Midnight at the Wandering Vineyard

by Jamie Raintree

  I don’t answer her because I don’t have to. We both already know. I’ve tried to avoid him, tried to deny that my feelings for him have never fully gone away, but Sam is undeniable. Still, I think if I said it out loud, the black hole inside me that he left behind would open up and eat me alive.

  “Tell me what happened, Mallory,” she says.

  EIGHTEEN

  I sit at the dining room table on Friday morning, coffee and notebook in front of me, sweet early sunlight pouring in through the blinds behind me. It almost counteracts my dry mouth and the dull ache at the back of my head. I don’t usually drink so much or so often. Alcohol has dulled the sharp edges of coming home, but makes them even sharper come morning.

  As perfect as the setting is for creativity, it doesn’t stop me from raking my hands through my hair as I try to come up with the right words to describe the floral company I have been tasked to write brochure copy for. I force myself to sit up straighter and try to imagine one of the bouquets from their website on the table in front of me. I search for the feel of their petals on my fingertips and their pungent scent in my nostrils, but instead I remember the feel of Sam’s lips and the scent of his cologne.

  It jars me from my vision and I try to erase him from my mind. When a sound comes from behind me, I jump, expecting to have conjured him. But it’s Mom, dressed in her business casual attire, her hair still damp from the shower.

  “Morning, love,” she sings. She breezes over to the coffeepot and pours herself a cup. “Do you want breakfast?” she asks, bringing the mug to her lips.

  I toss my pen to the table and sigh. “No, thanks.”

  “Tough morning?”

  “Just trying to come up with something for work.”

  Mom comes around the island to look over my shoulder at the blank notebook.

  “Off to a great start, I see,” she says. “What are you working on?”

  “The florist who hired the firm wants a brochure to send out to larger companies about their high-end bouquets and delivery service. For hotel lobbies and things like that.”

  “They didn’t send you a sample to draw inspiration from?” She waves her hand toward the empty table.

  “I’m kind of known around the office as the one with the overactive imagination.”

  She laughs. “Well, they have you pegged.”

  Mom drums her fingernails on her coffee mug.

  “Hmm...if only we knew someone in marketing...”

  “Not helping.”

  “Okay. You know what you need? A break. You’ve hardly left the property for almost two weeks. It’s no wonder you’ve lost your inspiration. C’mon.”

  Mom sets her mug on the island and grabs her keys, heading for the back door. I jump up, surprised by the sudden shift.

  “Wait. Where are we going?”

  “Bakersfield.”

  “Don’t you have to work?” I ask, stumbling out the back door behind her.

  “Are you coming or not?”

  Bakersfield is where Mom and I have always taken our mother-daughter shopping trips that I’ve treasured and missed since being gone.

  “I’m coming,” I say quickly and pull the door closed behind me.

  On the two-hour drive, Mom calls in to work to take a personal day and I admire how easily she asks for what she wants. In many ways, Mom is the most conventional one in the family, but she’s still not afraid to play hooky.

  For the rest of the drive, she asks me questions about every detail of my life in New York, wanting to know about each one of my coworkers, where my favorite place is to eat lunch, who I hang out with and where their parents live. I normally hate what I used to think of as hovering from my parents, but after what Tyler told me about how lonely they are without me, I welcome the opportunity to include my mom in my everyday life.

  Mom and I go straight to our favorite used clothing boutique. She’s convinced the colors and textures of the fabric will inspire me.

  “This has flowers on it,” Mom says, holding up a polyester blouse with shoulder pads. I look up from the rack where I’m swiping through shirts, not really looking at any of them but enjoying the screech of the metal hangers. The repetitive rhythm makes me feel like I’m accomplishing something.

  “You’re not suggesting I wear that,” I say. “That looks like something Grandma Patti would wear.”

  Mom laughs. She’s teasing me. She did this when I was a teenager and highly embarrassable.

  “And that’s an unnatural shade of orange so it’s not even good inspiration for the brochure.”

  “I’ll put it in the cart,” she says with a grin, but I watch her slip it back onto the rack. “You know, you don’t seem too anxious to get back to work.”

  I pull out another top that looks like it fell right out of the ’60s, trying to capture the lighthearted mood from the moment before, but it’s gone.

  “I think I’m just having a hard time connecting to it, being away from the office.”

  “I didn’t mean the project,” she says.

  “Oh.” My fingers slip from the sleeve of a shirt. “Well, I’m just trying to be here for Kelly.”

  “Mmm-hmm.” Mom analyzes me, one eye on the clothes she’s thumbing through, one on me. “But you enjoy your work, right?”

  “I do,” I say. “I enjoy being creative and it’s a challenge to come up with new marketing angles that haven’t been done a thousand times already.”

  “But?” she hedges.

  “But?”

  There’s a hitch in my laugh as I rack my brain for ways to reroute the conversation. My mom is the last person I want to admit my unhappiness to, for many reasons. First, because she was the one who pushed me to go to Columbia even when it turned out Kelly would be staying. The last thing I want her to think is that I’m not grateful. Second, because she’s so proud of what I’ve accomplished at the firm.

  “Come here, Mallory Victoria,” Mom says.

  I hang up the shirt in my hand and hesitantly circle around the rack. Mom meets me halfway. She eyes the salesclerk before speaking, as if the teenage boy behind the counter would be interested in my existential crisis.

  I suddenly feel much younger, like I’m about to be on the receiving end of a parental lecture.

  “Is this your paralegal face?” I mock-whisper to her to try to defuse the tension. Her expression is somber.

  “Tell me you’re not staying in New York just to make your father and me happy,” she says.

  “I...” The rest of the thought gets caught in my throat.

  A frown overtakes her features—a look so rare from her that it slices through the fibers of my heart. She tucks my loose bangs behind my ear. In a burdened whisper, she says, “I don’t know why you would ever think your dad and I wouldn’t be proud of you no matter what you did. Or where you did it.”

  I sigh. “You guys have been so excited about all the things I’ve accomplished since I’ve been there—”

  “We’ve been excited because we thought you were excited. We thought maybe you’d finally found something that made you happy.”

  “I was happy here,” I say, hurt by her words. Did I give her the impression I wasn’t?

  “Maybe happy isn’t the right word,” she says. She nibbles at her lip as she thinks it over. “Mallory, there’s more to happiness...no, fulfillment...than being content to move from one task to the next without any direction. Yes, that may be enjoyable in the moment, and there’s a lot to be said for that, but one day you’ll look back at your life, and I think you’re going to want it to add up to something. Maybe it’s hard to understand how important that is now, but when you get to be my age, you’re going to want to believe your life has meant something. That it means something.”

  Once again, my mom surprises me. It’s a speech I might expect from my dad, but Mom has dreams fo
r her career, too? All this time, I thought she only did it for the money, but I can see how much fulfillment—to use her word—she could get from seeing broken families pieced back together in new ways. I know from listening to her talk to Dad over the years that her opinion is highly regarded at her firm, and that is fulfilling in its own way, I’m sure.

  “Maybe I’m just not wired like that,” I suggest. I have no doubt that what my mom is saying is true, but I’ve never been able to understand how people stick to anything long enough for it to add up to something bigger. I’ve never been able to do it myself.

  “Honey, everyone is wired like that. It’s human nature. It’s sort of like falling in love. If you’ve never experienced it, it’s hard to know what it feels like. But once you do...” She gets a faraway look in her eye.

  “Can you please not think about Dad like that in my presence?”

  Mom laughs and I try to turn back to our futile search for inspiration, but she catches my wrist.

  “Mallory, that’s all I want for you. I know that’s what your dad wants for you, too.” She says it so simply, so matter-of-fact, that I wonder how I could have so greatly misunderstood their intentions.

  “I do, too,” I say.

  “Good,” she says. “Now, are you sure you don’t like those shoulder pads?”

  * * *

  When Mom and I get home that afternoon, Dad cuts out of work early to take Mom out on a date. I teased Mom at the thrift store about how in love they are, but I actually find it admirable for thirty years of marriage. I don’t often think about marriage, but if and when it happens for me, I hope I share that kind of unending adoration with the man I end up with. I guess Dad was right—I am idealistic.

  That evening, Sam wanders into the kitchen to find dinner while I’m already foraging, hopelessly clueless without Mom’s home cooking.

  “It’s quiet in here,” he notes.

  I peek out from behind the fridge door. Sam’s eyes are red and his hair is mussed in the way it tends to be after he’s been engrossed in work all day. When he gets in the zone, the house could burn down around him and he wouldn’t notice.

  “My parents went out on a date.” I whisper the last word, like it’s illicit. Sam laughs.

  “They’re very lucky,” he says, and I know he doesn’t just mean today.

  “Yeah, yeah. What have you been working on so intently today?”

  “Those guys I was talking to at the bar the other night, Chuck and Aaron... They’re interested in doing some business restructuring. I told them I’d put together proposals.”

  I lean against the counter. “Would you really stick around longer?” I ask.

  “Maybe,” he says. “A lot of it I could do remotely. Besides, what else am I going to do all day? Like you said, I don’t know how to relax.”

  “You said that,” I remind him. He nods, conceding. “Is this the excuse you’re giving my parents for extending your stay?”

  It still hard to believe I’m the real reason, and that he’s been completely straightforward about it. This time I’m the one who’s unsure.

  “Your parents love me,” he says. “I don’t need an excuse.”

  I roll my eyes. “And don’t you know it.”

  He winks.

  “Have you eaten at all today?”

  His shrug is long and unapologetic. You know how I get.

  “Well, I can’t cook so you’re stuck with...” I glance over at the contents of the fridge. “Leftover spaghetti or a sandwich.”

  “Didn’t I see...”

  Sam reaches around me and comes out with the cheese and salami Dad keeps on hand for wine tastings.

  “We’re not supposed to eat that,” I say.

  “I’ll buy more tomorrow,” he counters.

  “Is there a single rule you don’t feel you’re above?”

  I’m not entirely sure if I’m flirting with him or still taking out the frustrations of my eighteen-year-old self. Either way, he seems to be enjoying it.

  “I will not build a campfire if there is a no-campfire sign. That is where I draw the line.”

  “When have you ever camped?”

  We stare each other down and I try to keep my stony composure, but a giggle escapes me and yet again, he’s won.

  “Come eat with me,” he says, nodding toward the back porch.

  I consider it. Are we friends now? Have I forgiven him? Do I trust myself to make good choices when he’s around?

  “I’m bringing wine,” I decide.

  I peruse Dad’s house stash to find the white that pairs perfectly with peppered salami and meet Sam at the porch table. He unwraps our dinner while I pour two glasses.

  “I haven’t seen Kelly today,” he says as he slivers the first slices of cheese off the block with a paring knife. “I’m not keeping you, am I?”

  “That’s considerate of you to ask, but no. She’s been working.”

  “Good.” He smiles.

  For the next couple of hours, Sam and I sit on the back porch, eating and chatting. Now that he’s opened the door to his family life, his upbringing, his extended family, and his childhood adventures around the globe, conversation comes easily. I ask him probing questions about Europe, Asia, and South America. He answers with hysterical stories about bathroom blunders, foreign foods, and simple requests lost in translation that got his family kicked out of some places and almost arrested in others.

  After my first glass of wine, I’m laughing so hard that my cheeks ache. I notice that Sam’s glass has gone untouched.

  “Are you in some kind of program?” I ask, realizing my potential faux pas.

  Sam is taken aback. “No. I’m just trying to be respectful.”

  It’s a sweet but unnecessary gesture. “I’m a grown woman, Sam. I can handle it.”

  I scoot his glass toward him.

  He hesitates, then raises it to me. We finish the bottle by the time the sun goes down.

  “You know what I missed the most from my first visit?” Sam asks as I twist my empty glass between my fingers. The food is gone, as is the wine, and we no longer have any reason to stay here, but neither one of us seems to be in a rush to leave.

  “What’s that?” I ask. There are so many things to miss from the vineyard that I’ve begun to crave them preemptively.

  “I missed talking to you in the guest house.”

  His answer is unexpected. I’ve missed it, too, and at his admission, I feel a pang in my stomach to return to one of those moments. There are times like that throughout life, I’ve noticed, where you don’t know it will be the last time until it’s over. And by then, it’s too late to ever go back.

  But here we are, and it pains me to admit how badly I want it.

  “Will you walk me?” he asks.

  I remember my rule. About not being alone in the guest house with Sam again. And then, like all the other times, I ignore that voice in my gut telling me to protect myself.

  “Sure.”

  Our movements are stilted. Do we clean up from dinner first? How close do we walk to each other? Is he leading or am I? In the end, we leave the dishes—I’ll be back in a few minutes—and walk side by side, a few inches apart but not touching, though every cell in my body is reaching out to him. By the way he keeps glancing over at me, I can tell he’s battling his own emotions.

  He opens the door for me when we arrive and I enter the domain that he has made his own over the last couple of weeks. His paperwork is scattered over the dining room table. His suits hang from the window curtain rod for lack of a closet. The bed is tidy but made in a way that is not my typical fold, throwing the organization of the room slightly off.

  “You’ve sure made yourself at home,” I note.

  The coffeepot is out on the counter and well used.

  “You said the carafe was brok
en.”

  There’s a mischievous smile behind his nonchalance.

  “Want some?” he asks.

  I shake my head. He really will go to any length to get what he wants. It makes me more cautious, being alone with him.

  “No, thanks.”

  I wander around the room, pretending to look things over but really keeping space between us.

  “Want to sit?” he asks.

  I glance to the table, where papers are piled on its surface and on the chairs.

  “Here.”

  He motions toward the bed and then pointedly pulls over the wicker chair I used to sit in. He places it next to the bed for himself. Against my better judgment, I sit on the comforter, my hands in my lap. Sam settles into the chair, unbuttoning his sleeves and rolling them up.

  “So how much longer are you going to stay?” I ask.

  “I don’t have a plan. What about you?” he asks. “Must be hard to leave Kelly right now.”

  “I’m supposed to be in the office next week.”

  “Supposed to be?” he asks.

  I’ve never been accused of wearing my heart on my sleeve but it seems everyone can see my unhappiness. I’m not as good at keeping my feelings to myself as I thought. Between my conversation with my mom, my looming return date, and now this, the pressure to have all the answers is starting to feel constricting. I stand up and pace the room. Sam leans back in his chair.

  “It’s funny you should ask. My mom said something to me today. I know she was trying to help, but I feel like it made everything more complicated.”

  “What did she say?” he asks.

  “That they—she and my dad—don’t have any expectations of me or what I do with my life.”

  His one-note laugh is skeptical if not resentful. “Wow, that is complicated.”

  “I know it sounds like a blessing, and it is. Except I’ve somehow built my entire life around those expectations without realizing it and now that they’re not there, I feel more lost than ever.”

  His only response is the purse of his lips, and it finally hits me who I’m talking to. I’m sure Sam would have given anything to have parents who supported him in following his own goals, and here I am lamenting it.