Happy Hour

by Michele Scott

  Then there is me, Jamie Evans: I am the editor-in-chief here at Wine Lover’s Magazine. Besides being an editor and writer, I too am a mom. My daughter is nine years old and is the light of my life. I also take care of my mother-in-law, Dorothy, who used to date big-time movie stars back in the day, leaving never a dull story to be told in my home.

  My favorite wine is Viognier. I like the slight floral tones and the crispness of this soft white on a hot summer’s day.

  There you have it, the ladies of Happy Hour. I hope you’ll enjoy this monthly column about wine, food and friendship as much as I think I’m going to enjoy writing it. As always, we at Wine Lover’s love to hear from our readers.

  Cheers!

  Jamie Evans

  Editor-in-Chief

  ***

  That was it. Jamie wracked her brain, trying to come up with something new and fresh at the magazine. Her boss—not a creative sort—took the tack of breathing down her neck to bring up the numbers. She diligently studied the demographics that were regularly buying the magazine and ran marketing surveys. As the numbers and research came in, Jamie took note that nearly half of the magazine’s readers were women. She understood the recipe part of the deal. The magazine always printed fantastic recipes and food articles. But most of the time even those were written with a slant toward men, like “Five Top Grilling Meats,” or “Superbowl Sunday, Syrah and Snapper,” (the men in the office loved that one, but it definitely hadn’t been one of Jamie’s ideas). The magazine published plenty of articles on malolactic fermentation, organic growing, cigars and wine, yachts and golf, and what wine to drink while yachting or after golfing.

  Yes, there were plenty of testosterone-filled articles to feed any man, but what was there for women? Almost half of the readers were women! This excited Jamie. Surveys showed that women and wine went hand-in-hand, with the liquid grape being the favored alcoholic beverage amongst the female set. Not to mention that more and more women were involved with making wine, marketing wine, and everything that went with and concerned wine. That was why and how Jamie came up with the idea to do an article on up and coming Women in the World of Wine. She chose to address it from the local aspect and started making calls. No better place to begin than in her own backyard of Napa Valley.

  Her first call went out to Danielle, who she’d met at a charity event for lung cancer. Since divorcing The Bastard (a name they all agreed on when it came to Danielle’s ex, Al. Kat’s ex held the privileged title Sperm Donor), she made the decision to finally pursue her dream of becoming a winemaker, a plan she’d squashed deep down for the past twenty years. When she was married to The Bastard, he wouldn’t even listen to her winemaker dream. He laughed at her and told her it was nice, but not realistic. Her job was payroll and raising the kids.

  Danielle sulked for about three months, after discovering the other woman. Then she found it far more satisfying to get royally pissed off and went after The Bastard with guns loaded and blazing. Three years ago, Danielle exemplified a woman scorned, and her anger fueled her desire to make fine wines. Now she planned to enter the Harvest Wine Festival in October. A gold medal would put a smile on her face and show her ex exactly who she was—a winemaker extraordinaire. Jamie knew that Danielle was headed for greatness and had no qualms about putting the as-yet unknown winemaker in her article.

  Danielle turned Jamie on to Kat. Kat and her husband Christian ran an incredible restaurant in wine country, Christian’s. They also owned the popular Sphinx in San Francisco. Christian’s genius with turning ordinary food into delicacies, combined with Kat’s extensive knowledge of wine, made them the perfect pair and Christian’s was a major success.

  Jamie hadn’t been into Christian’s herself; money woes kept her within a tight budget these days and when a little extra did turn up, she spent it on her daughter Maddie or her mother-in-law Dorothy. After Nate’s death, Dorothy declined rapidly and now suffered from, at best guess, dementia. Jamie was determined to provide Dorothy with the best care she could.

  Nate’s brother, David, insisted on putting her in a home, but Nate and Jamie promised to take care of her as she aged. She knew that the last thing in the world Dorothy wanted was to live out her last years in a retirement home.

  Jamie called up Kat and, after some convincing, she’d finally agreed to do the photo shoot and article. Danielle had mentioned that Kat worked an extremely busy schedule with the restaurant only being open for a year, and that she could also be a bit standoffish. However, after talking with her on the phone for almost thirty minutes, Jamie found that she warmed right up and a kinship developed quickly between the two.

  Then there was Alyssa. It turned out to be just one of those things where you meet someone and there is an instantaneous connection, almost as if you’ve known each other from another life. Jamie met her while window-shopping in St. Helena on a lazy Sunday afternoon with Maddie. They’d wandered into Alyssa’s gallery. She immediately started talking to Maddie, and Jamie always a sucker for anyone who was nice to her kid knew she could become friends with Alyssa. The two women wound up talking about art and it hit Jamie that she would be the perfect addition to the article.

  Alyssa’s artwork captivated the connoisseur and average tourist, but she was humble about her work and, in Jamie’s opinion, didn’t charge enough for it. Alyssa was Miss America pretty, with mocha skin and delicate features. Her warm brown eyes invited you in, but there was also a tinge of sadness in them, something Jamie could certainly relate to. Alyssa turned out to be the hard one to convince, but Jamie promised her that what she did with her vineyard paintings for the community and for women in general was important and needed to be featured in the article. Alyssa finally agreed. Granted, Jamie had done most of her convincing over dinner and wine with the group, but that night also cemented a friendship among the women.

  At first the four of them would all meet sporadically for dinner, an occasional movie, a card game. But then they thought, why not get together regularly? The response and success of Jamie’s original article about these women bumped up the magazine’s numbers with the female population. Women were reading Wine Lover’s along with their usual women’s magazines. At least they were in their part of the world. An idea came to Jamie and she suggested that their get-togethers should be over wine, where they could talk about the wines that they were drinking, and what they would pair them with. The other three loved the idea—any excuse for friendship, food and wine sounded good to them.

  Their time spent with each other consisted of a bit of gossip, sharing secrets, the occasional shedding of tears, and always a ton of laughter. Jamie chronicled these get-togethers, which took place every other Sunday evening, beginning at the cocktail hour of five o’clock—The Happy Hour.

  At first they tried coming up with some kind of group name like The Decanted Divas, which was sort of fun, but a bit too corny. They tossed around Grapevine Girls, but that one reminded them all way too much of the Eighties TV show The Golden Girls starring Bea Arthur and Betty White. Jamie had said, “We might all be middle-aged or close to it, but I’m thinking we’re not ready for bingo down at the senior center. I’m not going for Grapevine Girls.”

  They almost chose The Vineyard Vixens—Danielle’s suggestion—but every time any one of them said the word vixen, it started a chain of laughter bringing tears to their eyes. “It is funny,” Danielle said. “Me a vixen? Please! My husband left me because he was bored with our sex life.” She laughed again, but Jamie and the others knew that it wasn’t as funny to Danielle as she tried to make it.

  “Screw it, we don’t need a name,” Kat said, unclipping her light brown hair and letting it fall to her shoulders. “It’s like a happy hour.”

  They all nodded in agreement and made a schedule as to who would host happy hour on which Sunday.

  The hostess would choose the wine and recipes for the evening. The rules were: no chug-a-lugging (these were tastings, not frat parties), and no driving home buzzed (which oc
casionally happened to one or more of them; Kat’s husband Christian was available to act as a taxi service if needed).

  Tonight was Jamie’s night and, as usual, she was running late. It didn’t help that Jamie always chose some impossible recipe that typically called for some ingredient she’d never heard of. But she couldn’t help herself because as she looked through her cookbooks on the Fridays before her Sundays, she always found a mouthwatering photo that accompanied a complicated recipe. The wine part was easy for her, though. Wineries from all over sent wines to the magazine and someone had to sample them. Of course Jamie reciprocated, writing them up in the Happy Hour monthly column.

  Today was no different as far as the recipe. She’d chosen duck a l’orange. Already five after four and the duck was in the oven, but she had yet to make the saffron potatoes. Nora still hadn’t shown up. Even though times were tight, and she’d let go of the cleaning service, Jamie had had to hire Nora to take care of Dorothy while she was at work and to help out on happy hour Sundays. Nora wasn’t the best housekeeper, even when she bothered to clean and clear clutter at all, but she always made sure Dorothy had her meals and was happy. And Jamie appreciated Nora’s sportsmanship. Taking care of Dorothy came with a certain—um—weirdness. God bless her, but Dorothy truly believed Nora to be Dean Martin.

  While Jamie searched the cupboard for saffron, Dorothy came in, wearing a poodle skirt, a white blouse, and a bow that pulled her long gray hair taut. Her blue eyes, exactly like Nathan’s and Maddie’s, blinked rapidly. “Hi, honey. Has Dean called? I thought we had a date.”

  “No, Mom. I’m sorry. He hasn’t called. But he should be here soon.”

  Dorothy laughed girlishly and did a twirl as well as a seventy-seven-year-old woman could manage. Actually, her twirls were still quite good. Dorothy, who’d been a dancer in her younger years, had also worked in Hollywood for some time. Rumor had it that after she divorced Nate’s dad, she’d partaken in a few scandalous affairs with notorious hot shots and bad boys in the entertainment business. Now, a tendency to fall back into yesteryear had left poor Dorothy not only believing that Nora the housekeeper embodied Dean Martin, but there were days that she imagined that the UPS driver and mailman were Frank Sinatra or Elvis. Yes—Elvis. Jamie loved the outfits she donned for her dates with Elvis.”

  “Where’s Nathan? He should be home by now. School is out.” Dorothy looked at her wrist, at the watch that wasn’t there, and tapped it. “He is supposed to come straight home. Dinner will be ready soon.” She shook her head. “That boy.”

  Jamie walked around the kitchen counter and put her hands on Dorothy’s shoulders. “Mom. It’s me. Jamie. Nathan is gone. Remember? He is an angel now.” She swallowed hard. Dorothy frequently forgot that Nate was no longer with them, something Jamie wished she could do. Countless times she wished she could live in Dorothy’s world, a world where Nate still existed.

  Every time she heard her husband’s name, a weight pulled down on her heart. Her breath shortened and sorrow closed her throat, but Dorothy couldn’t understand.

  “Jamie! Yes. You are such a nice girl. I always liked you. You are so much better than that Ann Marie that Nathan thought he wanted to marry. You came home with him and it was a ray of sunshine walking through the door. Deano thought you were a doll. You need to call Nathan and tell him to come home. He’s been gone too long.”

  “I know, Mom. You’re right. Why don’t you go watch some TV and I’ll let you know when Dean shows up?” Nora had better hurry her butt up, because Jamie’s sweet mother-in-law needed a boyfriend.

  “Good girl. I’ll do that. Will you bring me some sherry while I wait?”

  “Of course.”

  Four-thirty rolled around. Maddie would be home any minute from her Uncle David and Aunt Susan’s place in Marin County.

  The doorbell rang. “Nora!” Jamie yelled, half exasperated, half relieved, as she opened the door. Nora scurried past her, removed her purse, and laid it on the sofa. She then said something in Spanish that Jamie thought to be an apology—either that her brother or brother’s wife was sick and needed help. It went something like this. “Lo siento. Mi wife de mi hermanos esta esicky.”

  “Your esposa is sick?”

  She smiled and shook her head. “No. Es mi hermano.”

  “Hermano? Hermano? Hermano?” Where in the world was the Spanish/English dictionary at? In her office upstairs.

  “Es mi brother.”

  “Your brother esta infermo?” Oh yeah, hermano is brother. Should have known that.

  “Su esposa.” Nora crossed her arms and looked at her with a ‘you are so dumb’ expression.

  “His wife?”

  She tossed up her hands, nodded, and headed for the kitchen, where she gasped at the mess Jamie had created and immediately began cleaning. This was how their relationship went. They spoke Spanglish to each other with Nora basically in control, and typically aggrieved with Jamie. Nora was almost always late and sometimes didn’t show up at all (on Sundays). But she always had a fabulous excuse and she definitely had the knowledge that there was no way in hell Jamie was ever going to find someone to clean her house (sort of) and take care of Dorothy for two hundred dollars a week, as well as make the trek out on her Sundays. She’d wedged Jamie between a rock and a hard place, and she knew it. So Jamie dealt with it.

  As Nora scurried around the kitchen attempting to clean it, Jamie checked on the duck and decided to turn the heat up a little. The potatoes were boiling but she still hadn’t found the saffron. Maddie bounded in the side door off the kitchen, loaded down with shopping bags. “Hi, Mommy.”

  Jamie stopped the saffron search and wrapped her arms around her daughter. “Hi baby. Where’re Uncle David and Aunt Susan?”

  “They said to tell you that they had to get back to the city because they have a dinner or something tonight.”

  “Oh.” Jamie peered out the kitchen window to see David’s Mercedes pulling out of the driveway. This seemed to be becoming the norm with Nate’s brother. Maddie’s visits with her aunt and uncle typically meant gifts galore. Then when David and Susan would bring her home they would visit for less than ten minutes, say hi to Dorothy and leave. Today they hadn’t even bothered to get out of the car. With a sigh and frown, Jamie shook her head. Unbelievable. A heart to heart with her husband’s brother was overdue and necessary. “Look at you. Looks like you got a few things.”

  Maddie smiled widely. “Check this out, Mom.” She opened a bag and took out Ghirardelli chocolates, a purple cashmere sweater and a pair of True Religion jeans. “Aunt Susan bought them for me. She said they’ll be perfect for next fall. Her personal shopper picked them out just for me. And Uncle David took me to the bookstore and he got me a bunch of new books I can’t wait to read. They’re in my suitcase at the door. Can you bring it in for me? It’s kinda heavy.”

  “Sure, sweetie. Sounds like you had fun.” A tightness crept into her shoulders and neck. The jeans alone had to have cost over a hundred dollars.

  “I had a great time. We saw the new movie with Matt Damon in it, and then last night we watched Mamma Mia again on DVD, and we ate at Auntie Sue’s favorite restaurant. It was the best Mexican food ever,” she squealed.

  “That’s wonderful, honey.”

  “Where’s Grandma? I want to tell her about it, even though she won’t remember.”

  “Waiting for her suitor.”

  Maddie smiled. “Who is it supposed to be tonight?”

  “Dean, of course.”

  Maddie rolled her eyes. “Should have known. Oh, my gosh. I can’t believe I almost forgot, but the best part this weekend was that Aunt Susan got a horse.”

  “She got a horse?”

  Maddie nodded. “It’s amazing. He’s soooo beautiful and sweet. He’s sorrel, which Aunt Susan explained is like a reddish brown, and he has a blaze on his face, and he jumps!”

  Jamie remembered that Susan grew up riding horses and as a young woman rode on the show jumping circuit,
but her prized horse had been injured badly, resulting in his having to be put down, so she’d gotten out of the horse world. Apparently she’d gotten back in. “Great. That’s wonderful.”

  “It is, Mom. She said that I can come and ride with her sometimes. I want to go again next weekend. They said that I could. Aunt Susan even said that she’d get riding lessons for me!”

  The muscles in Jamie’s neck and shoulders tightened further. “Honey, I think that’s great, but we need to talk about this, and right now my friends are coming over.”

  “But Mom. I can tell you’re going to say no.”

  “I didn’t say no. I said that we need to talk about it, but not now.”

  “But I want to.”

  “Nevertheless, I need you to either go in and watch TV with Grandma, or read one of your new books, or find something to do in your room. We will discuss this later. I am expecting company soon.” Jamie stood up straight and then, oh no, that smell. Burning. The duck!

  “Señora Jamie!” Nora yelled.

  “I know, I know.” Grabbing hot pads off the counter, she pulled open the oven to see that things were only a tad crispy but not burnt. She took the duck out and pulled at a wing. Hmmm. Not at all appetizing and nothing like the photo in the cookbook.

  As if on cue, Nora grabbed the hot pads and the duck from her and dumped it into the trash. She headed to the fridge and took out cheeses and some fruit, and went to the cupboard for crackers. Jamie turned off the stove. So much for duck a l’orange and saffron mashed potatoes.

  “Mommy.” Maddie placed her hands on her hips.

  “Not now, Maddie.”

  Jamie turned in time to see her storm off toward her room. Great way to welcome the kid home, but Susan and David obviously weren’t doing her any favors. Horses! Now it was horses!

  Jamie kicked the trash can and Nora’s eyebrows went up in scorn. “I know. I know. Don’t look at me like that, though.”