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A Delicate Finish

MIRA

Francesca DeAngelo wasn't a praying kind of woman. She had her own personal arrangement with God. It went like this: she wouldn't ask for anything unless it was absolutely necessary but, when she did, He better damn well come through. Over the years this had worked for her quite well, with one major exception.

She climbed down from the tractor seat, walked back to where the spray rig was connected and bent down to examine the attachment. Pulling off her gloves, she wiped the nozzle free of wet sulfur. Then she clambered back up into the cab and, holding her breath, tried turning over the engine.

"Please, please, don't die on me now," she muttered. The motor coughed back into life and once again the bulky machine rolled forward. Maneuvering the vehicle between rows of Syrah vines, she looked back over her shoulder hoping to see a dusty cloud of sulfur pouring from the rig. Nothing. The machine was still jammed.

Setting her teeth, she turned off the engine and climbed down to check the nozzle once again. Everything looked normal, everything except that it wasn't working. Pushing her protective goggles to the top of her head, she gazed out over the burlap-dry hills on one side of the valley and the lush green grapevines on the other, tilted her head back to consider the position of the sun and swore like a field hand. When things went south, they went with a vengeance. She kept her voice low, a habit she'd acquired around her son, Nicholas. He was eight years old and a sponge for four-letter words.

It was late spring in Santa Barbara County. The valley between the San Rafael and Santa Ynez Mountains where the twelve-hundred-acre DeAngelo Vineyards nestled was still damp and misty even though it was high noon, perfect mildew weather. Francesca had absolutely no liquid assets to repair her rig, a grape grower's only defense against crop-destroying mildew. The weather had simply not cooperated. Because of a cool spring aided by the La Niña weather pattern, the vineyard would produce a thinner crop of Chardonnay this year and an even thinner crop of Syrah. Those annoyances she could manage. Every vintner faced weather conditions and mechanical problems. A short summer meant adding sugar to the wine. A long one meant an early harvest. A broken spray rig or linchpin meant paying interest to the bank until the profits rolled in. It all went with the territory. This was not one of those times when divine intervention was necessary. This was no more than an ordinary setback.

What Francesca couldn't think about without a serious knotting of her stomach was the county's newest adversary, Grape Growers Incorporated, the Wal-Mart of the wine industry, building a world-class winery in her valley. GGI meant bankruptcy for family vineyards. DeAngelo Winery, with its vines stitched into gently sloping hillsides and its flatlands with excellent drainage, would be among the first to fall. A weak harvest wouldn't help matters. Unless the spray rig was repaired quickly, mildew would form and she would lose three-fourths of her grapes. Then she would be in serious trouble.

Francesca would never call herself bitter. Her lip curled. Bitterness followed in the wake of disappointment and disappointment came when expectations didn't materialize. She'd given up on expectations long ago. She barely remembered what it was like to want something so badly she could think of nothing else, the time when she'd first negotiated with God, promising that if He granted her this one and only wish, she would never ask for anything else again. God listened and, very soon after, Jake Harris asked her to marry him.

Seven years later, Jake gave up on her, the marriage, the vines, their six-year-old son, Nicholas, and took a position as winemaker for a vineyard in Napa County. She still couldn't pinpoint exactly when the relationship began to sour. It had happened suddenly, without warning. One minute they were happy and the next they weren't. They'd had a fight, not a major one, certainly not the worst they'd ever had, but for some reason it was the most important one.

Jake had packed up his suitcase while she'd gone into town for fried-chicken strips, his favorite, to appease him. "It just isn't working," he said calmly, before walking out into the rainy night. He forgot the chicken strips, or maybe he hadn't really wanted them in the first place. Maybe it was just an excuse to get her out of the house so he could gather his belongings and leave.

She remembered the odd timbre of his voice and the way the back of his head glowed like a silver orb in the rainy night and the way her ribs ached because she thought about him so much. Mostly she remembered the chicken strips rising into her throat and filling her mouth before she vomited the contents of her stomach into the toilet.

In the blink of an eye, she'd gone from Francie Harris, wife, mother and half of a successful wine-making pair, to Francesca DeAngelo, single-parent vintner struggling to make do.

As far as Francesca was concerned, God owed her. He broke their bargain, freeing her to resume asking for favors once again.After all, a marriage should be worth quite a few favors. At first she prayed for a successful harvest and enough income to pay the help and her bills. Later, she added a few more items to her list, items like the evolution of the perfect grape to add to her Pinot Noir blend or enough profit from the year's harvest to pay off her bank loan for the new winery. Lately, she'd prayed for the demise of Grape Growers Incorporated. She wouldn't pray for the broken spray rig. It was too far down on the list. She would figure out something else.

The familiar ring of the lunch bell brought with it a new set of problems. Julianne, her mother-in-law, would have to be told about the faulty rig. She would wonder why the spraying had stopped. And, as usual, she would step in with the offer of a loan. If Francesca didn't accept, the tension in the house would be thick as the un-filtered must from her red grapes.

She sighed and turned toward home. It wasn't that she didn't appreciate her mother-in-law. The problem was that Julianne's generosity had created a debt Francesca couldn't possibly repay. She walked down the hill between leafy vines that soon would be thick with plump Chardonnay grapes. Her footsteps slowed as she reached the porch. She heard Nick's chattering and his grandmother's bubbly return laughter. Francesca's resolution faltered. She was ashamed of herself. Where would Nick be without Julianne? Where would anyone be without her?

Excerpted from A Delicate Finishby Jeanette Baker Copyright © 2005 by Jeanette Baker. Excerpted by permission.
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