to move to Paris. All of them had landed in New York City, and that was where they were going to stay unless somewhere even more exciting presented itself.

When Grace and Ted first saw the house in Sneden’s Landing, twenty-two years ago, with Clemmie toddling around, they fell instantly in love. For eighteen months, Clemmie had been the only thing Grace could think about. From the moment the squawling newborn was placed in her arms, Grace came undone. She fell head over heels, didn’t care about anything other than being with her daughter. Even now, years later, they are bonded together, as much like best friends as mother and daughter.

Back then, when Grace was interested in nothing other than Clemmie, stumbling upon the house at Sneden’s Landing was like something out of a dream, giving Grace a focus outside of her daughter, a focus that grounded her and made her feel safe.

All Grace had ever wanted was seclusion, and water. They wanted to be close enough to get into the city for meetings with publishers, for events they were expected to attend, but far enough that they had, at least, the
feeling
of country, even if it wasn’t the deepest, darkest depths of Vermont, as she would have liked.

They came up for lunch with Katie and Richard Walbert, a couple they had developed a couple crush on. The friendship burned brightly and with great intensity for a year, before sputtering and dying. This was at the height of their mutual affection for one another, and the fact that Katie and Richard had a weekend house in Piermont but wanted to live in Sneden’s Landing was enough for Ted and Grace to want to be there too.

As the four of them toured the small hamlet, Grace fantasized about waking up every morning with these stunning views of the Hudson, the vibrancy of neighbouring Nyack, the quiet and privacy of Sneden’s Landing.

Katie vaguely knew the people who owned a house in Sneden’s, knew they had been talking about putting it up for sale. In a haze of excitement the four of them all showed up on the doorstep – which you could do in those days – and asked whether it might be possible to have a look around.

Grace didn’t need to look around. Even as they rounded the curve of the driveway she caught sight of the old rambling farmhouse, lawns leading down to the water’s edge. There was a dilapidated barn, an old cow shed, various other outbuildings that had been left to rot; all she saw was magic. The interior of the house was terrible. Grace and Ted didn’t even have to look at each other to know this was it.

By the end of the day a deal had been made, sealed with a handshake. A month later they moved in, terrified that Clemmie, racing around in excitement, would topple into the water.

Six years later, when Ted was no longer seen as a hugely talented newcomer but had become a fixture at the pinnacle of the literary world, Grace was in Nyack, getting the food shopping, when she stopped by a noticeboard, seeing a sign for a Mrs Fixit looking for work. ‘Experienced house manager,’ it said. ‘Great with animals, kids. Will clean, organize, drive, cook. Ask and it shall be done.’

Grace scribbled down the name and number, liking the way the ad had been written, the cartoon that accompanied it, of a woman juggling children, animals, shopping bags, tools, all with a big smile on her face.

That afternoon Ellen walked in, sturdy, solid, smiling. She had an air of calm that allowed Grace, unwilling to admit she was utterly overwhelmed by all she had taken on, to finally exhale.

Ellen was the same age as Grace, and her husband Glenn ran the local garage and took care of their cars, turning out to be an excellent handyman on the side. Ellen took care of everything else, and over the years, as Ted’s star had continued to rise, it had become more and more about taking care of Ted.

Ellen updated his Facebook, Twitter, the calendar on his blog. You may think Ted Chapman was the one responding to your generous tweet, thanking you for your kind words, but in fact it was Ellen. Always.

She wrote his newsletters, responded to his fan mail, coordinated meetings with his agents, and was on first-name terms with the assistants of the biggest and most powerful agents and actors in Hollywood, not phased should Harrison Ford or Bradley Cooper phone the house.

She was able to decipher his scribbles, type up his notes, spend hours online, or on the phone, researching anything he needed, last minute, for his latest book.

She accompanied him to literary events – unless of course the invitation was for husband and wife, in which case Grace would attend – and television shows, ensuring he was comfortable in the greenroom, the cars arrived on time, he had everything he needed.

Ellen organized his book tours, arranged his travel, ensured the hotels he stayed in had the correct suite, and that he had a basket of fresh fruit, and a bottle of pinot noir, and Perrier, on arrival.

But more than that, more than any of that, Ellen was a friend. Ted talked to her, had been known to hang out in Glenn’s garage, delighting in the local gossip Glenn shared with him, in the glimpse into another world he was afforded just by knowing Ellen and Glenn.

As the years have rolled by they have come to know each other intimately. Ellen understands him as well as she understands her husband; is far better, in fact, at anticipating Ted’s needs than those Glenn has.

Grace adores Ellen. She always referred to her as Ted’s other wife, the
good
wife, the one that knew where everything was. Whenever Ted was away, Grace delighted in stealing Ellen away from her office in the barn and planting her at the kitchen table with a cup of tea.

Ellen leaving was unthinkable. There was no question that Ellen had to leave, that her family took precedence, but none of them could bear the thought of it. Grace kept thinking the problem might go away. Perhaps her mother wouldn’t be as bad as Ellen thought. Perhaps she would be very much worse. Perhaps the end wasn’t far away and Ellen could come home, back to work as normal. Surely Grace could pick up the slack for a few months.

Grace has been trying to pick up the slack for weeks and it has been disastrous. Her memory, never wonderful, has in the last couple of years appeared to have gone to pot.

She decided to write everything down. It seemed like a brilliant idea, except everything was written on little yellow Post-its that would end up crumpled in a pocket or at the bottom of a handbag, never to be seen again.

Grace thinks about something Ellen said yesterday on the phone. ‘I put an ad on Craigslist. For my replacement. Apparently this is where you’re supposed to advertise these days. Don’t worry. I used the anonymous email address and of course I didn’t say who it was for.’

‘Craigslist?’ Grace scowls. ‘I’m not sure how safe that is.’

‘Darren found his wife on Craigslist,’ says Ellen.

Grace laughs. ‘Not exactly. She answered an ad to be a roommate. That isn’t quite the same thing.’

‘Point being, Sarah’s lovely. And he found her on Craigslist. I spoke to one of my friends who works for a domestic staffing agency and she says these days lots of the domestic agencies find their staff there too, there or the
New York Times.
It isn’t like before when you paid all that money to an agency knowing they’d do all the background checks so you’d know what you’d be getting. They’re advertising in the same places, and it’s up to us to do all the due diligence. Anyway, I haven’t had any responses yet, so I’m putting an ad in the
Times
next week. If I get anything that sounds interesting, I’ll forward it to you. How does that sound?’

‘Worrisome,’ says Grace.

‘Only because you and I are so old we don’t understand all this technology. Trust me. It’s what everyone’s doing. I did advertise on the noticeboard at the library, but I haven’t heard anything, and I’ve passed the word around. Didn’t John Foster say his old assistant was looking for something?’

‘Yes. We met her.’

‘And?’

‘She was twelve.’

‘Oh dear.’

‘I know I sound completely ageist, but I don’t want a young college graduate with stars in her eyes. I want someone like you. Mature. Efficient. Someone who has common sense and initiative.’

‘Young people can have that too,’ Ellen says.

‘This one didn’t. She was an hour and a half late because she got lost and had no service to check the GPS on her iPhone.’

‘She couldn’t have stopped and asked?’

‘Exactly!’ Grace says. ‘Maybe Craigslist is the way to go . . . if you’re sure.’

‘I’m sure.’

‘T
ed? Are you ready?’ Grace slips the second diamond earring in as she calls up the stairs. ‘The car’s here. We have to go.’

‘Coming!’ The sound of footsteps as Ted clambers down the stairs, pausing as he catches sight of Grace. A smile spreads on his face as he looks at her, Grace mentally exhaling a sigh of relief.

‘Have I ever told you how lovely you are? How lucky I am to have such a beautiful wife?’ In the mirror, Grace looks at herself approvingly, aware of how they look together, he so debonair, so elegant in his tux, she in a white silk shirt and long black velvet skirt. It could so easily have looked frumpy, but the skirt is an inch tighter than it needs to be, the shirt a centimeter lower, the heels a smidgen higher. Her auburn waves are glossy and loose, and the only jewellery she wears besides the earrings is a chunky, modern gold cuff.

‘I scrub up well, don’t I?’ she says. ‘Although I may have to concede that you scrub up even better. Do you have any idea how good you look in a tux?’

‘Hmmm.’ He raises an eyebrow before gesturing upstairs. ‘Do we by any chance have time . . .?’

‘No!’ She pushes him away with a laugh. ‘But ask me again later and I’ll see what I can do.’

Thank God, she thinks. Thank God my husband is in a good mood. These flashes of Ted at his most charming, no traces of anger or irritation or disdain, are what Grace lives for. So often, of late, he has been at his worst, and Grace is beginning to feel more and more like she is walking on eggshells.

And yet, in moments like these, it is easy to remember why she married him in the first place, easier still to imagine this may be the turning point, that this good mood may last for days.

Even though it never does.

Hand in hand, they go out to the car.

T
onight is the thirtieth anniversary of the magazine
Country Flair
. A glittering occasion, the magazine has taken over the ballroom of the Mandarin Oriental, their guests an assortment of luminaries featured in the magazine over the years.