The Winemaker's Daughter, page 25
She takes a bag down the hall to the nurses’ station. They are reluctant to allow her into the back room where they keep a hot plate, a microwave, and a refrigerator. She walks by without waiting for approval and then starts to entice the nurses with what she’s brought.
“Alora . . . pappardelle con ragu. Have you ever had a truly rich ragu, made of God’s own tomatoes, not the hard, tasteless, New World Order things? With porcini mushrooms?” She removes a small sealed jar of tomatoes, a bag of dried pappardelle, an onion, some seasoning in a pouch.
“Where did you get these?” the head nurse asks.
“I always travel with the makings of at least one meal. My emergency bag. This”—she points to the jar of Cartolano tomatoes—“and the pasta, I brought from home. Everything else came from the Albertson’s on Front Street.”
“We can’t let this—”
“Please, I’ll take full responsibility. Act like you never saw me.”
After she gets the ragu started, she returns to Teddy’s room. He seems to be asleep, though it is difficult to tell with the wrappings over his face. She puts her finger under his nose and feels the breathing. Back in the tiny kitchen, she takes out a bottle of Montepulciano d’Abruzzo, the simple table wine from the mountain region east of Rome. The ragu needs only a half cup of the blood of Italy; she sets it aside and begins boiling water on the hot plate for the pappardelle. When the thick pasta noodles are ready, she pours wine into two plastic cups and takes the meal into the room with the patient.
The smell awakens Teddy. Brunella is immensely pleased to be able to arouse his senses.
“What is it?”
“Pappardelle con ragu.”
“A family recipe?”
“Family tomatoes, well traveled, from Piemonte to Camp Missoula to the Columbia basin to Sacred Heart Hospital. Can you sit up?”
He edges his back slowly into a different position, though it is painful to move his butt and legs, from which skin has been lifted.
“Take a sip.” She moves the wine under his mouth and helps him drink. “Montepulciano d’Abruzzo, a wine made for healing.”
She feeds him the pappardelle, spooning it into his mouth and picking up the pieces that drip on the gauze and the sheets. The light is falling away behind the Bitterroots.
“It’s good,” he says, between bites. “Keep the wine coming.”
“I have to be careful, with your pain medication. All you need is a taste.”
He motions for one more sip, then waves off the food. “I know what you came for, Brunella,” he says.
“Do you?”
“It was the heat that killed him. He wasn’t burned and he didn’t die of smoke inhalation. The heat killed Niccolo.”
“The heat.”
“Yes.”
“I suppose that’s good.”
“No, it’s not good. It’s worse than anything you can ever imagine. Worse than flames. Worse than drowning. Worse than being strangled. You see this?” He raises the hand. “Looks like flesh just melted off, the skin peelin’ away, but the pain wasn’t what you would think ’cause the nerves were destroyed. But Niccolo, he’s in that broiler. The air becomes superheated, like—I don’t know—four hundred, five hundred, six hundred degrees. Like somebody holding a blowtorch down your throat. But you have to breathe. You can’t stop taking in air. You don’t have a choice. So what you do is—”
“Stop!”
He reaches out to find her face, pawing the air before his fingers land. “I thought you wanted to know.”
“I do.”
“You went back to the fire, you and Treadtoofar?”
“Yes. Thank you for the tip. There isn’t any water in there.”
“That’s correct.”
“And there wasn’t any last summer, Teddy?”
“Bone dry. Those pumps were never going to save us.”
“So it wasn’t Niccolo’s fault?”
“Draw your own conclusions. Nick played it straight with the information he had.”
She kisses him very gently, but he still winces at the touch of her lips on the freshly transplanted facial skin beneath damp gauze and silicone. Her eyes are clouded as she whispers a thank-you into his wrapped ears.
“Are you going to tell Leon Treadtoofar . . . what you just said to me?”
“If he asks. There’s one more thing. You have to wonder about it yourself.”
“Tell me.”
“Why did your brother ask for water pumps? Why did he put his trust—and our lives—at risk, if there wasn’t any water in there?”
“Well, obviously he didn’t know that at the time. He got bad information.”
“Did he ever tell you anything about the water in that basin, Brunella, before the fire?”
“No.”
“He told me.”
“What?”
“He told me about the water.”
“Teddy. You mean he told you about Kosbleau and the Indians draining it all for that casino?”
“Is that what you and the investigator think happened?”
“It looks that way.”
“Niccolo did everything a fire boss was supposed to do. The reason he was so confident about the pumps giving us relief was that he knew something, Brunella. He knew there had to be water in that basin. Now ask yourself this: How did he know? How could he have been so sure? We’re in a humdinger of a drought. Everything’s drawn down and caked, and still—still!—he’s dead sure there’s water in there.”
“It’s a mystery.”
“No, it is not a mystery. Niccolo knew because your father told him.”
“That can’t be.”
“Your father told him on the radio. That’s where the bad information came from. I heard him. Angelo told him on the day of the fire. He knew there was water in there. He knew. He told Niccolo to save his life. But obviously something had happened that Angelo didn’t know about. The water he thought was in that basin had disappeared.”
“Yes, we know that. Leon and I have documents from the reservation, and we found a pipe up on the ridge, and it all leads down to the tribe’s casino. But why would my father tell Niccolo there was water in there? How would he know? That’s national forestland, not our property. It’s been very dry. Everything was dying in there. I don’t understand.”
“Go ask your father.” His lips are pursed, and he makes a sound like wax paper peeling off a piece of meat. “Is there any more of the pasta?”
She spoons another mouthful to him.
“And now I suppose you’re going to ditch me.”
“Is that what you think of me?”
“You don’t need me anymore. I’ve told you everything I know. When you see my face, you will be afraid. And because a woman like you would never stay with someone disfigured, you won’t want to be around me. Remember I told you last summer about the woman I nearly took the big ride with? She had money, and I didn’t, and we could never be equal? It’s the same with beauty. I understand that.”
“A woman like me. What do you mean by that, Teddy?”
“You have a good heart. You may want to stay and see what I look like. But everything you say and do after that will be charity.”
“I’ll stay until they kick me out.”
“No. You don’t—”
“I’ll stay after they take the bandages off your face.”
“You can go.”
“I’ll stay until I’m—”
“Go, please. That’s what I want: Go home and ask your father about the water. Ask him why he was so sure there was water in there. Why did he tell that to Niccolo? Do what I say.”
She holds his head in a gentle embrace, rocking slowly, as darkness settles on the Bitterroots and a cooler breeze blows into the hospital room. She rocks him until he sleeps, his head against her chest.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
BRUNELLA STRIDES PAST a mound of unopened mail and ignores a flashing phone light. Eighteen new messages, all but three marked urgent. Electronic nannies—can’t they ever chill? Nothing is urgent when everything is urgent. And another thing: When did instant gratification become the national anthem? She forgets to close the front door, climbs upstairs, strips off her clothes, and turns on the shower. Here is Teddy once more, the face that followed her west from Missoula, as smooth as newborn skin, pink and dewy, and then mangled and raspberried. She is desperate to hold his face with her eyes and see beyond the surface.
She stays in the shower until the hot water runs out, puts on a robe with the phone in one pocket, and wanders from room to room before going outside. The early evening is warm, sunlight keeping the daylilies open, as she strolls to the backyard and down a path to her cedar bench. The columbine has peaked and gone, making way for black-eyed Susans on one side of her path and Roma tomatoes on the other. Need something to attract hummingbirds. She makes one call, trying to reach Nolanne and Cindy at Salmon Bay. She has not spoken to them since the aborted opening of Kornflint’s waterfront compound. Once the injunction was in place, using mother and daughter as evidence of a unique community that would be extinguished by the Kornflint project, Brunella felt secure in leaving. All she wants now is to touch base. When she dials the Godden girls, a robo-voice tells her the number has been disconnected.
The next day she drives to the crumbled fishing pier. The shacks of Salmon Bay are still standing, tenuously frozen in teardown poses where the dozers came to a halt after the court order. Nothing is stirring. She climbs up the rickety stairs to the office she has been keeping; it smells musty and unused, covered by dust. The newspaper left on the desk from her last day here has yellowed from the sun and looks preposterously old. She opens a window to let in a brisk slice of the bay, a blend of creosote and salt air; the noise is muted, low-industrial. Questions: Why didn’t the old vodka-livered Scandies put up more of a fight for their neighborhood? Why did it have to come from her? She does not belong; she is a floater, a tourist, the worst kind of cultural dilettante, she thinks now. Did she bring to life the old hatreds between Red Finns and Tollefsons? Or was it there all along, dormant, and by trying to preserve Salmon Bay she dredged up the ancient toxins? Not for the first time, she wonders if this campaign of hers is simply a ghost dance, trying to hold on to a fishing community in the city when she has her own fight east of the mountains.
Outside, she searches for one active business, a single structure with a pulse. She looks for Svenson’s, anticipating lefse just out of the oven. But the deli has closed with no explanation. Just like Scandinavians to leave without comment or emotion, to skulk away—silent, brooding, and blond. Don’t these people ever get mad? Brunella drifts around, looking for a familiar face, calling out for Cindy and Nolanne, trying to find something in the abandoned neighborhood. She bangs on the door of a ragged house.
“Looking for somebody?” The voice startles her. She turns to face a stubby man in jogging shoes and hard hat turned backward.
“Where are the people . . . Cindy and Nolanne? And what happened to Svenson’s?”
“You mean the people who used to live . . . in that?”
“Yes. This is their home. What’s going on here?”
“Let me check.” Friendly now. Forced politeness. He calls up a name on a palm-sized computer. “Godden? Is that the last name? We got ’em in the database. Relocated last Tuesday.”
“Relocated. Where?”
“It’s a free country. And they chose—let me see—Zanesville, Ohio.”
“Zanesville? What is that?”
“Can’t tell you.”
“They’ve lived here their entire lives. Why would they uproot themselves to Zanesville?”
“Can’t tell you. But you can buy a helluva lot of house in a place like Ohio, and with the kind of relocation money they got, why not?”
“What about Svenson?”
“Let me check. . . .” He enters the name into the palm computer, whistles. “This one went to Carefree, Arizona. Can’t say I blame him.”
“It’s a hundred and fifteen degrees down there.”
“But with AC you never have to go outside.”
“So where does somebody go to get lefse, or aquavit, or lutefisk?”
“We’ve preserved the John Olerud posters.”
A deliveryman is waiting for Brunella on the porch of her home, package in hand. She tells him to leave it with the others in the mound, but he says he cannot deliver it without a signature; it’s a legal document. Inside, she rips open the envelope and finds:
LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT OF ANGELO CARTOLANO
She drops the document on the floor and dials the coulee, heart at a gallop, fingers shaking; an interminable time between rings. “Hello?”
“Babbo! You’re alive.”
“S, sono magnifico, Nella. What’s the problem?”
“I just got this package.”
“My will, entirely rewritten. Hah! Read it carefully, and then you must come home. Roberto is here with some people, and they have so many papers.”
She spends the evening going through the material inventory of Angelo’s life, his pile after eighty years. He has constructed the will so that all property transfers to Brunella as soon as she signs the document. He leaves her: A premium wine vineyard, most of it in mature Nebbiolo grapes, the remainder in Sauvignon Blanc, Pinot Grigio, and some Sangiovese. An orchard of apple trees, Italian plums, figs, cherries (both Bings and Rainiers), and peaches (whites and Red Havens). The house, built in 1952. Two cellars, one in the main house, with at least a case of every Cartolano bottling except the one Angelo destroyed, and another in the newer detached building, full now with small oak barrels holding the wine dubbed “Niccolo’s vintage.” Stainless-steel fermentation tanks, six of them. A grape press from the hilltop town of Barolo, circa 1885.
She imagines herself the winemaker, trying to craft a life in that slightly listing house in the coulee, Angelo staring at Mount Stuart in the dying light, nobody from the city to tell her she’s been talking to herself too much. What will she do at night, worry about commodity prices, get geared up for Class B basketball, tune in to the local talk-radio demagogue while slurping her Mega Gulp? She would try to lose the city edge, for starters, stop finishing people’s sentences, maybe give the talk-radio gasbag a chance.
More stuff: A key to the locker in the cellar that contains the bottle for the Last Man’s Club (accompanied by a note in Angelo’s barely legible scrawl: Don’t let any of these bastards outlive me). A pickup truck, in working order, with 127,000 miles on it, and a Taurus station wagon, fifteen years old, in need of a new engine (or a tow). A Marc Chagall lithograph of a harvest scene in Provence, with floating spirits, as usual; one of them, a woman, appears to be masturbating. Jars containing seeds of the Cartolano family tomatoes from Piemonte. A baseball from the 1995 Mariners run—when they came from thirteen games out of first place in early August to win the American League West—signed by the three all-stars of that team: Ken Griffey Jr., Randy Johnson, and Alex Rodriguez. (Traitors! Angelo has written in a note attached to the ball.) And a baseball from the 2001 team, which broke the record for most wins by any team in the history of the American League, signed by Ichiro Suzuki.
Included in the will are legal descriptions of the house and land. She studies the boundaries, puzzling over one point. It says the Cartolano property extends to the ridge above the vineyard and coulee, as she thought, but that it also takes in a narrow swath of land on the crest, all the way to the edge of Gregory Gorton’s property, bordering the dead forest. And with the kind of fright that comes over a person who looks in the mirror one morning and sees somebody much too old, Brunella realizes that the little parcel of land on the ridge with the pipe draining water out of the national forest belongs to the Cartolanos—more specifically, that she will soon be its owner.
As promised, the irrigators have taken their case to the senator from Idaho who controls Indian affairs and water, and he has delivered. The tribe’s water, purchased from the upper Columbia basin and stored in a mammoth pit, will go nowhere pending a federal investigation. The entire casino project has been put on hold, red-tagged by building inspectors. The Indians invoke their sovereign nation status, but they are reminded by the senator from Idaho that Indians are still trustees of the United States. The tribe has countered with an offer: The Indians will give away land across the river, and a modest amount of water, to anyone who wants to start anew, suggesting that they may want to build themselves a golf course. The irrigators are outraged by this suggestion; it’s leftover land, windswept and treeless, “unfit for a palsied rattlesnake,” in the words of Mrs. Flax. What they want is the water, a ticket to lifetime subsidies. Goddamn right they should pay us, the irrigators say. Mrs. Flax puts out a call for people throughout the West to join her in keeping watch over the Indian water pit.
When Brunella arrives after a sleepless night, several hundred people have set up camp around the fortified gates of the casino project, a make-shift assemblage of tents, trailers, tarps, flags, coolers, guns, generators, dogs, televisions, barbecues in halved metal barrels, fire rings on the asphalt. Mrs. Flax makes the rounds on the hot pavement, a cat in one arm, others trailing her, exhorting people to stand guard round the clock. The Indians have not made a public appearance since the tribal chairman was assaulted. Reports filter into the campsite of Indian moves and intrigue: They’ve been spotted down the road in a caravan; they showed up at the River-Vu Outlet Mall, couple hundred in one place, and didn’t buy anything, just stared at people until they were asked to leave. Upriver from the pit, a dozen or more Indians have gathered around a milling of young salmon, the out-migrating fish trapped in one of the bigger holding pools of the backed-up Columbia. Mrs. Flax distributes white ribbons and instructs people to wrap them around their upper right arms, and she hands out white baseball hats to select deputies. She is hoisted atop a car and delivers a speech about the Constitution and western water rights. The tribe, she says, is a dependent nation, “some would say conquered.” She rattles off the names of all the irrigators who have thrown in the towel, a litany of collapse. Fist in the air, she calls for a citizen’s grand jury to investigate the Indians.
