“Then he’s under duress.”
She sighed, but she didn’t look hurt. She looked like she wanted to hear me. She looked like she wanted to be on the same side, as opposed to opposite ones, so we could get to the conversation she wanted to have, the one about Ben.
“Darling, we’re supposed to sit down with the caterer . . .” she said. “Should I cancel that? It’s not about the deposit, though if we don’t sit down with her, she is going to take that. She needs a final head count. She needs a final decision on the entrée.”
“Mom, I can’t really deal with that right now.”
“I told her we’re going with the fish,” she said.
I looked at her, confused.
“I’m sorry, did you cancel the wedding and forget to tell me?” she asked.
“No.”
“Well, I think that means part of you doesn’t want to cancel.”
“What about the other part?”
My mother looked me right in the eye. “If you want to fix things, you have to start somewhere,” she said. “For you that somewhere is fish.”
I interrupted her. “Do you remember when Finn snuck out of the house on his fifteenth birthday and hitchhiked to Los Angeles to go to a Phish concert?”
“It was his sixteenth birthday. And of course.”
Her face went dark even remembering it. Finn ended up at a downtown Los Angeles police station, my parents driving five hundred miles in the middle of the night to pick him up. “Why are you bringing that up?”
“Because Bobby and I were the ones that you were mad at. Even though I was thirteen.”
“Fourteen. And I seem to remember that you took it upon yourself to drive to the Queens’ harvest party while we were gone.”
“You were late, how else was I going to get there?”
“Very funny.” She was less than amused, just remembering how I’d borrowed her car, driven up the road to the party. “I think we’re getting a little off track.”
“You grounded both of us, as long as you grounded Finn. Do you remember why you made that decision?”
“Apparently you do.”
“You said Finn wanted to go so badly that he wasn’t thinking clearly. But we knew how dangerous it was and we didn’t stop him, or tell you and Dad so you could stop him. And you said that was unacceptable. Because that’s what we do for the people we love. We don’t sit around watching while they make mistakes. We at least try to stop them from doing things we know they are going to regret.”
“You realize I was talking about children as opposed to grown people?”
“Do the same principles not apply?”
She nodded. “I guess they do.”
Then she took my hand and put it to her face. Josh and Peter squirmed beside her, curling in against her legs.
“So that’s what you’re trying to do?” my mother said. “Stop the people you love from doing what they’ll regret?”
“Yes. Exactly.”
She kissed the inside of my palm. “But which way is regret?”
Sebastopol, California. 1984
The baby was crying.
All the children were crying. They wouldn’t stop. He could hear them from the bedroom, Jen trying to soothe them. He wanted to get up and help her, but she had ordered him away. He had worked all night and was heading back to the vineyard soon. The clock read 10 A.M. He needed to sleep for at least an hour or two.
He was lying on the bed, staring at the ceiling. They had three children and they were going bankrupt trying to make this vineyard work. After that first vintage—when he thought he had the hang of it, that one lovely wine giving him a false sense of security—he realized he didn’t have a handle on anything. The weather wasn’t cooperating: two years of storms, one year of no storms at all. Three children.
Sebastopol was changing, diversifying, but it wasn’t becoming a wine haven. And there was a man who wanted to buy the land back from him and turn it into a subdivision: McMansions on McMansions, ten of them, one acre of land each.
Dan didn’t want to think about doing it, but he had to think about doing it. He had given himself five years, five vintages. If he sold the vineyard now, they could get out without losing everything. He would come out ahead. But even one more bad harvest, and he would be borrowing against what he had already borrowed.
He wasn’t going to do that, not to his wife, not to his kids. The boys fighting, always fighting. If they moved back into the city, they would still fight, but he would be around less to hear it. And maybe they would cry less. That was possible too.
He looked up to find Jen in the doorway, the baby in her arms, sleeping. Jen smiled at the small victory. He smiled back at her. He loved her so much he thought it might break him.
“Hey there, baby,” she said.
Jen came over and lay down next to him, putting their daughter between them. Jen had put her in a blue dress. Her legs stuck out beneath it, chunky and sweet. The baby was a mix of both of them. Bobby had been a spitting image of Jen, Finn of him. But this one, their daughter, on any given day, looked like both of them. And neither of them.
He put the baby on his chest, reaching for Jen’s hand. “You okay?” he said.
She sighed. “I gave up,” she said. “I gave the kids a bag of cookies.”
“That was smart of you,” he said.
“Each. Each their own bag.”
He smiled, looked at her.
“Did you sleep at all?”
“Yes.” He nodded, meeting her eyes, so she wouldn’t worry.
“Liar.”
She closed her eyes, about to fall asleep herself.
“We need to take the offer,” he said.
She opened her eyes.
“I can get my job back at the university,” he said. “I just got off the phone with Bill and he said they’d be glad to have me. And the real estate agent can get our money out of this. She knows a guy who’s interested.”
“That’s what you’ve been doing instead of sleeping? Making that decision?”
“That’s what I’ve been doing.”
She paused, and he could see her relax. They would move to San Francisco. She could get a job as a studio musician. They could have salaries and buy the purple Victorian home they’d driven past in Pacific Heights. They could get help with the kids.
She looked at him and smiled. He loved that smile, and was willing to move mountains when it appeared. He had made it appear now by giving them both a break, by giving them a way to turn it around.
Then her smile disappeared on him. “Did you call anyone else?”
“What?”
“Did you call anyone besides Bill? To tell him the plan?”
“No.” He shook his head. “Why do you ask?”
She moved closer to him for a second, one hand on him, one on her baby. Then she stood up, leaving the baby with him, sleeping quietly on his chest.
“I’m just trying to figure out who I need to call back.”
He looked at her, confused.
“To tell that we’re staying.”