“’Cause you’re moving to London with Ben. You can’t do this thing long distance. I don’t want it. I have Margaret and the kids. Margaret is talking about going back to work. And Finn . . .” Bobby shook his head.
“What is going on with you two?”
He wiped his hands, reached for the water. “You’ll have to ask him.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means you’ll have to ask him.” He shrugged. “He’s acting like a dick. And he doesn’t want to talk about it with me, which is probably my fault. I’ve been a little judgmental.”
“About what?”
Bobby chugged his water. “All the women he’s been messing around with.”
“Finn always is dating someone.”
“This is different. He’s dating everyone.”
Bobby put the water down.
“And he says he wants to move to New York to go work for his buddy Sam, who has a new restaurant. He’s talking about selling me his share of the bar. I only bought the bar so he could run it. Now he’s leaving me with it.”
Bobby crinkled his forehead. He looked hurt that Finn was freezing him out—when they never froze each other out. Hurt that Finn would want to move away from him.
They were truly best friends—my good brother, my bad one. They always had been. I was the little sister they took care of in different ways: Bobby tutoring me in algebra, Finn sneaking me out for two-for-one pizza and a drive-in movie the night before the algebra test. But their relationship with each other was reciprocal, the two of them always sticking by each other’s side. Until, apparently, now.
His cell phone rang. He reached into his pocket, a smile returning to his face.
“Hey, pal.”
Then he held out the phone so I could see who it was. Ben, complete with a smiling photo, beckoning. Bobby put the phone back to his ear, happy to be talking to him.
Bobby loved Ben, though he loved him for the wrong reasons. He loved him for being an impressive architect, an upstanding member of society, a member of Soho House. All the things Bobby valued these days.
“You coming up?” Bobby said, into the phone.
I shook my head and whispered to Bobby, “Tell him I’m not here.”
“Sure,” Bobby said. “She’s right here.”
He handed the phone over.
Instead of putting the phone to my ear, I ended the call. And handed the phone right back to him.
Bobby looked down at the phone in his hands, confused.
“What the hell?” he said.
“Don’t look at me like that. I wanted to finish our conversation.”
“You could have told Ben that,” Bobby said.
I felt my face start to turn red.
Bobby registered it. “Oh no.” He paused. “Are you blowing this with him?”
“No, but thank you for the support.”
“That’s why the obsession with the vineyard. So you don’t have to admit that you’re blowing this with him.” He shook his head. “Why am I the only one in this family that has a clue about being a grown-up?”
“Has it even occurred to you that you don’t know everything that’s going on with me? Let alone with Mom and Dad? If you did, you’d understand that selling the vineyard isn’t about selling the vineyard.”
He smirked, unimpressed. “Is that so?”
I looked at him confused. Did he know about Mom and Dad too?
“Bobby, they’re running away from the thing they care the most about because it feels too hard to stay. We can’t let them do that.”
His phone rang again, Ben on the line again.
“Well, we’re going to have to,” he said. “Because it’s already done.”
Then he turned away and picked up.
Sebastopol, California. 1979
The word the real estate agent used to describe the land was bucolic.
Bucolic, Dan knew, was generous. The dirt was dusty, muddled. There were dozens of stumps he’d need to dig out by hand.
“Tons of possibilities here,” she said.
Possibilities. Bucolic. Real estate speak. She was, after all, a real estate agent who was trying to convince him to buy ten acres of land in an area where no one was buying ten acres of land. Not for what he wanted it for. Not for making wine. They were doing that an hour east and south over the winding, trepidatious climb of CA-116, leading you to a different world, to Calistoga and St. Helena, the tony world of Napa Valley.
That was a world Dan had only visited, a world still rejoicing from their win in the Judgment of Paris a few years earlier. The victory had been a big deal in the wine world. Eleven judges, graded tastings, California wines rating best in each category. Beating out the French, beating out the world. A French judge had demanded her ballot back, but it was too late. She had already spoken. Napa Valley was the winner.
Sebastopol wasn’t Napa Valley. It wasn’t obvious for growing grapes—this wedge-shaped hunk of land separating the Russian River Valley from the Petaluma Gap, all sloping land and overgrown trees, winding roads like obstacle courses.
This was Western Sonoma County. It was rolling country, a land of apple orchards. This very acreage had been an apple orchard, the real estate agent told him. Now it was dehydrated, empty.
But he wasn’t only looking at the land. He was looking at the rest of it. Sebastopol’s prevalent but predictable weather patterns. Mornings always warm, especially when the fog burned off. Evenings always cold. The elevation here keeping the land above the coastal fog.
He had been a scientist by trade until he felt compelled to do something else, until he felt he had to be standing here. He had been standing on the top of the hill—the high point that looked over the acres—every morning this week. He had been standing here for two hours at a time, as he clocked how the sun came up, how the wind felt. He thought he could work with this. And, if he managed, he would be the first to succeed.
He would have to try. He couldn’t afford a piece of land in Napa Valley. He could barely afford this land, in the middle of nowhere. But that wasn’t the only reason. Maybe if he honored the land—if he honored the elements that made it the strange and unique way it was—he could make a different type of wine. He could do something worth doing.
The real estate agent was trying to be patient. She had been standing on the top of the hill with him every morning this week, standing over him as he reached down, his hands grabbing soil, studying it.
He knew if she had any other potential buyers, she wouldn’t be here. She knew that he knew this.
He tried to ignore her, but she followed his eyes out to the empty land. She looked at his empty ring finger.
“Are you going to build a home here?” she asked.
“A vineyard.”
“Really?” She tried to recover. She did a terrible job. “Very exciting!”
He was looking straight ahead.
“Are you a winemaker?”
“No.”
She looked at him, perplexed. “Do you have someone to help you?”
He shook his head. “Not yet.”
He was twenty-five years old. He had no family, no money, two classes so far in viticulture. Fourteen more classes to go.
He had no business doing what he was about to do.
“I’ll take it,” he said.
And he looked out at nothing. The beginning of his life.
Mr. McCarthy