The Truth is in the Wine (25 page)

Getting over the death of her husband was a daily chore. First of all, she did not know how to move on. More importantly, she did not know
when
to move on. What was the perceived “proper” time to pick herself off the floor and date again.

She aged gracefully and, when she wanted to, had a younger woman's spirit about her. Mitch was not the first man who expressed interest in the widow. But he was the first to be chivalrous and humorous and who did not pressure her. The words that sold her on him were these, uttered about six months after her husband's sudden death:

“The last thing I want to do is come into your life as some whirlwind. At the same time, I do not reject when I have a chance to add good people into my life. I could be wrong—I was once—but I see you as a good person. So, just know I am here to build on what we started when you are ready.”

It was an approach that made so much sense, which explains why so many men didn't get it. Madeline had a few men her age approach her as if she was some horny, lonely woman, dying to
have someone warm her bed. “Everybody needs a little loving, you know?” one man said to her on their second phone conversation. That was their last talk.

Other men figured she must have had some life insurance money, so she was financially secure and could take care of them. One man told her: “So, I think we'll get along. You seem like a woman of today. You understand the value of being the breadwinner. I'll do my part—keep you feeling good and take out the trash.”

She told him: “Leave. When you do that, you'll be taking out the trash.”

Mitch was strong on his own merits, but clowns like those magnified his stature in Madeline's mind. She figured she would always, in some way, grieve for her deceased husband. But she knew the only way to have a fulfilling rest of her life was to live it. That did not mean with another man. It meant being open to another man who was worthy.

“So,” she said to Brenda in the lobby as Paul and Ginger made love, “Mitch said they will be here at seven-thirty to pick us up. He said he had an Italian restaurant in mind.”

“Girl, it could be Waffle House at this point,” Brenda said. “I just look forward to having fun, good conversation with good men. If we get that, then I will be fine.”

“I can't speak for Mitch's friend, but Mitch always has a lot to say about a lot of things. So, we'll be fine.”

They noticed it was time for their kids to be downstairs and they were not. So Brenda called. No answer.

“The car is right there, so they have to be in the room,” Madeline said. “They might be sleep. Paul had a long night. Come on, let's go knock on their door and wake them up.”

So they took the walk to the room, chatting the whole way. But
just before Brenda could knock on the door, she heard something and pressed her ear against the door.

“Madeline. Listen,” she said.

And they blushed as they took in the lovemaking sounds of their children.

“Come on, Brenda,” Madeline whisper. “This isn't right.”

“OK,” Brenda said, and they tiptoed off.

When they got to the elevator, Brenda said, “That was weird.”

“Kinda creepy,” Madeline said. “I remember Ginger walking in on me and her father one time. She was young, around five, and she heard all this noise and I guess she was concerned. Girl, it was embarrassing. I was bent over, holding on to the rear of the bed and her father was behind me doing his business.”

Brenda laughed loudly. “Oh, no. How did you get out of that?”

“Shoot, we didn't,” Madeline said. “I just said, ‘Ginger, go back to bed' and she turned around and left. And we kept doing what we were doing. Thinking about it now, she might have just stood there and listened to us.

“When I saw her in the morning, there was this awkward feeling I had.”

“It probably was just you feeling that way,” Brenda said. “Kids have a way of moving on.”

“I hope so,” Madeline said. “I'd hate for her to have that image of me burned in her memory.”

“I know what you mean,” Brenda said. “Paul never caught us doing it. But we caught
him
. One night my husband went in his room to get a basketball—he was still playing at the time—and I went to check on Vino. Well, he was so into masturbating that he didn't even realize we were standing in the doorway. When he did, he just stopped and pulled the covers over his head.”

“Wow,” Madeline said. “Did you ever address it?”

“I didn't; his father did,” Brenda said. “I don't know what he said, but he told me he had a talk with him—man-to-man—and we never talked about it again. But Paul did seem a little strange or embarrassed when I saw him the next day. He was about twelve.”

“I think we're going to be waiting down here for a while,” Madeline said. “So, let's have some wine.”

“How about a white? Paul loves reds, but I like some whites, too,” Brenda said. “A chardonnay?”

“You pick it, I'll drink it,” Madeline said.

“So how do we handle this date thing?” Brenda said. “I'm a little out of practice. Haven't really dated in a few decades.”

“I know what you mean,” Madeline said. “You know why it's sad? Because even though we were married, we still should have been dating our husbands. That's where marriages go wrong. We get stuck in the rut and let it slip away.

“Having a so-called ‘date night' wasn't enough. You do that once a month or so. What about the other twenty-nine days?”

“I know,” Brenda said. “It's amazing how people don't get it with relationships. Older people who have been through stuff should be the relationship experts. What do these youngsters know?”

They kept sipping the wine and before long, they were feeling especially good.

“I'll tell you what the real problem is with relationships,” Brenda said. She was on her third glass. “Not enough of what our kids are doing right now is going on.”

They gave each other a high-five and fell all over each other laughing.

“Seriously, though, the problem,” Brenda continued, “is that we make wrong decisions when we choose life partners. Sounds like you got it right—your husband was your soul mate. But most
of us choose a husband or a wife for all the wrong reasons or not enough of the right reasons.”

“As an example…,” Madeline said.

“As an example, I'll use myself,” Brenda said. “James was a good man, overall. But he did not have that energy and real zest for life that I wanted in a man. Still, I ignored it, even though it bothered me. I felt like I could change him or that he would grow into the man I wanted him to be.

“Having fun and laughing and being joyous are important to me. We had fun, to a degree, but he was more conservative and laid back than I needed. I needed a take-charge man. He wasn't that. And I knew it and yet I went along with it anyway because I figured he was a good man who was going to be good to me.

“As it turned out, that wasn't enough. I knew it wasn't enough a long time ago—
years
ago—but I literally suffered in silence. And when your kid moves on, that's when it really hits, you know? Then it's just you and him and it all comes out in a rush. Even at that I took it, stayed until I couldn't take it anymore.”

“One thing you said,” Madeline chipped in. “You said you thought you could change him. That's one of the big mistakes people make in relationships. You can't change anyone. Now, you can
inspire
someone to change by how you act. Maybe. But people's natural defenses come up when you are clearly trying to change them.

“They're like, ‘What's wrong with me? Why do I need to change?' And instead of getting what you want, you get more of what you don't want. But I agree with you on decision-making. You know how many friends and family members I know who married someone that I knew wasn't right for them? A
lot
. If I knew it, they
had
to know it, too. But some people just want to say, ‘This is my husband' or ‘I'm married.' And that's the mistake.”

“Yes,” Brenda chimed in. “They say the divorce rate is fifty percent. I say of those who stay married, more than half of them wish they weren't married. They stay because they feel trapped or that it's cheaper to keep her or easier to stay—even though they are unhappy.

“I tell you, it took everything in me not to cheat on James. I was bored to death. Nice man. But he wasn't for me. And at the end, when I realized I had to leave, is when simply looking at him irritated me. I was in a bad place.”

“Well, I give you credit for doing what was the strong thing to do,” Madeline said. “My sister right now has been married eleven years and unhappy with nine of them. Just not happy about how she's living, where she's living and who she's living with. But she won't do anything. She said she's stuck. It's sad.”

“I tell you, I was concerned about Paul and Ginger,” Brenda admitted. “I never saw my son as he was. He never said it was Ginger, but what was I to think? Finally, he told me he lost his job and how that really knocked him off his feet.”

“And it knocked Ginger off hers, too,” Madeline said. “There was a time when she was miserable, very upset. There was no communication, that's what I gathered.”

“Well, they are communicating now—in the language of love,” Brenda said, and they laughed again. And when they looked up, there were Ginger and Paul, smiling.

“So,” Paul said, “how many drinks are we behind?”

“A bottle and a half,” Madeline said, “and you're not gonna catch up because we ain't stopping.”

“Oh, boy,” Ginger said. “That doesn't sound good.”

“What have y'all been doing?” Brenda asked. “We've been waiting on y'all.”

They were not about to say what they
really
were doing. But
Paul didn't want to lie, either. So he told the vague truth. “We were in the bed,” he said.

“Yeah, I bet you were in bed,” Madeline said.

“Mother? What does that mean?” Ginger asked.

“Nothing, child. Let's go eat. You've got to be hungry,” Madeline said.

“We're going to a place in Yountville called Bistro Jeanty. Supposed to be good,” Paul said. “Then we have a four o'clock at Sterling Winery.”

“Oh, I read about Sterling,” Ginger said. “Up on a mountain with a great view of the valley.” And then she thought:
That's the best place to tell Paul he will be a father again.

Which would have been great if it wasn't where Paul had planned to tell Ginger he hit the lottery for $8 million.

T
hey drove to Yountville for lunch, which was on the way to Calistoga, where the Sterling Winery was. The sun was brilliant; it was another day that highlighted the magnificent of God.

The conversation was light, but everyone wanted to hear details about Paul's night in jail. He wasn't so keen on talking about it. Not because he did not want to share, but because he was not sure if they would get why it was an experience he was glad he endured.

“I can sum it up this way,” he said. “It was embarrassing, dehumanizing, funny, enlightening and interesting. Overall, I'm glad I went through it. It's a crazy system, the prison system. Even in a little town like this people are troubled by guns and drugs and violence.

“I told Ginger about the man in the first cell I was in as they processed me. He had a great career in the government but his daughter and his wife died within months of each other and he was just broken down. He lost it and now he's an alcoholic who can't let go of his grief.

“Thank God I didn't lose my family, but I understood how important family is to me because I put myself in his place. It made the things that bothered me seem inconsequential.

“And then there was a guy there who said he was arrested for speeding. But the other guy, Otis, told him he was lying. He could tell you about yourself through your body language. Like, he said I was from the southeast, that I was educated up north. This wasn't like some fortuneteller. This was a man who studied my speech patterns and body language and could tell me about myself. I was blown away.

“So this other guy has all this mouth. He's saying how he was in for speeding. Otis told him he was lying. Told him he could see in his eyes and how he shifted his body. The guy got mad and eventually admitted that he had shot someone, someone he thought had been seeing his girlfriend. Turned out it wasn't the even the right guy.”

“I have a question,” Brenda said. “When someone catches his or her mate cheating, why is it they want to beat up or shoot the other person? You shouldn't go after anyone; you should walk away. But if you just
had
to shoot someone, shoot your mate. That's the person who really did you wrong.”

“Or just shoot yourself,” Madeline said.

“I liked it better when you said don't shoot anyone,” Ginger said.

“Anyway,” Paul concluded, “it was an interesting experience. Met a guy in my cell who was in for the same reason I was—and he loved wine. An actor from L.A. I got lucky: We talked about wine all night. It helped us forget where we were.”

They drove along mostly in silence for the next several minutes, taking in the sights and admiring the beauty and quaintness of the place. Then Ginger spotted an ideal picture-taking spot: A roadside sign in Yountville with glorious mountains in the background, that read: “Welcome To This Famous Wine Growing Region: Napa Valley…and the wine is bottled poetry.”

So Paul pulled over and they took turns taking photos of each other in front of the sign and in different groups. And they got another tourist to take a few group photos of all of them.

Brenda and Madeline were a little tipsy, so their excitement was magnified. They wanted several photos of themselves—alone and together. And they kept checking the photos after they were taken and not approving before finally Paul took control of the moment.