20. Mackenzie
Mackenzie
The problem is that once wasn’t enough.
Twice wasn’t enough.
Even three times was doing absolutely nothing to diminish my craving for more of Jake Cavendish.
I know we have to have The Conversation, and I have a pretty good idea of how it’s going to go, but I can’t keep drifting along. I need to know. I would have talked to him afterward, on Friday night, but he fell asleep again.
I waited, but he didn’t wake up. Eventually I had to leave, but I thought he’d call.
No.
I know he’s left Havelock. The townhouse snitched on him. His last use of the key was at 8:16 Saturday morning. I keep expecting him to call, but there’s only silence.
My uncle and I are going to have a dispute this year over the timing of the harvest. I can feel the storm brewing.
I want a bigger and bolder red, which means I want those red grapes on the vine as long as possible.
Uncle Franz is fine with that, but his almanac forecasts an early frost this year.
We are already circling over who will make the call.
In the meantime, every day, we test the sugar level on the grapes.
We’ll pick the grapes for our sparkling wines first, probably beginning in the middle of August. The real fight will be in October.
Every morning, I pray for more sun and the right amount of rain.
Every morning, I walk between the rows of vines, starting just before dawn, just as Opa used to do.
If I see a blight of any kind on a vine, I flag it for attention later in the day.
I check the grapes, of course. I look for pests and vermin.
And an awful lot of the time, I look up as I return to the house to see my grandfather watching me from those big windows.
This is when I feel the weight of tradition and legacy, and I love it.
When Jake doesn’t call by Monday evening, I call him. I see no reason to be subtle, not after his very existence is mucking up my mother’s matchmaking – well, that wasn’t the only factor – and we had another round of incredible sex.
“Are we having a thing yet?” I ask as soon as he picks up.
He’s watching television. I can hear it in the background but not clearly enough to know what game is on. “No,” he says crisply, biting off the word as if he resents it.
I take his tone as a hint that he has mixed feelings about his reply. “When does a fling become a thing? Statistically speaking.”
“This will never become a thing. We have a deal.”
“Just for tonight,” I agree. “But there’s been more than one tonight.”
“Three,” he says, sounding like a lawyer. He waits, letting the silence grow between us, which he does much much better than I do. In any given negotiation, I know who will win, but still.
I can’t leave it be.
“I think you’re wrong.” I keep my tone light, playful even. I know him well enough to want to avoid him feeling cornered. Clarifying the situation is no cause for adversity. “I think we’re already having a thing.”
“That’s because you’re wrong.” His tone matches mine. Light. Indifferent. We could be discussing the probability of rain in the next forty-eight hours.
Except I’m never indifferent when discussing the weather. It always matters to the vines.
“In fact,” Jake says and I know enough to brace myself. “There’s no longer anything going on between us. You’re right that we had just a night, and we had it several times, and so we’re done.”
“You’re just deciding that for both of us.”
“No, I’m deciding for me. Remember?”
“I remember. You’re an asshole. You only think about yourself.” But I’m thinking about Richard Bradshaw’s comments about monsters, or more importantly, about people shaped by monsters who dread the possibility of becoming monsters themselves.
“Exactly,” Jake says. “And if there’s a thing, then I have to think about me and you and maybe even us. You’re not asking for a small concession here, Mackenzie. You want me to just change who I am, and I’m not going to do that.”
“Not for anyone?”
“Not so far.”
Ouch. I wince, but he can’t see that—and I’m glad. “You are an asshole,” I say, as if I’m complimenting the color of his tie.
“I know. And I called it early, so you can’t say you weren’t warned. Take care, Mackenzie.”
And he ends the call.
I can’t believe it. No nicey-nice. No thanks-for-the-good-times. No it-was-great-while-it-lasted. Nope. No concessions from Jake Cavendish. Done and gone.
But I’m the one who doesn’t like compromise.
I also don’t like being turned down. I know I’m not wrong about him, but if he won’t take a chance on us, I can’t force him.
I’d love to shake him so hard that his teeth rattle.
I’m so mad that after I finish staring at my phone, I turn it off and chuck it across the room.
(It lands safely on the couch.) Then I retrieve it, take out the battery, and drop it in the bottom drawer of my dresser.
I’ll ditch my number and get a different one.
Jake will never be able to contact me again.
But I don’t need to bother. He probably won’t even try.
It is almost worth driving to Toronto to argue with him, but he probably wouldn’t let me in the door.
I grab a coat and head downtown, needing to do something other than sit alone and fume.
Merrie takes one look at me and holds the door wide open.
“I wasn’t sure you’d be open on a Sunday,” I say.
“I’m not, not anymore,” she says and turns the sign to closed. She’s wearing her whites and leads me toward the kitchen. I grab a seat at the counter, wondering where I’ll start so I don’t sound pathetic.
I’m not sure there’s such a place.
Merry takes a bottle of wine from the bar fridge, a perfect distraction, and presents it to me. It’s a white, a Gewürztraminer with an unfamiliar label. I see that it’s from Niagara, a vineyard I don’t know. There are a lot of small ones down there.
“I don’t know this wine.”
“You should,” she says and leaves me with a corkscrew and two glasses.
She returns to the kitchen while I open it.
The cork has a wonderful fruit scent, apples and citrus, fresh as a day at the beach.
It’s dead clear, pale yellow, and looks divine in the glass.
I swirl and sniff, seduced before I even taste.
“Little place,” she says. “The way he told it anyway. Down by Jordan, just starting up.”
“God knows where they found any acreage down there.” I close my eyes and let it slide down my throat, cool and crisp and utterly perfect.
Then I realize what she said.
“They called on you?”
She nods. “Nice kid. Earnest. Sold me with a sip.”
“Me, too.”
“I bought a case if you want to take one home.”
“Thanks. I might. Opa would love it. Let me pay you for it.”
“Deal.” A moment later she puts a plate of fried calamari between us and takes off her hair net. She shakes her head and all those bouncy red curls are loose.
“You didn’t have to close for me.”
“It’s slow tonight anyway.” Merrie comes around the counter as I pour her a glass and we toast each other before she even slides into the seat beside mine. “The fish chick stopped in today and I couldn’t resist this.”
I can smell the calamari and my stomach growls in anticipation. Merrie’s is the best I’ve ever had, which is saying something given the quantity of calamari I’ve eaten in my lifetime. The batter is so thin and perfectly golden. The squid is tender and fresh—and her homemade aioli is irresistible.
I grab one, dip it and pop it into my mouth, then my eyes widen in surprise.
That is not calamari.
“Playing around tonight,” she says as if she hasn’t noticed my reaction. “I wanted to see how the jalapenos came out if I blanched them first. What do you think?”
“Unexpected,” I manage to say.
She smiles. “You can see the difference between them and the calamari, if you look. The green shows through the batter.”
“But I wasn’t looking.” I see now that the platter is mixed.
“You will now.”
I have a calamari, a sip of wine, then another jalapeno. “I like how fresh they taste, especially in comparison.”
“I like to mix things up a bit, as you know.”
I nod, mumble agreement and we eat companionably for a few minutes.
It’s very quiet. The gas fire is flickering on the hearth on the other side of the restaurant and appliances in the kitchen hum quietly as they go about their business.
Only the occasional car drives down Queen Street.
There’s a light on in the closed shop across the street, the one with the papered windows, but the paper diffuses the light to a glow.
“So, who is he?” Merrie asks finally when she’s finished eating and is just savoring the wine. “Or who was he?”
“He was a hook-up, who kept happening. I asked if it was becoming a thing, and he bailed.”
“Boo. No more sex.”
“No more amazing sex,” I have to say.
“Maybe you should have kept your mouth shut.”
“Hindsight is 20-20.”
“Is that yours? It’s brilliant.” We laugh together and she toasts me. “Here’s to asking for what you want, even when you don’t get it.”
I think about that. “I’m not sure it would have turned out to be what I wanted. I just wanted to know.”
“A status report.”
“Exactly. I mean, we agreed just for one night, but then it was two and then it was three, and we never talked about it again.”
“Until now.”
I nod and sip. She’s watching me.
“But what did you expect the answer to be?”
“I don’t know.”
“I don’t believe you. You’re disappointed, which means his wasn’t the answer you expected or wanted.”
She’s right. Merrie tops up our wine, probably guessing that it’s an excellent way to erode my firewalls.
“I did want it to be a thing,” I admit. “I like being with him. I like him. I like how we are together.”
“But he doesn’t.”
“I guess not.”
“Just in for the sex.”
I frown. “I don’t think so. It didn’t seem like it.”
“So, do you think that he rejected you or the idea of a relationship?”
“Does it matter?”
“Sure. One is personal and the other might be philosophical.”
“An asshole only has to think of himself.” I don’t mean to say the words out loud but I obviously do because Merrie laughs.
“I can get on board with that, actually.” I must look surprised, because Merrie leans forward. “Why does the traditional marital relationship work?”
“It doesn’t, not always.”
“But when it does, it’s often because one partner has surrendered their own objectives to play for the team.
Usually, the wife’s goals are surrendered to the greater good of the relationship.
Wife, mother, homemaker, maybe even more tasks fall to her, while he keeps on doing whatever he’s doing.
” She took an appreciative swallow of wine, probably intended to give me time to think, then fixes me with a look. “I don’t see you ever doing that.”
“Not a chance,” I agree.
“So, maybe you are in agreement, but just don’t like that he was the one to call it first.”
I suspect she’s right, just as Richard Bradshaw was right, but it still annoys me that Jake didn’t want me enough to battle even his own expectations. “That sounds so petty.”
“It does, and it doesn’t. Is it petty to want to achieve something yourself? I don’t think so, and I don’t think you should be in a hurry to surrender what you’ve already accomplished.”
“That wasn’t why I asked…”
“No, you just wanted to know the state of the union, but if you haven’t talked about it, if he hasn’t talked about it, then there probably isn’t a union to discuss.
” She toasts me. “Just a few happy interactions, which isn’t nearly the same.
” Her brows rise. “Thank goodness. If we had to commit to every guy who caught our interest, they could put turnstiles on the marriage registry offices.”
I laugh, because I’m supposed to, and because I feel better. Merrie changes the subject, asking about wine matches for summer appetizers, like bruschetta, and the conversation shifts to our shared passion for food.
I’m not convinced that it wasn’t possible for Jake and I to work it out—we’re both smart people, after all—but maybe Merrie’s right and I haven’t lost that much.
Just great sex at intervals, and I will mourn the loss of that. (Anybody would.)
But as for the path forward, British Columbia, here I come.