“Remember I told you about Manitou Brewing Company? I’ve gotten to know the owner and I’m going to meet with him and his son tomorrow. They’ve planted five acres of hard cider apples. In another three years, he thinks they’ll be ready to process commercially.”
Silence. The Indiana road noise and the rumble of Alex’s Dodge Ram combined with the slap of windshield wipers to create a considerable sound barrier, making it hard to detect the meaning of the barely audible sigh that whispered from the phone.
“And I suppose you’ve got several PA job interviews scheduled for me too?”
I smiled and shook my head, for no one else’s benefit. “No, honey, but that’s a good idea.” Two people can play this game.
“All right. Well, I tried to call Shawn, but he hasn’t gotten back to me. I may text him as I head up 31, but even if I stop to see him, I should be up there before seven or eight. Although it’s probably snowing like crazy where he is.”
“Okay, just drive carefully. Take your time. I’ll be here when you get here.”
Stopping to see Shawn. Of course. He’s probably nervous. Why didn’t I think of that before? Alex’s birth father lived on the west side of Michigan, and Alex would drive right through his town to get to me.
Five years earlier, after his stint in the army and just shy of his twenty-second birthday, Alex had found Shawn. We had always told our two older boys, both adopted, that we would help them search for their birth parents as soon as they turned eighteen if they wanted to. Ultimately, Alex acted on his own and wrote a brief, neutral email to Shawn Field, announcing that he believed Shawn was his biological father and politely requesting contact. It was a classic, gutsy, Alex move. He prepared us for it, especially asking if Steven would be okay with Alex’s finding this “other” father.
The encounter went improbably well. Shawn immediately said all the right things: “I’ve thought of you every day since I learned you were born”; “I never knew where you were or who adopted you”; “we’ll take it at whatever pace works for you”; and especially, “Your parents must be amazing. You’re such a great kid.”
The images from the night Alex and Shawn traveled across the state to Ann Arbor to introduce us to each other are burned into my mind’s eye forever. Body types: check. Eye and hair color: check. Mannerisms, facial expressions, charm: check.
Steven had been brilliant. Warm, funny, easygoing, unthreatened. It had been an incredibly healing evening all the way around. Two fathers and a mom, all putting out the love for this complicated boy. It was the first time Alex had his biological and adoptive family together in one place.
Then came all the changes.
Alex got caught up in the young woman’s disastrous problems. Shawn’s own complicated web of divorce, another son, and a girlfriend got messy for Alex. They stayed in touch, but at this point I wasn’t sure where their relationship was headed. I hoped their visit today, if there was one, would be good.
The phone startled me again. I grabbed it, thinking Alex had forgotten to tell me something, but instead, I heard an older man’s voice.
“Hey Abbie, it’s Charles.”
“Hey Charlie, how are you?”
Charles Aiken and his son James had started Manitou Brewing Company nearly ten years earlier. Now they successfully produced craft beer. If all went well, I would be working with them to create my hard apple cider.
And if Alex would consider it, and if he could find the PA job that he liked, he might be the trusted technical advisor to help me move this project forward. There were many “ifs,” and Charlie was one of them.
“You coming down tomorrow?” he asked. “James can’t be here, but you come on anyway.”
“Absolutely! Alex is on his way and I hope he’ll come with me. You tell James he’ll miss a good lemon meringue pie.”
Charlie’s chuckle was deep and warm.
“Is there a cider tasting possibility?” I ventured. Manitou’s first test batch was in the barrel.
“Mmmm, not likely, but we’ll see.”
“Okay, I’m figuring about two. Does that work?”
“Yep.”
“Thanks, Charlie.”
I sighed as I hung up. Tomorrow would be an interesting day.
I walked across the kitchen and into the small office facing the front of the property. This had been the original bedroom in the core structure of what, with additions, had become a sprawling farmhouse. I moved to the window of the tiny room and sat on the wrought iron bed that had likely been in the same spot for most of the house’s existence. My hand traveled absently over the quilt as I looked down the long field that bordered the quarter-mile driveway, all the way down to the brick gateposts at the entrance from the road.
A subtle movement caught my eye. It wasn’t one of the area’s ubiquitous deer. I squinted into the darkening mist. A slender figure, hunched slightly against the drizzle, walked slowly back and forth at the posts, stopping occasionally to look up the length of the driveway. It looked to be a young woman—a girl, even—and if she was one of my scarce year-round neighbors, I didn’t recognize her. Tourists were rare at this time of year. She looked as if she couldn’t decide whether to come up to the house or not. What now? I should hop in the truck and see if she needs help.
The oven buzzer sounded and I returned to the kitchen to baste the brisket. When I got back to the window, the girl had retreated down the road.
Weird. I guess I don’t need to chase her.
Chapter 2
I sometimes wonder if parenting isn’t like what a famous novelist once said about writers—that they are anti-therapists who figure out the characters in a book and then give them damage, so they do whatever it is they need to do. Perhaps parents engage in a similar and dangerous creative process with their children, only in a less intentional, more convoluted way.
Alex and I were sliding down M-22 in my Ford Flex, trying to stay on the curving road along the west coast of the peninsula. Spare beauty filled the bleak and frosty landscape, a beauty that made me love to be here when others my age were basking in Arizona sunlight. The unseasonable rain of the previous two days had given way to a sudden freeze and windswept blue sky as high pressure dipped down from the north. Even through my Maui Jims, the ice sparkled on bare tree branches as the cold pulled all the moisture from the air, candy-coating every tree and shrub with a million prisms.
I knew better than to wax poetic with Alex. It was enough that he sat by my side, his knee bobbing incessantly, releasing the rest of his body to relax. He stared at the mesmerizing rows of orchard, occasionally interrupted by a snug farmhouse up a hill or down a snaking road from the two-lane. Maybe it would have been better to take the route through Suttons Bay, where the most activity on the peninsula happened, but I loved this stretch of road.
“How’d the visit with Shawn go?” I ventured. I’d not asked the previous evening when Alex arrived, not wishing to pounce on this other world of his the minute he showed up.
“He’s okay.” Alex’s voice was unguarded, and I waited for him to continue. “He and his girlfriend are heading out to California to see her daughter. I guess there’s a new grandchild. She will stay out there for a while, but Shawn’s coming back after a few days. Looks like his business is finally picking up some.”
“That’s cool. Did you see Rob?” I kept my voice entirely casual. Rob was Alex’s half brother, the son Shawn had raised. Rob was ten years younger than Alex, and the process of their getting to know each other had been tentative on both sides.
“Nope, he’s at school and couldn’t get away on short notice. Shawn seemed disappointed, but we’re in touch with each other when we want to be.”
I waited for Alex to say more, but he was finished.
I had spoken to him over dinner about the pressing, storage, and fermentation process I had in mind for the cidery and how helpful I thought he could be with his extraordinary skills at organizing spaces and maximizing efficiency. Now I wanted him to know
more about Charles Aiken.
“So this guy Charlie—I think he’ll still be Mr. Aiken to you at this point—he knows all about the history of hard cider. It’s kind of interesting, actually. I want to go see this museum he’s been to in England. It’s in Hereford. You know that’s where I used to live, that year I spent in England.”
“Mm-hmm.”
“He’s had his apples planted for four years now, and what I’m proposing, like I told you last night, is that they’ll do the growing, I’ll get into the pressing and fermenting part of the business, and they’ll do the bottling and distribution from their operation downstate. You remember, they have a beer brewery there.”
“Why would you truck the cider downstate when there’s so much wine bottling and distribution up here?” Even at twenty-seven, Alex could sometimes talk to me like a long-suffering teenager. It was the tone.
“Because they already have the business down there. Maybe one day they’ll decide to bring it all up here. I don’t think we’re there yet.”
“We? Sounds like you’re already in it for sure. I mean, you re-roofed the shed, you’re talking like it’s already part your business. What does Dad think of all this?”
“He’s nervous. You know he thought I was nuts when I first started talking about it, but he’s gone over parts of a business plan with me and asked me good, hard questions, and I promised not to tie up any of our family money beyond what we decided I could put in from my inheritance so there won’t be pressure on him to support the business.”
“Oh, so your inheritance doesn’t count as family money?”
“Excuse me?”
“No, I think I have the right to ask! I’m trying to understand if Dad really supports this or if you just bypassed him by using the money from Grandma and Grandpa. It seems an awful lot like you’ve just imagined this whole business the way you want it to be, and you’re forcing everyone and everything around you to fit your little fantasy.”
My God, when is this son of mine going to blunt the razor edge of his inquiries? Why does he need to flay every deed to expose a perverse intent?
“So you obviously need to talk to Dad directly if you really want to know what he thinks,” I said. “The inheritance is money we didn’t ever count on, and so wasn’t part of our planning for our future. I don’t think Dad would have made the choice to put it into this property, but he didn’t strenuously object to it either. The land itself is a good investment.” My hands tightened on the wheel. “And yes, it’s been a dream of mine, Alex, and people should fulfill their dreams if they can do so responsibly.” I didn’t mean to get preachy with him, but goading gets me there quickly.
Alex wasn’t quite done. “So are you just going to live up here all the time without him? Is this some kind of separation or something?”
“Alex!” I shot a look at him before turning back to the road. His steady gaze appeared more provocative than disturbed. “Seriously? No! I’m traveling back and forth a good bit, with a preference for being up here, and Dad comes up too. He loves it here also, he’s just not ready to move here permanently. He’s just started scaling back his practice, but he’s not retiring yet.”
I slowed the Flex as we entered the town of Leland, sleepy on a winter afternoon, Christmas decorations draped lazily on the tree planters. I pulled over in front of a small shop and turned to fully face Alex.
“This is a time of exploration for us—a next chapter. This cider thing is something I really want to try—”
“Why?” Alex interrupted. “What’s the big deal with cider? And it doesn’t sound like ‘us,’ it sounds like only you exploring.”
I dropped my hands from their grip on the steering wheel and stared at them in my lap. Leave it to Alex to worry a sore spot. I knew what I had to say about the business was true to my core. I hoped what I had to say about Steven and me wasn’t only “fitting my little fantasy,” as Alex had just suggested.
I turned toward him again. “You know I’ve always been into gardening and growing fruit. Ever since I lived in England and learned to love hard cider, I’ve been fascinated with its making. I promised myself I’d find a way to make the farmhouse and the land pay for itself. And I love living in Northport. I don’t think I need to explain that to you after all these years of spending time here. I feel like I have another big life project in me, and creating a business out of these deep interests seems to pull it all together.”
Alex was still listening, so I continued.
“Dad is anxious about my getting into something that’s, from his point of view, so out of my wheel house. I recognize that starting this business is somewhat risky, as any new business would be, but I am being careful, and I’m doing my homework. And I’m enjoying everything I’m learning.” I sighed. “Sometimes in a marriage, you have to let the other person stretch, and this is definitely a stretch for us, but I would not do this if I thought it would damage our family. How all the arrangements work out is definitely a work in progress, and you know Dad and I are both pretty independent.”
Alex’s knee began to bob up and down again, signaling that I’d said more than enough. “All right,” he said.
Reflexively, I searched the window of the shop across the sidewalk. New sweaters, but nothing for spring yet. Fine with me. I wasn’t done with winter by a long shot. I needed some more time to think, to deliberate on what lay ahead.
I pulled the Flex out onto the road and quickly left the town behind.
Global warming aside, the Leelanau Peninsula was far enough north in Michigan that mother nature, the locals, and the tourists seemed to share an understanding that spring, summer, and fall were short, brilliant, and demanding, requiring energy and speed and a frantic level of growth and activity. I met and enjoyed that challenge when the time came, but for me, winter’s reward included long stretches of time for contemplation, and quieter activities of hand and mind. Even now, as we crossed the bridge over the Leland River and left the little town, part of me longed to be back in my sewing room, arranging yellow flannel triangles on a background of stylized clouds. I visualized the half-made sailboat quilt for a niece’s baby.
Deciding to lighten the conversation, I told Alex, “You know, thirty years ago, on our first trip together, Dad and I stayed at the inn where Charlie Aiken lives now.”
We were passing the road that bisected the peninsula; it was time to slow down and start looking for the Blue Heron Inn. The old white farmhouse appeared around a bend in the road and we turned into the dirt driveway. The Flex picked its four wheels over the crunch of ice and stones and came to a rest at the side of the inn.
I didn’t open the door right away; instead, I continued my story. “It was an October weekend, at the height of fall color. We’d spent a night farther south at a resort just north of Sleeping Bear Dunes and had a spectacular hike on the dunes and in the forest, with one magnificent view of Lake Michigan after another. We drove up the coast to Leland, where I’d sailed into the harbor before but never explored by land. We found this inn and stayed here.”
The Blue Heron had been cozy and our hosts friendly, though Steven and I had eyes for little more than each other at that point. We began that weekend as lovers and ended it engaged to be married. Now, a complicated lifetime later, I was greeting the inn again, possibly to enter another life project originating from this ramshackle but lovely old structure.
Alex swung his tall, strong body out of the Flex and surveyed the property. I saw in his eyes an appreciation of the neatly stacked woodpile between the house and the outbuildings and a critique of the outbuildings, solid but worn-looking. I led the way to the back of the inn and the staircase to the kitchen. Charlie had instructed me that only inn guests used the veranda entrance at the front facing the road.
Charlie’s daughter Melissa answered my knock with the tired smile of a woman with more to do than time allowed, but with a light in her pale blue eyes that signaled satisfaction in the challenges she faced.
“Hey Me
l. This is my son Alex. We’re here to talk cider with your dad. Is he around?”
“Hi, Melissa Aiken.” Mel stuck her hand out to Alex as she leaned into the door to let us in. “Dad’s in the orchard checking on the ice. You can head out there if you want, or wait here and have a cup of coffee. He won’t be long.”
I looked at Alex. “I left the pie in the car. I’ll go out and get it. You want to take a quick look at the trees?”
Alex gave me the ‘You’re not leaving me here with a stranger’ look and said casually, “Sure.”
We stepped back into the icy afternoon and I led the way around the back of the inn, our boots crunching toward the five acres of cider apples Charlie and James had put in. We ducked between well-trimmed trees with strong central leaders and horizontal branching at two-foot intervals. I loved the vigor and order of an orchard, with mesmerizing rows marching across the landscape. I noted that the ice that had coated roadside branches farther up the peninsula hadn’t settled on this protected grove of trees.
Charles Aiken smiled as he strode up a path toward us. A handsome man of medium height, he was blessed with a full head of sandy hair streaked with gray. Trim and cleanshaven, dressed in upscale gentleman farmer style, he sported solid jeans, thick wool socks turned over leather boots, a good parka, and an Irish wool bucket hat.
“Hi, Charlie! Out checking the children for frostbite?” The shouted question died in the crackle of approaching boots and Alex’s silent scrutiny.
“I sure didn’t bring them this far to lose them to ice, I hope.” Charlie stuck his hand out, much as his daughter had done. “Charles Aiken.”
“Alex Stone. I’m pleased to meet you.” Alex grasped Charlie’s hand. Alex was always good at handshakes and eye contact, a skill that belied his innate shyness and basic premise that most people were fools that he wouldn’t suffer gladly.
Hard Cider Page 2