People were always surprised when they met her grandmother for the first time. To say she was not the usual senior citizen would be a vast understatement. Today she wore a white tank top and denim coveralls over her still-trim figure. A Virginia Slims cigarette dangled from the fingertips of her right hand. Grandma had been a chain smoker for more than fifty years and was not about to stop now, despite all the health warnings. Her feet, still a petite size six that she prided herself on, were covered with muddy, formerly white sneakers.
"Angela, darling," her grandmother crooned, opening her arms wide for a one-armed embrace, meanwhile holding her cigarette expertly in the air to avoid catching her granddaughter's hair on fire. Even as she hugged, she shook off the long ash. Before she'd discovered Virginia Slims, Grandma had used a cigarette holder, and what a pretentious sight that had been! Dungarees and an eighteen-karat-gold Tiffany cigarette holder! Her grandfather had matched her conspicuous consumption with Cuban cigars. But those had been the days of prosperity… before the year of the drought, before the year they'd had the fire in the warehouse just after harvest, before the year they'd had so many strange machinery breakdowns, before the year they'd lost their prize vintner to a French winery, before the year they'd been hit with phylloxera. Now they just eked by, growing grapes for other wine makers, hoping for a miracle that would allow them to bottle wine again.
Thank God for her job in the city, which allowed her to make huge commissions selling Beverly Hills homes to the rich and famous. Without her annual input of $100,000 to $200,000 into Blue Dragon, they would be looking at one dead mythical serpent… so to speak.
"Grandma!" she squealed affectionately, and hugged back, giving an extra squeeze. It had been only a month since she'd visited last, but she missed the old lady and was desperately worried about her and the vineyards these days… with good reason. "How have you been? Is Miguel taking his heart pills? Did you fix the aerator? Where's Jow?" Miguel was the foreman, just as old as Grandma and still working as hard as ever, despite his doctor's precautions. And Jow was "Just One Week," the German shepherd she'd bought for her grandmother and grandfather so they wouldn't be lonely eight years ago after she married the man they had all come to refer to as the Creep. They'd vowed to keep the dog for "just one week" because having a rambunctious animal amidst delicate grapevines could be a problem. Besides, even as a puppy, they'd been able to tell by his huge pointy ears and enormous feet that he was going to grow into the horse of a dog he was now. Well, they'd kept Jow, her marriage had ended after only one year (too bad she hadn't made the one-week vow about the Creep), and grandpa had died three years ago of a sudden and massive stroke, brought on in part by the series of unexplained mishaps in his precious vineyard.
Grandma shrugged and began to lead her up the front steps. "Everything's fine. Jow is out with Miguel inspecting the new roots in the west field. You know, that damn dog has the greatest nose for aphids. And he saved a dozen of the rootstock last week by scarfing up slugs. Eats like a horse, and not just slugs. He ruined three of my prize rosebushes this spring because he insists on peeing there, close to the house. But at least the damn dog is of some use." She sniffed with disdain as she spoke, as if to hide the fact that she adored "the damned dog." She took a long drag on her cigarette, blew out the smoke in a circular cloud, then ground out the stub in a special sand-filled tub near the front door, placed there especially for that purpose by a disapproving Juanita, the Mexican housekeeper who had been a fixture at Blue Dragon forever. She was Miguel's wife.
"When are you going to quit smoking, Grandma?"
"When are you going to find yourself a good man and come back home to Blue Dragon?"
Never, apparently. "I heard you have a buyer interested in Blue Dragon. Gunther again?"
"As always," her grandmother said in a voice of pure disgust. If it wouldn't have been unladylike, she probably would have spit, too.
Gunther Morgan was a neighboring vintner who had been wanting to buy the Blue Dragon for years, since even before her grandfather had died. They suspected, but had never been able to prove, that he was responsible for some shady tactics to coerce them and other property owners in the region to sell. A more despicable fellow was not to be found in all of the Sonoma Valley.
"At least he's upped his offer this time," Angela remarked.
"Who told you that?"
"Carmen."
"Pfff! My great niece has a big mouth. She ought to use it to mind her own business. In fact, she ought to use it to find herself a husband and a father for that girl of hers."
"Grandma!"
"Well, it's true. If Carmen would spend more time teaching her daughter some traditional values, instead of preaching all that man-hating nonsense to college girls, she'd be a lot better off."
The best Angela could come up with was, "Tsk-tsk-tsk!" Then, "That statement is outrageous, even for you, Grandma. You know very well that Carmen is a respected professor of women's studies at Merryvale College. True, she goes off the deep end with some of her feminist philosophies, but she is by no means a man-hater."
"Ha! I heard her on the college radio station one day. She said any woman who lusted after George Clooney was a brainless twit."
Angela frowned in confusion. "Why would Carmen be discussing a movie star on a public radio station? She's not usually into entertainment issues."
"She was talking about how young girls are given the wrong standards in picking a man. Seems she's writing a new book, Men to Avoid in the New Millennium. She said women would be better off using logical standards to pick a mate, like a Bill Gates-type fellow, rather than lusting after a hunk of the month, like George Clooney."
Hunk of the month? I wonder if that's Carmen's phrase, or Grandma's? "That doesn't mean she's a man-hater."
Grandma was already lighting up another Virginia Slims. She inhaled deeply before replying in a puff of smoke: "Honey, any woman who fails to lust after George Clooney has to be a man-hater."
Angela had to laugh at that. "Even you, Grandma?"
"Especially me."
"I suspect that Carmen's point was, in this postfeminist era, women should have learned at least one thing: Looks aren't everything."
Grandma waggled her eyebrows at her. "They don't hurt."
"Furthermore, Grandma—"
"Uh-oh! I know I'm in trouble when you start a sentence with 'furthermore.'"
"Furthermore, Grandma," she continued, shooting her grandmother an exaggerated scowl for interrupting her, "I know better than anyone that all the man-pleasing acts in the world by a loving wife aren't going to keep a bound-to-stray, overly attractive husband at home."
Grandma nodded gravely. "Perfect example: the Creep."
"Precisely."
"Ay-yi-yi!" a feminine voice shrieked. "Is that a cigarette I smell in my nice clean house?" Juanita came barreling down the hallway that led from the kitchen to the front anteroom, all five-foot-nothing of her. But then she noticed Angela, and a smile spread across her face. "Angela, I didn't know you were here already. I made your favorites for lunch… chicken frijoles and 'spicy-dicey ricey.'" That latter was the name a much younger Angela had given to Juanita's special jalapeño-pepper-and-wild-rice dish.
"Oh, Juanita, I've missed you—and your cooking— so much." Angela, at flve-foot-seven, had to bend over to hug the tiny housekeeper, who had been a second mother to her since she was a toddler. That was when her mother and father had died in a car accident, and Grandma and Grandpa had stepped in as her parents.
"How about my cooking?" Grandma asked, clearly miffed. "I thought my penne pasta with pesto marinara was your favorite."
Grandma and Juanita had been fighting a gentle battle for years in the kitchen over whether the Italian dishes of her homeland were better than the Spanish dishes that Juanita preferred. It had not been unusual to have lasagna and tacos on the dinner table at one time.
"Now, now, I love both of your cooking," Angela said.
"Hmpfh! Well, come
then, Angelina. I've set the table out on the side porch. Hope that damn dog doesn't get a whiff of my frijoles, or he'll be galloping down from the hills faster'n a cat with a hot tail. Ate a whole ham I baked last week before I could catch him."
Grandma made sure she got the last word in, though. "We're going to eat in bianca for dinner tonight. All white. Chicken in garlic sauce, angel hair pasta with shrimp, cauliflower fresh from the garden, even white fudge mousse." Grandma took one last drag on her cigarette then.
That caught Juanita's attention, if Rose's insistence on an Italian menu had not. "Put out that stinkin' cigarette."
Sometimes it was hard to tell who was mistress of Blue Dragon.
Sometimes it just did not matter.
Sometimes it was so good to be home.
Pride goeth before…
Rose lit a cigarette and leaned back in her wicker chair.
She and Angela were sitting in the shade of the side porch, replete from Juanita's wonderful lunch. Rose squabbled constantly with Juanita, as two old women were wont to do, but she knew that Juanita was a good cook and a priceless friend. She also knew that Rose returned her affection in equal measure… aside from the smoking.
She and Angela were sipping from stemmed Lalique crystal wine goblets glistening with a splendid 1997 dry chardonnay, the last year they'd made their own wine at the Blue Dragon. The lunch and the visit with her beloved granddaughter both contributed to making it a perfect day in the house and on the land she loved dearly.
The only thing missing was the sound of children. It had always been a shortcoming, in Rose's opinion, but in fifty years here at the Blue Dragon all they'd had was Angela, and Angels's father, Marcus, before her. Oh, it hadn't been her fault that she'd given birth to only one child; she would have had a dozen kids, if she could have, but a hysterectomy had been necessary when she was only twenty-five. And her son, Marcus, had had only the one child, Angela, before his untimely death. And, God knew, she couldn't blame Angela for failing to have children with the Creep. Still, this was a huge house made for loud, energetic children.
Inhaling sweet smoke from her cigarette deep into her lungs, she exhaled slowly and studied her granddaughter. Such a good girl she was… though hardly a girl anymore at thirty-two. And she worked so hard. They rarely talked about it, but Rose knew how much money Angela plowed back into the Blue Dragon to keep it going. Rose never protested, though it rankled her pride mightily. In effect the Blue Dragon belonged to Angela… or it would as soon as she passed on. Before then, she hoped for a miracle; she was saying a novena every night for just that purpose. There had to be a way for Angela to be able to return to Sonoma and run the vineyards and reopen the winery.
"Why are you looking so wistful, Grandma?"
Rose laughed. "I was thinking about miracles… and great-grandchildren."
Angela laughed right back at her. "From me? It would take a miracle, and more, since there are no likely fathers on the horizon for me."
"You could do that artificial-insemination thing, couldn't you?"
"Grandma! You don't really mean that."
She shrugged. "I guess not, but I thought maybe I could shock you into action."
"We have more important things to discuss today, Grandma."
By the serious expression on her face, Rose knew she wasn't going to escape this time. "What is it now? Bounced check? Increased taxes? That sleazeball Gunther?"
"No, it's more than that. We need a big influx of money into this estate, Grandma. Bigger than I can provide from my job."
She exhaled a nicotine cloud. "How much?"
"Five hundred thousand would be nice. Two hundred thousand would pay off our bills and enable us to make some much-needed improvements. The other three are a cushion we've got to have. We can't go on month to month anymore."
Rose nodded. She understood the pressure all these money woes put on Angela. But five hundred thousand! Where would they ever get that kind of money? It was impossible. That must be what Angela was trying to tell her. "I am not going to sell the Blue Dragon, if that's what you have in mind… and certainly not to Gunther. I'd rather sell my jewelry, the antiques, everything in this house first." Actually, she'd already sold some of her most valuable possessions and replaced them with reproductions.
Angela reached across the table and patted her hand. "I know that, Grandma. I have an idea that might work, though."
Rose narrowed her eyes at Angela with suspicion. There was a shifty cast in her granddaughter's pretty black eyes… the kind that meant she was going to try to talk her into something she would not like. "What idea?"
"I sold a Bel Air mansion recently to a Hollywood producer. He's about to make a film—a romantic saga—about an old California family after World War Two. And here's the best part…"
Rose waited. That crafty cast was still in Angela's eyes.
"It takes place in a vineyard."
"So?"
"I think I could talk him into filming the movie here."
"For five hundred thousand dollars? Is he nuts?"
"No. He offered two hundred thousand—tentatively—conditional upon a personal tour and approval by his film crew. But I think I can negotiate him upward once he sees the place."
"When would this be? And for how long?"
"August… possibly into September."
"Angela! That's prime growing season… maybe even harvesttime. We can't have strangers stomping around here then."
"Maybe I could negotiate a time deadline, and put a limit on the number of people. It's the only way, Grandma."
"Oh, Angela," she sighed. "I can't believe we are reduced to this."
"It's not such an awful thing. Really. Lots of vineyards rent themselves out to movie studios… even to cooking shows on TV. In fact, we might be able to get you a bit part in the movie."
She pretended to brighten up. "Like Sophia Loren."
"Yeah. An older version of Sophia Loren."
"Ha! Sophia Loren is no young chick."
"I forgot."
"Any chance you could negotiate George Clooney into this movie? That would be the clincher for me."
Angela smiled warmly at her. She knew she had won. They were going to have a film crew here at the Blue Dragon.
"Just one thing, Angela."
"Anything."
Ha! Smart women know never to say that. "If I'm willing to give in on this point, I want you to agree to something."
"Anything."
Yep. Very unsmart of you, sweetie. "I want you to try to look a little harder for a man. You need someone to love, who will love you in return."
"And give you great-grandchildren?"
At least Angela wasn't offended. "An added bonus," she conceded.
"Okay, I'll look harder. I promise. It will be at the top of my list." She pretended to be writing herself a note on the palm of her hand. "One… good… man."
"Oh, I don't know about good. Virile would be better."
Angela had just begun to take a last sip of wine from her goblet and she started to choke. When she was able to talk, she asked with an arched eyebrow, "Virile?"
"Very virile."
Vinland, a month later…
Drowning in children…
Magnus and his nine children had been at sea for two sennights. Furthermore, he had not lain with a woman for eleven months. He wasn't sure which of those facts was driving him the barmiest.
"Are they all asleep?" he asked Torolf.
"Yea. Finally," his son answered, clearly disgusted. The younger children—all eight of them—were strung out between them on bed furs spread on the ship's cold planking. Most important, a long rope tied one ankle of each to that of the next, with Magnus and Torolf on either end. He would take no chance that one of them might sleepwalk over the side into the frigid water. Then there was Jogeir, who had developed a passion for fishing over the side of the boat and was becoming quite successful in his efforts. His lameness mattered not when casting a net or pullin
g in a heavy cod. Jogeir might decide to go night fishing and fall overboard. Or, in Hamr's case, he might just get it into his reckless head to go whale hunting… in the dark… with a stick.
It was the strangest thing… a lack-witted female killer whale had been shadowing his longship for days now, as if she were a long-lost friend. Click, click. Squeal, squeal. Chirp, chirp, the whale went on endlessly, which was enough to give a grown Viking an ache in the head. The whale seemed to be communicating with them in whale language, which Magnus of course did not understand, despite being fluent in the language of five countries, including Saxon English, which was very close to Old Norse. Perhaps the whale's vision was bad, and she thought his longship was a male whale.
Torolf saw the direction of his stare and said, "I am never going to have children. They are far too bothersome."
"Going to be celibate, are you, son?" he asked with a laugh.
He could barely see Torolf's face in the moonlight, but he suspected that it had turned green at the prospect. Celibacy at sixteen years of age must sound horrific. But then, celibacy at his age was not so pleasant, either.
"Nay, I am not as lack-witted as you to take such a vow."
The boy is far too impertinent by half.
"I will find a way to get the pleasure without the pain, so to speak."
Ha, ha, ha! Immature braggart! And I am going to find a beautiful young woman who loves to tup and cannot bear children. Well, actually, I am not. Now that I have taken my celibacy vow, I could not tup her, even if she dropped down in front of me… which will probably happen now, some twisted joke of that jester god, Loki. Mayhap then my vow would be invalid… because of the interference of a god. Aaarrgh! My brain is splintering apart here, and all from lack of a good tupping… or from too many children. Or whale talk.