“You don’t seem fucked up at all. You’re successful. You know yourself. You seem to know me.”
“I do know you, but obviously you don’t quite know me, yet, and I need to fix that. Starting with your current misconception of me. Of course, I’m fucked up. My mother left my father for slutting around and then died and left me with that man. I blame her. I blame him. I blame me. I fear the fuck out of being just like that man.”
“You aren’t.”
“I am, Faith. I’m calculated. I’m cold with everyone but you, and yet I say that after the way I just treated you. I’m a bastard made by a bastard, and he was a damn good attorney. I drive myself to be better than he was. And I am.”
“Your version of being a bastard is a man who demanded to know everything from me. Not a man who assumed he did. Once I came to the realization that I’d pushed your buttons, I realized that too, even if you did not.”
“I pushed you.”
“I pushed you, too. And for the record. It’s pretty impressive that your version of ‘fucked up’ is to be amazing at your job.”
“I’ve seen your art, Faith. Your version of fucked up makes you amazing at your job, too, and obviously, from your recent success, I’m not the only one who shares that opinion. But there’s a difference between the two of us. I know I’m amazing at my job. You don’t.”
“I’m working on that,” she says. “You’ve helped. Last night helped. But right now, in this moment, I’m consumed with the same demon I’ve been consumed with since my mother died. I go back and forth between anger and gut-wrenching guilt. But never grief, and that starts the guilt all over again.”
I hand her another glass of whiskey. “I shouldn’t drink this,” she says.
“Why not? Are you driving?”
“Right,” she says. “Why? I’ll just go slower.”
“And as for your current demon,” I say when she sips from the glass, “I predict that once we get the chaos your mother created under control, you’ll find the grief. Or not. Maybe you’ll find out things about her that make that grief impossible.”
“Is that what happened with your father?”
“Yes,” I say. “It is, but I feel like I should remind you of what I just said. I came to terms with what I felt for my father many years before he died. And he wasn’t in my life, therefore there wasn’t anything to change those terms.”
“And you really feel no grief?”
“I really feel no grief,” I say without hesitation. “But you asked me if I feel alone now.”
“You said that you don’t.”
“And I don’t,” I confirm, and when I would offer nothing more to anyone else, I do with Faith. “But, on some level, I have moments where I’m aware that I have no blood ties left in this world, and that stirs an empty sensation inside me. Maybe that is feeling alone. I just don’t name it that.”
“You have no family at all?”
“My mother’s family has been gone for many years. My uncle on my father’s side died a few years back, but I hadn’t seen the man in a decade and as far as I know, neither had my father.”
“We live odd parallels,” she says. “My father and my uncle hadn’t spoken for about that long when my father died either.” She sinks back against the cushion. “And I’m feeling all the alcohol now.” She shifts to her side to face me. “I’m not drunk,” she adds. “Just kind of numb again, which is a good thing. It’s better than guilt.”
“How many employees do you have?”
“Is this a sobriety test?”
“If it is, will you pass?”
“Yes,” she says. “I told you. I’m numb, not drunk. And I have fifty employees, at least part of the year.”
“And your mother’s mishandling put all of those jobs on the line. You had to protect the winery.”
“I know. Especially Kasey’s job, and another ten or so key people who have been with the winery for their entire careers.”
“And yet you still feel guilt for fighting for them?”
“I feel guilt for not finding a way to fight for my mother and them.”