Summer of Love

Dawn

Phoebe missed her mother from the other side of the vines but had no hope of getting back to her until her work here was done.

-Phoebe and the Burning Vines

July 2015

Be in the moment, Dawn, I said to myself, because that was what my yoga teachers and the instructors in the online mindfulness class I took a year ago were always telling me to do. Alfie kept my feet warm in my damp, chilly kitchen while I checked my text messages and waited for coffee to brew. I closed my eyes and focused on the hiss and fragrance of the water hitting the freshly ground beans and the loving heat of my goldendoodle on my toes. He'd been my gift to myself after Clark and I finally broke up, when I'd needed someone to come home to who would be excited to see me even when I couldn't look in the mirror.

I reminded myself that had I been hungover-like I was most mornings six months ago-I'd be spending money I didn't have on an inferior paper cup of coffee at the place around the corner, along with a gooey egg sandwich to soak up the acid in my stomach. And I'd be wondering when-if-the fog in my brain would clear and what I could do that might legitimately be called work until it did. I needed to list all the reasons I could think of for not drinking while I reset my system and decided what would come next. I still couldn't fathom the idea of being alcohol-free forever. And even though I drank the most when I was by myself, it was birthdays and celebrations without the fizzy joy of a glass of champagne that were the hardest to imagine. I did like waking up with a clear head and a completely settled stomach, though, plus enough energy to get to a yoga mat before heading to work. Except when I saw something like this text message from Dennis:

Want to grab a drink Saturday?

A drink.

Why is it always a drink?

Six months ago, before the Incident, I would have been thrilled to throw off the promise I'd made to myself not to drink that day-that week, that month-because I had an excuse: Dennis, the handsome, intriguing professor I'd met at the Berkeley Art Museum, where we were the only two people at 11:00 a.m. on a Tuesday looking at film stills from the career of Elia Kazan. I'd noticed him because how could I not? He looked like a New York City transplant with his brown leather shoes and slim pressed white shirt tucked into well-fitting jeans. And that mop of black hair that hadn't grayed yet despite the telltale lines near his eyes. The prominent pointy nose. Had he been a Bay Area local, he'd have been wearing Birkenstocks or Tevas on that unusually warm day and probably chinos he'd owned since grad school. I'd been out with so many guys like that. It was getting old.

I was getting old.

I blame the pink cloud of early sobriety-though I hated using that word because of all it implied-for my boldness in sauntering up to him where he was casually looking at a glossy of Marlon Brando and Eva Marie Saint, and saying, "Did you know Grace Kelly was offered the role and turned it down to do Rear Window?" My heart hammered in my chest even though I knew I looked good that day, having squeezed my nearly forty-year-old self into faded black jeans I'd purchased as a promise to myself not to gain weight while not drinking, as I'd heard so many people did, along with a flowy pale-blue top that showed my tan arms.

Keeping his arms folded across his chest, he gave me a sideways look with a raised eyebrow, and I saw for the first time that his eyes, like mine, were as blue as my shirt. "I did know that, but then, I teach a class on Hitchcock. How do you know this wonderful bit of trivia?"

Oh shit, I thought. Do I have to admit to being a wannabe filmmaker stuck as a set designer creating immersive worlds that revealed character and foreshadowed plot but only ever other people's plots? I shrugged, buying myself a few seconds. Then, turning back to the picture so I wouldn't have to hold eye contact, I replied, "I really like movies from the '50s, especially the Hitchcock ones from that era. I even named my dog Alfred, though I call him Alfie."

He smiled exactly the kind of smile I hoped to see whenever I mentioned my dog: childlike and warm. "Alfie," he repeated. "That's a great name for a dog." Then he turned back to the picture. "Do you think Saint did the role justice? Or would Kelly have been better?"

"You know, I prefer to be content that she was fabulous in Rear Window. It was obviously the right choice."

"Agreed. Plus, her legacy doesn't have to be sullied by having worked with a McCarthy informer."

"Brando and Leigh and all the other actors he made stars don't seem to have suffered," I pointed out.

He chuckled with what I took to be an agreement, then said, "Forgive me, but this is what I'm knee deep in right now. I'm writing an essay on him and some others. What do we do with the great art and feats of politically problematic figures? Kazan, Lindbergh, Pound."

"Sounds suspiciously like you might be a professor."

Dropping his arms and looking squarely at me, he said, "Guilty as charged. Professor of film history here at Berkeley. I'm Dennis Schulz. No relation to Charles." He held out his hand to shake.

His hand was large and warm and dry, and I thought, Is it possible I'm actually meeting someone the old-fashioned way? I didn't know anyone who met off the dating apps anymore. "Too bad," I said, "because Snoopy is my hero."

"Is he now?" Dennis looked genuinely amused.

"I mean . . . Joe Cool? The World War I flying ace? Author of 'It was a dark and stormy night'?"

Dennis laughed more heartily this time, and I felt a blush bloom in my chest and cheeks. "You got me there," he said. "I think because of the name I share with his creator, I've gotten a little prickly over the years about not being able to get people signed originals of 1960s comic strips."

"I can see how that would be a burden."

"And what do you do?"

"I'm a set designer," I replied, knowing it sounded cooler than it had felt to me for a long time. "And my name is Dawn Hartley."

Dennis raised impressed eyebrows. "A set designer for films?"

"Mostly television advertisements, theaters, and museums. Some big functions here and there. I'm freelance." Interesting, I thought to myself, he didn't comment on my last name. Big wine drinkers were always intrigued by my name and asked if I might be connected to the famous Napa vineyard.

"You must be good, then."

I shrugged. I was good, but the career wasn't mine.

We moved on to other movies we loved and eventually books and music, and by the time he said he had to get to his class to teach, we had exchanged numbers.

That was two days ago.

And now . . . a drink? If only it was before I finally admitted to myself that I really needed to stop drinking, at least for a while. If only it was before I'd accumulated more than one hundred days, triple digits, and started feeling healthy for the first time in years. My original three-month goal had turned into those one hundred days and then into six months; I was three weeks away from that lofty half-year milestone. I'd never gotten that far before-the most I'd done was a day, maybe three. Even when I'd set a seven-day goal for myself, I'd always get to Friday, sometimes Thursday, and find a reason to have a glass of something.

The Incident had been galvanizing.

Audrey, my best and only sober friend, was cheering me on toward a year. Her theory was that if I could get that far, I'd never want to go back.

Of course, Audrey also thought I needed meetings and more sober friends than just her. She always said, "No one with long-term sobriety does this alone." Was that what I wanted, though? To be sober forever? Sober-sober? Did I have to go to meetings and use the word alcoholic, a word I sincerely felt did not describe me?

Audrey hadn't had a drop of alcohol for seven years, which was nothing short of amazing, given the mess she'd been in college when we first met in the dorms at Columbia. But she managed to make not drinking seem glamorous with her Goop spa treatments, hot yoga, and SoulCycle, all of which made her look even more gorgeous in the billowy caftans and trousers she favored. The Oscar on her mantel from her supporting role in a movie about aliens from when we were both nine didn't hurt her allure.

I grabbed my phone and called her.

"Dennis just texted to ask if I wanted to have a drink."

"That's great!" she chirped into the phone.

"Yeah, but . . . a drink?"

"Coffee is a drink, you know."

"But a coffee date is so lame," I said, pouring myself a first cup of my perfectly brewed elixir. Alfie stirred to his feet and looked at me expectantly with a cocked head and wagging tail, so I put Audrey on speaker while I got him some breakfast and fresh water.

"I disagree," she said.

"Do I have to tell him? You know, that I'm not drinking?"

"How long have you known this guy? An hour? No."

"Then why should I tell him I'm suggesting coffee? I don't want him to think I'm not that into him. Going out for a cocktail telegraphs real interest, sex appeal, sophistication . . ."

"So does Royal Coffee."

"Be serious."

"I'm dead serious. I once had amazing sex after a mimosa-free brunch in Brooklyn."

"Once."

"Do you want to see this guy or not?"

"Of course I do."

"Then get over it. Suggest Royal. Oh! Or the Japanese Tea Garden."

"I do love the Tea Garden. . . ."

"See? The Tea Garden. Just do it."

"Okay."

But I didn't.

I hung up with Audrey and started a text to him suggesting coffee or tea, then deleted it. Like, eight times. Finally, I wrote:

Work is nuts at the moment. Next week?

I cringed at myself. Chicken. This is why you're not a real filmmaker. Though I'd improved over the years, I'd always battled what I'd only realized in the last year was called anxiety. As a kid, I'd been called "nervous," the kind of student who always got sick-and I mean throwing-up sick-before important tests, who shied away from trying out for the school plays even though I wanted to, who majored in film with the intention of becoming the first female director to be a household name, only to move to San Francisco after graduation for a props job at the Curran Theatre that my mother had secured for me through some old friend of hers. And since I showed a talent for knowing exactly what to add to any set to make it come alive, I'd moved up through the ranks quickly, no doubt due to the many en plein air excursions Mom had taken me on, with my very own easel and paints, where she taught me how not just to see but to imagine what might enhance a scene. Now I could pick my projects, but I always stayed in my lane. I sometimes thought that, too, was part of my success; I didn't question the higher-ups. Directors knew I'd get the job done without being a diva.

Talking to Dennis at the museum had been very out of character for me, and looking back on it now, my stomach clenched at my own boldness. What had I been thinking?

I needed more time to get my bearings. I needed to not feel unsexy for suggesting coffee instead of a cocktail. I needed to come clean to the people closest to me before I started going on coffee dates with strangers.

I glanced at Mom's moody depiction of our favorite beach in Carmel that hung over my couch a few feet away, and I felt a pang of guilt. Mom. Miranda Hartley, the first woman vintner in Napa. Mom, who had no idea I was trying to stop drinking. How could I possibly tell her? How could I possibly tell her that I couldn't handle the thing she made, the beautiful bottles she'd refined and perfected over fifty years, the science and art she'd dedicated her life to. She always insisted winemaking was both science and art, and I wondered if that was because she was a painter at heart. It made me happy to see her indulging this love of hers as she got older, traveling to museums all over Europe and taking various classes abroad.

Mom and I had always shared everything, and here I was not telling her what had become the ruling factor of my life. Lately when she asked me how I was doing, I'd taken to giving her one-word answers like fine and tired, then steering the conversation toward something not-me, like the highly suspicious pickleball trend or where she was traveling next, all of which went against everything we'd ever been to each other. Dawn and Miranda were the Hartley Girls long before Rory and Lorelai were the Gilmore Girls, with a long-standing Sunday-evening ritual while I was growing up: We'd laze around on the couch eating popcorn and Red Vines while watching whatever old movie was on the local channels, eventually graduating to rented VHS tapes when those came on the market. "No ads!" we gleefully said as we popped one of those into the shiny new machine that made all those satisfying clicks. But Mom always made sure to pause the tapes so we could talk during a few breaks like we always had during commercials. It was during those evenings that I'd share about the girls who were being mean to me, the boys I liked, the teachers I feared.

Mom shared, too-her worries about the vineyard, which included her search for organic pest control, her stress over finding a new head grower after Emilio died suddenly of a heart attack, not to mention her intense sadness at losing such a close friend and colleague. Emilio had been at every family celebration, even after Grandma Joan died, and I shared Mom's sadness in losing him. My father was the only subject that had ever been off-limits. "He was a typical artist and didn't want to be a father, and he asked not to be contacted" was all she'd said. When my eyes filled with tears and I sniffled at this blunt information, she put her arm around me and offered a box of tissues and said, "I know, baby. It hurts. But really, it's my fault. I should have known better than to get involved with someone like him. If you need to be mad at anyone, be mad at me."