The Vineyard

by Barbara Delinsky

  Her feet slowed, then finally she stopped. Gasping for breath, she lowered herself to the rock. When gasps turned to sobs, she put her face to her knees.

  She couldn’t remember the last time she had cried. The act felt foreign—or maybe what felt foreign was the depth of it. Those sobs started at the very bottom of her heart. They were deep and wrenching, reflecting a sentiment she shouldn’t have felt but did.

  “Olivia.”

  She turned away from Simon’s voice but couldn’t stop crying. Once they started, it seemed, she was helpless to control the tears, or the anguish that caused them.

  He didn’t say anything else, just sat down beside her, facing the opposite way, put an arm across her chest, and drew her close. She cried against his arm now, still those same wrenching sobs.

  In time they slowed, but mostly it was due to exhaustion. The pain remained just as overwhelming. She wasn’t in control here, but was at the whim of a powerfully raw emotion. Her breath came in ragged bursts. She was exhausted, emotionally and physically, infinitely grateful to be leaning on Simon.

  “Christ, you run fast,” he said, and she would have laughed if she hadn’t been so spent. His arm was wet, though she had no idea whether from his sweat or her tears.

  Her breath continued to come in broken bits. “She wasn’t supposed—to die until—we talked.”

  He stroked her head, moving his fingers through her hair.

  “I wanted Tess to meet her and to like her. I wanted to like her myself. I wanted her to see me as an adult—and like me, too.”

  “I know.”

  “There may have been—a whole other side of her. I didn’t know she drank.”

  “It’s done, Olivia. You can’t torture yourself.”

  But she did. “What a wasted relationship!” she cried, feeling nearly as angry as she was bereft.

  He didn’t argue with her, just continued a gentle stroking. When she turned to face him, he supported the back of her head. She needed that support. It buffered her from the pain.

  “She couldn’t love me.”

  Simon said, “That’s not it.”

  “How do you know?”

  “No mother can’t love her child. Sometimes she just won’t.”

  “But why not?”

  “Sometimes she has her own issues.”

  “My mother’s issue was me. I came at the wrong time and did all the wrong things.”

  “It wasn’t you.”

  “How do you know?”

  He held her back, and gently conceded, “I don’t. I didn’t know your mother. What I do know is that mothers are made to love. Look at you and Tess. You love her, even though she isn’t perfect or always easy, but you wouldn’t trade her for the world. That’s what mother love is about. Your mother loved you. If she couldn’t show it, the problem was with her, not with you.”

  Olivia wanted to believe him. His eyes were the same blue as the skies at the end of night. She wanted to believe him so badly. “Maybe if she could have seen me now—seen the kind of mother I am, seen the kind of work I do and the kinds of people I work for—maybe she would have loved me now …”

  But Carol Jones was dead. The obituary said it. Thomas Hope said it. Olivia had no reason to doubt either one. For once, she couldn’t even pretend. Fantasies wouldn’t help her here. She couldn’t think up a single story that would make it not so.

  The pain in her mind spread to her heart. Again, she felt a dire need to hold Tess.

  “I have to get back,” she whispered. Separating herself from Simon, she pushed both hands over her face to erase tear streaks. Her legs shook when she stood, but Simon was beside her, and much like having Susanne and Natalie in the car earlier, it was a comfort.

  Grieving, she let it be that. Nothing more.

  THAT EVENING, she and Tess opened the three boxes. They found pictures of Carol and Olivia, and pictures of Olivia alone. There were Olivia’s school papers—the best of the bunch, Olivia decided, since they showed B’s rather than D’s. There was a hospital tag so tiny that it was hard to imagine it ever fitting around Olivia’s ankle, and the cast that had been on Olivia’s broken arm when she was seven.

  There was a dried corsage. Olivia cried over that. She had worn it pinned to her senior prom dress—a dress that Carol had neither helped her shop for nor seen her wear, though Olivia didn’t tell Tess that.

  “I can’t believe she saved it,” the child breathed in awe. “That was so sweet!”

  Olivia didn’t argue. She thought about what Simon had said—about Carol wanting to be there for her daughter but having issues that prevented it. Maybe it was true. If Carol had missed her own prom because she was pregnant with Olivia, she might have felt too much pain to be involved with Olivia’s prom. If that was so, taking Olivia’s corsage from the trash and saving it all these years was, as Tess said, sweet.

  Was there any harm in believing that? Was there any harm in letting Tess believe it?

  Olivia pulled Tess close and held her there. “Yes, it was sweet. It was very sweet.”

  “Don’t cry, Mom. Please? I hate it when you’re sad.”

  “I am so lucky to have you.”

  “Ow. You’re squeezing too hard.”

  “Sorry,” Olivia said and reluctantly loosened her grip. “What else do we have?”

  They had a pair of afghans, one green and one blue. Olivia felt a chill when she pulled them out, wondering how Carol had known their favorite colors. She searched the bottom of the box for a note, but there was none.

  They found a small zippered sack with jewelry inside, none of which was valuable but all of which Tess adored. She promptly put a small Timex watch on her wrist.

  They found a diary with a discolored tin latch, and again, Tess was all eyes. “Open it, Mom.”

  Olivia wasn’t about to do that in front of her daughter. Fearing what Carol had to say, she tucked the diary under her thigh. Seconds later, though, her own curiosity won and she took it back out. The latch opened easily. She opened the book to a blank page. She turned to another, blank as well, as was a third. She fanned the pages, looking for writing on any of them.

  “Nothing?” Tess asked in dismay.

  Olivia fanned the pages again, then turned to the very first. A neat hand had written “Carol Jones” in clotted ink, but the name appeared to be the only words written in the entire book.

  “Why would she have a diary,” Tess asked, “if she didn’t want to write in it?”

  Olivia thought about that. It was a cruel hoax, offering them hope in one breath and taking it away in the next. She didn’t want to think of Carol as cruel.

  Simon’s words echoed. Your mother loved you. If she couldn’t show it, the problem was with her, not you.

  “Maybe she was dyslexic,” Olivia said. “You hate to write.”

  “I’d write in this.”

  Suddenly, the past was moot. There was sadness in a blank diary, but good could come of it. “Well, maybe that’s why she put it in this box. Maybe she meant it for you.”

  Tess’s eyes lit up. “Do you think so?”

  Olivia couldn’t imagine a better legacy. “Yes. I think so.”

  Smiling, Tess pressed the diary to her heart.

  Warmed that this little bit of pleasure had come of such pain, Olivia removed the last item from the box. It was a small leather folder, barely big enough to hold a three-by-five print. The photographs inside were roughly half that size. There were two, one on each side.

  Tess caught her breath. “Who are they?” she whispered.

  Olivia had no idea. She hadn’t seen either face before—not when she was growing up, not in any of Natalie’s prints—but suddenly the idea that she was related to Natalie seemed silly. Time to face facts. “Maybe my grandmother?”

  “And your grandfather? On their wedding day?”

  It looked that way to Olivia, but more than the clothes, she was riveted to the faces. Both wore gentle smiles.

  “They look very nice,”
Tess said.

  Olivia nodded. Her throat was tight.

  “Do you think they’re still alive?”

  Olivia swallowed and took a steadying breath. “Not according to your grandmother’s death notice.”

  But Tess wasn’t giving up hope. “Maybe there’s an address in the envelope. If there is, we can go there and find them.”

  The envelope was the only thing left to explore. Olivia hadn’t opened it since she had returned the obituary notice there that afternoon. There had been no personal note packed in with the other things. If Carol had written one, it would be here.

  A personal note might hold explanations. It might hold words of love. It might hold the name of Olivia’s father.

  Olivia wanted those three things desperately, so much so that she was of half a mind to put the envelope in a safe deposit box unopened. That way she could always hope there was a note, even if there was not.

  Reason won out, though, because finally Olivia was tired of pretending.

  Opening the envelope, she pulled out Carol’s driver’s license and her Social Security card. She pulled out the bankbook from an account that had been closed out three years before. She pulled out several newspaper clippings. The first was the review of an art show that contained photographs “restored by Otis Thurman and Olivia Jones.”

  Olivia had barely recovered from seeing that when she found the death notices of Carol’s parents, six years apart, though both within the last decade. That meant both had been alive when Tess was born.

  Furious at Carol for this as well, Olivia reached for the final item in the envelope. It was a piece of typing paper folded in thirds, surely a note. But the paper was blank, used simply as wrapping around another bankbook.

  This one wasn’t for a closed account. The most recent interest notation had been made three months before, which would have been a month before Carol died. But the date didn’t hold Olivia’s attention for long. What did was the bottom line of the account.

  Tess was at her elbow. “One hundred and fifty-three dollars?”

  Stunned, Olivia said a quiet, “No, sweetie. It’s one hundred and fifty-three thousand dollars. Plus change.”

  Tess tipped up her head and pushed her glasses higher. “Whoa. That’s a lot.”

  “Yes, it is.” Olivia put a hand to her chest. She blinked and looked at the numbers, but they didn’t change. Setting down the bankbook, she wrapped her arms around Tess and pulled her close. She closed her eyes and breathed in the scent of aloe shampoo and warm child as she rocked back and forth. “Your grandmother gave us a cushion. This means you can get the best education money can buy.”

  “How about the best clothes?”

  “Clothes come from me. Schooling comes from her.”

  “Did she say that?”

  “No. But she would want it.”

  “How about the best clothes for you?”

  “This is school money.”

  “How about the best vacation for you?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?” Tess asked, pulling back.

  IT WASN’T UNTIL SEVERAL HOURS LATER, when Tess was asleep for the night and the rest of the house was quiet, that Olivia realized why she didn’t want any part of the money Carol had left her. With the understanding came anger and an urgent need to vent.

  Tucking the bankbook in the pocket of her shorts, she left the house and found the path through the woods. The moon was bright, lighting a sky that teemed with stars. She half walked, half ran toward Simon’s cabin, building a fierce anger along the way. She was shaking with it by the time she arrived at his door.

  Simon was sprawled on the sofa reading when she knocked. When he saw her through the screen, he was on his feet in an instant. He looked warm and almost sleepy with his hair mussed and his glasses below the bridge of his nose. Pushing them up with one hand, he opened the door with the other.

  Slipping past him, she held out the bankbook and, arms folded tightly, watched his face while he looked inside. He read the contents impassively, and seemed about to say something when, wisely, he caught her expression. Closing his mouth, he gave an almost imperceptible nod.

  It was all the permission she needed. “I am furious,” she cried. “How could she do this to me? Did she think I wanted money? Was that all her life was about? Where has she been for the last twenty years? Didn’t she hear all the talk about quality time? Didn’t she see Terms of Endearment or … or The Cosby Show? Didn’t she get it?”

  Olivia looked around in bewilderment, then put her hands on her hips and stuck out her chin. “Where did she get that money? I want to know, but of course, she isn’t here to say, so I can only guess. She didn’t have a career, and she didn’t win the lottery, and if she drank herself to death, she spent a shitload on booze. So where did this money come from?”

  She held her forehead and looked at the floor. “Her parents? I doubt it.” Her eyes found Simon’s. “There was no lump-sum deposit in this account, just a whole lot of small ones over a dozen years, and that’s only this bankbook. The opening balance is big enough to suggest there were bankbooks before this one, probably with a whole lot of other little deposits.”

  With an angry expulsion of breath, she went to the window. “She was probably stashing money away from the time I was a child—and that’s all well and good and honorable and almost every other nice word you can say except ‘insightful’ and ‘perceptive’ and ‘sensitive.’” She whirled around and cried, “I had to buy all my own clothes. I used to work in the local supermarket, seven days a week sometimes, over holidays and after school, because she said she didn’t have extra money, and I didn’t have anything to wear. I’m talking basics. I bought my own jeans. I bought my own shirts. I bought my own underwear. The first time I bought a bra, I went out and did it myself. That was baby-sitting money. I mean, even back then!”

  Olivia remembered being acutely embarrassed, buying that bra without quite looking the salesclerk in the eye. The hurt was acute only now, looking back from the perspective of a mother with a daughter of her own. Olivia would never, never send a child of hers off to do something like that alone. It was a female thing—a milestone meant to be shared. She wouldn’t miss it with Tess for the world!

  Pushing a hand into her hair, she walked off toward the hall. Buck was in her basket, but the kittens were playing around it on the floor. She barely saw.

  “Okay.” She turned back to Simon, trying to reason things out. “Kids need to be taught the value of money, but hell, I was out there on my own. Do you know what it would have meant if she’d handed me a ten-dollar bill to put toward the sweater I wanted because every other girl in the class had one? Do you know what it would have meant if she had come with me to buy that bra? Do you know what a little help would have meant? I had to get a new apartment after Tess was born because the one I was in didn’t want kids. So here I am with a newborn, and the first apartment I take doesn’t have a refrigerator. I mean, how many apartments don’t have refrigerators? Well, I didn’t have the time to fight, and I didn’t have the strength to move to another place, and Tess needed formula stored because I couldn’t produce enough milk to feed her myself, so I bought a refrigerator, and paid twenty-five dollars a month for nearly two years because, of course, the interest from buying on time nearly doubled the cost of the thing.”

  Her eyes filled with tears. The aloneness hurt. “Was that a lesson I needed to learn? Would it have killed her to help me out a little? Would it have killed her to send baby clothes? There we are, me pushing Tess in her secondhand stroller through the nicest parts of Atlanta that we could find, and we’re surrounded by mothers pushing state-of-the-art prams with their kids looking oh-so-cute in their Baby Gaps. I wanted that for my child, too, but I couldn’t afford it. Would it have killed her to send one little sweatshirt? Would it have killed her to buy a cheapo plane ticket and come visit?

  “But no,” Olivia raced on with a snort. “She was too busy making her little trips to the bank
to stash her money away. And then,” she drawled derisively, “it comes back again to how she got the money in the first place. Did she take it out of her paycheck? Did she steal it? Or was it money for sex, left on a sleazy nightstand by a sleazy John when he finished doing his sleazy thing?” She shuddered.

  Simon was in front of her then. “Olivia …”

  She looked up into eyes that would understand. “I don’t want it, Simon. I don’t want her money. It wasn’t about money then, and it isn’t about money now. I wanted her time. I wanted to have a mother with me at Girl Scout meetings, just like my friends did. It’s lovely to think she collected articles about my work with Otis, but would it have killed her to call me? My number was listed. All those years I kept it listed so that she could find me if she wanted to, but no. She didn’t. She couldn’t get herself to tell me I was doing good, not now, not when I was a kid. I tell it to Tess all the time, even when she’s doing lousy, but if she’s trying hard, she deserves the praise. Didn’t I deserve something?” She exhaled shakily. “It wasn’t about money. It was about love.”

  He pulled her close, pressing her cheek to his chest. “Oh, baby, she did love you. She just didn’t show it the way you wanted her to.”

  Olivia tried to shake her head, but there was no room to move between his hand and his chest.

  His voice was deep, but soft as warm flannel. “Yes. She did love you. Forget money. Think about Thomas Hope. She made him promise to get her things to you. Made him promise. And it wasn’t easy for him. It wasn’t like a trip across town. Chicago’s a long drive, but he did it, because it was her dying wish. Her dying wish. Deathbed confessions are admissible in court. They’re considered sacrosanct. Well, your mother’s deathbed confession was that she wanted you to have her personal effects.”

  “That’s not a confession,” Olivia murmured, but her resistance was fading.

  “From a woman who refused to open her life to her daughter and granddaughter? I’d say it is. She could have thrown everything out. But she wanted you to have something of her. She could have given the money to charity, but she wanted you to have it. Does it matter how she got it? Does it really?”