“Second uncle,” Sandrine said. “Or uncle once removed. I’m not sure.”
Stéphanie shrugged. “More than half the village is related to you.”
A harried-looking waiter wearing the traditional white apron and black jacket came over. We ordered cafés and jambon beurres.
“Hey Stéph,”Sandrine said. “Do you think Franck would have liked to become a winemaker like Pascal?”
Stéph stubbed out her cigarette. “Hardly. He’s never going to stay in one place for very long.”
“Who’s Franck?” I asked.
“Stéph’s older brother,” Sandrine said. “I mentioned him before.”
“Franck wants to travel,” Stéphanie said, looking an odd mix of sad and proud. “Once he’s done his year of military service, he’s going to fly off somewhere—God knows where. He’s been asking around about au pair positions lately.” She crinkled her eyes at me. “Tiens! He needs to meet you. I’d bet you two would have a lot to talk about.”
“Sure,” I said, although I didn’t think I could help him much in finding an au pair position. “Aren’t au pairs generally female?”
Stéphanie’s eyes blazed a bit at this. “Why should they be, any more than winemakers should be male?”
I liked her spark. “Good point. Is his English good?”
Stéph shook her head. “Terrible. He’s very good at philosophy though.”
“How is he doing with…ah…all that?” Sandrine asked in a delicate, hesitant way that I was not at all accustomed to.
Stéph shrugged. “Not great but…better than he was, anyway.”
I had no idea what they were talking about, but before I could formulate a question the waiter brought our sandwiches. I bit into mine. It was half a gorgeously fresh baguette sliced open, spread with butter, then filled with a few slices of ham and some cornichons. How could something so simple be so delicious? I wondered why I had been brought up on rectangular loaves of spongy bread when baguettes were a possibility. What was wrong with us North Americans?
“Thibaut has his eye on Laura,” Sandrine informed Stéph as she chewed.
“He does not!” I turned to her. “All he does is mock me.”
“He asked me to find out what you thought about him,” Sandrine said. “I haven’t because I don’t think he treats women well, but I figured you should at least know. I needed to warn you at least.”
“When did he ask you?
Sandrine shrugged. “I don’t know. A few days ago, I guess.”
“And you didn’t tell me?”
“Why?” Stéph asked. “Are you interested?”
“Non!” I answered.
Sandrine shared a smile with Stéphanie.
“Do you know Thibaut?” I asked Stéph.
“A bit.”
I couldn’t stop thinking about this new piece of information as I finished my sandwich. Something was happening between Thibaut and me—something I couldn’t label. Somehow our eyes caught often during the day, and my heart beat a little faster when I spotted him in a crowd. He could be a jerk. I knew that. The problem was, he was an oddly appealing jerk. Still, it would probably come to nothing. Right then, in fact, it was still nothing, so there was no point in telling Sandrine any of that.
“Maybe Franck?” Sandrine said to Stéph.
“I can find my own boyfriends, merci quand même!” I nudged Sandrine to underline my point. I didn’t need her to start matchmaking. Besides, didn’t she know that the more she objected to Thibaut, the more I would find him intriguing? I couldn’t help that strong contrary streak that often reared its head at the most inconvenient times. “This sandwich is great though,” I added as a consolation.
Sandrine and Stéph accepted my reluctance to be a pawn in their machinations and went on to commiserate about their respective biology classes. I sipped my espresso and pondered further on the conundrum of Thibaut.
CHAPTER 16
My time with the Beaupre’s was almost over, even though I felt like I had just arrived. I only had ten days before moving to the Girards, my second host family. The Beaupres had truly taken me in like their own daughter, and that was exactly how I felt. From what I had seen of them, the Girards were perfectly lovely people, but I didn’t feel ready to move yet.
I was at home in the Beaupres elegant house. I knew that I had to jiggle the lever on the top of the toilet to make it flush, and where Madame Beaupre kept the olive oil and white wine vinegar that I used to make the vinaigrette whenever she asked. A new house and a new family meant starting from square one.
First though, I was in for a treat. The Beaupres were taking me to Paris for the school break at the end of November. It was a National Holiday everybody called “Toussaint,” which roughly translated as “All Saints.” I knew it had something to do with the Catholic religion, but I wasn’t clear on the details.
Madame Beaupre had told me that she was a born-and-bred Parisian, and that her mother died when she was quite young. It was imperative that every year she return to Paris to put flowers on her mother’s grave during Toussaint. I found this a little unnerving, but the promise of visiting the Eiffel Tower, the Sorbonne, and the Arc de Triomphe more than made up for it.
I started reading Victor Hugo’s Les Misèrables as research. It was a thick tome, but that was okay because even though Sandrine, Stéphanie and I had become quite friendly thanks to our weekly lunches at le Square, they still hadn’t extended any invitations for weekend activities. This left me plenty of free time to fill. I read about the catacombs and the sewers underneath the streets of Paris, and the metal Elephant of the Bastille that Gavroche slept in at night.
Julien was also on a break from his hotel school, and would meet us at Mamy’s house just outside of Paris where we were all going to stay.
I picked through my wardrobe of hippy tie-dyed shirts and ponchos with my newly Frenchified eyes and found my clothes sorely lacking for Paris. I felt more sophisticated now than the girl who had worn these things before—I could almost carry on a simple conversation in French, after all. I no longer needed to show the world that I was different from the conforming masses. I knew I was different. That was enough.
Madame Beaupre always looked undeniably chic. She favored tailored skirts and jackets accompanied with beautiful silk scarves (often Hermès). I needed to find some clothes like that…maybe not the skirts but at least some tailored jackets and floaty scarves to dress up my jeans. Maybe if I became a little more chic something would come of the flirtation between Thibaut and me. Right now, I felt like things were in a holding pattern and wasn’t sure they would ever change. I wasn’t even sure if I wanted them to progress, but I was curious. I picked up my Birkenstocks from the floor of my bedroom. I hadn’t worn them since that day at Adalene’s house— favoring my Keds instead. I needed to find a nice pair of boots or a pair of flats as well.
In Paris I could find all of those things, and because I never went out except to le Square, I had saved up an impressive amount of spending money. I packed extremely light, determined to come back to Nuits-Saint-Georges as a full-fledged French girl.
Sophie, on the other hand, had been calling once a week since she arrived in America. According to her parents, she was beyond enchanted with the cheerleaders and the football players and the daily visits to Taco Bell. It seemed she was as eager to lose her Frenchness as I was to gain it.
Monsieur Beaupre drove at his usual speed, but I had become accustomed to it, as well as to the lack of seatbelts. We were pulling into the gravel courtyard of his mother’s house within three hours, which seemed to gratify him immensely.
Mamy rushed out of her house and greeted us all with herbes de provence-scented hugs and kisses. She grabbed my face between her soft hands and kissed me on the forehead. Of course, she had the most delicious lunch ready for us.
First came a steaming ceramic bowl of French onion soup, topped with garlicky croutons of toasted baguette and grated Emmenthal. The November air outside carr
ied the threat of snow, and I couldn’t imagine anything more perfect on a late fall day than this bowl of teaming perfection.
Next came a chicken stew with little button mushrooms in a white sauce redolent of cream and mustard, served over the silkiest mashed potatoes that I had ever tasted. This was all accompanied by delectable wine—first white, then red.
Next came her massive wooden serving board of country cheeses. Even though I was wiser now as to the progression of a French meal than I was the last time I sat at her table, I still helped myself to generous portions of each of the five cheeses. Life is short—I was determined to grasp every opportunity to eat good cheese.
Slices of fresh baguette were plentiful, and before I knew it over two hours had flown by.
“Your French has come along so well,” Mamy said. She passed me the cheese platter for seconds and, after setting it down beside my plate, she grasped both my cheeks in one of her capable hands.
“Merci,” I said. I hadn’t thought about it, but sometime during the previous several weeks I’d stopped feeling like I existed inside a bubble of incomprehension. At first I understood about a quarter of what was being said…then half…and in that moment, I realized I understood at least 85–90 percent of the conversation. Not only that, but I could jump in and contribute most of the time. To think…three months of living in France accomplished what eleven years of school French had failed to do. It seemed I wasn’t just naturally bad at French as I’d believed. Maybe I just couldn’t learn the way I had been taught at school. Being thrown into the deep end and having to survive seemed a much more effective method for me. Also, I was certain all the delicious cheese played a magical role in my increasing fluency.
“I wonder if Sophie’s English is as good as your French,” Mamy mused.
“I’m sure it’s far better. She spoke more English than I did French.”
Mamy’s eyes got damp. “It will be an excellent thing for her to be able to speak English for jobs later on,” she said. “Still, I don’t like having one of my chicks so far from the nest.”
I reached for her hand and squeezed it. “She says they are taking as good care of her in America as you are all taking of me.” Indeed, from her letters, Sophie seemed to adore her first host family, but I knew she had to move to her second one soon, just as I did.
“You are such a comfort.” She squeezed my hand back. “You feel like my granddaughter.”
When I thought of a French grandmother, my thoughts went immediately to Mamy. She did remind me of a French version of my grandmother Agnes, who ran a bed and breakfast on a small island in the Pacific, and had single-handedly operated a massive farm since my grandfather had died and left her a young widow with four children.
“Tu es ma grandmère française,” I said.
She picked up her yellow linen napkin and began to dab her eyes. When she was done, she stood up. “Now! Can you guess what I made you for dessert?”
I couldn’t, but the various appetizing possibilities were endless.
“Do you still like sweets?” she asked.
I laughed. “I don’t think that will ever change. Especially not in France.”
She took four brown, shallow ceramic dishes out of the fridge and put one in front of me. “Do you know what it is?”
I shook my head. I didn’t, although it looked delectable and was covered with a paper-thin layer of what looked like caramel.
“Crème brûlée au vanille!” she declared. “Have I managed to make something you haven’t tried before?”
“Yes!” I said. I could tell just by looking at it that it was a great oversight I was glad to correct.
“Wait!” she said. “I have the perfect wine to go with it.” She went over to the wooden armoire that took up the whole back of her kitchen and turned the large metallic key with a blue pom-pom on the end. She extracted four of the most beautiful glasses I had ever seen. They were finely etched and handblown into a deep flute shape.
Finally, she produced an oddly shaped bottle.
“What kind of wine is it?” I was always interested in expanding my wine education.
“It’s called the vin de paille,” Monsieur Beaupre said. “It’s from the region beside Burgundy called le Jura. Do you know what paille is?”
I regretted the fact that I had lost the habit of carrying my pocket dictionary around with me everywhere.
“No.”
A few explanations later, along with a charade of a cow chewing on something and a lot of mooing sounds, I figured out that paille translated as straw, or maybe hay.
“Why do they call it that?” I asked.
“The grapes are picked late,” Monsieur Beaupre said. “Then they are left to rot on a bed of hay.”
“Oh,” I said, a bit faintly.
“It’s good,” Madame Beaupre assured me. “It is a sweet wine and goes well with desserts. It is quite a local delicacy.”
I decided anything drank out of these exquisite little glasses could only be sublime.
When Mamy poured us all a glass, I marveled over the dark yellow color of the wine, so intense that it had tints of amber.
I took a sip. It was crisp and had the taste of honey. “It’s delicious.”
I watched as Mamy tapped her spoon on the top of her crème brulée, shattering the layer of caramel like a thin pane of glass.
I copied her example and the satisfying crack and shatter of the caramel gave way to a brown-flecked custard underneath. I took a spoonful.It melted in my mouth, and the splinter of the caramel crust that I had managed to scoop up as well crunched between my teeth.
“Why have I never had this before?” I asked to the ambient air. It was unctuous and creamy…would there be any end to new pleasures in France?
“Do you like it?” Mamy asked, looking pleased.
“I love it!” I said. “I love you! I love France!”
She grabbed me by the cheeks and planted another kiss on me.
The next few days in Paris were a whirl. We visited the Eiffel Tower and the Arc de Triomphe, then Madame Beaupre led us all into the red light district as though it was a perfectly tourist-worthy destination.
We strolled along in front of the peep shows and the Moulin Rouge. My Canadian upbringing meant that all of this brought a blush to my cheeks, while at the same time it fascinated me. But the Beaupres seemed to take it in stride, as though it were completely normal to weave between the prostitutes and the striptease establishments. Besides some dodgy-looking characters and a myriad of scantly dressed women, there were also many seemingly regular people, like us. Maybe this was just part of Paris life, I conjectured, and maybe Parisians were as proud to show it off as they were the Louvre.
Julien began to discourse rapturously about the spectacles that were put on by the dancers at the Moulin Rouge and the Lido and the other revues.
“Like the ones that you watch on TV?”
“Yes,” he said. “It is a magical world of fantasy and beauty. We should have bought tickets, but you usually need to book months in advance.”
Madame Beaupre guided me into a few stores that Sophie liked: one was called Pimkie, and another, Camaïeu. We selected a sky-blue wool blazer and a silk scarf with swirls of yellow and different blues. Julien helped me select a pair of delicate, brown leather boots that proved to be painful to walk in, but passed his test of what women’s shoes should be. Luckily, he also approved of a pair of flats.
On the third day, we went to the cemetery where Madame Beaupre’s mother was buried. It was in the Fifth Arrondisement, tucked behind the winding streets of the rue Mouffetard, not far from the Pantheon, she’d told me.
It was quite a somber affair, with the gunmetal November sky and frigid air providing a suitable backdrop to the graveyard. Madame Beaupre set down a dark yellow pot of carnations on the grave. Her eyes, I was distressed to see, were full of tears. Julien held one of her hands.
“It was a long time ago,” she murmured to no one in particular. “But
it is a terrible thing to lose one’s mother while still young.”
The cemetery was crowded, with many families also using this special day to commune with their departed members and leave tributes of flowers, and sometimes leave little marble plaques or other mementos.
I’d never been much in the habit of visiting graveyards. We tended to opt for cremation on the West Coast. Maybe as a result of this, cemeteries always gave me a sense of deep unease, and French versions, I was discovering, were no exception. The contrast between Paris—a city that made me so acutely alive—and the hushed grayness of the cemetery made the inevitability and permanence of mortality sting even more than usual.
It also made me think. Seeing Paris with the Beaupres was a privilege and a gift, but I wanted to one day explore this miraculous city with someone I was truly in love with—that elusive missing person in my life. The familiar ache grew in my chest. Julien was now firmly in the category of honorary brother, and something—though I had no idea what—was happening between Thibaut and I, but still that spot in my heart remained empty. Even though I was only eighteen, I felt panicked amongst all those graves, believing that I was running out of time. I gave myself a shake. I was letting my imagination run away with my feelings, as usual.
After visiting the cemetery, Julien and Monsieur Beaupre wanted to go and see an exhibit of sports cars in the far northern end of Paris. Madame Beaupre had no desire to go and, as accommodating as I always tried to be, I had a hard time mustering up any enthusiasm for cars. To me, they had never been of any interest besides being an efficient way to convey my body from Point A to Point B.
“Let’s go out for lunch,” Madame Beaupre said. “There’s a special place I want to take you. A place that always cheers me up.”
We took the metro several stops and transferred twice. Madame Beaupre knew it by heart and didn’t need to consult the multi-colored route maps on the walls of the stations. I felt like a different person walking through the metro with Madame Beaupre, like a French girl just out for a stroll in Paris with her maman. I loved my own mother back in Canada, but though she had taught me many things, she couldn’t teach me how to become more French. Or how to do Algebra, for that matter.
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