Eight Hundred Grapes

by Laura Dave

  He nodded. “Margaret. Me and Margaret.”

  My heart dropped. How had I not known this? How had it not occurred to me, ever? The summer before Bobby and Margaret had started dating, she had been at the house all the time. She and Finn had been lifeguards together at the Ives pool. She had been Finn’s friend first, before she was Bobby’s wife.

  “Please don’t look at me like that,” he said.

  “Finn, are you sleeping with her?”

  Finn shook his head. “That’s your question?”

  “Hey.”

  We looked up, the sound of a voice shocking us. It was Bobby, standing in the kitchen doorway. Bobby, who, if he’d heard the end of our conversation, certainly seemed to have no idea it was about him.

  He walked in, an overnight bag in his hand.

  “Holy shit,” he said. “Lasagna!”

  He made a beeline for the table, not even dropping his bag as he reached for a bite. Finn leaned back, not fighting him.

  It seemed fair: Something was going on between Margaret and Finn. Bobby should have as much of the lasagna as he wanted.

  “What are you doing here?” Finn said.

  Finn’s tone was less than welcoming.

  “Mom called for reinforcements,” he said, slightly taken aback. “You too?”

  “Yep,” he said.

  I looked up at Bobby. “So you know about Mom and Dad too?”

  Bobby nodded, took another bite. “It’s my second lasagna this week.”

  This was when Margaret walked in, a twin on each hip, Peter and Josh Ford, dressed in matching firefighter uniforms complete with enormous red pants, suspenders, and fireman hats. Margaret was that way: five foot ten, long, blond hair, beautiful. And able to carry matching five-year-old firefighters on each hip and make it look easy.

  Margaret forced a smile. “If someone’s drinking already, I want in,” she said.

  She moved toward the counter, coming over and giving me a kiss. “Say hello to your awesome aunt!” she said, shoving the twins in my direction.

  The twins reached in for a hug, their fireman hardhats falling off. They were the hardest part of not living near home, these little versions of their father: blond curls, strong smiles, adorable little boys. I loved them from five hundred miles away, but it wasn’t the same as seeing them more often than that, and I felt it when I squeezed them, thinking how that five hundred miles was about to get exponentially larger.

  I wrapped my arms around the twins, nuzzling into them. “What are you guys wearing?”

  “We’re firefighters,” Josh said.

  Margaret touched the top of Josh’s head. “A fireman came to the boys’ kindergarten to do a presentation,” she said. “It’s their chosen career path for the week.”

  Peter looked at her with disdain. “You mean, forever.”

  Margaret touched his cheek. “Yes, love, I mean forever.”

  I nodded, letting them know that I believed them. But they were already squirming away, starting their fire truck engines and running out the back door to the vineyard to play, to get the kind of love only my mom could provide for them.

  “I guess I should go too,” Margaret said. “We’ll catch up later?”

  I nodded. “Sounds good, Margaret.”

  It did not sound good.

  She looked over at Finn. “Hey, Finn,” she said.

  Finn looked up, right at her, but only after she looked away. “Hey,” he said.

  And it was impossible to ignore what was between them—like it was taking everything they had to avoid looking at each other at the same time.

  The room was silent. Margaret followed the twins outside. Bobby moved toward the doorway awkwardly, standing there, biting his nails.

  I reached for a fork in the center of the table, holding it up. “Bobby, where are you going?”

  Then Finn stood up. “I have to get to the bar,” he said.

  Bobby moved toward the hallway. “I’m going to unpack,” he said.

  Then they both walked out, in opposite directions. Leaving the lasagna to me.

  The Wedding Crashers

  Synchronization. To operate in union.

  On a vineyard, synchronization meant watching and waiting until everything lined up.

  You didn’t step in too quickly.

  You also didn’t step out.

  The night before Bobby’s wedding, Finn got arrested. He would tell you that it wasn’t his fault. He would be right and wrong.

  We had been drinking that night at The Brothers’ Tavern. Finn had been good friends with the previous owners and they’d agreed to let him throw an impromptu bachelor party for Bobby. My father had joined us and left. Bobby’s friends had joined us and left. And eventually, Finn, Bobby, and I were the last people in the bar, a candle on our table, too much bourbon between us.

  Bobby poured us each another round, and I rested my head on the table. Finn had his head in his hands. Bobby was the only one awake and he was wide-awake, wired. He slapped Finn on the wrist.

  “Don’t be a pansy,” Bobby said. “We’re just getting started.”

  Finn sat up, startled, and moved his glass closer to Bobby. “Hit me,” he said.

  Finn was anxious to give Bobby whatever he needed the night before his wedding. I, on the other hand, was ready to go home. Though that wasn’t an option. When I said that my brothers each played a role in my life—one helping me to be better, one helping me to be better at being bad—I also should have said that I played a role in theirs. I fixed things for them, when they didn’t even know yet that they were broken. For Bobby, that meant staying up all night to put jokes into his speech for school president, revising his first Valentine’s Day plan with Margaret, which had involved a monster truck show with the football team. And on the night before his impending wedding, in a way he couldn’t name, fixing things for Bobby involved alcohol and nonstop movement.

  “I think Bobby wants us to go and do something, Finn,” I said.

  “I do!” Bobby said. “That’s exactly what I want. Let’s do something!”

  There was nothing to do in Sebastopol at 12:50 A.M. But, Finn was up, ready to please Bobby. “Where should we go?” he said.

  Bobby moved toward the door. “I have an idea,” he said. “I know of a party.”

  “I love a party,” Finn said.

  We headed up into the hills to a private estate owned by Murray Grant Wines. The lush vineyards surrounded a Spanish mansion that could have held five of my parents’ houses. All the lights were on, a party in action.

  “What is this?” Finn said.

  Bobby shrugged. “Some girl is getting married. One of the groomsmen was talking about it at the bar earlier this afternoon.”

  “Are you crazy?” I said.

  “Maybe.” Bobby smiled ear to ear. “I still want to go to a wedding.”

  Finn shrugged. “Fuck it, then. We’re crashing a wedding if Bobby wants to,” he said. “Besides, it’s so late. Anyone who’s still out at a party won’t give a shit if there are a couple of new guests. They’ll be glad to have new people to drink with.”

  Bobby nodded. “We are crashing a wedding,” he said. “Genius.”

  Then Bobby put his arm around Finn.

  This was the secret no one knew. For all of Bobby’s accolades at the time (newly minted MBA from Stanford Business School, a primo first job lined up at a venture capital fund), he just wanted to be as comfortable in his own skin as Finn was. (Finn, who still had yet to be employed, except for an occasional bartending shift and the stipend he’d made selling one of his photos to the Press Democrat.) And tonight that meant Bobby doing something ridiculous to prove to himself that even though he was about to write his future in stone, he could still be anyone.

  We went into the wedding reception, which was on its last legs
. Finn was correct about that. The bride was in her slinky sheath dress, but everyone else was in bathing suits and jeans. They were all drunk, hanging out by the Olympic-size swimming pool. Which made it slightly less awkward that the three of us were walking in in shorts and T-shirts, Finn in his backward baseball cap.

  Bobby made a beeline for the bar, saying hello to everyone he passed. The partygoers stared at him, confused, but they didn’t really care too much. They were at a wedding in wine country, drinking Murray Grant’s rosé blend, thinking it was good.

  Bobby made a face as he downed his first glass, then ordered another.

  Then Bobby pointed to the bride. “She looks beautiful . . .”

  The bride had flaming-red hair and makeup running down her face. She might have been beautiful earlier, but now she was a wet mess, someone having thrown her in the pool. She was happy about that. She didn’t care that she was a wet mess. That was how a bride was supposed to be. At least that was what Bobby said, toasting to the happy bride, before he walked right up to her.

  Finn shook his head. “This isn’t going to go well,” he said.

  But, the bride seemed to like Bobby, the two of them gabbing.

  As we walked over to join them, the bride gave Finn a flirtatious smile, newly married and checking out Finn, striking a pose for him.

  “Hello there,” she said.

  Finn nodded. “Hello.”

  Then she motioned toward Bobby. “He’s getting married tomorrow,” she said, her wild red hair flying.

  “We know,” Finn said.

  Bobby leaned in to her, a little too close.

  “The thing is,” Bobby said, “I’m a little young to be getting married. You know? I love Margaret. I really love her. But maybe that’s part of it. You look a little older. You probably are more sure.”

  The bride looked at Bobby, irritated. “Did you just call me old?”

  “Older, not old.”

  The bride looked like she was going to cry, which was when the groom came over. He was also redheaded, and large. He smelled like a brewery. “What’s wrong?” he said.

  She pointed at Bobby and Finn. “They called me old.”

  Finn put up his hands in surrender. “No, we didn’t.”

  “Are you calling Catherine a liar?” the groom said.

  “Who’s Catherine?” Bobby said.

  Bobby put out his hand, which the groom slapped away. A group surrounded us, the happy couple and the Ford siblings, who had upset them.

  “Easy,” Finn said. “Let’s take it easy here.”

  He put his arms out, trying to keep the group from closing in.

  Bobby moved closer to Catherine as though she couldn’t hear him, as though that were the problem. “I said you looked older, not old. Can we move on to whether I should get married tomorrow?”

  This was when the groom threw a punch at Bobby’s face.

  Finn jumped in to protect Bobby, and pushed the groom onto the ground. He wasn’t trying to fight him, just trying to get him away from Bobby.

  “Get him out of here!” Finn yelled. He was thinking only of Bobby and his upcoming marriage. Protecting both.

  As I ran with Bobby into the woods, the cops showed up, sirens blasting.

  Bobby stopped where he was. “I have to go back for him,” Bobby panted.

  And he wanted to, he really did.

  He started to race back toward the fight, toward the cops. But, even from the woods, we could see it was too late.

  Finn was on top of a rich, redheaded groom—and the cop who was pulling him off was not there to save him.

  I kept going over the night before Bobby’s wedding—as if it held the secret to how I should feel, seven days before mine.

  I was getting nowhere fast—lying on my childhood bed, staring at a photograph of Culture Club taped on the ceiling above. It had been there since I was a teenager, placed at my eye level, so Boy George would be the one to say good night.

  It felt like he was taunting me with all the answers I didn’t seem to have—when my phone rang.

  I looked down at the caller ID, a happy Ben staring back. I wanted to pick up and tell Ben what Finn had just told me—I wanted Ben to be my person again, the one I told everything to. Ben always said the thing that revealed to me what I should do. Ben said that was giving him too much credit. It never seemed to me that it was giving him enough.

  “Hey,” he said when I picked up the phone. He paused, not sure what to do now that he had me there. “Thanks for picking up.”

  I kept my eyes on the ceiling, on George’s face. I wasn’t going to make this easier. Maybe I was done making it harder, but that was different.

  “What are you doing?” he said.

  “Staring at Boy George.”

  He laughed. “That bad of a day?”

  “You have no idea.”

  He cleared his throat, asking me a question that encouraged me to answer him.

  “You want to tell me?” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “You going to?”

  I shook my head as though he could see that. “How would you describe Bobby and Margaret? Would you describe them as happy?”

  “Yes, I would.” He paused.

  “What?”

  “I would describe him as happier than her,” he said. “She seems a little lost.”

  That broke my heart for Bobby, for the reasons why Ben was correct, for the reasons it didn’t matter.

  “And my parents?”

  “That is more even. That is blessed,” he said. “I mean, next to you and Boy George, I’d say they are the happiest couple I know.”

  I laughed for the first time that day, some of my anger melting. Ben felt like Ben again, the two of us talking gently in a dark room, the world safer and more lovely for it.

  “You still need to take that poster down. It’s creepy. Milli Vanilli creepy.”

  “That’s not a battle you’re going to win, Ben.”

  Except that it was. I would have to remove everything from this room before this house was sold. The house. The vineyard. My childhood.

  “So I oversaw the move today,” Ben said. “Everything is on its way to London.”

  His accent crept up on me and warmed me to him.

  “I guess you heard that . . .”

  “I did,” I said. “Thomas called looking for you.”

  “He mentioned something about that,” he said.

  “Considering what’s going on between us, did you think that maybe you shouldn’t have sent my stuff to London?”

  “I did. I thought you might not want me to send your stuff anywhere without talking to you first. I thought that was the right thing to do. But I decided to move everything anyway.”

  “What would you call doing that?”

  “Hopeful.”

  I covered my eyes with my elbow. “Ben, I should get some sleep.”

  “I had them leave the guest room mattress. I’m sleeping on that. Though I forgot to tell them to leave sheets. So it’s a bit of a sad situation. Empty apartment. Old mattress. No pillow for my head.”

  “You could check into a hotel.”

  “That’s sadder.”

  He paused. We both did. The silence between us was exhausting.

  “I haven’t shown up there. I’ve tried to give you space. But you do need to talk to me.”

  “I’m listening.”

  He got quiet. “I was ready for you to argue. Now I’m not sure where to start.”

  “How about with Michelle Carter?”

  “I’ve told you about Michelle Carter.”

  What he’d told me was they had dated briefly the summer before we met—three months of briefly while she was filming a movie in New York. And that Michelle had crushed him. Eviscerated him. That was
the word he used. Then she went back to London and got back together with her boyfriend. The famous actor—and often her romantic costar—Clay Michaels. The couple was tabloid fodder, glossy red carpet photos of them falling into the hands of girls at nail salons on a regular basis.

  Ben had never even been photographed with Michelle at an event. He liked to joke: If you weren’t photographed with a movie star you were dating, was it like it never happened?

  And so Michelle became an anecdote for Ben to share about his dating life. The time he dated one of the most famous women in the world. How she completely and totally disappeared on him. How else was that going to end? Ben laughed. The way we laugh about the people who slayed us, when we’re talking about them with the one person who never would.

  “Does Clay know the truth?”

  “Yes. He’s always known that Maddie wasn’t his.”

  “He isn’t furious?”

  “Apparently he has a kid that isn’t Michelle’s.”

  I was getting a headache. I pulled the covers up higher, contemplating Michelle’s odd arrangement with her boyfriend, contemplating what else I knew about Michelle: her gorgeous house in London recently photographed for the cover of Architectural Digest, her gorgeous face chosen for People magazine’s “50 Most Beautiful People.”

  Boy George stared down at me, laughing. He was laughing and not doing anything to save me. What could he do?

  “When Michelle moved back to London, that was it,” he said. “She got back together with Clay, and an old friend of mine, the guy that introduced us, said that they were having a baby at some point. But I never heard from her again.” He paused. “Until I heard from her again.”

  “What did she say when she called you?”

  “She said our summer fling resulted in a little girl who she was finally ready for me to meet,” he said.

  “When was that, Ben?”

  He paused. “Five days after I proposed to you,” he said. “Timing’s a funny thing, isn’t it?”

  That was five months ago. Ben had proposed to me during a trip to Paris. He had known about Maddie for five months? That was longer than he had said yesterday. Had time collapsed for him? His engagement, the realization that he had a little girl. Everything melding into one long day. On one side there was our life, which we considered happy. On the other was this brand-new blessing, which could tear that life apart.