Eight Hundred Grapes (7)

Where was that mother now, screaming about Ben’s lie of omission? Why couldn’t she take on that role so I could find my way to the other one—the one where I got to find sympathy for Ben in her outsized protection of me. That was the mother I knew.

I stood up. “I can’t deal with this right now. I’m going to bed.”

“Then go.”

I headed for the door, completely exhausted and ready for the night to be done.

“Henry is an old friend,” my mother called out after me. “We knew each other back in New York. And he recently was named the conductor of the San Francisco Symphony.”

I turned around, but stayed in the doorway.

She shrugged. “He’s only been out here a few months, but it’s been nice. Just . . . to be a part of that world again.”

Part of that world. She looked defeated saying the words and remembering it—who she used to be, how she used to be. It made me want to convince her that she was still a part of it: She had been the music teacher in town for decades. But that wasn’t the same thing. And what was the point in trying to convince her it was, anyway? As if anyone could convince you of the one thing you didn’t want to see.

“What does that have to do with you and Dad?” I said instead.

She looked up at me.

“I’m not talking about Dad. I’m talking about you and me. You have always tried to take care of everyone in this family, just like I have. As opposed to figuring out what you want. Not what you’re supposed to want, but what you truly want.”

I started to laugh. I couldn’t help it.

“You can’t seriously think you’re in a good position to offer me advice on my romantic life at the moment.”

She met my eyes. “I think I’m in a great position, actually,” she said. “No one sees what an incomparable person you are more than I do. Except, perhaps, Ben.”

She paused. And then she said it simply. “Be careful what you give up.”

I crossed my arms over my chest, trying—in spite of myself—to hear what she wasn’t saying. “Because you can’t get it back?”

She stood up, walking past me in the doorway.

“No.” She squeezed my shoulder. “Because, eventually, you get it back any way you can.”

I waited for her to disappear up the stairs before heading that way myself. But before my mother was gone, she called out a final good night. “For what it’s worth, I’m glad you’re home.”

That made one of us.





The Contract




I woke up to the sound of a Bach cello sonata, the sun heaping through the windows, joining the music in an intense wake-up call. It was how I woke up most every morning as a kid—my father wanting us to get up with the sun, my mother reserving the first half hour of each day to practice, to keep her hand in.

I used to love the sound of her cello, the warm tones greeting me. Post-midnight run-in, though, her cello had another connotation, images of a naked Henry running through my head, dancing along with the music.

I rummaged through my suitcase, searching for a decent pair of jeans and a sweater, lamenting how little clothing I’d brought from Los Angeles. Nothing to battle the early morning fog, nothing to battle the late afternoon heat. The only shoes I had with me were a pair of ballet flats. My favorite boots left behind, my favorite everything left behind.

In my rush to get out of the house before my mother finished playing, I almost missed the note she had left on the countertop: “Coffee on. Banana muffins in fridge. Made yesterday, but delicious.”

I took a cup of coffee and a muffin, and headed down the hill to the winemaker’s cottage to find my father.

It was just after 9 A.M.—a gorgeous time in the vineyard. The sky was intensely blue, the early morning fog starting to burn off, letting in the sun, the morning heat. I passed through the gardens that served as cover crop, their wildflowers snaking between the vines, the land all purples and greens.

I stopped to study the vines, touching the shoots, feeling it come over me. It was a feeling that I only knew when I was back in the vineyard. A potent mix of happiness and excitement and something I couldn’t name except to say that being back in Sebastopol, back at my parents’ house, was like seeing a lost love again.

Until I was fourteen, I couldn’t get enough of the vineyard. I’d followed my father around to do the most mundane tasks: to trellis the vines, study the grapes, make teas to feed the soil. My father would dig into the compost, and I would join in, just to be a part of it. Before school, after school, we discussed vines and vintages. My father would even take me down to the wine cave and give me a taste of the racked wine, a taste of the wine still waiting to be racked. He never said it, but he was thrilled I wanted to be a part of it.

Then came the day I wanted nothing to do with any part of it.

The same vineyard, the same fifty acres that had brought me so much joy, became suffocating as opposed to freeing.

It coincided with two awful harvests in a row. The first harvest had gone awry due to weather, the rain forcing the grapes off the vines long before they were ready. The second had been the result of rolling forest fires, the smoke drying out the Sebastopol air, searing the vineyard. After years of everything going fairly smoothly, the two bad vintages—the only two my parents ever had in succession since early on, since before I remembered—had threatened to put us out of business.