Peter's Christmas

by M. L. Buchman

  His career was roaring ahead, his business fast and smooth, but, now that he considered it, he really didn’t give a damn.

  His life looked perfect, but—“Don’t think it!” —but his autobahn mind finished, “it wasn’t.”

  Russell left his silent reflection to its own thoughts and went through the back door that led to his apartment, closing it tightly on the perfect BMW, the perfect rose on the seat, and somewhere, lost among a hundred other props from dozens of other shoots, the long pair of perfect red-leather Chanel boots that had been wrapped around the most expensive legs in Manhattan. He didn’t care if he never walked back through that door again. He’d been doing his art by rote, and how God-awful sad was that?

  And he shot commercial art. He’d never had the patience to do art for art’s sake. No draw for him. No fire. He left the apartment dark, only a soft glow from the blind-covered windows revealing the vaguest outlines of the framed art on the wall. Even that almost overwhelmed him.

  He didn’t want to see the huge prints by the art artists: autographed Goldsworthy, Liebowitz, and Joseph Francis’ photomosaics for the moderns. A hundred and fifty more rare, even one of a kind prints, all the way back through Bourke-White to his prize, an original Daguerre. The collection that the Museum of Modern Art kept begging to borrow for a show. He bypassed the circle of chairs and sofas that could be a playpen for two or a party for twenty. He cracked the fridge in the stainless steel and black kitchen searching for something other than his usual beer.

  A bottle of Krug.

  Maybe he was just being grouchy after a long day’s work.

  Milk.

  No. He’d run his enthusiasm into the ground but good.

  Juice even.

  Would he miss the camera if he never picked it up again?

  No reaction.

  Nothing.

  Not even a twinge.

  That was an emptiness he did not want to face. Alone, in his apartment, in the middle of the world’s most vibrant city.

  Russell turned away, and just as the door swung closed, the last sliver of light, the relentless cold blue-white of the refrigerator bulb, shone across his bed. A quick grab snagged the edge of the door and left the narrow beam illuminating a long pale form on his black bedspread.

  The Chanel boots weren’t in the studio. They were still wrapped around those three thousand dollar-an-hour legs. The only clothing on a perfect body, five foot-eleven of intensely toned female anatomy, right down to her exquisitely stair-mastered behind. Her long, white-blond hair, a perfect Godiva over the tanned breasts. Except for their too exact symmetry, even the closest inspection didn’t reveal the work done there. One leg raised just ever so slightly to hide what was meant to be revealed later. Discovered.

  Melanie.

  By the steady rise and fall of her flat stomach, he knew she’d fallen asleep, waiting for him to finish in the studio.

  How long had they been an item? Two months? Three?

  She’d made him feel alive. At least when he was with her. The image of the supermodel in his bed. On his arm at yet another SoHo gallery opening, dazzling New York’s finest at another three-star restaurant, wooing another gathering of upscale people with her ever so soft, so sensual, so studied French accent. Together they were wired into the heart of the in-crowd.

  But that wasn’t him, was it? It didn’t sound anything like the Russell he once knew.

  Perhaps “they” were about how he looked on her arm?

  Did she know tomorrow was the annual Thanksgiving ordeal at his parents? That he’d rather die than attend? Any number of eligible woman floating about who’d finagled an invitation in hopes of snaring one of People Magazine’s “100 Most Eligible.” Heir to a billion or some such, but wealthy enough on his own, by his own sweat. Number twenty-four this year, up from forty-seven the year before despite Tom Cruise being available yet again.

  No.

  Not Melanie. It wasn’t the money that drew her. She wanted him. But more, she wanted the life that came with him, wrapped in the man package. She wanted The Life. The one that People Magazine readers dreamed about between glossy pages.

  His fingertips were growing cold where they held the refrigerator door cracked open.

  If he woke her there’d be amazing sex. Or a great party to go to. Or…

  Did he want “Or”? Did he want more from her? Sex. Companionship. An energy, a vivacity, a thirst he feared that he lacked. Yes.

  But where hid that smooth synchronicity like light-image-camera-man? Where lurked that perfect flow from one person to another? Did she feel it? Could he… ever again?

  “More?” he whispered into the darkness to test the sound.

  The door slid shut, escaped from numb fingers, plunging the apartment back into darkness, taking Melanie along with it.

  His breath echoed in the vast darkness. Proof that he was alive, if nothing more.

  Time to close the studio. Time to be done with Russell Incorporated.

  Then what?

  Maybe Angelo would know what to do. He always claimed he did. Maybe this time Russell would actually listen to his almost-brother, though he knew from the experience of being himself for the last thirty years that was unlikely. Seattle. Damn! He’d have to go to bloody Seattle to find his best friend.

  He could guarantee that wouldn’t be a big hit with Melanie.

  Now if he only knew if that was a good thing or bad.

  # # #

  JANUARY 1

  If you were still alive, you’d pay for this one, Daddy.” The moment the words escaped her lips, Cassidy Knowles slapped a hand over her mouth to negate them, but it was too late.

  The sharp wind took her words and threw them back into the pine trees, guilt and all. It might have stopped her, if it didn’t make this the hundredth time she’d cursed him this morning.

  She leaned into the wind and forged her way downhill until the muddy path broke free from the mossy smell of the trees. Her Stuart Weitzman boots were long since soaked through, and now her feet were freezing. The two-inch heels had nearly flipped her into the mud a dozen different times.

  Cassidy Knowles stared at the lighthouse. It perched upon a point of rock, tall and white, with its red roof as straight and snug as a prim bonnet. A narrow trail traced along the top of the breakwater leading to the lighthouse. The parking lot, much to her chagrin, was empty; six, beautiful, empty spaces.

  “Sorry, ma’am,” park rangers were always polite when telling you what you couldn’t do. “The parking lot by the light is reserved for physically-challenged visitors only. You’ll have to park here. It is just a short walk to the lighthouse.”

  The fact that she was dressed for a nice afternoon lunch at Pike Place Market safe in Seattle’s downtown rather than a blustery mile-long walk on the first day of the year didn’t phase the ranger in the slightest.

  Cassidy should have gone home, would have, if it hadn’t been for the letter stuffed deep in her pocket. So, instead of a tasty treat in a cozy deli, she’d buttoned the top button of her suede Bernardo jacket and headed down the trail. At least the promised rain had yet to arrive, so the jacket was only cold, not wet. The stylish cut had never been intended to fight off the bajillion mile-an-hour gusts that snapped it painfully against her legs. And her black leggings ranged about five layers short of tolerable and a far, far cry from warm.

  At the lighthouse, any part of her that had been merely numb slipped right over to quick frozen. Leaning into the wind to stay upright, tears streaming from her eyes, she could think of a thing or two to tell her father despite his recent demise and her general feelings about the usefulness of upbraiding a dead man.

  “What a stupid present!” the wind tore her shout word-by-word, syllable-by-syllable and sent flying back toward her nice warm car and the smug park ranger.

  A calendar. He’d given h
er a stupid calendar of stupid lighthouses and a stupid letter to open at each stupid one. He’d been very insistent, made her promise. One she couldn’t ignore. A deathbed promise.

  Cassidy leaned grimly forward to start walking only to have the wind abruptly cease. She staggered, nearly planting her face on the pavement before another gust sent her crabbing sideways. With resolute force, she planted one foot after another until she’d crossed that absolutely vacant parking lot with its six empty spaces and staggered along the top of the breakwater to reach the lighthouse itself. No handicapped people crazy enough to come here New Year’s morning. No people at all for that matter.

  The building’s wall was concrete, worn smooth by a thousand storms and a hundred coats of brilliant white paint. With the wind practically pinning her to the outside of the building, she peeked into one of the windows. The wind blew her hair about so that it beat on her eyes and mouth trying to simultaneously blind and choke her. With one hand, she grabbed the unruly mass mostly to one side. With the other she shaded the dusty window. The cobwebbed glass revealed an equally unkempt interior.

  No lightkeeper sitting in his rocking chair before a merry fire. No smoking pipe. No lighthouse cat curled in his lap. Some sort of a rusty engine not attached to anything. A bucket of old tools. A couple of paint cans.

  A high wave crashed into the rocks with a thundering shudder that ran up through the heels of her boots and whipped a chill spray into the wind. Salt water on suede.

  Daddy now owed her a new coat as well.

  Cassidy edged along the foundation until she found a calmer spot, a bit of windshadow behind the lighthouse where the wind chill ranked merely miserable rather than horrific on the suck-o-meter. Squatting down behind one of the breakwater’s boulders helped a tiny bit more. She peeled off her thin leather gloves and blew against her fingertips to warm them enough so that they’d work. Once she’d regained some modicum of feeling, she pulled out the letter.

  She couldn’t feel his writing, though she ran her fingertips over it again and again. His Christmas present. A five-dollar calendar of Washington lighthouses from the hospital gift store and a dozen thin envelopes wrapped in a old x-ray folder with no ribbon, no paper.

  In the end he’d foiled her final Christmas hunt. It had been her great yearly quest. The ultimate grail of childhood, finding the key present before Christmas morning. There was no present he could hide that she couldn’t find. Not the Cabbage Patch Kid when she was six; the one she’d had to hold with her arm in a cast, from falling off the kitchen stool she’d dragged into her father’s closet. Not the used VW Rabbit he’d hidden out in the wine shed thinking that she never went there anymore. And she didn’t, except for some reason the day before her eighteenth Christmas.

  A part of her wanted to crumple the letter up and throw it into the sea. It was too soon. She didn’t want to face the pain again.

  Too soon.

  The rest of her did what it supposed to do. The dutiful daughter opened the envelope and pinned the letter against her thigh so that she could read the slashing scrawl that was her father’s. Even as weak with sickness as he must have been, it looked scribed in stone. His bold-stroke writing gave the words a force and strength just as his deep voice had once sounded strong enough to keep the world at bay for his small girl.

  Dearest Ice Sweet,

  He’d always called her that.

  Icewine. The grapes traditionally harvested on her birthday, December twenty-first. “The sweetest wine of all, my little ice sweet girl.” By the age of five she knew about the sugar content of icewine, Riesling, Chardonnay, and a dozen others. By eight she could identify scores of vintages just by the scent of the cork and hundreds by their logos though she’d yet to taste more than thimblefuls of watered wine at any one time.

  Cassidy stared at the waves digging angrily at the rocks. Spray slashed sideways by the wind dragged tears from her eyes even as she struggled to blink them dry. She hadn’t cried in a long time and she was damned if she was going to start now simply because she was cold and there was a hole in her heart.

  Seven days. She’d looked away for a one moment seven days ago and he was gone. Christmas morning. He’d hung on long enough to tell her of his last present, hidden in plain sight in the used X-ray folder on the side table. A long list of crossed-out names had shuttled films back and forth across Northwest Hospital. Last used by someone named Barash. No meaning for her whatsoever.

  I bought this calendar the day you moved back to Seattle. Marked in all the “dates.” Now I know that I won’t get to go with you. I’m sorry to leave you so young.

  “I’m twenty-nine, Daddy.” But it felt young. Her birthday gone unremarked because he’d never woken that day so close to his last. The hole in her heart was so broad that it would never be filled.

  He’d only been gone a week. Cremated, waked, and ashes spread on his beloved vineyard by the permission of the new owners. They’d owned his vineyard for five years, but still, they were the new ones. It still wasn’t right, them living in the place where her father belonged. She could still picture him striding among the vines, rubbing the soil in his palm, showing his only child the wonders of the changing seasons, the lifecycle of a grapevine, and the nurturing of honeybees.

  For our first “date” I will just tell you how proud I am of you. My daughter took a vintner’s education and turned herself into the best food-and-wine columnist ever.

  He always believed in her. Always rooted for her. Always cheered her on. He’d been the same way with her boyfriends. Always welcoming them when they arrived. Always consoling her when they were gone. No judgment, not even on the ones she should have avoided like a bottle of rotgut Thunderbird.

  The wind rattled the paper sharply, drawing her attention back to the letter.

  You are so like me. You figure out what feels right and you just go do it, damn the consequences. I could never fault you for leaving. I always did what I wanted, too. Saw it and went right for it, no discussion needed. All the while wearing perfect blinders that blocked out everything else. You got that from me. You come by your whimsical stubbornness honestly, Ice Sweet.

  She wasn’t stubborn, years of careful planning had led her this far. Even her move to Seattle to be with him had been calculated, though she never told him about that. She shifted on the hard rock that was in imminent danger of freezing her butt.

  Her father kept apologizing for all the wrong things. Seattle had ended up being a great career move, or was becoming one as she’d hoped. In New York, she had worked as one of a thousand food and wine reviewers. Okay one in fifty, maybe even one in twenty-five, she was damn good, but there were only three women at that level. The other twenty-two were members of longstanding in the old boys’ club.

  “We’re looking for someone with a more refined palate.” Read as someone who was “male.”

  She’d let go of her sublet in Manhattan when she’d found out he was sick. Bought a condo in Seattle to be near, but not too near him on Bainbridge Island. Helped him move into the elder-care by Northgate when he couldn’t care for himself any longer, and from there to Northwest Hospital where she’d lived out his last two weeks in the chair by his bed.

  The Village Voice dropped her the day she left Manhattan. That had hurt as they’d run her first-ever review, a short piece on Jim and Charlie’s Punk and Wine Bistro. Jim and Charlie’s was still there, partly thanks to that review that was still framed and hung in the center of the bar’s mirror.

  But in Seattle she was rapidly rising to the very upper crust of the apple pie. Her reviews ran in every local paper. The San Francisco Chronicle had picked her up for their Travel section the following week making it difficult to stay grumpy about the loss of The Voice. Then AAA took her national with their magazines. From there, it hadn’t been a big step to national syndication. Six more months in New York and she’d have still been grinding her way up fro
m the twentieth spot to the nineteenth. She was going to bypass the lot of them by skipping right past the de rigueur hurdles and sitting at the head table herself.

  Her father’s cancer had brought at least that much good. Now if only it hadn’t taken him with it.

  And she wasn’t whimsical, no matter what he thought. Her dad had always described her mother as the organized one. And Cassidy had done her best to be just like her. You didn’t become a topcolumnist by following the wind all willy-nilly.

  If she didn’t hurry, she was going to freeze in place. She chafed at her legs with one hand and then the other, but it didn’t help. She was cold past any cure less than a piping-hot tub bath. She peeked ahead, just two and a bit pages. She turned to the second sheet.

  I started the vineyard after my tour in Vietnam. Got signed off the base and walked out of San Francisco right across the Golden Gate. No home, no job, no one to go back to. Headed up into the hills, don’t even know why or where I was. Walked and hitched ‘til dark, slept, woke with the light, and kept moving.

  One morning, I woke up in a field, leaning against a rotting, wooden fencepost, looking at the saddest little vineyard you could imagine. Poor vines dying of thirst. I found an old bucket and started watering them from a nearby stream. Old man came out to lean on the fence. Watched me quite a while, a couple hours maybe. I didn’t care about him. Those vines were the first thing I’d cared about in a long, long time.

  “You want ‘em?” the old guy asked. “Five hundred bucks and they’re yours.”

  I don’t even remember how it happened. One minute my final pay was in my pocket, then his. Other vets drifted in. I charged them fifty bucks to join. Five of us worked the land, recovered the vines. That was the start of the thirty acres of Knowles Valley Vineyard.

  She’d never heard how his first vineyard started. Didn’t even really know where it was, somewhere in the hills of northern California.

  Though he might have ambled all the way to Oregon for how much she knew.

  Walk the year with me. Let’s take our time. My past is mine, but your future is not. That’s only up to you. I leave you to walk alone, it is a rough trail often over rocky soil. But keep your head high and you’ll go far.