Hard Cider

by Barbara Stark-Nemon

  After handing me his report, Pappas leaned back in his chair and said, “Mrs. Stone, I’ve secured this first round of information as we discussed, but I think it’s important to ask yourself again what it is you want to have happen and what you expect the consequences to be.”

  “I want to know if Julia is my husband’s daughter,” I answered, annoyed at what seemed to me so obvious.

  “Yes, of course,” he said. “But from hearing you talk, and with your conviction that your husband has no knowledge of having possibly fathered Julia, continuing to pursue this information without telling him—or Fiona Phelan, for that matter—has consequences. Each of them could feel betrayed rather than protected, as I think you see yourself doing.”

  I squeezed my eyes shut for a moment. His points challenged my resolve. But I’d made my decision. “There is enough upheaval in my family right now,” I said. “I don’t want to introduce more if I don’t have to.” Another notion suddenly entered my thoughts. “For whatever reason, Julia came to me—not to her mother, and not to Steven. Maybe that gives me the right to manage this shock my own way. Maybe it doesn’t, but that’s kind of where I am with it at this point.”

  “All right. As long as you’re going into this with your eyes open, I think we have a plan.” Pappas went on to detail the DNA collection process.

  Fifteen minutes later, I left Pappas’s building and crossed the street to stagger through the cheerful crowd of shoppers at the 2nd Street Market. Lunch seekers had Mediterranean, Italian, and Indian food vendors to choose among, and even in January, local farmers, dairies, and bakeries had fresh and preserved foods for sale. Food and coffee aromas wove a sensory net around my jumbled thoughts.

  I purchased a cup of coffee and stared at the paper cup, realizing it could serve to provide someone with my DNA. I’d just arranged with Martin Pappas that I would secure samples from Julia and from Steven. He would stand by if I wanted him to acquire a surreptitious sample from Fiona Phelan. In the final analysis, I’d been unwilling to authorize that invasive step with a woman I’d never met and who had no inkling of what her daughter had set in motion. Pappas’s raising the moral imperatives around betrayal deepened my own concern and added to Norman Tripp’s warnings. My hand shook as I brought the coffee to my lips. Suddenly I wanted to be home—back in Ann Arbor and dealing with the mild frustrations of caring for others, then back to the farmhouse and figuring out how to devote myself to the dream of my own business, in the northern place of my heart.

  Chapter 20

  “Good news, Abbie. Congress just passed regulations that ease taxes on hard cider producers and add pear cider to the craft brew side rather than the wine side. Won’t take effect until later in the year, but this is good for our future. Give me a call when you can—I may have a bead on a collection tank. I left a message for you at the house, but you can ignore it. Didn’t know exactly where you were. But by the end of this week, James will be back up here, and the three of us can have a sit down. Talk to you soon.”

  Charlie Aiken’s voicemail on my cell phone reached across the entire state to replace the leaden feeling of moral decrepitude I’d battled all morning, ever since leaving Ann Arbor. On my way north, I’d mailed off Steven’s nail clippings and a swab from a drinking cup to a DNA lab, and I’d resolved to collect a sample from Julia in the next few days.

  Charlie’s enthusiastic words drew me north through the quotidian landscape of mid-Michigan. I’d asked him to sort out his business options with his son, and he’d apparently done so. I, on the other hand, felt anything but sorted out. I hadn’t even formally put together my part of the proposal.

  I’d wanted to go over it with Steven, but in the entire ten days I’d been home, I’d barely managed to discuss anything beyond Alex’s predicament and the grocery list. All that we couldn’t talk about had caged me like an iron lung. So I hadn’t spoken about my business at all; instead, I had concentrated on Alex, on holiday visits, on household chores, on working with Steven in safe, common territory. We had passed on a proposed trip to Chicago to see my sister Alice for New Year’s. Neither of us felt like being lively at a party.

  As if channeling my frustration at our family drama playing against my orderly plan to organize the business of my dreams, Alex’s name popped up on my cell phone with the insistent ring tone I’d assigned for his calls.

  “Hey honey,” I answered.

  “Hi Momma,” he answered, and right away I heard more calm in his voice than I had at any time in the previous two weeks.

  “I’m on I-75 in the middle of Michigan, headed north. What are you up to?”

  “I’m on my way in for an afternoon shift.” He paused. “I talked to Haley this morning.”

  “Really. How did that go?”

  “We actually had a fairly reasonable conversation.”

  “Oh Alex, that’s great.” How quickly the slightest hopefulness brought tears.

  “I told her that I’d needed some time to think after our blowup last week, and that I thought we should step back and try to communicate a little better.”

  There is a God. “Good for you. That can’t have been easy. What did she say?”

  “She said it really freaked her out when I asked her if she wanted to go through with the pregnancy, and when I asked her if she wanted to reconsider trying to make a go of our relationship. It was kind of like whiplash, and she just lost her temper.”

  “That sounds like an honest admission.”

  “Yeah, I think we were both honest. I told her that if this is my kid, I’m going to take responsibility for it. It’s not what I expected to be doing at this point in my life, but I’m not going to be a deadbeat either.”

  “Did you actually say that to her?”

  “More or less.”

  “Alex Stone, you never cease to amaze me. How are you feeling now?”

  “What do you mean? I wasn’t planning to be a parent and I don’t believe in raising kids in two households, so what amazes you?” Irritation spiked in his voice, but absent the venomous energy of our previous few conversations.

  “You amaze me because you feel the way you do but were still able to talk to her civilly—at least, it sounds like you did. That’ll go a long way toward making this process—”

  “Mom, I don’t need a cheerleading session here. I just wanted to tell you so you wouldn’t be up north drinking scotch and being all depressed.”

  How well this boy knew me, but his brashness left me breathless. “Thank you. That’s very thoughtful. Have you thought about when you’ll tell your brothers?” I knew I was pushing it.

  “Mom! I’m almost at the hospital. Gotta go.”

  “Bye. Have a good shift.” When Alex needed to be out of a conversation, he needed to be out. I gently performed a neck roll in either direction and eased the tension in my shoulder. Alex had stepped up. I was so proud of him.

  The open farmland stretched on either side of the highway as far as I could see under the cloudless sky. Dry roads and minimal traffic made for a perfect travel day, and I set the car to cruise control. Another grandchild—one I didn’t know if I’d ever be able to see.

  I couldn’t fathom all that this might mean for Alex’s future, but one thought struck me swiftly, causing me to sit up straighter: He wouldn’t be coming back to Michigan any time soon. He wasn’t going to join me in the cider business any time soon. He would stay and navigate the radically different course his life had now taken. His attention would be elsewhere for quite some time. Funny how decisions get made for us sometimes.

  I flipped the radio on, grateful, once again, that I’d splurged on satellite service.

  “I’d like to welcome Jake and Deborah, who’ve come to tell us about their website, FertilityIQ.com, a forum for couples experiencing infertility to rate their doctors and clinics and learn more about others’ evaluations. Jake, tell us how you came to start this site . . .”

  My God, a Trip Advisor for infertile people. I shook my head, the st
one of anguish produced during all the years of tests, drugs, surgeries, and dashed hopes weighing with familiar heft at my center. Alex’s unplanned child and the appearance of Julia Reiss were throwing me back to that time of fear and uncertainty, of exploding constructs of how to make family or claim family.

  “. . . and in other news, New York Times best-selling author Pat Conroy has died. In a memorial reading today, the words of the author . . .” Another tortured author that I love, gone. “ . . . Why do they not teach you that time is a finger snap and an eye blink, and that you should not allow a moment to pass you by without taking joyous, ecstatic note of it, not wasting a single moment of its swift, breakneck circuit?”

  I wasn’t sure I could manage joyous ecstasy right at the moment, but I surely felt like the clock of my life had sped up in these last months, events and changed circumstances flying by like the mid-Michigan flats outside my car window. In the interest of not wasting time, and because checking tasks off my list had always worked as a way to slow down and anchor myself, I placed a call to the Michigan Liquor Control Commission.

  “This is Patty,” answered an officious sounding voice.

  “Good morning. I’m interested in finding out how to become licensed to produce hard apple cider.”

  “I would first suggest that you go to our website and look at our frequently asked questions.”

  “I have done that,” I answered firmly. “I saw all the information for beer and for wine producers, but nothing specific to hard apple cider. I understand there have been some recent changes.”

  “I think the changes you’re referring to are on the tax side, not the licensing side.”

  “So you don’t have specific licensing for cider?”

  “Hard cider is considered to be fermented wine and falls under those regulations. The alcohol content of the final product determines its licensing category, and then also how much you’re producing and whether you’ll be selling it in an onsite restaurant, but you’ll find all that on the website.”

  “Okay, but can you briefly tell me what the first steps to initiate the process are, and how long it generally takes?”

  “Download the appropriate application form,” Patty answered, a note of impatience escaping her robotic tone, “and submit it with the required paperwork and fees. After we’ve processed your application, we’ll schedule an inspection.”

  “An onsite inspection?”

  “Of course.”

  “And how long does this whole process take?”

  “Three to six months.”

  “Thank you, Patty.”

  So this meant I couldn’t work on licensing until my operation was up and running, but it would be good to study the requirements ahead of time. I should have done this downstate, with high-speed internet. At least now I’d started—done something concrete. I turned up the volume of the radio, switched to an ’80s music station, and sang my way to the north country.

  Three hours later, I stood in front of an open cupboard door with a glass of scotch in one hand and a fistful of potato chips in the other. The late-afternoon sun slanted across the old snow outside the kitchen window. Even with the second floor shut down, it took a long time for the old farmhouse to warm, and the kitchen was always the first room to get there. The ceramic wood stove began to throw out significant heat, but I’d realized the chill I felt came as much from my own inside as from the cold house, so I’d recruited the scotch, and now it was working its magic.

  Still, the phone sat waiting on the counter. I downed another swig, picked up the phone, and dialed Julia Reiss.

  “Hi Julia, this is Abbie Stone.”

  “Oh, hi Mrs. Stone, happy New Year.” Julia sounded hesitant and didn’t say more.

  “Happy New Year to you too. I was hoping you could come for coffee . . . tomorrow would be great if you can do it.”

  “I don’t work until the afternoon. I could come in the morning.”

  “That would be perfect. How about ten?”

  After replacing the phone in its cradle, I paused long enough to pour another glass of scotch, flushed with what I’d set in motion and carried by the mixture of energy and dread I was feeling to make yet another move. I dialed again, this time to Charlie Aiken, and arranged a meeting with him and James for early afternoon the following day.

  The light was fading quickly. I pulled on boots and a parka and walked along the two-track until I reached the shore of the bay, just in time to catch the last of the sunset rays over Cathead point, sparkling in pinks, oranges, and blues across the frozen shallows. Turning back toward the empty house, lit only at the back, I felt the weight of what I’d taken on. I wasn’t often lonely when alone. Tonight, I was lonely.

  Chapter 21

  Snow fell silently overnight; no whistling wind heralded the four-inch blanket that covered the landscape, softening the morning call of chickadees from nearby pines and providing a daybreak snow shovel workout, when I rose. I cleared a path from the drive to the house at the back and another to the front door, which we rarely used but which drew visitors with its formal welcome. By 8:00 a.m., breakfast muffins were cooling on the counter. I’d reviewed a dozen ways the conversation might go with Julia and had practiced possible responses, but now, I simply had to wait.

  She arrived promptly at ten, her truck barreling up the unplowed drive, throwing a fantail of snow. She stopped next to my car, close to the back entrance, and I greeted her at the door. A blast of cold air and her reddened cheeks, ready smile, and shiny curls immediately freshened the whole atmosphere of the kitchen. Nothing furtive, no veil of dread hung about her, leaving me suddenly paralyzed with doubt about my surreptitious plans. Should I be including her in this, not working around her? Quickly, Norman and Pappas’s words of warning and caution flooded in. Even if Julia had told me the whole truth, I didn’t know her, didn’t know where she wanted to go with this question of paternity.

  I poured coffee and asked about Julia’s brief holiday visit to Ohio and whether there was any news at Dolls and More. After only a few exchanges, I took the plunge.

  “Did you say anything to your parents, or learn anything more about surrogacy, when you were home?”

  The abrupt change appeared to startle Julia, and her fingers tightened around her coffee cup. I’d carefully chosen the decorative disposable hot cups. They were pretty, and Julia Reiss didn’t know me well enough to note that I never served coffee in paper cups.

  “No,” she said. “I wasn’t home for that long and we did a lot of holiday visiting.” She looked up at me then, and I could see the question in her eyes before she asked, “What about you? Did you find anything out?” I suspected the mixture of pleading and discomfort on Julia’s face mirrored my own.

  She’d given me the opportunity I’d needed. “I didn’t find anything either. We had a bit of a family crisis that came up just going into the holiday, so I wasn’t really able to do any searching.”

  “Oh no. I’m so sorry. Is everyone okay?”

  “We’re okay. It’s just, something’s come up for Alex that’s quite unexpected . . . and life-changing.” The minute the words were out of my mouth, I regretted them. Sorry Alex. Before Julia could ask anything more, I pushed on. “Right at this moment, I can’t approach Steven. There are too many stresses on our family right now.” I took a sip of coffee and Julia waited, silent and unmoving. I leaned toward her, across the kitchen table around which my family had gathered for so many years. “I know how important this is to you, and I am committed to finding out the truth, but I just need a couple of weeks to get through the mess we’re in before . . . I stir the pot.” I caught myself before saying, “before getting us into another mess.” As resistant as I felt, I didn’t want to put Julia on the defensive.

  Her gaze dropped to her hands and her shoulders sagged slightly, but her voice remained steady. “All right.”

  “I want you to think about something in the meantime, Julia.” I hoped giving her a task would be a hedge against
disappointment. “If it turns out that Steven isn’t your father, where will that leave you? Will you pursue other possibilities? Will you feel any more comfortable talking to your mother?” I let these questions sink in for a moment, hesitating as a pained look passed over Julia’s face. “There’s no going back once we know. Even more important, if it looks like he is your father, how will you tell your mother and the rest of your family?”

  “Well, she sure hasn’t been in a big rush to tell me. And already there’s no going back,” Julia blurted out.

  As cautious as I was trying to be, and as much as I balked at the unwelcome way in which this girl had insinuated herself into my life, my heart went out to her, and her anger. We were, each of us, trying to control a potentially out-of-control situation for ourselves.

  “I know,” I said, “but just think about it. Remember, this is the woman who’s played a pretty important part in what sounds like a really good family that you have, right? Any which way this shakes out, it’s going to be hard, but it’s going to be okay too. We just have to work to make it okay.” I realized this sounded maternal. I didn’t know if I even had the courage of my own conviction—I had my doubts about the possibilities—but at the moment, I needed Julia to consider me an ally. She did not answer me but began to make moves to leave, carrying her plate to the sink and looking for the garbage to throw away her cup. I hastily rose from my chair, sending my own empty cup skittering across the table.

  “Just leave everything, I’ll take care of it, thank you,” I said—too nervously but Julia seemed not to notice. She just stared out the kitchen window toward the newly roofed cider shed.