Ellen Crosby - The Chardonnay Charade

Afterward I said to Quinn, “I can’t imagine who could possibly replace him. He’s the memory of the vineyard. Our living history.”

We were in the Mini again, heading over to the north block of Chardonnay, which was near my house. Along with a late-flowering block of Pinot Noir, these were the only other vines on that side of the farm. Last night we had agreed that we would concentrate our efforts on the southern vines.

“We really don’t have the manpower or the equipment to cover two locations this time around without the helicopter. Those vines need to be replaced, anyway,” Quinn had said. “They’re not producing much anymore. If we lose the fruit, then so be it. I know we killed ourselves to save it the night before, but what are you gonna do?”

I pulled off Sycamore Lane onto the north service road. In the distance, the vines glittered and sparkled. It would have been beautiful if it hadn’t been frost. I downshifted and stopped next to a row marker, cutting the engine.

For a long moment we stared silently out the window at the frost-covered posts and vines. “Hector’s right,” he said. “This is work for someone young. It’s backbreaking, you know that.”

“Maybe we can keep him on somehow—”

He cut me off harshly. “Oh, for God’s sake. What is it about you Virginia folks, anyway? You’re always living on your memories. Mosby…the damn Civil War…you talk about that stuff like it happened yesterday.”

“We do not —”

He was in no mood to listen. “You do so. Hell, half the Romeos spend their weekends parading around in Civil War uniforms reenacting the battles on the same damned battlegrounds. I hate to break it to you, but you lost. The South lost. Why do you have to go over and over and over it, like picking at a scab?”

Either his passion or our body heat was starting to steam up the car windows. He rubbed a small circle in his window with the side of his fist and said without looking at me, “Let Hector go, Lucie. You gotta write your own chapter. Everyone else had their day. Now it’s your turn. You changed your house after the fire. Now it’s time to change the vineyard. It doesn’t have to be preserved as a shrine to your mother.”

As speeches go, it was a long one for him, but clearly something that had been festering. With the clinical precision of a surgeon he had just cut open my life to expose my family’s proud heritage like it was dead tissue that needed removing. Unlike me, he’d come to Virginia to forget his past. I often thought he was trying to shed his memories as a snake sheds a skin. Mine made me who I was. Eli was right that we hadn’t always had an easy time of it after our mother’s death, dealing with Leland’s gambling habits and his errant ways. But I couldn’t stay on at the vineyard without finding a way to fuse the past and present together.

“What you don’t understand about me…about Virginia…the South,” I said, “is that we aren’t mourning the past, we’re honoring it. You make it sound like I’ve got cobwebs in my hair and roots growing from my feet. It’s not like that at all. If you’re a Southerner you’re not talking about geography. You’re talking about a way of life. We’re polite, we respect our elders, our families are important. We have values and traditions.”

“Yeah, well, I have those things, too,” he retorted. “But it doesn’t stop me from moving ahead. I want to do things differently. Break some rules. Experiment. I can’t do it if you’re going to stay mired in keeping everything as it was in your mother’s time.”

“Do we have to have this conversation now?” I asked. “I’m exhausted and filthy. I need a shower and my bed. Why don’t we continue it some other time, okay?”

He shrugged. “Sure. And no point getting out of the car, either. Look.” He pointed to grape clusters, lost to the freeze, that hung limp and shriveled on the vine.

“We saved what we could,” I said. “That has to be good enough.”

I dropped him back at the vineyard parking lot by his El Camino. “See you in the morning,” he said, then smiled faintly. “God, I’m beat. See you whenever.”

“Thanks for everything,” I said.

He reached out and swiped my sooty cheek with a sooty finger. “I’ve been meaning to tell you,” he said. “You look good in black. Suits you.”

“Very funny.”

I had almost fallen asleep when I realized that perhaps the remark about me wearing black had only been half joking. It was the color of funerals, of death, and of the past. The perfect color for someone who clung to old memories and couldn’t let go.

For the second day in a row I woke up late. Though I’d washed my hair twice and stood under the shower for at least half an hour before going to bed, when I smelled my pillow it stank of smoke. Another shower still didn’t remove the tarry grime from under my fingernails. I gave up and got dressed. What I really needed was coffee and something to eat.

Through the open door to Mia’s room I saw tangled bedsheets and clothes flung everywhere. I’d never heard her come in nor get up, but her purse was on her dresser, so she was still home. I found her in the kitchen, sitting in one of the ladder-back chairs at the old pine table our mother had brought from France after she and Leland were married. Dressed in a gray T-shirt that ended midthigh, my sister’s head was bent over a coffee mug in one hand and a cigarette in the other. Her long blond hair screened her face and she didn’t look up at the sound of my cane tapping on the tile floor.

“Hey, when did you get in?” I asked. And when had she started smoking again?

Mia raised her head and for a split second it was Leland’s eyes looking at me, wary and defensive, the haunted, wasted look he’d worn the mornings after he’d had too many Scotches on poker night with the Romeos.

“You’re hung over,” I said, then wished I hadn’t. All I’d done was antagonize her. But seeing her eyes, dark and hooded like two bruises, shocked me the same as if someone actually had hit her. I knew she drank at college like all kids did, and she certainly had access to alcohol at home. She looked like she’d tied one on in a big way last night. I stared again at her eyes. It wasn’t the first time, either.

“No, I’m not.”

I sat down across from her, hooking my cane on the back of another chair. “How much did you drink?”

She sucked hard on her cigarette. “A few beers.”

“Yeah, and I’m going to run the Marine Corps Marathon. Did you drive home drunk?”

She exhaled smoke out of the side of her mouth and stubbed the cigarette in the ashtray. “Will you lay off, for God’s sake? What business is it of yours what I do?”

“You’re my sister.”

She shoved her chair back and stood up. “When did that ever matter?”

I had set that up perfectly. “I’m worried about you. You’re underage. If you get caught—” I sounded too defensive.

“I can vote and join the army and get married. So I’m not legal to drink. Big goddam deal. I will be, in a few months.”

Mia had been fourteen the day she went riding with our mother when Orion, Mom’s horse, threw her as they took a jump over one of the many dry-stacked stone walls that ringed the perimeter of the farm. Mercifully she didn’t suffer long, dying later that day of internal injuries. Mia never spoke about what happened, nor explained why my mother, good enough to qualify as an alternate to France’s Olympic equestrian team, had stumbled over a hurdle so low anyone could have stepped over it without breaking stride. I always wondered if they’d been quarreling and Mom was distracted when it happened. Even back then, Mia had been headstrong and temperamental.