A vertiginous shock, the first splash. The glorious discovery within the space of seconds of newfound and liberating physical freedom, healed by the warm sunlight which splatters and ripples across the sparkling surface around my face, while my newly opened eyes gaze up and I recognize a centenary oak tree that reaches over one corner of the glowing azure rectangle, while behind it a vivid afternoon sky whose July color particularly characterizes Western New York. I’m alone in the pool, and am whole with the world, and the world is mine. I’m 20 years old.
I still go to a pool for a swim at least once a week. Although never once, I believe, without reliving this exact memory, a flashback revitalized hundreds of times in my mind since 1971. The pool, the oak tree, the marvelous way I felt that afternoon in Mrs. Abbott’s new pool. That day, Mrs. Abbott, standing in the kitchen in her simple house-dress, always chosen with variants on black and white, with her short-cropped, white hair simply combed back, told me to finish up my tumbler of gin and tonic, go and change and “Do enjoy the pool” (which had just been installed) “until the others arrive.” My special privileges with her in those days were countless, and the benefits she gave me are endless, still measured regularly and shared as best I can, through my daily actions, and of course my devotion to the stage.
Mrs. Theresa Gratwick Abbott was a widow, around 63 years of age, with a daughter about my age. She descended from an incredibly rich family, and her father had built a lovely summer residence on the outskirts of my home town around 1900, overlooking the entire valley. The fortune evaporated, and Mrs. Abbott now lived in a three-story wood-frame house that was the caretaker’s residence on that vast property since those faded days. She apparently lived on the remainder of a trust fund, and stayed quite scrupulously within her budget. Excepting for two areas where she was exceptionally casual (to the detriment of much-needed roof repairs and other practical expenditures): food and drinks for guests, and her summer travel. These feasts, wonderful banquets really, were purposely designed to keep the local amateur theater troupe afloat, by inviting actors, carpenters, musicians and other volunteers to supper before the rehearsals in the summer months. And her travel budget was quite simply the annual booking of three large rooms during seven days at the very comfortable Inn in Stratford, Ontario, where every year she managed to always have seven of the best possible seats, fifth row center, for every performance, matinee and evening, during one week of the Stratford Shakespeare Festival!
She also picked up the tab for breakfast and dinner for herself, daughter Jane, plus Jane’s brother and his wife, and two or three local boys (that’s where I come in) who somehow had demonstrated a strong sense of theater, and possible eligibility to the suitor status for her daughter. Of course I was president of the High School Drama Club, and through this a good friend of Jane’s for years. Stratford was at least a four-hour drive from Pavilion, stopping for lunch, and the embarkment took place in an eccentric and noisy Chevrolet station wagon, with all the windows rolled down. It had a stick shift that made the ride a sometimes jerky contrast to the always erudite conversation inside.
But the plays I saw over those years were of course of the highest world-class standards in every way, and the effect on this teenager can’t be over-stated, particularly seeing them from such exceptional seats, next to my mentor. I discovered there the texts of ‘Romeo and Juliet,’ not to mention many rare and very challenging historical plays by the Bard. My first Molière play was at Stratford, a ‘Tartuffe’ in an unforgettable English-language production. There were fully staged musical-comedies and classical music recitals, and my first ‘Waiting for Godot’ (truly an epiphany moment for me, where I discovered the concept of absurd). Our discussions after the plays or at lunchtime were thoughtful and interesting. I was thrilled.
Every evening after dinner at the large round table, we would walk across the park that joined the motel to the theater, over a footbridge and past the elegant swans that shared the pond. The swans became for me a metaphor of Mrs. Abbott’s innate elegance, and I recall feeling very dapper in my new white jacket on the first night. In the corridor, Mrs. Abbott had complimented me, “Don’t you look spiffy” which rang to my ears of another era. But I knew I passed an important audition.
Mrs. Abbott was very gifted at conversation, was very well-read, and retained the lilting accent of her gracious mother, born in England. The large portrait of that lady painted by Joachim Sorolla, which I have seen, attests to her grace and standing. Mrs. Abbott was very witty, and headstrong, and from her I learned the art of persuasion. Back in Pavilion, for example, when she phoned our house — remember: I’m a teenager, with a full-time summer job — and said “Now reeeeeally, Greg, you MUUUUUST come to dinner with us tonight before the rehearsal,” I was required to convince my parents to get me up there and back, and allow me to not be at home again for another night. But I worked it out, and if they didn’t understand everything that was happening to me, my parents both respected her very much, and they had always found a way to support my activities so far, my piano lessons, my singing lessons, and my plans destining me to college and onwards.
When afternoon tea was given in those days in her book-filled home, I was also invited. There were Christmas Eve dinners by candlelight on that famous, long dining room table, employing the engraved stemware that was seldom needed in rural life. One of her dinners might require ordering two geese at a time, which she would phone in to my Uncle Leo, the local butcher. Much more common, a standing rib of beef, to serve ten or twelve hungry Thespians. Sometimes the situation could turn to pure Oscar Wilde: one evening she was seated at the head of table and I was seated of course at her right, and noticed she was sipping from a coffee mug as dinner started. She picked up my surprise and, sipping again, quipped dryly, “Vodka. It sterilizes the mouth.”
Mrs. Abbott supported my important decision to enter the far-away New England Conservatory, and gave me her valued opinions. She patiently endured me reciting full length German poetry, about which I was passionate at the time having just discovered Lieder. I returned regularly from Boston for years, and was always made to feel an honored member of the group. Later, when coming home from Paris for various holidays, our adult exchanges reinforced to me how much her influence and her constant benevolence were part of my fabric.
Looking back, on one occasion, she did almost wear something other than black and white. It was a formal party she hosted when Jane turned 21 (one year before I did). Family members attended from across the country. I was seized by Mrs. Abbott’s stately appearance as she descended the wide stairway, dressed in black velvet and black embroidery, I believe, and wearing an enormous brooch made of truly the largest emerald, surrounded by diamonds, that I have ever seen, anywhere. It had been her grandmother’s I suppose, and was never used out here in the country, until that night. As she approached me for a baise-main, the vision in that muted light of the shimmering green jewel as she approached me under the doorframe to her study, could perhaps be described as if actually meeting Miss Havisham of ‘Great Expectations,’ gloriously groomed in black with a green accent, instead of dressed as a bride.
After Jane decided to marry a local guy, Mrs. Abbott died in the 1980s. The memorial service, held under a white tent, was on a lovely summer day just in front of that wonderful house surrounded by those gently waving, tall trees. It happened to be a day I was in Pavilion, but scheduled to return to France that evening. Immediately after I finished singing a song at the service, accompanied my Mike — my closest childhood friend and adored by Mrs. Abbott — my mother was waiting once again in the car to drive me to the airport, and so back I went to Paris. Symbolically, and in every sense, on that warm day I was walking away from a life that I had known and loved. That house which held so many memories of banquets, fireside discussions of books and theater, and giddy laughter, soon started to give in to so many years of neglect. After Jane died, and the money was gone, her sons had it torn down. The pool that had been dug for our youthful joy and with the promise of the brightest possible future, was filled in and plowed to nothing. Not a trace remains now when I drive by — one can barely recognize a tree — and I’m filled of course with the emotion of tragic loss. And at the same time, brimming with inexpressible thanks for those memories.