CABERNET ZIN (Cabernet Zin Wine Country) (29 page)

“I had to go to the store.”

“For how many hours? They are too little to leave alone. I want to talk with Noah.”

“No. This is harassment.”

“I have a right to talk with my children.”

“I don’t think you do. Goodbye.”

Zack stood and looked at his phone. He wiped his thumb across the glass face. He did not know what to do. He flipped through his call history and saw Claire’s last call to him. He needed someone. He needed her.

“Hi Zack.”

Zack noticed how Claire’s voice seemed different, “Sorry to call. I needed to talk. Lydia did this psychotic thing with the kids –”

“– I, I can’t really talk now Zack. I’m so sorry.”

“Why?”

“My father. His health is getting worse. He’s at the hospital again.”

“That must be hard for you … Should I come out soon? Can I help?”

“No.” The sound of Claire wiping her eyes with a tissue muffled across the phone, “I’ll be fine. You take care of your kids and call me when you get out here?”

“Certainly. See you soon.” Zack continued standing and rubbing his phone with his thumb as if it were a magic talisman or a lamp with a genie that could give him a string of wishes. His mind bobbed about what he should do and where he should go but he focused on the mission he needed to complete. Zack scrolled through his phone and dialed his lawyer.

“Law offices of Harley & Earle.”

“Hey David. I had these issues come up relative to the divorce. Can I drop this document from Child Protective Services and this recording I have from my kids? … Yes. I’ll drop the information at your office. Call me when you’ve looked over everything and have an idea how I can get my kids back.”

-:-:-:-O-:-:-:-

David Earle said, “Zack, I got the judge to see us over lunch tomorrow. I told her you have work in California that you need to get back for and we’re worried about the safety of your kids. She owes me a few new favors since our last meeting for cases I took for her recently. So we’re set up and it should be pretty straight.”

-:-:-:-O-:-:-:-

Nicholas hugged Lydia in her living room, “I’m glad you called. You could have phoned after your meeting with the judge, not waited until the next day.”

Lydia stared out the dining room window at the empty driveway beyond. Zachary always parked his car so she could see it there; it had been an annoyance before but now, sadness, emptiness. She felt Nick’s arousal against her pelvis, earnest but small when she remembered Zack, “I thought you should know that the children are with their father now. I’ll see them only a few times a year – and with supervision.” In the courtroom, the judge asked Zack to ask both children who they wanted to stay with. Noah said Zack right away, his eyes stuck on Nick who sat in the back of the courtroom to observe. Grace looked at Lydia with her big eyes and her curls wavered with her head swiveling between her mother and father. Lydia’s heart broke watching the pain in Grace’s eyes as she had to make a careful choice. Such a little girl making such a huge life changing decision. Lydia saw in those eyes that she had let them down. She knew how patient Zack was with the children. Lydia held solid with her anger for Zack but the right thing was to allow the children to be with him.

Nick said, “Good. It was tough for me to be around them all that time. I could handle my own kids fighting as they do but someone else’s kids … unpleasant. Part of the reason I had to leave when you and I fought.” He pushed her hair away and touched his lips against her neck. “I knew you would have a hard time resisting me.”

Lydia would have felt her muscles contract with desire but now only an empty black void filled her belly. Gutted like the image striking her mind of fish that Zack brought back from a fishing trip with a friend of his a year or more ago.

Nick said, “Why don’t we have our own kids? That might take the edge off missing Zack’s.”

Lydia turned her face away. Nicholas’ fingers brushed the tip of her breast, an inkling of sensitivity stroked through her, but faded into the growing darkness. His voice continued curling around her, “You know I don’t want to get married. But we can still have kids.” He kissed her neck. “We could even start now.”

She was sure she did not want kids with Nicholas. “I’m hungry. I’m going to make something.” Nicholas reluctantly released her. He sprawled across the couch. His hand scooped up the remote control from the side table and he stabbed it in the air at the television to first turn it on and then cycle through the stations in the blurring speed of an old hand.

Lydia set spaghetti noodles boiling on the stove, the children’s favorite dinner. She pulled out a fat stubby onion and sliced into it. A hybrid tear-less onion variety she bought the prior week. The tears came to her eyes anyway, pooling at the edges of her lids until the surface tension gave away and they fell to her chest, her arm, and to the cutting board. Tears for her children but also tears for the images of Zachary in their happier days.

Nicholas asked, “Hey hon, can you grab me a beer from the fridge? I don’t want to miss the Lion’s next play.”

“Here,” Lydia threw the can of beer at him.

Nicholas lurched to catch the silver missile before it smacked him between the eyes, “
Fuck!
Did I ask for the beer wrong? Tell me the code, please.” Nicholas shook out his hand where a bruise would appear the next day or two. “Damn it.” He cracked the tab and foam boiled out the top. He vacuumed the suds with his slurping lips, his eyes returning to the television game. He pressed the bruise against the cool can and sprawled along the couch again.

Lydia cut the rest of her onion. Her tears surged like breakers until she couldn’t see through the blurring deluge. She dropped the knife to the cutting board and sank to the floor behind the kitchen cabinets.

A black despair oozed through her veins. Anger and wrath that helped her cope with the struggles of her life had driven away the fragile things she desired – her existence displaced by loneliness and despondency.

What had she done?

-:-:-:-O-:-:-:-

Claire tugged her phone from her jeans pocket, “Hello, Tyler.”

“The hospital called. Dad died a few minutes ago.”

The hard edge of the kitchen counter caught her as she tipped back, her hand catching the side of it to steady herself.

“What’s wrong?” Leiko asked from the kitchen table.

Claire propped herself up with her hand, she knew this could come at any time, but it still smacked her with emotion, “I’ll meet you there. I’m at Dad’s.” Claire watched Leiko stand and search for her car keys. “You’re going?”

“No. I’m driving you. I can see your face. You can’t drive.”

“We’ve known each other too long.” Claire looked around the living room. Her father kept almost nothing. He had the television, his chair, the couch, and the little shelf on the wall with the family photo album. Just one. They didn’t take many pictures in the family. Too painful probably. Claire pulled the book off the shelf and hugged it, her father was permanently gone. She argued with him at their last meeting. Grief held her. She could never talk with him again.

Leiko followed Claire to the car. She knew the way and thankfully did not pester Claire with mundane conversation. Claire cinched her seat belt until the strap was tight enough to hold her into this world. Claire clutched the photo album as they drove silently toward the hospital. She slowly opened the cover and looked through pictures of the family she hadn’t looked at in years. Faded photographs from the seventies and eighties of her parents. Later pictures of her, her sister, and her brother doing kid things. Her father laughing. That’s what she remembered. She could hear his laughter from long ago when they were happy and together – it helped push away the pain of the growing sadness and pain. A few pictures of her father leading his Finance lectures at the college where he worked. Older ones with double high blackboards that flew up as he filled them with math, economics, and stock trading concepts. A few pictures of the white boards and markers and then his last years of work using electronic boards run by a computer system. A pair of pages for each of his children traced pictures from their earliest swaddled bundles through school, their graduation, and into adulthood.

The last page of the album held a piece of paper folded neatly with her name on it and dated from a month or two ago.

“Claire, I placed this note in the photo album because it might be something you look at sooner rather than later. I wanted to write you a last note while I still can – still it has taken me days to finish since my window of clear thought pinches shut so quickly now. The air is blowing through that crack in the wall faster and faster each time the gap gets narrower – I can hear it whistling as the last few breaths squeeze out. I know you are falling for Zack – I can see how your face lights up thinking of him – I’ve told you my misgivings but not the reason. Your heart will want what your heart wants. While you’ve only known austerity and seen how I lived frugally, I have been fortunate to use the skills I taught my university students to increase my wealth. I did the research and managed over a lifetime to be well placed during the good times and sat protected ahead of the bad times by watching for the signs. Study my ledgers and you’ll see my notes. You’ve also had the training I taught you over a lifetime. Like things my father taught me, I didn’t realize he had passed to me until much later – often in the small moments, probably ones I never realized at the time. You will find the small ideas and mechanisms of thought I built up in you over our years together. My suggestions to keep your operating costs low so your wealth can accumulate. Methods I used to make my small savings grow to something substantial. Be mindful of any entanglements introduced to you by this new man. I worked hard my whole life, saved carefully, and invested wisely. So be protective of the money you will have upon my passing. I positioned an account for each of you and your siblings with your names on them. I urge you require that any suitor sign a prenuptial agreement when you get that far in your relationship. You may think it brazen but you will be surprised at the substantive nature of my holdings, and now your holdings. Wealth is freedom. I hope that you avoid using it for frivolous things like a half drunk lottery winner lusting for new cars and homes that wash their money through their fingers as fast as it appears. Find something meaningful to do with the money. Remember our times together. I have been so very proud of you your whole life.”

Claire’s eyes blurred too much for her to read his signature at the bottom. Her fingers touched the coarse surface of the writing. She traced the impressions of his emotions gouged into the paper, dashed with the long strokes he wrote when rushed, but deep with passion and the weight of love for her. She closed the book and hugged it tight against her chest as the car carried her floating along the smooth river of the road. The trees blurred beyond the gravel strips along the blacktop streets, their dark branches merging into a mist beyond her thoughts.

Claire continued flowing through the days that followed like a boat pushed on a glassy lake barely breaking its mirror sheen. The hospital had regular processes for such a death, the funeral home had their systems, the lawyer office mechanically distributed the will, and the cemetery had a burial process. Her father was lowered into the ground by ratcheting pulleys and cranks. Dirt cast. More words. Then the process was done. Her father now lay in a little hill that looked over a lush valley reaching back from the sea. Peaceful.

Claire floated numb. She remembered her sister and brother’s elation with the money their father gave them, set up in trusts from which they could only draw monthly distributions. Claire’s endowment was the only one that her father gave without restriction, but the lawyer was discrete in telling her this.

Claire kept the photo album nearby. The rest of the house Tyler emptied of the furnishings, such that her father had kept, improving his place over the crumbling contraptions of broken furniture he owned; and they sold the house. Even with the sickening economy in the rest of the nation, the housing market in the suburb her father had invested in remained in high demand. His house sold within days and closed in just a few more – a hotly desired area with a solid stream of bidders that ran the price up to shocking levels. The tax attorney appeared a few times to tidy her father’s affairs. 

Claire scanned her father’s ledger books and his old tax returns. Her quick glance with an eye trained by her business degree showed the amazing story of what he had done. She saw notes he wrote to her in the margins, times when he had her do paper trades while he placed real bets on the major corporations she loved for the products they made. She cried again, finding her tissue box empty. Her father had really taught her so much in those small moments of their lives – she never realized. Not like sitting her in a room with five hundred other students and the big blackboards and his jacket smudged with chalk. He taught during the ride in the car, pointing out the sign of a new retail store going up, and discussing the investment required. Which made her think of Zack’s investment in the startup winery. She put the ledgers and the photo album aside. She wanted to see Zack. She missed him. Needed his voice close. Maybe he could help fill the missing hole in her heart. Smooth away the pain. The calendar showed only a few days before he would again appear on the West Coast.