Free The Obituary Writer by Ann Hood Page B

today!”
    “Well, here I am,” Vivien said, scooping the child into her arms. At six, Pamela had the same brown curls as her mother, and the same vivid blue eyes. Looking into her face, Vivien could see the child Lotte all over again, as if thirty years hadn’t passed and they were still sitting side by side at the Field School.
    “I’m mad mad mad at Bo and Johnny,” Pamela said, her whole face seeming to frown. “They won’t let me ride the ponies with them. They say I’m too little but I’m not. I’m big, right, Vivvie?”
    “Quite big, darling,” Vivien said. “And getting bigger every minute.” She hugged Pamela good and hard before setting her back down. Poets and mothers spoke of the lovely smell of children, but to Vivien they smelled acrid, like vinegar. And in Pamela’s case, earthy too, like the soil here in Napa.
    Pamela dragged a small wooden chair with a straw seat over to the stove so that she could inspect the beans. “Do you wish I were a boy, Vivvie?” she asked, tasting one.
    “Not at all,” Vivien said truthfully. Lotte’s boys were not at all like the boys she’d grown up with in San Francisco. They thought nothing of shooting and skinning deer or rabbits. There was always dirt under their fingernails and in the creases of their palms. She couldn’t remember seeing them dressed in anything but blue jeans and flannel shirts. No, Bo and Johnny were mysterious creatures to Vivien, and even to Lotte. When Pamela had been born, Lotte was the happiest Vivien had ever seen her. At last, Lotte had told her, I won’t be alone.
    “Well, sometimes I wish I were a boy,” Pamela was saying. She stirred the beans, just like her mother had, with confidence and assurance. “Like in Treasure Island , right, Vivvie?”
    “You want to be an adventurer,” Vivien said. Whenever she visited here, she read to Pamela at night. Robert Louis Stevenson was their latest favorite.
    “Yes!” Pamela said. “I want to fight pirates and crocodiles and sail around the Cape of Good Hope!”
    Vivien laughed. “Girls can do that too,” she said. “See? You don’t have to be a boy at all. Just older than six.”
    “That’s a relief,” she said. Pamela jumped off the chair and scurried toward the large open doors that led outside to where Lotte stood cooking.
    The fullness of Lotte’s life always struck Vivien. While hers was solitary and isolated, Lotte’s was populated with noise and work and people. Like tonight. At the long picnic tables behind the house, neighbors from other wineries sat talking and sharing their own wines, nibbling cheese made from one of their goats. Mexican and Italian workers from Lotte’s vineyard sat beside them, speaking in Spanish and Italian and broken English so that the air seemed to buzz with syllables. Children ran past, holding empty jars as they searched for fireflies. Someone had brought a large wooden bowl of rocket and small red tomatoes from her garden. The salad was dressed with olive oil from one of the vineyards, and a splash of a vinegar Lotte made from pouring leftover wine into an earthenware jug she kept by the kitchen door.
    Vivien stood beneath the string of white lights Robert had hung from the patio roof, weary from the abundance, the fresh food and wine, the life that seemed almost palpable here. A hand on her shoulder forced her to look up, into the face of the Italian man from the library.
    “Mrs. Lowe,” he said, smiling beneath his mustache.
    She didn’t correct him. “Sebastian, right?” she said.
    “If you must pronounce it like that, it’s okay,” he said. “I just like the word, how should I say this? In your mouth. It sounds like the song of a canary.”
    His hand felt heavy on her shoulder, like a burden. Would it be impolite to move it away? Vivien wondered.
    “We will get food,” he was saying, “and then sit together?”
    Vivien shook her head. “I’m sorry, no. I’m sitting with Lotte.” Even as she said this she caught