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She rolls down her Volvo’s window to greet him, manually rolls it down. The Volvo is more than fifteen years old, and requires the turning of an actual lever. Gwyn doesn’t mind, likes it actually, as it gives her a second to compose herself. Because when the window is down, the messenger gives her a big smile, a smile she is used to getting from men she is just meeting, a smile of approval. These days, such smiles unnerve her. They remind her she may have to start paying attention to them again.
“Mrs. Huntington?” he asks.
“Yes?”
“I’m Porter Blevins from the winery,” he says. “My apologies that the flight was delayed.”
“No reason to apologize. You weren’t flying the plane, were you?”
Porter seems to appreciate this, coming from her. “If I were, I would have been more effectual.”
Effectual? The word surprises her coming out of his mouth, continues to surprise her as he hands over his card, proof that he is who he says he is. He opens the briefcase and takes out the bottle of wine she ordered. The bottle of wine that he flew across the ocean to hand-deliver for Gwyn and Thomas’s party this evening. A bottle of 1945 Château Mouton-Rothschild.
“I’m glad to open it for you,” he says, “so you can make sure that it is to your liking.”
“I’m sure it’s fine.”
“I’ve been instructed to open it,” he says, and looks worried.
“Well,” she says, more firmly, “I’m changing the instructions.”
He nods, and Gwyn wonders how many people check a $26,000 bottle of wine to make sure it has aged appropriately. Especially one flown in on a private plane from across the Atlantic.
“Mr. Marshall sends his loving regards,” he says.
Look at that, she thinks. What treatment! For $26,000 plus the cost of the messenger’s flight, you don’t just get a bottle of wine, but regards, loving regards, from someone you don’t know.
“Please send him my best as well,” she says.
Through the cell phone, she hears her daughter, screaming: “Mom! Did I just hear that you flew in wine? You’ve got to be kidding me. That’s what you are at the airport picking up?”
“That’s what I’m picking up,” she says, and rolls up the window. “It’s for the
toast tonight.”
“Have you lost your mind?”
Gwyn thinks about this, as she tucks the briefcase under the seat. “Yes. I think I may have.”
“What about Dad, Mom?”
“I have to get home, and bake the cake.”
“But who is picking up Dad?”
Who is picking up Dad? This isn’t what Gwyn wants to talk about. If anything, she wants to talk about the cake. The real story behind the red velvet cake. The first baker to make it—a southern woman, from a town less than fifty miles from where Gwyn grew up—wanted to make a cake that meant something, that symbolized the contrast between good and evil: the good represented by the lily white frosting, the evil represented by the red colored cake. The baker had thought that even if it didn’t taste so different from other chocolate cakes, people would decide it tasted different. Because it had it all in there. Good and evil. Holy and unholy. Right and wrong. And she was right, wasn’t she? People are drawn to the cake even if they have no idea why. They have no idea that they are counting on it. You know, to save them.
Does her daughter want to hear about that? No, she doesn’t think so. She doesn’t think she is ready.
“Mom,” Georgia says again. “Who is getting Dad?”
“Your father is effectual,” she says.
“What does that have to do with anything?”
Gwyn turns on the ignition. “He can take a cab.”
Maggie
