Page 2 of Kiss My Glass
“Shel, I’m so sorry,” I say. And then I utter the fateful words, the ones Worse has been waiting for since I got up this morning. “How can I help?”
“Come and stay with us!” Shelby implores. “Help us out and keep me company! I’m going to have to sit on my patootie for the foreseeable, and Nate will wreck himself looking after meandthe vineyard, poor lamb.”
Yes, my sister says “patootie”. Like those people can’t roll their tongues, she’s genetically incapable of swearing.
“Why me? Why not ask Mom? Oh, right…” I remember now. Our hippy mother is about to go to Europe to do some woo-woo walking tour along an ancient pilgrimage path.
“Don’t tell her!” Shelby pleads. “She knows I’m pregnant but thinks everything is fine, so she’s coming back two weeks before my due date. If she knows I’m not well, she’ll cancel her whole trip and I’ll feel terrible.”
“And none of your friends can help?”
“They have jobs,” says Shelby.
“Shel,Ihave a job,” I protest. “And before you say it, no, Ican’twork remotely. I deal with real people, who need me there in person.”
“Ineed you,” says Shelby. “And I thought you said you weren’t that happy at work…?”
My sister doesn’t quite wheedle but it’s close.
Thing is, she’s not wrong. Even before the threat to send me to Corpsicle, Minnesota, I’d not been loving my workplace. Too many people,somany processes. Cases get accepted for how they can boost the firm’s reputation, not on how much the people need our services. I may have moaned about this on one of our irregular Armstrong family zooms. But it’s poor form for my sister to use it against me as emotional blackmail.
“I don’t hate it enough to quit. But I suppose I could always ask for some compassionate leave…”
Too late, I realize that my sister will take this as an iron-clad commitment.
“Thank you!!” says Shelby. “Come for July and however much of August before the baby is born! It’s those last weeks that are the riskiest for me. And that’s when it’s full on in the vineyard, as you know.”
Oh, yeah. I know. I spent eighteen years as unpaid labor until I left home for good. Okay, more like thirteen years; Dad waited until we’d passed toddlerhood at least. All four of us Armstrong kids worked to help Dad make wine, because our profit margins were so low, it was the only way he could keep food on the table. I understand why he did it, but it would have been nice to have a choice. Three of us kids left as soon as we could – me, and my two big brothers. Scattered like quail. Only Shelby stayed. Only Shelby cared enough to try to save the business after Dad died, and Mom didn’t want it. Shelby managed to find one investor who didn’t laugh her out of town, and that guy brought in her future husband, Nate. Between them, with Nate as manager and Shelby as winemaker, they clawed Flora Valley Wines back from the brink and fell in love in the process. I’m glad it worked out for them. And yes, I feel guilty that we abandoned Shelby. But do I feel guiltyenoughto spend as long as six weeks in the place I couldn’t wait to leave?
“Shel, I have a laundry room that’s become a beer pond, and a dead car. Can I think about this and call you back?”
“You can have your old bedroom,” says my sister. “And you can set up your home-brew in one of the sheds. The pigs will be super stoked to see you.”
“I’ll call you in the morning,” I say. “Goodbye!”
I sit in silence and realize that Worse has won. My sister’s personally asked for my help and that means more than I ever expected it to. Right now, I need a mop and bucket, my neighbor’s jumper cables, and an order to commit me into a lunatic asylum for willingly making my life ridiculously complicated. So help me, it looks like I’m going home.
ChapterTwo
DANNY
PSA: Don’t match with an online date when you’re pretty sure they’re seeing someone else. Someone you’re acquainted with. Distantly, but still – no excuse.
Of course, I say all this now in hindsight. Or half hindsight because I’m having trouble seeing out of one eye.
“Jesus, Danny! Who gave you the shiner?”
My older brother, Nate, has decided to FaceTime me instead of call. He only does that when he has something heavy to tell me. Can’t wait to find out what it is.
“A guy who objected to me having a drink with his girlfriend the night before,” I say.
“Did you know it was his girlfriend?” A typical Nate question.
“I assumed they’d recently broken up, but didn’t actually check beforehand…”
Nate has his tight judge-y face on. He’s a paragon of duty and upstanding behavior. It comes with the territory for the first born, but Nate takes it to extremes. I’m smack bang in the middle of us five Durant siblings. The only one not to go to college. I’ve built a great business trading in classic cars, but it’s not exactly one of the top-drawer careers our father had planned for us all.
“Don’t start,” I warn Nate. “Iwasn’t the one putting myself out there when I wasn’t available.”
