Curious Wine

CURIOUS WINE

by

Katherine V. Forrest

The Naiad Press, Inc.

Copyright © 1983 by Katherine V. Forrest

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Printed in the United States of America

First Printing—May 1983

All of the poetry quotations are from
The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson
, edited by Thomas H. Johnson (Little, Brown and Company).

Poem #1473 by Emily Dickinson on page 44 as well as a portion of Poem #599 on page 18 are reprinted by permission of the publishers and the Trustees of Amherst College from
The Poems of Emily Dickinson
, edited by Thomas H. Johnson, Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Copyright © 1951, 1955, 1979 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College.

Poem #1654 by Emily Dickinson on page 23 as well as a portion of Poem #599 on page 18 are from
The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson
, edited by Thomas H. Johnson. Copyright © 1914, 1929, 1942 by Martha Dickinson Bianchi; Copyright renewed 1957 by Mary L. Hampson. Reprinted by permission of Little, Brown and Company.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Forrest, Katherine V., 1939- Curious Wine I. Title.

PS3556.0737C8 1993 813’.54

ISBN 1-56280-053-1

About the Author

Katherine V. Forrest is a naturalized citizen who was born in Canada, in 1939. She has lived in the East, the Pacific Northwest, and the far West. She has held management positions in business, and is now writing full time and living in San Francisco.

For Sheila

Who has made everything possible

I had been hungry, all the Years—

My Noon had Come—to dine—

I trembling drew the Table near—

And touched the Curious Wine—

—Emily Dickinson

Chapter 1

The cabin was warm and bright with the light Diana Holland and Vivian Kaufman had seen from a distance on the winding mountain road, friendly yellow light radiating into a black night, onto glowing snow.

Liz Russo greeted them with shouts of welcome, a flurry of hugs for Vivian, a collecting of coats. Four other women were gathered around a huge blazing fireplace; one arrested Diana’s attention immediately. She sat on the hearth, and rose as Liz Russo introduced all the women.

Lane Christiansen, the woman Diana had noticed, extended a hand to Diana and then to Vivian. Tall and slender, she pushed blonde hair back from her forehead.

“Elaine?” Vivian said, smiling and holding her hand for a moment before releasing it.

“Lane,” she corrected. “Short for Mar-lane-a, as in Dietrich. My mother was a big Dietrich fan and she didn’t stop to think how inconsiderate it was to give me three syllables in each name.”

“Lane is nice,” Vivian said, smoothing and straightening the jacket of her plaid pantsuit.

Perfectly fitting deep green pants and a camel sweater clung softly to Lane Christiansen. Diana, having already tidied her own sweater over her pants, reflected with amusement than an unusually attractive woman always seemed to make other women self-conscious, slightly defensive. She glanced at her admiringly but curiously; the other women wore jeans and sweaters or sweatsuits.

“I suppose I should be grateful for Marlene. Mother might’ve been a bigger fan of Hedy Lamarr or Pola Negri,” Lane said to Vivian. “What could you do with Hedy or Pola?”

The women laughed, and Lane smiled; to Diana the smile seemed cool, remote.

Vivian said, “Do all of you know Liz’s maiden name?”

“Sure. Taylor,” said Madge Vincent.

Diana said, chuckling, “You used to be Liz Taylor?” Lane laughed, a light silvery sound.

“Damn you, Kaufman,” Liz said, “I ought to pull your false eyelashes off.” She said ruefully to Diana, including Lane in her glance, “Imagine growing up with a name like Liz Taylor. I wanted to get married when I was twelve just to get rid of it.”

The women laughed. Liz asked Diana, “What would you like to drink? We’re out of vodka but there’s lots of bourbon and scotch and gin. A little wine, too.”

“Wine, if it’s white.”

“It’s white, but not exactly what they serve at the Beverly Hilton. My sons keep it here. Make yourself comfortable, dear. If you don’t like the wine you can join the drinkers. Viv, come on in the kitchen honey, let’s bullshit.”

The fireplace was surrounded by a long sofa, two armchairs, and a circular coffee table with drinks and a tray of cheese. Large corduroy cushions were scattered over a raised hearth. Diana decided to sit near the fire.

Madge Vincent said, “May we assume you and Vivian have a good reason for wanting to live in your awful city?” An intense-looking woman of perhaps thirty-five, with disheveled shoulder-length dark hair, she sat on the sofa tapping her cigarette into an ashtray overflowing with long cigarette butts.

Diana settled herself on a cushion, smiled and extended her hands in a conciliatory gesture. “I bow to the superiority of your beautiful city. Especially since I’ll be outnumbered five to one when Viv leaves. It’s not really my fault, though. I can’t help it if I was born there. In beautiful downtown Burbank, in fact.”

Chris Taylor said, “You knew Viv was born in San Francisco, didn’t you?” She was slightly pudgy, with graying hair and timid, anxious blue eyes. Diana had learned from the introductions that she was Liz’s sister.

“Yes. I’ve heard lots of stories about you and Liz and Viv all growing up together. I finally got to meet Liz a year ago Christmas. She came down with her husband for the holidays.” She smiled, remembering how much she had liked the Kaufmans: Liz, big and physical and warmhearted; and her husband, a loud cigar-smoking gentle bear of a man.

“You heard they got divorced.”

“Yes, Viv told me. I felt very bad.”

“Twenty years.” Chris sighed. “We don’t mention George around Liz.”

Diana watched Millie Dodd, who sat cross-legged on the floor, lift from a well-padded case a guitar which had the high gloss of expensiveness, and lay it across her knees. “George and Millie,” she intoned in a hushed whisper, and struck the strings with an abrupt slash of her fingers, producing a dramatic thrumming of finality. She pushed at chemical blonde hair, a frizzy cloud around her face, and smiled in delight at her musical effect, blue eyes as ingenuous as a child’s. Diana thought she could be as young as twenty-five, as old as forty.

Millie continued a low pleasant strumming as Liz brought Diana her wine and returned to the kitchen. Diana sipped from the small heavy wine glass; with a shudder of distaste she placed it on the hearth and looked up to meet the amused eyes of Lane Christianson.

“Not exactly vintage.”

“A tad too much vinegar,” Diana joked, noticing an identical glass, almost full, beside her.

“More like the whole vinegar bottle. Maybe you’d like liquor.”

“I only like vodka.”

“Me too.”

“I’ll get us something when I’m out.”

Diana’s eyes lingered on Lane Christianson. Leaping firelight reflected gold highlights in her hair, which was shades of blonde and silk-textured, reaching just below the nape of her neck, framing her face and falling over her forehead. Cut in layers that shifted in pattern as she moved her head, her hair reminded Diana of a stand of autumn trees she had once seen in Utah with leaves like sunlit coins, blowing in the wind in changing colors of gold. In the firelight, the warm tones of her skin suggested the topaz she would become under a summer sun. Diana could not decide if her eyes were gray or blue. Lane sat relaxed, legs curled gracefully under her, but with her slender body erect and her shoulders very straight. Diana thought her beautiful.

“What do you do, Diana?” Millie asked.

“I’m a personnel representative for West Coast Title and Trust,” Diana answered, turning reluctantly away from Lane to the other women.

“Do you work with their customers then?” Chris asked.

“No, I hire people. I work a lot with Viv. Do all of you know she’s a supervisor? I’ve hired a lot of word processing people for her.”

“Ever hire somebody she hates?” Chris asked.

Diana was amused by the question. “She hollers once in a while. I make good choices, usually.”

“I imagine the worst problem is just keeping people on the job,” Lane commented.

“Yes.” Diana gazed at her again. “People drift from job to job, it’s amazing. I interview people in their early twenties with a dozen jobs already, they see no reason why it should be any different.” She asked with a prickling sense of expectancy, “What do you do?”

“I’m a lawyer.”

“Good for you.” She was gratified that this impressive woman had applied her intellect and physical gifts to a challenging profession.

“One nice thing about being in a group like this, I don’t have to have the adjective for a change. When I work I’m always the woman lawyer. Out of earshot, I’m sure I get other adjectives.”

The women chuckled. Diana asked, “Do you have your own practice?”

“I’m with a law firm. With five names. I’ll give you a card if you think you might need help sometime.” Her voice was light, her eyes animated.

“Do you specialize?”

“I work on the stupid messes our corporate clients get themselves into with civil rights violations.”

“That’s just great!”

“No, frustrating. Like trying to change the tides. We’ve had the Civil Rights Act since ’sixty-four, all the lip service anybody could ask for, all kinds of smoke and fire—and it’s shocking, the little progress.

Bad as it is for women, it’s worse for blacks—most management people I know want them to go back to picking cotton.“

“I agree with you about women,” Chris said, “but sometimes I wish—mind you I’m just as liberal as the next person, I just wish that’s where the blacks had stayed. And those other people flooding into San Francisco these days, those... those...”

“Chris, get out of your time capsule,” Madge said. “This is nineteen
seventy-eight
. People have got to allow other people their own space.”

“That’s easy for you to say, they’re buying property like crazy, those…
perverts
."

“Chris—”

“Madge, I don’t feel like arguing,” Chris said.

“Neither do I,” Lane said, her smile thin and tired. “I came up here to get away from all that.”

Diana asked in the awkward silence, “Are you in real estate, Madge?”

“More or less. I’m kind of itinerant.” She drew deeply from her cigarette and reached for the ashtray. “What all of you do is a lot steadier than my profession.”

“I thought real estate was booming. It certainly is in Los Angeles.”

“That’s the trouble.” Madge extinguished her cigarette and ran her fingers through her hair. She inserted another cigarette between thin lips and smiled sourly at Diana as she flicked a tiny gold lighter. “Everybody and his brother are into it. I happened to meet Lane when her firm handled a problem for my agency. She’s a good lawyer, but she cares too much and works too hard.”

“Real estate isn’t my field,” Lane said, looking at Diana. “I was helping a colleague, I had to research everything. Which made me a poor lawyer who took longer to get things done,” she added with a chuckle.

“She got here two hours before you did,” Madge said to Diana. “Has to leave Wednesday. She was supposed to drive here with me two days ago to relax and ski for a whole week.”

“Last minute complications, Madge. It happens.”

“All the time to you, Lane.”

Diana said, “What do you do, Millie?”

“I’m a nurse,” Millie said, sipping what appeared to be a martini. “Chris and I live just down the street from each other. She’s not really quite so narrow-minded as she seems.”

Chris said tartly, “I work for a vice-president of Shell. You ought to hear his opinions.”

“How long have you been with Shell?” Diana asked, anxious to change the subject.

“Twenty-four years this past month.”

“Really? It sounds like you have a very responsible position.”

“I worked my way up to it. I’ve been a secretary all my life and I’ve never felt the least bit apologetic about it.”

“Why should you, if it belongs in your script?” Madge said.

Diana smothered a smile. Liz and Vivian came out of the kitchen arm in arm, carrying drinks. Feigning polite interest in the continuing conversation, Diana examined her surroundings.

The fireplace, floor to ceiling slab stone, dominated the cabin dramatically, and the major furniture was clustered around it. Dark wood paneling was warm and lustrous, blending with the rich brown shag carpeting. A curved breakfast bar separated the kitchen from the main room. Diana thought that the kitchen seemed unusually well- equipped for a cabin, with generous-sized cupboards and counters, a large refrigerator, an elaborate stove. In the dining area a tiffany lamp hung over an oval table surrounded by wicker chairs. A bookcase held games and cards and puzzles, a collection of paperbacks, and a matched set of books, probably classics. Off the dining area was a doorway, apparently to the back bedrooms and bathroom. A sturdy ladder leaning against one wall led to an open trapdoor in the ceiling.