Eight Hundred Grapes

by Laura Dave

  He headed for the door. “Unless you prefer your wedding dress?”

  “So, little one,” my father said.

  We were in the back of Finn’s pickup truck, heading to The Tasting Room, steadying the barrel of wine for the tasting between us. The truck was moving along at a steady pace, The River playing in the background. My father always played Bruce on the morning of the first tasting. Bruce Springsteen, my father’s favorite, necessary for synchronization: the music the first grape was picked to, the music it should be tasted to during the official wine tasting. My father never changed it, certainly not today.

  Finn took a left onto Main Street, taking the long way to The Tasting Room.

  “Ben,” my father said.

  That was all. No question at the end of it.

  Bruce played loudly.

  My mother had told me that she hadn’t told my father, which meant he didn’t know about Ben. He didn’t know anything beyond the fact that he knew me, and he knew I wouldn’t be here like this if something wasn’t up.

  “You having doubts?” he said.

  “You could say that.”

  “I just did,” he said.

  I smiled at him as Finn took a right off of Sebastopol Avenue, leading us into the sweet town of Sebastopol. It was dusty in its way but also full of gems: the best ice cream in five hundred miles, a drive-in movie theater, a local saloon. Sebastopol’s central drag had recently been usurped by the new downtown industrial complex filled with artisanal foods and fancy florists and a five-hundred-dollar-a-night boutique hotel, creating a mini-Napa. But it was still quiet, lovely, at this time of day.

  “You know, I almost married someone who wasn’t your mother.” He shook his head. “A week before the wedding, I told her we should call it off. I said it nicer than that, but I told her we should reconsider.”

  I looked at him, confused. “Is that true?”

  He nodded. “My decision to become a winemaker didn’t feel like a choice. I had this great job at the university. Tenure track. But I spent most of my free time thinking about wine. It felt like something I was compelled to do. The woman, who was a poet, had this quote on her wall about writing. I think it was Fitzgerald. Anyway, he talked about how he had to write his books, how there was no choice in the matter. That was how I felt about this.”

  He motioned to the land around him, small vineyards as far as the eye could see.

  “The truth was, that girlfriend . . .”

  “The poet?”

  “The poet. She hadn’t made it that easy for me. She told me she wasn’t going to sit and watch me live my dreams in some small town when she could be in London, Paris. She said if I insisted on making wine, spending my life in a small California town, that was the last straw.” He shrugged. “That’s how I named the vineyard.”

  My jaw must have dropped open to the floor. My father always said that he’d come up with the name at The Brothers’ Tavern, after midnight, five beers in. It was a detailed story that he’d recounted often.

  “I don’t understand,” I said.

  “Nothing to understand. I lied to you before. Don’t tell.”

  I looked at him, floored.

  He shrugged. “Your mother has always been a little sensitive about it,” he said. “She feels like she has been spending her life on a vineyard that was dedicated to another woman. It doesn’t matter that I chose the vineyard over the woman.”

  I nodded, even though I wanted to say he was facing the same problem now. My father still put the vineyard first, my mother still felt like she was in second place. And so, what was my father trying to say about Ben? That the demons we were facing, we needed to face now? That we’d face the same demons on the other side of building a family together, building a lovely life, and trying to hold on to it?

  “Thing is, whatever’s going on with Ben, it’s okay to walk away. It’s also okay to get over it. The two of you have built a great life together, that matters too, it matters as much as whatever is going on that has made you doubt him.”

  “It doesn’t feel that simple.”

  “Most of the time it is. Most of the time a person wants something more than anything else. You can tell because at the end of the day that’s what they’re willing to fight for.”

  My father looked away, sad and angry. Suddenly I wasn’t sure if we were talking about me and Ben, or him and my mother. She had spent her life fighting for her family, for my father, and now she seemed to be fighting for someone else.

  Finn pulled in front of The Tasting Room, waving at Bill and Sadie Nelson, who were walking toward the entrance. Bill and Sadie were winemakers from Healdsburg, and old friends of my parents’, my father’s first recruits to Sebastopol.

  He pointed at me, and they smiled, waving big.

  Finn got out of the truck. “Let’s go, slowpokes.”

  “Give us just a second,” my father said.

  “I’ll send out some of the guys to get that barrel,” he said.

  My father nodded. “Great,” he said.

  Finn disappeared inside, Bill and Sadie holding the door for him.

  “So Ben has a kid?”

  I was still watching Bill and Sadie walk inside and thought I heard him wrong. I turned toward him, shocked.

  He reached into the back pocket of his jeans, pulled out a series of index cards.

  “What a world,” he said.

  “You know?”

  “Of course I know.” He nodded. “Your mother tells me everything,” he said.

  “Why didn’t you come out and say it?”

  He looked up and met my eyes. “Because I didn’t want you to miss my point, the way you’re about to do, and jump to asking my opinion on what you should do about the fact that the person you trusted most in the world lied to you.”

  “Which is?”

  “My opinion?”

  He put his notes in his front pocket.

  “If you want to get married, then you should. If you don’t, you shouldn’t.”

  “That solves it!”

  “I do what I can.” He laughed. “Thing is, either way we cut it, we shouldn’t test the people we love,” he said. “We do, but it’s shitty and ultimately, regardless of what they did or didn’t do, we’re the ones who feel like we failed.”

  Then, as if that closed the case, he kissed me on the cheek and headed into The Tasting Room.

  The Wine Thief

  Two times a year, my father did a tour of The Last Straw Vineyard for locals and wine club members, once at the start of the harvest and once the day of the harvest party. The rest of the year, the only place to taste my father’s wines was at The Tasting Room.

  My father wasn’t unique in handing over the wine tasting responsibilities to Gary and Louise. Many people associated Napa Valley with going to a tasting room at a vineyard and drinking a bunch of wines for ten dollars or the price of a bottle of wine. But that type of stop-by tasting was usually only done by the big wineries—like Murray Grant—factory wineries, existing on the side of Highway 29, that were eager to take advantage of drunk tourists who didn’t know better, who didn’t care if they were drinking anything good, who only cared that they were drinking.

  But most of the small vineyards in Sonoma County didn’t have tasting rooms at their vineyards. They gave their wines to Gary and Louise to sell, Gary pouring the wine to folks who were serious about drinking it, pouring different wine for the folks who weren’t and stumbled into his tasting room. If that sounded like snobbery, it wasn’t. The measure wasn’t people who could spend a lot of money on wine. Gary and Louise regularly lost money. The measure was appreciation.

  Today, The Tasting Room was open only to winemakers. And the only wine on tap was ours.

  There was no way to adequately describe The Tasting Room and make it sound as cool as it was. On the surface, i
t was a ’50s-style diner. The soda counter had been converted to a wine bar. The fluorescent lights had been replaced with hanging lanterns and candles and wooden sconces. The tiled floors were washed and polished twice a week. Cork-filled vases lined the small tables.

  When I walked in, I felt happy to be there, surrounded by this group of winemakers, who got together every year for the harvest. They had nicknamed themselves the Cork Dorks. The Cork Dorks: a play on the fact that so many of them were scientists. Some migrated to Sebastopol at my father’s urging. Some came in the rush of the ’90s, when Pinot Noir really hit the map.

  There was Brian Queen, a former colleague of my father’s from San Francisco State, who was one of the only Grenache producers in the region. Terry and his wife, Sarah, produced Sauvignon Blanc in upper Russian River. Lynn and Masters (her Robert Redford look-alike boyfriend) had recently gone over to the dark side, Napa Valley, where they were making a Cabernet Sauvignon that the New York Times had named as one of the best ten wines coming out of California.

  And then there were Gary and Louise, The Tasting Room owners, who grew grapes in the backyard, grapes that led to arguably the most scrumptious sparkling wine you’ve ever tasted—inarguably, if you asked either of them. No one did. They just drank.

  Everyone hugged everyone hello, no one, thankfully, asking about the wedding.

  “Look who’s here,” Finn said.

  He motioned toward the back door, and I followed his eyes to see my mother sneaking in. She had on a long white dress, Bobby by her side, looking dapper in his sports coat and tie. Jacob McCarthy walked in behind them, looking un-dapper in jeans and another of those zipper cashmere sweaters.

  “I’m glad she showed up,” Finn said.

  I pointed in Jacob’s direction. “Are you glad he did?”

  My mother waved as she moved closer to us, Bobby walking up behind her.

  My mother wrapped her arms around my shoulders, like it had been ten months since we had seen each other, not ten hours. “You snuck out,” she said. “Why didn’t you tell me that you were leaving?”

  “We didn’t think you were coming,” I said. My eyes were on Jacob, who’d moved across the room toward my father and was saying a friendly hello.

  My mother looked offended. “Of course I was coming. Margaret needed to talk to me. And then I was getting the twins off for the day. They had to eat, didn’t they?”

  “Someone else has to eat!” Louise said, running over, kissing my mother. Giving me a hearty squeeze, then a second one. “Do they not feed you in Los Angeles?”

  Louise was a large woman, in every way: her stature, her kindness, her love of wine. I had never seen her completely sober, now being no exception. She held a mostly finished jelly jar of wine in her hand.

  “I guess that’s what you get for becoming a big-city girl,” Louise said.

  “Weight Watchers?” Finn said.

  “Exactly.” She laughed.

  Bobby put his hand on my shoulder. “She’s about to get even more big city. She is a very important real estate lawyer. And she’s moving to London with her amazing fiancé.”

  He was trying to help. As usual, he was doing the opposite.

  “Okay, folks, let’s get this started!” Gary said.

  He clapped his hands together, excitedly, and motioned to my father.

  My father put the barrel by the table, pausing for dramatic effect. Then he took out his thief to a loud cheer.

  My father’s thief. A winemaker’s tool that he used to extract wine. It looked like a swirly straw. And, in many ways, it was. My father put the thief into the top of the barrel, sucking from the free end of it to pull enough wine from the barrel to give everyone a taste. Everyone was quiet suddenly, like we were in a library. Then he gently pulled on the thief, filled glasses for everyone.

  As he finished, the Dorks erupted in a cheer, Finn stepping forward to distribute the glasses.

  My mother usually served the wine, which led me to look around the room for her. She was standing in the corner, hiding by the tall soda maker, like she wanted to disappear into it.

  I was so busy staring at her that I didn’t see Jacob move in front of me, holding glasses of wine, making it hard to escape.

  Jacob held a glass in my direction. “Hey, there,” he said.

  “What are you doing here, Jacob?”

  “Your father invited me.”

  I took the wine from him. “He was just trying to be nice,” I said.

  He smiled. “Then he succeeded,” he said.

  “Ladies and gentlemen!” Gary called out again. “If you’d please shut it!”

  We all turned to the front of The Tasting Room. Gary stood next to my father, his arm on his shoulder. My father leaned into him, his old friend, waiting to hear what he had to say.

  Gary held up his glass. “Jen, what are you doing standing in the back? Get up here!”

  Everyone turned to see my mother, hiding by the soda maker. She smiled and smoothed her dress. Then she made her way to the front of the room to take her place by my father.

  “I’m going to tell you all a little story,” Gary said. “I was running a wine shop in The Haight, when this guy walks in and says I have the loveliest selection of wine he’s ever seen. And he wants to show me a place where he thinks I’d like to move. I thought he was crazy. Then I got here. And I knew he was.”

  My father smiled.

  “None of us would be here. Not without Dan Ford. Not without Jen Ford. And we are grateful.” He held up his glass. “Even if you’re cashing in your chips and getting the hell out. Though I can’t quite believe you’re selling out to the Murray Grant empire . . . How many chips did they give you, exactly?

  Everyone started laughing, but there was an edge to it. No one in the room was a Murray Grant Wine fan. I turned to Jacob, who forced himself to smile, playing it off.

  “What’s the big plan, Dan?” Brian Queen called out. “Second honey­moon?”

  Louise laughed. “You should be asking Jen that.”

  My mother stared anxiously at my father, asking him silently how to answer. No one knew that when they left here, they wouldn’t be leaving together.

  She pulled herself together and held her wineglass up, tipping it in my father’s direction.

  “Whatever Dan wants!” she said.

  The Dorks cheered as my father awkwardly put his arm around my mother.

  Bobby headed to the front of the room, Finn staying by the back door.

  My father took my mother in, forcing a smile. I watched as he struggled. It was too much. I grabbed for another glass of wine, downing it as my father held up a bottle of unlabeled wine, faced his friends.

  “I don’t know if any of you all remember, but at one of the very first Cork Dork meetings, we sat around talking about it, doing the math on it, how much work a single grape requires. From vine to finish. A single grape the start of it, this unlabeled bottle right here in my hand the end of it, the eight hundred grapes inside.”

  He looked out at his group of colleagues and friends.

  “We know the secret, right? It’s not just eight hundred grapes in this bottle. It’s everything else that makes it heavy. Patience and focus and sacrifice and . . . fucking boredom.”

  The Dorks laughed.

  “Let’s just call it time. This bottle holds the endless time that I was lucky to spend with all of you.” My father nodded. “Thank you, guys,” he said. “Thank you all, for today, and for everything. It has been a really good run.”

  Then, as was tradition, he uncorked the bottle and took a sip right from it. The Cork Dorks cheered.

  My father didn’t look sad. He looked happy, maybe for the first time since I’d been home. My father looked truly and seriously happy. He took a sip of his wine, nodding, appreciating what he had accomplished with this wine, with a
ll of his wines. Lost in it. My mother looked up at him, their eyes meeting, sharing that moment, both of them having the same experience of the wine.

  In spite of Henry.

  In spite of what was happening between them.

  Bobby was standing near my parents, smiling. Finn was by the back door, smiling.

  I, on the other hand, chose this moment to drop my wine, the glass shattering on the ground.

  Everyone turned toward me, just in time to see the tears streaming down my face. The winemakers froze, drinks midair. Bobby and Finn looked at me with mouths agape. My father’s smile, disappearing. My mother’s eyes going wide.

  As I moved as fast as I could. Toward the exit.

  The Ride Home

  I ran out of The Tasting Room, needing air. I knew someone would head out after me, so I went directly to Finn’s truck, opening the unlocked front door, searching for the spare key where he kept it under the driver’s-side visor. I planned to drive myself out of there. I planned to keep driving until my father’s last tasting was far behind me, until I could pretend it wasn’t happening.

  “I don’t think it’s there.”

  I looked up to see Jacob standing by the driver’s-side door, holding a cup of water.

  I wiped at my tears. “I don’t want to talk to you,” I said.

  “I don’t want to talk to you either,” he said.

  Then I took the cup out of his hands, drank it down.

  “Uh . . . I brought that out here for myself.”

  I handed him the empty cup.

  He looked down at it. Then he turned it over, no drops coming out.

  “I was thirsty,” he said.

  I tried to focus on taking deep breaths. I couldn’t calm down, though. Apparently when your parents split up, it didn’t matter if you were a grown-up, it turned you into a five-year-old again: wanting them to promise you that everything was going to be okay. And wanting to make everything okay for them, the way you could when you were five, just by saying you loved them.

  Jacob tossed the cup into a trash can. “You seem like you need to get out of here.”