Dead Letters(10)
Zelda would take over then, to explain our father: Marlon always pretended not to notice these guardedly fond moments but felt more confident in her attachment to him whenever he caught that intense, shrewd gaze. This woman was everything he wasn’t, everything he aspired to. She ordered drinks without looking at the menu—she knew what she wanted and was not particularly worried about price. There was never any question of whether she could afford it, whether the bill would arrive and she would come up short. Marlon had left behind a number of threatening business partners and outstanding debts (monetary and otherwise) in the swampy town of his childhood and had disappeared into the anonymous horde of penniless musicians here in New York out of necessity. He imagined a future where he would sit and look out at his own land. He had learned a word, years ago, pedigree, that he would sometimes, after five or six drinks, slosh around on his tongue. Nadine, who kept herself aloof and separate, and so rarely allowed him to know what went on in that inscrutable head of hers, was classy in a way that Marlon found hopelessly erotic. Her pale Irish skin reminded him of marble, and her ramrod posture of a statue. So different from the bronze, wiry girls he had tussled with as a young man, in smoky dive bars and tropical rainstorms.
“It is grand, isn’t it?” He allowed a strand of black hair to fall across his face as he leaned across the cab toward her. “C’mon, you. Hop on out. I’ll give you the tour.” Nadine obliged, and Marlon snatched a picnic basket from the bed of the borrowed truck. With his other hand, he led her down into the field, tall with alfalfa and wildflowers. “They’re selling the whole property,” he finally said, watching Nadine’s face carefully as she assessed everything. He had learned not to push her too quickly or too hard; when she felt cornered, she balked, like some trapped wild animal. Nadine simply nodded her head, her eyes measuring each blade of grass with that sharpness he had come to expect. He spread out the picnic blanket and sprawled on it, popping the cork on the bottle of Champagne he had brought. It fizzed warmly, and they both leaned in to lap up the bubbly spill as it ran down the edge of the bottle.
“Just thought you might want to take a look. You’ve been talking about leaving the city so much lately,” Marlon said with a shrug. “A nice getaway, anyway.”
“It’s beautiful. It’s so nice to breathe the fresh air,” Nadine agreed. “So this place is what, a farm?” She was careful not to appear too interested, but she couldn’t help feeling nervous excitement at the sense of possibility. Some quiet voice that she hadn’t heard for years kept suggesting a new beginning. She didn’t examine this prompt too closely; she would inspect it later, when she was away from Marlon and could think properly, without all the noise and hormonal interference his presence created in her.
I would interrupt here, derailing Zelda’s artful dialogue. She could perfectly capture our parents’ voices, a born impersonator. But I liked the history of the wine, and of the ground that it came from.
“I was thinking a vineyard, actually.”
“What, here? In New York?” Nadine arched her eyebrows skeptically.
“I know, I know, it seems weird. But there’s this Ukrainian guy who brought some vinifera grapes over from Europe, and they’ve done very well. Some other guys are trying it now, and I don’t know, I have this feeling that the region could get pretty valuable.” Marlon shrugged, sipping his cup of Champagne. “Just a hunch.”
“A hunch, huh?” Nadine smiled slyly. “I’m not a complete ninny, you know. I figure you’re the kind of guy who likes to financially reinforce his hunches.”
Marlon glanced at her in surprise. He thought he’d managed to conceal his proclivity for putting his money where his mouth was.
“I like risk,” he said lightly. “And I’m about to take another.” He drew a deep breath. “The real reason I wanted to bring you here. I’ve been thinking.” He paused to stare at Nadine. “I want to marry you. I want to run away with you and give you babies and spend the rest of our lives naked and drunk.” Without breaking eye contact, he unbuttoned the first three buttons of her shirt, then stopped, his hand poised at the open collar, near her throat. Nadine’s face registered only stillness. She waited long enough that Marlon began to wonder if he hadn’t drastically overplayed his hand. But finally, she covered his hand with her palm and slid both inside her shirt.
“Fine. But we’ll talk about those babies later.”
—
Needless to say, whatever conversations they later had about those babies, nothing stuck. I’ve never known if Zelda and I were accidents; at least we both knew that whatever our status, desirable or planned, we were on equal footing. Either we were both wanted or neither was. Perhaps Nadine had unconsciously hoped for kids and grown careless with her contraceptives. Or maybe Marlon had worked his insidious magic until she relented. Our father said we were wanted, “beginning to end, A to Z,” always with a playful grin. Nadine had said that it was a moot point.
By the time we were born, the reality of the vineyard’s disappointing prospects was becoming clearer, and our parents were just beginning to swat nastily at each other, like house cats cooped up too long indoors. We often wondered, as I imagine many children do, whether we were the cause of our parents’ eventual rupture. If they had been different people, a better team, things might have gone differently. This was early days for modern Finger Lakes winemaking, and Marlon’s selection was actually prescient; property prices went up over the next decade, and plots of land like ours were hotly coveted by ambitious investors and hotheaded fools alike. But Nadine and Marlon fought each other viciously on every petty decision. Soon, Silenus transformed from a prospector’s fortune to a time-consuming forfeiture while Zelda and I ran feral and barefoot in the fields, gnawing on unripe grapes and making gowns from the sickly vines as our family and its investments tumbled down around us in molting shudders of decay.