St. Helena, Napa County, California
September 1999
I TOSSED AND TURNED in bed that night. Michelle could tell Josh about what she saw, and then I’d be the villain to my children, to David. But something Michelle had said nagged at me. I figured it was complicated. What exactly did she mean by that?
In the morning was the crush. The white grapes had already been sorted for quality, their stems removed. From there, the mechanical crusher compressed the grapes to release their juice and separate their skins. I watched the cylinder squeeze the grapes, sucking their skins off, leaving the must behind—the flavor for the wine itself. Normally, the crush was one of the most satisfying parts of the process, but I couldn’t help but see myself in the machine, rotating between the cylinders, crushed under the weight of the decisions I’d made and the choices yet to come.
“I always wondered why they called it a crush, when you like someone,” David had once said, early in our relationship, the two of us cramped in my dorm room bed. “It sounds violent, don’t you think?”
“It is,” I’d teased. “It feels like all the air is sucked out of your lungs.”
“I feel like the air is easier to breathe with you around,” he’d murmured. It was the kind of romantic sentiment I was used to hearing from David, but his words had still leveled me into contented silence. I’d liked how his body was wrapped around mine, the warmth of his arms around my bare chest.
I stood beside the machine, feeding it destemmed grapes, hypnotized by its mechanical hum. After I stopped cranking the crusher, I went back to the house, but as soon as I opened the front door, I could hear the phone ringing. When I saw the 805 area code, I answered it, my pulse racing.
“Andrew,” I said, the two syllables of his name twisting my voice with emotion.
“Hi, Mom,” he said.
It had only been a month since I’d seen him—one month since David and I drove him to the lime-grassed campus of the Dunn School in Los Olivos, his possessions packed neatly into three suitcases. David had been nervous on the drive—I could tell by the tight grip of his hands on the steering wheel, even as he hummed along to the radio—and I had spent the hours tamping down tears. It felt like we were abandoning Andrew, as much as we tried to sell the virtues of the school to him—the beautiful setting, the top-notch education. You’re such a smart kid, David had said. You’ll fit right in. It’ll be a fresh start.
In the rearview mirror, I’d noticed Andrew wince. He never should have needed the fresh start. When he was gone, I still felt his hand in mine, the warm weight of it. His nervousness to start school as a kid, the constant tug at my side. The blue pools of his eyes. Later, his voice, froggy with puberty, asking me to check over his homework. He took such care, such pride, in everything he did.
So many times since we’d left him at Dunn, I imagined him dropping my hand and deciding to hate me.
“How are you?” I said carefully. “How is it there? I’ve been thinking about you, but you said you didn’t want us to call right away…” Andrew had told us before he left that he wanted to be the one to make contact—that he didn’t want us checking in before he had time to settle.
“I didn’t,” he said. “I’m fine. Classes are good. It feels kind of like home, actually. With the vineyards all around.”
My mouth formed a wobbly smile, but a tear slid down my cheek. David was the one who had made all the arrangements for Andrew to attend. He had pulled strings with the friend of a former client in the admissions office, and I had been equally grateful and repulsed by his cool head under pressure, his ability to sweep the mess under the rug. When I learned that the Santa Ynez Valley was literally in the school’s backyard, I had felt a warped degree of relief, imagining Andrew looking out of his window and seeing vines climb into the distance, just like I was at home. I pictured us gazing into the same setting, telling myself it would feel like home to him.
David had tried to assuage my doubts about it all. He’s a gifted kid, Bev. He’ll do better there. The public school system wasn’t serving him well. He has a bright future—we don’t want this following him around. Even when it was just the two of us, he hadn’t wanted to talk about the real reason. To him, the lie had become the truth.
“That’s great,” I said. “We miss you here. I miss you.”
“I know,” he said. “I do too. But I’m doing well. And it was good to see Dad.”
“What?” My heart dropped like a stone.
“Yeah. Dad was here… Didn’t you know? He said he was on a business trip. He just stopped in for a bit. He told me you wanted to come, too, but couldn’t get away.”
Everything I couldn’t say burned in my throat. David had covered for me, the same way I was covering for him back at home. When I kicked him out, he hadn’t gone to be with some mysterious mistress that my imagination had conjured up. He had gone to see our son, the son who might still be under our roof had I gotten my way.
“That’s right,” I said, choking up. “I love you, Andrew…”
“I know, Mom. I love you too. How is Kieran? I miss him.”
“Good,” I said, nodding as the tears crested my eyes. “He’s good. Getting bigger.”
“And Josh?” he said.
“Good.” I was surprised he’d even asked about Josh. Josh had never once asked about Andrew.
“I’ll see you at Thanksgiving,” he said. “It’ll be good to be home.”
After we both hung up, I cried in earnest, sinking down onto the kitchen floor with sobs racking my body. Even though it had been a short conversation—a normal one, with no audible resentment on his end—I wondered if he sensed my immense guilt and understood the real source of it. Andrew was always perceptive, wired into my moods and sensing my shifting energy. Had he been around after I made David leave, he might have asked, Mom, what’s wrong? and I might have broken down and told him.
The boys had always been opposites, the balance between them uneven since they were born: Andrew had needed a short NICU stay to be hooked up to a CPAP machine because of his weaker lungs, while Josh got to come home with us right away, a separation that filled me with agony. Even before birth, Josh had been the bigger twin, the one siphoning the most nutrients from the placenta. Andrew’s growth had been a constant source of worry to the doctors. Almost an entire pound separated them when they were pulled out of me, and the gap had only continued to grow.
But Andrew and Josh were also identical in so many ways. Once Andrew had caught up in size, when they were still babies, I’d had to draw a blue dot on his heel to tell him apart from Josh, but as they aged, there was a softness about Andrew that Josh lacked, less in body than in mind, like he wasn’t born with the hard armor the world would require of him—a hard armor that Josh seemed to wear like it weighed nothing.
After I finally forced myself off the ground, washed my face, and put on mascara for a meeting I’d forgotten to cancel, I did what I was good at: I compartmentalized. I stopped thinking about Andrew and all the ways in which I had failed him. When Camille came in the door, her cheeks flushed after a walk with Kieran, I nursed my baby and told Camille that yes, she could bring him to a playgroup, and no, I hadn’t thought any more about David or Emilia.
It wasn’t until I returned home from the meeting that I saw the flowers on the front porch. They were pale pink, with silky petals. I couldn’t identify what kind they were, but Camille would be able to when she returned. I suddenly pictured what would happen when David came home. Camille would leave and go back to Santa Barbara. She’d sell her apartment and spin a globe with her finger to pick the next place she wanted to live, and she’d be gone. The thought was devastating. I loved having her with me, having her feel like part of my immediate family.
I knew Emilia had left the flowers, and that she must be somewhere on the property, ready to surprise me, which made me smile. I brought the flowers inside, placed them in a vase, and set them on the kitchen table. As I stared at them, I made the decision. I would go to Naples with Emilia. The harvest was almost over, and Marcel was more than capable of running the Golden Grape in my stead. Camille could stay and care for Kieran and make sure Josh was okay. Maybe this was my midlife crisis and I would return with the urge out of my system. I’d return and be able to be the wife and mother my family needed me to be. The version of me they deserved.
I padded upstairs to our bedroom, where I began pulling open drawers and taking out perfectly folded clothes. I didn’t know any specifics about Naples—its climate, its terrain—but I could picture myself there with Emilia, the two of us exploring vineyards and each other. It wasn’t Provence at twenty, but maybe it was our do-over.
My clothes were lined up on the bed: small piles of dresses I hadn’t worn in years because I’d deemed them impractical, along with jeans and T-shirts, my usual everyday wardrobe. I would need a new suitcase. The only one I owned was the size of an overnight bag, but I wouldn’t be gone longer than a few days, maybe a week. I couldn’t be away from Kieran for much longer than that. I’d need to pump breast milk, or could I wean him before I left?
I’d have to let David know I was going, which meant I’d need to answer the phone the next time he called. I would finally need to tell him what was on my mind.
The knock was soft, so soft I barely heard it. I had left the front door unlocked, and footfalls in the foyer heralded her arrival.
“I’m upstairs,” I called down, a want unfurling inside me.
I listened as she ascended the stairs, patches of color blooming on my cheeks, humming as I added a sun hat to the pile on the bed.
“Going somewhere?” said the voice at the door, a voice that definitely didn’t belong to Emilia. When I whirled around, David stood in the doorway, clad in dark jeans, shoulders broad under one of his trademark flannel shirts. Panic haloed my entire body.
“David,” I said in a breathless squeak as my husband entered the room.
“Bev,” he said, his dimples pronounced in his cheeks. “I think it’s time we talked.”