“Neither are we,” she said. It was kind that she chose to identify with me rather than pick up on my rankled feelings. “But it’s so fun to grow these things yourself. The garden is out back. Feel free to help yourself to anything, especially the lettuce. It grows faster than we can eat it, even if we have it at every meal.”
“Thanks,” I said. “This takes farm to table to a different level.”
“Let’s call it garden to table,” she said. “I’m just going to roast all these vegetables a little and put them over this cavatelli that I made this morning.” She showed me a bowl of pastas that looked like tiny hot dog buns.
“You made this by hand?” I asked, incredulous.
“It’s so easy if you have a pasta maker. I find it therapeutic. It requires just enough attention that you don’t have to think about anything else. But not so much that you’re tired.”
I nodded. “It sounds like meditating.”
“Kind of,” she said. “But you’re not here to talk about that, and the wine is outside. Go join them; I’ll be out in a minute.”
I looked down at the glass in my hand and headed back outside, realizing that I should have brought flowers or some sort of contribution to dinner. I eased myself onto the picnic table bench across from William. He poured me a glass of red and they continued their conversation about Tannin’s limp. I didn’t have anything to contribute to that conversation other than the fact that I thought he was pretty cute whether he limped or not.
When the conversation lulled into comments about the quality of the wine and the temperature of the evening, both of which were generally approved of, I decided to venture into possibly dicey territory, so I looked at William and asked, “Where are you going to be living in New York?”
Immediately, Everett made a snorting noise and got up from the table. “I’ll go check on Linda.”
William smiled. He clearly liked making his parents uncomfortable. “I’m staying with my friend Simon in the East Village for a few days and then I’ll find a sublet or a roommate situation in Brooklyn.”
“I used to live in Ditmas Park,” I said.
“Oh,” he said. “I don’t know where that is.”
“It’s a supercute neighborhood in Brooklyn. And it’s affordable, or it was when I lived there. My apartment was tiny, but I loved living there. I had this big couch that was blue and kind of shaggy that I found at a thrift store. My best friend, Nicole, called it Grover. She lived next door and would come over almost every night. Even though the apartment was small, I set up a full bar right outside the tiny kitchen, so people loved coming over. Nicole and I were always experimenting with new cocktails. One year, I threw an epic New Year’s party where everyone brought sleeping bags and we set them all up like a patchwork so everyone could crash after they were done drinking. You could fit about eight people in there with the bags all side to side. Even though most of my friends lived within a five-block radius, the sleepover part was the best part.”
Life in New York may have been stressful at times, but it was never boring. I liked the pace of it, that it was never quiet, that it was never predictable. I loved the fact that I could just walk to the bar on my corner and know half the people in there. But even with all the people around me, I will admit that sometimes I was lonely. I wanted someone to love me. That was probably why I fell for Ethan. But life with Ethan wasn’t what I wanted either, it turned out. I wanted more. I wanted all the fun and variety that my life had in Brooklyn, plus a great job and someone who adored me. Was that too much to ask?
“That does sound fun,” he said. “And you worked at Tiffany’s? That must have been weird.”
“Yeah, it was, like, behind-the-scenes stuff, though, not like I stood at a counter and sold diamonds to rich people. I made sure that my boss, Cheryl, went to all of her meetings and that the advertising proofs got circ’ed to the right people and that the invoices got paid on time. It was a long commute and long hours, but I learned a lot and got these earrings out of it.” I pulled my hair back to show the 1.5-carat studs Cheryl had just pulled out of her desk one afternoon a few weeks before I left and given to me. She had said that I couldn’t be in business without a proper pair of diamond earrings. I did wear them to my Goldman interview and on my first date with Ethan. And today. I liked to think they brought me luck.
“Nice,” he said, clearly uninterested.
“I’m more excited about the wine here, though,” I said.
“More than diamonds?” William asked.
“Absolutely,” I said. “Although I’m sure that one of those Disneyland gift shops up the road has a T-shirt that says, ‘Wine Is a Woman’s Best Friend,’ with a picture of a dog and a wineglass on it.”
William laughed. “Those places are pretty ridiculous, aren’t they?”
“Terrible,” I said. “Terrifying, actually.”
“Do you think Bellosguardo needs a gift shop?” William asked. “I think we should have one even though they’re tacky. People ask about it and it’s another way to make money.”
“I don’t think so,” I said. “I mean, if people want to buy the branded glasses, you should sell them at a markup. But I think those gift shops are pretty lowbrow, and that’s not your brand.”
“Good answer,” Everett yelled from the door. He was opening another bottle of wine but clearly had been listening the entire time.
Linda came out of the kitchen carrying a huge bowl of pasta covered in vegetables. “Pasta primavera!” she said, setting it in the middle of the table.
“It looks amazing,” I said.
We each heaped piles of pasta onto our plates and murmured our approval.
“This is delicious,” I said, genuinely impressed.
“What grows together, goes together,” Everett said.
“I love that saying,” I said.
“It’s especially true here,” he said, “because of the history of fruits and vegetables growing on this property along with the grapes. The grapes take on the flavor of the other food growing here. So you might notice a little hint of rosemary in the Zinfandel that we’re drinking. That’s because we have rosemary planted all along the side of the vineyard. Mostly because I like how it smells.”
They were so devoted to the beauty of their land, to the perfect taste of their food and wine. I wondered why their kitchen was so shabby in comparison to the one in the cottage and what the rest of their giant house looked like. I hadn’t had the wherewithal to look around when I’d gone in for a glass. Dinner chitchat was casual, about the time that William should leave for the San Francisco airport in the morning, about how Everett disapproved of a fellow winemaker irrigating his fields so early in the season, about how a new restaurant was opening in Petaluma that Linda wanted to target for getting Bellosguardo wines on the first menu. As they chatted and I only half listened, I couldn’t help but stare at William. He had great posture sitting at this picnic table, which made me think he had great abs, not that I had any proof. A long face with pronounced cheekbones. His style outside of the tasting room was casual hipster—an artfully fraying plaid shirt and a tattoo of a wine bottle peeking out from his left short sleeve. It was a good look on him.
“Did you know that William didn’t like grapes when he was little? Even delicious, sweet ones. What kid, especially one who grew up in a vineyard, doesn’t like grapes?” Everett asked.
“I still think you gave me the bitter ones,” William said.
“You never wanted to really be in the business,” Everett said.
I started to feel uncomfortable.
“I just want to try something else out. I’ve given lots to this business. I came back here after college, didn’t I? I could have stayed in LA,” William said.
“That was because of—”
“Let’s not talk about that now,” William said. He shifted his attention to me. “Do you want
to go see the vines before it gets too dark?” he asked. Linda was nervously stacking dishes to bring them back into the kitchen. “Great time of day; the bees are mostly asleep so you can get close enough to taste the grapes.”
“Mostly asleep?” I asked.
“You’re not allergic, are you?”
“Not that I know of,” I said. “But I don’t want to get stung to find out.”
“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ll protect you.”
I teased, “Kind of hard to do with bees. Unless you have a spare beekeeper’s outfit that I can borrow.”
“I’ll see if I can find one before our walk,” he joked back. He punched me in the arm really lightly, and it felt electric. The spot where he touched lingered warm long after.
I loved how we were already familiar, how it felt like I was part of the family. I was ignoring the fact that Everett and Linda had been scowling as William and I talked about Brooklyn neighborhoods. Instead of interpreting their scowls as discomfort with me, a relative stranger, being part of this family discussion, I chalked it up to their disapproval of William’s summer plans. I so wanted to be a part of this family. Besides, I was beginning to disapprove of William’s plans too. I wanted him in the same place as me, not in the same place as Ethan.
We brought the rest of the plates into the house, refilled our glasses, and headed out to the vines, as he called them.
* * *
—
The vines were old in this part of the vineyard. Many were ones that the count had planted when he originally settled the land, but the growth was young, William told me. It was the beginning of the season, so the grapes were still tiny, like little rocks, and tasted sour. He picked one and fed it to me, but I puckered at the taste and spit it out.
“I’m sure the rabbits will appreciate that,” he said.
“There are rabbits?” I asked.
“And mice and even marmots. But we hate the marmots. They make too many holes.”
We walked together through the rows and he told me which wine would be made from each grape. How they would taste. How long they would need to be aged. Where each vine had originally come from. How long it had been growing. At the end of each row was a rosebush. William plucked a rose for me.
“We keep roses at the end of each row because roses get the same mildew diseases that grapes get, but they get them first. They’re like our canaries in a coal mine, but for wine.”
I sniffed the lush pink rose. It was so fragrant that it made me sneeze. “But you’re allowed to pick one for me?”
“Just doing research. Looks healthy,” he said. “And bless you.”
“Thank you!” I said, almost singing. “You know so much about this place.” I skipped ahead down the row of grapes, which seemed to go on for miles, sloping downhill. The vines wrapped tightly around the trellises set up for them and the tendrils snaked toward me, as if they were reaching for me. The ground was soft and gave way under my flip-flopped feet. It felt slightly like a Disney movie, but in the best way possible. “It must be hard to leave it.”
“It’s where I grew up. But I need to see new things, you know?” He walked leisurely behind, occasionally stopping to look at a grape.
“I know,” I said. “I was dying to get out of Iowa.”
“Do you ever think about going back?”
“Never,” I said. “But I do want to have a home one day. Eventually I want to know somewhere like you know this place.”
“I’ll come back here one day,” he said. “My parents think I won’t. But I will. I just want to try something else. I don’t know if I’ll be any good at it, at making movies. But you only live once.”
I stopped and touched the stony grapes with my hand, the tiny grapelings hard against my fingers. I plucked one from the vine. “What’s your favorite?” I asked, holding one of the tiny grape rocks up to the sky.
“Grape? Probably Pinot Noir.”
I laughed and dropped the grape. “No, silly! Movie.”
He sighed. “Hard question to answer. I always say The Conversation. Because that’s what a film person would say. But the truth is that I love John Hughes movies the most. First is probably The Breakfast Club; who doesn’t love that one? Then Weird Science and Planes, Trains and Automobiles. I love how they create a world.”
“Will you set your movies in Sonoma?”
“How could I not? It’s the only place I know. But I also have to leave it to write about it.”
“That makes sense.” I had always wished I was a creative person—an artist—but the closest I ever got was knitting a scarf for my mom one Christmas. An ill-formed scarf no less. “So you haven’t started yet?”
“I’ve started a million times, but I haven’t made much progress. They let me in on the back of a documentary short that I made about this place. I interviewed my parents and spliced in some old photos and took some B-roll in the vineyard.”
“I’d love to see it,” I said.
“It’s terrible,” he said. “It has fifty-one views on YouTube and approximately thirty-eight of them are definitely by my mom. But she loved it so much that she put it up on the vineyard website.”
“Oh, the website,” I said. “It’s actually not a bad site. But I didn’t see the video when I looked at it. She must have put it in kind of a weird spot.”
“She’s doing the best she can,” he said.
“I’m impressed she can do it at all,” I said. “But I can’t wait to help her.”
“You’re sweet,” he said.
“Anyway, the film must not be so bad if it got you into NYU.”
He smirked, but I could tell he was proud of it. “Okay, I’ll go grab my computer and meet you at the cottage.”
* * *
—
We separated and I meandered back to the cottage, ducking under and around the vines, feeling elated. I tried to remember what it had been like when I’d met Ethan during business school orientation. We were both in the giant UC Berkeley bookstore. He was trying to decipher the codes on the course books to figure out what the reading lists would be for the classes he was interested in taking before attending them the first week. I was looking at the shelves devoted to undergraduate English classes with names like History of the English Novel and The Legacy of The Odyssey: Quest Novels. I’d picked a few things off the shelves; I’d left almost all of my books behind in New York and needed something to read before classes started in earnest. He’d come over to tell me not to poach books from the course selections because they were ordered with specific quantities in mind. “There has to be an overage,” I’d said.
“You’ll mess everything up,” he said. “I used to work in my college bookstore. I know how the ordering works.”
“How do you know I’m not just getting ready to take one of these classes?” I asked.
“You’re wearing a Haas T-shirt,” he said. “There’s no way you have time to take these undergrad literature classes.”
I looked down and it was indeed true. I’d been given the T-shirt when I registered and I hadn’t unpacked my suitcases yet. “Good point,” I said. “But I really want to read this.” I held up a copy of Ulysses. “And they must account for some people who buy the books but don’t take the classes. Or someone who will buy the books from somewhere else.”
“I can’t imagine you will be able to read that this semester. Just give up now and buy a romance novel.” He was wearing a monogrammed shirt from Brooks Brothers tucked into perfectly pressed khaki pants; his hair was short, his neck perfectly shaved. He had aviator sunglasses on his head and was carrying a beat-up, but clearly fancy, leather briefcase. I wondered if it had been his father’s before him, like the kind of family heirloom that is passed down on the first day of work. He looked straight out of prep school, like he had never figured out another way to dress. He wasn’t unattractive; he h
ad a strong jaw and a Roman nose. He was a regular guy. There was no way he had ever dated a dominatrix, and he wasn’t fit enough to be gym obsessed.
I tried not to feel insulted by his romance novel comment. I wasn’t against them, although I hadn’t read one since my Mary Ellen library days. But he had said it with such a sneer that it made me defensive. Did he think I wasn’t smart enough to read Ulysses? “I don’t read romance novels,” I said. “This is much more up my alley. And if that scares you, you can walk away right now.”
He seemed a bit taken aback by my forwardness.
“Okay, okay,” he said. “You read what you want.”
I still thought he was condescending, so I decided to give it right back to him. “What are you doing here?”
“Shopping classes before they start. You can know a lot about a class by the reading list, and the reading list is always right here in the bookstore before you have to sit through seventy-five minutes of class.”
“I might be in denial about classes starting,” I said. “I forgot that I was wearing this T-shirt. You are a very prepared person.”
“Thank you,” he said. “I’m Ethan Katz.” He shifted the macroeconomics textbook in his right hand to under his left arm and held out his hand to shake mine.
“Hannah Greene,” I said. I offered Ulysses as a means of a handshake. He shook the book, which made me smile.
“You’re going to buy it, aren’t you?”
“Just to annoy you,” I said.
He followed me up to the register, bought Ulysses for me, and then asked me out for dinner at Chez Panisse. I had been in Berkeley for about a week, existing solely on ramen noodles and peanut butter sandwiches. How could I pass up an opportunity to eat at one of the best restaurants in the country? So, I had said yes. I hadn’t felt a physical spark with him, but we clearly had plenty to fight with each other about from the very start. Ethan didn’t want someone to flirt with him; he wanted someone to converse with, so my instinct toward low-grade conflict worked for us. It was a peculiar aspect of our relationship, mine and Ethan’s, that often led to a kind of verbal combat and one-upmanship (combined with put-downs).
The Shortest Way Home Page 9