by Donna Ball
“That you didn’t even pay for,” Ida Mae pointed out.
Bridget said, “That’s right, Ida Mae. If it hadn’t been for your generous Christmas gift, we wouldn’t have this money at all.” She tucked the check into her pocket. “I’ll get this to the bank first thing Monday. Thank you, Derrick. It will be put to good use.”
Paul looked confused. “You’re certainly taking this awfully well. I know you were expecting a lot more—we all were. Aren’t you disappointed?”
“Of course we are,” Cici said, picking up her spoon. “We’re just not surprised.”
“We know you too well,” Lindsay said. “You gave yourselves away with the expensive presents.”
“I felt bad,” Derrick said. “I should never have gotten your hopes up.”
“Don’t be silly,” Bridget said. “We knew it was never a sure thing.”
Lori dug into her cobbler with the enthusiasm of one who has never had to worry about calories a day in her life. “I don’t get it. How can one bottle sell for eight thousand dollars and another just like it sell for two fifty?”
“Actually,” Derrick said, relaxing a little as he picked up his spoon, “that was the problem. They weren’t exactly alike.” He tasted the cobbler. “Exquisite. What is that flavor?”
“Amaretto,” Bridget said, pleased. “It is nice, isn’t it?”
Ida Mae sniffed. “Plain old vanilla flavoring was always good enough for me.”
Cici said, “What was different about this bottle?”
“The label,” Paul supplied, tasting the cobbler. “Marvelous, Bridge. Forget manufacturing jam. You should open a bakery.”
“Apparently,” Derrick continued, “the first bottle—the one that sold for so much—was rare because it had a label that was discontinued in midrun. The new label—the one your bottle has—was picked up that same year and continued all the way till 1986, when the winery shut down. Clearly, not so rare.”
“Do you mean it was the label that was valuable, not the wine?”
“In a way. That’s the way it is with collectibles. The rarer the item, the more valuable, and when the wine is gone, the collector will still have a piece of art in the label.”
Cici turned to Ida Mae. “Ida Mae . . .”
The older woman’s brows drew together. “I told you, I don’t have no more wine.”
“I was going to ask,” Cici said patiently, “why the winery closed down.”
“How should I know? Weren’t none of my business, anyhow. Long as I got my paycheck, what did I care? Ya’ll want me to put on another pot?”
Bridget said, “Yes, thank you. We’ll take our coffee into the living room.”
“And now,” Paul said, scraping the last bit of cobbler from the bottom of his dish, “if we’ve covered the subject of the wine . . .” He looked around the table. “Who’s going to tell me why your sheep are wearing sweaters?”
Derrick ’s footsteps clacked on the stone floor of the dairy as he walked around, hands clasped behind his back, gazing appreciatively at the space. Occasionally he would stop at one of the paintings that was hung to dry, or study a charcoal sketch thoughtfully before moving on. Noah, with his earphones in place, pretended disinterest as he leaned against the doorway, but his eyes narrowed whenever Derrick stopped before one of his pieces.
Finally, Derrick completed the circuit of the room. He stopped a few feet in front of Noah and simply waited until Noah, scowling, finally removed his earphones.
“Thank you for showing me the studio,” he said. “You’re very lucky to have a place like this in which to work.”
Noah shrugged. “I guess.” And then he added, casually, “So how good does a person have to be to get you to sell his stuff?”
Derrick tried unsuccessfully to suppress a smile. “Good is a relative term, Noah. “
“Oh yeah? Then who decides what’s good?”
“If you are in the business of selling works of art, the market does.”
“You mean whoever’s got the money.”
“More or less.”
“Then what use are you?”
“I often ask myself the same thing.”
Noah looked at him speculatively for a moment. “I ain’t no dummy, you know.”
Derrick lifted an eyebrow. “I never imagined you were.”
“Lindsay could’ve showed you this place by herself, instead of telling me to.”
“True enough. Why do you suppose she didn’t?”
He shrugged. “So’s you could look at my stuff and tell me if it’s any good.”
“Don’t you imagine she could tell you that herself ?”
“She tells me it’s good all the time.”
“Don’t you believe her?”
“She’s my teacher. She’s supposed to say I’m good.”
“I wish I’d had teachers like that when I was in school. I recall several essays that were returned with comments that were very far from good.”
Noah said, “You know what I mean. She’s supposed to encourage me. That’s her job.”
Derrick nodded. “Whereas I am supposed to be an objective expert.”
“So?” Noah demanded. “What do you think? Do you like my drawings or not?”
Derrick turned and took his time studying the charcoals that were displayed, the pastels, a few experiments in oil.
“I like this one,” he said at last, choosing a charcoal of the border collie in an attack crouch, teeth bared, fur wild. “And this one.” He pointed to a pastel of the sheep meadow, patchy with snow, and a lone muddy sheep standing in a far corner. “But this is by far your best.”
He indicated the eight-by-ten oil on art board that Noah had just completed as part of a class assignment using the glass plates Lindsay had found in the loft. This was a monochrome detail of one of the plates featuring a fountain in the rose garden. He had added, in the background, a deer wandering down the garden path, daintily nibbling on rose blossoms.
Noah said with interest, “Oh yeah? You want to buy it?”
Derrick replied, “No.”
Noah’s first surprise was quickly replaced with a belligerent scowl. “Why not?”
“Because your first question should have been, ‘What do you like about it?’ instead of ‘What is it worth?’ An artist has to be sensitive to what the viewer sees.”
“That’s bullshit.” Shoving the earbuds back into his ears, Noah turned toward the door.
Derrick said, “Maybe. But I’m the expert.”
Noah jerked open the door, took one step through it, and then turned around. He came back inside, closing the door with perhaps a bit too much force, and jerked the headphones out of his ears. “Okay. So what do you like about it?”
Derrick turned back to the painting and spent a careful moment in contemplation before he answered. “It’s alive. It has depth and emotion, just like the sketch of the dog, and the pastel of the meadow with the one muddy sheep in the corner. It tells a story, and draws me in.”
Noah, hands shoved deep into his pockets, affected indifference. But Derrick cast a sidelong glance at him without turning, and gauged the intensity of his interest. “I shouldn’t be a bit surprised to see your work hanging in my gallery one day . . . if we could come to terms, of course.”
Noah gave up the effort to disguise his interest. “Oh yeah? Then what’re you wasting time for? Why not now?”
Derrick turned to face him soberly. “Man to man?”
Clearly, no one had ever addressed Noah in such a fashion. His shoulders squared a little, almost unconsciously, even as his expression grew more guarded. “Yeah, okay.”
“Your work is unfinished,” Derrick told him. “You are unfinished as an artist. To show a work before it’s ready deeply undervalues it.”
Noah thought about this for a moment. “You mean if I hold off my stuff is going to be worth more than if I sold it now?”
“That’s exactly what I mean.”
Noah grunted. “You think I
could be an artist then?”
“I think you are already an artist. Don’t you?”
He shrugged. “Lindsay is an artist and it don’t make no never mind to her. I want to be the kind of artist that makes money.”
“I’m sure you’re not the first person to ever say that.”
Noah regarded him speculatively for a moment, then seemed to come to a decision. “Okay,” he invited expansively, “talk to me. What do I need to do to get you to buy my paintings?”
Derrick gestured toward the door, smiling. “First, let’s find a fire to sit in front of, and maybe a cup of tea with some of Bridget’s shortbread cookies. Then we’re going to have a long chat about the art business.”
“Actually,” Paul said, bending back a twiggy offshoot of a vine, “these vines aren’t in bad shape. You’re lucky they hadn’t started to bud before the freeze hit, though.”
“They go on forever,” Lori said, stepping high over the crunchy brown grass and knotty roots that made the ground uneven. “But it gets a little thick back there close to the woods.”
“I can certainly see what Lindsay meant by the amount of work it would take to clean this place up.” Paul paused and looked around, eyes narrowed in the bright sun. “Still, if these are the original vines—or remnants of them, anyway—it might be worth it. You might even be able to salvage the original vinifera.”
“What’s that?”
“It takes a special kind of vine,” Paul explained, “called vitis vinifera, to make wine. But the problem with letting a vineyard go wild like this is that the vinifera are constantly in danger of being contaminated—through pollination by bees and other sources—with more pedestrian grapes. Before long, they’re no longer the original cabernet or shiraz or merlot, but something else altogether.”
Lori said, “But the good ones are the vinif—whatever you said.”
“Right. But only if you want to make wine. If you want to make jam . . . well.” He spread his hands expansively. “All it takes is grapes.”
He added, “It seems a shame, though. It takes years to establish a productive vineyard, and here it is laid to ruin. Thomas Jefferson actually brought the first vitis vinifera to Virginia, did you know that? He thought Virginia could be one of the finest wine-producing regions in the world.”
“How did you learn so much about grapes?”
“My dear, you live with a wine expert for ten years and you’re bound to pick up a thing or two. And all those tours of Napa didn’t hurt.”
Lori bent to pick up a stick, switching it back and forth in the high grass as they walked. “Not that it matters,” she said, a little dispiritedly. “It was a stupid idea, anyway.”
“What was?”
“Making jam out of wine grapes.”
“I don’t see anything stupid about it,” objected Paul. “A trifle ambitious, perhaps, especially from Bridget’s point of view, since she’s the one who would have to be in charge of manufacturing, but as an overall concept it seems perfectly sound.”
“That’s just the problem,” Lori said. “Everything I come up with sounds good in theory, but when it comes to execution . . . let’s face it, I’m a total screwup.”
Paul shot her a quick incredulous glance. “What are you talking about? Aren’t you the one who came up with the idea that saved the sheep from freezing to death?”
Lori grimaced. “I’m also the one who came up with the brilliant idea to shear them in the first place.”
“So, one little mistake.”
“It’s more than that.” Lori focused rather grimly on slashing through a feathery stand of wheat grass with her stick, and then she cast Paul a hesitant, uncertain look. “Can I tell you something?”
“I shouldn’t be a bit surprised.”
“But you have to swear not to tell my mother.”
He chuckled. “When I was your age there was a saying—‘You can’t trust anyone over thirty.’ Now that I am over thirty I’m here to tell you with absolute certainty that the axiom is absolutely true. We’re all terrible finks, and you can’t trust a one of us. I won’t keep secrets from your mother,” he told her, “especially the important ones.” Then, sliding his hand into the stylish slit pockets of his camel coat, he added, “Of course, I don’t tell her everything I know, either.” He looked at her tenderly. “What is it, princess?”
She stopped, chewing her underlip, and for a moment she wouldn’t meet his eye. Then she said, “The thing is . . . I don’t think I’m very smart.” And then, as though she were afraid he would dismiss her, she rushed on, “It’s not that I don’t try, and it’s not that I don’t want to get things right . . . it’s just that everything somehow gets all muddled up in the end. It’s like college. I told mom it was boring, and I wasn’t learning anything, but that’s not really it . . . I mean it is, but the real thing is that it was hard, a lot harder than I ever thought, and I just couldn’t keep up with the work. I tried, but I kept flunking everything, and nobody likes to flunk everything. So I thought maybe I’m just not cut out for college. I mean, not everyone is, right? And maybe if I could just show my mom that I’m good at something else, anything else, it would be okay.” She released a long, slow breath that puffed on the frosty air. “The trouble with that plan is that I’m just not good at anything.”
They walked in silence for a while, and it seemed that Paul would not reply at all. And then he said, reasonably, “How do you know?”
She looked at him. “What?”
“How do you know you’re not good at anything?” he repeated. “Have you tried everything?”
Her frown was dismissive. “Well, not everything. But—”
“But nothing. Oh, I could tell you all kinds of inspirational stories about how many books John Grisham had rejected before he sold his first manuscript and how Vermeer died a pauper and how Coco Chanel—well, forget Coco. The point is that if you keep trying, you’re bound to get it right sooner or later.”
She slid a glance toward him. “But Vermeer died a pauper.”
“Only because he didn’t live long enough,” replied Paul promptly. “He’s terribly famous now.”
Lori couldn’t restrain a giggle. “Uncle Paul, that’s the worst inspirational speech I’ve ever heard.”
He grinned and flung an arm around her shoulder. “That may be, my dear, but my heart’s in the right place. Come along, let’s get out of the wind.”
They started back toward the house, and his tone grew serious. “You know, I’m a huge fan of your mom’s.”
Lori sighed. “So am I.”
“She can run a business, a table saw, a sewing machine; build houses, drive a tractor, plan the perfect Zurich vacation, and throw the most exquisite parties I’ve ever been privileged to attend, and just when you think she can’t top herself she does something utterly outrageous like moving into a century-old mansion in the middle of nowhere and deciding to restore the place brick by brick . . . The lady casts one long shadow, that’s for certain.”
Again Lori sighed. “Tell me about it.”
“She’s a smart, ambitious, determined woman who made a lot of success for herself,” Paul agreed. Then he stopped, and stepped in front of Lori, and rested both hands on her shoulders somberly. “But,” he said, “the most incredible thing she has ever made is you. And don’t you ever forget it.”
Lori buried her face in his chest and hugged him hard. “Now that,” she said, sounding a little misty, “was a great speech.”
“Which only proves my point.” He patted her back briskly. “If you keep trying, you’re bound to get it right.”
Lori laughed, scrubbed the moisture from her eyes, and stepped away from him. And with their arms around each other’s waists, they made their way back to the house.
They stayed up late that night, tossing logs on the fire when it started to die down, opening a second bottle of wine, reminiscing and catching up, laughing and musing. Lori and Noah stayed up late, too, though not as late as the adults, pop
ping corn over the open fire and drinking hot chocolate and quizzing Paul and Derrick endlessly about the places they had been and the things they had done. The gentlemen told stories about artists’ receptions and book signings, weekends in New York, and vacations in Brussels. The ladies told stories about drying apples and canning peaches, stripping furniture and reglazing bathtubs.
When Noah went upstairs to listen to his iPod and Lori, dozing before the fire, was reluctantly persuaded to say goodnight, Cici put another log on the fire. Lindsay took Lori’s place on the sofa, stretching out with a glass of wine and swinging her wool-clad feet across Paul’s knees. “Gosh, I’ve missed you guys,” she sighed.
“Mutual, my darling,” Paul returned, massaging her toes. “The old neighborhood just isn’t the same.”
Derrick refilled Lindsay’s glass, and Paul’s, and then raised the bottle to the others, who shook their heads. “I must say, I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes. Sheep farming, wood chopping, forest creatures and wild dogs and teenage boys roaming at will . . . a far cry from sailing on the bay and dining in Georgetown. And the most astonishing thing is that you all seem perfectly at home here.”
“It grows on you,” Cici agreed, contentedly stretching her own feet toward the fire.
“Tell the truth,” Paul insisted. “Don’t you miss it? Life in the real world?”
They laughed as one. “Of course I do!” Cici said. “I haven’t seen a movie in a year.”
“Or a manicurist,” added Bridget.
“Or a shopping mall,” sighed Lindsay.
“But . . .” Cici gestured to include the lamplit room, the glowing fire, the deep and velvety stillness of the night beyond the windows. “I would miss this even more.”
“Oddly enough,” said Derrick, “I can see that. And as much as I hate to admit I might actually have been wrong, I must say I think the move has been good for you.”
He glanced at Paul for confirmation, who nodded. “It’s the Zen of bucolic life,” he agreed. “It’s why agricultural peoples live an average of ten years longer than members of urban societies.”
