“And these Mission vines make lousy wine, good for slugging down at Mass and that’s about it. But they’re strong and sturdy and they never get sick. If you grafted these hardy Papist vines onto the best European vinifera, the Pinots of Burgundy and Champagne or the Cabernets of Bordeaux—my God, you’d have poetry in a bottle.”
What was it about listening to Reuben talk about grapes and wine that thrilled her so? His handsome face turned serious, his voice became low and intense. The purity of his obsession excited her in the oddest way, for no logical reason she could think of.
“How do you know so much about wine?” she asked him. “And grapes and soil and everything.”
He stood up, slapping the dirt from his hands. “It’s just a hobby,” he answered rather brusquely. “Every man’s got a hobby. Wine’s mine.”
They walked back down the stony track to the green valley floor holding hands. It was a bright, hot day full of golden sun, the kind of day she’d missed during her week and a half in cold, foggy San Francisco. She asked Reuben if he wanted to see why the farm was called Willow Pond, and took him to the prettiest spot, to her mind, on all of the two hundred acres she owned. It was the dry season, so the creek that fed the little pond was only a rocky trickle meandering through mosses and ferns and clumps of green azalea. But the willows still shadowed the shallow banks and bent over the quiet blue water like graceful mothers tending their children.
“Willows were my favorite trees when I was little,” she told Reuben, “because they were the easiest to climb.”
“Were you a tomboy?”
“No, not really. I wanted to be, but I wasn’t allowed. I wasn’t allowed to do much of anything, to tell you the truth. What was it like growing up in the South, on a plantation and everything?”
“Oh, you know. Cotton and tobacco,” he said vaguely. “White pillars, black folks singing. Women in crinolines.” He put his hands in his pockets and started to walk back across the wildflower meadow. She watched him for a second, then followed.
She slipped her arm through his, and thought of a question he wouldn’t mind answering. “Do you really think Doc Slaughter will come in with us?”
“Well, we’ll soon find out,” he said readily, “but I’m betting he will. It’ll be risky for him, but I think he’ll like the odds. I’ve never known Doc to turn his back on a main chance.”
“Why didn’t you tell me he was a real doctor?” Reuben shrugged, and she thought of what he’d told her and Henry last night—that a coal-stove accident twelve years ago had scarred Doc’s face so badly he’d lost all his patients. So he’d turned to his second love, antiques and curios; but he’d turned to alcohol too, and eventually he’d fallen into the demiworld of fencing and forgery. He still kept his medical diploma on the wall of his shop, for a joke. A sad joke, Grace thought.
“If he does agree to help,” she said, “I guess we’ll all be going to San Francisco in a few days. I wonder where we’ll stay. Henry and I used to stay at the Palace, but now that he’s—”
“Hold it,” Reuben cut in, coming to a halt in mid-field. “What are you talking about, Gus? Why do you think you’re coming?” She looked blank. “Not that I wouldn’t love to have you, honey, just you and me at the Palace Hotel—wouldn’t it be great? But the thing is, there won’t be anything for you to do. And if things get sticky, the farther away you are from Wing—”
He stopped when she laughed at him. “Are you out of your mind? Of course I’m coming! And Henry, and Ah You.”
“What?”
“Well, what did you think? That Henry would let you out of his sight while a great money-making scheme, which he thought up, was going on? He likes you, Reuben, but frankly, he wouldn’t trust you as far as the front gate.”
“I’m offended,” he said after a startled pause. She shook her head at him. “What about you?” he asked. “How far would you trust me?”
She laughed again. “With my money? Forget the gate. Not past the front steps.” He smiled back rather weakly; he couldn’t tell if she was serious or not. The hell of it was, she didn’t know either.
They started walking again. “If this trick works and you get rich,” she mused, “do you still plan to just sit around in your ranchero with your feet up, watching other people do all the work?”
“Sure.” But he said it listlessly, she thought. “Why not?”
After a moment, she said with great nonchalance, “With a wife by your side, no doubt.”
He seemed to consider it seriously. “Maybe a wife,” he conceded. “And definitely kids. I’ve always liked kids. What’ll you do with your money, Grace? After you pay off the bank and the tax man.”
“Try to be a farmer, I guess,” she said, dejected. “Plant raisin grapes and wheat, maybe try corn again.”
“Raisin grapes?” He grimaced. “That’s disgusting.”
“Well, I don’t know anything about wine,” she said a little too loudly. “You’re the one who knows about wine, Reuben, not me.” She was intensely aware of the implications teeming under the surface of this conversation. Because he was a smart man, she could only assume that he was, too. But they didn’t look at each other, and a silence ensued, and she thought he was letting the subject drop until he spoke again.
“You’re the one who’ll get married soon,” he said lightly.
“What makes you think so?”
“You’re the marrying kind. I see you with a loving husband, a big lumbering sort of fellow, a little simple in the head but with a heart of gold. Doting on you. And a passel of kids running around all over the place.”
Her smile faded. “I want to show you something,” she murmured. “It’s not far.”
It was just over the hill, hidden from the house and the fields by a grove of oaks, low-branching and far-spreading, silent and lovely, guarding the tombstones at their feet like faithful soldiers. The weather-stained picket fence around the tiny graveyard was sagging and gap-toothed; it couldn’t last much longer. Good: she’d never liked it anyway. Her stepparents had built it long ago, preparing early for the day of salvation. It suited them—straight, sharp, restrictive, confining. They lay within its four sides now, at peace for eternity. But another soul rested here too, and for her Grace wanted space and freedom and no boundaries. The fence couldn’t rot soon enough.
Reuben’s hard arm came up around her shoulders, as if he sensed her sadness. “These are my stepparents’ graves,” she told him. “Claude and Marie Russell.”
“Russell,” he repeated, squinting at the dates chiseled into the stones. “Not Rousselot.”
“It used to be Rousselot; they changed it when they came here from Canada.”
The third gravestone was smaller, and as far away from the other two as the small space allowed. Grace knelt in front of it and rearranged the little bouquet of wildflowers, wilted now, that she’d laid here yesterday. Baby Girl Russell, the stone read. March 12, 1881.
“Who is it?” Reuben asked softly, coming to his knee’s beside her.
“My baby. She died so soon, before I could name her. But I got to hold her for a minute.” He took her hat off so he could see her face. She reached for his hand and whispered, “Now I can’t have any more children. The doctor said so.”
“Ah, Gracie.” He put his arms around her, even though she wasn’t crying. His sadness for her hurt her heart, and comforted her at the same time. “Poor Gracie,” he whispered, rubbing her back like a father.
She lifted her head from his shoulder. “Can I tell you about myself, Reuben?”
His stroking hand stilled; he tried to hide it, but she saw the flash of shock in his eyes. “You mean—the truth?”
She nodded, and waited, in complete sympathy with his alarm. The truth was something they hadn’t overburdened each other with before.
Finally he took a steadying breath and said, “All right. Yes. You can tell me.”
There was a low, semicircular bench around the base of one of the oak trees, a litt
le distance away from the graveyard. They sat there beside each other, not touching, listening to a mockingbird’s cheerful gurgling overhead, while Grace readied herself for the extraordinary task of telling Reuben the truth.
“I was born in St. Louis,” she began, because telling where you were born seemed like a logical place to start. “I don’t know anything about my father, but my mother was French and she was an entertainer. That is—” She stopped, stymied already. This was supposed to be the truth. “She danced and sang, I know that; what else she might’ve done to make a living, I’m too young—I mean I was too young—to know. Her name was Lili Dushane. Maybe.” She tried to laugh. “Can you imagine having a mother named Lili Dushane?” Reuben smiled, and she took heart.
“All my earliest memories are of train rides and hotel rooms and men, and the sound of my mother laughing. The later memories … there’s less laughter. More men. Seedier hotel rooms and the smell of gin. When I was ten, a Catholic social-worker lady came to our hotel in Sacramento and talked to my mother for a long time. After she left, Mama cried all night. The next day, the lady came back and explained to me how I was going to go live with a real family, and it would be wonderful—I’d have a daddy and schoolmates, a beautiful house on a farm with animals, and no more moving. And Mama said she’d come and see me so often, I wouldn’t even miss her.
“So I came to Willow Pond to live with the Russells, and I never saw my mother again.”
Reuben put his fingers on top of hers, on the space of bench between them. She turned her hand over, so they could be palm-to-palm.
“My stepparents were very strict, very religious. For the life of me, I couldn’t figure out why they wanted me. They didn’t seem to like me, much less love me. I don’t think they even liked each other. They were French Canadian Catholics. They kept me out of school because it was an occasion of sin, and my stepmother taught me prayers and the catechism at home. That’s just about all the education I’ve got,” she said bitterly. “It’s a damn miracle I can even read.” It still made her angry.
“All through my adolescence, I saw my mother’s abandonment as a trick, something she’d done on purpose because she didn’t love me, or just to be mean. But when I got older, I started to be able to—to conceive of the possibility that something had happened to her, that she’d died, or gotten too sick from drink and excess to be able to act responsibly. Now I really think that’s what must’ve happened, and I’ve forgiven her. But when I was growing up, all I knew was that she’d thrown me away and never looked back. So I rebelled against my stepparents. We fought constantly. I made it my life’s work to do everything they didn’t want me to do.”
“And then along came Joe,” Reuben guessed.
She smiled. He’d put his elbow on the back of the bench and twisted around to watch her while she talked. He looked fascinated. “Along came Joe,” she agreed. “I thought he was so good-looking. But he could’ve looked like Quasimodo and it wouldn’t have mattered, because he had one quality that was absolutely irresistible to me: he was forbidden.
“And we really did love each other. Those two months we had together were the happiest days of my life. We’d meet everywhere, as often as we could, we couldn’t keep our—” She trailed off. “Well. Anyway. It was sweet and innocent, and I thought it was beautiful.”
“Did he really fall off the rose trellis and break his neck?”
“Yes, he did. I know—it’s so crazy, it sounds like something I’d make up, but it really happened that way. After he died, and the truth came out, my stepfather locked me in my room. They passed meals to me through a crack in the door, and they even boarded up my window so I couldn’t climb out. It went on for weeks. Literally, weeks. And all that time, I was living for just one thing: to see the look on their faces when they let me out and I told them I was pregnant.”
She stood up, and looked out past the picket fence and the graves to the low hills rising in the sunny distance. “Well, it was nice while it lasted, but that little victory was over very quickly. Guess where they sent me.”
Reuben’s face was a study. “Don’t tell me a convent.”
“You guessed. Yes, a convent! In the Sierras. I couldn’t believe it, either. And ‘Blessed Sisters of Misery’ would’ve been a good name for those nuns, believe me. They treated me just like the sinner they thought I was, so much for Christian charity. They kept telling me I’d have to give up the baby as soon as it was born—which, of course, only made me even more determined to keep it. Somehow. When I was seven months pregnant—”
“You were sixteen?”
“Sixteen. When I was seven months gone, the Mother Superior came to tell me my stepparents had died. On a pilgrimage to Los Angeles, to see a little Mexican girl who had the stigmata and who claimed she’d been visited by the Blessed Virgin.”
“Hmm, this has a familiar ring.”
“The steamboat they were on blew up, and every pilgrim on board was either killed or drowned.”
“Well, at least they all went to heaven.” He winked at her.
“A few days later Henry showed up.”
“At the convent?”
“Yes. He was my stepfather’s black-sheep brother—so you see, Reuben, he is sort of an uncle. His name was hardly ever mentioned at home; all I knew was that he was a terrible sinner. Naturally I took to him immediately.”
“Naturally.”
“He got me out of the convent and brought me back to Willow Pond, which I’d inherited. We became best friends. He was kind, funny, affectionate, and best of all, normal. I don’t know what I’d have done without him when the baby died.”
She caught a fleeting look of skepticism on Reuben’s face before he could hide it. “Oh, I know what you’re thinking. That he was using me, at least for free room and board, and then anything else he could think of.”
“No, no, I—”
“It’s all right, the thought’s occurred to me too by now. But even if it was true then, it’s not anymore. That’s all in the past, completely irrelevant.”
He stood up and came to her. “I’ve seen him with you, Grace. You don’t have to convince me that Henry loves you.”
She wound her arms around him and squeezed. They stood together quietly, not talking, just holding each other. In that moment she knew she loved him, and that she probably couldn’t have him. But she had him now. So she would make the most of it.
She smiled up at him, blinking away a secret tear. “Come on, I want to show you a special place.” He groaned piteously. “No, it’s the last place, and I promise you’ll like it.”
It wasn’t far, and when they reached the spot, she could tell by his face that he liked it. “This was my church,” she announced, spreading her arms. “My chapel in the woods.” All it was was a little clearing in the trees on the side of the mountain that bordered the western fields. Only a clearing, but the soft, grassy slope was flecked with mock-heather and violets, and overhead the tall pines and buckeyes and fluttering maple trees made a perfect lace canopy, as lovely as any cathedral ceiling. “I called it the Church of the Damned Sinner. I was the only member of the congregation. Also the priest.”
Reuben laughed. “I love it. But just tell me one thing, Gus—that you never came here with Joe.”
“Never. Only with you.” They stared at each other until he reached for her, but she slipped out of his hands and sat down on the green grass. “I haven’t finished telling you my life story.” She tugged on his trouser cuff until he dropped down beside her, sighing philosophically. “Where was I?”
“Henry,” he answered, moving closer and rearranging a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “How long did it take you to figure out he had another occupation besides farming?”
“Not long. But he didn’t try very hard to hide it. And after the shock wore off, I was delighted. Well, it was illicit, illegal, probably even sinful—I was all for it! Before I turned eighteen, I became his confederate.”
“What else did you
do besides impersonate Andrew Carnegie’s daughter?”
She closed her eyes; he’d started to kiss the back of her neck. “My favorite was when we pretended to be French aristocrats, father and daughter, in this country for a visit. In two weeks, we convinced the richest families in Sacramento to invest in the ‘Comte de Villefort’s’ new wine-making process, which he’d recently perfected at his chateau in the Loire.” Reuben chuckled; his breath tickled her ear and made her shiver. And he was running his fingers along her backbone, slowly, up and down. “The hardest part was keeping a straight face when Henry would try to speak French. I can speak French—my stepparents spoke it at home—but he can’t; he left Quebec when he was a boy and forgot everything. So he’d make words up, just gibberish that sort of sounded French—worse than his German—and everybody believed it. Thank God we never met any real Frenchmen.”
Now he was doing something to the front of her dress. Unbuttoning it, if she wasn’t mistaken. She didn’t think the story of her life had his complete attention anymore. “But then you fell on hard times,” he prodded, hurrying it along.
“Then we fell on hard times. It started when they banished him from San Francisco.”
“Who did?”
“Businessmen, city-father types. They didn’t like it when the silver mine he’d tricked them into investing in turned out to be nonexistent. But they were too embarrassed to prosecute, so they just banished him.” Her pulse was jumping, her mind starting to cloud at the edges.
“How could they ‘banish’ him?”
“They just did. They threatened him. They’re like the Croakers, only they work in city hall.” Reuben’s fingers began to play a game with the sensitive skin in the hollow between her breasts. “So anyway,” she resumed, eyes squeezed shut so she could concentrate, “that’s when things started to go downhill. He wasn’t allowed into the big action in the city anymore, so his schemes became more and more small-time. I knew we’d hit bottom when I caught him planning to bilk the life savings out of consumptive invalids in a sanatorium in Santa Barbara. Well, I mean, you have to draw the line somewhere. That’s when I decided to take matters into my own hands. I became Sister Mary Augustine.”