Sixteen
Vivian paced the bedroom, walking back and forth in front of an antique Georgian mahogany sideboard covered with framed family photos. She felt the eyes of her children following her as she contemplated the end of the wine dynasty she had once imagined for them.
An offer to buy Hollander Estates. As if there was any price that would be worth giving up her home. And yet, because of the amount of money the winery was losing, the offer wouldn’t even be enough to buy a more modest house. It was a failure on a magnitude Vivian never imagined.
She heard the bedroom door click open.
“Vivian,” Leonard said. “You’ve been hiding in here all day.”
“I’m not hiding! I’m thinking,” she said.
“Well, it’s dinnertime,” he said. “Everyone’s going to be at the table in twenty minutes.”
“How can you expect me to eat at a time like this?”
All her energy was going to her racing mind. Could she have done something to prevent this? Why had she let Leonard handle everything?
Because she’d always believed in him.
Oh, there had been moments of doubt. Cutchogue in 1970 had not been a welcoming place; eighty miles from Manhattan, it might as well have been on Mars. The town had a population of just under three thousand. There was a small stretch of stores, including a post office, a pharmacy, and a tiny grocery store.
Leonard’s father, taking pity on the dreamy newlyweds who had bitten off more than they could chew, flew out to help with the pruning to make sure they struck the balance of not too much, not too little.
Their first crop was the summer of 1971. How had they succeeded where so many others failed? A trial-and-error system of grafting, weeding out the weakest vines before planting, and expert pruning. Though there were ordinances against women running a vineyard, winemaking was, at its heart, farming. And there were no laws against women working in the fields. From day one, Vivian helped hand-hoe the vines and pick the first harvest.
They worked outdoors year-round. One winter brought three-foot snowdrifts into the vineyard and they had to literally roll themselves from plant to plant. In the summer, they were dodging lightning and thunder. It became so dangerous that Vivian begged Leonard to ask his parents for money so they could afford to install lightning rods. That was the one and only time he accepted financial help from his father.
August brought the birds, a menace attracted by the increase in sugar in the crops. They required a netting system: more money.
In 1976, Hurricane Belle destroyed their 1974 crop, and that was another tough recovery.
Labor, cash infusion, labor, cash infusion. And so it went until, like a child on a bike with training wheels, one day, the winery took off.
She never imagined it hitting a wall like this.
“You can’t stay up here and miss dinner,” Leonard said.
That was true. No matter how much she was hurting, no matter how afraid she felt, she couldn’t let it show. It was the only thing she could control. Keeping up appearances was her superpower.
Leah was under the covers by nine. It was barely dark out. Still, Steven followed her lead, turning off the TV and then the bedroom light. He knew she was upset and put his arm around her.
“Your parents will figure it out,” Steven said. “Don’t worry about them so much.”
He kissed her. She kissed him back in an “okay, goodnight” sort of way, but then he kissed her neck. She was surprised by the overture and willed herself to go with it even though she wasn’t in the mood. She pressed her body against his, hoping to feel something catch inside of herself. When she didn’t, she told herself just to do what she would do if she had felt something. She reached down and began stroking him over his boxer shorts and immediately realized that although she wasn’t feeling anything, he certainly was. She should have been happy about that. Instead, it made her feel terribly alone.
He gently tugged down her underwear. From the first time Steven ever touched her, it was like he knew her body intuitively. But now the practiced stroke of his hand felt clinical.
“I’m going to get on top,” she murmured, wanting to keep things moving, not wanting to get so much in her own head she couldn’t continue.
“Everything okay?” Steven said after a minute.
“Yes,” she said, opening her eyes. “Are you close?”
His movement beneath her stopped, his body still except for his heavy breathing.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“I don’t know, Leah. You tell me. It’s like you’re not even in the room.”
She moved off him and lay down by his side, staring up at the ceiling. Her heart beat with equal parts guilt for feeling so detached and defensiveness that he picked up on it.
He sat up, running his hand through his hair and looking at her. “What is it?”
She clutched the sheets to her chest. “I think I’m just upset about the winery.”
When she was a younger woman, sex could offer escape—just like drinking or running off to the beach or taking an aimless drive with the music blasting. Nothing was ever so bad that sensory pleasure couldn’t fix it at least temporarily. But now that she was older, whatever was bothering her was always primary. And she had to be in a perfect frame of mind to have sex.
“Leah, I know it’s a loss. And of course you need to be supportive of your parents. But you can’t let this consume you. You have a life waiting for you back in the city.”
She was thankful for her life in Manhattan. She’d run a successful business of her own while raising her daughter and sustaining a loving marriage. But the cheese shop, as much as she’d wanted it to, never filled the void that had been created when she left the winery. In the way that music and books and movies you see later in life can never compare to the ones you experienced as a child, so it was with a place.
Just like wine and cheese had a terroir, so did people. And this vineyard was her terroir. It was unthinkable that she was losing it, and yet there was nothing she could do about it. Her father had made sure of that.
But there was something she could do, and that was be there for her mother. Oh, she’d put up a good front at the dinner table. But Leah knew it was just that: a front. The dark glasses stayed on, and while she smiled and made conversation, she drank more than she ate. And when Sadie said something about being sad to leave, she hadn’t responded in her typical way, which would have been, “So don’t.” She was a strained, superficial version of herself. “I don’t think I can leave tomorrow,” Leah said. “I need to stay.”
“What do you mean, stay? For how long?”
“I don’t know. A week or so?”
“To do what?”
“Give my mother some moral support.”
“It’s not your job to fix this, Leah. You weren’t needed in boom times, so they can do without you during the bust,” he said. “Besides, we have to get back to work.”
“Just for a week,” Leah repeated.
“So you want me to go back to the city and deal with Bailey’s Blue?”
“Can you?”
He hesitated, and she could tell his mind was racing with images of long customer lines at the counter during the day and the hours of bookkeeping and placing orders at night . . . all things she had managed with an occasional part-timer, but things he was relatively new to handling—and never all alone. Still, she knew he could do it. It was just a matter of whether he was willing. And that was what she knew he was truly grappling with. When he ultimately nodded, Leah reached for his hand. “But, Leah,” he said, “don’t get overly caught up in all this. Your parents make the decisions about Hollander Estates. They made that clear a long time ago.” He got out of bed and walked to the bathroom.
Leah knew he was trying to be protective of her, but it felt like criticism. And the truth was, she had been a Hollander before she was a Bailey. But this, like her disconnection from their sex life, was something she couldn’t express to her husband. And with a few days apart, she wouldn’t have to try.
For now.