Eight Hundred Grapes

by Laura Dave

  “But Henry sees you?”

  She nodded, looking back up, meeting my eyes. “But Henry sees me.”

  She stood up and started getting dressed. Without further explanation. And I understood what my father didn’t get about my mother. It wasn’t about her fear of losing him. It was about her fear that she had lost herself. It was about what she had given up for him. Henry didn’t just see my mother as she was. He saw the girl who was sitting in the yellow car, her cello the most important thing in the world to her. He saw who my mother would have been if she had told my father to get out of her car—the imagined life she would have led then.

  Who could blame her for wanting a second chance at that? Suddenly, not me.

  I stood up and walked up behind her, wrapping my arms around her.

  “Mom, I just want you to be happy.”

  She nodded. “I am happy.”

  Though she was crying when she said it.

  Falling Out of Sync

  Desynchronization. Your fiancé lands his dream job on the other side of the world only to find out he has a daughter down the block, her mother still in love with him. Your mother is tired of doing too much work in her marriage at the exact moment someone returns to her life promising to do all the work instead.

  Everything seemed to be lining up so the wrong people were together. So the right ones were apart.

  In all my years growing up in Sonoma County, the drive over CA-116 had never felt so fast. In fifty minutes, I was in the Murray Grant waiting room, staring up at the pear. I’d planned on waiting for Jacob to walk out of his meeting, but Jacob wasn’t going to walk out of any meeting. There was a note taped to his office door. AT THE FACTORY.

  I got back into the car and hit the gas, moving fast toward the large Murray Grant Wines facility, where they bottled and shipped all their wines.

  There was a security guard outside too busy watching ESPN to notice or stop me.

  I stormed past him, opening the wooden door and entering the factory. It was angry and cold. A large conveyor belt was bottling the wine bottles. Cranes were pulling crates of wine toward the shipping area. I thought of my father bottling his wines by hand, waxing each shut.

  On the second floor was a hallway with several large glass offices. Through the glass, I could see Jacob standing in one of them. No cozy white couches there.

  He stood before a group of four men in expensive suits sitting around a conference table. Were they having a meeting about how they were turning Sebastopol into the new Napa Valley? Selling factory wine. Making them a lot of money to buy more small vineyards, turn them into something other than what they had been. Someone’s home.

  I ran up the stairs toward him and stormed into the office.

  Jacob looked at me in the doorway, the men in the business suits staring.

  I knew I was being crazy. I knew it even before Jacob’s look of confusion and outright irritation confirmed it.

  “Hey, Georgia. Could you give me a minute?”

  “No.”

  He looked at me, then back at his meeting in progress.

  “I need you to give me a minute, okay?” he said.

  The security guard had made his way up the staircase. “Everything okay?”

  Jacob tried to wave him off, trying to stay in control, to make it less of a scene. “We’re fine, Caleb,” he said.

  Jacob turned toward the businessmen. “Would you guys excuse me?” he said. “I’ll be back in one second.”

  Jacob quickly steered us out of the office, past Caleb, the security guard.

  “You want me to escort your friend outside?” Caleb said.

  “I’m doing that myself, Caleb,” Jacob said, moving us down the stairs, keeping his voice low, now trying to control his temper, in addition to everything else.

  Jacob slammed through the front door of the factory, leading us back out to the parking lot, toward his Honda.

  “I can’t believe you,” he said.

  He was moving so fast I was basically running to keep up with him.

  “What makes you think you can just walk in here like that?” he said. “That was my board up there. Do you have any idea how embarrassing it was to have that meeting interrupted?”

  “You need to sell me the vineyard, Jacob.”

  He stopped walking. “What?”

  “I want to run it.”

  Jacob stared at me, dumbfounded. But as soon as the words were out of my mouth, I felt the weight of their truth. It was what I had been feeling from the minute I returned to Sebastopol. This was my family’s home, and I didn’t want to give it up. I didn’t want to give up how I felt being back at the vineyard, despite everything that was going on with my parents and my brothers and Ben. I felt like myself here.

  He shook his head, and started moving again, faster than before.

  “You have no idea how to run a vineyard.”

  “My father will stay on and teach me. That’s not your problem.”

  “Except you keep making it my problem when you show up demanding I do something I’m not going to do. My grandfather ran this company for fifty years. Do you have any idea how hard it is to get the board to take his grandson seriously? Even without crazy women interrupting my meetings?”

  We got to his car and Jacob opened the trunk. It held several boxes of files. Jacob began searching through, reaching for a file.

  “Look, I understand you’re having an emotional reaction to the vineyard’s sale, but . . .”

  “Is that what I’m having? An emotional reaction?”

  “What would you call it?”

  Jacob grabbed the file out of the trunk. Then he grabbed another file. But Jacob seemed to still be searching—and it seemed like maybe he wasn’t actually looking for anything, busying himself as an excuse, so he could get himself together.

  “Thing you don’t get is that you can’t save your family like this. I know you think you can. It doesn’t work that way.”

  “That isn’t what’s going on.”

  “It is or you would have waited downstairs like a normal human being.”

  His eyes cut in a way that surprised me. It felt both intimate and mean.

  I felt my anger rise up. “Just let me buy the vineyard back. I’ll give you interest for your trouble, higher than anything you’d have made in the bank.”

  He shook his head. “I made a deal with your father in good faith, and he wants to honor that deal. That doesn’t make me a jerk. That makes me someone who isn’t going to change plans because his daughter is panicking.”

  “Stop pretending this is about my father. It’s about your business model telling you to take on his type of vineyard for reasons that have more to do with money than anything you’re admitting out loud.”

  He shook his head, irritated. “Whatever.”

  “And we both know the worst part of that transaction. You’re going to change his vineyard into a lesser version of itself. You’re going to destroy it.”

  “We’re not going to destroy . . .” Jacob paused, his face red. “Your father knows what he signed on for by selling to us.”

  “I’m just asking you to let me hold on to the vineyard until I can find someone to run it who will do it like he did.” I got quiet. “You know, for when he realizes how much it still matters to him.”

  He stared at me, like he’d heard me on that. This was about my father and it was about me. It was about me feeling like I was the one person who understood what my father actually needed. And maybe also what the vineyard did. The vineyard needed to stay in our family. It was as much a member of it as the rest of us. It was the shining member that brought us together again, and reminded us it was the most important place to be.

  Jacob met my eyes and paused. It seemed like he had heard me, like he saw me. And it seemed like he was going to do the right t
hing.

  But then slowly, evenly, he shook his head. “Your father is welcome to stay on and help run the vineyard. He knows that we would love to have him. He knows that was our preference.”

  I stared at him in disbelief. “Wow, just when I thought you might understand. You’re just a corporate asshole.”

  He laughed. “Name-calling. That’s a good tactic.”

  “You have the cute office in Yountville, it’s a good front, but this is where the dirty work gets done. The factory. The factory with your asshole board and your punch-the-clock workers. And everyone else who could care less about making good wine, who could care less about what my father has spent his entire life doing.”

  He put his hands up. “You know what? I’m done. I don’t need to explain myself. I’m trying to do a good thing for this company. I’m using vineyards like your father’s as models for more sustainable winemaking, for us to generate a better product. That’s a rough road with these guys. It’s an expensive road. Not that you give a shit, but you’re making it a hell of a lot harder.”

  He turned back to his trunk, really angry now.

  “You need to stay away from here. And me.”

  “Believe me, that’s all I want.”

  “Really? So why do you keep showing up here, then?”

  He started to close the trunk, which was when I noticed a duffel to the side of the files. His toothpaste and toothbrush on top. He followed my eyes and closed the trunk the rest of the way, slamming it shut.

  “Is everything okay?” I asked.

  He laughed. “Now you care?”

  “Did you have a fight with Lee or something?”

  “No, I just thought it would be a fun change of pace to sleep on an old mattress at the Yountville Inn.”

  He started walking toward the factory, picking up the pace, trying to get away from me. I struggled to keep up, Jacob looking up at the sky as he walked, as if that was the only way he could think of to avoid making eye contact.

  “Look, I’m doing the best I can to take over this company. That’s my priority and that’s what I need to focus on now. As far as I can see, you and I have nothing to talk about anymore.”

  “So what? I should call your lawyer with any additional questions?”

  “Just don’t call me, okay?”

  Then he looked up at the sky again.

  “It’s definitely going to rain,” he said. “Your father needs to take those grapes off the vines now.”

  “That’s what you have to say?”

  He headed for the factory door, not turning back. “What do you want me to say? That’s what matters.”

  No Secrets

  I drove back to the house, the sun fading out as I wound down the driveway. The SUV was gone, taking the Wicked Witch of the West Coast with it. And taking her lovely daughter. I expected Ben to be gone too, but he wasn’t. Ben was lying in my childhood bed, surrounded by papers and notecards. It took a second to realize they were the seating charts for our wedding.

  “I didn’t leave,” he said.

  I lay down next to him. “I noticed that. Why not?”

  He touched the seating charts. “These charts needed completing.”

  He held out the charts for me to see—the big, beautiful charts that were hanging over us, one of the reasons that coming back for harvest had felt unreasonable. We had no idea where everyone was sitting, what they were eating when they got there.

  I looked down in grateful disbelief. They were done. The charts were done. Everyone was in a seat. Everyone was next to someone that would make them happy.

  “I’ve been working on them since you kicked me out. You can look through and see that they are pretty much perfect. I even put my uncle Merle downwind. You know, because of his halitosis.”

  “Ben, that’s sweet of you . . .”

  “I also called the caterer. And she can come up here tomorrow. Though I figured with the harvest party we should wait until the day after tomorrow. But we can get it done then. One day and the rest of the planning is done. And I’ll take care of it. I hope you won’t think this is unmanly, but I seem to have a knack for this wedding stuff.”

  I couldn’t believe it. It was a small thing and yet it was the kindest thing he could have done—taking care of the charts, taking care of the caterer. So all that was left for me to consider was what it would feel like to walk down the aisle. Toward him. So that was something I could enjoy thinking about again, being in my dress again, moving toward our future.

  “Here’s the thing. We are good together. We belong together. And it’s easy to look at Michelle and decide she means more than she does, but it’s also easy to look away from Michelle. For me, it is. That’s what I’m trying to say. I love you. And that is my choice.”

  He was looking at me, his eyes unshielded, his heart open.

  “And I know you think it’s out of some loyalty, but it has nothing to do with loyalty. It’s about love.” He smiled. “From the second we met, I knew that nothing could pull us apart.”

  I tried fighting what popped into my head—except, perhaps, the mother of your child.

  He held up the seating charts, his form of truth. “And what I want more than anything is to walk down the aisle in your favorite place in the world and get through this together. That is what I’m going to do for you if you let me do it. I’m going to keep us strong.”

  Ben always got there a minute before I did. This time was no exception. I could forgive him or not. We could move forward or not. But if I stayed with him, he would make me happy I stayed. He would spend his life making me happy.

  And then he proved it.

  “What if we stayed here after the wedding?” he said.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “What if we stayed in Sebastopol? We could stay and figure out the vineyard together. We could figure out a solution so that your family wasn’t just giving everything away that they’ve worked so hard for.”

  “What about London?”

  “We don’t have to be there immediately. London can wait.”

  “You’ll help me fight? To get the vineyard back?”

  He nodded, serious. “I’ll help you fight to get the vineyard back,” he said. “We’ll find a winemaker to take it over, one who does things your father’s way. We won’t let him give this place to Jacob, just because your father is struggling. Just because he stopped believing in this place.”

  Ben moved toward me slowly, pulling my hair back from my face, smiling. “I don’t deserve a second chance, but sometimes when someone doesn’t, that’s exactly when you need to give them one.”

  I thought of all the second chances around here that weren’t being handed out. Between my brothers. Between my mother and father. I thought about how much happier they would be if they could hand them to each other. To themselves.

  “No more secrets?” I said.

  “No more secrets,” he said.

  Like that, I forgave him.

  Part 3

  The Union

  An Invitation

  My father once said watching wine age was like listening to music. He said it was the strangest mix of music and chemistry, in which you listened to every note to know what the grapes needed: when they should come off the vines, how long they should be given to ferment into the wine they wanted to be, how the wine should be racked, transferred, blended.

  Racking and blending were the primary ways my father interacted with the grapes once they were off the vine. Racking involved transferring wine from one container to another, to get rid of the sediment that might have settled, to allow the wine to aerate better. Then, after the wine was racked, came the blending. My father blended different clones, one or several, depending on what the wine needed. The initial barrel wines were more like spices in a stew. The final product was the joining of the different c
lones, the making of the stew. That was the job. Like you were a chef. You had to see what belonged together.

  As I got older, my father would take me with him to taste the newly blended wines—to help put the final touches on what he’d created. He’d share that first taste with me, trusting me to tell him that it was ready. It felt impossible that he was never going to do that again—that we, together, were never going to do that again. It felt impossible that someone else was going to finish the wine that he’d taken so much pride in starting.

  The morning of the harvest party, the sky was clear and stunning. The type of California sunshine that made you believe again was shining down. We had a tradition in our house of spending that morning out in the vineyard. The vineyard was mostly stripped at that point, except for Block 14.

  My father tried to time the harvest party to when Block 14 needed to come off the vines. We picked them as a family, staying up all night after the harvest party, picking the grapes before the sun came up.

  And, every year, the morning of the harvest party, we would check on the grapes together. Even when we were little, my father would bring us to check on those grapes and make a group decision as to whether they needed longer. All of us peeking at my father’s spreadsheet, the weather conditions, the grapes themselves. Do they leave the vines today? Do they stay on longer?

  But when I looked out the window, no one was in Block 14. The grapes swayed quietly, so rich and ripe on the vines.

  Ben wrapped his arms tighter around me. I could feel his newfound appreciation that we were on the other side of it, his mistake, my reaction.

  “Good morning,” he said.

  He looked so happy. And I remembered the joy I felt at making him that way.

  He smiled and looked out the window, to see what I saw. Block 14, empty. Then he turned back to me, trying to make it better.

  “What do you say that we go into town? Get me some of those pancakes Maddie can’t stop talking about?”