This Place of Wonder (28)

When I was eleven, our parents threw a party for someone’s birthday. Rory and I dared each other to steal a bottle of wine and run upstairs with it. On the balcony of our parents’ bedroom, we poured a good red into highball glasses and imitated the people we’d seen smelling, swirling, sipping. It smelled amazing to me, fruity and full of something that made me think of chocolate bars, but Rory wrinkled her nose. “Why do they do this? It stinks.”

“I love it,” I said honestly, and stuck my nose in farther, not even knowing what I was doing, but aware that there was something here. Something richer than I expected.

Then we drank, little sips, and smacked our lips together, and then great big gulps, on dares.

Oh. My. God.

The wine hit the back of my throat and the middle of my chest with a great zinging blast of something unexpected.

Quiet.

Quiet that spread from that center of my chest upward and sideways and downward, rippling out to my brain and my lower back.

I drank again. And again.

It was amazing. All the noise, all the anxious wishes to please, all the memories I hated cropping up—all of it just . . . stopped. It was an amazing discovery, that anything could do that.

Rory passed out, but I sat there on the balcony drinking the rest of the wine and watching people below. I sadly poured the last drops into my mouth and wished for more, but I didn’t trust myself to steal another bottle and get away with it.

But I knew there would be a next time.





Chapter Fourteen


Meadow


I try not to show it as I gather my things and leave the house with Elvis padding behind me and Cosmo in my arms, but every cell in my body is stinging with rejection. The rational part of my brain knows that it has nothing to do with me, that Maya just needs to be alone, but it goes against every instinct I own to turn away from her at this moment of need and leave her to it. For more than thirty years, she’s been at the very center of my life.

The first time I met her, she was barely four. It was a still July day that crackled with heat. Augustus and I were on a hunt for the best mangoes in the county. I wanted to buy some fresh, to make a dish I’d learned at a job I first took when I left home, prep cook at a Thai restaurant that paid me next to nothing but let me bring Rory when her day care filled up or closed for no reason (or for reasons that made no sense, all the same).

That particular day, Rory wasn’t with us, though I can’t remember why. I must have wanted to go out with Augustus myself. Did I know Maya was coming? Was I disappointed when I saw her? Maybe a little. Augustus and I had known each other only a few weeks at that point, and couldn’t keep our hands off each other.

I’d never wanted to have sex with anyone. They teased me about it at work, laughing when I rebuffed all advances, from boys, girls, everybody. The very thought of someone kissing me was disgusting. My experiences with sex had not been appealing, to say the least.

But from the first second I saw Augustus, I wanted him. He turned a switch inside me, off to on. On, on, on.

A few weeks in, I was obsessed. Obsessed with his mouth and the long, slow, deep way he kissed me. Obsessed with his big hands and the ways they explored my body, everywhere, all over, up and down, in and out. I loved his body, his ribs and tongue and penis and legs. The sheer number of hours we spent naked and exploring each other was a revelation.

But that day, he brought Maya with him. She was not the slightest bit beautiful or cuddly. She’d entered the scrawny years of childhood, and had her dad’s long, long limbs. Her hair was unwashed and unbrushed and wildly curly, but Augustus explained that her mother loved partying more than she loved her daughter, so he wanted to take her out, give her other experiences. At the time, it made me love him all the more, but now I know addiction isn’t so clear cut.

She eyed me warily, with an expression I would have called cynical in anyone but a four-year-old. Her eyes were a watery green in a cat-shaped face, and she had eyelashes so thick they looked fake, and a lush mouth just like her father’s.

I was smitten, but never in my life—before or since—did anyone make me work so hard for approval. The one thing she liked was my hair. It was almost to my waist, thick and wavy, and Maya loved to brush it. Once I found that secret, I tucked away pins and barrettes and soft fastenings in my pockets so she could play with my hair whenever we were together.

No one ever believes me, but I honestly didn’t know Augustus was married to Shanti. He wore no ring. He was up-front about the problems with her addiction. We never went to his place, only to mine, but he told me it was because he lived too far out for it to be realistic, the opposite direction from the farm.

I was nineteen and madly in love. Of course I believed him.



I drive back to my farm outside Ojai, just over forty minutes from Belle l’été. Bright, hot sunshine breaks through the morning gloom by the time I pull into the driveway, marked with a hand-carved sign, a rising sun over a meadow, and the words MEADOW SWEET ORGANIC FARMS.

My pride and joy, though it has begun to feel hollow the past decade or so. I still take pride in growing organic produce and supplying restaurants for a hundred miles around. I love the experimental crops, the annual tests of new heirloom varieties of squashes, tomatoes, beets, potatoes. Sometimes they’re successful, sometimes they’re not. Two years ago, a purple Incan potato proved so popular, I moved out a half acre of reds, but then the Incas succumbed to a fungus and I lost the whole crop before it ripened.