My thirty-second birthday fell on the Sunday after the last week of semester. When it dawned, I was feeling lower than I ever had in my life.
I had been in a slump ever since the letter from Chess arrived, but as the week of my birthday approached, I started to let a little bit of hope back in. Ever since I could remember, Chess had made a big deal of celebrating my birthday. Whether she was spoiling me with some lavish gift or making me a mug cake out of whatever she could find in our shitty little kitchen, she was always,alwaysthere.
But my hope that she might miraculously appear, arms outstretched and ready to forgive me, had been dashed a couple of days earlier when I opened our front door and nearly tripped over the package on our doorstep. It was a half-case of the Bibliophile Noriko reserve pinot noir, with a note enclosed that simply said:Happy birthday, Sadie. C.
It was almost worse than her not acknowledging the day at all.Hey, remember that expensive wine we never finished drinking that night you told me I loved you too much? Here’s enough for you to drown in. Happy birthday.
Given that, I was in no mood to do anything special for my birthday. I was especially in no mood to do anything wine-related for my birthday – but Fiona had gleefully planned a day trip for us all out to the Tsukamoto brothers’ winery, and if I cancelled, it would crush her.
‘Just wait until you see it!’ she exclaimed, as Hobart’s eastern suburbs started to give way to wine country. ‘It’s so beautiful out here.’
She was driving. Lex was in the passenger seat, headphones in. The girls were in the back, chattering busily over whatever it was they were doing on their iPad, leaving Jonah and me in the middle.
I leant my head against the window. There was something vaguely hypnotic about the straight lines of the vines.
Jonah touched my hand with one long finger. ‘You all right?’
I nodded. ‘Fine.’
I’d had to tell him about the wine. It was much more difficult to conceal six bottles of wine than it was to conceal a letter, after all.That’s great, though, he’d said over breakfast that morning.She’s making an effort.
I suppose,I’d lied. If I told him what I really thought – that Chess ticking a checkbox to double her Bibliophile wine club order for the quarter was so little effort she might as well have saidfuck you– he’d have argued with me, and I didn’t have the energy for that.
So I’d forced a smile when he slid a plate of corn fritters in front of me, and promptly changed the subject.The finish on your wedding ring is wearing off, I’d told him, gesturing at it with my fork.
He’d peered at it through his glasses.Oh, so it is, he’d said.Should we switch it out before we leave?
I’d slid the second of the three-for-$12 wedding rings onto his finger. The corn fritters had made me feel a little better – he knew how much I liked them, and ever since he’d found out about mylove of leek he’d been tweaking the recipe to include more of it. But there could be no clearer reminder than the streaked, faded gold finish on his discarded wedding ring that this tie – like all the other ties I’d ever had – was going to come undone in the end.
‘No thinking today, birthday girl!’ Fiona declared. ‘Only drinking!’
Jonah put his hand on top of mine, his palm on my knuckles, his fingers finding the gaps between mine. ‘That sounds like a sensible resolution, darling.’
He was an intelligent man. He might not know about the letter, but he’d probably guessed I was thinking about Chess. He had so many other things to worry about, between work and his family, and here he was, worrying about me instead.
I exhaled. No matter how dejected I was, I had to rise to the occasion. If nothing else, I owed him – and Fiona, and the kids – a pleasant day.
So I made myself smile. ‘Drinking, not thinking,’ I echoed. ‘I pledge to be a wonderful example for your children, Fiona.’
She laughed. ‘Obviously the whole reason I’ve immersed myself in wine culture is to make it seem less cool to them. Thank you for joining me in my mission to make them teetotallers.’
Jonah squeezed my hand, smiling back at me. Part of me wanted to snatch my hand away, and part of me wanted to hold on tighter. Caught between the two impulses, all I could do was sit perfectly still.
The winery was on the top of a hill, lines of vines trickling down the slope. ‘That’s katakana,’ Lex said, pointing at the sign next to the gate, which had Japanese characters under the wordBibliophile, written in that same trademark Tsundoku script. ‘It saysbiburiofairu. And the ones on the other side of the gate are kanji. They sayTsukamoto. Satoshi taught me.’
‘He’ll be delighted you remembered,’ Fiona said fondly.
The man himself met us in the car park, emerging from the building with a grin on his face. ‘I had to come down yesterday to talk business with Isamu, so I jumped on one of the wine tour buses,’ he said, hugging Fiona hello. ‘I thought I could be your designated driver home today, so you can enjoy the wine too.’
‘Sometimes, Satoshi,’ Fiona said, drawing back briefly to look at him, then hugging him again, ‘I think you’re an angel sent directly from heaven.’
Satoshi showed us around with obvious pride. ‘The actual winery, where Isamu makes the wine, is on the other side of the hill,’ he told us. ‘That’s his domain, so of course the design is all deeply utilitarian and unattractive. Here, though’ – he gestured to the tasting room, all white walls and warm wooden beams, where a minibus-full of people was being served – ‘I had more input.’
He pointed out the B&B, tucked away around a quiet corner (‘It’s very peaceful there, if you ever need a quiet getaway,’ he said to Jonah and me. ‘My mother runs a tight ship.’), before he led us into the restaurant. The same colour palette from the tasting room persisted, but the majority of the walls were glass, offering a panoramic view of the vines.
‘Pinot gris,’ Satoshi said, pointing out the different blocks of vines, ‘chardonnay, pinot noir. There are more varietals down the bottom of the hill and behind the B&B.’
Chess would love this.
