Page 36 of Grape Juice
“I spoke to Alec this morning—I can’t believe you’re leaving already.” He tosses an arm over my shoulders. “I feel like you’ve just arrived. Well, and like you’ve been here for years. Both at the same time.”
“Time moves in such odd directions here.”
“Don’t I know it. How do you feel about leaving? Are you ready?”
“Not in the slightest. But that’s a nice thing.” I chewon my lip, deciding how much of the sentiment to share. “Usually, I actually like the leaving part. But this time, I’m not ready to go yet. It’s a strange feeling.”
He smiles, mouth closed. “Something to do with Henri, maybe?”
I blush—even now, Antoine’s acknowledgment ofusfeels akin to getting caught under the bleachers. “I...”
“We don’t have to talk about it. I just wanted to tell you that he and I have discussed it. You, I mean. And the thing is, I know that boy—that man—quite well. And this is the happiest I’ve seen him in a while. He looks a little lighter. So thanks for that.”
“De rien, it’s nothing,” I say. But I can tell I’m beaming. It is very much something to me.
“You know, I always get a bit sad at the end of harvest. Relieved, of course, because the work is done. But the house gets so quiet. We build this little family, this little microcosm of the world, and then it just goes away. One by one, everyone disappears. After a bit, I settle into the quiet, start to enjoy it. But at first, that quiet feels so loud.” Antoine scuffs the toe of his boot against the ground as if in contemplation.
I look up at the sun, then out across the vines. “It’s hard to imagine how many times this house fills up and drains out. I mean, every year, all these people come, and it feels so new and large to them—to me—even though it’s all happened before. This thing, it’s not specific to us.” I try to put myself into context, to let myself be small in the grand lineage of the vineyard. But I don’t believe myself.Nothing in my time here can be shrunk down into something prosaic or digestible.
“It isn’t, and it is, specific to you all.” He squats down, resting his elbows against his knees. “You know, every year, I tell myself harvest couldn’t possibly be as special as the year that came before. And every year, I’m surprised. Or moved. Or just delighted.”
“Part of me loves that—and the other part of me wantsusto besospecial. Like, we can’t possibly be repeated.” I blush at my earnestness.
“Of course you can’t,” he says with a laugh. “No repetition, just continuation. Some other link added to the chain.”
I smile. How I adore this monument of a man and his aphorisms, with or without the assurance of his good graces. “You know, sometimes you speak in quotes, Antoine.”
“Ahh, my dear—that’s why I’ve brought you here.” He pushes his way into the cellar and grabs a legal pad, a plastic beaker, and a sponge from his desk. He shows me how to siphon wine from each cask—last year’s vintages—using the sponge to clean the nozzle. “Will you write tasting notes for the four ready for bottling?” he asks with childish excitement. “To send back to Alec along with the tech sheets. No one talks about wine the way you do—or at least, no one I’ve heard. So, well, I want you to talk about my wine.” He winks, hands me a ballpoint pen, and heads into his office.
The first, a Sylvaner, tastes like acid—sharp geometric shapes, antiseptic on a paper cut. It’s lean in the way ofwomen in Manhattan, lovely in the rigidity of its structure. Wine with good posture.
The second, a Muscat, smells like visiting a familiar, fancy, elderly relative—all the perfumy aromatics. Gardenias, French linens, expensive hand lotion.
The third, pinot noir, is fast and loud, with verve. Like the coy urgency of adolescence—too fun to be considered a serious wine, too serious to be considered frivolous.
The last—well, the last is grape juice.
“Antoine!” I call, a mouthful of pure, liquid fruit lacquering my teeth.
He pokes his head out from his office, and I point at the tank. “I... something might be wrong. That’s not fermented yet. It’s just pressed grapes.”
He smiles playfully. “Precisely, yes, it’s ‘must.’ But not just any grape juice—that’s yours. You made that. Picked those grapes, stomped them, sorted them, pressed them. That’s yourvin d’Alice. And if I were you, I’d taste it again.” He holds the beaker to his nose and inhales. “You know, if you strip away the poetry,allof this is just grape juice.”
I look at the row of casks behind us with their careful fermentation regimens. Their glass bottles and test tubes. Their native yeasts, their oxidation and pressing protocols, their aging requisites. Grape juice.
XVIII
When I finish my tasting notes, I give Antoine my handwritten pages, hug him hard, thank him. I promise to stay in touch and trod off to pack.
After I fold up my clothes, all of them grape stained and tinged with dirt, I write letters. This, I know, I can orchestrate with far more finesse and feeling than an in-the-flesh goodbye—espousals of affection unhampered by nervousness or my seemingly ingrained aversion to effusiveness. Bea has taken most of the crew into town to pick up ingredients for the week’s final few dinners, so hugs are off the table anyway. Henri stayed behind to drive me to the train station. In our future planning, that’s as far as we’ve made it: There’s been no discussion of communication once he’s dropped me off. Just a ride to the station—something I am doing my best to view as a simple, logistical fact and not a Victorian tragedy.
I tear sheets of paper from a notebook. One for Julian, for Pietro, for Bea. I write a soggy, atrociously saccharine note for Ruby. I fold them into squares, scrawl each nameacross the front in black ink, and place them gingerly in a row on the kitchen counter.
Pressing my weight against my suitcase as I pull the zipper shut, I gaze out the small, perfect bedroom window that’s like a portal into the vines, and I feel something wet against my cheek. I’m not crying so much as leaking—a string of slow-moving tears tracing their way down to my chin. Why does the noneternity of things hurt so much?
I lug my suitcase downstairs, and I find Henri reading a book at the kitchen table. It’s an old Annie Dillard essay collection, a favorite of mine:Teaching a Stone to Talk—Apprendre à une pierre à parler, translated into French. I’d told him about it one night, lying together in our hallowed truck bed. Before coming here, I’d purchased it in French, assuming that I knew the original version so well, I’d be able to parse it. I’d spent far less time reading here than I’d imagined. I’d given my copy to Henri earlier this morning with a message inside the front cover.
H.,
