Eight Hundred Grapes (36)

“Does he know you hate French food?”

“Go away, please.”

I wanted to explain it to her so she’d hear it. As much as my mother said I was making this about me, it seemed like she was doing the opposite. She wasn’t making this enough about her.

“It just feels tragic to me that everything you and Dad worked for, you’re just handing off to someone who is going to blow it. Who’s not going to honor your legacy.”

“Even if you’re right, and I’m not saying you are, that’s our tragedy.”

“That can’t be your opinion.”

She took off her kitchen gloves. “You want my opinion? I’ll give you my opinion. Worry less.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about the fact that you’re a smart, accomplished woman who has worked very hard to build a great life for herself. And you still think your main job is to make things okay for everyone else. For your father and me, for Bobby and Finn. It’s why I felt relief the day you moved away from here!”

“You cried. And sent me a map of Sebastopol, so I’d remember where I came from.”

She rolled her eyes. “The point is, I thought, now she is going to take care of herself too. But you’re just falling back into your old ways. Focusing on our problems instead of your own.”

“That isn’t true.”

“Are you sure about that?” she said, her eyes angry. “If you ask me, Sweetie, then you’re going to have to get over that Ben did something wrong and listen to your heart.”

“It’s related, Mom. It matters.”

“My goodness. You sound like you’re arguing a case. What matters is what you want to do.”

Then she pointed at the tent, the sailcloth tent, on the edge of the patio.

“We never would have paid for a sailcloth tent just for the harvest party. We could have run around on the lawn for all I care. Someone needs to get married under that sailcloth tent, it is too beautiful to waste.”

“You think that’s a good reason?”

She turned the water back on, looking away. “Well. It’s not a bad one,” she said.





Spontaneous Fermentation (and Other Ways to Lose the Love of Your Life) When we were kids, Bobby and Finn used to ride their bikes down to the candy store in the center of Sebastopol. I loved the ride—and my mother wouldn’t let me take it alone. But, man, was it fun when Finn and Bobby let me join them: the easy climb down the hills into the center of town, the hard ride back, candy melting in our pockets speeding us along. One time, on the ride back toward home, a car pushed us off the road. It was going so fast around the final turn, giving us no choice but to ride ourselves into a ditch to avoid getting hit head-on.


The car pulled over. It was a group of tourists, who had just been up at The Last Straw Vineyard. My father, at that time, was doing food and wine tours for elite tourists willing to pay fifty dollars a pop for a private tour with him.

They were apologetic, drunk, and apologetic, Finn telling them that it was okay. They felt like they needed to do something to make it right, though. One of the women checked out our skinned knees, covering us with ointment. Her husband offered to drive us back to our parents, Bobby refusing the offer after we stole a peek in their trunk. The trunk was filled with cases of wine from every vineyard on the road and many from Napa Valley—including Murray Grant Wines. They weren’t discriminating. They weren’t taking a special trip to visit my father. They weren’t even drunk on good wine. They were drunk on anything they could get their hands on.

They took off, heading back to their fancy Healdsburg hotel—the three of us walking our bikes in the direction of home, agreeing to keep the incident from our parents, otherwise that would be the end of the bike-riding to the candy store. They got confused on the dirt road. And no one was hurt. So there was no reason to make a big deal. Except that I remember all three of us being angry with them in a way we couldn’t explain, in a way I could only explain when I thought of my mother’s question about the vineyard: Was I sure that I wanted to hold on to the vineyard for my father as opposed to for myself? Was I sure that I was thinking of my mother and my father only?

We didn’t want them anywhere near our vineyard. We didn’t want anyone near it who wasn’t going to appreciate it.

So maybe the answer to my mother’s question about the vineyard was no.



I got into a bubble bath. I wanted some peace and quiet. Ben hadn’t reappeared from my bedroom, which let me know that in addition to nap time, Ben was checking in with Michelle, letting her know that Maddie was doing well, telling the story about how she loved the vineyard, how she was a future winemaker. Why did that feel like its own injury?

A second injury. There was a magazine by the bathtub. And Michelle was on the front page, staring back at me, all legs and glowing hair, a dress that cost more than the entirety of my closet.

I closed my eyes, sinking into the water, when my phone rang, Suzannah on the caller ID.

“I don’t know whether to kill you or come up there to save you,” she said when I picked up. “I had to sit in on your deposition in Santa Monica. I think I peed eight times. No one was pleased.”

I felt myself take a deep breath in, relieved to hear her Southern drawl, mad and loving and true.