The Shortest Way Home

by Miriam Parker

  “Okay,” she said, dropping the towel and heading back into the main room.

  I picked up the towel and hung it on the hook behind the door. The cottage would be ground zero for the party staff, so this bathroom couldn’t start out the day a wreck. I looked at my face in the mirror. It looked sallow and puffy, but my clavicles were more pronounced. Somehow with all the wine I was drinking, I had lost weight at Bellosguardo. Stress, maybe. Exhaustion. Love. Any of it was possible. I ran a comb through my hair, flipped my head over and back, and pinched my cheeks. I put my hands on my hips, using the “power pose” technique that I had seen on a TED talk about how just small tweaks to your body can change your entire mind-set. It was too early for a shower or makeup, but I could psych myself up. I needed all the power I could get. I counted off two minutes of Wonder Woman pose and then headed back into the front of the cottage to face the day.

  * * *

  —

  In the kitchen, Celeste was wrapping forks and knives in paper napkins. “Can’t we have one of the servers do that later?” I asked.

  “Better to just have it done,” Celeste said.

  I sighed and went over to the kitchen island to help her wrap.

  “Linda seems excited for tonight,” I said. The sound check the day before had been kind of intense. Jackson had appeared at his appointed time with all of the band’s equipment and I had been in the tasting room alone to let him in. Linda had disappeared about twenty minutes before he was supposed to arrive. We chatted about the schedule for the night (three sets: from 5:20 to 6, 6:20 to 7, and 7:20 to 8), the number of tickets I’d sold (fifty), and if he would take requests (not at the beginning, but he would consider it in the third set). I knew he wanted to ask me about Linda, but he didn’t. So, instead he asked me about William.

  “He’s on his way back to New York,” I said.

  “He’ll miss the party?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “His dad is getting better. And he’s losing valuable time.”

  “That makes sense,” he said. “And it’s good to know Everett is on the mend.”

  As he said that Linda floated into the room. She had gone back up to the house and changed out of her normal weekday office wear—leggings and an oversize sweatshirt—and into a more fitted dress and wedge sandals. I noticed that she looked thinner, or maybe I hadn’t ever seen her in fitted clothes; even on the day we went to Healdsburg, she had been wearing a blazer. She had brushed her hair and put on blush. She was smiling. She looked beautiful. And happy. Hopeful.

  She came over to us, smiled at me, and hugged Jackson. He was a lot taller than her, almost a foot, but their hug seemed natural. She whispered something to him that I couldn’t hear. I should have probably walked away, but instead I kind of turned my back to them and fiddled with the placement of the music stands. I could hear snippets of their conversation.

  “Glad he’s okay . . .”

  “Keeping busy . . .”

  “Tomorrow . . .”

  “New York . . .”

  Finally, I figured it was rude to keep listening, so I headed back toward the office. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Jackson,” I said. It turned out that I didn’t really want to know what was happening.

  * * *

  —

  “I think she’s nervous,” Celeste said. “She was asking me what she should wear.”

  “She looks great,” I said. “I mean, it’s sad that she lost weight because of the Everett situation, but she does look fantastic.”

  “You’ve lost some weight yourself,” Celeste said. I was secretly glad to have that confirmed by Celeste.

  “I can’t lose much more,” I said, trying to be modest. “I can’t afford to buy new clothes.”

  “You’ll make it work,” Celeste said, ribbing me in the side with a wrapped set of utensils. “Besides, I know about your secret credit card.”

  “I need to keep that under control,” I said. “Anyway, Jackson was here yesterday doing a sound check and she came down wearing blush. She seemed really happy.”

  “What about you? How’s your love life?” Celeste had not directly asked me about my love life in a few days, although I was sure she had been dying to.

  “You know,” I said. “Quiet.”

  “Have you heard from your boyfriend in New York?” Celeste asked. “Is he still your boyfriend?”

  She was fishing. But I wasn’t going to let her catch anything. “Ethan? A little. We talked once.”

  “He can’t be all bad.”

  “He’s not,” I said. “I just don’t know if he’s for me.”

  “What’s your status?” Celeste had moved on to hand-drying the wineglasses that had been washed in the industrial-size dishwasher overnight. I settled myself on one of the barstools in front of the large kitchen island and picked at a piece of croissant that Celeste had brought with her. Funny how for a person who never seemed to eat anything, she always was bringing food to other people.

  “I think we’re on a break. He’s working on his app. I’m out here. He seems busy. Distracted.”

  “Do you miss him?”

  “Not really,” I said. “Maybe a little. I miss having someone. You know?” I did have the fantasy of William, although I still felt bad about what had happened with him. It was a betrayal of Ethan, after all.

  “It’s nice to have someone,” Celeste said. “Although I’ve gotten so used to not having someone. And I met this guy named Thunder a few weeks ago at an open house I had. I mean, nothing’s really happened yet, but we’ve been on a few dates, and of course I mentally jump to how if he’s around on the weekends, I’ll have to clean up after him. Feed him. It’s a hassle.” She poured a cup of coffee from the coffeemaker and handed it to me. I hadn’t noticed her making the coffee, but I was grateful to have it.

  “Thunder? Is he the head of a motorcycle gang?”

  “No,” she said. “His mother just loved weather. His sister is named Rain.”

  “California is weird,” I said.

  “Hey,” she said. “You’re one of us now.”

  “I don’t mind taking care of someone if they take care of me, too, even if they have a crazy name.”

  “That’s a better way to be,” Celeste said. “Being too independent kind of makes you give up on life. Like, who cares if you eat that second piece of pizza or drink one more glass of wine? At least I don’t have cats. Cats make you seem desperate.”

  “I love cats,” I said. “But I will say that now that Everett is home and Tannin is back with him, I miss the dog. He was a really nice companion.” I sipped my coffee. It was strong, made my eyes open, and almost tasted like chocolate.

  “He’s a good dog. They’ve always had good dogs, Everett and Linda. Nice son too.”

  I nodded and took a bite of the croissant. I weighed the pros and cons of talking about my personal life with Celeste. On the one hand, I was confused and wanted a sounding board. On the other hand, it almost didn’t matter what I wanted. Circumstances were what they were. And I would have to wait. To see if William wanted to stay in New York. I had agreed to a summer at Bellosguardo, but would I continue? I would have to figure out what to do with my future now that I had knocked out the possibility of working in finance, or at least at Goldman. It was easier to know what you didn’t want than what you did. That was one thing I had learned this summer.

  The silence got to Celeste, and somehow her desire to pry was overwhelmed by her instinct to talk.

  “Back when they were in high school, Linda was with Jackson. Did I tell you that?”

  “I don’t think you did, but I know.”

  “My parents told me they were perfect for each other. True love. But her parents. It wasn’t practical.”

  I shook my head. “Practical marriages make me sad. That was one of my problems with Ethan. He was all about practicality. And he wa
s angry with me for being impulsive. I think my parents married for love. But the world kind of conspired against them. They started out happy, though. Starting out miserable . . .”

  “Getting married to fix your problems is never a good idea,” Celeste said. “I speak from experience.”

  “Oh right,” I said. “I keep forgetting that you were married.”

  “Because I’m such a successful single woman?” she asked.

  “Maybe,” I said. “I just think you’re cool. But tell me about being married.”

  “It was silly, really. We’d been together since high school and I wanted to get married, mostly because of bridal magazines. But once we were done with school, it turned out we had nothing in common. So, we got divorced after a year.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “Living with his mom, helping her with her winery.”

  “So, around here?”

  “None of us go very far,” she said. “My parents were relieved. Especially my mom. She said she’d never pressure me to get married again. But I will one day.”

  “Your mom sounds cool.”

  “Yours isn’t?”

  “We’re just not that close,” I said. “I used to talk to her more, but I feel like she doesn’t really get me. The last time she left me a message all she could focus on were other people my age who have kids. I haven’t talked to her since I’ve been here. My brother, I talk to more often.”

  “Why?” Celeste asked. “Everyone should talk to their mom.”

  “I don’t have much to say to her. And she doesn’t have much to say to me.”

  “I bet she misses you,” she said.

  “She’s fine,” I said.

  “Mothers miss their daughters.”

  “I don’t think I was the daughter my mother wanted. She wanted someone like her. Who didn’t want to stray far from home. Who would marry a guy in town. Live next door. Bring over the kids on weekends to swing on a rickety swing set. Besides, she’s busy with work. When she isn’t working, she’s recovering from work. She’s a nurse.”

  “That’s noble,” Celeste said.

  I had never thought of my mother as noble, but more someone who was gone for days at a time at the hospital and who was exhausted. And yet, she went back, each week her shifts slightly different, the patient load ever changing. The young doctors rotating in and out. The only constant in the hospital, it seemed to me, was my own mother. Which eventually led me to believe, after a number of years of therapy, that she was the source of her own misery. And this was even before my father died. But after, it was like she was entirely trapped, in our town, in our house, even though in retrospect she had the most portable job of all time—my mother could have been a nurse wherever she wanted. But for some reason, she couldn’t get out of the house, no less out of Iowa. She felt she had to keep the same habits from before my father died, even assuming some of his habits, like watching hockey. She couldn’t bring herself to change. I saw her turn inward on herself as she got older. She never was able to fully see the bright side of her life—her friends, her children, her grandchildren. All she could see was what she lost: my father.

  I must have had some sort of reaction to this because all I ever wanted, from the time my father died, was to leave everything behind and never look back. And in fact, I had already reinvented myself four times. I did like Sonoma Hannah the best of all the Hannahs. She seemed to be going places.

  As we finished our second cups of coffee, Annie’s sous chef, Rory, entered the cottage. He was already wearing his chef jacket and had a roll of knives slung over his shoulder like a yoga mat. It was early, still not even six A.M. He started blustering around the kitchen, clanging pots together, sharpening his knives.

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  “There’s no coffee,” he said, pulling the cabinets open.

  “Oh,” I said. “We must have drunk it all. I’ll make you some more. There are beans next to the grinder, which is next to the coffeepot.”

  “I’ll do it.” He groaned.

  “Whatever makes you happy,” I said.

  To keep myself out of cranky Rory’s way, I grabbed my computer and headed up to the house. Celeste followed me but headed down to her car, saying that she was going to work out and that she’d be back in a few hours. I went into the house and settled myself in the kitchen. I opened my laptop and started doing research on local wineries that also had hotels on the premises. There were a few, but none of the houses looked like Bellosguardo; at the very least, none of them were as old or as grand. By the time Nurse Selma came down to get Everett’s toast ready, I had made two pages of notes about what we would need: a staff, extra linens, great photography, a section on the website, a way to book. But people rented out rooms on Airbnb all the time; we could start that way and transition into a more official place later.

  “You come up to see Mr. Everett?” Selma asked.

  “Yes!” I said. “I have a lot to talk to him about.”

  I followed her up the stairs and into Everett’s room. He had been moved from the hospital bed, which was now folded up in the corner, into the grand four-poster bed in the room. He smiled when I entered behind Selma and looked like he had a bit more color in his face. His arm was still in a sling, though, and I could still see the remnants of stitches. Tannin was curled up next to him. “I got an upgrade,” he said. “But actually the other bed is more comfortable. This mattress must be eighty years old. It’s lumpy.”

  “Will that be part of the charm of the inn?” I asked.

  “We might need to upgrade some of the amenities,” he said. “Should we put in a gym too? A business center?”

  “Don’t get ahead of yourself,” I said. “But good mattresses and pillows might be a good investment. On the other hand, you can just bill the place as old-world charm and let them sleep on lumps.”

  “We’ll figure it out,” he said. “Big day for you, no?”

  “Yes!” I exclaimed. “The party has become weirdly popular. Somehow in the last day, we’ve sold another twenty-five tickets. It’s been covered on all the local websites and the Napa Valley Register.”

  “Great,” he said. He seemed a bit misty-eyed. “The party will be good for us. I’m so glad you’re here. It’s made all of this, and all of that”—he gestured toward Linda’s room—“a lot easier.”

  “I’m sorry about everything,” I said.

  “What can I say? We’ve lived apart for some time.”

  “I’m still sorry,” I said.

  “And I’m sorry that I wasn’t welcoming at the beginning. I was being . . . stubborn,” he said. “I’ve been stubborn a lot. I’ve been thinking, really, that if Linda would be happier elsewhere, who am I to keep her?”

  “I’m sorry,” I said again.

  “It’s always been hard,” he said. “She’s always really loved him. Anyway, after we got married because our parents made us, we knew almost immediately that it was wrong. We were going to break up; my father was still alive and he could have sold the vineyard; it would have been fine. And then she got pregnant. So we thought, well, let’s give this a go. At least for a little while.”

  “William is a great kid,” I said.

  “This was before William,” he said.

  “Oh,” I said, confused.

  “We had a daughter. Olivia. She was beautiful and tiny.” His eyes seemed far away. “And it made us love each other more. We would just stare at her for hours. She was a great sleeper and just wanted to snuggle with us when she was awake. She was the ideal baby. She was like a doll. She lived to be six months old, and then one day, her heart just stopped. She had been perfect, no signs of anything wrong. And then, it was just over. It happened in the evening. We were putting her to bed. We were there when it happened. All of a sudden, she just stopped living. It was unbearable. And we didn’t really believe it
. So we spent that night with her, all three of us on the floor in the tower room. We loved her so much.”

  “That room is beautiful,” I said. “It’s very peaceful.”

  “We rarely go there,” he said. “Just once a year, on the anniversary of her death. We loved that baby girl so much. And we grieved together for so long. We tried not to have another baby. William was . . . Well, we were very, very scared when Linda was pregnant again. We were on pins and needles. But then he started walking at around nine months and never stopped.”

  “He does have a lot of energy,” I said, sort of trying to change the subject. I wasn’t sure I was ready for this heavy conversation.

  But Everett didn’t want to change the subject or to talk about William. “Maybe it’s time for a change,” he said. “We had thought about it before. About updating the room. About updating the whole house, really. It’s stuck in time, isn’t it? We used to use the furniture before Olivia. All the rooms. But after . . . it was just too sad. It’s just been so hard to let her go. We don’t want to, but we finally have to. For us to be holding on . . .” He paused and wiped a tear from his eyes. I felt like he wouldn’t go on. But he did.

  “But we’re just in this same cycle, all of us. She doesn’t love me anymore. We’re just . . . And I hate Linda seeing me like this. I think it makes everything worse. I’m weak. Sick. She should go live her life. I am ready to tell her that if being here makes her miserable, she should fly away. It’ll be hard for me; I really do love her even though sometimes I don’t show it that well. I know I’m stubborn and overly focused on the winery at the expense of everything else, including her feelings. And I’m hard on her, about how she runs the business, not that I could do it any better. But she’s been my world for all of these years. She was always the one that I wanted. I’ve been chasing her my whole life. And maybe, finally, it just made my heart explode. At some point, I guess you have to stop chasing. I’m stuck in this bed. And I have Nurse Selma here to take care of me. And you can take care of the winery.”

  “I still have so much to learn,” I said.