The Shortest Way Home

by Miriam Parker

  “This place is different,” I said to the adorable spiky-haired bartender. “From the other places around here . . .”

  “It isn’t as popular with tourists,” he said.

  “Maybe tourists are stupid,” I said.

  “There have to be a few smart ones,” he said. “Like you.”

  I blushed, and instead of saying anything that I would regret, I just smiled. Sometimes I said every word that came into my brain, which generally got me in trouble. So, I decided just to keep quiet and swirl the wine in front of me. The wine-tasting class we’d been required to attend during business school orientation had taught us to swirl, sniff, and then taste when trying wine. So, in lieu of something witty to say, I swirled. Sniffed and sipped. And smiled.

  “I really do love the wine,” I finally eked out, wondering, Where the hell is Ethan? If he didn’t get in here fast, I would continue to flirt. This is not to say that I was very good at flirting. When I lived in New York, I had met guys mostly in bars, and my main mating technique was to figure out what they were interested in and argue with them about it. I felt strangely proud of the time that I spent hours arguing about recycling with a solar panel company vice president. We had dated for a few weeks as a result. It wasn’t that I couldn’t be charming; I just wasn’t great at batting my eyes and saying, “Oh, you’re interesting.” Because most of them weren’t. I preferred a challenge. My first encounter with Ethan was absolutely a challenge—we almost came to blows in the Berkeley bookstore. But nothing about the current situation indicated that getting in a fight was necessary or even possible. So I had to resort to my (minimal) feminine charms.

  “Thanks,” he said, smiling back.

  I felt a little flushed from the wine and could feel little beads of sweat forming on the insides of my elbows and my cheeks warming. Be calm, I told myself. Be cool.

  “Do you help make the wine? Help your dad, I mean.”

  “I know the basics,” he said. “But mostly my dad makes it. And Felipe. He’s our new expert winemaker from Chile. He’s making things even better. But I’m moving to New York. To get an MFA in screenwriting.”

  “You want to run away from here?” I asked, incredulous. You have a boyfriend, I told myself, trying to relax the smile out of my cheeks. A nice, stable, responsible boyfriend named Ethan. “I don’t get it,” I said. “It’s the most beautiful place on earth. Have you been to New York? It’s gross. From mysterious puddles even on the sunniest days to stinky subway platforms and aggressive pigeons.”

  “I’ve lived here my whole life. Except when I went to LA for college. But LA’s not real. And this place doesn’t really feel real either. I want to see what the rest of the world is like. Even if it is, to use your word, gross.”

  I guessed that was a good enough excuse. I had wanted to get the hell out of Iowa when I was growing up there. But there wasn’t any possibility of a future for me there, and there wasn’t any reason to stay other than a few friends. If Iowa had been a place that other people wanted to visit and I had a skill like wine making, I couldn’t imagine leaving. On the other hand, I had never felt settled anywhere I lived. When I was growing up in Iowa I dreamt of a glamorous life in New York City, but when I finally got to New York I found it exhausting, dirty, and remarkably unglamorous. I couldn’t believe how far I had to live from work in order to pay the rent on my thirty-five-thousand-dollar-a-year assistant salary and how small my apartment was, even with an hour-plus commute. I hated how my feet were black at the end of a summer day wearing open-toed shoes just because of the essential filth of the city. And it was depressing that groceries were so expensive that it made more sense to eat takeout. After a year of feeling sad, dirty, and overwhelmed, I set my sights on business school and California. I wanted the life I saw in the pages of the magazines I obsessively read at the library when I was a child—Town & Country, Architectural Digest, and the back pages of the New York Times Magazine, which advertised the luxury homes and estates. I devoured those descriptions as a little girl and dreamt about the homes. I wondered: What would it be like to live in one? How would I decorate it? Would I sleep in the same bedroom every night or rotate? I still don’t know why I wanted a life like the ones I saw in magazines. Maybe it was because my life felt so imperfect, I never felt like I belonged there.

  I wanted to ask the bartender more questions: about his childhood in Sonoma, about his screenwriting, about how he got the stubble on his face to be just that length and not any longer. But as he poured the second taste, Ethan and an older man I assumed was the bartender’s father walked into the room. The father’s baritone laugh filled the large space and the dog popped up from under my stool and rushed to greet him. Tannin gave an excited bark and threw himself against the father’s legs, his tongue coming wildly out of his mouth like a snake. The man picked up the dog. “Did you miss me, Tanny?” he asked. The dog licked his face and let out a squeaky bark. “I missed you too.” He put the dog under his arm and turned to Ethan. “This is Tannin. He really runs this place.”

  Ethan patted the dog’s head but pulled back when the dog tried to lick his fingers.

  “Ethan!” I said, hopping off of my stool to give him a kiss on the cheek. “There you are! I’m one taste ahead of you. You have to catch up.”

  “Thanks for the history lesson, Everett,” he said, shaking the hand that wasn’t holding the dog. Then he put his hand on the small of my back.

  “Thanks for coming to Bellosguardo. Enjoy your tasting. William, make sure to sneak that sparkling rosé into their flight. I think Ethan’s wife will like that one.” Everett put the dog on the ground and the two of them headed out the front door, the dog trotting behind like an adoring fan.

  William, I thought. That’s a good name.

  “We’re not married,” Ethan said.

  I bristled. I had an inkling that Ethan was going to propose to me this weekend, which I felt both excited and ambivalent about. I wasn’t sure if we were ready, but who doesn’t want to be asked?

  “My dad loves that dog more than he loves humans,” William said, ignoring the tension and the marriage comment.

  “And the dog loves him right back,” I said.

  “Licks too much,” Ethan said. He approached the bar and threw back the pour of wine like a shot of tequila, still standing, without even tasting it. William poured another white.

  “We’re moving to New York too,” I said. “Although I wouldn’t if I lived here.” Ethan glared at me.

  “What are you two doing there?” William asked. His smile sparkled and he looked directly into my eyes. My stomach felt at attention.

  I took Ethan’s hand, as if I needed to prove that we were together, even though at this very moment, I wished I could snap my fingers and make him disappear. “Jobs. We’re at business school at Berkeley. Well, we were. We’re about to graduate. I have a boring old job in New York. Ethan is more ambitious than me and is starting a company.”

  “I’m not more ambitious,” he said, staring at his glass and dropping my hand. “You have an amazing job in New York. One that everyone wants. It’s the type of job people go to business school to get.”

  “It’s okay,” I said. All of a sudden, even though I had been so proud of getting the job at Goldman, at beating out my classmates for the coveted seat in New York, now I was embarrassed by it. I had come to terms with moving back to New York because Ethan wanted to, and also because it was prestigious. But my true ambivalence about the city was now coming through.

  “We could use some business expertise here,” William said. “My dad is great at making wine, but not at making money.”

  I swirled, sniffed, and tasted the second white. It was a bit sweeter, but still crisp. Maybe I tasted peaches? “He should be selling millions of bottles. What do you think, Ethan?”

  Ethan carelessly threw back this taste as well. He was acting differently than he had on our
drive up and walk over. He had been fun this morning, playing around with the camera during our drive, teasing me about how I would need to wear a suit every day to work instead of my vintage-inspired flowy grad school wardrobe, which he called “faux boho.” Now he was cranky and rude. Maybe he was allergic to ivy?

  I couldn’t help but think about the local marketing workshop that I’d been to right before the semester ended—focusing on events and social media. “You should have so much fun here this summer,” I said. “You could have a weekly music event with a local jazz band set up over in that corner.” I pointed to the corner where the dog had been sitting when I walked in. “Call it something like Drink and Dance. Just get the local inn owners to promote it, like the El Dorado folks; they sent us here today. And tell some local residents. Maybe give locals free admission and charge the tourists or something. I would come to that, wouldn’t you, Ethan?”

  He shrugged. “Sure, if you wanted to go.”

  “That’s a good idea,” William said. “I’ll tell my dad.”

  “And maybe you could do weekly or monthly tastings of special bottles—like your wine that wins awards,” I said. “And wine-tasting classes. We took one of those at orientation. Maybe you could even go down to Berkeley and Stanford and run them.”

  “Sorry,” Ethan said, putting his hand over my mouth the way he did when I was talking too much. Normally, it was playful, but today it felt aggressive. “She’s in business school mode.”

  “No,” William said, “I think it’s cool. I mean, I won’t be here, but maybe my mom could do it. Although her hands are full—”

  “And the dog! You could have a Dog and Wine Day! Oh, and you can give him an Instagram feed. Post his photos.”

  “Seriously, Hannah,” Ethan said. “That’s enough.”

  “What’s gotten into you?” I whispered as William went to get the bottle of sparkling rosé. “You’re so cranky.”

  “I just have a weird feeling about this place,” he said.

  “Well, I think it’s beautiful,” I retaliated. And it was. It looked like something straight out of one of the magazines I had loved as a kid. The whitewashed stucco walls, the high ceilings, the leather couches. I had a feeling that this room was going to be important to me. I had never lived anywhere beautiful before—not in Iowa, not in New York, not in Berkeley. But I had always craved it.

  Ethan, on the other hand, wanted to get out of there. He stood up when we got to the light reds. “We’ve got to go,” he said.

  “But . . . ,” I said.

  “We have a lunch reservation,” he said.

  “We do?” I asked.

  “It’s on our itinerary. Sorry, man.”

  “But I want to buy some wine,” I said, hating it when he called me “man.”

  “We have to go,” he said, turning toward the door.

  I shrugged my shoulders at William and gave him a mournful look. I didn’t want to leave. There was something about this place. It felt like home.

  CHAPTER 2

  On the way back to town, I started chewing on the cuticles of my free hand. A nervous habit.

  “You’re doing it,” Ethan said. He took my hand; usually that was a gentle gesture, but now it felt antagonistic. To be fair, my cuticle chewing drove Ethan crazy. I kept my hand in his for a few minutes, to appease him and also to quiet my mind, which was reeling.

  “I know,” I said.

  “I’m just trying—”

  “I know!”

  “Hannah.”

  I gritted my teeth and walked in silence for a few minutes.

  “Ugh,” I said. “I’m starving.”

  “We might as well have lunch,” he said. “We’re a little late for our reservation, but I’m sure they’ll seat us.” It was after two P.M. We were both hungry. Maybe that was it.

  By the time we got to the restaurant, we were not really speaking. And before they could offer us a table, Ethan sat at the bar. He always did that when we were fighting. He preferred having serious conversations at bars rather than across tables. Maybe because it seemed less confrontational.

  A kind older bartender with gray hair to his shoulders came over to greet us.

  “I’m Reed,” he said. “I’ll be at your service today.” He gave us wet lavender-scented towels for our hands and put a big bowl of rolls in front of us.

  “Hi, Reed,” I said, grabbing a roll from the basket. It was already in my mouth when I thanked him.

  “Nice to meet you,” he said. “How do you like Sonoma?”

  “We just had a wine tasting at Bellosguardo,” I said, well into my second roll. “It was beautiful and the wine was perfect.”

  “So you’re ready for some sustenance,” he said. He presented us with menus. “I spent thirty years toiling away for the Chicago Public Schools, living in that frozen town, teaching children, and every night before I went to sleep, I told myself that one day I’d live in wine country and I would never use a snow shovel again. I used to come out here every summer and help out on farms and in restaurants. I even managed to buy a little piece of land that I would set up camp on for the summer. Solar shower and everything. Now I have a little cottage on that land that I built with my own two hands and I can walk to work. And that snow shovel? I turned it into a piece of art that hangs over my mantelpiece. Whenever I feel a little sad, I look at that shovel and think, ‘I’m living the dream.’ This is a special place; only a certain kind of person can live here.”

  “What does that mean?” Ethan asked.

  “You know, it’s just . . .” He gestured to the room. “It takes a certain kind of person.” Reed winked at me.

  “I’m jealous that you get to live here,” I said. Ethan shot me a look.

  We both glanced at the menu. I was too hungry to really make decisions. I was pretty sure Ethan had predecided what he was going to order based on TripAdvisor recommendations, but I hadn’t.

  “Reed,” I said, “I’m going to need your help. What’s your favorite thing on the menu?”

  “Well, I’m sure you’ve heard about the crème brûlée, but my favorite thing right now is the pasta in brown butter sauce. The menu changes every week, based on what’s available seasonally, but this is pretty special.”

  “Sold,” I said. I looked at Ethan. “Do you want to share the pasta and something else? Maybe the duck breast?” Ethan hated sharing with me, but I always asked.

  This time, he didn’t even have the courtesy to say no. He just said, “I’ll have the steak frites, medium well.”

  “Medium well? Are you sure?” Reed asked.

  “Medium well,” Ethan said.

  Reed nodded and recorded the order. He then brought us each a glass of Pinot Noir and a bottle of water. We clinked glasses in silence. I wondered what Reed was thinking about us. It was a game that we played when we were in restaurants that I liked to call Unhappy Couple. We would judge each couple in the restaurant based on how they interacted with each other, if they smiled, if they talked (so many people didn’t even talk to each other in restaurants, I wondered why they went out at all), if he stood up when she went to the bathroom or returned. If they were courteous to the waitstaff. It made us feel like our relationship was the good one. Now, all of a sudden, we were the bickering couple in the restaurant. If Reed played Unhappy Couple in his mind, he had a lot of material. Certainly, he was judging Ethan’s steak order. Waiters always did.

  Perhaps as a peace offering, perhaps as a house specialty, he brought us a dish of olives, the kind that melt in your mouth. I had never had olives this divine before. We sipped our wine in silence and devoured the olives. We each left a little pile of pits in our napkin.

  “These olives are incredible,” I said.

  “Locally grown, in my backyard, in fact,” Reed said.

  “I wouldn’t have it any other way,” I said. I could tell
that I was embarrassing Ethan. He hated it when I talked to strangers. He preferred to observe rather than interact. But I liked to get to know people; maybe it was because of my midwestern roots. “It’s impressive,” I said to Ethan when Reed had gone to check on our lunch order.

  “The olives?” Ethan asked.

  “They’re amazing, but that’s not what I mean,” I said. “Reed. He’s impressive. What he did. Following his dream.”

  “Hannah, you can’t dream all the time. Sometimes you have to be practical. He had his career and then he’s doing what he wants in his retirement. He’s probably got a great pension from Chicago and this job just keeps him busy.”

  Reed came back and placed our meals in front of us and refilled our wine. I had a taste of pasta, which was sweet and salty and perfectly al dente. Ethan focused on cutting his meat into tiny pieces but ate only one French fry.

  “Mine’s good,” I said. “Want a taste?”

  He ate another fry and didn’t respond.

  “I seem to have lost my appetite,” I said, slamming down my fork.

  “Too much bread?” he asked.