Amanda set the glass down and looked at this man. Nothing about him reminded her of anything, nothing remarkable. He did not seem like an executive nor a criminal. “My name is Amanda.”
“Do you get a break I could ask you some questions about your mother? Her name is Felicity, right?”
“Y-Yes.” Amanda looked around the tasting room, other than a few customers, none of the other winery staff was in sight. “Let me get Julie to watch the bar and I’ll meet you on the patio.” She pointed beyond the big doors toward the reflecting pools. Benjamin nodded and Amanda walked around the corner to find Julie to cover.
“What do you know about my mother? Is she sick or injured?”
“No. I’m not here if there is any problem like that. I used to be married to her –”
“Benjamin?” Amanda recoiled from the umbrella table that separated the two of them. That only meant one person. All those years of wanting to meet him. Dreading ever seeing him. The list of questions she had carved on metal plates bolted into her mind just flashed to useless vapor.
“I am. I met this girl Haley and she said you worked here. Curiosity made me come. At least to meet you, once.”
“You abandoned me. You left my mom and me. Why talk now?” Fire surged around Amanda.
Benjamin rested his hand on the table, keeping his fingers from shaking. “I – I only left because your mother threw me out. It was not sudden or anything. Your mother and I fought all the time. I was still young when I left. We didn't know how to fix things. Other things happened. I became severely depressed.” He started to rise to leave, “But I see I made a mistake to seek you.”
“No. Stay.” Amanda heard her voice speak for her. Her mind spun in confusion, not sure she should stay. “You left us when I was two years old. I remember empty shoes by the front door and hoping you’d return and wear them.” She studied his face, “But I don’t remember anything else about you. What other things happened? Mom told me you were evil and abandoned us and she was glad you left.”
Benjamin swallowed hard, “Too much to tell. Too many issues. We just didn’t make a good fit.” How could he tell this girl that he caught Felicity with other lovers in their wedding bed? More than one at a time and more than once? How he was never sure if Amanda was really his? How Felicity spilled hate and told him Amanda was certainly not his? Even though he could look at her hands and think he saw the same curl of her thumb as his? “I could not take the constant arguing. Your mother wanted someone to take care of her, be a hundred percent focused on her. I couldn't give her that hundred percent all the time. I had a career to get started. The fighting just pushed me away, and the infidelity. So, I went to the corner store for lottery scratchers and never stopped until I was two states away. I filled up with more gas. Then when my eyes got blurry, I stopped for eggs, coffee, and more fuel. I hit California and ran out of road to be among the rest of the refugees that live out here.”
“What infidelity?”
“I didn’t mean to say that.”
“But you did.”
“Sorry. The truth is your mother had a few friends and I caught her, more than once.”
Amanda considered yelling at him about such a falsehood, but she remembered the string of men that came over when Amanda was young to work on remodeling the bedroom. The bedroom and the bath that were always in disrepair. Then her father had already left them. “What did you do, for a career?"
“I banged around until I found my way into Shokworthe Trucking Company. I drove for years. I often passed your town and nearly stopped at the house every trip.” He looked at those beautiful eyes of hers and saw a happier version of the Felicity he remembered. “You look just like your mother. About a year or so younger than the last time I saw her …” His voice trailed off. Felicity was stunning but Amanda was even more gorgeous.
Amanda worried she might have a curse if she ever tried getting married, her mother’s baggage lurking in her own makeup. More fear for her already shearing soul.
He looked over the precise rows of trimmed vines that surrounded the patio, “The road made me weary. I put on three hundred pounds out there, eating in every truck stop as if I needed greasy salves to heal a wound. Hell, I was wounded.” He looked at Amanda, “I knocked around but ended up near Temecula as a golf club greens keeper for two years while I scraped off the pounds the road and the pathetic sorrow put on me. Friends starting up a restaurant in Old Town Temecula who needed help – hard for me to decide if I wanted to be in the food pit like that, but I was stronger by then. After I helped them get running, another trucker friend still driving told me Shokworthe wanted people for their new California office who knew logistics and the trucking industry. So I returned, but now I coordinate truck schedules and customers and stay in the office.”
“You never stopped to see us.”
Benjamin shook his head. “I'm so sorry, Amanda. I would stop at the diner across the street and eat through two meals wondering if I should knock on the door. The window of the diner looked right at the house. I saw you playing in the yard in a princess dress. I never got the courage to overcome the pain with your mother and so I’d have several deserts while I debated what to do. Then I just climbed back behind the wheel and turned the truck toward the highway with a thermos of coffee to get me as far away as my fuel tank would let me.”
Amanda’s body itched. Angry her mother never told her the truth. Sad she never had a father around. A father too frightened to walk across a street and visit, even once. Too late. She needed to leave, to run away into the vineyard, and hide among the vines. Emotions swelled and made her fear tears could leap from her face like the television cartoons at any time. “I have to get back to work. You must leave.” Amanda stood. “I have to use the restroom and I don’t want to see you when I get out. Buy a bottle of Zack’s Blend in the gift shop.” She knew that magical elixir somehow pulled on the emotions; perhaps he would remember something more. “You should not have tried to find me.”
Benjamin said, “I’m sorry.” He shuffled out of the winery to his truck. He climbed back behind the wheel and turned the pickup toward the highway. The long lanes gave him time to ponder his freshly opened wound.
-:-:-:- -:-:-:-
Amanda found Julie, “I need to make a phone call.” She gripped the plastic cup of her green tea with both hands.
Julie said, “I can keep covering the tasting bar. Go.”
Amanda walked along a hall toward a meeting room and from there outside to the grounds. A chunk of concrete sat against a jumble of other rocks in a little garden and she sat down. The sun burned across the clear sky. Amanda dialed her phone, “Hi, Mom.”
“Amanda, how is California?”
Amanda wanted clarity, “What happened with you and Benjamin?”
Felicity rolled with her usual answer, “He left us when we were two. I’ve told you that story a thousand times.”
“And it’s a story. I want the truth. I met him today.”
Felicity’s voice was closer to the phone and more urgent, “He found you? In California?”
“Yeah, apparently that trucking company he worked for when you were married opened an office out here and he works here now. That does’t matter. You told me lies my whole life.”
Felicity asked, “What did he tell you?”
“I’m not going to lead the story. You’ll feed on bits of it like a fortuneteller. You’ll have me believing my ancestors are speaking with me or that my future husband will be some tall dark stranger – because they are all strangers until you meet them.”
“Amanda. Calm down. It was all very simple back then. Your father was gone all the time for work. Like we led two separate lives. Then he never called on any important dates like anniversaries or birthdays –”
“That was Tommy’s dad that couldn’t remember dates. I always thought that was crappy you made such a big deal about it.” Amanda took a long sip of her tea.
“It is a big deal. When your husband forge
ts your birthday it means so much more than an absent mind.” Silence filled the phone for a moment before she said, “You’re right. It was Lars with that problem.”
“Shit!” Amanda’s thoughts meshed, “Was Tommy even Lars’ son? I remember the back hallway in the process of being painted for over a year. How long does crappy paint take to dry?”
“You don’t talk like that.” Felicity’s voice wavered, “Tommy is his. Just like you were Benjamin’s.”
“How certain are you?”
“Very.”
Amanda growled, “I think I might get a DNA test. I want to make sure.”
“No!” Then Felicity’s voice softened, “Don’t do that, Amanda. Those tests are often wrong, and you’ll …”
“– Learn the truth?” Amanda felt tears coming to her eyes. “I’ll learn the truth that the father that abandoned us only left because you threw him out? That he left because he was not my real father? Or he left because you did not know whom the father was? Soooo much better to find out I’m more likely related to some random dude picked up at a bar and shagged for a night, never to be seen again.”
“No. That is not true. You’ll be sad, no matter the test result you get.”
Little mincing chainsaws chewed their way around inside of Amanda, carving her as hollow as a slaughtered animal until numbness overcame her soul, “Felicity, I have to get back to work. Bye.” She pressed the button on her phone. Amanda sat on the hard cement and stared into the distance. This little spot looked over the north side of the winery and the dry river that ran back there with its flood plain. Amanda felt as empty and rocky as that dry riverbed, and as alone.
Chapter 17
“It’s been a few weeks. How is the hand?” Sardis asked, getting into the car. His body odor smacked Kyle’s nose. Sardis had worked on the roof hauling skips of clay roof tiles all day. The roofing company had a string of new construction jobs they bid too low on and now drove the workers hard to make their money.
Kyle leaned his head out the window as he started the car, “Getting better. Down to the splint and these wraps. Stiff when I take the splint off. I still can’t bend them.” He put the shifter into Drive and rolled the car out of the dusty lot.
“Drive through foreclosure town. I need a swim in another of those recently vacated homes. Any drinking water in here?”
“I filled the jug by your feet this morning.”
Sardis opened the jug, “You’re such a good wife, Kyle.” He drank longer than Kyle thought he could hold his breath. When he finally pulled the jug away, the plastic had sucked in upon itself. Sardis wheezed to catch his breath. Then he capped the jug and dropped it back to the floor. “I’ve been thinking.”
“That’s usually a problem.” Kyle remembered how Sardis’ thinking set them up for robbing that ice cream store when they were sixteen, pretending they had a gun, and frightening the two girls working the counter.
“Hell, Kyle. When are you getting a job? We need more cash.”
“The pity wage increase they gave you while I’m healing is helping.”
“They won’t take that away if you are back working. There are other new people on the crew too so I’m now one of the experienced laborers. We are getting closer to fall and winter. I’d like to have an apartment or something. The roofing jobs and construction stop when winter comes anyway.”
“We need to save our cash for better gear.”
“You’re thinking you can play?”
Kyle stared straight ahead. He flexed his hand and his fingers stayed stiff. “… No.”
“That’s what I thought.”
Kyle twisted the car out of the rough scrabble and onto the more graded dirt road leading from the development.
Sardis announced, “When I get cleaned up, I’m going over to see Amanda at that winery.”
“She’s not into you.”
“I think she is. A girl like her wants somebody with a job. I got one of those.”
“She looks at a man and isn’t hung up by a job.”
“Keep thinking that. Many girls out there look for a promising dude, using their only measure of a man, flashy cash. They cannot help themselves. Amanda stared at me the whole time we played there.”
Kyle rubbed his nose, the smell of the bandage thrust the loss from the wound, “You know how many people are looking at us when we play? Everyone is staring in our direction. That means we play well, we entertain them with our music. They are not looking at you because they see a drummer with a roofing job. You’re practically hidden behind the cymbals anyway.”
“They try to grab that quick peek. Especially Amanda. Shit, she is hot.”
“Amanda was never interested in you, Sardis. You kind of blew it with that whole body shot episode anyway.”
“That seemed to work out for you. If you had not yanked me off her she would be mine right now. I’d look forward to getting home to see her.” Sardis tapped the door trim with his finger. “She will swoon over me, since you kicked her away. She likes my music.”
“Our music.”
“Look at you. You can’t play. Are you afraid of trying to play?”
“I can’t move my fingers. It is not as if I only have to point them in the general direction of the fingerboard. I have to hit the frets, the right frets, in the right chords, at speed with the song. You know how long I practiced when I started playing? I expect that all over again, retraining my fingers in their new roles.”
“Your fingers haven’t changed in weeks.”
“They’re healing.”
“Still, have you played anything?”
“I said my fingers are too stiff. The nerves shoot pain up my elbow every time I try bending them. It’s like getting-kicked-in-the-balls kind of pain, if my balls hung from my arm pit.”
Sardis spit a wad of phloem out the window that could have smothered a lizard, “Elliot and I are starting a new band.”
“What?”
“We want to get somewhere. I cannot keep doing this roofing. I am more tired the next morning I start working than the previous night when I went home. This work just grinds a man down. We need to hit a store and rob some cash. Shit. No taxes taken out of that check, heh!” He slapped Kyle’s shoulder.
Kyle stomped on the car brakes and skidded to a stop at the side of the dirt road. A truck full of white-dusted dry-wall laborers and painters banged passed them. Kyle got out of the car in the middle of the dust cloud kicked up by the truck. He yanked open the passenger door and pulled Sardis out of the car by his ripped t-shirt. Sardis fell to the rocky dirt. Kyle kicked him in the ribs with his boot. Sardis rolled over and pushed to regain his feet. He lunged at Kyle, catching him in a tackle that slammed him against the side of the unyielding car body. Kyle’s head bounced against the edge of the unforgiving metal roof. Sardis punched Kyle in the stomach. Kyle bent forward, his air expelled from his lungs. Kyle tipped up and milled his fist around connecting with his brother’s chin. Sardis stumbled back.
Another battered pickup clanked beyond the car as it bounded through a pothole, mostly obscured by the shifting dust storm swirling between the vehicles.
Kyle swung and hit Sardis in the stomach. Sardis twisted and kicked Kyle’s foot from under him. Kyle fell to his shoulder and Sardis kicked into Kyle’s still healing ribs. Kyle cringed and rolled, protecting his ribs until he could draw enough of the dusty air to understand where he lay and what was up and what was down.
Sardis grabbed Kyle’s shirt and yanked him to his knees. Sardis smacked Kyle with his fist in the side of his head. Kyle pushed at the ground and shambled to his feet. He kicked his arm out in a bad swing and only realized as his fist connected and the bandages splayed away that his damaged hand had crushed into Sardis’ nose. His brother’s head snapped back and his hands went to his bloody face. Kyle fell to the dirt holding his hand that had disappeared into a hazy blur of pain. He pressed through the pain cloud with his other hand, feeling for the bones in his damaged hand. The hurt ran
up his shoulder and vibrated along his spine but the bones seemed like they held. He flexed his fingers and he could close them into a fist, the first time they bent together into any type of grip since before the accident.
Sardis pulled his shirt off and wadded it against his face. He got to the car and fell in the seat. His naked arm tugged the door closed and righted himself in the seat. He stared ahead with a grim acceptance on his face and waited for Kyle.
Kyle picked himself up from the dirt. He shuffled for the car, his elbow squeezing against his ribs. He flexed his fingers again. The pain rambled through his shoulder but his mind pushed it away while he watched his fingers move together, hinge in and out slowly, individually.
A tiny sparkle of hope whirled out of the dust that still obliterated his world.
Chapter 18
Kyle heard the creak of a car door followed by the slam of it shutting. He had fallen asleep hoping to avoid the hunger that his empty pocket could not quench.
“Hey there, Mr. Hottie.” Haley’s head poked through his open window, disturbing a fly that eagerly rubbed its front legs. “I thought I’d find you under this tree.”
Kyle twisted himself off the rear bench seat and reached for the door handle to get out of the car. The door swung open, pulled by Haley. Kyle’s eyes bulged. She wore a silk robe patterned with a confusion of zebra stripes but the confusion ended when she flicked the belt knot undone and a wide strip of her naked body glowed before him. He saw the soft drape of the robe over her breasts, nudged back with her hard nipples. The flourish of tattoos that spun out from her ribs and across her belly like a living vine leaped over her pale skin. A bright diamond glittered in her belly button and her dark, close cut landscaping urged his eyes further down along the sweep between her legs. She dropped one knee to the seat between his legs. Kyle slid deeper into the car like a caged sacrifice soon to be under the knife of a high priestess. She reached for his shirtless and crunched up abdomen. Her eyes closed when her fingers touched him, savoring him. Kyle suddenly wished he had not used his shirt for a pillow. She brought her other foot inside the car, kicking off her sandal in a smooth motion and closing the door after her. Kyle knew the danger. He could smell her fragrant shampoo and maddening ginger perfume that burned his nose and yanked at his body. Her breasts swayed and urged him to caress them. Her thighs clamped his leg and he could feel her heat through his jeans. His body charged alive wanting her, his arms and hands desired only to wrap her curves with his touch.
Crushing (The Southern California Wine Country Series) Page 12