The Vineyard

by Barbara Delinsky

  “What about intense heat? Can that ruin a vintage?”

  “It could. We’ve planted vines that thrive in the kind of cool weather climate we have here on the coast. Usually, it just means earlier ripening and an earlier harvest. I can handle that.”

  “What can’t you handle?” Olivia asked, doubting there was much.

  “Hurricanes,” he said without missing a beat. “Word is this is going to be a bad season.”

  “Here?” In the seven years Olivia had been in Cambridge, there had been only a handful of mild blows. Granted, Rhode Island was on the coast. Still, New England was New England.

  “The Caribbean’s already had two.”

  “But you don’t usually have trouble here, do you?”

  “Oh, we have. Not that I’m looking for trouble”—he shot her a dry look—“but you asked.”

  “How do you protect the vines from a hurricane?”

  “You don’t. You just see that they’re healthy, which means that you do what you normally do in August. You hedge. You layer leaves on the trellis. You monitor for pests. From this point on, I have to be careful about spraying. Some sprays aren’t allowed within a certain number of days of harvest. If harvest comes early, and a spray is prohibited within sixty-six days of that, we’re talking now.”

  Olivia thought about the harvest, and briefly regretted that she wouldn’t be here to see it, to be a part of it. “How do you know when to pick the grapes?”

  “Taste and a refractor. That’s a machine that registers the sugar and acid content. We harvest when the grapes have the optimal balance between the two. If it happens in one group of vines before another, we harvest only the block that’s ripe.”

  “Do you use a machine?”

  “If we’re racing an early frost, we may, but I prefer to do it by hand. We hire extra workers for that. More this year, what with two of my staff gone.” He shot her a look as they walked on. “Speaking of which, how’s the new cook?”

  “Susanne?” Olivia asked only half in jest.

  “No. The cook cook.”

  “You mean Fiona.” Olivia was a minute finding the right words. “Young … willful. She prides herself on knowing how to cook and doesn’t like having Susanne there, but Susanne’s far better at it. She’s trying to teach her, but Fiona resists. The truth is, I don’t think she’s long for Asquonset life.”

  “Is Susanne?” Simon asked with caution.

  “Well, she’s not talking about leaving. I think she’s having fun. Not that she would admit it.”

  “Barely a month till the wedding. Any word from Greg?”

  “I TALKED WITH HIM LAST NIGHT,” Jill told Susanne when she asked. Breakfast was done. They sat on the patio, lingering over coffee. “He’s with a client in Dallas.”

  Susanne put her head back. She felt lazy in the heat. “Is he coming here?” It was no longer a matter of making him share the guilt. She wasn’t feeling guilt now. She was here, she was busy, and if the truth were told, she was having a good time. Her days were filled doing what she loved most, and for once, she had an appreciative audience. But Jill wasn’t quite as content.

  “Not yet.”

  “Is he coming for the wedding?”

  “He says no,” Jill answered. “I think he’s wrong, but when I dare suggest that, he gets defensive. How about you?”

  Mark had asked her the same thing less than an hour ago. “If you’re wondering whether I feel any better about the wedding seeing Mother with Carl, the answer is no. They’re good together, and they’re in love—all that is quite apparent. It also makes a mockery of her relationship with my father. No, I’m only staying until the cook business gets straightened out.”

  Jill leaned forward. “Fiona is not getting straightened out.”

  Susanne knew that. “But maybe her problem is with me. Maybe once I leave and she’s in charge, she’ll be fine.”

  “She may be happier, but will we? Where does she get some of those combinations? Rack of lamb dredged in cardamom? Shrimp on a bed of stewed figs? Kiwi sorbet with peanut brittle bits? I mean, innovation is one thing. Pushed too far, it’s unpalatable. There may be good reason why her restaurant closed. I think you should stay awhile, Susanne.”

  A small part of Susanne could do just that. When the children were young, she had spent most of the summer at Asquonset. The kids had loved the open air, the warmth, the shore breeze. They had loved playing with their grandfather.

  Playing with their grandfather. Not their grandmother, Susanne mused. Alexander was the one who gave piggyback rides and played ball. Granted, he did it on his own schedule, and he was ever the disciplinarian if the playfulness got out of hand, but he was the one who took them to the yacht club and bought them penny candy at Pindman’s. The children would have continued spending summers here if Susanne hadn’t balked. But she couldn’t relax here—because her role model, Natalie, never relaxed. If Natalie wasn’t gardening, she was cleaning closets with Marie, or nosing around the shed, or meeting with her accountant, or joining friends for lunch. She always seemed to have something to do that kept her from Susanne and the children. That made Susanne feel superfluous.

  Obviously, some things never changed. Natalie hadn’t spent more than twenty minutes at a stretch with her since her arrival. True, she wasn’t exactly meeting friends for lunch at the yacht club or planning prewedding soirees. When she wasn’t in the loft, she was outside, often on a cell phone. Fine, she was arranging for people to clean the carpets or groom the rhododendrons. Still, Susanne was her daughter, here for Natalie’s sake. If Natalie didn’t spend time with her, where was the incentive to stay?

  “I’m here only until Fiona shapes up,” she said. “Mother can’t help. She isn’t focused enough.”

  “She’s feeling pressure about the new label look. It’s a major marketing move. She’s very involved in that, Susanne.”

  Susanne grunted. “She certainly likes to think she is.”

  “She is,” Jill insisted. “I’m at the office every day. She’s instrumental in the marketing operation, and not only since Alexander’s death. She has always been involved. Have you read anything of what Olivia’s written?”

  Susanne closed her eyes and lifted her face to the sun. “Nope.”

  “You should. It’s enlightening.”

  “It’s one-sided. My father isn’t here to tell his side.”

  She was delighted when Jill had no answer for that—but her delight was short lived. When Jill finally responded, her voice was more reasonable than Susanne might have liked.

  “This isn’t adversarial. No one’s taking sides. Natalie isn’t denigrating Alexander. She’s simply telling about her part in the growth of Asquonset. Why is it we always knew so much about Alexander and so little about her? And the truth is, it’s because he talked and she didn’t. Now she’s opening up. I think you should read her story, Susanne.”

  We started slowly. For a while, it felt like we were spinning our wheels more than anything else. Wherever he went, Alexander created a vineyard in the minds of the people who listened, but back home, it was still largely experimentation and prayers.

  Image was important. Alexander said that, and I agreed. We added the upper floors to the Great House in the early fifties, perhaps before we could comfortably afford it, but with two active children, we needed the space, and it did look good, I have to admit. We incorporated a picture of the house in our sales kit. Again, this was cultivating the image of success before we had a right to do it, but there was no harm done. It wasn’t as though we weren’t on our way. We did have grapes to sell.

  Chardonnay were the first vines that took conclusively. We planted one acre, then two, then four in successive years. We weren’t thinking of making wine ourselves. We weren’t even thinking of supporting ourselves. Our goal was to add to the acreage at the same time that we found other varietals that would thrive here. To that end, we sold juice from our grapes to vineyards in Europe.

  Why does that surp
rise you? European vineyards have good years and bad, too. Nowadays, we all have tricks up our sleeves to minimize the bad years, but back in the fifties, growing methods were less sophisticated. In a lean year, a vineyard could mix the juice from our grapes with their own and produce a wine that was actually quite respectable. And if the product of our work went into the lesser of their wines? That was fine. We were paid for what we sold them. That meant we had money to buy more vines.

  How did we support ourselves? Corn and potatoes.

  But you’re right. That wasn’t enough. Not to care for a growing family. Not to pay for Alexander’s trips. Not for machinery and fertilizer and pesticides and fungicides.

  How did we manage? I lost many a night’s sleep until I found an answer, and then, when I acted, lost many a night’s sleep worrying that it would fail. Fortunately, it didn’t. Suburbia was an idea whose time had come.

  Let me backtrack a bit. There was a fellow in town who had grown up with my brother and Carl. He visited us when Brad died, then went off to war himself, but he was injured and returned within the year. He had lost the sight in one eye, and though he swore that he could still fight, he was discharged. We used to see each other at Pindman’s. I’d share my dreams about growing a vineyard, and he’d share his dreams about growing a town.

  Yes, a town. He always thought big, Henry Selig did, and there were people who laughed. I never did, lest he laugh at my dream. Both were relatively far-fetched at that point.

  I lost track of him when the war ended. I was so busy trying to hold my life together, and he moved down to New York. Next thing I knew, though, he was back, and suddenly his dream made a great deal of sense. He was looking around him, seeing all those soldiers back from war, many of them with college degrees thanks to the GI Bill, many with wives and growing families and jobs that paid good wages. Those men wanted to buy houses in places where their children could play outdoors and their wives could grow flowers.

  Henry knew how to build houses. He knew how to plan a development that included hundreds of them, and he knew where he wanted to do it. There were small towns within an easy drive of Providence, and large tracts of land that were his for the buying. Suburbs were springing up in other states. He saw no reason why they shouldn’t spring up in Rhode Island.

  All he needed was the money to buy the land and to finance the purchase of building materials.

  I had money. It wasn’t much—I would be but one of many investors—but I had taken it out of the bank loan and set it aside. I didn’t know why at the time. Security, I guess. I had lived through the Depression. I liked knowing I had something stashed away just in case.

  No. Alexander didn’t know I had it.

  Why not?

  Oh, dear. How to explain. Maybe I felt I deserved something, after having been let down so badly. Maybe I was worried that he would spend it and lose it. Yes, I suppose it was a matter of trust. I needed to know that I had something of my own.

  I didn’t tell Alexander about Henry Selig’s business proposal. For what it’s worth, I didn’t even tell Carl. I was working as hard as any man at Asquonset to make the place a success. As I saw it, that money was mine.

  It was a wise investment. Within a year, the first batch of houses were built and every single one sold. I saw a fivefold return on my investment. So I put the original amount, plus some, back in my account at the bank, and invested in the next phase of Henry’s project. It was even more successful. Again, I added part to my account at the bank and reinvested the rest, and Henry never let me down. He went from building houses to building offices to building shopping malls. To this day, I get dividends on some of those investments.

  Was I frightened? Terrified during that first phase. Logic said that it would be a success, but if it wasn’t, my nest egg was gone. Once we saw how wildly successful real estate ventures could be, there was no fear.

  Well, at one other point there was. During his time in New York, Henry mingled with the theater crowd—playwrights, directors, actors, and actresses. Henry was already in Rhode Island—with some of my money in hand—when Joe McCarthy and his committee were questioning members of that crowd for communist leanings. Henry’s name came up. There was talk that he would be called to testify. He was never actually questioned. I guess they figured that even if he had left-leaning friends, he was such an utter capitalist that his presence would make mockery of their witch-hunt. But it was a scary few months. People were condemned by association. Henry was fingered because he was the friend of others who were fingered, and I was a friend of Henry’s.

  All’s well that ends well, as they say. McCarthy got censured, Henry got rich, and I got the money to make the difference in our lifestyle while we were waiting for our grapevines to grow gold. We enlarged the Great House again, and decorated this time. We hired a cook and began to entertain. We hired a field hand, plowed new land, and planted triple the number of new vines. We bought modern machinery and enlarged the shed. We began bottling wine.

  I’m not saying we couldn’t have done it without my real estate earnings, but I do think it would have been harder, and surely would have taken longer. Those earnings made the difference. They were the little boost we needed. I’m pleased to have done that for Asquonset.

  Natalie sat back, looking mystified. “Funny. I haven’t thought about that in a long time. It wasn’t ever something I dwelled on, wasn’t something I discussed with Alexander, even so many years later.”

  “Because of his ego?” Olivia asked.

  “Because it was irrelevant. I could have poured ten times what I did into the vineyard, but if we hadn’t put backbreaking hours into planting and nursing those vines, into researching new methods of trellising and testing new pesticide programs, they wouldn’t have amounted to much more than weeds.” She fell silent.

  Silence was part of their routine. Olivia had learned to use it to gather her thoughts. Doing so now, she felt something was missing. She flipped back through her notes, but couldn’t put her finger on it. So she said, “Describe an average day.”

  Natalie smiled. “There was no average day, not when you were raising children and grapes, not when you were feeling your way along, building a business when you really knew nothing about building a business.”

  “And you were the one who did it, not Alexander.”

  Natalie thought for a minute. “I suppose that if you have to label things, you could say that I was the what-to-do person and Carl was the how-to-do-it one. Alexander was our front man. He traveled. He spread the word. By the time we were bottling wine in great enough quantity to market it, we knew just where to go. Alexander was wonderful that way. He wasn’t good with money, and he wasn’t good with plowing or plucking or grafting, but he was a powerful publicity tool.”

  “Was he good with children?” Olivia asked and suddenly realized that that was it. Natalie’s story lacked that personal element.

  “He was wonderful with children,” Natalie said, but her smile quickly faded. “Oh, it was hard at first. I told you that. When he came home from the war, he was a stranger to them and they to him. After a year or two, as the children grew a little older and more familiar, that changed. I guess he found that they weren’t any different from adults. If he played with them, they liked him. Mind you, he wanted the house rules followed, but I was the enforcer. I was the bad guy, he was the good guy. It probably helped that he traveled, because it was more of a novelty when he was home. He never took a trip without returning with some little toy or memento for them.” She sighed, smiling again. “They adored him, which made him happy, and Alexander happy made my life easier.”

  “Was it a hard life?”

  “Hard? Physically hard?”

  “Living on a small farm on the coast.”

  “It got easier in the fifties. Suddenly we had washers and dryers. We had dishwashers. We had vacuum cleaners. We had oil heat and a thermostat. We had two cars. We had three televisions. It wasn’t a bad life at all.”

  �
��Were you happy?”

  “I was very happy.”

  “Were you happy?”

  “I … was,” Natalie replied, but more reflectively. “You’re wondering what I was feeling about Carl all this time.”

  “About Carl. About Alexander. About the children. You’ve given me facts about the vineyard’s growth. I want to hear the emotional side.”

  The older woman remained thoughtful. “I was thrilled about the vineyard. That was always a source of joy for me. To this day, I get a lift just walking among the vines.”

  “With Carl?”

  “With or without,” she said, then amended that. “With is better. He loves the place like I do. He put in the work and feels the pride.”

  “And you love him.”

  “Yes.”

  “What about Alexander? What was your marriage like?”

  Natalie considered that for a moment, and when she began, she spoke slowly. “Hard work. Al and I had very different outlooks. I accepted that most of the time. On occasion, it bothered me. I sometimes grew frustrated with him. I wanted him to be … to be …”

  “More like Carl?”

  Her sigh was confirmation of it. “He wasn’t, of course. Couldn’t ever be. And if it suddenly happened, it would have thrown me for a loop. I had structured our lives in a way that made accommodation for his needs and mine.” She paused, frowned, pressed her lips together. “There were times of strain. But they always passed. In the overall scheme of things, we had a good working marriage.” She raised earnest eyes. “And I was happy, Olivia. Alexander wasn’t Carl, but Carl was in my life. I had the best of both worlds. Yes, I was dutiful when it came to doing things Alexander liked, but I enjoyed many of them, too. I liked going to parties. I liked going out to dinner. I liked taking theater trips to New York. I am not making myself out to be a martyr in this book.”

  “Were you happy as a mother?” Olivia asked, because it struck her that Natalie hadn’t once said that.

  She didn’t now either. She studied her lap for the longest time before finally raising her eyes. They held dismay. “I love my children. I suffer when they do.” Her voice quivered. With a breath, she gathered her composure. “As the years went by, we drifted.”