Eight Hundred Grapes

by Laura Dave

  She sighed, loudly. “I’m saying we make up all sorts of stories when really we should just keep the door closed.”

  There was a knock on the door, and Margaret walked inside, without even waiting for an invitation. She sat herself down on the edge of the tub, her hair wet from her own shower, her hands full with towels and the baby monitor and hair clips and a spoon and an open container of yogurt. She rearranged, leaning over the tub, putting one leg inside.

  “Holy shit, are you okay? I passed out when I saw her there. Maddie’s her name?”

  That was the thing about your brother marrying his high school sweetheart. You’d known her since you were a tiny person. She’d sat before you in many more inappropriate positions than this. She thought nothing of walking in on you in the tub and going about the business of prying. She was your sister too.

  She was dripping all over with that hair, her voice low, confirming Maddie wasn’t the only child taking a nap. The twins were down as well, which was probably the reason Margaret had taken a minute to shower herself.

  She pulled her hair into two tight buns, the spoon in her mouth. “What a shit,” she said. Then she motioned toward the phone, talking loudly. “Tell Suzannah to call back later.”

  Suzannah screamed through the phone. “Tell Margaret I’m already hanging up and going back to doing your work. So Saloom doesn’t fire your ass!”

  Margaret took the phone away, leaning in with a demanding look.

  “Well, what’s the story, already? I have so many questions.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Do you know who the mother is?” she said. “Some ex-girlfriend?”

  I pointed at the soaking magazine, a wet Michelle staring up, still too pretty.

  She picked up the magazine. Confused. “She works at People?”

  I closed my eyes tightly, ignoring her.

  “What was Ben thinking, showing up with her here? You know what? Back up. Bobby didn’t say a word about this, so I assume you haven’t known for long. When did you find out?” Her eyes got wide. “Did you just find out?”

  “Margaret, I just need a minute alone.”

  “No way.” She shook her head. “The twins are taking their nap. We’re talking.”

  I pulled myself up, pissed. “You want to talk, let’s talk. But you go first, Margaret.”

  I was silent, watching Margaret’s face, Margaret letting it sink in that I knew about her and Finn. At least I knew there was something I shouldn’t know.

  Her voice got incredibly quiet. “Finn told you?”

  She shook her head. Like that was the betrayal here.

  “It’s not what you think,” Margaret said. “Between me and your brother.”

  “Which one?” I said.

  She drilled me with a look. “You trying to be cute?”

  “I’m trying to take a bath, but apparently that isn’t happening.” I pointed at the sink. “Can you hand me a towel?”

  She shook her head. Then she reached over, grabbing the towel, putting it on the bathtub’s edge, but too deep in, the towel falling into the soapy water. “Finn. Between me and Finn.”

  “Do you realize how wrong that is? That you even have to specify that?”

  “I could do without the judgment, okay?” She paused. “I didn’t do anything wrong. I didn’t.”

  “So who did?”

  She looked at me. “Bobby.”

  I closed my eyes. “Margaret, if you’re about to tell me that my brother cheated on you, don’t. I don’t want to hear it.”

  “No, but there are a lot of ways to disappear on somebody.”

  “What was his?”

  “I don’t know . . .” Margaret shrugged, not wanting to say it. I was angry, but then I could see why. I could see why she was hesitating. As soon as she started talking, she began to cry.

  I put my hand on top of hers. “What happened?”

  “Our marriage. Getting married young. The miscarriage young. And then we decide to wait to have a child. Bobby wants to wait and we wait too long.”

  I squeezed her hand, remembering it all too well: Margaret losing the baby five months into the pregnancy. She was devastated, only pulling out after the wedding, only pulling out when they were entrenched in their life together.

  “We spent years trying to have the twins. All those fertility treatments. And I was the one who wanted that, but he wanted them too. Then they arrive. And what does he do?”

  “He’s not helpful?”

  She wiped at her tears, but they kept coming, the towel I’d left on the sink now her handkerchief. “He is helpful. He was absolutely amazing with the twins. Matching me feeding for feeding. Diaper change for diaper change.”

  “I’m not sure how that means he disappeared,” I said.

  She smiled. “It means I disappeared. At least as far as he was concerned.”

  “You’re mad at him for being a devoted father?”

  “No, I love that he is a devoted father. But it just made it obvious that there was not a whole lot there when the kids weren’t. Do you know when the last time we had sex was?”

  I shook my head fiercely. “I don’t want to.”

  “You don’t want to? I don’t want to.”

  “So you’ve started sleeping with Finn?”

  “No, I’m not sleeping with Finn,” she said. “It was stupid, what happened. Finn came over on July Fourth. For drinks. Burgers. Bobby was running late, of course, and we’d both had too much to drink. And he had his camera there, you know? He had come from doing this terrible shoot of a couple’s dogs. I asked to see his photographs and so he showed me. He showed me the photographs of the dogs. And we laughed about how ridiculous they were. We were really laughing. And it was stupid. But I kissed him.”

  I looked at her, speechless.

  “But he pulled away. I could tell he didn’t want to, but he did. He put his beer down and walked out. Got in his car. Drove away. Actually, he sat in his car for a solid five minutes. Not getting back out. Then he drove away.”

  I felt myself audibly exhale, relieved. Finn had stopped it, whatever Margaret had started. There was no unfaithful act. Except then I looked into Margaret’s face, my relief turning to something else. The longing I saw there stopped me in my tracks. It mirrored perfectly the longing I had seen when I looked at Finn.

  She shook her head. “The thing is, Finn . . . he was my friend. He was my friend when I was fifteen years old and I knew he liked me even then. He liked me for the reasons I liked me. But I chose Bobby.” She shrugged. “I chose Bobby for all the reasons that everyone chooses Bobby. I just didn’t take it into account.”

  “Which part?”

  “The part where someone looks at you, really looks at you, when you walk into a room. You either have that with someone or you don’t. And if you don’t, you’re fucked.” She paused. “That’s what I wished I had known going into this marriage, that we didn’t have the one thing you need most.”

  I thought of Ben and how he made me feel when I walked into a room, like I was the only one there. I derived meaning from that, Margaret deriving meaning from its absence. Though wasn’t that just a story we were telling ourselves? Synchronization: You look up just when someone is looking at you. Your eyes meet and you feel like he recognizes your beauty. You look up and he is looking the other way and you tell yourself he never wanted you in the first place.

  Margaret shook her head, trying to fight her tears. “Finn looks at me like that. I’m not turning us into Dynasty. I’m not sleeping with my husband’s brother, as much as I may want to.”

  “Margaret, this isn’t about Finn. You need to talk to Bobby.”

  Margaret shook her head, wiping away her tears, composing herself. “I fucked everything up,” she said. “And if you want to judge me for that, then judge me.”<
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  Which was when Bobby stormed into the bathroom. Holding it with his bitten-down fingers. The other side of the two-way baby monitor.

  “I think I’ll judge you, Margaret,” he said.

  Sebastopol, California. 1994

  They were spending the season in Burgundy. Or Dan was.

  He was in the south of France and the countryside looked a lot like Sebastopol: rolling hills, sky. He didn’t love it here the way he loved it in Sonoma County, though. He didn’t love anywhere like Sonoma.

  He hadn’t been here since he was twenty-three years old, interning for the best Burgundy producer in the region. He hadn’t wanted to be here now, but he had no choice. Two devastating harvests in a row, no wine he was proud to distribute. They needed the money. It had seemed like a good opportunity to come back. This was a renowned vineyard: They had finished high at the Judgment of Paris, they had finished the highest in many competitions since. And he understood why. This land, this soil, was agreeable. It was made to do exactly what he needed it to do.

  But Dan missed his vineyard. He missed his kids, their voices far away on the weekly calls, Jen even farther. And the days he didn’t miss them were worse than the days he did because they brought something else. Guilt.

  Dan felt guilty for being apart from his family, and guilty for being away from his vineyard. He’d left Terry to harvest for the season, knowing of course that Terry wasn’t going to do it the way he would. He would do fine though, and the money Dan was making here would allow them to make up the difference they lost—not just for the bad harvests, but for a bad harvest to come.

  That was all a million miles away from the south of France, from the quiet life he was living on the vineyard with Marie, the winemaker here. They would read books at night, have long dinners, talk occasionally of their other lives, of Jen, of Marie’s boyfriend in Spain. He was a chef, who opened a restaurant in San Sebastian, who wanted Marie to come and join him there. Marie had no intention of leaving her vineyard to join him there.

  Marie didn’t want to follow the chef. Not anymore. She wanted Dan. He wanted her too, though not in the same way. He wasn’t harboring the illusions she was, that he could leave everything and stay here with her. People did such things for love, or what they named as love so they could justify doing what they wanted regardless of the people who needed them.

  But their closeness was weighing on him, like a drum in his ear, in his heart. It was starting to feel like an answer to a question he didn’t know he had been asking. He hoped she didn’t notice. He brought up Jen twice to avoid her noticing. She nodded and smiled. Because it didn’t matter to her. This wife that lived on the other side of an ocean was as irrelevant as the chef. Marie was young. What mattered to her was what she wanted.

  They were eating dinner, the way they did many nights together, no one else within twenty miles of this place, a fire in the fireplace, music, her bad French music, on the stereo.

  Marie couldn’t cook like Jen could. Marie was an amazing winemaker, but in the kitchen she made two things well. She made a green garlic soup and toasted bread. They had that most nights. Tonight was no different.

  Except for this. When Marie disappeared from the table, he cleaned the dishes. He cleaned the dishes and got ready to retire for the evening. Turning down the music, wiping off the table. Then she walked back in. Naked.

  “Come here,” she said.

  He smiled. “What are you doing?”

  “Nothing. What are you doing?”

  They had spent days walking in the vineyard together. They had taken bike rides down the coast and slept on the beach. They had drunk too much wine one night and fallen asleep on the couch head to feet. When he woke up, he hadn’t moved. He had gone back to sleep.

  He shouldn’t have done those things, but they were on one side of a line that kept him with his wife. She was starting to feel imaginary so far away. But he knew she wasn’t. Just like he knew that wasn’t what Marie was asking for now.

  He had drunk an extra glass of wine. She had encouraged it. It was making it hard to walk out the door. It was making him think that he shouldn’t walk out the door. Maybe he should walk toward her instead. No one would know. He would barely even know. When he went back to Northern California, wouldn’t Marie feel as far away as his family felt from him now? She would.

  She was beautiful. She was naked.

  And she wanted him.

  What he did next would determine everything.

  The Last Family Dinner (Part 2)

  When my parents decided to build the barrel room, Finn nicknamed it the Great Barrel Room, mostly because it ended up costing them more than my parents had spent on their actual house, red door included. The Great Barrel Room, slightly off the wine cave. It was an inviting room, with its wooden rafters and a stone fireplace, white lights wrapped around the oak beams.

  My father had built the room for Bobby and Margaret’s wedding so they would have a place in which to get married.

  It housed some of my father’s most valued wine barrels and was home to the few tastings my father did on the property. It was also where, in recent years, we’d started having our family dinner during the last weekend of the harvest.

  Family dinner. The most intimate celebration with the people for whom the harvest meant the most.

  But first, it had been for their wedding. Their gorgeous, intimate wedding, the happiest bride and groom. Bobby was truly joyous his entire wedding day, not leaving Margaret once the entire evening.

  Which made it ironic to be sitting in there tonight: the room where we got to witness that kind of love, while Margaret and Bobby were standing outside of it, fighting.

  My mother had set a gorgeous table, covered with daisies and baskets of fresh raisin bread, homemade herb butter. She refused to bring out the meal, though, until everyone was there. But everyone wasn’t there. Ben sat between Maddie and the twins, all three kids stuffing their faces with the homemade bread (the twins picking out the raisins). My parents were at either end of the table. Then there was only me, surrounded by empty seats, where Finn should have been seated, where Bobby and Margaret should have been seated.

  Finn was nowhere to be seen. He hadn’t even arrived home yet. And Bobby and Margaret stood out in the cave, arguing loudly, in the way you did when you were yelling, but keeping your voices down at the same time. The rest of us pretended we didn’t hear them—my mother focused entirely on the twins, on giving them more buttered bread, on ignoring my father’s gaze.

  My father, meanwhile, was the one closest to the doorway. He gripped the edge of the table, trying to decide whether to go outside and interrupt them.

  “You can’t seriously be saying that!” Margaret yelled.

  My father caught my eyes and shook his head, looking down at the bread baskets in the middle of the table, the drooping daisies. He wanted to do something to turn this meal around—this meal that he looked forward to all year. His kids back in one place, the new family members along with them. All celebrating another harvest, another job well done.

  My father banged on the table. “You know? Let’s just eat.”

  This was directed at my mother, but I jumped up ready to do it, so there was activity. “Good idea,” I said.

  I headed for the serving bench, past my mother, before she could argue that she was going to do it, past Ben, before he could get up and help. I kept moving toward the pot roast, like it was going to save the evening. Maybe it would. My mother’s pot roast, with its plump tomatoes and roasted onions, too much brandy.

  I put on her oven mitts and gingerly picked up the pan, the roast rich and robust, not suffering from its extra time waiting for us.

  I put the roast down in the middle of the table.

  “That looks wonderful!”

  We looked up to see Margaret entering the barrel room, Bobby behind her. They had smiles painted on
their faces, Margaret’s aimed at the pot roast, Bobby’s aimed at the twins.

  Bobby took the seat next to mine, Margaret sitting on his other side, looking like she’d rather take the seat on my other side, the one between me and my mother. Finn’s seat. But she sat where she always did between Bobby and my father.

  Margaret scooted the chair over so she was near my father, as near as she could get, like he was going to protect her if Bobby threw the succulent roast at her. She was smart. Beneath his smile, he looked like he wanted to do that.

  I reached over, tentatively tapping Bobby on the back, trying to be comforting to him. It was a mistake. Bobby looked like he was about to explode, and my touch only tightened him up.

  Bobby looked across the table, nodding in Ben’s direction, their first and only hello. Ben gave him a nod back, giving me a supportive smile.

  Then Bobby reached immediately, and deliberately, for the wine.

  At another moment, Bobby would have wondered what had changed with Ben and me that had Ben sitting at this table. But Bobby wasn’t thinking about that. He wasn’t thinking about anything except what he’d overheard in the bathroom.

  Luckily, Josh called out to Bobby, distracting him. “Daddy . . .”

  He looked across the table at his son. He gave him a genuine smile. “Yes, what?”

  “Where’s Uncle Finn?”

  Bobby bit his thumb, Margaret answering for him.

  “I’m sure he’ll be here soon,” she said.

  Bobby looked away from the twins, toward Ben, just in time to see Ben put his arm lovingly around his daughter, Bobby noticing for the first time the child that wasn’t his.

  “Who’s the kid?” he whispered.

  Margaret hadn’t told him. I wasn’t going to break that news. Not when the rest of his world was unraveling before him.

  Bobby didn’t want an answer, though. He was already reaching over and pouring himself some wine, not pouring any for his wife.

  My father clocked that he ignored Margaret’s glass and took the bottle from Bobby, pouring some for Margaret himself. Margaret smiled at him gratefully.