Eight Hundred Grapes

by Laura Dave

  “Hey, guys. What’s going on?”

  We looked up, and Finn was there, holding a six-pack of beer. Finn stood there, Bobby stiffening at the sight of him. I made room anyway, for my good brother, who had behaved very badly.

  Finn sat down on the other side of me, and maybe this was all that Bobby could do, but he did it. He didn’t get up. I tried to reward him for that, handing him the beer.

  Finn cleared his throat. Maybe so we would look at him.

  Which was when I noticed that he was holding a paper in his hand: an entire folder, a blue folder, UCLA Law School’s insignia on the front.

  He handed it over.

  “I stayed up looking for it. It wasn’t easy to find. But there it is.”

  The contract. It was the contract we had signed saying we would never take this place over. I looked down at it. There were the signature lines I’d made. Bobby had signed the first one, Finn the third. But on the second line—saved for me—there was nothing.

  “I never signed it?”

  He shook his head. “You never signed it,” Finn said.

  Bobby looked over, as if to confirm it. He nodded. “No signature.”

  There was meaning to derive from that, probably that everyone is too busy in law school to do anything well. But maybe there was some other meaning too.

  Finn put his arm over my shoulder. “You should frame that,” he said. “It was like the younger you telling the older you something.”

  “But what?”

  “But what? That is the question.”

  It was Bobby who answered.

  “Maybe that you’re a pretty crappy lawyer.”

  Then he took the contract and ripped it into a thousand pieces.

  We sat there quietly, the early morning coming up over the vineyard, the fog moving away. Slowly but surely. Leaving a glistening in its wake. Leaving sunshine. From the half-burned winemaker’s cottage, it couldn’t have been more beautiful.

  “I still don’t want this place,” Finn said.

  “Me neither, I have no interest,” Bobby said.

  He didn’t look at Finn when he did it, when he agreed with him, but he agreed with him all the same.

  I looked at Finn, tempted to explain what had just happened, Bobby moving toward him, though I kept my mouth shut, in favor of trusting what I had learned this weekend, in the face of everything falling apart, and maybe coming together in a greater way than I could have hoped for. You couldn’t always work so hard to fix it. Even if things didn’t always go the way they should, sometimes they went exactly where they needed to.

  Bobby took a sip of beer. “I don’t want the responsibility,” he said. “But it’s more than that. I’m not really sure I would be good at it. I think you have to believe you’d be good at it.”

  “That might change,” I said.

  “Well, it only changed for you because it’s too late,” Bobby said.

  Finn looked over.

  “Maybe too late,” Finn said. “Maybe not.”

  “Maybe not,” Bobby said.

  Then Finn reached over and held out his hand to Bobby.

  Bobby took it.

  And the three Ford children got drunk and watched the sun come up.

  The Other Line

  Ben was lying on my bed, awake. “Hey,” he said. “You okay?”

  I stayed in the doorway, not because I didn’t want to go to him, but because it felt bizarre, looking at him in my childhood bedroom. This room, more than any place since, felt like my home.

  “What are you smiling about?” he said.

  I shook my head. “Can’t answer that, at the moment.”

  He smiled. “I’m just glad you’re smiling,” he said. “Is she okay?”

  I tilted my head. “Don’t you mean he?”

  “No, I mean she. Your mother. I knew your dad was going to be okay. He’s the toughest bird I’ve ever met.”

  “They’re both fine. They’re going to be fine.”

  “Good. Then come here, already.”

  I sat down on the edge of the bed, and Ben put his arm on the small of my back.

  “Maddie went to the hotel with Michelle,” he said. “But she asked when she could come back. She asked if she could have pancakes with us in the morning. Isn’t that cute?”

  “That’s nice.”

  “I told her we are working on keeping the vineyard, which she was thrilled about, but maybe because it’s close to the pancakes. Fine by me if that’s the reason. I feel good with her happy being in Sebastopol.”

  I smiled. Then I looked at him, really looked at him, trying to figure out how to say it. “You can’t stay here, Ben.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You can’t stay here with me. Even temporarily. You need to go and start your life in London.”

  He looked at me, taking in those words. “And you’re not coming?”

  I shook my head, definitive. “I can’t.”

  He paused as if considering how to fight this. “I thought we made a new plan.”

  “It doesn’t work. You need to be with your kid. Down the street. To take her to soccer. To pick her up from school.”

  “She hates soccer.”

  I shrugged. “That’s who you are.”

  He sat up. “You’re who I am too . . .”

  I leaned down toward him, tried to figure out how to explain it. “It isn’t about Maddie. It’s about the part of you that didn’t tell me about Maddie when you could have fit us together.”

  He shook his head. “We’re back to this?”

  “That’s why you kept them a secret from me, Ben. You didn’t want me to see what I see when I look at you now.”

  “And what is that?” he said.

  “That part of you wants to work things out with Michelle.”

  He was quiet, looking down at the pillow, trying to control his anger. He shook his head.

  “Except I decided on us. Isn’t that the important part?”

  “Part of you wanted to go the other way. That doesn’t seem like a problem?”

  “That seems like reality.” He paused. “We are presented with options and we either take them, or we remember why it isn’t worth it to take them. Why what we’re giving up is too much.”

  I nodded, knowing he believed that, and knowing he was wrong. Ben hadn’t picked one option, which was why I sensed the intimacy between Michelle and Ben: They had been living a life together in which that intimacy was all there was.

  Ben sighed. “I don’t want to be with Michelle.”

  “No, but she is your have-to-have.”

  “Michelle isn’t my have-to-have and what does that even mean?”

  I didn’t say anything. I didn’t have to. He realized that I wasn’t talking about Michelle. I was talking about Maddie.

  He nodded, not arguing with that. It was the truth, after all. From the minute Maddie had walked into Ben’s life, she was the only thing he could see, as she deserved to be. The rest—me, Michelle—was secondary. As we deserved to be. The problem was that if we were fighting for second place—and who wanted to fight for second place?—the tiebreaker was still to be determined, wedding or no wedding, London or no London. And maybe that was the bigger thing. Suddenly, I understood our life together—so far from my family, with someone who didn’t feel like my family in the way he needed to—was my second place too.

  Ben looked at me. He couldn’t argue, so he said something else, which he knew to be true. “And you need to be here?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “You need to be here,” he said. No question attached. “And not temporarily.”

  He always got there, though this time I was there before him. I needed to be in Sonoma.

  “What are you going to do?”

  �
�I don’t have a vineyard. I don’t have a family intent on staying. They’re working it out. My parents. My brothers.” I shrugged. “I guess the reasons I want to stay are more complicated than I think they are.”

  “Or maybe they’re simpler.”

  I pushed his hair out of his face. “I’m not trying to punish you. I’m not mad.”

  “I know,” Ben said. “That makes it worse.”

  He reached for my hand, laying me down beside him.

  “This still feels, in this moment, like where we belong. How do you account for that?”

  Ben’s face was so close to mine. He smiled at me, that smile I loved. Those lips, soft and sweet. And I agreed with him. There was a world in which we moved back toward each other, but I couldn’t help but have another image locked in my mind. Another moment. Not tomorrow, but one day. Ben walking down the street with his daughter and her mother. His wife, his hand on her back. An image like the one I had seen in Silver Lake.

  But this time I’d be walking toward them. Michelle in town for work, Ben and Maddie tagging along. He’d complain that he still wasn’t used to the cameras, to the scrutiny around their lives, and how much Michelle cared about those things. But he would complain in the way that showed that he was also amused by it, the way we got to be amused by the things we did for love. It would be good to see them. Hearing how Maddie was doing, how they all were doing together. Ben smiling, the charge gone, something kinder there. Something like friendship.

  We lay back on the bed, hand in hand. My wedding dress was hanging on the door, still ready to be worn.

  “Why do I feel like you’re trying to do the right thing?” he said.

  “Because I am,” I said.

  Ben turned toward me. “Who says there is a right thing?”

  Synchronization. Everything lines up like a sign of where you are supposed to be. But what do you give up? Because you give something up. As simple—and complicated—as the other line, the other way your life could have been if you had taken a different path. If you had gotten into the right car. If you hadn’t gotten out of the wrong one.

  “Do not close your eyes. If we fall asleep, I won’t be able to convince you,” he said.

  Then he did.

  Everything Worth Doing

  It was 9 A.M., so I went back to the hospital to see my father. He was sitting up in bed, his color back. He looked like himself, which was an enormous relief, the tears rushing to my eyes.

  He stopped me with his arm, with a quick wave of it. My father had never liked tears and he didn’t want to watch mine now, not on his watch, not when he didn’t have the energy to stop them.

  “I hate it in here,” he said.

  This instead of hello.

  “I really hate it,” he said.

  “Then leave.”

  “Working on it. Your mother is getting me checked out as we speak. She’s talking to the doctors and the administrators. Or at least, that’s what she said she’s doing.”

  “You think she’s lying to you?”

  “She could be running to get a sandwich.”

  I laughed and took a seat on the edge of the bed, took hold of my father’s hand. Scare or no scare, I never wanted to be sitting there again.

  “Are the brothers working?”

  “Yes, the vineyard is all good.”

  “Good.” He paused. “Do they still want to kill each other?”

  “Yes, but the normal amount.”

  “Also good. Though it’s really about the grapes. Remind them of that. If anyone loses perspective again, remind them that the most important things don’t involve that much talking.”

  “Of course.”

  He closed his eyes. He was tired. There was no denying that. He needed rest. And all of this time, he’d had trouble asking for it. Now he was going to get it. “Thank you.”

  “For someone who says he doesn’t care about that place anymore, you seem pretty concerned.”

  “Who said I didn’t care? I’m just getting ready to care about something else.”

  That was the truth, wasn’t it? We had so much space in our heart. My mother was tired of giving it all to our family, so she gave it to Henry. Until she realized that wasn’t the answer either. My father realizing the same thing in time to save them.

  “It’s time for me to get out of here, kid,” he said.

  “You like to go out with a bang?”

  He laughed.

  He reached for my face, holding my cheek. “What happened?”

  I shook my head without answering.

  “You left Ben?”

  I nodded, trying not to think about where Ben was now, what was happening with him. Maybe he was talking to Michelle, but probably he was letting it sink in for himself that he was going to London, that he was doing what he needed to do. We both were.

  My father nodded. “It was the right thing,” he said.

  I smiled. “Now you tell me.”

  “You needed to get there yourself. Or it wouldn’t have been. You get that?”

  “Well, if you say so.”

  He smiled. “I think you’re going to be okay, kid. He wasn’t the person.” He shook his head. “Or maybe that’s just what I’m telling myself now so I don’t feel responsible.”

  “Responsible for what?”

  “Responsible for you. You don’t understand your worth. That was my job.”

  I reached over and took his hand, my father, whom I loved more than anything in this world. My father. My mother.

  “Daddy.”

  “Oh no, you’re bringing out the big gun.”

  “I’m moving home, not because I’m scared, but because I’m not anymore. I want to be here.”

  He nodded because he could see that I meant it. Then he got sad, thinking about something else.

  “It’s too late, baby.”

  I nodded. “For our land, but I’ll find new land. And I’ll make Jacob give it back to me, the Last Straw name.”

  “He won’t do it. He’s not going to be allowed by his board, even if he wants to.”

  “Then I’ll fight him to give me B-Minor, unless you don’t want me using it.”

  “Then what?”

  “Then I’ll ask Mom.”

  He shook his head. “You’re the most stubborn person that I’ve ever met. And if you think I mean that nicely, I don’t. It’s not a compliment, even if it sounds like one.”

  “Will you help me?”

  “If you tell me why you want to be here so badly?”

  My mother’s words came to mind. Be careful what you give up. In a way, that was what I had done. I had focused on other things, on my relationship, on a life far from here. And I was glad I had. It had altered me in the ways that made it possible for me to want to be here. To know what that meant. I had given away a love that felt too dangerous, too risky, and being back here was the greatest reminder that it was real love. How I felt waking up here in the morning, and how I felt sitting on the winemaker’s cottage porch at night. How the smells and sounds and people seemed to grab hold of me every time I let them in. How the wine still did.

  The wine. And the fearless piece of me that wanted to be a part of it, even if I couldn’t control it. The fearless part of me knowing that just maybe it was the way to build a life that I wasn’t only good at, but that I loved.

  He smiled. “You remember when you were a little kid, and you came into the winemaker’s cottage and announced that you wanted to be a winemaker? I was relieved when you changed your mind.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s a life you have no control over. You do everything in your power and ultimately you have no control.”

  I moved in closer to him, trying to avoid sounding ironic when I said it, what I knew to be the truth. “Didn’t you just describe everything
worth doing?”

  He smiled. “Not everything, wiseass.”

  “Give me the exception.”

  “Making clocks. That, you can control.”

  “Why does that sound familiar?”

  “I tried to convince you to become a clockmaker. I even took you into San Francisco one afternoon to go to the oldest clock store in the city, to watch the clockmaker do his work.”

  “Seriously?”

  He shrugged. “You had trouble telling time. I thought at the very least it would help.”

  “Did it?”

  “Not really.”

  He closed his eyes. He was getting tired. I patted his hand, getting ready to leave him, to let him rest, to let my mother come inside and rest with him, the two of them quiet together, the way they belonged.

  “So you’re staying? And I’m going. I’m going boating. I’ll hate every second of it, but I’m going.”

  I laughed. “Why are you doing that to yourself?”

  “It’s the only way to get where we want to be.”

  He looked at me, making sure I heard him. They weren’t coming back to Sebastopol, or if they did, it wouldn’t be on the terms I was imagining. The vineyard saved, my father’s legacy, the way it had been, intact.

  Then he smiled. “But you’ll be okay. You’re going to be a great winemaker for the same reason you’re a terrible driver.”

  “Why is that?”

  He shrugged, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. “No one else has a clue what you’re doing, but at the end of the day, you get to where you want to go.”

  I smiled, leaning in toward him, starting to cry.

  “Okay, let’s not get dramatic. You really do have to work on the driving.”

  He motioned toward the doorway, where my mother was walking down the hall toward us. “Are we not going to talk about the other guy?” he said. “Before your mother gets here?”

  “What guy?”

  He tilted his head. “Your mother will make a big deal about it.”

  “Who?”

  “Jacob. I’m talking about Jacob, of course.”