A Taste of Chardonnay

“And today’s attendance is seventy-two,” announced Father Ed.

Chardonnay fidgeted in her pew, hyperaware of the eyes trained on her every move. She glanced sideways as discreetly as possible. And fifty of them are crowded around us. How could Meri and Savvy sit there so serenely?

It was always this way the first Sunday they came home in the summer and on holidays. It unnerved Char sometimes. How on earth did the word get out? Being gawked at in the shops and on the streets just because she was the daughter of a famous—rather, infamous—vintner made her feel uneasy. Undeserving.

But even with the stares, she’d always found solace at the little adobe church.

Of the three, Char was the seeker. Meri was absorbed in her art, and Savvy had chosen the law as her guide to life. Yet they all found common ground in the observance of mass. Its tradition provided a comfortable structure that they were missing in their broken home. Char never had to coerce the others into going. Following months apart at their respective schools, it was a ritual that teased them back into something almost like a legitimate family unit.

If not for the devout French au pair who’d first brought the girls here as toddlers, they’d never have discovered Saint Joan’s; no one else in their family was remotely spiritual. Cousin Patrick was serving time for dealing coke. Another cousin, Paul—though only thirty—had already spent his way through a fortune and now preyed on rich, married women. And Uncle Phil had an upcoming court date for tax evasion.

As far as Char remembered, the only time Papa had ever gone to church was to attend his wife’s funeral. Neither he nor Maman had ever talked to the girls about God or religion or the concept of giving something back of their tremendous fortune.

Then, as now, Papa was always either working, partying, or traveling. His absences were the norm. In fact, it was a novelty when he showed up for a weekday meal.

But Char, unlike Papa, was home to stay. She couldn’t wait for the day when she could walk into mass without any fanfare whatsoever.

Ryder sat with his family toward the right rear of the church. He tried to pay attention to the priest, but his eyes, like everybody else’s, kept wandering to the beauties up front and left.

Bridget followed his line of sight. Leave it to her to never miss a trick.

“Who are they?” she whispered loudly into Ryder’s ear.

“Who?” Ryder feigned ignorance.

“Those girls everyone’s looking at,” she hissed.

Thankfully, Mom’s “shhh” lips put a lid on Bridget’s questions for the moment.

During the sermon when there was a break from the rhythm of kneeling and standing, Ryder studied the St. Pierres from his rear pew. Only very recently, down in LA, had he ever known people who had what they called in the business “star power.” Like the rare actor, those three girls also possessed that indescribable “it” quality—whatever “it” was. Must be genetic. With no apparent effort, they exuded some magnetic, unself-conscious cool. What was it about them? The only answer was everything. From the way their long hair curved around their slim shoulders and how the simple lines of their clothes skimmed their bodies, to the identical tilt of their heads when they talked and the intoxicating scent of flowers that hung in the air around them. It would be easy to explain away as the smell of money. But lately, he’d brushed shoulders with enough women with similar trappings—absent the class—to recognize true chic when he was in its presence.

“We look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Amen,” intoned the priest.

Inexplicably, at that moment Chardonnay’s head swiveled and her eyes caught Ryder’s.

His totally unprepared heart cartwheeled. Had she felt his eyes caressing her?

Recognition flashed warmly on her face, curving her lips up a centimeter before she turned back around.

The whole thing had taken two seconds, but to Ryder it eclipsed his whole morning.

Over his sister’s head, his mom gave him a dark, warning look. Maternal overprotectiveness. It’d gotten more intense after Dad died. He supposed it had something to do with shouldering the entire weight of raising four kids all by herself. He and Bridget and the twins were pretty good at tolerating it. Fortunately, neither he nor his siblings were prone to troublemaking. That would’ve pushed Mom over the brink.

When the last hymn closed, the way his mom herded her brood out of the building would’ve put a border collie to shame.

“Jeez, Mom!” complained Bridget, twisting her neck backward as her mother planted a fingertip between her shoulder blades and nudged. “What’s the rush? I wanted to look at those girls some. Hey! One of them looks just like the girl in the picture with Ryder . . .”

“Don’t stare, Bridget. Let’s give them their privacy. For heaven’s sake, this is mass, not a fashion show.”

Ryder turned wistfully too, trying to come up with a good-enough reason to lag behind and talk to Char, but the St. Pierres were now surrounded by a knot of people. Besides, there was his family to consider. Ben and Brian had bolted out the double doors ahead of them, and his mother was ready to go. Opportunity lost.

For a quarter of an hour, Char and her sisters were held up in the sanctuary, cornered by parishioners who wanted a word. Some were genuine friends, anxious to welcome them home. A few were brazen enough to introduce themselves for the first time. All were on their best behavior, and there was no good excuse not to be gracious.

Finally, Father Eduardo, his tummy nicely disguised by his white robes, took Char’s elbow.

“Excuse us, will you?” Miraculously parting the hangers-on, he guided her toward an interior door.

Savvy peered over the heads of the throng that had swallowed her up, and Char wiggled her fingers good-bye.

“Thank you,” Char whispered to Father Ed as they made their way down the familiar rubber-treaded steps leading to the church basement.

“Welcome home,” he said. “And congratulations on your degree. Public policy, isn’t it?”

Char smiled, pleased he’d remembered. She’d be willing to bet that Papa didn’t know what subject she’d majored in. “Mm-hm. How are donations these days?”

“Up, I’m happy to say. Spring cleaning, you know. We must have a dozen trash bags full of clothing that needs sorted.”

They’d come to a room lined with shelves full of odds and ends: a toaster, lamps, some mismatched dishes. The floor was stacked with plastic storage bins, their lids marked with sizes.

“Our usual deal? I help sort, in exchange for a few bins for my friends?”

Father nodded. “Fine by me. I took a cursory glance—mostly outgrown school clothes, still in good shape.”

Char opened a bag and pulled out a wrinkled, child-sized shirt, then dropped it back in.

“I think I’ll go ahead and sort these now. I told Meri and Savvy I might stay after to do donations. We drove separately.”

“Suit yourself. The sooner they get sorted, the sooner they’ll be available for distribution.”

While her sisters drove home, Char dove into the bags, distributing the items into the appropriate bins. For the hundredth time, she thought back to freshman winter break, when she’d gone home with a friend whose parents taught her the meaning of the term “noblesse oblige.”

Like Char’s family, Candy Golberg’s parents were well off. They had the big glass and steel contemporary in Chicago, the sprawling A-frame in Vail they called the cabin, and the “cottage”—the gingerbread Victorian on the shore of Lake Michigan. But unlike Maman and Papa, the Golbergs made it their policy to give back. Dr. Golberg spent every January in Honduras operating on children’s cleft palates, free of charge. Char had seen pictures; it was no picnic. He lived in a tent, paid his own airfare, and came back covered with mosquito bites.

Mrs. Golberg sat on several boards and ran the daycare at the Y in one of Chicago’s poorer neighborhoods, donating back her small salary. Every Christmas she hauled her kids to the soup kitchen to serve up meals. They were used to it, even made an event of it, laughing and talking with the regular “customers.” And if the Golbergs happened to have company for the holidays, guess what? They went, too.

Mrs. Golberg said, “I always told my kids: What you do with your money tells as much about you as how you earned it—if not more.”

Candy was no slouch back at Hollyhurst Academy, either. On their free days, when they had no schoolwork between breakfast and evening vespers, she volunteered at a local nursing home. Char even went with her a couple of times.

Char never forgot that. From then on, she made it her mission to help out whenever and wherever she could.

Helping others—in any capacity—never failed to warm her heart. But when she started focusing in on migrant kids, she knew she’d found her true passion. Those kids couldn’t help where they were born or that their parents didn’t speak English. Here were people who put her own problems into perspective. This wasn’t just random charity. This was her raison d’être. Her life’s work.

Happiness spread through her as she anticipated the looks on the children’s faces when she distributed the clean, good quality clothes, over on El Valle Avenue. It always took a few weeks until people caught on to the fact that she was there on summer Wednesdays. That’s why it was so important that she establish a permanent, year-round identity.

She was dying to get inside that building, to check on the layout. She’d been making notes of her questions as they came to mind, and now they filled up several pages. Only three more days till her next appointment with Bill Diamond.