On day two, the first one died. We weren’t certain enough of its death to discard its body, so we left it with its siblings in the box. It had begun to stink, but the scent of sour dairy concealed the aroma of its miniature dead body and the mouse vomit and excrement that had inevitably accrued inside the box. Only when flies began to gather did we acknowledge its demise. I wanted to dispose of its little corpse, but Zelda grabbed my hand with her own.
“We shouldn’t separate it from its brothers and sisters,” she whispered, her eyes glimmering with a curiosity I should have questioned. For whatever reason, I listened to her—perhaps unwilling to recognize my own morbidity, I allowed hers to shine through—and we left the shriveled body in the nest. Its remaining siblings were clearly not doing well, but we continued to fondle and nurse them along, in perverse denial of the fact that we were clearly killing them. I remember trying to convince one to suckle at the eyedropper only to realize that it was dead, its body cooling in my hands. I put it back in the box, and we slid the whole arrangement under the bed. Zelda and I went for a sleepover the following night, and in silent, complicit agreement, we made no plans to deal with our feeble, expiring charges. We felt impossibly guilty, and it seemed somehow as though getting rid of their corpses would make our offense real. The trajectory of this ruinous narrative was so fixed as to seem immutable, and any gesture to avert its recognizable conclusion looked hopeless to the point of quixotic bumbling; we were killing them. So we ignored it. Three days later, when Zelda’s room smelled distinctly ripe, we took the whole box and flung it into the lake without opening the lid. Early on, we had proved to be disastrous caregivers.
I shut my mother’s door softly behind myself and guiltily lock it again. The upstairs of the house is getting hot, even though my mother had it designed to be “energy efficient.” Just another deviation from her plans, to have an upstairs that refuses to stay at room temperature, regardless of the weather.
Curled into the rumpled covers of Zelda’s bed, I pull out her cellphone, and start flipping through it. No new emails. I open her Facebook app and scroll through her news feed. I recognize a lot of the names. Zelda doesn’t have very many friends, and I’m surprised she’s on Facebook at all. Curious, I check her home page, and lo and behold, she joined just six months ago and has posted only a few photos. I flip through them quickly, recognizing only Wyatt. There’s a picture of the two of them out on a boat somewhere—looks like Seneca Lake, though it could be Cayuga. Neither of them is really smiling, though Wyatt has a slight curl to his mouth. His nose is sunburned. In another photo, Zelda is kissing the cheek of a pretty redhead with a spray of freckles. The girl is tall and skinny, with poky collarbones and a coy smile. She’s staring straight at the camera. I have no idea who she is.
The last picture Zelda posted was from the day before the barn burned, June 19. Zelda was photographed in front of Bartoletti Vineyard, the sign looming above her. She stands right in front of the sign, pointing at it with both arms, eyebrows raised meaningfully in an expression I recognize. I read the caption she posted with the photo: “Begin here…for a day of wine tasting.” I look at Zelda’s face again, and I feel a strange certainty that she’s posing for me. That the imperative “Begin here” is directed at me. I study her face, reading mischief. I’m suddenly sure she’s giving me an order. Bartoletti Vineyard is just a few miles away; the Bartolettis were friends with my dad, while he still lived here. I doubt that they’ve kept in touch. Marlon isn’t great with correspondence; “out of sight, out of mind” is basically his mantra, and he is religiously devoted to not looking backward. I get the impression that Marlon left some business unfinished there.
I cast my eyes over the heaps of clothes lying on Zelda’s ragged Turkish rug, scooped up from an estate sale. Zelda loved owning things that belonged to dead people. Half her wardrobe used to belong to someone’s deceased grandmother. I snatch a white-and-turquoise caftan from one pile and put it on. Peering into Zelda’s jewelry box, I see that all her favorite pieces are still nestled inside. Frowning, I put on her chunky silver bangles. Zelda imbued these things with almost talismanic powers; I can’t remember the last time I saw her without those bracelets.
Downstairs, I accidentally wake Marlon, who has been dozing on the couch. He jerks upright with a start and looks at me in revulsion.
“Zelda?” he croaks. I’m tempted to say yes, to play the ghost of Christmas future and warn him that his dissolute ways will only lead him to grief. But looking at his face, I realize he’s already there. He looks broken. Worlds worse than he looked yesterday, as though this place has already aged him.
“No, Dad. ’S me. Ava.” He slumps in relief, a slightly silly expression on his face. It is unbecomingly lined from the pillow.
“ ’Course. You, uh, startled me.” He straightens up on the couch.
“I’m going out for a bit longer. But you shouldn’t have to worry about Mom. She’s sleeping, and I locked the door behind her. I’ll be back in time for dinner,” I reassure him. He nods blankly. I feel sorry for the man. In pity, I almost unlock the liquor cabinet. But then I decide that I really can’t afford for him to get into the bourbon; I can look after only one parent at a time.
I clamber into the truck and drive up the lake toward Bartoletti Vineyard, humming softly to myself. An old Russian lullaby our father used to sing.
The Bartolettis have a sprawling, successful operation. Much more so than ours on both counts. Their grapes win awards; people drive across the whole Finger Lakes region to taste their wines. They make a particularly good Riesling, one with a flavor profile I have always coveted and was never able to approximate. They have a slick tasting room with huge antique beams, expensive-looking lighting, an entire wall of temperature-controlled wine storage behind clean glass doors. “Emerging artists” vie for space on the wall to display their uninteresting acrylics. Tourists flock. Affluent locals buy the Bartolettis’ sparkling wine for their children’s weddings.
As a young, enthusiastic vintner, my father had endeared himself to the Bartoletti patriarch, charmed the matriarch, and gotten himself invited over for bacchanalian feasts where he soaked up as much booze, information, and cannoli as he could from Seneca Lake’s wine tycoons. Mr. Bartoletti had always kind of scared the shit out of me. He was a tall, swarthy Italian, now probably in his seventies but still imposing. When we were younger, Zelda convinced me that Mr. Bartoletti was part of the Mafia, that he ruled the underworld of Watkins Glen with an iron fist. This hadn’t seemed at all fanciful at the time.
I pull into the drive and park by the tasting room. The vineyard is busy, it seems; the parking lot is mostly full. I bypass the tasting room and head straight for Mr. Bartoletti’s office, in front of which is the sign in Zelda’s photo. I’m sure that he’s in his office, working. My father had desperately wanted there to be some secret to running a wildly successful vineyard, some occult practice that would guarantee a brilliant harvest, like plucking grapes under the full moon or debauching virgins in the fecund fields. But Mr. Bartoletti’s secret was much less glamorous. The man worked with a maniacal, dedicated fervor.
I knock on his office door and hear only a grunt. Interpreting that as an invitation to enter, I poke my head into the office. Bartoletti doesn’t look up immediately, but when he does, his face turns scarlet.
“Zelda Antipova. You have some gall to show up in this office,” he says, visibly seething. “I knew you probably weren’t dead. Seemed a tad convenient, given your predicament.”
“Sorry, Mr. Bartoletti, it’s, um, Ava. Antipova. Zelda’s twin.” Bartoletti’s scowl barely falters.
“Oh. It seemed unlikely your goddamn sister would show her face in here. So, is she dead after all?”
“Looks that way,” I say, annoyed. He grunts and makes a show of going back to his paperwork.
“We’ll see if it sticks,” he grumbles.
“We’re hoping for the best,” I say ambiguously. He almost smiles but settles for a ha
rrumph. “Can I ask, though, what did you mean, her ‘predicament’?”
He looks up at me, assessing. “She managed to keep it a secret?”
“I’ve been away, overseas. I’ve just come home to tie up loose ends, and I found a mention of you in some office paperwork—”
“Just a mention?” he spits. “Your goddamn sister owes me a hundred thousand dollars. Or a tractor. An expensive one.”
My eyes widen. “What do you mean? She…borrowed it from you?”
“She came here desperate last season. A bunch of equipment had crapped out on her, and she was struggling to keep Silenus afloat. I know she got a raw deal, with both your parents out of the picture. How is your father, by the way?” He forces a deeply unpleasant smile.
“Fine,” I lie.
“I should have known, after he left the way he did, that your whole family couldn’t be trusted. Hucksters. But Zelda just seemed so upset and…well, sincere, damnit. I went against my judgment and sold her the tractor. To be neighborly. She had only ten grand to give me, on a tractor worth over a hundred.” He snorts and shakes his head, clearly disbelieving how easily he had been had. “We worked out a payment plan that we both thought was reasonable. But the first payment was due months ago, and you can guess how much I’ve received.” He leans back in his chair, eyeing me. I focus on not squirming. “You really do look a lot like her.”
“Funny thing about identical twins.”
He smiles joylessly. “Any chance you’re here to settle her debts?” he asks.
I shake my head. “I’m afraid not. I’ll go home and look at the books. Like I said, I just got here. And my mother isn’t exactly on top of things over at Silenus,” I add, hoping to appeal to any shred of compassion he has left. “Looks like you guys are doing well over here.”
“Hard work and solid accounting. Not too difficult. Something your father never quite believed,” he says.
“Well, Marlon’s ambitions sometimes outstrip his resources,” I say.
Bartoletti laughs for the first time. “That’s the truth. Any chance he’ll be stopping by to settle up some outstanding business?”
“Unlikely, but I’m happy to tell him you’d like to see him.” I don’t even want to know what Marlon left unresolved with this man. I don’t ask.
“Listen, dear,” he says, softening. “I’m sorry about your family’s business. But Silenus is folding. Zelda knew it—she was just too stubborn to face facts. I’ve let the debt slide a little, hoping she could pull it together with this season, but…” He shrugs. “I’m going to have to collect soon.”
Something deep in my stomach squeezes. Money. Dealing with it always makes me feel this way. Like my father, I prefer for it just to appear, and keep appearing, without ever having to peek at checking account balances or scribble out a budget. My mother was the only one in the family with an inclination to pinch pennies. Coincidentally, she was the only one with money.
“I understand, Mr. Bartoletti. If you could just give us some more time to get everything in order…I have a funeral to organize, and everything in the vineyard is a bit up in the air.”
“How long do you think you’ll need?”
“As long as you can give us?” I ask, hoping I sound charming and young, rather than pathetic. But I’ll settle for pathetic if it gets me what I need.
“I’ll give you a month. Then we’ll have to treat the whole thing more seriously. This business, it isn’t a game or a hobby. Something your family has never seemed to understand.” He returns to his paperwork, and just like that, I am dismissed from his presence. As I reach for the doorknob, he calls after me.
“Oh, and I’m sorry for your loss.” He doesn’t sound sincere. I scuttle back out the door, murmuring a deferential thank-you as I shut it behind myself.
“Zelda, what have you gotten us into?” I whisper, my head reeling. I climb into the truck and sit behind the wheel, wondering where to go next. Then I realize I already know. My father has taught me a few things: Where there’s debt, there’s almost always more. I turn the ignition and drive down Route 414, back toward Watkins Glen, and the bank.
—
I don’t know the first thing about finance. Thanks to Marlon’s more successful second venture, due entirely to his third wife’s deep coffers, he’s paid for most of our educations. I almost took out a loan to go to Paris, but at the last second Marlon again came through with a good-sized check, and I’ve been coasting by, supplementing his dollars with French government student subsidies. I’m not good with money.
Zelda and I have had a bank account at the Community Credit Union in town since we were six years old, when Marlon gave us our first “paycheck,” for trimming vines with him out in the field. After we’d done an hour or two of work (“an honest day’s labor” in Marlon’s rather generous assessment) he loaded us into the truck, each of us clutching a twenty-dollar bill. Ten dollars an hour seems like lavish pay for two distracted six-year-olds, but we weren’t going to argue. We still have those accounts.
I park the truck in a fifteen-minute loading zone near the bank, hoping to be quick. Before going inside, I retrieve Zelda’s driver’s license. I’m not sure that what I’m about to try will work, but I can use all the government documentation I can get.
Not many people live in Hector, New York, and I suspect there’s a very real possibility that people at the bank will know that Zelda Antipova is presumed dead. I’m certain they will have heard about the fire, but I’m banking (ha ha) on the fact that they won’t know who was involved in it. It’s probably a crime to impersonate someone in order to gain access to her banking information, but I can live with that.
I look up and down the street: quiet, as ever. Watkins Glen is called “the city” by those of us who live out here, but that is a rather generous description of our Podunk county seat. There are a handful of sadly blinking stoplights and a clothing store that sells Carhartt merchandise, thick woolen socks, and long underwear for the frigid winter. Farmer gear. A gaudy life-sized simulation of a pirate ship sits near the water. This bizarre reproduction houses an ice-cream stand and a miniature golf course; Zelda and I would lobby to be brought into town on hot summer evenings for raucous, giddy fun. Nearby, a stark pier juts out into the lake, and you can meander out to the tip on raw winter days and imagine you are somewhere near the North Pole. In the summer months, a yacht perches by the dock, offering chartered wine cruises. An overpriced hotel and a similarly overpriced fish joint sit next door to the dock, providing tourists simultaneously with a view of the thirty-eight-mile lake and glutinous, flavorless pasta al mare swimming in thin cream sauce, despite the fact that there is no mare anywhere nearby and seafood is about as appropriate here as it would be in Ohio. A burger joint, a brewery, and an “Italian” joint that serves microwaved calzones and meatball subs sit along the mostly deserted main drag. Highlights include the huge, freezing-cold public pool and the hike along the (admittedly picturesque) waterfall’s gorge. For a few unpleasant weeks during the humid month of August, NASCAR enthusiasts flood the town, and the streets are crammed with aspirational muscle cars and mullet haircuts. The place fairly reeks of Budweiser during this period, and locals take care to steer clear of the city, heading to Montour Falls or Ithaca for any supplies not harvested from the garden. I find myself wondering what things will need doing at Silenus in August, how busy I will be (preparing for harvest!), and shake my head when I realize what I have been imagining. I will be safely back in Paris by the time NASCAR rolls into town.
I muss my hair distractedly as I walk into the bank, momentarily not realizing that I’m imitating one of Zelda’s gestures. The bangles shake unfamiliarly on my forearms. Inside, the bank is chilly and air-conditioned, and I pad softly across the carpet in my sandals to the customer service area. An employee gestures me toward her stall way too enthusiastically, and I walk over, letting my bag plop into the chair. There are always two chairs in front of bankers, suggesting that a single person will neve
r suffice for the creditors.
The woman in front of me is wearing a thick layer of green eye shadow, and her hair is shellacked with hair spray, making the brownish strands crispy and stiff, almost alien in their brittle anti-gravitational mushroom. She has a gigantic smile on her face, and her nails clack unnervingly on the keyboard in front of her. As we face off, I realize that I’m hugely relieved to be doing this in English; in France, I would have had to submit two forms and enter into a verbal sparring match with whoever was at the front desk just to sit down with another human being, which is when the actual negotiations would begin. This woman may be a foreign creature to me, but at least we speak the same language.
“Hi,” I say. A solid beginning.
“Hi there, sweetie. What can I do for you today?” She clasps her hands together and tilts her head attentively. She has clearly attended her customer service training sessions.
“Well, I have a bank account with you, and I’d like to inquire about the status of some loans. I think I’ve gotten off track with my repayment, and I wanted to know about the remaining balance, see about maybe restructuring?” I don’t know exactly what that means, but I am fairly sure it is what one does with loans that one isn’t paying back. Unfortunately, the whole incompetent and clueless act works better with middle-aged men; they immediately get all paternalistic and want to mansplain the contours of the particular pickle in which you’ve found yourself. But I guess I’ll have to settle for the kindly, concerned woman in front of me.
“Of course, sweetheart. Can I just see your proof of identity and your account number?”
“I don’t have the account number on me, but here’s my license,” I say, sliding Zelda’s across the desk. She gives it a cursory glance before typing in my name.
“And your Social?”
I panic for a minute and almost give her mine, but then I remember Zelda’s and spit it out in a relieved rush.
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