Blush - Jamie Brenner Page 0,42

tasting room and sold their wine by the caseload. But if they were going to truly succeed, they needed their wine in restaurants. The most celebrated wines in the country were produced on the West Coast, but it was the New York City restaurant market that could make or break a brand. And New York City restaurants wanted nothing to do with Long Island wines.

“You know what our greatest asset is, Vivian?” Leonard had said one night. “It’s not out in that field. It’s right here, in front of me. It’s you.”

Suddenly, the decision to send their children to school in the Hamptons wasn’t so crazy. The Hamptons were filled with influential Manhattanites.

“I need you to network,” he told her.

It sounded simple enough, but she soon found that the Hamptons social scene was, in the 1980s, as closed to her as it had been to her parents in the 1950s—not because she was Jewish but because she was an outsider. The Freudenbergs were long gone from the Hamptons; they had sold Woodlawn and their townhouse on Fifth Avenue and moved to Palm Beach. Any remaining connections from her parents’ generation were too old to help her. The parents of her children’s friends were cordial but clannish. If Leonard and Vivian were going to make inroads socially, she’d need to follow her parents’ model with Woodlawn.

“Okay,” she said. “I can do that. But we need to start entertaining. And that means renovating this house.”

The pool had been built during that remodeling. As Vivian oversaw the house renovation, making countless decisions large and small, she remembered her love of night swimming as a child. And so one of the design elements of the pool was dozens of fiber-optic lights that looked like the reflection of the stars at night. Looking at them now, she wished she could transport herself back to the optimism of the 1980s. She hadn’t appreciated it at the time, but they were the happiest years of her life. She had her children, the winery was flourishing, she was young and beautiful and in love. She believed their family and business would continue to flourish. She had no idea what was just around the corner.

Vivian heeded Leonard’s request that she make inroads in the Hamptons social scene. Invitations came their way sporadically, but none had brought them any closer to connections that might help them crack the Manhattan restaurant market.

And then one night, the mother of one of Asher’s classmates invited them to a dinner party she was hosting in East Hampton along with her husband, an investment banker. Vivian’s expectations for the evening were low; by that time, they’d been to a few such parties, driving down dark streets lined with hedgerows so tall you could only imagine what was hidden behind them. The evenings were pleasant, full of fine food and small talk. But nothing had ever come out of them.

Vivian felt out of place at the parties. A decade of working in the field pulling leaves and setting out bird netting and pruning vines had left her more comfortable running around with her kids barefoot in the backyard than slipping on heels and a Norma Kamali dress for cocktails at a waterfront mansion. Ironically, if she had followed the path her parents had wanted for her, she would be living in a house just like the ones she visited as a guest, hosting parties all summer long instead of worrying about sour rot.

Security greeted them at the foot of the drive and directed them to another gate at the side of the sprawling front lawn. They followed a stone path to the poolside terrace. A bar was set up on the terrace, and another on the lawn. The entire area was strung with small, decorative lights. Beyond the pool, a long table set for forty with arrangements of roses and lilies and twinkling with countless votive candles. Music played from outdoor speakers, Elton John’s hit “Little Jeannie.”

Their hostess wore a cream-colored, flowy knee-length dress, a silk flower in her upswept hair. She smelled faintly of marijuana, and it was hard to reconcile her with the plain mom Vivian mostly knew from drop-offs and pickups and bake sales. She took Vivian by the arm and said, “I’m glad you’re here. Someone wants to meet you.”

“Meet me?” Vivian echoed, turning to look at Leonard. But he’d already made his way to the crowd of men smoking cigars poolside. Vivian followed her hostess to the terrace, where she immediately