Eight Hundred Grapes

“So you’re letting her do that. Even if it costs you the vineyard?”

“Even if it costs me the vineyard,” he said.

My father stepped down the ladder, moving back toward the destemming machine. Then he looked out at the vineyard, at everything he was giving up. Which was when I understood: My father didn’t want to be here without my mother. If he was going to be anywhere without her, it was going to be somewhere far from here. It was going to be far from everything he was proud that they had built.

“Dad, we can figure out another way.”

He shook his head, angry. Angrier than I had seen him about all of this—angry that my mother was putting them in this position, angry that he was competing with someone for her affection, and just angry. It both relieved and scared me.

He headed toward the door.

“This is the other way,” he said.

Then, he was gone.

Note by Note

My mother was in a towel in the corner of the bedroom, standing in front of her cello. Dancing. She was dancing around the cello, swaying, happily, or trying to stop from tripping over her feet, or both.

This was her first minute free from her grandchildren, from Maddie. She was getting ready to go to Henry, and I watched her for a moment, thinking of my father’s words. He thought that he understood what was happening in a way she didn’t: She was scared. She was scared that if she didn’t get out of this version of her life now, she never would. My father would leave her, one way or another, and all she would be left with was the fear she already had. That she had chosen the wrong life.

You become your mother in the oddest ways, at the oddest time. Today, I had become her because I was afraid of the same thing.

She pulled her towel up. “We have

to stop meeting like this.”

Instead of yelling, she sashayed toward me, trying to get me to dance with her.

Though instead of dancing, I reached for her, and held her to me as I started to cry. The two of us fell to the floor.

“What is it?” my mother said.

“You still love Dad.”

She nodded. Then she paused, before answering. “With all my heart.”

“So what are you doing? Covering your bases?”

“That’s not the reason,” she said.

“Then what?”

My mother shrugged, trying to decide whether she was going to keep me as her daughter in this moment, or if she was going to trust me with something she wasn’t going to be able to take back.

“When I met your father, I fell madly in love. Head-over-heels, turn-my-whole-life-around in love. When I look at him, when he touches me, I still feel that way.” She shrugged. “I don’t know how to explain how Henry makes me feel.”

She shook her head, like it was the last thing she wanted to do. She motioned toward her cello.

“Henry loves it when I play the cello.”

I wanted to tell her that Henry already said that, in a way that I wished I could get out of my head, how much he loved that. But I could see in her face that if I said a word, she was going to bolt, so I stayed quiet.

She shrugged. “Henry loves it when I play the cello in a way that is hard to explain. He stands there watching like I’m the only person in the world, listening, note by note, like each note matters to him. Because it does. And it’s not just that he loves music, or that he loves me. It’s this third thing, where those two things meet. It makes me feel . . . understood.”

She paused.

“I understand everything about your father, but your father doesn’t understand me the way Henry does. And I don’t fault him for that. But it is an amazing thing to be with someone who really sees you.”