Chapter 11 Lost Souls #2
He waved a hand through the air. “This isn’t lovemaking, what we’re doing. Maybe that’s the problem. Let’s go out on a date, perhaps even seduce each other. I can’t keep doing it this way. You’re going to create an aversion.” As soon as he said it, he knew he’d made a mistake.
“An aversion?” She nodded in that way that showed him he was going to the doghouse no matter what he said.
“You know what I mean,” he said sweetly.
“I do. This is about you getting tired of me. Six years together, and now I don’t even excite you anymore.”
“Excite me? You got me excited twice yesterday and once already this morning! That’s about all I’m good for. I need to recharge.”
Her eyes could have put holes through glass. Otis took a timid step toward her and offered a hand. She swatted it away.
“C’mon, Bec. The baby will come when it’s supposed to come.”
“Unlike my husband,” she said without any hint of humor.
Otis sighed but stepped closer to her and opened up his arms. “Come here.”
She reluctantly let him hug her, and he pressed his cheek to her head. Her hair smelled like dried rose petals. “I want to say something, but I don’t want you to get mad at me. We’re in this together. You have to always know that.”
No response. Oh, the hell with it, he thought. “I think you’re struggling right now. Yes, part of it is me and how I’m distracted by work. Of course it’s how you’re giving everything you have to Cam. But there’s something bigger at the core.” He let his words settle.
“Is my husband trying to be my psychotherapist right now? I can’t wait to see how this goes.”
He held her tighter. “I’m guessing not well, but I’m going to say it anyway.
I think you’re still blaming yourself for not being home to stop Jed from enlisting.
So you’re constantly trying to make it up to your family.
You give and give and give, all the time, despite them not giving back.
And you’re so hung up on things needing to happen.
Jed going to rehab. Your mom eating healthier.
Your dad drinking less and working more.
Us having a baby. It feels like it’s all related. ”
The only sound for a good minute was the hum of the window unit.
When she didn’t respond, he said, “It wasn’t your fault.
You don’t owe them anything. You don’t owe Jed anything.
You were seventeen, growing up in an awful home.
You did the best you could. Jed, and Jed alone, is responsible for his own actions.
I know they’re your family, and you have to do what you have to do, but stop doing it for the wrong reasons. ”
He pulled back and waited till she was looking at him. “You have to live your life. God, I hate seeing you hurting so.”
A tear escaped her eye.
He wiped it and then kissed her cheek. “It’s time to put yourself first for a while. Can you do that?”
She shrugged her shoulders. “Maybe. I still want a baby, though.”
“I do, too, my love, but let’s not rush it, okay? Trying is supposed to be the fun part.” He kissed both cheeks and then the tip of her nose. “You’re my everything, Rebecca Till, and I love you and am attracted to you more today than I was to that sexy girl on the purple bus six years ago.”
“You sure?”
“You’re the only thing I’m ever sure of.”
They kissed, and Otis could feel some of her pain fall away.
“Did you really call your penis a lobster tail?” she asked, as they pulled apart.
A smile split his lips. “I was trying to be ... polite.”
Laughter spilled out of both of them, and Otis fell in love all over again. She had her own demons, but they’d be no match for her in the end. Otis believed that with all of him.
Often the years were determined by the vintage, whether it was wet or cold, hot or dry. Carmine was a dry farmer, meaning he didn’t use any irrigation, and as the warm months came, he cursed when it didn’t rain, saying he used to get all the rain he wanted, but now God had it out for him.
The ’75 harvest, the first since the end of the war, settled into a steady climate that brought the grapes to a nice balance.
Carmine liked to pick after midnight while the fruit was cold.
As they dumped grapes into the crusher/destemmer, he would blast Italian opera music, insisting that his wines demanded to be celebrated as they made their journey toward the bottle.
Otis soaked up as much as he could from his teacher—how carbonic maceration staved off oxidation, how sulfur could paralyze a wine if it was overused, how a bladder press was far gentler on the grapes and easier to clean than a basket press.
Like Paul, Carmine had recently sworn off redwood fermenters and used only double-lined stainless-steel tanks, but that was one of the few modern techniques that he embraced.
“You need to unlearn some of these things,” Carmine said. “They’re good tools for larger wineries. Gallo has to use machines to pick, has to filter, to load up the sulfur. What we’re doing here allows for less intervention. This is liquid poetry. You don’t filter poetry, do you?”
At home, Bec always played the latest records. When Otis complained about how much she spent on them, she’d remind him how much that last bottle of Barolo or Barbaresco had cost them.
Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here spun constantly on the turntable. Otis was still more of a classical or jazz guy, or hell, even some bloody silence, but rock ’n’ roll had its place, and he especially appreciated his fellow Brits, who rocked in a way the Americans couldn’t figure out.
He’d come home from a long day’s work, shut his truck door, and hear the familiar sound of Roger Waters’s voice coming from the open windows.
He’d find Bec inside chasing Cam around, or maybe dancing with him, and he’d smile at her strength and promise himself that he wouldn’t work as hard next year.
In late October, after everyone else had gone home, Otis plopped into a chair across from Carmine and let out a long sigh. These long harvest days were not for the weak. They cracked a couple of beers, because it takes a lot of good beer to make great wine, and spoke about the future for a while.
“Stop doubting yourself,” Carmine eventually said. “You don’t need half the fight you have to make good wine. I’m scared for the wine world, scared of what you’re going to do to it. I hope I make it long enough to watch it happen.”
Otis sneaked into bed that night, thinking that Carmine had given him the finest compliment of his life, but when he woke and found the other side of the bed empty, something in his gut told him he’d royally fucked up.
Couldn’t Bec see that sacrifice bred greatness? Couldn’t she hold on a little longer?
He found Bec curled up on the comfy chair, cradling a steaming cup of coffee. Her cheeks glistened from fresh tears.
He sat down in the chair beside her. “Am I in trouble?”
She barely acknowledged him.
“Harvest is over. We made it.”
She smiled despite the tears. “You’ve been working seven days a week since you moved here—harvest or not. You haven’t once looked up.”
Here we go, he thought. “I’m trying to carve out our life, Bec. This isn’t the time to act like we’re retired. We must fight so one day we can sit back and enjoy it.”
“That’s not the way it’s supposed to work.
Life isn’t a fight. The only opposition is what you’ve created in your head.
” Tension coated her tone. “You’re fighting because you think you have something to prove.
Just stop for a minute. You have a son that needs you.
I need you. Nothing in this world matters more than what we have within these walls.
Don’t you dare try to blame my frustration on my parents .
.. or my brother. I get the part they play.
This isn’t about me or them. It’s about your absence. ”
In her eyes he saw a future without her, and it seized him with fear. “Oh, Bec. Please. I’m making our dream happen. I just need a little more time.”
“You need to find balance.”
“I agree, it’s just—”
“I know, and I support you. I love your desperate want to make something great, but we have a lifetime to get there—”
“But we don’t. Though I do need to spend more time with you and Cam, I also need to pay the bills. I need to make more than six bucks an hour. I need to get us into a bigger house, to own a house. I need to ...”
She touched his face and looked into his soul.
“You need to let go of your fears. We’re eating.
We’re healthy. You’re doing exactly what you want to be doing.
You told me to stop trying to rush having another baby.
Take your own advice. Stop trying to rush your dreams. All the good things are coming.
What we need is to be here now, for each other and for Cam.
Don’t wake up one day when he’s twenty years old and realize you missed it.
There’s not a wine in the world you’ll make that will ever matter as much as our son. ”
If only her desperate words were enough.
Then the land came.
“It’s not fifty acres—it’s forty-nine—but it’s close. And it’s on a hillside.”
Otis scratched his head. Never mind that it was exactly what they’d dreamed of. “We’re buying this with what?”
“I don’t know that part yet.” Bec had returned to her other self and showed a kind of enthusiasm that Otis couldn’t quite muster.
“I’m not sure that’s a currency.”
“Let’s go see it.”
“Why, Bec? So we can be reminded of what we don’t have?”
“No, so we can realize what we want.”
“You don’t even want this dream anymore. You think I’m working hard now. Wait till we have our own place.” He resisted the urge to say that she’d been discouraging lately, to say the least.
“Otis. We want the same thing, but you don’t have to work so hard to get it. Don’t you see we made this happen in Germany? We created this.”
Oh, he saw it. Talk about adding fuel to her fire. She’d never stop her mysticism now.