Like his late father, Bobby had never let Susan talk him into anything. He had refused her pleas for donations to Peruvian rebels in the Andes (by then Central American rebels had become passé), for ending incidental cetacean kills, to her friend’s feminist-oriented Girl Scout troop. It wasn’t that he and Jeremy hadn’t believed in her cause for the week, Bobby simply feared that by giving to her he was giving in to her, showing a weakness that she would exploit for life. As Tobie’s on-again/off-again girlfriend, Susan had been a fixture around the ranch for years, and both Bobby and Jeremy had secretly enjoyed having her about; she kept things interesting. She was eight years Tobie’s senior, and at first Jeremy had hoped her age might help mature his youngest son, but he had long given up on that whimsy.
The last years of his life Jeremy had great fun telling of one of her run-ins with her ultimate nemesis, the automobile. Her Mustang had died of thirst; she had driven it without water for days, with the red light on her dashboard a distraction, like a mosquito, to be dismissed with a wave of the hand. Her father lent her his new BMW, his pride and joy. Jeremy had been out front of Mount Vernon puttering around in the yard that long-ago Sunday morning. Susan, who had spent the night at the Barnes with Tobie, came bolting from the front door in a rush; she had failed to tell her son’s sitter she’d be out all night. She hopped into the expensive car and sped off down the drive. Jeremy often said that he knew at that moment what would happen next. He had installed a locked chain across the entrance the week before her flight. It was a desperate measure done to repel the siege of tourists after the wine country periodical had published a detailed map pinpointing the famous Jeremy Barnes vineyard.
Susan flew through the obstruction, uprooting the four-foot posts connected to the chain that clung like braces to the teeth of the radiator grill. Jeremy dropped his trowel and let out a great holler as the car disappeared from view.
The sound of the two posts pounding against the rear quarter panels of the 630i had no apparent impact on Susan’s mission, for if she made it to Healdsburg by ten she’d shave an hour off the sitter’s fee. Finally, two miles from the ranch, Gilberto flagged down the obsessive Susan.
Gilberto had been on his way home from Mass and thought he had apprehended a fanatical tourist with a souvenir, a paranoid thought brought on by two incidents at the ranch earlier that year: Gilberto had caught a tourist at the road cutting down a mature sauvignon blanc vine with a chain saw, and he had discovered early one morning a home winemaker and five accomplices up from Walnut Creek busily picking several rows of prime chardonnay vines. Their feeble excuse – that they thought the vineyard had already been harvested – didn’t hold water; the fools were out there in early August. The benevolent Jeremy had dropped the trespassing and felony theft charges against the perpetrators, but he asked the prosecution to go after them for violating a state statute prohibiting “attempted chaptalization” – adding sugar to the unripened grapes for fermentation, a minor misdemeanor under the alcoholic beverage code.
After Susan’s mishap, Jeremy had loaned her a rusted pick-up kept running only for inspecting the vineyards during the rainy season. Susan had it stolen that evening in front of Healdsburg’s supermarket. She had left the keys in it, running, while she went in to do her weekly shopping. Her excuse was that she was afraid the battery might go dead.
Later as a joke, Jeremy had purchased an old civil defense siren from a surplus store in Oakland; it was during the time of his recovery from heart surgery, when he would relax outside on the porch swing. He spotted Susan whipping into the drive in her rental car, and to warn of her approach he let go with the ear-piercing siren that Gilberto had secretly mounted on the rooftop the night before. Jeremy had it dismantled after Gilberto lost half his pruning crew; they had mistaken it for a sneak attack by the Border Patrol. It was one of Bobby’s favorite stories of his late father.
But Susan had finally made a request of Bobby that he couldn’t refuse. She had asked him to escort her to an invitation-only party in Timberrrville, a little community out on The River that rapidly was becoming the hip suburb to the county’s growing metropolis of Santo Dinero, the amusing name tagged on Santa Rosa by some rural locals. Susan had pulled out all the stops; she told Bobby it was his final chance to alter his fate as a social hermit. Susan had flatly refused to take Tobie; Bobby was her stand-in, her way out, her escort faute de mieux. Tobie had not been asked by her for the simple reason that The Insect would no doubt tag along and vomit in the corner of their hosts’ home before passing out. It was one social blunder Susan wouldn’t commit.
The night of the party Bobby stumbled up the steps to Susan’s cabin on “The Mountain,” a hill of granite behind Healdsburg that caused The River to abruptly change its course. Technically the hill was a dozen feet shy of being classified a true mountain by Rand-McNally, but that was the name tagged on it by the townsfolk. Two years before Susan had persuaded her father to purchase the old summer home on The Mountain’s north slope – as an investment, of course. Her father, an apple cannery owner in Gravenburg, readily agreed; it fell outside the ten-mile limit he’d imposed in the treaty agreed upon before she went fishing for her own home.
The winter after she moved into the cabin was called the Year of the Deluge by the locals. Sixty-five inches of rain fell in five months. Her home didn’t catch a ray of sunshine all winter in the canopy of the slope and the trees, and she swore that on the bathroom walls she could actually stand there and watch the mold grow. It was no wonder to Bobby that now she spent so much time with Tobie in the warmth of the sunny deck of Daniel’s old place. If it hadn’t been for the fight with Tobie that erupted over the party, no doubt Bobby wouldn’t have been standing on her porch cleaning his shoes covered with the mud of The Mountain.
“Hey, Little Ronny, where’s your momma?”
“She went to pick up the sitter. If she doesn’t come back in, tell her the drugstore called. They found her purse.”
“What’ve you been up to?”
“I didn’t have to go to school this week.”
“Were you sick?”
“No. My daddy took me to a Mensa convention in Los Angeles.”
“Now what is it your daddy does?”
“He used to be vice president at Grandpa’s cannery. Now he’s a parapsychologist.”
“That’s nice. Was it fun – your trip?”
“Boring. All I could do was sit in the hotel room or play computer games. I don’t like computer games. I’d rather play soccer or Scrabble.”
“Why didn’t you stay with your momma?”
“She said she was too busy to drive me to school in Gravenburg every day. She’s been real busy with her job.”
“Busy with Tobie growing roses?”
“I dunno.”
Susan burst through the door in a rush trailed by a 15-year-old girl. Susan had on a wildly striped miniskirt that appeared to be made from a T.G.I. Friday tablecloth; it was the first time in five months that Bobby had seen her in anything but jeans, a T-shirt and flak jacket. He was impressed. Ronny addressed his mother in a resigned tone.
“The drugstore called and said you left your purse.”
“Shit! Oh, damn it! I can’t believe it. How could I do such a thing?”
Ronny looked at Bobby through his thick rimmed glasses and rolled his eyes. Her diatribe continued.
“We’ll have to get the goddamn thing, Bobby. I have to pay the fucking sitter. Kimberly, this is Bobby.”
“Hi.”
“Hello.”
Susan turned to her son. “Now you be a good boy for Mommy and don’t give Kimberly a bad time.”
“Yeah, okay. When does Daddy get back from skiing?”
“Tomorrow night, baby, if the roads from Tahoe are open.”
“Can I walk down to The River tomorrow and watch the naked people?”
“Only if it’s nice like today. And only if you promise not to throw rocks. Really promise this time. Those people enjoy their privacy.”
“Oh, okay. I promise.”
Bobby ran right into it as he walked in front of Susan’s car. He fell face down in the driveway of pine needles; the bumper had nearly ripped his kneecap off. Susan sat in the passenger seat, combing her hair in the mirror of the visor, oblivious to his fall. Bobby struggled to his feet.
“What in the hell happened to your bumper?”
“Nothing. Come on, get in. We’re late.”
“Turn on the headlights, Susan.”
In the beams of light Bobby saw half of the front bumper bent three feet straight out like the lance of a knight or the bill of a swordfish. Susan stepped out of the car and marched up to inspect the damage.
“When did you do this?” Bobby inquired.
“God if I know. I – I do remember hearing something when I pulled away from the drugstore.”
“I wonder what their car looks like.”
“Whose car?”
“Never mind. Let’s take mine.”
“No, that’s okay, let’s just go.”
“I can’t drive this. Halfway through an intersection I’d skewer a pedestrian.”
“Whatever, Bobby. You’re making me late.”
