The Vineyard (3 page)

Otis had used light, angle, and focus to make her look willowy rather than thin, spirited rather than self-conscious. He had made the shiny strands of that short, sandy hair look stylish, and the maroon polish on her toenails look exotic. He had made her brown eyes large in a delicate face. Somehow, he had made her look pretty.

When her eyes slid from that photograph to another tacked nearby, her smile widened. Tess was with her in that one, nine years old the summer before. They were dressed as a pair of dance hall girls in a Dodge City saloon in the days of the wild, wild West. Otis had condemned the picture as the lowest form of commercial photography, but they'd had a ball dressing up. They talked about going for an Elizabethan look this summer—assuming they could afford another weekend at the shore. Money was tighter now, without child support. The reality of that was just sinking in.

Jared Stark had let her down in every imaginable way. He was supposed to have loved her. Barring that, he was supposed to have loved their child. At the very least, he was supposed to have helped keep that child sheltered and clothed. So, what had he done? He had
died
.

A timer rang. Setting aside the anger that had displaced grief, Olivia silenced it. Tess was the love of her life, and school was nearly out for the day. Recapping her inks, she washed her brushes and carefully placed the maybe-Lange photographs in the vault. She neatened the office, filled her briefcase with paperwork to do at home, and opened the door in time to greet the mailman.

Otis's personal letters and bills went in one pile, those addressed to the studio went in another. Among the larger pieces there was a supermarket flyer, a mailing from the American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works, and the week's
Time
. At the bottom of the pile was a large manila pack.

One look at its sender and Olivia felt a wave of pleasure. The mailing label was ivory with a burgundy logo that depicted, in a single minimalist line, a bunch of grapes spilling from a wineglass. Beneath it was the stylized script—so familiar now—that read
Asquonset Vineyard and Winery, Asquonset, Rhode Island
. The address was handwritten in the more traditional but no less familiar style of Natalie Seebring.

Holding the large envelope to her nose, Olivia closed her eyes and inhaled. She knew that freesia scent now as well as she knew the handwriting. It was elegant, conjuring images of prosperity and warmth. She basked in it for a minute, then crossed to the large table where the last batch of Seebring photographs lay. They were from the early fifties and had needed varying degrees of repair, but they were ready for return. Now there was a new pack. Natalie's timing was perfect.

Olivia had never met the woman, but she felt she knew her well. Photographs told stories, and what they didn't tell, Olivia easily made up. Natalie had been a beautiful child in the twenties, a striking teenager in the thirties. In the forties she had been the blushing bride of a dashing soldier, and in the fifties, the smiling mother of two adoring children. According to her photographs, she dressed well and lived in style. Whether a parlor with an exquisite Oriental rug in the foreground, an elegantly upholstered settee at midrange, and original art on the wall behind, or a garden surrounded by lush shrubbery that screamed of color even in black-and-white, the backgrounds of the pictures she sent were entirely consistent with the image of a successful wine-making family.

No downtrodden migrant crew this one. Of course, these pictures didn't have the artistic import of one taken by Dorothea Lange,
but Olivia had followed the growth of this family for months and was totally involved. The appeal here was prosperity and ease. She had fantasized about being a Seebring more times than she could count.

Her own story was light-years different from anything she had seen in the Seebring pictures. She had never met her father. Her mother didn't even know who he was. Olivia had been the product of a one-night stand on a liquor-blurred New Year's Eve in an alley off Manhattan's Times Square. Carol Jones, her mother, had been seventeen at the time.

Feminists might have called it rape, but months later, when Carol finally realized she was pregnant, she was rebellious enough and defiant enough to tell her parents it was love. For those pious folk, the pregnancy was one defiant act too many. They disowned her. She retaliated, predictably rebellious and defiant, by leaving home with nothing of her heritage but her name—Jones.

A lot of good that did Olivia. There were pages of Jones listings in every telephone directory. There were pages and
pages
of them in New York. And now, not only couldn't she find her grandparents, she couldn't find her mother either. Moving from place to place herself, Olivia had left a trail of bread crumbs to rival Hansel and Gretel, but no relative ever came looking. Apparently, no relative cared—and it was their loss. Olivia might be no prize, but Tess was. Tess was a gem.

Unfortunately, the loss went two ways. This gap in her history meant that Olivia and Tess went without extended family. It was just the two of them—just the two of them against the world. That wasn't so bad, though; Olivia had come to terms with it. She could cope.

It didn't mean she couldn't dream, of course, and lately she dreamed she was related to Natalie Seebring. Being grandmother and granddaughter was pushing it a little, but there was a woman in some of the early Asquonset pictures who, given a marginal resemblance to Carol, could be Olivia's grandmother. Olivia hadn't seen the woman in any of Asquonset's postwar pictures, but there were easy explanations for that. She might have been a WAC who had fallen for a serviceman and ended up in New York. Her husband might have been a rigid military type who wanted things done his way, or he might have been irrationally jealous, forbidding her contact with her family. Hence, her absence in photographs.

But if she was Natalie's sister, then Natalie would be Olivia's great-aunt. Even if she were only a cousin, the blood bond would be there.

Olivia glanced at the clock. She had to go get Tess. Time was growing short.

But the lure of this new package was too great to resist. Opening the clasp, she peeked inside. The scent of freesia was stronger now. She pushed aside a cover letter and saw several dozen photographs. Most were eight-by-tens in black-and-white. Under them was a bright yellow envelope.

Curious, she pulled it out. Otis's name and address were on the front, written not in Natalie's freehand but in a calligrapher's script. She was giving a
party,
Olivia decided—and immediately vowed to go as Otis's date. She didn't care if people snickered behind their hands. She wanted to see Asquonset. She wanted to meet Natalie.

She laid the invitation on Otis's desk with his personal mail—then quickly took it back and returned it to the mailer with the pictures. He wouldn't be in again until tomorrow. She liked the idea of having the invitation in her own house for a night.

Tucking the package into her briefcase, she checked the office a final time, then let herself out and locked the door. Natalie's new batch of pictures would be the treat she gave herself that night when everything else was done.

Savoring the anticipation, she half walked, half ran through narrow streets hemmed in by tightly packed houses, trees, and parked cars. The June air was stagnant and warm. She arrived at Tess's school in a sweat, a full ten minutes late.

Most of the children had gone. A few stragglers remained on the playground, but they were immersed in themselves. Tess stood alone at a corner of the school yard with a shoulder weighted down by her backpack, one foot turned in, her glasses halfway down her nose, and a desolate look on her face.

Two
 

F
IGHTING A SINKING HEART
, Olivia kept her voice light. “Hi, sweetie.” She gave Tess a hug, which was barely returned, and smoothed aside a mass of unruly brown hair.

“You're late,” Tess said.

“I know. I'm sorry. I got hung up on something as I was walking out the door. How was your day?”

Tess made a gesture that might have been a shrug, but it was lost when she started off down the street. Her legs weren't long, but they moved fast. Olivia had to step to it to keep pace.

“Tess?” she coaxed.

Still that defiant silence.

“Hard day?”

“The worst. I'm dumb. I'm just dumb.”

“No, you're not.”

“Yes! I'm the dumbest one in the class.”

“No, you're the
smartest
one in the class. Your IQ is out of sight. You're dyslexic, that's all.”

“That's
all?
” Tess cried, stopping dead in her tracks. Her freckles were bright red against the pallor of her skin. Her wire-rimmed glasses magnified a pair of big, brown plaintive eyes that were suddenly filled with tears. “Mom, she made me stay in from recess again because my paper was a mess. My handwriting stinks. She can't read it. And my spelling stinks. And even if it didn't, I didn't do what she told us to do. I didn't hear her right, so my hearing stinks, too!”

Olivia took her daughter's face in both hands. “Your hearing does not stink! You hear every word I say, even when you're not supposed to because it's
adult language
.”

Tess tore her chin free and resumed her march. Olivia was beside her by the time they turned the corner and strode along for several more blocks until Tess eased up. This time, when she put an arm around the child's shoulder and drew her close, Tess didn't resist. They turned right onto one street, then left onto another.

“Kind of like a maze,” Olivia remarked when they made another sharp turn. She was hoping for a smile.

Instead, she got a glum, “Yeah, and we're rats.”

“So, what's the reward at the end?”

Tess didn't reply. And then they were home. They lived in an apartment attached to a small brick house that, in its heyday, had belonged to one of the would-be elite of Cambridge society. The fact that it was sandwiched more closely to its neighbors than a house belonging to the true elite would have been was hidden by a thick stand of trees. Those trees also prevented neighbors from seeing when the owners closed in the screen porch, added a small bedroom and bathroom, and put the space out for rent.

Olivia wasn't the first tenant by a long shot. The galley kitchen was vintage fifties, and the bathroom little better, but she had loved it on sight—loved the character, the quaintness, the charm. One look at walls of ivy-covered brick and a flagstone walk flanked by mountain laurel in bloom and, even before seeing the inside, she knew she had to live there.

Only after they moved in did she realize how tiny the place was, not necessarily the best buy for the money. But it was done, and it did have character, quaintness, and charm. She set Tess up in the small bedroom, which she painted with a soft blue sky and a forest of floor-to-ceiling trees. She used a sleep sofa in the living room for herself. The sofa was flanked by a pair of lobster traps standing on end, each holding lamps. An old wood trunk on a dolly—both painted sea green, like the lobster traps—served as a clothes chest and was
easily rolled away at night. An overstuffed easy chair sat to the side, large enough for Olivia and Tess to share for bedtime reading. An antique, early-American table with matching chairs—Olivia's birthday gift to herself the year before and the inspiration for hours of imagining who had owned it before them—stood in the kitchen end of the room.

They no sooner opened the door this day when the phone began to ring. Their eyes met, their expressions knowing and vexed.

“It's Ted,” Tess said.

“Uh-
huh
.”

“We're ten minutes late. I bet he's been trying that long.”

“Uh-huh.”

“He's probably frantic about something,” the child advised, scornful in a way that Olivia would have considered disrespectful if she didn't know Tess was so right.

Ted was always frantic. He was a high-strung, type-A personality, an impulse buy on Olivia's part, picked up at the checkout counter of a bookstore. In hindsight, she should have known he was trouble from the fact that he didn't smile once during that initial encounter. But he looked her in the eye, which was more than many men did, and talked readily, as some men did not. He was even interested in what she was reading and why.

Naturally, she initially thought his intensity was infatuation. He brought flowers, took her to dinner, rented movies. He phoned her so often that she finally suggested he not call her at work. By that time she had realized that he wasn't infatuated at all, but was simply approaching their relationship as neurotically as he approached the rest of his life. They had been dating for five months, and now the end was near.

Olivia had to hand it to herself. She had a knack for picking losers. Not that she wanted to. Not that she planned to. Typically she fell for one feature—say, great eyes or a sexy voice—and it wasn't always physical. She had fallen for Pete Fitzgerald because he could cook. He cooked Irish, Italian, and Jewish. He cooked Greek. He cooked the lightest Russian blini she had ever eaten. Out of the kitchen, though, he was a dud.