Laura Dave: Eight Hundred Grapes: a perfect summer escape to a sun-drenched vineyard

“I think you’re not supposed to be shtupping someone who isn’t Dad.”

“Well, I’m not shtupping him.”

I looked at her, confused. “What?”

She shrugged. “Henry is impotent, if you must know.”

I covered my ears. “I must not know. I must go back in time and know anything but that.”

“I’m sorry,” she said, holding up her hands in surrender. “I’m just saying … I’m just trying to explain to you that things are more complicated than they seem.”

Complicated . That was Ben’s word too. The problem was that they were both using it passively. When the truth was that they had made things complicated. Actively. That was the important part they each were leaving out.

“Where’s Dad?”

“Dad and I are taking a little time apart,” she said. “He’s been staying in the winemaker’s cottage for the last couple of weeks. Not that he doesn’t do that every year during the harvest.”

There was an edge to how she said that, which I chose to ignore.

“Because of Henry?” I asked.

“Because we’re taking time apart,” she said.

I looked through the bay windows to the lantern-lit vineyard, the lantern-lit path that led to the winemaker’s cottage. My father was asleep in one of the two bedrooms inside. When I was a little girl, I’d beg to sleep in the other room and go out with him first thing in the morning to help pick the first grapes before school. I told him that when I was older my brothers and I were going to take over the land for him—to keep his legacy running. I meant it. Running the vineyard was what I had wanted more than anything when I was a little girl. Now I had left him there alone. Each in our own way, we all had.

“How could you not have told me what was going on?” I asked.

My mother reached for her coffee. “We were waiting until after your wedding. We didn’t want to ruin it for you.”

I met her eyes. Apparently Ben and I had done that all ourselves.

“I’ve tried not to burden Finn and Bobby with this either. They both have their hands full with other things.”

I thought back to the bar—Finn acting weird when Bobby came up. Bobby nowhere to be seen. “With what things?” I said.

She shook her head. “I can’t get into all of that right now. They should be allowed to be here to offer their side.”

How had we gotten to the place where everyone in the family was on different sides? I had been home for the last harvest, I had been home another time since—everyone had seemed fine. Now though? I felt like I was going to cry. And Ben—usually my first call when I felt this way, the one person who could help me find perspective on this—was the reason I had none.

My mother cleared her throat, seeing an opportunity to change the subject. “Are you going to tell me what happened?” she said.

I shook my head.

“Did he do something unforgivable?”

“What kind of question is that?”

She leaned in. “A bad one, probably. What’s a good one? Tell me and I’ll ask.”

Ever since I’d left the bridal shop, I’d envisioned sitting at this table with my mother and my father, talking it out. The way we had when I’d needed to figure out what college to go to, how to pay for law school, how to get over a thousand broken hearts. Now my concern was that the three of us were never going to be sitting here again.

“Georgia …”

I looked up.

“Did you do something unforgivable?”

“Stop using that word. No.”

“Well, is there someone else?”

Normally, my mother was the first to think adultery went into the unforgivable category.

“Yes, there is. And she’s four-and-a-half years old.”

My mother looked confused.

“He has a daughter. That he’s kept from me.”

She went silent, the calm before her impending storm. My mother couldn’t stand dishonesty. She was wisecracking and irritable and stubborn. But, beyond all that, she was remarkably genuine. And she demanded the same of the people she loved.

She reached for her coffee. “I’m sure Ben has an explanation for this,” she said.

“You can’t be serious,” I said. “I just told you that Ben has a child with someone, and he didn’t choose to share that information. I found out at my dress fitting when I saw him walking down the street with the mother of his child.”

“I understand. It’s awful. Particularly that he didn’t tell you.” She paused. “I’m just putting it out there that he may have an explanation for keeping this to himself.”

This was what she had to offer me? Pre-Henry, my mother would have demanded blood from Ben. She would have stormed around the dining room talking about values, the way she’d done when my best friend in high school had used her parents’ restaurant to throw herself an open-bar birthday party. Even when I explained how that had happened, she had said there was no explanation. You either were truthful or you weren’t, and that defined you.

Where was that mother now, screaming about Ben’s lie of omission? Why couldn’t she take on that role so I could find my way to the other one—the one where I got to find sympathy for Ben in her outsized protection of me. That was the mother I knew.

I stood up. “I can’t deal with this right now. I’m going to bed.”

“Then go.”

I headed for the door, completely exhausted and ready for the night to be done.

“Henry is an old friend,” my mother called out after me. “We knew each other back in New York. And he recently was named the conductor of the San Francisco Symphony.”

I turned around, but stayed in the doorway.

She shrugged. “He’s only been out here a few months, but it’s been nice. Just … to be a part of that world again.”

Part of that world. She looked defeated saying the words and remembering it—who she used to be, how she used to be. It made me want to convince her that she was still a part of it: She had been the music teacher in town for decades. But that wasn’t the same thing. And what was the point in trying to convince her it was, anyway? As if anyone could convince you of the one thing you didn’t want to see.

“What does that have to do with you and Dad?” I said instead.

She looked up at me.

“I’m not talking about Dad. I’m talking about you and me. You have always tried to take care of everyone in this family, just like I have. As opposed to figuring out what you want. Not what you’re supposed to want, but what you truly want.”

I started to laugh. I couldn’t help it.

“You can’t seriously think you’re in a good position to offer me advice on my romantic life at the moment.”

She met my eyes. “I think I’m in a great position, actually,” she said. “No one sees what an incomparable person you are more than I do. Except, perhaps, Ben.”

She paused. And then she said it simply. “Be careful what you give up.”

I crossed my arms over my chest, trying—in spite of myself—to hear what she wasn’t saying. “Because you can’t get it back?”

She stood up, walking past me in the doorway.

“No.” She squeezed my shoulder. “Because, eventually, you get it back any way you can.”

I waited for her to disappear up the stairs before heading that way myself. But before my mother was gone, she called out a final good night. “For what it’s worth, I’m glad you’re home.”

That made one of us.

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