Alexander enlisted. He wanted to marry me before he went overseas. I had all of a week to make my decision.
“It must have been a nightmare for you,” Olivia said, wondering for the first time if she would have liked to live through those days after all.
They had finished clearing the patio table and were wandering into the vineyard. It made sense that Natalie needed the vines around her when she told this part of the story. The vines were a major player—and beautiful ones they were. Olivia could see the change that moving from June to July had brought. The leaves were a richer green now, reaching the higher wire in greater numbers, and though the grapes remained small and hard, with this day’s sun there was an air of promise.
“It happened so fast,” Natalie said, sounding overwhelmed.
“Where was Carl at this point?”
“Guadalcanal.”
“Did he know what was going on?”
Natalie didn’t answer at first. She left the path and started down a row of vines, putting a hand out to graze a leaf here and there. “Not until after the wedding,” she finally said.
“Did you try to reach him?”
Natalie looked at her then. “To what end? He hadn’t mentioned a wedding—his and mine—either before he left or in the first letters he sent. My mother was pressuring me. My father was pressuring me. Alexander was pressuring me.”
Ever the romantic, Olivia said, “But you loved Carl.”
“I was seventeen. I was confused. And I was alone. When I most needed help, my best friend—my soul mate, my other half—was gone. My mother was saying that if I didn’t marry Alexander, Asquonset would fail and my father would die. She was getting weaker by the day, and they had just lost Brad. I was all they had left. I was their only hope.”
Olivia could see the anguish in her eyes even now. They were Suddenly old eyes, bloodshot with misery, heavy with decades of private grief. For the very first time, Natalie looked her age.
Seeming to understand that, awkward with her own transparency, Natalie looked away. But she went on with her tale.
“I kept praying my mother would know why I was torn, but she was too tormented for that. I made the usual arguments—I barely knew Al, I was too young for marriage, Al was too old for me. Finally, when he wanted an answer and I was frantic, I told my mother that I loved Carl. I blurted it right out, and she didn’t blink an eyelash. She asked where Carl was in our time of need and whether he could come up with enough money to save things. I had no answer. Alexander was pushing to get married within the week. I didn’t know what to do.”
“What about Jeremiah and Brida?” Olivia asked. “Didn’t they speak up on Carl’s behalf?”
Smiling sadly, Natalie cradled a bunch of baby grapes in her hand. “I talked with Brida, but they were in an untenable position. They worked for my father. He put the roof over their heads and food on their table. They were acutely aware of that—and grateful. Brida had a terrible case of arthritis. She wasn’t old, but the damp air wreaked havoc with her joints. She couldn’t do some of the things she used to, and no one complained. So Jeremiah and Brida felt a special loyalty to my parents for that.”
“And not to their own son?” Olivia asked in dismay.
“Yes, to their own son.” Natalie paused.
“And?”
“They loved me. But there was a girl in Ireland, the daughter of dear friends there. They had always dreamed that she and Carl would marry.”
“Did he know her?”
“No.”
“Then it was a bogus claim,” Olivia decided.
Natalie smiled. “Is that so? How do you know?”
Olivia looked at her in a moment’s pause and let out a breath. “I don’t.”
“For what it’s worth,” Natalie relented, “I had my own moments of wondering if Brida had contrived the story to make my decision easier. She was a bright woman. She knew I was between a rock and a hard place. She loved me, but she loved my parents, too. She was convinced that the money would help, and a healthy Asquonset was good for her family, too. Besides, her story wasn’t bogus. There was a young woman in Ireland. But it was years after the war before Carl would even consider marriage, and then not to her.”
“So,” Olivia said, trying not to sound judgmental, “you agreed to marry Alexander.”
Natalie grew defensive. “I tried to buy time. I said that we should let him go off and plan a wedding for when he came home on leave. I kept thinking that maybe Carl would show up and marry me first—and that my father would have found his dream vine in the meantime, so he wouldn’t need the money. But I was bucking the tide. Young girls were getting married right and left. It became the patriotic thing to do—you know, send our boys off to war with one more reason to want to win. So, yes, I agreed to marry Alexander. And then it was like it was done. I had barely given the word and there I was, in the little church in town, promising to love Alexander forever, for better or for worse.”
“What did you feel for him then?” Olivia asked.
Natalie didn’t answer. She walked on through the rows of vines, murmuring gentle words of encouragement to the grapes. Simon was nowhere in sight. Olivia heard the distant drone of a machine that said he was in another field. He was shorthanded. He would work on the holiday. Olivia knew the type.
Not that he was like Ted. That kind of workaholism was bad. She couldn’t say that Simon’s was. His felt more like dedication.
Besides, here was Olivia, working on the holiday, too. Only this didn’t feel like work.
“Natalie?”
The older woman stopped walking. She studied the clusters on the vines for a minute before asking Olivia, “Do you know what grapes these are?”
“Yes. They’re Gewürztraminer.”
“Bet you didn’t know that name before you got here.”
“No,” Olivia confessed.
“Many people don’t. The word gewürzt means ‘spicy.’ The wine we produce from these grapes is spicy and light. This was one of the first varietals that we grew successfully. Gewürztraminer loves a cool climate. It’s commonly grown in Alsace, in France. That’s where my father got the rootstock.”
“With Alexander’s money?”
Natalie made a mocking sound. “Not … quite.”
“Uh-oh. Why not?”
She shot Olivia a crooked smile. “That’s for another installment. We haven’t finished with this one. I believe you were asking what I felt for Alexander.” She frowned. “The answer is complex.”
When she said nothing for a long minute, Olivia helped her out. “What was your wedding day like?”
I was numb. Out of breath. Have you ever been swept along by a powerful wave at the beach? Or by a crowd of people? It was like that. Once I said that I would marry Alexander, I was swept along by a powerful wave of events. Before I knew it, I was standing there at that altar in my white dress, with Alexander beside me in his brand-new uniform. We made a handsome couple. I say that without arrogance. I can do that, at my age.
You’ve seen the pictures. I was smiling, wasn’t I? Didn’t I look happy? And it wasn’t an act. Every girl dreams of her wedding day. I was marrying a fine man from a fine family. I was marrying a mature man. He would take care of me—he would take care of all of us once he returned from the war. He was the answer to my family’s woes.
Did I think about Carl that day? No. I couldn’t. It would have been too painful. I didn’t allow myself to think about him that whole week. Just … blotted him out.
What else could I do? The decision was made. My betrothal was a fait accompli. There was no purpose in wondering where Carl was and what he was thinking.
I’m not proud to admit that. It doesn’t say much about my love for him that I could push him out of my mind and smile through my marriage to another man. I’ve often asked myself how I did it. Carl asked me, too, when we finally talked, but that wasn’t for four years. He was overseas that long. Again, though, I’m getting ahead of myself.
<
br /> My wedding that day in March of ‘42 wasn’t elaborate. My parents couldn’t afford it, and they had a perfect excuse for modesty, what with Brad’s death and the war and such short notice. There was a ceremony at the church, followed by dinner at our house. Alexander and I drove to Boston for a two-day honeymoon, before he left for the front.
So. What did I feel for my new husband? I felt all the things that many a girl marrying in the early days of the war felt. I was young. I was advancing my wedding date because of the war, but I believed that I was doing the right thing. I was a bride, and I was excited about that. I bought into the role. I had a new husband and a new name. I had the highest hopes for the future, even with him heading off to war—and I was philosophical about that. My husband was fighting for our country. I was proud. I put a starred flag in our window to show that we had a boy at the front.
I stayed with my family in Asquonset. Many young girls did that when their new husbands went to war. Alexander wanted to settle in Asquonset. His family owned shoe factories in New Bedford and Fall River, both an easy drive from the farm. He promised to build us a house of our own when he returned. In the meantime, I had to finish high school, so I had to be close. Besides, my parents needed me.
At the beginning, I wrote a letter to Alexander each night. Each night, when that letter was addressed and sealed, I tried to write to Carl. Night after night I struggled with the words. Finally I realized that there weren’t any right ones for what I had to say. So I simply wrote out my thoughts. It was an artless letter, blunt and without pretense. By that time, though, I was angry. The reality of the situation had begun to sink in. I was married. I was tied to another man for the rest of my life. It was legal. It was religious. It was permanent.
But it should have been Carl.
Because it wasn’t, he became the bad guy in my mind. I decided that he had put his feeling for war before his feelings for me. I reasoned, selfishly, that in racing to enlist without a thought to my welfare, he had betrayed me as surely as I had betrayed him—and the letters I received from him each week reinforced that belief. They were newsy notes, telling about the men in his unit, the food, even the showers. They weren’t personal. They weren’t love letters.
He and I were talking about that just last week. He thought for sure that he must have said something about love, because he remembers that was what he was thinking and feeling. But I showed him. I took out the letters. There were no words to that effect. He frowned—legitimately puzzled, bless his soul—and Said that he must have been afraid the censors would black out anything personal.
I’m not sure the Japanese were into collecting personal information about individual servicemen, but I gave him the benefit of the doubt.
Anyway, back in 1942, I sent my letter off. In the two months that Carl had been gone, I had received six letters from him. I never received another after that.
“Not one?” Olivia asked. They were heading back to the house now, walking slowly under an ominous gray sky. “Not even a little note of congratulations?”
Natalie had her hands linked behind her in a pose that suggested impotence. “Nothing. It was my punishment. He was angry and hurt. He destroyed every bit of evidence that he had with him of my existence.”
“Like Simon burning his house?” Olivia asked.
Natalie shot her a curious look. “Who told you about that?”
“Simon,” she said and realized her mistake when Natalie raised a brow. “You know me,” she said with a wry grin. “Mention something about the past and I foam at the mouth with questions. I got him going about his wife and daughter. He wasn’t pleased with me.”
“He isn’t pleased with many people. Keep at it.”
“Uh-uh. Not me. A therapist could spend years getting Simon to talk. I’m only here for the summer, and I’m no therapist.”
“He deserves happiness.”
“Don’t we all?” Olivia mused and changed the subject. “What was it like the first time you saw Carl?”
“After the war?” Natalie asked. “It was hard, but not as hard as I’d imagined it would be.”
“Why not?”
“Because we needed him. All hell had broken loose here. Jeremiah was trying to run things himself, and desperately needed help.”
“Where was your father?”
“In the house. He didn’t get out of bed much after my mother died.”
“When did that happen?”
“A year after my wedding. I had a baby by then, and, thanks to Alexander’s leave time, two by the end of the war. I was running the house, raising children, nursing my father, working with Jeremiah, who was in none too great spirits himself.” They reached the patio and stopped walking. “Brida’s arthritis was the crippling kind. She could do less and less, though she tried. The more she tried—and the more she failed—the more heartbreaking it was for those of us who watched. Jeremiah became her nurse, on top of everything else that he had to do. He just couldn’t—just couldn’t do it all.”
“Where was Alexander?”
“England.”
“I mean, after the war.”
“England,” Natalie repeated. “Then France. He was gone for the better part of five years. To this day, I think he loved intelligence work more than anything else he ever did. V-E Day—V-J Day—our boys started streaming home. Not Alexander. He stayed on to gather evidence of war crimes for the trials.”
“But you needed him here,” Olivia argued.
“Carl was back.”
Carl was back. As though that said it all. But it certainly didn’t, in Olivia’s opinion. “So what was it like having him here?”
“Awkward at first,” Natalie said after a moment’s thought. “We didn’t know what to say to each other. We had to redefine our relationship.”
Olivia tried to imagine how it was for Carl. “I’m surprised he came back to Asquonset. Seeing you must have been painful.”
“He believed in the cause. That was the thing about Carl. To him, Asquonset wasn’t a job. It was a way of life. He truly believed that one day we would be successful grape growers and wine makers. He wanted to help make it happen. Besides, he wanted to be near his parents.”
“The romantic in me says he wanted to be near you, too.”
Natalie glanced at the house just as Madalena and Joaquin came out the door. “There may have been some of that, too,” she murmured distractedly. Then she paused and called out, her voice wary, “Madalena? Are you and Joaquin going somewhere?”
They were dressed in a way that Olivia, for one, had never seen them. Not dressed for work. Not dressed for church. They were dressed for … travel.
Madalena’s face was covered with guilt.
In heavily accented English, Joaquin said, “My sister is ill. We go to Brazil now.”
“Brazil,” Natalie breathed in dismay as she crossed to where they stood. She took Madalena’s hand. “Brazil? For how long?”
Madalena looked at her husband.
He said, “My sister, she has seven kids and twelve grandkids.”
“I know that, Joaquin. I’ve been sending them clothes for years.”
“She is ill now. She need help.”
“Can’t we hire someone? I’ll gladly pay.”
“She need family.”
“For how long?” Natalie asked again. When neither of them answered, she said, “You’re leaving me. You’re leaving because of my marriage. That’s it, isn’t it?”
Again, Joaquin spoke for the two. “It’s time. We’re tired.”
“Fine,” Natalie said, nodding. “I can understand that. But at least wait until after the wedding.”
Joaquin shook his head. “My sister.”
“Then go for a week. Go for the rest of July. But come back in August.” When neither of them said anything more, Natalie turned to Olivia. “Try to convince them, please.”
Olivia did her best. She said that Madalena’s roast duck was the best she’d ever eaten, and that Joaquin h
ad an unrivaled way with the roses. She said that Tess had refused to eat salad until she tasted Madalena’s garlic dressing, and that her old Toyota had never run as smoothly as it had since Joaquin had worked on it. She said that if ever the two of them were needed at Asquonset, it was now. She asked if money was the issue.
“No,” they both said with such ferocity that Olivia sensed it was a lost cause. She sent Natalie a look that said as much.
But Natalie already knew, judging from the look of resignation on her face. She pressed several fingers to her forehead in a moment of gathering her wits. Then, ever the lady, she said, “Come. We’ll go inside. I’ll pay you what you’re owed.”
OLIVIA STAYED ON THE PATIO, not so much because she expected Natalie to return but because she felt unsettled.
Unsettled? No, that wasn’t it. Disappointed. She understood why Natalie had married Alexander. Given the circumstances, she supposed she might have done the same thing. But without regrets? without thinking of Carl day and night? Could she have done that? Did that kind of love just end?
Sinking back in her chair, Olivia rested her head, closed her eyes, and thought about the men who had passed through her life. She revisited each relationship, searching for something she may have missed at the time. Not a one came close to what Natalie and Carl had had.
Olivia would give her right arm for that kind of love. If she ever loved someone that way, she would never let go.
“I’ve let you down.”
Olivia jumped. She hadn’t heard Natalie return. “No, I was just thinking. Are Madalena and Joaquin gone?”
“Gone.”
“I’m sorry I couldn’t help. They seemed to have their minds made up.”
“And their bags packed. It wasn’t worth arguing. But if you’re thinking that I accepted that as easily as I accepted losing Carl—that I just cave in and move on—you’re wrong.”
“I wasn’t thinking that.”
“But you were thinking something like it.” Natalie lowered herself to the foot of the lounge chair. “My children are thinking it, too. They’re thinking that I buried Alexander and moved on”—she snapped her fingers—“just like that. But it isn’t just like that. It never was. What I feel here”—she touched her heart—“doesn’t always jibe with this.” She touched her head. “You can know, intellectually, that a course of action is the right one, even when you don’t want it to be. In this instance, I know that Madalena and Joaquin have to leave. His sister really is sick. He needs to help her. The timing is suspicious, but truthfully, if they’re unhappy with the prospect of my marrying Carl, then they shouldn’t be here. Carl has given too much to this place to have people here who think less than the world of him.”
The Vineyard Page 21
