Eight Hundred Grapes (70)

The wine cottage porch started to collapse.

“Let it go,” my father called out.

Ben turned and looked at me, deep sorrow in his eyes.

I looked straight ahead at the wine cottage, the smoke wafting over it, moving toward the vineyard. I started to move forward, toward the fire, as if I could do what no one else had been able to do. As if I could stop it before it got to the vineyard.

I could feel a hand on my arm, stopping me. Jacob. I met his eyes.

“No,” he said.

Then a bolt of thunder exploded in the sky. It came quickly: the rain following, splashing down, a waterfall. The thunder crashing onto the edge of the vineyard.

I looked up at the pouring rain, hard, deep pellets hitting my skin.

The rain heaped down, pushing through the cottage, the fire engines’ sirens getting closer.

The water was taking care of the fire, the flames receding beneath the downpour. Relief seeped through me.

Synchronization. Wasn’t this the definition? A fire hits a vineyard. And then, like a miracle, it starts to pour. It was overdue to pour but it starts then, pressing down at the fire.

And then I looked toward the vineyard and I realized. The rain. The rain that was saving the vineyard. It would ruin the grapes that were still on the vine—Block 14, my father’s most valuable grapes. We had to get to them first. All of us realized it at once.

“Move!” Bobby said. “Move.”

We took flight, me and Finn and Bobby, Jacob and Ben not far behind us, my mother and father not far behind them. The entire family ran through the vineyard to get to the rest of the grapes. The messy, wonderful business of getting the job done for each other when you most needed to.

We arrived at Block 14 and started pulling at the soaking grapes. We pulled at the clusters even without clippers, grabbing the available buckets from beneath the vines.

The fire trucks’ sirens were loud and close, the firemen arriving to help with the fight.

It was why I didn’t hear it at first, none of us heard it, through the rain, through the running.

My father was down on the ground.

Holding on to my mother.

Limp, listless. In her arms.





Part 4


   The Last Harvest





The Waiting Room There was a moment before we were in the car racing to the hospital. There was a moment before we all stopped what we were doing and started moving toward our father. But that moment was blurred. By the rain, by the sound of my mother. What was clear was what came next. We were racing to the hospital, almost as soon as we saw my father there. Finn driving, me in the passenger seat, my mother holding my father in the back, Bobby and Margaret and Ben in the car behind. All of us were too scared to wait for the ambulance, needing to do something, leaving the kids behind with Michelle, all the kids staying with the movie star.


There was a moment before we were in the waiting room at Sonoma County Hospital, full of Fords, the mishmash of people they loved. All of them currently afraid of losing the person they loved the most: Margaret held on to Bobby, Finn stood with my mother, I was sitting with Ben on a bench. And Jacob. Jacob was standing off to the side.

Bobby started pacing. “We have been sitting here for hours, someone has to do something.”

Finn shook his head. “What do you want us to do, Bobby?”

“Something.”

I leaned in to Ben, Finn holding my mother. It was something when you lose your center. My father, in a way that we weren’t willing to acknowledge, was that. And in the moment I saw him lying in the vineyard, I realized it wasn’t the vineyard I feared losing. It was him. As long as he was working the land, I got to imagine it. That the day without him would never come.

My mother stood up. “That’s him.”

I turned, expecting to see my father, standing there with a hospital band on his wrist, telling us he was fine. But it was the doctor coming out to see us. The doctor giving my mother a hug, like they were old friends.

“Jen. He had another heart attack,” he said.

“Another?” Bobby said.

“What does he mean another, Mom?” Finn said.

Which was when I realized what my father hadn’t told me about the car accident, what must have happened. My father had had a heart attack while he was driving, causing that accident.

The vein popped in Bobby’s neck. “What the hell is going on?” Bobby said.

My mother jumped in front of him, in front of all of us, her back to us, facing the doctor.

“What does that mean, exactly?” she asked him. “Is he okay?”

“It was a mild heart attack, though not as mild as last time. He’s responding to a clot-dissolving agent, but he isn’t out of the woods. I’m not pleased to see him back here. He has to take it easy, Jen. We have talked about this.”

Bobby looked like he was going to explode. “When did you talk about this? Mom, how did you not tell us that Dad had a heart attack?”

“We didn’t want to worry you,” she said.

Finn stood behind his brother. “Why?” Finn said.

“Yeah, why?” Bobby said.

Bobby was yelling now, full-on yelling.

They both were.

My mother turned toward them, her voice the loudest of all. “We thought you’d overreact! Imagine that. We thought you’d make it about your own fear as opposed to, you know, what your father would need to actually get past it.”