Page 20 of Blush
Friends have told me to try keeping a journal, but I always give up after a few weeks. Maybe writing about the book club will give me something to focus on, so I’ll stick with it.
Delphine chose the first book—Laceby Shirley Conran. She said it was an amazing miniseries earlier in the year, but I missed it. The book kept me turning the pages, but parts were shocking and I’m afraid I’ll blush talking about them tonight. At the same time, all of the mistakes and bad behavior of these characters make me feel better about my own.
What mistakes and bad behavior? Sadie flipped through the pages. It seemed the book club had lasted just half a year—ending in May of 1985. Out of just six books read, two were written by the same author, Judith Krantz. Sadie had never heard of her. She hadn’t heard of any of the writers except for Jackie Collins, although she might have been confusing her with an actress. All she knew was that the page of notes about the first book,Lace, included mention of a porn star, a secret adoption, and... sex with a goldfish.
Did her grandmother still have a copy of the book stashed away in the library? She must have saved it. Putting the journal aside, Sadie made her way back to the contemporary fiction section of the shelves.
“Conran... Conran,” she said, passing by the “B” last names and brushing her fingertips over the mid-alphabet “C” names.
Her phone buzzed with a text from her mother.
Mateo is going to give us a tour of the grapes planted for this season. Meet me on the veranda.
Mateo Argueta was a few years older. He’d grown up at the winery and started working with his father when he was a teenager. Sadie barely knew him; he always seemed quiet. Not just quiet, but like he was thinking something important and didn’t want to be disturbed.
She’d go on the tour. Better to risk being bored in the present than entertained by snooping around in the past.
Twelve
Vivian stood at the edge of the veranda, framing her eyes against the sun. In the distance, Leah and Sadie walked the fields with Mateo Argueta.
If not for the current crisis, the sight of her daughter and granddaughter enjoying the literal fruit of their family’s decades of labor would have been gratifying. She still couldn’t believe they might lose it all.
When she and Leonard made the giant leap to start their own vineyard, neither set of their parents had faith in them. The Hollanders wanted him to continue working at Gelleh Estates in Napa. Her family wanted their new son-in-law to have a proper career, and that meant joining the Freudenberg department store empire. Leonard had his own ideas.
“We’ll make our own dynasty,” Leonard said to her at the time. “It’s you and me against the world.” Madly in love, she made the leap, and they set out for the North Fork. Her parents, appalled, cut her off financially.
What she hadn’t known at the time was that conventional wisdom said that wine grapes would not grow on the North Fork. Yes, Long Island was full of grape trees—native American grape trees,vitis riparia. They had too little sugar and too much acidity to produce goodwine. In order for Leonard to produce wine to match the success of his father’s West Coast vineyard, he needed to cultivatevitis vinifera. Thevitis viniferahad first been planted in Persia. The Greeks brought vinifera vines from the Middle East back home, and then the imperial Romans took the vines to France, Spain, and Germany. People had been trying to grow the grapes in New York State, but the plants were simply too fragile for the climate.
Vivian and Leonard were determined; Leonard to prove to his father that he could be a winemaker out on his own, and Vivian to follow her heart and show her parents that she was not throwing her life away.
That first season, they planted descendants of the grapes that had grown in Bordeaux—Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, and Sauvignon Blanc—and also the varietals planted in Burgundy: Pinot Noir and Chardonnay.
They did exhaustive research, and Leonard called on everything he’d learned at his father’s knee. There was no inherent problem with the land: the mix of sand and organic material made it loamy and drain well. The climate was variable but not unlike that of one of the world’s great wine regions, Bordeaux. Leonard was confident that the Napa Valley was not the only place in the country where great wines could be produced.
They used grafted vines and picked out the weak ones before planting. Leonard knew how to recognize the weeds early—dandelion, pepperweed, redweed—and to remove them quickly so they did not compete with the vines for moisture and nutrients. Eventually, Leonard’s father, impressed with their determination, came out to help with the delicate art of pruning. The plants took root, and so did their life together.
It was backbreaking work. Gone were weekends of horseback riding and brunch. Vivian fell into bed each night so exhausted she couldn’t bother to turn out the light. Her legs and arms were covered with bruises and insect bites. But progress was made.
And now this.
Vivian had meant what she’d said to Leonard the night before: Leah had a right to know that the winery was in trouble. And she wanted to tell her now, in person, not after Leah was back in New York City. Leah should know that this summer might be her last at the vineyard so that she could experience it accordingly.
Vivian walked over to the group standing among the blooming Cabernet Franc. Mateo noticed her first and greeted her with a hearty wave.
“Hey there, Mrs. Hollander,” he called out.
“Mateo, these plants are looking wonderful. I haven’t been out since you put up the catch wire.”
Mateo was a big improvement over their previous vineyard manager, Joe Gable. Joe had not only been drinking from the stockroom, he had failed to treat their entire Chardonnay crop for insect control and they’d lost it all. Still, Leonard waited weeks to give Mateo the position. It was as if he couldn’t believe the best candidate for the job was right there under his nose. Vivian had hoped he would hire him but didn’t push, knowing he would say something along the lines of “Do I need to remind you what happened the last time you told me to hire someone? And what happens if it doesn’t work out? I can’t fire Javier’s son. It would be a disaster.”
In the end, his need for a strong right hand in the field won out over his concerns. Now they had the best vineyard manager since the one who worked for them in the seventies and eighties. But apparently, that was not going to solve their problems.
“Hi, Gran,” Sadie said.
“Mom, I’m glad you’re here. I called but kept getting your voicemail,” Leah said.
Vivian barely heard her. Sadie, wearing gardening gloves and holding a pair of pruning shears, was a sight to behold. Her granddaughter’s dark hair and dark eyes resembled the Hollanders more than herself, yet seeing her stand in the same spot where she had stood atthat age—a newlywed, a hopeful pioneer—brought the past rushing back. The thought of losing it all felt like a physical blow.
