Eight Hundred Grapes (24 page)

I drilled Ethan with a look. “It was a fire hydrant, Ethan, not a person.”

Ethan got in my face. “What it is, my lady, is unacceptable.”

Then Finn stepped forward, putting his hand on Ethan’s shoulder. “Let’s just calm down here, okay? You need to ignore her. She wasn’t even in the truck. She’s just trying to help me out.”

“Is that true?”

Finn gave me a threatening look. “Tell him, Georgia,” he said.

“I guess,” I said, convincing no one.

“Come on, Ethan. Think about it. You think I’d let her drive my truck?”

Ethan looked back and forth between us, trying to decide if that was something he was willing to accept, which was when his walkie-talkie went off, Ethan picking it up.

“We’re not done here,” he said, pointing to me. Then he turned to Finn. “But I will deal with Elliot for you, Finn.”

Finn smiled. “Thanks, Ethan. I appreciate it.”

Ethan smiled back, no one immune to Finn’s charms, female or male. “No problem, pal,” he said, heading out, giving me a look as he went.

Finn looked at me. “Way to narc on yourself.”

“I didn’t want to leave you in the cold.”

“I’ve got Ethan covered.”

I looked around the jail. “Obviously.”

Finn shrugged. “Yeah . . .”

We hadn’t spoken since our blowout and he looked uncomfortable. He was embarrassed about our fight, this stint in the city jail, apparently one of many stints. But what was there for him to say? The Ford children didn’t apologize to one another. We did what my mother had told us to do as children. We held out a hand and the other sibling had to take it. Everyone willing to move on.

This was what he did. He reached out his hand and took mine as he sat back down.

“My hands are a little clammy,” he said. “I haven’t washed them for twelve hours.”

“You really do suck at apologizing,” I said.

He smiled. “Thanks for coming to get me,” he said.

“You okay?”

“Yep. It’s no big deal. Just needed to dry out.”

“Ethan says you guys have a standing date, like a weekly poker game. Without the poker.”

He shrugged. “Ethan likes my company.”

I shook my head. “Finn . . .”

“You want to start, Miss Hit-and-Run?”

He shook his head, getting serious all of a sudden. And looking older than he was.

“I know. It’s going to stop. I’m stopping it.”

“How?”

“However I can,” he said.

Then he nodded, like he was resolved. Resolved and exhausted—done with his own nonsense, done with how he was feeling.

He looked down at his fingers, shaking his head. “Maybe it was sleeping here last night, but I keep thinking about the night before they got married. That wedding we crashed together. Do you remember?”

“Your first arrest?”

“Very funny.” He looked up and sighed. “Do you know what I was thinking the whole time? Maybe they won’t be able to get me out of here in time for the wedding. That I would miss Margaret and Bobby getting married.”

“And that made you happy?”

“It made me sad, actually. What do you think that means?”

“That you love your brother.”

He smiled. “. . . And don’t say that you love your brother.”

I paused, trying to think of what to tell him, sitting in this depressing jail cell. Finn needed to figure out how to be somewhere else, both of us needed to be somewhere other than where we’d been.

“I was out of line,” he said. “What I said about Ben. Sometimes it takes people a minute to figure it out.”

I smiled, grateful and relieved to hear him say that.

“But, the thing is, you just used to be so fearless when we were growing up. Fearless and fucking happy. I don’t know. I want you to be happy like that.”

I smiled. “I was happy, wasn’t I? What happened?”

“Adulthood. Ambition. Compromise.”

I laughed. “All things you have managed to avoid.”

He shrugged as a smile crept up. “I hear there is a famous movie star in town. Someone by the name of Michelle Carter?”

“How did you hear that?”

“I’ve been in jail, not . . . in jail.”

I smiled.

“Ethan’s been giving me hourly reports. Michelle spotted at the ice cream shop. Michelle spotted at The Tasting Room. Michelle spotted on Main Street and Fifth Street and at the Sebastopol Inn.” He paused. “What is she doing here?”

“We invited her to the harvest party.”

“Why?”

“I’m making an effort with Ben. And that means making one with Michelle.”

“Can I be the one to make an effort with Michelle?”

“Come on, she’s not that pretty.”

“Yes. She’s that pretty. She’s prettier.” He paused. “Since she’s coming, maybe you can set me up with her,” he said. “With Michelle. That would fix everything in terms of Margaret.”

“You think?”

“No,” he said, but he smiled while he said it.

Then he paused, looked at me seriously.

“I need you to tell me I’m not completely fucked,” he said.

“You’re not even close.”

Finn stood up, motioning around the jail cell. “Let’s be honest. I’m close.”

The Wine Cave

W
e got back to the house and Finn went inside to take a shower. I went down toward the vineyard and found my parents in the wine cave, walking along the aged barrels. They were working through the wines that they were going to serve that night, choosing from among the wines that had just finished fermenting. They were standing there together, working side by side, like they had been standing there eighteen months ago when those wines had begun the work they were getting ready to finish. My mother never gave herself credit for everything she did for the wine. It was the reason that she didn’t seem to see it now—how much she loved it.

I watched them for a minute before moving closer. My mother leaned into my father. They looked happy together.

My mother looked up. “Hey,” she said. “Where have you been all morning?”

I didn’t know if the better answer was stealing their vineyard back for them or bailing their son out of jail.

I looked back and forth between them, bracing myself for their wrath. “I was actually down at the courthouse.”

“The courthouse?” My mother perked up. “Getting your marriage license?”

“I filed an injunction,” I said.

My mother tilted her head and gave me a look. “For what?”

“The vineyard. To stop the sale of the vineyard.”

My father laughed. “That’s not going to work.”

I plowed onward. “Ben and I can’t match what Murray Grant is paying you for the vineyard, but we can come close if you take a share of the money in percentage of future earnings. And either way, we will figure out a way to make you whole.”

They shared a look with each other, my father crossing his arms over his chest. “So what’s the plan?” he said. “You’re just going to give up your job?”

“No. My firm has a San Francisco office.”

My mother laughed. “Oh, so you’re going to be a lawyer and run the vineyard?”

My father shook his head. “You and Ben don’t want this place. You think I want this place.”

“I love it here, Dad.”

“Enough to give up everything you’ve worked for? Your marriage and the firm . . .”

“The vineyard isn’t getting in the way of any of that.”

He looked at me seriously. “Then you have no idea what the vineyard is,” he said.

My father turned back to his barrels, done talking. My mother looked away.

I left the wine cave and headed up the hill, toward the house, quickly. I knew they were angry, but I was angry too. It left me thinking of my mother’s words.
Be careful what you give up.
You get it back however you can.
I was floored and scared by everything my father seemed to be giving up here. And maybe it wasn’t my job to convince him that he was making a mistake—maybe I shouldn’t have even been trying—though I wasn’t just scared for him. I was scared how untethered I felt, thinking about losing the vineyard. As if for the first time, in a very long time, I was able to see how very much it mattered to me.

I looked down the hill, toward the wine cave. My mother was walking through the doorway, my father hoisting a case of wine over his shoulder, following her. I wanted to call out to them, but they were too far away to hear anything, let alone what I didn’t know how to say.

Sebastopol, California. 2004

I
t was the night before their child’s wedding. It should have been a happy time, but Dan was worried about the wedding. He was worried about Bobby choosing Margaret. Dan loved Margaret and thought she’d be great for Bobby. That wasn’t the problem. The problem was that he wasn’t certain that Bobby thought Margaret would be great for Bobby. After Margaret lost the pregnancy, Bobby had expressed doubts to Dan as much as Bobby ever expressed things. He was young. And now that they weren’t going to have the kid, what was the rush? Dan had asked him the simple question.
Why not wait, then?

Bobby told him the truth.
Because I won’t do it then and I think I should.

Wasn’t that the worst reason to do anything?

Dan drove into town to the brewery to see his kids, his daughter home from law school. She was like Bobby in this way. She thought she was supposed to take a certain path. She thought she should be in law school and, he knew, part of her wanted to be there, learning about torts. Tax law. She seemed happy, or she had convinced herself she was happy. That was often the same thing. Who was he to interfere?

When he got home, Jen was sitting on the front steps, making place cards for the reception: so everyone would know where they were sitting at the long farm table, lit by candles and lanterns, shining grape leaves.

She motioned toward Finn’s room. “The bride is sleeping upstairs,” Jen said.

“Margaret? Why?”

She shrugged. “Something about being here to help tomorrow. I sent her to Finn’s room so she wouldn’t see Bobby. Is that supposed to be bad luck? It’s silly for me to think of that. But I do.”

“Finn and Bobby are sleeping at Finn’s place anyway, if they even leave The Brothers’ Tavern. They were all drinking pretty heavily when I left them, your daughter included.”

“That’s comforting.”

“Finn was in a mood. He was going on and on about how the barrel room looks ridiculous, but if worst comes to worst around here, we could rent it out for weddings. Call it the Great Barrel Room and charge fifty thousand to rent it for a week.”

He walked up the stairs.

Jen smiled. “That’s not a bad idea,” she said.

He took a seat next to his wife. “I’m worried about them.”

“All of them?”

“Yep.”

“But I’m the one that worries. You’re the one that says it’s going to be okay.”

“I thought we got to stop thinking about them so much, but this moment feels more important than even when they were young. They are becoming themselves.”

She put more of the place cards in a stack.

“Your sons are good men. You raised them to take care of each other, and your daughter is getting where she wants to go.”

He looked at her. “Are you finding it hard to talk to her?”

She shrugged. “She just likes saying
torts
. It’ll pass.”

He shook his head. “Bobby doesn’t want to get married.”

She took her husband’s hands. “That will pass too.”

He leaned in toward his wife and said it, what he’d never admitted before, even to himself.

“It makes me sad that none of them want the vineyard.”

She looked up. “We raised them to want their own things.”

He nodded. “I know, but . . .” He shook his head. “It’s silly. I’m being silly. I’m glad that they’re doing what they’re doing. I’m glad for each of them. I’m just feeling nostalgic.”

“I bet that you are,” she said, but she moved closer to him.

“I was the one who discouraged her from staying here. I told her to go explore new worlds.”

“And?”

“She seems like she isn’t happy with the one she chose, not the way I’ve seen her happy.”

“Then she’ll find her way home.”

They heard loud music coming from the guest bedroom, punk rock, blasting downward.

“What’s wrong with Margaret tonight?”

“Bride’s nerves?”

He looked up, deciding whether to throw a rock at the window or just run upstairs and ask his future daughter-in-law if she was going crazy too.

“I’m taking you somewhere,” she said.

She took him down the vineyard, to Block 14, the small opening there, where she had a blanket and a bottle of wine and a small radio. They couldn’t hear the music from here. They couldn’t see anything but each other. Dan started kissing her, soft at first then harder, pulling up her dress from behind. She gripped his waist, his hip, bearing against him as he pushed himself into her. His hand holding her stomach.

He pushed her curls off her face. “Can this be the first time we’re doing this?”

It was the first. It wasn’t the last.

Have-to-Have

W
hen I arrived at the house, the driveway was full of trucks, catering trucks and a florist truck, a van from a furniture company called Moving Up. The staff was in motion, setting up for the evening. They moved through the house and over the lawn, carrying candles and lanterns and flowers, lemons and grape leaves in glass vases, sofas on their backs.

“Hey there.”

I looked up to see Suzannah standing behind me, in the middle of the driveway, wearing a long blouse like a dress, short booties. Eight months pregnant and gorgeous. Like she belonged there.

“I’ve arrived,” she said.

She held out her arms to hug me, and I jumped in, so happy to see her it was crazy.

“What are you doing here?”

“What do you mean,
what am I doing here?
What do you think I’m doing here? I’m pawning off my work.”

She squeezed me hard, then she let go.

“Um. How did you leave out that Michelle Carter was the baby mama? That is the craziest part of this whole thing.”

“What does it change?”

“How I’m going to tell this story to everyone else.” Her eyes went wide. “Is it true that she does a honey cleanse every January and the rest of the year lives on French fries and burgers?”