Page 54 of Before We Say Goodbye
“You had a mini heart attack.”
“A heart attack?”
In her eyes he saw so much loss and pain. He’d done this to himself, and the reality of it came at him like a train. He’d been pushing for so damn long and hard, and this was what he got.
“Where are the boys?”
“With my parents.”
Bec slid onto the bed and cuddled up with him and began to weep. He squeezed her. “No, don’t do that. I’m fine.”
“It’s gotta stop, Otis. You’re not fine. You’re thirty and had a heart attack. You won’t make it to forty unless you stop.”
“I’m going to slow down.”
“How? We have to start all over. Do you know how many acres of vines we need to get into the ground?”
Reality gut punched him. She was right. He hadn’t earned anything, certainly not tenure with his farm. The following years would be the toughest of his life.
He didn’t know where to go from here. “I’m going to change, Bec. You’ve been right all along. I can’t keep going this hard. We’ll have to get more help. I’ll settle down. If you want to sell the farm, we’ll sell the farm. Maybe it’s time I go back to sch—”
“Oh, right, so you can be miserable about it the rest of your life. We have to replant, Otis. We’re not stopping now, but you have to change. Your behavior on the road has to change. How many times do I have to tell you that what you put in your bottles doesn’t define who you are? You take it too seriously.”
Otis stared up to the white ceiling. “I don’t know how else to say it, but that farm and those wines, Lost Souls, it’s my oxygen.”
Bec petted his face, there for him even when he didn’t deserve it. “We’re your oxygen, Otis. Me and Cam and Michael. You’re missing out. You’re missing the boys grow up. All Cam wants to do is go fishing with you, and you haven’t taken him once. They just watched you collapse and be carried unconscious into an ambulance.”
She climbed off the bed and stood over him. “I didn’t marry your wines, Otis. You’re a great man, even without them. The problem isthat you’re the only one who doesn’t see it, the only one who doesn’t realize that you let the quality of each vintage determine your greatness. That’s not healthy.”
“But it’s true. What’s wrong with that? The quality of Rembrandt’s work had to do with his paintings, not how he brushed his teeth. Keith Richards isn’t known for the way he dresses. It’s his guitar playing. I’m an artist, and I am absolutely defined by my output. I only get so many vintages in a lifetime, and it already feels like I’m running out.”
She slapped the air. “You don’t get it. You will make better wine when you stop trying so hard. You’ll make better wine when you can find balance in your life. What does any of it matter if you have another heart attack and don’t wake up? You talk like you’re in your eighties. You’re thirty. Doctors are getting out of their residencies in their thirties. Most people at our age still have no idea what they want to do. You know exactly. You’re way ahead, but you have to sit back and smell the riesling—”
“It’s not that easy, Bec.”
“It is. Yes, you only have a finite number of vintages, but what about the finite amount of time you have with your boys? With me? I could be gone tomorrow.”
Otis saw a flash of a life without her, and it caved in on him. “I hear you, Bec.”
Bec didn’t leave the changing up to him. Having read it in one of her cuckoo books that she kept on her cuckoo bookshelf, she decided the first order of business was to institute daily recess for Otis.
Recess.
She laid out the whole plan with a straight face too.
He was back home from the hospital and feeling okay. Along with the doctor’s instructions to eat healthier, start jogging, and stop drinkingso much, he had a long list from Bec, including her instructions to “take an hour every day to play.”
“Play?”
“Yes, play.”
“For God’s sake, who has time to play?”
She didn’t respond, didn’t have to. He’d already promised. He could hear himself back in the hospital.I’ll change, Bec. I swear to God.
Worst promise he’d ever made.
“Guess what,” Bec said, determined to fix him, “you have two expert boys outside who can teach you how to play.When will the replanting happen?you might ask. On either side of recess.”
