The Vineyard (20 page)

Carl was a tour guide with an agenda. He led her past the tanks to the far end of the room, where he showed her the machine that crushed and stemmed the grapes. He explained that red wine was made by fermenting the grapes skin and all, while white wine was made from the fermented juice alone. He showed her the tubing that carried juice from the crusher to the stainless steel tanks, where the fermentation took place.

He led her into a second room, this one nearly as cavernous but
filled with multiple tiers of oak barrels. In contrast to the harsh stainless steel and concrete of the fermentation room, this room was mellow. The light was dim. The barrels were neatly lined up and soft edged. The smell was of wood.

“We age the wine here,” Carl explained. “The barrel, itself—how it's made, where it's from, how many seasons it's been used—plays a large part in the process. All those things affect the taste of the wine. The length of time the wine sits here is another variable.”

That decision, it seemed, was made by the wine maker. His name was David Sperling, and his office was an enclosed laboratory-like loft high above the barrels. Olivia was introduced to him and to his assistant, either of whom she might have liked to talk with a while, but Carl moved her along to the bottling room. Here was state-of-the-art machinery, installed just the year before. Proudly, he explained how the sterilized bottles were moved in and out, up and down, down and around in the process of being filled, corked, and labeled.

Olivia was fascinated. By the time they reached the outside air again, she was ready to start over and go through the whole thing a second time. Carl looked pleased when she told him that, but he had afternoon plans that began with rescuing his intended from her advertising meeting.

“Another time,” he promised.

It was just as well. The golf cart puttered back through the woods and had no sooner emerged from the dark and rounded the side of the Great House when Olivia saw Tess. She was sitting on the bottommost of those five broad stone steps, her body hunched into a knot.

Twelve
 

O
LIVIA SAT DOWN
on the step beside Tess. “Hi, sweetie. How was your morning?”

Tess answered with the quiver of her chin, quite a feat with her chin on her knees. Glasses halfway down her nose, she stared glumly out at the vineyard.

Olivia tucked a long brown curl back toward the French braid that was supposed to have held it in place. She wondered if Tess was discouraged by something specific, or if it was just more of the same. “How was Mrs. Adelson?”

“She's fine, but I'm not. I'm not getting this, Mom.”

Ach. More of the same. Harder to take, perhaps, with a new strategy and such high hopes. “You will. It just takes time.”

“She says totally different things from the tutors at school.”

“I know that. She and I have discussed it.” Olivia tried to catch Sandy alone whenever she could. She was feeling guilty for letting the past tutors do so little and wanted to be—to use Sandy's word—proactive. “But everything she says makes sense, Tess. Mrs. Adelson may be just what you need.”

Tess lifted her head, turned it, and stared at her like she'd lost her mind. “Do you
know
what visual mapping means? First there's a
story
map. Then there's a
character
map. I mean, I could spend a year doing each one, Mom. It takes
forever
to map things out.”

“Now it does. That's because it's new. Once you get the knack of it, it'll be easy and quick. It'll become second nature. You like the book, don't you?” They were reading
A Wrinkle in Time,
by Madeleine L'Engle. It was on three of the five book lists that they had checked, and Sandy was thrilled. She had worked with it many times before and said that it was perfect for visualization training.

Tess murmured a begrudging, “Yes.”

“And just think about the head start you're getting on the other fifth-graders.”

“But then I have to read the book a second time when school starts. I
hate
reading.”

“That's only because it's a struggle. Once you're done with Mrs. Adelson, it won't
be
such a struggle. You may even enjoy it.”

Tess looked up through her glasses in a way that rendered her eyes all the more woeful. “But what if I go to a different school? What if I go to one that doesn't even read this book?”

Sandy Adelson's school read it. Olivia was starting to think about applying for Tess to be admitted there. Cambridge Heath hadn't yet made a decision, they had told her when she called the day before. Nor were there any job nibbles …
anywhere
. She could easily turn her focus to Providence, could prod the places she had already contacted and send résumés to others. She could map out a thirty-mile radius of the city and send letters to everything within that distance.

“If that happens,” she reasoned, “you'll have learned how to do visual mapping, so you can apply it to the books that you
do
read.” Wrapping an arm around the child's shoulders, she gave a squeeze. “Come on, Tess. Anything that's good is hard. But in time it gets easier and easier. Mrs. Adelson says you're one of the smartest kids she's ever worked with—and she's been working with dyslexics for twenty years.”

“Yeah, well, she can't help me with sailing. I looked at the book they gave us, Mom. I can't figure that stuff out.”

Of course, she couldn't. That
stuff
included things like “head stay,” “bowsprit,” and “traveler,” all of which fell under the title “nomenclature.” Tess couldn't get past the title to the others.

“Did you try to visualize it?” Olivia asked. “Did you try to see
‘nomenclature' as names, like ‘shirt,' ‘shorts,' ‘shoes'?” She pointed to each as she said it.

Tess gave an aggrieved sigh. “Parts of the boat. That's what you said. But I can't visualize them if I don't know what they are.”

“We went over the diagram.”

“It's just a
picture.”

“You're upset. Getting upset doesn't help.”

“Those
things
don't
mean
anything to me.”

“That's only because you're not familiar with sailboats, Tess. Once you put the name with the part in real life, you'll know what it is. They said they'd be working on that this afternoon, didn't they?”

“Yes, but most of the other kids already know it.”

Olivia guessed that was because the other kids either were from families that belonged to the yacht club or had grandparents who had been taking them sailing since they'd been old enough to talk. “O-kay. Then this is what I think you should do.” Here it was—a basic lesson in socialization. “Let the teacher talk. Let the other kids talk. Ask questions. Learn from what they say.”

Tess looked doubtful. “What if they ask me something? What do I
say?”

“If it has to do with the parts of the boat, just say that this is the first time you've ever been on a boat.”

“But it isn't. We went whale watching. We went on a sunset sail up in Maine.”

“Not the same, Tess. Come on. You know that.” She glanced at her watch, then at the patches of blue that had appeared in the sky. “Have you had lunch?”

“Yes.”

Olivia hadn't, but she could live without lunch. It was twelve-thirty. She had to drop Tess at the yacht club at two, then hurry back here to do the work she'd been hired to do.

But first things first. “We're getting some sun. Let's make pictures.”

“Of what?”

“Grapes. I snap, you draw.” She tipped her head. “Yes?”

“Can I snap, too?”

“Only after you've drawn.”

“That isn't fair. Using the camera's faster than using a pencil. Why do you always get the easier part?”

“Because I can't draw for beans,” Olivia said. Hooking an arm around Tess's neck, she popped a kiss on the child's head. “Let's
do
it.”

T
HE AIR WAS SIGNIFICANTLY WARMER
by the time they fetched the camera, the sketchbook, and a piece of charcoal, the last being Tess's choice in lieu of a pencil, her little bit of control over the situation. That said, she went along willingly, as Olivia had known she would. Tess liked to draw because she did it so well, which wasn't to say that her fear of sailing class was eased, but at least she was distracted from it.

Olivia turned her face to the sun and breathed in the scent of warm leaves and drying earth. She forced herself to relax, forced herself to believe that Tess would grow up to be a literate, fully functioning, self-sufficient adult.

“Let's go,” Tess said.

Olivia opened her eyes. She looked around. Between Natalie's tour and her own study of the vineyard map, she knew what was where. Simon would be working with the most worrisome of the grapes. Given this region in general and this summer in particular, those would be reds—either Cabernet Sauvignon or Pinot Noir.

She pointed in the other direction, toward the Riesling block, but hadn't gone more than five paces when she did an about-face. It made perfect sense to locate Simon first. Then they would know exactly what to avoid.

“Which way, Mom?”

“This
way.” She walked along the road until she reached the Pinot Noir fields, picked a random row, and started down it. The dirt underfoot was loose. It looked to be newly plowed. The vines reached the first tier of the wire trellis, with the occasional leaf now growing higher. The grapes themselves were larger than they had been when Olivia and Tess had first come, but they were still sad, nutty-looking little bunches. Simon was nowhere in sight.

Tess ran up beside her. “The light isn't right here. It's too flat. You always say that it's better with early light or late light.”

“Yes, well, this is the time we have, and it's midday. See, that's where you're the lucky one. You can draw in whatever kind of light you want.” Just ahead of them, a small bird flew away from a spot under the leaves some two feet off the ground. Within seconds, another followed.

Olivia stopped walking. She studied the spot where the birds had been. Slowly, she moved in. “It's a nest,” she said softly. “Do you see?”

Tess was fast in the lead, creeping forward. She stopped several feet from the nest and crouched down. “Look,” she whispered in delight when Olivia came down beside her.

The nest was small and perfectly round, a miraculous creation of dried grasses and sticks. More miraculous, though, were the little beaks moving amid tiny balls of fluff.

“Three
babies?” Olivia whispered.

“Four,” Tess whispered back. She scooted away, pulling Olivia with her, and let go only when they were a good six feet from the nest. She sat down in the dirt. “If we stay too close, the parents will be afraid to come back, and the babies will die.” She opened her sketch pad.

Olivia watched her for several minutes. She never failed to be amazed how a child with a visual discrimination problem that made reading so difficult could so easily reproduce a visual image free-hand. But Tess did it. These drawings might lack the fine shading and nuance that would come with maturity, but she reproduced shapes of remarkable accuracy and scale with uncanny skill. Her drawings could be as simple as that minimalist line of grapes in the Asquonset logo, but they captured the subject—and with feeling.

This
by a child who, as a toddler, had had trouble putting the round puzzle piece in the round hole; a child who, to this day, couldn't do a jigsaw puzzle if her life depended on it; a child who loved to learn but found reading to be pure torment.

Tess had been right. The light was too flat for making interesting photographs of the grapes, so Olivia photographed Tess. The child was adorable, sitting there on the ground with her legs folded in and her hair curling out. Her gaze went back and forth from the bird's nest to the paper. When her glasses slid down, she pushed them up with the heel of her hand. The charcoal moved easily, almost lyrically.

Olivia caught Tess's concentration. She caught deliberation over one line drawn, and the change of mind over another. She caught excitement when the baby birds' parents returned to the nest. She also caught startled awareness, then abject horror when Tess looked up and saw Buck.

“Oh no, Mom,” the child cried softly and scrambled to her feet.
“The cat'll get the birds.” She stole forward, passing the nest, putting her little body between the big Maine coon and the chicks. She held out a hand to Buck and crooned, “What a
nice
cat you are, what a nice cat you are.” Dipping its mangy head, the cat rubbed her hand. “Good boy.
Good
boy. Know something? I think there's more to do on the other side of this field. Wanna show me? Come on, Buck. Come on, kitty.”

The cat followed her as she moved away, crossing down the row of vines. Olivia photographed the two of them until Buck suddenly made his body low and long and scooted under the vine to the next row with his scruffy tail in pursuit. Up for the challenge, Tess shot Olivia a wide-eyed look before taking off down the row, whipping around the end, and disappearing.