An Independent Woman

by Howard Fast

  “I hear you’re going down to Harry’s place today.”

  “I was going,” Eloise said, “but I can’t. I have to stay with Cathrena. Do you know how many we have for dinner tonight? At least eighteen, not counting the children. I’m going to feed them first. Freddie, are you sure Judith is bringing her mother and father?”

  “Yes, and for heaven’s sake, embrace them, kiss them. This isn’t easy for them. Maybe it’s the hardest thing they ever faced.”

  “Your mother knows that, Freddie,” Barbara said sharply.

  “How old is Jean?” Adam asked, anxious to change the subject.

  “Four—or five. Which is it, Barbara?”

  Jean was Sam’s little girl. “I’m ashamed to say I’m not sure, perhaps four and a half. I’m a rotten grandmother.”

  Freddie said apologetically, “It’s just that I’m nervous. Judith isn’t bulging much yet, but—well, weddings are terribly serious to the Hopes. They’re very religious and very straitlaced, and I haven’t seen them since Judith told them.”

  “It will be all right,” Eloise assured him. This is not the first time it’s happened.”

  “Let’s not anticipate.” Barbara smiled. “Just go with the flow.”

  “I’ll walk them down to Hawthorn,” Freddie said. He turned to Adam. “Harry sent over four cases of Greenberg’s Chardonnay. He’s loaded with it. I’ve been trying to find a buyer in Los Angeles. They’ll drink anything with ‘Chardonnay’ on the label.”

  “We won’t serve it tonight. I won’t give it to guests,” Adam said firmly.

  “It’s not bad at all,” Eloise said. “You two remind me of Hemingway and all his nonsense about noble wines. Why shouldn’t we serve it? I will not offend Harry.”

  “It’s not Harry’s vintage. It’s Greenberg’s.”

  “Well,” Freddie said, “Dr. Hope likes red wine.”

  “That does it!” Adam declared. “I will not have the father of Judith Hope drinking Greenberg’s lousy Chardonnay. Sell the rest of it out in L.A. for whatever you can get.”

  “Pop,” Freddie said, his tone gentle and conciliatory, “I have the solution. We have a case of Cohen’s Chardonnay left over from the wedding. It’s very good. I also have some lovely dry Chablis that I’ve been experimenting with. I’ll put some Hawthorn labels on it, and Harry will be delighted. We’ll all of us here drink the Cabernet.”

  “Good heavens!” Eloise exclaimed. “You talk like we’re a family of drunks. How much wine do we need?”

  “A lot,” Freddie said. “We give six white and six red to Candido for Thanksgiving. He knows more about wine than any of us.”

  “Watch Adam,” Barbara whispered to Philip, who was listening in amazement. “He admits to no one knowing more about wine than he does.”

  Adam’s face tightened, but he said nothing. Eloise said soothingly, “Dr. Hope will drink your best Cabernet. In fact, this might be the time to open a bottle or two of the Rothschild, if you have any left. This is a joyous occasion. Enough talk. Now, Freddie, take Barbara and Philip down to Hawthorn. It’s a cold morning, so wrap up. The walk will do you all good.”

  The stroll down the old Silverado Trail on this fine November morning was a treat in itself. The sky was steel blue, the air sweet and clean. The road was unspoiled, much as it had been fifty years ago, except for blacktopping; no towns, no stands, just the old oaks and hemlocks and an occasional ponderosa pine. As they walked, Philip observed that wine was a sort of religion in this place.

  “Not religion,” Freddie said. “It’s a way of life. The big places, like Gallo, have tried to turn it into a science, but the really great wines are the result of the vintners’ experience and instinct. Take Sauterne, for example. You can make a dozen different Sauternes, from a sweet dessert wine to a dry table wine that is as good as anything California produces. We make some Sauterne at Highgate, and we label it table wine. We blend in some Thompson grapes, which are usually considered to be table grapes, and it’s been enormously successful.”

  “Then why don’t you serve it tonight?” Barbara wondered.

  “We sold it all, every last bit of it. It’s a point of honor not to go into wine that has been sold or promised, and anyway, it’s not dry enough for Adam’s taste. And while it’s very good, Pop is a sort of chateâu freak. Don’t get me wrong, I love Adam—but we fight like cats and dogs. When I insisted on calling this simply dry table wine, he gave in, but not very willingly. There’s no such thing as a super-great wine or noble wine, not even the Imperial Tokay, of which we produce a few gallons out of seeds from the emperor Franz Joseph’s winery. Mother, who knows more about wine than she would admit to, read a book by Hemingway in which he talks about a noble wine, and Mother was ready to scream. She agrees with Adam that Highgate Cabernet is as good as any claret wine, and when I go to France I taste them all. Some are different, but I don’t know that any are much better than ours. Joyce Ansel, who is the head of the department at the university and rates very high as an expert in viticulture, agrees with me. Of course, it depends on the year and the crop. There are great years and there are indifferent years. And the claret grapes that we depend on for the Cabernet also vary. But we’re a business, and either we sell the wine or we go out of business.”

  Philip, who had listened to Freddie’s discourse with fascination, mentioned the wine auctions where a single bottle fetches anywhere from a thousand to five thousand dollars, for the great names like Rothschild.

  Freddie laughed. “They’re buying a pig in a poke, and nobody knows what’s in a bottle until it’s opened. It’s great publicity for the wine business, but there’s no such thing as one wine being a thousand dollars better than another. When you come down to it, wine is wine, and if it’s good, it’s good, and if it’s bad, it’s bad. Why don’t you ask Adam about it tonight? I’d love to hear what he says.”

  “I don’t dare,” Philip said. “When it comes to the rites of wine, I’m just an onlooker.”

  “How is Judith taking tonight?” Barbara asked. “Is she nervous?”

  Freddie shrugged. “You haven’t seen her yet? She’s absolutely beautiful. When she covers the scars, you’d never know. Her nose is different—well, you’ll see her. She’ll be here by noon. I told her what a crowd we’re having, and in spite of my assuring her that we have adequate help, she wants to help Mother. Maybe that’s not so crazy. Do you remember Steve Cassala?”

  “Of course I do.” And she explained to Philip, “Steve’s father, Tony Cassala, financed my father and his partner, Mark Levy, in the shipping business. It’s a long story and I won’t go into it, but during the big earthquake the regular banks were burned or had their vaults locked by the heat. Tony Cassala used to lend money to and hold it for the Italian fishermen who didn’t trust the big banks. So when the old banks burned, he became a banker—and grew into a very large one. But, Freddie, I invited Steve to the wedding. He and his wife, Joanna, never showed up. I thought perhaps he had died.”

  “Almost, but not quite. He’s in better shape, and she’s in good health. He’s eighty-nine, but she’s a good deal younger. She’s coming with him and her sister, Rosa, and Rosa’s husband, Frank Massetti.”

  “Your poor mother,” Philip said.

  “Don’t pity her, Phil. She loves it.”

  Barbara, for all her good spirits, felt strangely tired, more tired than she had ever been after a walk of only a mile.

  They were at Hawthorn now—signs of construction everywhere, piles of lumber and stone, a concrete mixer; the main house being enlarged, the bottling plant being reconstructed. “If it were not a holiday, there’d be a dozen trucks here. Harry is plunging in on this,” Freddie told them.

  Small Danny ran out to meet them, followed by May Ling and Harry, who appointed himself tour guide. Evidently the move to the Valley had overcome Danny’s objections to his new father, although he ran to Freddie for hugs and kisses. Harry, totally enthralled with his new life, appointed himself guide, explain
ing that while some of the crop had already been sold, most of it would be turned into wine. He pointed out the mechanical crusher, which, he noted, would be replaced; it was too old. Only the juice of the grapes would be used, since this would be white wine. He explained, in spite of Freddie’s presence, that for Chardonnay, the skins were discarded. “Fermentation begins,” he said knowingly, “when wine yeast comes in contact with must—and of course, since the yeast is on the skins, we have to add yeast.” Freddie remained silent as the lecture on winemaking went on and on—which Barbara regarded as a considerable improvement in Freddie’s tolerance, since he had overseen the whole process of renewing the equipment.

  Barbara slipped away, leaving Philip to be enlightened, and joined May Ling in the house, which was in utter disorder due to the presence of paint cans, wallpaper, and wood. “I have never been so happy,” May Ling told her. “Oh, Barbara, San Francisco may be the most beautiful city in the world, and I’m sure it is, but I can’t live in a city. I grew up in the Valley, and I want to spend the rest of my life here. I’m pregnant, and Daddy says that I’m doing fine and that I’m still young and strong, and that if I want another baby, I can have one. I’m only thirty-seven, and Daddy comes by every few days. I think he’s the best doctor in the world. And Harry’s an angel. Can you imagine giving up a practice like his to make wine? They wanted him back on some special case, but he simply won’t leave the place. He says he has enough money.”

  “You’re happy,” Barbara said. “That’s the main thing. I’ve never seen you so pleased before.”

  “When I tell Harry that it won’t hurt a bit if he goes into the City for a day or two, he comes back with the story of his grandfather who would never dream of going back to Europe for fear that they wouldn’t let him back here again. I think he has this strange feeling that if he goes into the City, they won’t let him back into the Valley.”

  “He’ll get over that. But Judith—in every case I’ve ever heard of where a woman goes through that kind of trauma, she loses the child.”

  “Except when she doesn’t.”

  “Yes,” Barbara agreed, “except when she doesn’t.”

  “You see, she took it for granted that the pregnancy was over—never told the doctors about it. That woman’s wonderful,” Eloise said. “The newest thing in advertising is the pregnant woman. The unmentionable has become big business, in childbearing clothes, and now Frank Halter—he’s the number-one fashion photographer in the City—can’t wait for her to bulge properly. He has a job for Vanity Fair, and they want him to do four pages of her. They want one of them to be a nude from the side, and the money they want to pay her is sinful. But she talked it over with her father, and he put his foot down, and the magazine agreed that she could wear something diaphanous—but she says that Halter is getting impatient because she isn’t bulging enough.”

  “Give her time. She’ll bulge.”

  “She’s so tall and strong—you know, she’s six feet.”

  “She could be seven feet,” Barbara assured her, “but you can’t do it without bulging. Is the child all right?”

  “As far as they can tell at this time.”

  “And the wedding’s next week. It seems that I can’t go away for a few days without the world turning topsy-turvy. How is Adam taking all this?”

  May Ling smiled. “He’s an old dear. He wanted to have another mammoth party here after the wedding, but Freddie and Judith wouldn’t hear about it. We’re having only family at the wedding— it’s a small church. Adam has done a complete about-face. Well, everyone thinks it’s wonderful, and Adam feels he’s a pathfinder into a new world, as if this were the first interracial marriage that ever took place. Do you know, Bobby darling, my only fear is that they won’t be content to live on a farm and will go back to the City.”

  “Highgate is hardly a farm, and the City’s only an hour away. She hasn’t given up her house, has she?”

  “No. She has a pool there, I’m told, and believe it or not, Adam talks about building a pool here.”

  “I’ll believe that,” Barbara said, “when I see it.”

  “But, darling, I never even asked you how you are? And poor Philip, with that short thatch of new hair.”

  “I’m all right,” Barbara replied. “I seem to have gotten so tired during the trip, and it’s so hard to shake it off. But Philip’s made of steel. He never complained about his burns. It’s that damn Christian lust for flagellation; the more it hurts, the more he smiles and bears it.”

  “And how goes the marriage?” May Ling asked.

  “Comme ci, comme ça—marriages are made not in heaven but by ordinary mortals. Sometimes I adore him, sometimes he drives me up the wall.”

  “But he’s so decent and kind.”

  “That’s it.”

  “I’ll never understand,” May Ling said.

  “No, darling. Don’t even try to understand. The very fact that this family can live so close without shredding each other to pieces is a miracle of sorts—you and Freddie, for example.”

  May Ling shook her head. “I never will understand Freddie. Never mind. I must show you the kitchen.” She led Barbara through the half-deconstructed house and into a big square room. “The kitchen was the size of a snuffbox, Barbara. So I tore down the wall between the kitchen and what was the dining room, and now I have a, room twenty-two feet square. Harry was all for it. I think he believes that every winery must have a kitchen the size of Highgate’s. I threw out everything that was in there. We’re going to do it all in Mexican tiles. Next week I’m going into San Francisco to pick out the kitchen stuff. Will you come with me?”

  “I’d love to go with you. I’m sure you know by now that I will grasp any opportunity not to write. Writing is like a man you adore and hate at the same time. Very perplexing. All my books until now were out of some part of my own experience—but now I’m trying to write about the family. Very frustrating. Sarah and Mark, Jake and Clair Harvey, my brother Tom, my father and mother, all the agonies and pleasures and deaths, three wars—it’s impossible. But I’m not that good at shopping anymore. After half an hour, all I want is to sit down and rest.”

  “Then we will.”

  “Try to find a chair in some of those stores! And won’t Sally be hurt? I mean, if you don’t consult her.”

  “Then let her be hurt,” May Ling said in a rare display of independence.

  Barbara looked at her approvingly. Tall, slender, her skin a pale brown, her eyes almost black, the one-quarter Chinese so marked and beguiling—this was a new May Ling, happy and assured.

  “No, I don’t mean that,” May Ling said quickly. “I love Mother, but this is my life and my place. I will have a lovely room for her and Dad whenever they want to come. But it’s my house.”

  Barbara threw her arms around her and kissed her.

  IF THERE WERE A STAR or at least a focal point for that Thanksgiving Day at Highgate, it was without question Judith. As she had promised, she turned up shortly after noon. Barbara was in the kitchen with Eloise and Cathrena, helping to set the big table, which had been extended three feet by a wooden frame that Candido had hurriedly knocked together. Eloise had found two identical tablecloths that would cover the length of it. Eloise was consulting with Barbara about the place cards when Freddie appeared with Judith. A fire was already burning in the big fireplace, and by dinnertime it would be a bed of hot coals with a single large log glowing above the coals. The room was warm with the smell of good food—the enormous turkey in the oven, the cranberries turning into sauce on the stove, the great pot of sweet potatoes simmering, the vegetables being cut, five pies getting their crusts, dough rolled out for dinner rolls, and Cathrena scolding one of her helpers for cutting the dinner rolls too small.

  It was at this point of both confusion and activity that Freddie appeared with Judith. Barbara’s first reaction was that Judith had lost weight, the strong bones of her face more prominent, and that there was something different about her nose,
a certain sharpness; yet she was the same Judith, easy and graceful. She wore blue jeans and a blue work shirt, but she explained to Eloise that she had “fancy clothes,” as she put it, in her car and would change before dinner. “I’m here to help, Mrs. Levy,” Judith said. “These jeans, they’re a badge of work willingness.”

  “First of all, call me Ellie. Everyone else does. Secondly, Barbara and I are trying to work out the table, and then we’ll set it. Can you make twist rolls?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Then take over from Rosa, who can’t. That will release Cathrena for other things. Adam, my husband, insists on twist rolls; and then we’ll have a large challah—that’s the Jewish festival bread—and Cathrena will give you the measurements.”

  “You’ll want eggs in that, won’t you?”

  “Oh yes, probably six eggs for the large loaf. Cathrena knows—I’m not sure. But how do you know that?”

  “Jewish friends, Jewish bakeries—one right down the street from where my mom lives.”

  “Your folks will find their way here, won’t they?”

  “Oh yes, they’ll be here.” She rolled up her sleeves and went to work quickly, expertly, as if she had been making bread all her life. “We’ve been to the Valley so many times. They know just where Highgate is. I love to make bread,” she assured Eloise. “I’ve done it before.”

  AN HOUR LATER, HAVING FINISHED the seating and setting the table, Eloise and Barbara betook themselves to the living room with mugs of coffee, and Eloise lit one of her infrequent cigarettes. The living room at Highgate was a bit larger than the kitchen—twenty-two feet by thirty feet—with a large fireplace that backed the kitchen fireplace and fed into the same stone chimney, encircled by three sofas: two seven-foot couches and one eight-foot couch. There was a grand piano that both Eloise and Freddie played, a television set in one corner, bookshelves on either side of the fireplace, a long table backing the big couch, an eighteen-foot grospoint Portuguese rug with a pattern of pink roses, and armchairs scattered about. The ceiling was beamed, and above a wooden wainscoting, the walls were painted stark white. On the walls were paintings from Jean Lavette’s gallery, given to Eloise and Adam as wedding gifts: one a Renoir and another a Picasso; plus a large painting of a Levy— Lavette freighter and a painting of Adam’s brother, Joshua, who had died in World War II. There were also groups of family photographs and a glass breakfront containing medals and awards won by Highgate wines.