My father climbed the opposite ladder, moving toward the top of the second fermenter, from the opposite end.
Then he motioned toward the compost piles, Bobby and Finn standing by them, ignoring each other, working on the feed. He was happy, looking at his sons. “They’ve been working all day, not saying a word.”
“Why are you smiling, then?”
“People get more work done when they don’t talk.”
He bent over the grapes, kneading them softly. Which was when I saw it, sneaking out from beneath his white shirt. A scar, white and winding, in the center of his chest.
I moved closer to him. “Dad, what is that?”
“Nothing.” He pulled up his T-shirt, blocking my view. “It’s nothing . . .” he repeated.
He kept studying the grapes, not taking his eyes off his task.
“What happened? Did you hurt yourself working?”
He was getting more and more irritated. “Georgia, can you drop this?”
“You want me to drop everything these days.”
“Not everything. Just this.”
“And Henry,” I said.
He drilled me with a look, angry that I had the nerve to bring up Henry when he so clearly didn’t want to discuss it. Except that I was angry too. I was angry at all the secrets around here, at all the things that we weren’t talking about: my mother’s relationship, the fact that the most beautiful woman on the planet was in love with my fiancé.
“Henry isn’t even about Henry. It’s about a car going off the road.”
“What are you talking about, Dad?”
He looked up at me. “Do you remember when your mother and I were driving into town a few years ago and the pickup went off the road? Do you remember? Neither of us was badly hurt, but we had to go to the hospital.”
“Of course. Mom called me hysterical.”
He motioned toward the scar on his chest. “When this happened, when we got in that car accident, it changed things. When I lost control of the car that night, it changed things around here . . . and really it changed things for your mother.”
“Why?”
He shook his head. “It scared her when I got hurt like that. And I think your mother had to consider that one day she was going to be without me, and what was her life going to look like then.”
“Her answer was Henry.”
He nodded. “Yes.”
“So you’re letting her do that. Even if it costs you the vineyard?”
“Even if it costs me the vineyard,” he said.
My father stepped down the ladder, moving back toward the destemming machine. Then he looked out at the vineyard, at everything he was giving up. Which was when I understood: My father didn’t want to be here without my mother. If he was going to be anywhere without her, it was going to be somewhere far from here. It was going to be far from everything he was proud that they had built.
“Dad, we can figure out another way.”
He shook his head, angry. Angrier than I had seen him about all of this—angry that my mother was putting them in this position, angry that he was competing with someone for her affection, and just angry. It both relieved and scared me.
He headed toward the door.
“This is the other way,” he said.
Then, he was gone.
Note by Note My mother was in a towel in the corner of the bedroom, standing in front of her cello. Dancing. She was dancing around the cello, swaying, happily, or trying to stop from tripping over her feet, or both.
This was her first minute free from her grandchildren, from Maddie. She was getting ready to go to Henry, and I watched her for a moment, thinking of my father’s words. He thought that he understood what was happening in a way she didn’t: She was scared. She was scared that if she didn’t get out of this version of her life now, she never would. My father would leave her, one way or another, and all she would be left with was the fear she already had. That she had chosen the wrong life.
You become your mother in the oddest ways, at the oddest time. Today, I had become her because I was afraid of the same thing.
She pulled her towel up. “We have to stop meeting like this.”
Instead of yelling, she sashayed toward me, trying to get me to dance with her.
Though instead of dancing, I reached for her, and held her to me as I started to cry. The two of us fell to the floor.
“What is it?” my mother said.
“You still love Dad.”
She nodded. Then she paused, before answering. “With all my heart.”
“So what are you doing? Covering your bases?”
“That’s not the reason,” she said.
“Then what?”
My mother shrugged, trying to decide whether she was going to keep me as her daughter in this moment, or if she was going to trust me with something she wasn’t going to be able to take back.
“When I met your father, I fell madly in love. Head-over-heels, turn-my-whole-life-around in love. When I look at him, when he touches me, I still feel that way.” She shrugged. “I don’t know how to explain how Henry makes me feel.”
She shook her head, like it was the last thing she wanted to do. She motioned toward her cello.
“Henry loves it when I play the cello.”
I wanted to tell her that Henry already said that, in a way that I wished I could get out of my head, how much he loved that. But I could see in her face that if I said a word, she was going to bolt, so I stayed quiet.
She shrugged. “Henry loves it when I play the cello in a way that is hard to explain. He stands there watching like I’m the only person in the world, listening, note by note, like each note matters to him. Because it does. And it’s not just that he loves music, or that he loves me. It’s this third thing, where those two things meet. It makes me feel . . . understood.”
She paused.
“I understand everything about your father, but your father doesn’t understand me the way Henry does. And I don’t fault him for that. But it is an amazing thing to be with someone who really sees you.”
She paused, and my heart started racing, trying to reconcile what she was saying with what my father said.
My mother sighed, looking down. “I see your father and I love who I see.”
“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