Sweeter Than Wine (44 page)

She moved, trying to relieve the pressure against her stomach and ribcage.
"Si'gfr'd, get off me," she mumbled, trying to push him away. She couldn't breathe,
and besides, wasn't she angry at him because--?

She was falling.

Alice woke up with a scream when she hit the floor.

Her hips and backside hurt, and she couldn't breathe. Siegfried lay sprawled
on her, and the hall runner was rough and prickly through her nightgown. She
blinked, and recognized the regular pattern of bannisters towering above
them.

What are we doing at the foot of the stairs?
she thought, in the same
instant that she coughed again. She had not been dreaming the smoke.

Wriggling backwards from beneath Siegfried's limp form, she braced her arms
against the carpet and raised herself to a partially sitting position.

Her heart, already pounding from the shock of her awakening, accelerated
further when she saw the lurid red light shining under the kitchen and dining room
doors.

Fire!

She grabbed Siegfried's head by the hair, and lifted it up from where it lay. His
eyelids fluttered briefly, but he did not respond. His arm--blood welled up from
deep cuts in his arm and dark blotches stained her nightgown. Oh, dear God, she
was soaked with his blood.

"Wake up!" She shook him as hard as she could. "Siegfried, get up!" The light
increased fractionally. "Siegfried!" she screamed, "Oh God, please help me.
Siegfried!
"

He did not rouse.

She had to get them out. Soon everything would be ablaze. But what was she
going to do about Siegfried? Alice's thoughts ran in a panicked circle.

She inhaled a lungful of smoke and, coughing, scrambled up on her knees.
She hooked her hand under Siegfried's armpit, trying to drag him toward the front
door. She managed to straighten out his limp form, but he moved barely an
inch.

She tried again. All the weight Siegfried had gained this summer made him too
heavy to move. He was a dead weight--Frantically, she tore open his shirt,
pressing her hand against his chest. But her own heart was beating too hard to
feel anything except her own hammering pulse in her fingertips.

A red flame licked through the dining room door with a wave of heat. She fell
off her knees onto her bottom, jarring frozen thoughts loose.

This was no place to quit! The fire didn't care whether she was ladylike or not,
where she came from, who her mother was. She would burn--more importantly,
Siegfried and his child would burn if she could not get them away.

The hallway swam unpleasantly. She would have to pull Siegfried to the door.
But she didn't have the strength.

No. She would find the strength. God would just have to give her the strength
to do it.

"I won't leave you here!" she yelled, angrier than she had ever been, angrier
even than when Siegfried had confessed his lie. "I don't know why you came back,
but damn it, I'm not going to leave you!"

She pushed herself to her feet and grabbed Siegfried's unresisting arms. He
was so heavy, and the hall carpet grabbed at his legs and held him back. She
clung to her anger to keep panic at bay, dug in her toes, and
pulled
.

This time, they moved six inches. Alice's breath hissed between her teeth as
she shifted her grip under Siegfried's armpit, tightened her stomach muscles, and
raised Siegfried's back and hips off the floor. She inched forward, and he moved
with her, only his heels dragging.
Thank You, oh thank You
, she prayed in
silent gratitude as she fought not to cough.

Another foot, then another, each seeming easier than the last.
We're going
to make it out,
she thought, almost disbelieving, until she hit a mountain.

Not a mountain, not really, only the ridges in the hall runner she had kicked up
earlier that night. But they might as well have been a range of hills. She couldn't lift
Siegfried any higher. Her knees trembled. In another moment they would give out,
and she would fall...The fire would leap upon them, and devour them...and she
would never have the chance to see Siegfried hold his child...

She looked over her shoulder at her goal, gathering her strength. It flew open
in a shower of wood splinters and a crash that was barely audible over the hungry
roar of the fire pursuing her. A man with a shovel stood sihouetted momentarily in
the doorway.

"Alice!" Then Hugh was there, scooping up Siegfried, gasping and coughing.
He was saying something, but she couldn't hear. She bent as Hugh pulled
Siegfried past her, and caught Siegfried's feet, lifting them, helping Hugh the last
few feet towards the door. Then they were outside on the porch, and the night air
was cold and fresh after the heat and choking atmosphere in the house.

Hugh's words finally became comprehensible: "Alice, I didn't do this. I didn't
set the fire," he said, over and over again. Sweat and tears rolled down his face,
leaving tracks in the soot.

"Of course you didn't--
set
the fire?" Another spasm of coughing
interrupted anything else she might have said, anything else she might have
thought.

They wavered and lurched across the porch. Walter Bundschu appeared. "Let
me," he urged. He slipped his hands under Siegfried's calves. Smoothly, he lifted
her husband from her numbed grip.

Alice clung dizzily to the porch railing as she watched the two men bear
Siegfried's unmoving form toward an unfamiliar Ford.
Is he dead
? A great
yawning emptiness opened at the thought.

Behind her, fire raced down the hall runner, leaping up to the doorway,
sending hungry sparks across the porch after her.

She stumbled down the stairs and across the narrow strip of yard, the ground
rising and falling like the deck of the Transbay ferry. She collapsed onto her hands
and knees in the drive under the palm trees, the gravel yielding and slippery
beneath her fingers, fragrant with--wine?

Siegfried's wine? She looked around and saw, blurrily, that he was being
bundled into the back of Walter Bundschu's car, and that Walter was tying a rough
bandage around Siegfried's bleeding arm.

He was going to be all right. He was being taken care of.

Her face felt funny--stiff, and tight.
I'm going to be sick
. But she felt no
repugnance, only blessed relief. She let her head hang. No braid fell down. She
smelled burned hair and her stomach revolted.

When she finally finished bringing up the evil-tasting remnants of the
grappa
, she did not think she would ever be able to move again. And she
didn't want to move, even if the volunteer firefighters, just now arriving, did see her
like this.

A loud shriek made her head snap up. Toward the back of the house, lit by the
fire's leaping light, Maria broke free from the fireman who was attempting to
restrain her. There was a blanket-shrouded body at her feet, and as Alice
watched, Maria screamed. "No! No! NO! Don't arrest him!"

Behind Maria, Hugh Roye, his head bowed, did not resist as Sheriff Albertson
put handcuffs on him. He never glanced up as Maria's screaming reduced to sobs.
He only shook his head briefly in response to something Albertson asked him and
ducked awkwardly into the sheriff's car.

Oh, no
, Alice thought.
Not Peter. Not Hugh. Oh, please
.

"Mrs. Rodenwiller," a male voice said. She felt a jacket being draped around
her shoulders and hands lifting her up. "Are you all right?"

She saw someone blurrily. It was Mr. Duhring. "Siegfried?" she gasped, and
bent double, coughing. Mr. Duhring held her until she could breathe again, then
gently turned her.

"Oh, my God!" he said, appalled. "Quick! Get that car over here!" he yelled. In
a more soothing tone, one she found infinitely more frightening, he said to her,
"Mr. Bundschu's going to drive you to Doctor Stillman's office, Mrs. Rodernwiller.
Hang on, okay?"

As Mr. Duhring lifted her into the car, she saw firemen turn a hose onto the
burning house, their little pumper truck valiantly sucking water from Montclair's
reservoir. A thin arc of water touched the flames and the back half of the house
collapsed in on itself in a violent cloud of red and yellow sparks. Alice's breath
escaped her in a long sigh.

"I'm so sorry about your house, Mrs. Rodernwiller," Mr. Bundschu said, aiming
his car down the drive to the gate. "And about Mr. Verdacchia."

She didn't say anything, or look back. It was over. They might extinguish the
fire, but the house was gone.

Siegfried was slumped in the other corner of the back seat, his head propped
at an angle against the canvas of the raised top. She wondered dully if she could
force herself to move far enough to arrange him into a better position.

In another moment she was sliding toward him, easing his position by leaning
his body against hers. He was still breathing, and she touched the base of his
throat, feeling his pulse beating.

Thank you, God!

* * *

Drifting through the darkness that had overtaken him in the house, Siegfried
drew a breath, and coughed harshly, his lungs burning. It was dark. He was sitting
upright, and the jostling of the train's movement was uncomfortable.

Why am I on a train?
He tried to open his eyes, to advise the conductor
that there must be some mistake.
The last place I wish to be is on a train
.
He wanted to see Alice, he wanted to be with her.

Grief fountained in the darkness.
I am on a train because Alice is sending
me away. Has already sent me away.

He wondered briefly where he was going, then decided he did not care. He
had failed. He had sworn to succeed or die trying, and now he must pay the price.
It would be far easier just to sleep and pretend that he was not being exiled from
his home--again.

He let the rocking motion of the train draw him deeper into peace and
forgetfulness, imagining the golden-brown hills of Sonoma County slipping away
from him in the darkness.

* * *

Walter Bundschu raced along Lovell Valley Road, bouncing Alice and
Siegfried together.

"Do you have to go so fast?" Alice asked after another pothole sent her head
nearly into the canvas top of the touring car.

"Oh--Oh, Mrs. Rodernwiller. You're awake?" Bundschu slowed down
immediately. "The way Mr. Duhring was talking, I thought you were--"

"I'm not dead yet," Alice said. She coughed again. Siegfried coughed too. "But
don't slow down too much."

Bundschu's pace increased until he was going moderately fast. At least the car
wasn't jouncing so much. He glanced at Alice in the rear view mirror, his gaze full
of concern for more than her safety. "You know, your husband, he came to us
tonight. He was real sorry about what he'd done."

Selfish curiosity bit Alice. She had thought she could feel no higher terror than
this night had already brought.
He talked about us. He talked about
me.
"What did he tell you?"

"That he lied to you, when you wanted to switch to prunes earlier this
summer," Bundschu said, and shook his head sadly. "Because he was scared of
where he would go. Not much call for winemakers, these days. That he was sorry
you didn't want to stay married to him."

Alice felt guilty relief. Siegfried hadn't revealed her circumstances. "He only
wanted the land I inherited from Bill. It was supposed to stay in the family. The
Roye
family, whose coattails I am not worthy to touch," Alice added
resentfully, before deciding she had already said too much.

"But when he saw that you were in trouble--" Bundschu clicked his tongue
expressively. "The way I see it, if the land's all he cared about, then he could have
just wrung his hands on the sidelines. He would have been a rich widower. He
didn't need to run into that burning house."

She remembered her panic when she thought Siegfried might die, and her
desolation at the thought of living without him.

"Sounds like you two need to talk. If you'll accept some advice from an old
married man," Bundschu kept his eyes straight ahead on the road, "when the two
of you are stronger together than you are alone, then you should fight hard to save
what you have. From what Siegfried told me earlier, he was willing to fight. Are
you?"

She loved Siegfried, but could she ever forgive him for his betrayal of her
trust? "Maybe," she said, realizing that she wanted the chance to find out. Her
hand curled around Siegfried's shoulder, as if she could anchor him to this world,
as if she were afraid that she needed to hold him lest he escape.

* * *

Friday, October 10, just after midnight

The doctor's home office was a pretty gingerbread house near the Sebastiani
winery. Alice was swiftly examined, pronounced sound except for a minor case of
smoke inhalation, given hot peppermint tea to soothe her raw throat, and ordered
to go to bed.

Though she was stumbling with fatigue, she insisted weakly that she wanted to
stay and keep vigil while Dr. Stillman stitched up the long, jagged gash in
Siegfried's arm. The young doctor frowned at her sternly and asked his wife to
take Alice to their guest room. Mrs. Stillman lent Alice one of her own sensible
nightgowns and her husband's robe, and made her free of their bathroom, filling
the deep tub with hot water and the mirror with steam so Alice couldn't see
herself.

When she emerged from the bath, her own bloodstained nightgown was gone,
and Mrs. Stillman was there, ready to put her to bed.

But before she could allow herself the luxury of sleep, Alice had to make two
phone calls. Mrs. Stillman let her use the doctor's telephone in the parlor. The first
call was to Giuseppa Ambrogi, Maria's widowed mother, who lived on the outskirts
of Sonoma. Once she had recovered from the shock of the news, Giuseppa
promised to go immediately to Maria.