“I don’t want to wear this.”
“Well, it’s slim pickings,” he said.
He headed for the door. “Unless you prefer your wedding dress?”
“So, little one,” my father said.
We were in the back of Finn’s pickup truck, heading to The Tasting Room, steadying the barrel of wine for the tasting between us. The truck was moving along at a steady pace, The River playing in the background. My father always played Bruce on the morning of the first tasting. Bruce Springsteen, my father’s favorite, necessary for synchronization: the music the first grape was picked to, the music it should be tasted to during the official wine tasting. My father never changed it, certainly not today.
Finn took a left onto Main Street, taking the long way to The Tasting Room.
“Ben,” my father said.
That was all. No question at the end of it.
Bruce played loudly.
My mother had told me that she hadn’t told my father, which meant he didn’t know about Ben. He didn’t know anything beyond the fact that he knew me, and he knew I wouldn’t be here like this if something wasn’t up.
“You having doubts?” he said.
“You could say that.”
“I just did,” he said.
I smiled at him as Finn took a right off of Sebastopol Avenue, leading us into the sweet town of Sebastopol. It was dusty in its way but also full of gems: the best ice cream in five hundred miles, a drive-in movie theater, a local saloon. Sebastopol’s central drag had recently been usurped by the new downtown industrial complex filled with artisanal foods and fancy florists and a five-hundred-dollar-a-night boutique hotel, creating a mini-Napa. But it was still quiet, lovely, at this time of day.
“You know, I almost married someone who wasn’t your mother.” He shook his head. “A week before the wedding, I told her we should call it off. I said it nicer than that, but I told her we should reconsider.”
I looked at him, confused. “Is that true?”
He nodded. “My decision to become a winemaker didn’t feel like a choice. I had this great job at the university. Tenure track. But I spent most of my free time thinking about wine. It felt like something I was compelled to do. The woman, who was a poet, had this quote on her wall about writing. I think it was Fitzgerald. Anyway, he talked about how he had to write his books, how there was no choice in the matter. That was how I felt about this.”
He motioned to the land around him, small vineyards as far as the eye could see.
“The truth was, that girlfriend . . .”
“The poet?”
“The poet. She hadn’t made it that easy for me. She told me she wasn’t going to sit and watch me live my dreams in some small town when she could be in London, Paris. She said if I insisted on making wine, spending my life in a small California town, that was the last straw.” He shrugged. “That’s how I named the vineyard.”
My jaw must have dropped open to the floor. My father always said that he’d come up with the name at The Brothers’ Tavern, after midnight, five beers in. It was a detailed story that he’d recounted often.
“I don’t understand,” I said.
“Nothing to understand. I lied to you before. Don’t tell.”
I looked at him, floored.
He shrugged. “Your mother has always been a little sensitive about it,” he said. “She feels like she has been spending her life on a vineyard that was dedicated to another woman. It doesn’t matter that I chose the vineyard over the woman.”
I nodded, even though I wanted to say he was facing the same problem now. My father still put the vineyard first, my mother still felt like she was in second place. And so, what was my father trying to say about Ben? That the demons we were facing, we needed to face now? That we’d face the same demons on the other side of building a family together, building a lovely life, and trying to hold on to it?
“Thing is, whatever’s going on with Ben, it’s okay to walk away. It’s also okay to get over it. The two of you have built a great life together, that matters too, it matters as much as whatever is going on that has made you doubt him.”
“It doesn’t feel that simple.”
“Most of the time it is. Most of the time a person wants something more than anything else. You can tell because at the end of the day that’s what they’re willing to fight for.”
My father looked away, sad and angry. Suddenly I wasn’t sure if we were talking about me and Ben, or him and my mother. She had spent her life fighting for her family, for my father, and now she seemed to be fighting for someone else.