‘You want to see my stays? They’re worn over this shift which doubles as a nightgown, and they’ve got boning from the bust to below the waist, sort of like the corset that Scarlett O’Hara wore in Gone With the Wind, you know, but not nearly so tight. There’s really not room for my bust in this thing, but shit! Check out my cleavage!’
Amy Cornell, lady’s maid
William Paca’s five-part, Palladian-style Georgian mansion towers over its neighbors from its perch on an embankment several feet above street level. The three-story, five-bay central house is flanked by symmetrical two-story pavilions – one a former office, the other a kitchen – each connected to the main house by short, one-and-a-half-story hyphens, or passages. Perfectly balanced. Out back, a two-acre formal garden steps gently down to a wall that borders King George Street, a garden that was (and still is) the most elegant in Annapolis. In 1965, exactly 200 years after it was built, the house – which had been converted into a hotel – was scheduled for demolition, but after an eight-year struggle by a group of tenacious Annapolitans, the building and its terraced gardens had been saved and lovingly restored.
‘Paca House fits our needs perfectly,’ Jud said as we paused on the sidewalk to admire the impressive façade, which was built of brick laid in the Flemish bond style – narrow end of the brick out – so Paca could show off his wealth.
Jud pronounced the name ‘Pack-ah,’ and I had to correct him. ‘It’s Pay-kah. According to a rhyming couplet Paca wrote himself in 1771, it rhymes with “take a.”’
‘Is it Paca Street in Baltimore, too?’ he asked, correcting his pronunciation.
‘Nope. Pack-ah. Go figure.’ I stepped aside to allow a workman carrying a large wooden crate to pass. ‘When I saw all the to-ing and fro-ing, I thought they’d closed the house for repairs.’
‘That’s what we asked Historic Annapolis to say,’ Jud informed me. ‘Actually, we’re replacing all the antique furnishing with high-quality reproductions specifically made for us in Wilson, North Carolina.’
‘I can’t imagine the expense.’
Jud grinned. ‘Our sponsor has deep pockets.’
‘Sponsor?’
‘The show is being underwritten by Maddingly and Flynt.’ I must have looked puzzled because he continued: ‘Paints. They specialize in recreating historical colors. Some of them are pretty vibrant, like Ripe Pear and Presidential Blue.’
‘I remember a bit of hoo-hah when historians bored through all the paint layers at Mount Vernon and discovered that George and Martha Washington favored gaudy, Easter-egg colors. Their dining room is green, as in emerald green.’
Jud grinned. ‘At Paca House, I understand researchers used an electron microscope and discovered more than twenty layers of paint, all the way down to the brilliant peacock blue you see on the walls of the main floor rooms today.’
‘I’m familiar with it,’ I said. I’d toured the house often, in fact, whenever we had out-of-town visitors, and we’d attended the occasional garden wedding there, too.
Jud and I detoured around the moving van where two burly guys, sweating profusely in the noonday sun, were struggling with an eighteenth-century sideboy, and continued down Prince George Street past the house.
‘Historic Annapolis – affectionately nicknamed Hysterical Annapolis by some of us locals – isn’t generally noted for their flexibility. How on earth did you get them to agree to closing the place to tourists for three whole months?’ I asked.
Jud paused to look at me, and tapped his temple with his index finger. ‘Ah, that’s where we had to get creative. Technically, the house is getting some renovations done, but at Lynx network expense. The roof needed to be replaced, for example, and the cypress shingles set us back nearly a quarter of a million. And as a gesture that we weren’t going to eat and run, so to speak, we’ve set up an endowment that should pay for the services of a professional gardener, pretty much in perpetuity, thanks to another sponsor, Hughes Horticultural. We’ve repointed the brick on the façade – a minor expense compared to the roof – and there were things we had to remove, of course, so we could return the house to some of its eighteenth-century functionality. We uncapped all the chimneys and had the flues checked to make sure the fireplaces could be used without burning the house down. Took out the storm windows, too; otherwise nobody would be able to open the windows.
‘I’m hoping the weather stays temperate so we don’t have to use the fireplaces that often,’ he continued, ‘but the fireplace in the kitchen will be going pretty much twenty-four seven.’
We were making our way down a narrow alleyway sandwiched between the Paca House and a private residence that eventually led to a parking lot tucked behind Brice House, another Georgian masterpiece that now served as the headquarters of the International Masonry Institute. Normally, there would have been half-a-dozen cars in the lot, but through some Lynx magic, the cars had been made to disappear – probably to assigned spaces in the Hillman parking garage off nearby Main Street – and the lot was now occupied by two aluminum-sided trailers, their doors standing open in the late August sun. Cables snaked from the Paca garden, through the hedge, along the ground and into the trailer marked ‘Production,’ outside of which several well-tamed coils of wire were connected to a giraffe-like stalk antenna. The second trailer was marked ‘Wardrobe.’
Jud bounced up the fold-down steps that led into ‘Wardrobe,’ poked his head out the door and motioned me inside. ‘In here.’
It took a few seconds for my eyes to adjust to the low light inside the trailer, but once inside, I noticed a woman sitting behind a table, head bent over her work which was spotlighted by an anglepoise lamp. When we entered, she looked up, dress pins studding her lips, paused in the act of sewing lace onto something that looked like a collar. She considered me over the top of a pair of half-glasses perched precariously at the tip of her nose.
Jud introduced us. ‘Alisha, this is Hannah Ives. I’m twisting her arm, hoping she’ll agree to fill in for Katherine Donovan. Can you show her Katherine’s costumes?’
Alisha laid her work down on the narrow table in front of her, spit the pins out into a glass dish and stood. ‘Sure.’ She led me down a long aisle toward the back of the trailer.
Rich costumes hung along both sides of the aisle like the seventy-per-cent-off sales at Macy’s, if Macy’s had been unloading merchandise that had been hanging around since 1780-something, that is. Groups of costumes were bundled loosely together, labeled with signs hand-lettered in felt-tip marker: Karen Gibbs, Dexter Gibbs, John Donovan, Melody Donovan and a dozen or so others. Katherine Donovan’s wardrobe hung on padded hangers in a section just past her daughter’s.
‘Here you go.’ Alisha shoved the hangers along the pole to make maneuvering room then, to the accompaniment of a soft rustle of silk, pulled out one of the most beautiful gowns I had ever seen. Holding the hanger in one hand, she draped the exquisite garment over her extended forearm. It was a pale peach confection, with gold, dark rose and deep blue flowers embroidered all over. ‘This is a ball gown,’ Alisha said. ‘Hey, Jud, hold this for me a minute, will ya?’
As Jud took charge of the hanger, I fingered the fabric, imagining myself waltzing around in the gown, like Cinderella at the prince’s ball. After a moment, Alisha called my attention to the other garments on the rack. ‘This pale blue linen is for everyday wear, of course…’ She shoved it aside. ‘And this thing that looks like a nightgown is called a shift. Colonials wore them pretty much day and night.’
I thought about all the clothes in my closet at home – if I stopped shopping at Chico’s, the company would have to declare Chapter 11. ‘Only two dresses?’ I asked.
Alisha chuckled, tucked a stray strand of wiry brown hair back into the untidy knot at the back of her head. ‘Lord, no. The Donovans are supposed to be wealthy. If you sign on, you’ll have several more made during the course of the show, and your fancy ball gown, of course.’
I couldn’t think of anything more appropriate for a ball than the gorgeous gown she’d already showed me. ‘Ball?’
‘At the State House – the show finale. Every VIP in Annapolis will be attending it. The governor, the mayor, the superintendent of the Naval Academy, senators, congressmen. Your husband will be invited, too… you’ve got a husband?’
I nodded. ‘Will everyone be in costume?’
‘Of course. The ball is the climax of the show.’ Alisha stared dreamily up at the ceiling. ‘Candlelight, music, tables groaning with food.’ Suddenly she snapped out of it. She grabbed the hanger from Jud’s outstretched hand. ‘This is something special, all right. You gotta try it on.’
I stood rooted to the floor, mouth slightly ajar. ‘Are you making all the costumes?’
‘Just for the principals,’ Jud commented from behind me. ‘For the special events, we’ve arranged rentals from A.T. Jones up in Baltimore for the invited guests.’
‘Back here,’ Alisha ordered in a time-is-money sort of way, indicating the rear of the trailer with an impatient jerk of her head. She hustled me into a cubicle separated from the front of the trailer by a thin blue and white gingham curtain and, once I was inside, ordered me to strip. When I got down to my bra and panties, she waved an impatient hand. ‘Everything’s gotta come off, sweetie.’
‘Everything?’ I felt like I was back at the doctor’s office, preparing for my annual physical exam.
‘Well, you can keep the panties on for now,’ she relented, ‘although they didn’t wear panties back then, you know – but the bra’s got to go.’ I turned my back, unhooked, and slipped out of my bra. Although the reconstructive surgeon had worked wonders after the mastectomy that had separated me from my breast, it still wasn’t ready for prime time. Alisha, bless her, didn’t seem to notice, or care. She thrust the nightgown-like shift in my direction. ‘Put this on first.’
I slipped the garment over my head, smoothing the fabric down over my hips. Before I could even turn around, she wrapped a corset around my waist, adjusted it under my breasts and ordered me to stand still while she laced it up the back like an old-fashioned tennis shoe. ‘I feel like a sausage,’ I said, sucking in my gut as she tightened the laces.
Next came an under-petticoat that tied around my waist with a drawstring, followed by a delicately embroidered silk petticoat in the same soft peach as the gown.
I now saw that the gown itself was in two parts – an ankle-length robe, open at the front so the petticoat would show through, and a triangular-shaped piece that served as the bodice. ‘It’s called a stomacher,’ Alisha explained as she clapped it to my chest and pinned me into it. ‘And you’ll be wearing pocket hoops – sometimes called a farthingale – but we’re not going to bother with them now. There’s not enough room to swing a cat in here as it is. Shoes, too, but frankly, dancing slippers haven’t changed much in two hundred years. You could probably get away with Capezios from Zappo dot-com.’
Alisha seemed to be assuming that I’d already agreed to participate in the Patriot House, 1774 experience. I was simply trying on costumes, though, not committing myself to anything. ‘If I sign on,’ I reminded her.
Alisha squinted at me, her head tilted, ignoring my remark, then drew the dressing-room curtain aside. ‘Take a look, Jud. Perfect fit. Don’t think we’ll need to do any alterations at all.’
Jud studied me critically. ‘Jesus, you take my breath away.’
I felt my face redden. Jud was young enough to be my son, but the compliment pleased me enormously. ‘Is there a mirror somewhere?’
Alisha tugged on a rolling clothes rack and when it gained momentum, wheeled it to one side, revealing a full-length mirror mounted on the inside of a door that led to a pocket toilet. ‘Who is that?’ I gasped when I saw my reflection.
I certainly wasn’t what anybody would call fat, but the woman in the mirror had a waist the size of a mayonnaise jar and – Oh. My. God! – a pair of round, plump breasts and a goodly amount of cleavage. I tucked my chin down for a closer view. ‘Wherever did those come from?’ I asked of nobody in particular.
‘You can thank the corset,’ Alisha replied. ‘Good for back support, too,’ she continued, flexing her knees in way of illustration. ‘You’ll probably be doing a lot of heavy lifting.’
‘Won’t there be servants for that?’ I mused, turning to check myself out in the mirror, back, front and sideways.
Jud and Alisha exchanged a knowing glance. ‘You’ve decided to do it then?’ Jud prodded.
I whirled around to face them, petticoats sweeping the dark green linoleum. ‘Not so fast, young man! I’ve got a million questions. I’m curious about the Donovans, for one thing. When Kat Donovan had to withdraw from the show, how come her family decided to stay? There’s no way that Paul would have left me to deal with my cancer treatments all alone.’
‘LynxE was set to send all of the Donovans packing and go with another family,’ Jud explained, ‘but it was Katherine Donovan herself who insisted that her husband and children be allowed to stay on.’
‘Why would LynxE agree to that?’ I asked.
‘It’s purely a practical matter,’ Jud explained. ‘The Donovans were halfway through the orientation, for one thing. For another, the wardrobe is a huge expense. We’d have to remake four sets of costumes, instead of just one. So, with the Donovan family’s full concurrence, we decided simply to replace Kat.’
‘But why me?’ I asked as Alisha began to help me undress.
Jud shot me a crooked grin. ‘Lady of the House number two was a size fourteen, at least. As for Lady of the House number three? We would have had to use a shoehorn to get that woman into the dress that you’re wearing now. So that’s why we cooked up the sister-in-law scenario, and why I thought of you.’
‘Just like Cinderella. Her foot fit the glass slipper, and she got the prince. I fit the dress and if I want to, I get to be a television star.’
‘You’ll do it, then?’
Barefoot, stripped down to the shift, I stared at him for a moment, considering my options. Jud was still grinning boyishly, sucking up to me big-time, the rascal. ‘I like to think I’ll try anything once, but… gosh, Jud, I feel like a fish out of water. A beautifully dressed fish, to be sure…’
‘Tell me you’ll consider it seriously, Hannah.’
‘It’ll take a lot more than beautiful dresses and sweet talk, Jud. Do you have some sort of prospectus with details about the show? And I imagine there’s a contract you expect cast members to sign.’
‘If you have time to accompany me to the production room, I’ll see that you get a contract.’ He did an about-face, threw Alisha a kiss, and said, ‘Thanks, doll.’ Then, to me: ‘Get changed and we’ll tour the house. That should answer some of your questions. I’ll wait for you outside.’
After I dressed, Jud escorted me through the Paca House garden where workmen were busily assembling an old-fashioned wooden well. ‘Colonials had to be careful about drinking the water,’ he explained, ‘but we’re connecting this well up to the city water supply. Coming down with cholera would be just a bit too real, you know?’
I had to agree.
We passed through the spacious kitchen and walked down a narrow hallway that led into a bright English basement situated directly under the main house. Jud paused in front of a door that was secured by a combination lock, its keypad resembling the face of a telephone. ‘Ordinarily, this is a conference room,’ Jud told me as he punched four numbers into the lock and twisted the knob. ‘But we’ll be using it as an on-site staging and storage area.’ Jud pushed the door open and held it aside, waiting for me to pass through. ‘We’ll keep the camera equipment in here, use it as a break area for the crew, et cetera, but as far as the cast is concerned, the room will be strictly off limits.’
A half-dozen plastic filing crates lined the long, walnut conference table that dominated the room. Jud rummaged through one of the crates, extracted a fat sheaf of papers secured with a paper clamp. From another cube he took a manila envelope.
‘Here’s the contract,’ he said, handing it to me. While he scribbled something on the outside of the envelope in black felt tip marker, I scanned the contract quickly. Although the print was minuscule, a phrase on the first page practically jumped out and slapped me in the face: You will be required to wear a microphone twenty-four seven.
‘Jud, what’s this about wearing a microphone all the time? I mean, my God, even in the privy?’
Jud capped the marker, eased the contract out of my hand and stuffed it into the envelope. ‘Sorry about that. It’s a boilerplate contract we borrowed from another show.’ He hauled a cell phone out of his pocket and tapped in a memo. ‘Just reminding myself to have the lawyers modify that clause. We have microphones, of course, but due to the wonders of modern technology, cast members won’t be wearing them. Follow me. I’ll show you something amazing.’
Jud tucked the envelope containing my contract under his arm, then pulled the door shut behind us, jiggling the knob to make sure it was securely locked. I followed him back towards the kitchen and up a short flight of stairs into Paca House’s spacious entrance hall, where Jud pointed to a flat disk about the size of a dinner plate mounted high on the far wall.
‘That’s it?’ I asked. ‘The microphone? It looks like a mini-UFO, or a fancy shower head.’
Jud grinned. ‘It’s called a SelectoZoomMini. The technology was originally designed for sporting events, a much larger version, of course. They would install SelectoZooms high above stadiums, and a wide-angle camera would look down on the scene from the center of the disk. All an operator has to do is pinpoint a spot on the field using his monitor, and the SelectoZoom can zoom in on that spot and pick up the audio. It’s so sensitive that it can actually hear somebody popping their chewing gum.’
‘That must have kept the censors busy,’ I joked, ‘bleeping out all the cussing.’
Jud laughed. ‘I imagine so.’
He led me into a spacious room just to the right of the massive front door, where a workman was assembling a wooden bookcase. The worker glanced up curiously, then went back to leveling a shelf. ‘We’re setting this room up as a library. We’ve installed SelectoZoomMinis here and in all the main rooms of the house,’ Jud continued, ‘including the kitchen and the schoolroom, and there’s one in the upstairs hallway, too. There will be a couple of Steadicam operators on hand to film close-ups, and to accompany you to places and events outside the house, of course. But when you’re in the house, you won’t need to worry about wearing microphones.’
‘Do you have mics in the bedrooms, too?’
Jud snorted. ‘No way. We’re not that kind of network. If we decide we need to film you dressing or bathing – although they didn’t do much bathing in 1774 – we’ll give you fair warning and, I assure you, we’ll do it tastefully.’
‘What’s that, then?’ I asked a few minutes later as we descended the staircase that led back to the kitchen. I was pointing to a wooden box about the size of a bird house that sat on a deep window sill to my right.
‘That’s a diary cam. There are four of them – one here, as you see, one in the library, one in the storeroom just off the kitchen, and one out in the summer house at the foot of the garden. Patriot House participants will be able to use the diary cams at any time to record their private thoughts or register their concerns. The diary cams are monitored, and someone on the production staff will collect the tapes daily.’
He opened a little door on the box, stepped aside with a slight bow and a wave of his hand. ‘Take a look.’
Inside the box was a video camera, straight off the shelves of Circuit City or Best Buy. A simple control was mounted just above it with two big buttons, one red and one green. ‘Push the green button, wait for the red eye on the camera to start flashing, then say anything you want.’
I followed Jud’s instructions, and when the red eye began winking at me, I said, ‘Hello, my name is Hannah Ives, and I am out of my freaking mind.’ I pushed the red button to stop the recording (I’m a quick study) and said, ‘There you go. A comment that millions of viewers will soon be programming their TiVos to hear, I’m quite sure.’
‘I honestly hope so.’
‘Which reminds me,’ I said as we headed into the kitchen. ‘When will Patriot House actually air?’
‘We start taping on Labor Day and wrap up with the State House Ball, just before Thanksgiving. Throughout December, we’ll be editing the show. The first of eight episodes will air on January the third.’
Labor Day was less than two weeks away. If I signed on to the show, I’d miss the family’s annual end of summer cookout, but it wasn’t my year to play hostess, so perhaps they would forgive me. ‘Is the show scripted?’ I wondered.
Jud paused beside a long oak table covered with iron utensils and stacks of crockery. ‘Lord, no. We’ve provided cast members with customized orientation packets, of course, tailored to their specific roles in Patriot House. Some of the cast have taken advantage of the library of eighteenth-century reference material we’ve made available down in Williamsburg, but otherwise…’ Jud shrugged. ‘Founding Father will assign certain tasks – a formal dinner, or a shopping trip, for example – but the whole point is to see how the cast naturally reacts, how they work as a team to accomplish those tasks.’
‘Founding Father?’ I laughed out loud. ‘Sort of like Big Brother?’
‘You got it, but with broader vocabulary and posher grammar.’
‘By my faith, sir, methinks ’tis vain so to primp and preen before the looking glass,’ I improvised. ‘Like that?’
‘Forsooth, methinks not,’ Jud said with a laugh. ‘We expect the cast to speak in plain, twenty-first century English, otherwise nobody’d understand them.’
‘Thank you, Jesus,’ I said.
Back in the garden, on a path overlooking the herb beds, Jud handed me the envelope. ‘Go over the contract carefully, Hannah. Have your attorney take a look at it. How soon can you get back to me?’
‘I’ll want to discuss it with my husband, of course.’
Jud sucked in his lips. ‘Of course. That goes without saying.’
Paul’s attorney, Murray Simon, dealt with big issues, like bailing me out when I was mistakenly arrested by the FBI. When I wasn’t getting into trouble, Jim Cheevers was our lawyer of choice, but I knew he was on holiday in Costa Rica. Nearing retirement age, Jim was shopping for a villa in Tamarindo.
Jim’s secretary would have happily handed me over to Jim’s second-in-command, but we already had a lawyer in the family, my brother-in-law, Gaylord Hutchinson – nicknamed ‘Hutch’ – who was married to my older sister, Ruth, so I made up my mind to consult him first, even though I knew that the majority of his business had to do with real property, trusts and estates. ‘I know you’re slammed, Jud, but can you give me a couple of days?’
‘Slammed doesn’t begin to describe it,’ Jud complained as we strolled past the herb garden and out the gate that led back into Martin Street. ‘Try back against the wall, puffing my last cigarette with a dozen M-16s aimed at my chest.’
I touched his arm. ‘I guess I’d better be quick about it, then. I wouldn’t want your execution on my conscience.’
‘Thanks, Hannah. Much appreciated.’
As we strolled down Martin Street, Jud pointed out the greenhouses where the gardener had been at work for several months growing the vegetables needed to sustain the Patriot House cast over the course of the program.
Further on, another parking lot was being transformed. Straw had been strewn over the gravel and, as I watched, workmen began to erect a log-like structure – half barn, half lean-to – where, Jud informed me, our horse stall, cow shed, chicken coop and rabbit pens were going to go. Milk and eggs I could deal with, but I tried not to think of chicken and dumplings or rabbit stew.
As Jud walked me home, the great circle route via King George Street and Maryland Avenue, I continued to worry aloud about being thrown into the mix so late, but when we arrived back on my doorstep, Jud pinned me with a disarming grin and said, ‘It’s reality TV, Hannah. If the missus had been kidnapped by Indians, or died of smallpox or something – God forbid – it would be natural to expect Jack Donovan to send for a female relative to help run his household. That’s how it was done.’
Not much different from today, I mused, remembering how my two sisters, Ruth and Georgina, had rallied to take care of Paul while I was undergoing chemo and feeling like crap. ‘Well, I certainly trust that Paul won’t be busily lining up wife number two just to keep him in clean laundry and freshly-baked bread while I’m away – if I decide to come on board, that is.’
Jud grinned, and raised a pale eyebrow. ‘By Sunday, then? You’ll let me know?’
I reached out and shook his hand. ‘Today’s Thursday, so yes, by Sunday. One way or the other. Promise.’