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Marie couldn’t cook like Jen could. Marie was an amazing winemaker, but in the kitchen she made two things well. She made a green garlic soup and toasted bread. They had that most nights. Tonight was no different.
Except for this. When Marie disappeared from the table, he cleaned the dishes. He cleaned the dishes and got ready to retire for the evening. Turning down the music, wiping off the table. Then she walked back in. Naked.
“Come here,” she said.
He smiled. “What are you doing?”
“Nothing. What are you doing?”
They had spent days walking in the vineyard together. They had taken bike rides down the coast and slept on the beach. They had drunk too much wine one night and fallen asleep on the couch head to feet. When he woke up, he hadn’t moved. He had gone back to sleep.
He shouldn’t have done those things, but they were on one side of a line that kept him with his wife. She was starting to feel imaginary so far away. But he knew she wasn’t. Just like he knew that wasn’t what Marie was asking for now.
He had drunk an extra glass of wine. She had encouraged it. It was making it hard to walk out the door. It was making him think that he shouldn’t walk out the door. Maybe he should walk toward her instead. No one would know. He would barely even know. When he went back to Northern California, wouldn’t Marie feel as far away as his family felt from him now? She would.
She was beautiful. She was naked.
And she wanted him.
What he did next would determine everything.
The Last Family Dinner (Part 2)
When my parents decided to build the barrel room, Finn nicknamed it the Great Barrel Room, mostly because it ended up costing them more than my parents had spent on their actual house, red door included. The Great Barrel Room, slightly off the wine cave. It was an inviting room, with its wooden rafters and a stone fireplace, white lights wrapped around the oak beams.
My father had built the room for Bobby and Margaret’s wedding so they would have a place in which to get married.
It housed some of my father’s most valued wine barrels and was home to the few tastings my father did on the property. It was also where, in recent years, we’d started having our family dinner during the last weekend of the harvest.
Family dinner. The most intimate celebration with the people for whom the harvest meant the most.
But first, it had been for their wedding. Their gorgeous, intimate wedding, the happiest bride and groom. Bobby was truly joyous his entire wedding day, not leaving Margaret once the entire evening.
Which made it ironic to be sitting in there tonight: the room where we got to witness that kind of love, while Margaret and Bobby were standing outside of it, fighting.
My mother had set a gorgeous table, covered with daisies and baskets of fresh raisin bread, homemade herb butter. She refused to bring out the meal, though, until everyone was there. But everyone wasn’t there. Ben sat between Maddie and the twins, all three kids stuffing their faces with the homemade bread (the twins picking out the raisins). My parents were at either end of the table. Then there was only me, surrounded by empty seats, where Finn should have been seated, where Bobby and Margaret should have been seated.
Finn was nowhere to be seen. He hadn’t even arrived home yet. And Bobby and Margaret stood out in the cave, arguing loudly, in the way you did when you were yelling, but keeping your voices down at the same time. The rest of us pretended we didn’t hear them—my mother focused entirely on the twins, on giving them more buttered bread, on ignoring my father’s gaze.
My father, meanwhile, was the one closest to the doorway. He gripped the edge of the table, trying to decide whether to go outside and interrupt them.
“You can’t seriously be saying that!” Margaret yelled.
My father caught my eyes and shook his head, looking down at the bread baskets in the middle of the table, the drooping daisies. He wanted to do something to turn this meal around—this meal that he looked forward to all year. His kids back in one place, the new family members along with them. All celebrating another harvest, another job well done.
My father banged on the table. “You know? Let’s just eat.”
This was directed at my mother, but I jumped up ready to do it, so there was activity. “Good idea,” I said.
I headed for the serving bench, past my mother, before she could argue that she was going to do it, past Ben, before he could get up and help. I kept moving toward the pot roast, like it was going to save the evening. Maybe it would. My mother’s pot roast, with its plump tomatoes and roasted onions, too much brandy.
I put on her oven mitts and gingerly picked up the pan, the roast rich and robust, not suffering from its extra time waiting for us.
I put the roast down in the middle of the table.
“That looks wonderful!”
We looked up to see Margaret entering the barrel room, Bobby behind her. They had smiles painted on
