Miranda
“How did you learn so much about wine?” she’d asked after they’d sampled an especially delicious young pinot. Standing in the cool, damp room that smelled of wood and yeast and moss, she watched him consider how to answer her question.
“Wine is in my blood, like it is in yours. My grandfather’s father owned his own winery down near Pasadena.”
“What?”
“Ag is a hard business. His sons discovered they could make more money picking fruit up here in California a few months a year than they could killing themselves on the family farm, so his kids sold it. My parents moved to Stockton permanently in the twenties, and I started picking when I was eight. Mostly cherries and walnuts, but my family always spoke of their lost wine business with regret, especially once Prohibition was lifted and the industry picked back up again, so as soon as I was old enough, I came to Napa.”
“When did you meet my dad?”
“After about five years in the fields.”
Miranda had detected how much Emilio was not saying, about how her father had the means and connections to purchase this land and start a business with little experience, while Emilio, with his lifetime of experience, could only be hired by a man like Leo.
Though she’d appreciated all that going unsaid, because she had no idea how she’d reply to any of it, her stomach churned uneasily anyway.
She’d also wondered who his great-grandfather had hired to pick his grapes but didn’t want Emilio to feel she was making an unfair comparison.
No matter what the answer, his history was the reason the men on her vineyard trusted him.
When he told them, in Spanish, that he understood their plight and that doing good work at Hartley could help them feed their children and send them to college, they got to work, and she never had to worry about bruised grapes.
As Thanksgiving unfolded without him, Miranda was grateful for the distracting company of the Wilson and Sullivan families.
Mrs. Sullivan had been her and Winnie’s kindergarten teacher, and she always clucked sweetly at how grown up they’d become, which was equally true of her daughter, Clare, who was a few years younger than Winnie and had just started at Cal Poly.
Kath and Bill Wilson owned the general store where Joan ran five times a week for everything from sugar to batteries and propane.
“You do so much for all of us,” she said every one of the nine years she’d been inviting them for Thanksgiving dinner, “let us do something for you.”
Conversation over appetizers and the feast stayed shallow and extremely complimentary to the cook, which put Joan in a good humor.
No one else noticed that Winnie and Lincoln went missing.
They’d helped with the piles of dinner dishes but disappeared sometime after that.
Miranda didn’t want to ask her mother if she’d seen them for fear of sending Joan into orbit about her youngest daughter’s inattentiveness to their guests, so she took a few minutes while everyone praised the pumpkin and apple pies to do a quick search of the house.
It hadn’t taken long to find them—or hear them, rather—in the guest room that Lincoln had been given.
But it wasn’t the sound of sex she heard; it was a pealing, side-clutching laughter.
A roaring blaze of jealousy flamed within her.
Laughter like that was rare. Leaving a party because their hormones had been out of control—that Miranda could have written off.
This shared joy was different. Miranda herself had only felt unguarded and at home enough with a very small number of people to laugh like that.
Her friend Rachel and her sister, Winnie.
Never her one true romance, Ben, not even her mother.
What if, in Lincoln, her sister had actually found a man who loved her without condition and with his whole being?
Someone who’d stick around, unlike their father.
Every muscle in her body felt rigid, and the only way to stop the fire licking her insides was to contain it in a hard shell of resentment.
Tears needled her eyes as she went back to join the party, but she didn’t let them flow.
Emilio returned to Hartley Vineyard the frosty Monday after Thanksgiving.
In the office, he quietly poured himself a cup of coffee from the pot where they brewed freshly ground beans from a roastery in Berkeley called Peet’s, which Joan had become obsessed with after reading about it in the Chronicle shortly after it opened.
She said it was the best coffee she’d had outside of France, and all other beans were banished from the vineyard.
Miranda nervously poured herself a second cup and said, “We missed you at Thanksgiving.”
“We?” The expression on his deeply etched face was hard to read.
“Well, I certainly did. And everyone asked about you. And Mom…wasn’t really herself without you there.”
He nodded, sipped his coffee, and stood there for a spell. It seemed like he was mulling over what to say.
“Hey,” Miranda ventured, “I…I don’t know what happened between the two of you, but I’d like to think you and I have a separate relationship and that it’s not based on you and Mom.”
This time his expression was easier to understand: Finally, it said, and she wished she’d said that ages ago. “I feel the same way,” he replied.
“I’m so glad.” She smiled, then took another sip of coffee. “May I ask where you spent the holiday?”
“My brother Diego had a big party at his place in Roseville. In the past, I would eat with you, then go to his place for more pie, so it was nice to spend the whole day this time. All of his children and grandchildren were there.”
“Grandchildren! How many?”
“Three.”
“They must be young, right?” Diego used to work with Emilio at Hartley, and they’d always seemed close to the same age. She was pretty sure Emilio was in his early fifties.
“The oldest is four, and the youngest was born a month ago.”
“Oh! A baby to hold. How fun.” Even as she said it, though, she felt the same dull ache in her heart that she felt when she held her friend Rachel’s children. Would she ever have one of her own? She was the only girl she knew of from her high school class who hadn’t had at least one by now.
“She’s adorable. And Diego’s youngest son, Raul, just returned from his second tour.”
Oh shit. Vietnam. “Second? Wow.”
“He went into the army so college would be free, but he never expected to fight in anything like this. He is…not himself.”
“I’m so sorry, Emilio.”
“Many of the men who work here have sons or brothers over there.”
She felt her face redden with embarrassment because she didn’t know this. “Is there anything we can do for them?”
“We can pay them fairly.”
“Do we? In your opinion?”
“For the most part.”
She didn’t like the sound of that. “Well…if you have ideas, bring them to me, okay? Hartley should be part of solutions, not problems.”
He nodded silently and got back to work, and Miranda felt distracted for the rest of the day as she wondered how to raise the question of fair payment again.
The next day, Joan showed up in the office midmorning with a basket of apple muffins—Emilio’s favorite—still warm from the oven.
From her desk, Miranda watched as he looked up from his paperwork and gave Joan that inscrutable expression.
Joan set the muffins on his desk and said, “Pay them the bonuses. I’m sorry it took me so long to agree.”
Bonuses? For the workers? Why was this the first Miranda was hearing of this? She was the one who oversaw the books now. Why hadn’t Emilio mentioned this yesterday? Annoyance battled with relief at the peacemaking unfolding before her.
Or was it a peace? Emilio wasn’t smiling, and he seemed unmoved by the baked offering. He leaned on his desk with his fingers laced together and said, “I’m glad you came around. They deserve it.”
Miranda recalled the pre-Thanksgiving conversation about Gallo and Chavez with Winnie and Lincoln.
The truce between vineyard owners and unionized workers was fragile.
Chavez had the ears of all the major newspapers, so Hartley and every other grape grower had to tread carefully.
Unlike Gallo, Miranda didn’t resent the union; she thought they were right.
But since their vineyard wasn’t making cheap and inexplicably popular table wine and earning a fortune, they had less money to spare on lawyers to prove their better intentions.
Hartley would likely get lumped in with the other growers if there was another boycott.
And now she was additionally concerned about families sending loved ones to Vietnam.
“Tell them Merry Christmas.” Miranda heard the note of superiority in her mother’s voice and winced.
“I will.” Emilio nodded.
Neither of them said anything more, and so Joan said, gesturing to the muffins, “They won’t be hot much longer.” Without waiting for a reply, she turned and left, then closed the door quietly behind her.
Emilio exhaled loudly and leaned back in his chair.
The sweet, cinnamony scent of the muffins made Miranda’s stomach growl and her mouth water, but she wasn’t about to eat one unless Emilio did.
“You don’t need her permission for anything to do with the payroll,” Miranda said. “Just come to me, and we can work out whatever needs to be done. I don’t remember the last time she even asked about the budget, let alone did the math.”
Moving his attention from the door to Miranda, he said, “I do know that. But I mentioned the bonuses to Joan in another context, and she became angry. I didn’t feel it was right to go around her.”
“What was she angry about?”
He sighed and seemed to think a beat before replying, “It’s not really about the bonuses. She doesn’t like that I invited Raul to live with me.”
“Diego’s son who went to Vietnam?”
Emilio nodded.
“That’s so kind of you. What could her objection possibly be?”
“I don’t want to speak for her,” he said, “but the reason I offered to let Raul stay with me is that Diego doesn’t have enough space. In any sense of the word. At my home Raul can spread out and take his time to…come back to himself.”
“Does he need help? Is there anything we can do for him or you?”
“There are resources for veterans. But he has to want them.”
She couldn’t imagine what Joan had said against Raul living with Emilio. Vets were coming home every day with all kinds of problems, needing help. Miranda felt an indignant anger on Emilio’s behalf and suddenly understood why he needed some space of his own at the holiday.
“I’m glad Raul has you” was all she could think to say.
He gave a wistful half smile, then plucked a muffin from the basket and took a bite.
Following his lead, she got herself a muffin, brought it back to her desk, and tore open its steamy crumb.
They ate in silence for a minute or two, then Miranda said, “Any time you want to spend with your brother and his children, or just with Raul, all you have to do is tell me you’re taking the day or week or whatever off.
You’re not obligated to spend holidays with us, and you should take as much time as you need to help your nephew. I can hold down the fort.”
“Thank you. Spending time with your family is never an obligation, though. I’d never want you to think that.
” Then, holding another muffin contemplatively in his hand, he said, “I was married once. A long time ago. We were very young, and she left me for someone she believed would make her more comfortable than I ever could.”
Instinctively, Miranda hated this woman for hurting him. And also, she thought, So…you, too, know what it’s like to be abandoned by someone who was never supposed to do that to you.
“I’m so sorry. That’s terrible,” Miranda said.
“I thought so, too, for a long time,” he said. “But eventually, I realized it was a gift. She was a haunted person who I couldn’t make happy, and I would have spent the rest of my life trying.”
“That’s very enlightened of you.”
He chuckled, apparently quite entertained by this notion. “Hardly,” he said. “I was just sick and tired of feeling sick and tired. I had to find a way to see it differently. To save myself.”
She opened her mouth to reply, but when no words came to mind, she shut it again.
With sudden gravity, he said, “I hope you know that I would never leave you. Or your mother. Or the vineyard.”
Her throat gummed up with emotion. “Thank you,” she croaked, then reached for another muffin so she had a reason not to say anything more.