by Kate Ledger
The inspiration to brew had descended upon him after dinner, one night three months earlier, when all three couples had dined at La Bouche, an upscale French bistro in Federal Hill. It was an evening of frustrations and disappointments, though nothing in particular had happened. At a crowded table in a far corner, Rick and Janet Grove sat across from him and Emily. Betsy and Ted Ebberly sat apart from each other at either end of the table. Simon remained privately disdainful of Janet Grove, who had once been a smoker. At one point, years ago, she’d come to him for medical advice about her inflammatory bowel, and he’d intended to refer her elsewhere. It was his policy—no smokers, all his patients were duly warned—and he believed as a matter of principle he should stick to his word. He’d tried to make the case with Emily that physicians were the ones who had to take a stand against the scourge of smoking. “She’s my friend,” Emily had seethed, until he relented. To everyone’s relief, Janet had managed to quit since then, but Simon still felt the chafing of having been forcibly compromised.
She had a narrow mouth with high cheekbones and tousled hair that was miraculously still blond as wheat. Emily, he thought, treated her with a little too much fawning, a little too much eager attention, and it was all the more apparent when he saw his wife interact with Betsy Ebberly. Emily maintained a friendship with Betsy, too, but she was cooler toward Betsy, he’d noticed, more distant and polite.
“I’m against it,” Janet was saying, and he realized she was talking about a show at the Contemporary Art Museum where she was a trustee. “Call me old school, but as I see it, we’re still in that phase of trying to attract and inspire. You know, bring people in. We’re still in need of underwriters. This is just asking for trouble.”
“Is this that exhibit about fanaticism? The one you described before that’s so controversial?” Betsy asked. Freshly plump, in roseate sweaters, she had soft hair that spilled onto her shoulders as if she hadn’t quite figured out how to control it, and a habit of squinting as if she were trying to see through a mist. She was the guidance counselor at a high school, and Simon wondered if professional snobbery was another reason Emily didn’t engage her seriously. Janet was well connected, influential, even elitist in her associations. Betsy, on the other hand, didn’t thrive on lofty ambitions or public attention, high-strung business mavericks or the manipulative press. Her career involved having conversations with maladjusted teenagers about their hormone-affected social lives, delivering advice and ideas that probably went unappreciated. The modest salary she earned was constantly in jeopardy from the school district. She was a saint, if you thought about it! Snubbing Betsy was an oversight on Emily’s part, he decided ruefully. Here was a caring, attentive and sincere woman—who gave without expecting back and who deeply deserved the highest order of respect.
“What’s the exhibit?” Simon said loudly to Janet. “Sounds to me like bad art.”
“It originated in the Netherlands,” Janet explained. “From on Deep, it’s called, portraits of so-called extremists. There’s a painting, it’s very haunting, of suicide bombers, done by the brother of a suicide bomber. There’s a photo of that woman, what’s her name, the abortion protester, the famous one?”
“Avery Scott?” Emily suggested. “Even Frith steered clear of any company that had anything to do with her.”
“There’s a portrait of her,” Janet continued, “in the hospital, from when she had breast cancer, getting chemo. It’s a view from inside, instead of as a spectator from the outside.”
“So the point,” Betsy filled in, squinting pensively, “is humanity. Across the board. Even people we don’t really understand.”
“But can you imagine the public response to this one?” Janet demanded. “It’s like shooting ourselves in the foot.” There was something about the angle of her wrist, he noticed, or maybe it was her fingers, that made it seem she was holding a cigarette even when she wasn’t.
“The best thing to do,” Emily said plainly, “is to get the show and present it appropriately.” She made her point in the calmest of voices, with a finger touching the edge of a wineglass, and Simon was again taken with the way she pressed for common sense. As if the answer were obvious, and you’d be an idiot to have any other perspective. “Don’t present it as if you’re already apologizing. You package it for your membership. If it’s truly about humanity, stand behind its humanity.”
“I don’t get it.” Simon leaned toward Janet, challenging. “What do you mean ‘insiders’? If you’re immersed in something, even if it’s bombing people, how can you comment on it like an insider? Once a person’s looking at something, actually analyzing it, aren’t they already an outsider?”
“Ah,” said Rick Grove appreciatively, lacing his hands behind his head. He looked, Simon thought, like he’d wanted to point out the absurdity himself but hadn’t dared. “Fascinating conundrum.”
Janet defended, “It’s not like a foreign journalist coming in to take pictures. I understand its merit, but to embroil the museum? Not now.”
“I always think about these things in terms of the kids I deal with,” Betsy said. “It seems we’re always worrying about sanitizing the wrong things. And if there’s something that prompts discussion, real talking, it’s usually worth withstanding the fire. I agree with Emily. You go for it and make sure your audience understands your message and your position clearly, whatever that position is.”
“A-always d-dangerous for a m-museum,” Ted Ebberly commented as everyone waited patiently for him to work his way through the sentence. “R-remember that one in N-nebraska that never recovered from the d-display of t-torn American f-flags?” Ted was a neuroscientist at the medical school, one of those stupefying fact-gatherers who retained everything he read. In his round, olive-toned head with its thick eyebrows, the straight-across lips like an Incan statue, he had details and figures on the most arcane topics in a way that made Simon feel amateurish. The marvel of his stutter was that it tended to dissipate during the length of an evening. (“You’re a neurological phenomenon. Someone should study you,” Simon had once announced at a dinner gathering, after Ted’s speech pattern had normalized. “You just need time to warm up. Once you get going, you know how to bring it home.” Emily had purpled at the frankness of his comment, but Betsy had jumped to the rescue: “It’s true! He’s the perfect gauge of a party. As soon as the stammer disappears, you know everyone’s having a good time.” She’d saved Simon from the arrows in Emily’s glare, but she’d also shown everyone how she wanted nothing more from Ted than what he was. Betsy Ebberly, he was convinced, was the nicest person he’d ever known.) “That m-museum l-lost its lease, just because it accepted the show,” Ted reminded everyone, “and ev-ev-eventually had to close down.”
They abandoned Janet’s predicament, but it was not long before the conversation at the table had turned to hobbies, and there was concurrence at the table that they’d all reached an age of reckoning in which hobbies—however once passion-stirring and preoccupying—had become mere dalliances. It began as Betsy Ebberly announced that she’d signed up for an adult extension course in French and was studying a second language for the first time in her life.
“I’ll never be fluent,” she conceded, “but it’s fun.”
“Well, you’re not alone,” said Rick with a knowing air. “Just recently, I realized I’ll probably never make the senior tour.” Everyone at the table laughed. He’d been a compulsive golfer for as long as anyone could remember.
“Ha!” chided Janet. “Like it just dawned on him. For years he’s been trying to get his handicap lower than the number of children he has.” Ted Ebberly whistled. The Groves had bred five.
“But you’re still able to compete. You haven’t slipped,” Emily said, and Simon marveled again how she was able to come up with a placating comment every time. “You’re still in tournaments, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” Rick acknowledged, “but my fantasies are tempered.”
Betsy reflected, “It’s a
lovely thing, being at this stage of life. The pressure’s off. We are what we are already. We can explore whatever interests for sheer enjoyment.”
“Right,” Janet agreed. “You can relax on the course. Your goal now can be to have a good time.”
Simon felt his neck growing hot. “That’s a cop-out if I ever heard one,” he blurted, in a voice too loud, too aggressive for the conversation. Under the table he felt a kick from the toe of one of Emily’s pointy shoes. But the truth seemed obvious, and Simon couldn’t just sit there and let them spout off about what was and wasn’t possible. Rick might have been happily tenured (“a specialist in long books,” Simon often kidded), but if that was the limit of his vision of himself, then Simon was disgusted to hear it.
“I’ve come to terms with it,” Rick said. “I’m good, but I’ll never be quite that good. I can accept it.”
“What’s changed?” Simon demanded. “Nothing’s changed. Success is about desire! State of mind! There’s no time limit.”
“Well, wishing something into being isn’t quite the same as having the talent. You have to have the talent,” Rick said. “I humbly admit: I don’t got it.”
“I agree,” Emily said genially. “Most of us could come up with the resolve if we had the talent to begin with.”
“If you really wanted to make the tour,” Simon said, pointing his finger at Rick Grove, “if you really, really wanted to make it, you’d quit your job and commit the rest of the time you had to playing golf. It’s that simple.”
“Well,” Rick said, leaning forward, glancing at Janet. “I’ve got a family. There’re practicalities to consider. Also, I have a career I care about.”
“So, really,” Simon concluded, “what’s standing in your way is you.”
Fortunately, the hors d’oeuvres arrived just then. As a communal plate of foie gras was passed around, conversation turned to vacations. The Groves were heading back to France—a conference of Pushkin scholars and an art tour—followed by a holiday. They were making a special trip to one region south of Bourgogne famous for a particular kind of wine.
“There’s nothing in this country that even comes close to the wine they make,” Janet stated. “They just consider themselves farmers with a family tradition, but they’ve actually tapped into something of superior quality, even for France.”
“It’s phenomenal wine,” Rick said. “Rich, flavorful, almost as intense as a Barolo, but with even more complexity. And of course you can’t get it in this country because the international distributors don’t deal with them.”
Emily, masterful controller of conversations, guilty-as-charged for fawning too much on the Groves, announced, “I adore Barolos.”
“Did you know,” Rick informed everyone, “that white-wine glasses are intentionally smaller and thinner and when you hold them, you’re supposed to touch the stem, and not the vessel part of the glass, with your hand? That’s to keep the wine cold. Red-wine glasses are fuller and rounder to get more air in them, and you’re meant to hold the body of the glass itself and warm it in the palm of your hand.”
Betsy laughed and insisted she couldn’t tell the difference between a cabernet and a merlot, and Rick began to list the names of Californias from all along the coast, wineries they’d visited, and years that were worth springing for. Simon, put off by the discussion of golf, found himself attacking the foie gras with unusual vigor, but he glanced up to see Emily rooting through her purse for a pen and a piece of paper to write down the wines Rick recommended.
At his side, his wife wore a navy suit with snappy white stitching around the collar and cuffs. He knew it was high style—she was an excellent dresser—but the outfit looked to him like an unfinished sartorial enterprise. He didn’t like it, and he felt miffed she hadn’t asked his opinion of it, the way she used to when they went out. She was still beautiful to him, he realized with a pang. If he were just meeting her for the first time, he’d have the same impression of her face he’d had when they’d first met: There was perfection in the particular assemblage and proportion of features. It was a primitive sort of perfection, not pinup girl, or bunny, the kind of creature who would be taken for defenseless food by a creature in the wild. Instead it was, and had always been, the kind of perfection of the fittest, the face of a creature meant to survive. She was tall enough to appear imposing, but even more, there was an alertness, a spark under the skin, that intimidated. She did not seem to gaze long at any one thing. In the length of an exhalation, the sharp, dark eyes went quickly from looking amused to looking bored. She was assessing, constantly appraising, not quite imperious, but aware of the details and forming an opinion about everything. When she smiled, revealing just the right number of opalescent half-ovals and not at all too much gum, you felt you had earned something. Even the slightly arched nose, that staid and somewhat Semitic ornament, had a way of looking judgmental, made you want to do right. Made you want not to have fucked up, ever. You wanted her to respond with approval. Her looks were the kind that promised the propagation of a better species. When he’d met her, he could have delivered a thesis on the role of such physical features in a Darwinian picture of evolution.
At forty-seven, she still emanated that striking keenness. So he was taken aback by her complacency at the table at La Bouche. He felt betrayed by the concession that they were all up in age and that things were more or less over. He refused to believe that the tracks of their lives had been laid, the direction set, and there was nothing left to do but modulate the speed at which they raced toward the end.
That night when they had returned home Simon had descended to the clinic in the basement. He sat in his office in front of the computer. Several patients had written to him with questions or simply to update him about their conditions, and he wrote back to all of them. But then he was curious. With a search engine, he looked up wine-making. It wasn’t particularly difficult, he discovered. There were kits with simple components, plastic fermenters, rubber stoppers, hydrometers, entanglements of siphon tubing. But why go to all the trouble if all you were going to make was a crappy wine? He surfed until he found the best, most expensive components he could find, hard oak, air-dried casks that had been toasted over open fires by able French craftsmen, assembled by expert coopers in tiny villages that specialized in wine barrels as an art form. He found a checklist of necessary items and scrolled through the list, ordering one by one. There were individually blown glass tubes, computerized jet filters, premium electric transfer pumps that could move 122-degree liquid for the racking process. Click, click, click. In no time, he’d ordered nearly five thousand dollars’ worth of wine-making equipment—and then he found himself on the phone to France, trying to wangle even better air-dried oak casks from an individual vintner. How hard could it be? People with a lot less intellect and fewer resources could brew wine—why not he?
He ordered several books on wine-making, but what caught his eye were the contests. They were held in Sonoma and attended by wine-tasters from all over the world. There were ribbons for the most sophisticated varietals. He read through the instructions and was moved by the simplicity of the process. You could have your wine in four weeks if you wanted, or you could wait longer and allow the fermentation to continue for an entire year—or several. Patience was all.
It was past two in the morning when he was finished making purchases. Logging off the Internet, he crossed back to the silent house, bounding upstairs. He passed Jamie’s bedroom, its door open the width of a hand, her night-light illuminating a small yellow ring of light. He had a mind to poke his head into the room, but he decided against the risk of waking her. In their bedroom, Emily was already asleep, her face dewy with moisturizer, one hand above her head, one across her chest. What he wanted was to wake her and tell her about the wine kit, but he decided that he’d wait. He decided he’d show her when the kit arrived, surprise her. What he imagined was a family project, Emily selecting the type of wine they would make (they could make a Barolo, for chrissake;
it couldn’t be too hard to figure out how to order—what were they called?—Nebbiolo grapes from northern Italy), and Jamie designing the wine label. He’d give Jamie the text, and she’d design the lettering and whatever artwork went with it. He kept the secret as the equipment slowly arrived, and now he was waiting only for the season to do its work on the fruit.
“You went to town,” Julie said, surveying the equipment.
“French white oak casks! They’re better than kiln-dried American casks. You wouldn’t believe how hard they were to get. Handmade, too. Beautiful, aren’t they?”
Simon pried open a wooden crate and reached into the wispy haylike packing. “See this here—” He pulled out a handheld tool with a rubber grip and a small viewing window. “It’s a refractometer. Hold it up to your eyes, and it tells you how much sugar you have in your sample. That part there’s a prism. You hold it in natural light, and the way the juice bends the light, you can tell how ripe your grapes are.”
“So what’s the secret?” Julie wanted to know.
“It’s a surprise,” Simon said. “For my wife. My staff knows—Melinda, Joyce and Gabi—they helped me haul everything in here. But Emily doesn’t know yet. She’s going to have her very own wine.”
The shipment of grapes he’d ordered would arrive at the end of August. Bright, ruby grapes—the picture of them brought jewels to mind—four hundred pounds of Barbera grapes from Piedmont (he hadn’t managed to find the Nebbiolos, but an Italian clerk had assured him that he’d enjoy the Barberas even more and that the wine-making process would be quicker). He’d purchased an automatic, motorized crusher-stemmer with aluminum fluted rollers that would break the grape skins and expose the juice and then channel the fluid through a screen. The stems, capable of imparting harsh tannins and excessive acidity, would be expelled through a chute, and nobody would ever have to touch them. Emily would resist, at first. He could hear her protests about the expense or the mess or the extravagance, but he’d change her mind. It was such an elegant project, and the results would impress their friends. (How great it would be to serve a bottle of their very own wine and challenge Rick Grove to guess where it was from!) Emily wouldn’t possibly object after the fermentation was under way.
