Eight Hundred Grapes (17 page)

Bobby turned toward Ben, confused. “What is he talking about?”

The vein was throbbing in Ben’s forehead. “Finn, now is not the time.”

Finn shook his head. “Exactly. What are you doing bringing your kid here?”

“Your kid?” Bobby said. “That little girl is your kid?”

Bobby was connecting the dots, and for a minute it seemed like he might turn all his Finn-anger at Ben. Bobby moved to tackle Ben, Finn joining in. The three of them locked together.

“Hey!” my father said.

He jumped in between his sons and his future son-in-law, separating everyone out. He pushed Finn first, his eyes holding tight on Bobby, warning him, warning them both.

“That is enough,” he said.

His voice was serious and steady, enough to stop them in their tracks. Finally.

Everyone stared at him, no one used to seeing him that angry. The anger, alone, stopped everyone in place.

“Bobby, you’re going to go talk to your wife.” He pointed toward the house. “And Finn, you’re going anywhere else.”

They both stared at him.

“And I really don’t care what you both have to do to act like grown men until then, but at five
A.M.
tomorrow morning, I expect you both in the vineyard, for my final day.”

Then my father walked back into the barrel room, everyone separating. My mother followed my father inside. Bobby moved toward the twins, Ben toward Maddie, Finn walking the other way. Finn walked out into the vineyard. Past the gardens and the winemaker’s cottage. Getting lost among the high vines, the evening wind swallowing him.

Until I was left alone, or mostly alone.

Alexis appeared in the doorway. “I think I’m going to go,” she said.

Exile on Main Street

M
y father had a theory that what was of equal importance to the wine you presented in your vintage was the wine you left out of the vintage. In winemaking, this was known as declassification. Declassification: a fancy word for what wines you were willing to throw out. The decision was made as early as when the grapes were picked. It was made as late as after investing months fermenting the wine.

I always thought that was what made my father such a great winemaker. There were some winemakers who wouldn’t declassify anything that came from their vineyard—the factory winemakers, the big producers. They didn’t care about quality control to begin with and they didn’t care about it at the end. They wanted high yields, regardless of weather, regardless of rot. Give it a shiny name and sell it for five dollars. Someone would be glad to drink it.

My father believed in low yields, working from the best grapes, balanced pruning. The year of the second awful harvest, after sweeping fires, my father declassified more wine than he bottled, even though it meant he risked going broke in the process. Even though it meant that he risked everything.

“I shouldn’t have brought her to the house,” Finn said.

We drove toward The Brothers’ Tavern, Finn slipping around in the passenger seat even though he swore he was fine to drive: a full-
on fistfight with his brother over his sister-in-law apparently sobering him up.

“I’ll apologize tomorrow,” Finn said. “First, to Ben. Then I’ll apologize to Dad.”

“Great, sounds like a start.”

He looked over at me, trying to read my tone. His lip was bleeding, his eye starting to swell—the package of frozen peas my mother had grabbed for him useless on the dashboard. “Thank you for giving me a ride,” he said.

“I didn’t have a choice. Dad made me.”

He looked out the window. “He shouldn’t have. I’m a better driver drunk than you are sober.”

He reached for his peas, holding them to his face.

I checked the clock. I promised Ben that we’d talk after I took Finn to work. Ben didn’t quite understand why I had to go into town with Finn, even though he wasn’t mad at Finn.

Ben was mad at me that I hadn’t kept my family out of our relationship. Ben had been the one who screwed things up—and, arguably, it had been a mistake to bring Maddie with him. But I hadn’t protected him from my family. Wasn’t that the job? It was about the two of you. And you told the rest of the world that you had it figured out or that you would. That was love, after all. Loyalty in the face of despair.

Finn ran his tongue over his busted lip. “I’ve been trying to keep my space. To do the right thing.”

“I know that you have.”

He tossed the peas back on the dashboard. “She kissed me. I was the one that walked out.”

“You just need to explain what happened to Bobby. I can explain it to him. You can talk to Margaret and just tell her it was a mistake.”

“A mistake?” He shook his head, laughing. His bloody lip was splitting open against the pressure. “Bobby isn’t going to see this as a mistake.”

“Finn, if I explain to . . .”

“No.”

“Why?”

He shook his head. “’Cause you can’t fix this. I know you try to fix everything, but you can’t fix this.”

“I just want to help.”

“Start by helping yourself.”

His tone was dismissive, and it stopped me. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing. You’re just acting like you know the right thing for everyone when you don’t even know the right thing for yourself.”

“That isn’t true.”

“Really? Then why are you still thinking about marrying someone you don’t love?”

I gripped the steering wheel, my heart starting to race. “I love Ben.”

“Georgia, he has a kid you didn’t even know about.”

“So? You’re saying if I loved him I should have known?”

He shook his head. “I’m saying if you love him, why’d you run?”

I gripped the steering wheel tighter, hurt and angry. No one had said that to me, and his words—in a way I didn’t want to admit—penetrated.

So I didn’t focus when I turned onto Main Street. I forgot about the curb. I forgot about how, when you turned onto Main Street, the curb jutted out five feet, making room for the fire hydrant.

The fire hydrant that I hit. Muffler first. Jolting us, me into the steering wheel, Finn into the dashboard.

The water shot upward, spraying the front of Finn’s pickup, soaking the empty street, Finn’s bag of peas exploding all around him.

Finn held on to the dashboard, bracing himself. “Are you okay?” Finn said.

I reached up, touching my forehead, feeling for blood and nodding that I was fine.

Finn nodded, relieved that no one was hurt. Then, once he knew that, he wanted nothing more than to kill me himself.

He gripped the dashboard, the water coating the windshield, like a rainstorm.

A tornado.

“You really shouldn’t be behind the wheel!”

I shut the ignition and jumped out of the truck, stepping into the soak
ing spray of the fire hydrant, surveying the damage. Finn’s headlight was dented, his muffler tipped. I tried kicking it back into place, water in my eyes.

Finn screamed at me. “What are you doing? And where are the keys?” he said.

Then he slid into the driver’s seat, motioning for me to take the passenger side.

“Get back in the car,” he said.

I kept kicking but it was no use. The muffler wouldn’t go back into place, nothing would go back into place.

The Brothers’ Tavern was still several blocks away, but its lights were visible in the distance. Finn could make it by himself. He was going to have to try. I started walking in the opposite direction.

Finn called out the car window. “What are you doing?” he said.

I turned around, still under the spray, getting drenched. “I’m leaving you.”

“Why?”

“You’re an asshole, Finn. You weren’t talking about me and Ben. You were talking about Bobby and Margaret, at least the version of them you want to be true.”

He laughed. “Really, then why are you running away from me?”

“I’m walking.”

“Semantics. You’re running. You’re just not very fast about it.”

Finn called out after me as I walked fast down Main Street, soaking wet. My wallet was still in Finn’s truck, my phone too.

“Come back!” Finn said.

But I turned left onto Green Street.

And I saw him standing there in front of the small French restaurant that my parents used to go to when I was growing up, the only restaurant in town that served after 10
P.M.

Henry.

He stood under the awning, backlit by the open sign, the streetlights. His hands were in his big pockets, his cashmere sweater hanging over his stomach. He was looking at the menu longingly, though he must have felt my gaze, because he turned toward me.

I walked over to him, pulling my hair behind my ears, tugging on my drenched shirt.

He smiled. “Hi there, Georgia.”

He took his hands out of his pocket, like he was going to reach out to shake mine, or dry some wet streaks from my face, or both. Thankfully, he thought better of it.

“You’re . . . wet,” he said.

“I had a fight with a fire hydrant,” I said.

He looked at me like that was the weirdest thing he’d ever heard. For that, at least, I didn’t blame him.

“Are you looking for your mother?”

“I’m actually looking for you.”

This surprised him. He stepped back, looking uncomfortable. “Why’s that?”

I tried to think of how to answer him. What was a good answer? Why had this little confrontation seemed like a good idea? Maybe because there was no one else that I was able to talk to. Not Ben, or my brothers, or my parents. I had no idea what I wanted to say to any of them, but I knew what I wanted to say to Henry. I wanted to tell him to stay away.

“I thought we should talk.”

“Okay . . .” he said.

I wasn’t sure where to start. I looked at Henry, as if that would provide a clue as to why my mother loved him. He was so different from my father: city intellectual to my father’s outdoorsman, large to my father’s lean and lanky. Of course, that wasn’t the right question. The right question was why my mother was giving so much up for him—her family, her home, the farm around it that she had nurtured with her own hands.

“Your mother just texted me that she may not be coming.”

He reached in his pocket, showed me his phone like proof.

“I’m meeting my son instead, actually. He’s never been to La Gare.”

“You have a son?”

“I do, yes.”

“You’re divorced?”

“No, I’m not technically.”

I looked at him, confused. Henry was married? He had a wife somewhere, wondering where he was, two homes breaking up so he and my mother could run off?

“I have a son, but I was never married to his mother. We were close friends. We still are.” He pointed at the menu. “Would you like to join us for a bite to eat? My son is a winemaker. He’s relatively new to the area. I think you’ll enjoy each other.”

“No, Henry, I think that may be the last thing I’d like to do. No offense.”

“None taken.” He paused. “It’s nice to see you again,” he said.

He looked like he wanted to see me as much as I wanted to see him. Which did the strangest thing. It warmed me to him.

Then he leaned forward, looking me in the eyes, and a weird thing happened—suddenly, I was the one standing at attention.

“It’s easy to think you understand what’s going on between your mother and me,” he said. “It’s always easy from the outside looking in.”

I gave him a look, warning him to avoid suggesting I was on the outside of anything involving my mother.

“What I’m saying is that I do love your mother very much,” he said.

“And you think that makes it okay to break up a family?”

He shook his head. And I saw it, his edge. The kind that meant he wasn’t going to play nice. “That’s her choice, not mine.”

He paused, softening, but pressing on.

“Your mother has taught me a little about winemaking. It’s fascinating to me. Perhaps because it isn’t unlike music. Timing is everything.”

I was unsure what he wanted me to take from that.

“When your mother walked into rehearsal for the first time, she had on this green jumpsuit which she thought looked sophisticated but she looked ridiculous. She was the most ridiculous and beautiful woman I’d ever seen.”

He shook his head fondly.

“I’d just had my son, though. And by the time I left his mother, she had already met your father.” He paused. “So if you want to understand why your mother’s with me, you have to ask someone else. But for me, I’ve been waiting thirty-five years for the two of us to fall into rhythm.”

I was floored, hearing him talk about my mother that way, and seeing what happened in his eyes. There was an intensity there. It was intoxicating to witness that kind of intensity—that kind of passion, really—honest and raw and irresistible at the same time. Irresistible in how sure of itself it was. And my mother was on the receiving end of that intensity. How could she turn away from it?

“What makes you think I want to hear any of this?”

He smiled. “Because you came to find me tonight,” he said.

“To tell you to go away.”

He shook his head. “That’s not going to happen.”

Again, that edge—and worse, a certainty. He was certain that my mother and he were a done deal. He was certain that they belonged together—the way my father was certain of the same thing.