Eight Hundred Grapes

She sighed, but she didn’t look hurt. She looked like she wanted to hear me. She looked like she wanted to be on the same side, as opposed to opposite ones, so we could get to the conversation she wanted to have, the one about Ben.

“Darling, we’re supposed to sit down with the caterer . . .” she said. “Should I cancel that? It’s not about the deposit, though if we don’t sit down with her, she is going to take that. She needs a final head count. She needs a final decision on the entrée.”

“Mom, I can’t really deal with that right now.”

“I told her we’re going with the fish,” she said.

I looked at her, confused.

“I’m sorry, did you cancel the wedding and forget to tell me?” she asked.

“No.”

“Well, I think that means part of you doesn’t want to cancel.”

“What about the other part?”

/> My mother looked me right in the eye. “If you want to fix things, you have to start somewhere,” she said. “For you that somewhere is fish.”

I interrupted her. “Do you remember when Finn snuck out of the house on his fifteenth birthday and hitchhiked to Los Angeles to go to a Phish concert?”

“It was his sixteenth birthday. And of course.”

Her face went dark even remembering it. Finn ended up at a downtown Los Angeles police station, my parents driving five hundred miles in the middle of the night to pick him up. “Why are you bringing that up?”

“Because Bobby and I were the ones that you were mad at. Even though I was thirteen.”

“Fourteen. And I seem to remember that you took it upon yourself to drive to the Queens’ harvest party while we were gone.”

“You were late, how else was I going to get there?”

“Very funny.” She was less than amused, just remembering how I’d borrowed her car, driven up the road to the party. “I think we’re getting a little off track.”

“You grounded both of us, as long as you grounded Finn. Do you remember why you made that decision?”

“Apparently you do.”

“You said Finn wanted to go so badly that he wasn’t thinking clearly. But we knew how dangerous it was and we didn’t stop him, or tell you and Dad so you could stop him. And you said that was unacceptable. Because that’s what we do for the people we love. We don’t sit around watching while they make mistakes. We at least try to stop them from doing things we know they are going to regret.”

“You realize I was talking about children as opposed to grown people?”

“Do the same principles not apply?”

She nodded. “I guess they do.”

Then she took my hand and put it to her face. Josh and Peter squirmed beside her, curling in against her legs.

“So that’s what you’re trying to do?” my mother said. “Stop the people you love from doing what they’ll regret?”

“Yes. Exactly.”

She kissed the inside of my palm. “But which way is regret?”

Sebastopol, California. 1984

The baby was crying.

All the children were crying. They wouldn’t stop. He could hear them from the bedroom, Jen trying to soothe them. He wanted to get up and help her, but she had ordered him away. He had worked all night and was heading back to the vineyard soon. The clock read 10 A.M. He needed to sleep for at least an hour or two.