backstory.”
Corbin sighs and his shoulders slump a bit. But he squares them back up and smiles at me. “Fair enough. I hope you have on comfortable shoes, this may take a while.”
“I only have comfortable shoes,” I say, smiling, “I’m a teacher.”
We start walking again, the little solar lights along the path coming on as the sun sets.
He blows his breath out and says, “Where to start? Um, I married Elise way too young. I thought I’d make my parents proud, finally getting my act together after being kind of a stoner screwup in high school and college.”
“Really?” That stuns me, he seems so…adorably square. I had him pegged as Student Council president.
“Oh yeah. I did just enough to barely get by and mostly skated through on charm. And family money of course. My dad had a bad heart attack when I was a junior and that was a wake up call. I cut way back on the partying, did my work, got the grades. But I felt like they didn’t really notice–fourth kid with a history of screwing around, it takes a while, I guess. So when Elise started saying we should move in together after college, I said we should just get married.”
“Did your family not approve of living together?” I asked. Heaven knows Grandma had given me the old “free milk” speech before.
"Oh, I doubt they would have noticed. Which is why I went with the wedding. No way to ignore that, right? I was young and stupid. I thought Elise and I would be a good match because we were from similar backgrounds. Both from Boston, our families had friends in common…We looked really good together." He chuckles, but it’s dry, like he knows it’s not funny.
“I mean, I’d never even really met her family. It wasn’t until we started planning the wedding…‘we’, that’s rich. ‘She.’ Well, ‘she and her mom.’ It was like I’d gotten on an express train. After graduation, I started work in the Boston office of Yankee Cotton,” he sees my startled expression and adds, "yeah, not the best name, but that’s my family’s textile mill. Anyway. Elise was crazed with wedding planning. It was way too easy to take a wrong step, express the wrong opinion, so I started working longer hours, keeping out of her hair. When we did see one another we fought. Once, in a quiet moment, I said to her that maybe it wasn’t normal to be screaming all the time. She said, ‘That’s because your parents are the Cosbys. Normal people fight.’"
“Well, I’m glad your parents are not the Cosbys,” I say, “but it’s nice that she thought they were perfect.”
“Another sign of how little attention she paid. My parents are normal people who disagree sometimes, but they don’t scream and slam doors and storm out of the house.” He trails off, and we walk a bit longer, getting deeper into the vineyard. The only light now is the moon, but it’s a cloudless night, so it’s enough to see by in the wide spaces between the rows of grapes.
“And the wedding itself. My god,” he continues. “Our parents met for the first time at a cocktail party Mom and Dad threw. It was fine. Once the whiskey sours and martinis were flowing, they realized that Dad had gone to Harvard at about the same time Elise’s father, Charles had gone to Yale. So they did that semi-aggressive ribbing thing that drunk guys that don’t like one another but have to pretend they do sometimes try. It was uncomfortable and of course Elise blamed my parents. She really wanted me to work for her dad, who was in banking, so she ran mine down whenever she could.”
“So…why were you marrying her again? It had to be clear to you that it wasn’t going to work out.”
"Yeah, crystal clear. But I didn’t want to be the family fuck-up. I thought the stand up thing would be to make it work. Young and stupid, remember?
“No kidding.” There was a deranged nobility to it, though, I had to admit.
“So at the wedding itself–which if you can think of the most ostentatious
Corbin sighs and his shoulders slump a bit. But he squares them back up and smiles at me. “Fair enough. I hope you have on comfortable shoes, this may take a while.”
“I only have comfortable shoes,” I say, smiling, “I’m a teacher.”
We start walking again, the little solar lights along the path coming on as the sun sets.
He blows his breath out and says, “Where to start? Um, I married Elise way too young. I thought I’d make my parents proud, finally getting my act together after being kind of a stoner screwup in high school and college.”
“Really?” That stuns me, he seems so…adorably square. I had him pegged as Student Council president.
“Oh yeah. I did just enough to barely get by and mostly skated through on charm. And family money of course. My dad had a bad heart attack when I was a junior and that was a wake up call. I cut way back on the partying, did my work, got the grades. But I felt like they didn’t really notice–fourth kid with a history of screwing around, it takes a while, I guess. So when Elise started saying we should move in together after college, I said we should just get married.”
“Did your family not approve of living together?” I asked. Heaven knows Grandma had given me the old “free milk” speech before.
"Oh, I doubt they would have noticed. Which is why I went with the wedding. No way to ignore that, right? I was young and stupid. I thought Elise and I would be a good match because we were from similar backgrounds. Both from Boston, our families had friends in common…We looked really good together." He chuckles, but it’s dry, like he knows it’s not funny.
“I mean, I’d never even really met her family. It wasn’t until we started planning the wedding…‘we’, that’s rich. ‘She.’ Well, ‘she and her mom.’ It was like I’d gotten on an express train. After graduation, I started work in the Boston office of Yankee Cotton,” he sees my startled expression and adds, "yeah, not the best name, but that’s my family’s textile mill. Anyway. Elise was crazed with wedding planning. It was way too easy to take a wrong step, express the wrong opinion, so I started working longer hours, keeping out of her hair. When we did see one another we fought. Once, in a quiet moment, I said to her that maybe it wasn’t normal to be screaming all the time. She said, ‘That’s because your parents are the Cosbys. Normal people fight.’"
“Well, I’m glad your parents are not the Cosbys,” I say, “but it’s nice that she thought they were perfect.”
“Another sign of how little attention she paid. My parents are normal people who disagree sometimes, but they don’t scream and slam doors and storm out of the house.” He trails off, and we walk a bit longer, getting deeper into the vineyard. The only light now is the moon, but it’s a cloudless night, so it’s enough to see by in the wide spaces between the rows of grapes.
“And the wedding itself. My god,” he continues. “Our parents met for the first time at a cocktail party Mom and Dad threw. It was fine. Once the whiskey sours and martinis were flowing, they realized that Dad had gone to Harvard at about the same time Elise’s father, Charles had gone to Yale. So they did that semi-aggressive ribbing thing that drunk guys that don’t like one another but have to pretend they do sometimes try. It was uncomfortable and of course Elise blamed my parents. She really wanted me to work for her dad, who was in banking, so she ran mine down whenever she could.”
“So…why were you marrying her again? It had to be clear to you that it wasn’t going to work out.”
"Yeah, crystal clear. But I didn’t want to be the family fuck-up. I thought the stand up thing would be to make it work. Young and stupid, remember?
“No kidding.” There was a deranged nobility to it, though, I had to admit.
“So at the wedding itself–which if you can think of the most ostentatious
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