My Grape Year: (The Grape Series #1)

by Laura Bradbury

  Sandrine had her turn on the rope, and I was relieved to see she didn’t get more than a meter off the ground, despite the jeers doled out by the gym teacher. They weren’t that big on the idea of positive reinforcement at French high schools.

  Sandrine came over and inserted herself between Thibaut and me. She turned her back on him. “Cigarettes,” she wheezed. “I have to stop one of these days.”

  “I’m dreading my turn,” I said.

  “You can’t possibly do worse than me.”

  “Want to bet?”

  “Mademoiselle Bradbury!” The PE teacher’s voice rang across the gymnasium. “On the rope! Or have you forgotten that this class is not just for fulfilling your socializing needs?”

  I called the teacher a rude French word under my breath.

  Sandrine burst out laughing, and the PE teacher was opening her mouth and gathering steam to yell at both of us when a man came in carrying two large, square boxes, which, on closer inspection, were tied up with yellow ribbon and looked like they had come from a boulangerie.

  The PE teacher was distracted from giving me a bollocking. “You’re late!” she said to the man, consulting her watch.

  “They’re fresh out of the oven,” he said, ignoring her tone.

  “Everyone!” she shouted, and blew the whistle that always hung around her neck. “Who would like to share some galette?”

  My fellow students exploded with cheers and all rushed forwards.

  She blew the whistle again. “Let me cut it first,” she said, laughing. I was quickly revising my opinion of her.

  “What is galette?” I asked Sandrine.

  Thibaut was still lingering beside us. “You don’t have galette in Canada?” he asked.

  “No. At least I don’t think so.”

  “No gallettes? What a strange country Canada must be,” he said. “Not very Catholic.”

  I thought of all the various churches in my hometown—Scientology right across from the Jehovah’s Witnesses and kitty corner to the Church of England and the Church of Latter Day Saints. “It’s not any one religion.”

  “Heathen,” Thibaut observed, but with an engaging smile.

  “It’s a special dessert we have only during Epiphany,” Sandrine said. “It’s to commemorate the Three Kings or…something like that.”

  Thibaut snorted. “Who wasn’t listening during her catechism classes, n’est-ce pas Sandrine?”

  “All right, Thibaut.” Sandrine put her hands on her hips. “How about you tell us all about the history and religious meaning of the galette de roi.”

  “Is it good?” I interrupted.

  “Good?” Thibaut asked, his eyes round. “It’s delicious! Layers of puff pastry filled with almond crème.”

  The teacher had cut up both galettes, and began to hand out pieces

  “Thibaut,” Sandrine said, “be gallant for once in your life and get Laura and me pieces.”

  “Why should…,” he began, but stopped talking when he saw Sandrine’s narrowed eyes.

  He expelled a momentous sigh and pushed through the crowd towards the galettes. In Canada we would have naturally formed an orderly line-up. There, it was an instant mob.

  “Inside each galette is a tiny ceramic figurine called a fève,” Sandrine continued. “The person who finds the fève in his or her piece is the queen or king, and then they have to choose a queen or king of the opposite gender. The royal couples have to wear those crowns,” she said, pointing at a pile of flattened but golden things lying beside the galette boxes.

  “That’s not very republican,” I said.

  Sandrine shrugged. “Neither is being Catholic, but we all are.”

  It also wasn’t an equitable system for people who preferred people of the same gender, I reflected, but apparently the Catholic religion and the boulangeries hadn’t spared much thought for that.

  Thibaut eventually returned, looking put-upon but carrying three slices of galette on a napkin.

  “Merci,” said Sandrine, taking hers. “Maybe you’re not all bad.”

  “Tell that to your friend here instead of warning her away from me,” Thibaut nodded at me.

  “She wasn’t—”

  “I was.” Sandrine interrupted me. “And, just for the record, I still think I’m right.”

  A girl named Aude was whooping and hollering and holding up something in her hand.

  “She found the first fève,” Sandrine said. Aude was going out with a boy named Pierre, so it was no big surprise that she chose him to be her king and they both went up to the front to be ceremoniously crowned. They kissed each other once, then again. Then I started to see some flashes of tongue. The teacher blew her whistle again. They finally pulled apart.

  I took a bite of my galette. I hoped I didn’t have the fève in my piece. I would probably choose Thibaut, but that would be making a public declaration that I wasn’t at all certain he was prepared to make. I peeked under the crust of my slice and was relieved to see no sign of a fève.

  Now I could just concentrate on the taste. The crust was flaky and buttery and melted on my tongue, and inside was a creamy filling that tasted perfectly of almonds and vanilla. It was simple, but perfect. So perfect that it made me severely regret, for the first time in my existence, that I hadn’t been brought up Catholic. To think, French kids got to eat these every January for their whole lives. Lucky bastards.

  I was finishing up every last crumb when I noticed that Thibaut had gone still beside me.

  I glanced over and saw a ceramic figurine that looked like Baby Jesus in the manger between his fingers.

  “Thibaut found la fève!” a boy beside us shouted for all to hear. I felt my face burn scarlet. Was he going to name me his queen? How I hated feeling so uncertain all the time. Why couldn’t we just try having a normal relationship?

  “What are you waiting for my little man?” the prof said. “Come up here, get your crown, and name your queen.”

  Sandrine, I noticed, was watching Thibaut, intently.

  Thibaut made his way up to the front, cocky and self-assured. I sort of hated him at that moment.

  The prof put Thibaut’s crown together and placed it on his head in mock ceremony. She did a little curtsey. “Your queen?” she prompted.

  He surveyed the crowd. His eyes caught mine, then passed over me. I felt cold.

  “Rose,” he said.

  I felt that other girl’s name like a slap across the face. Rose was the prettiest girl in the class—out of every boy’s league. She only dated men who were several years older. However, with her huge blue eyes, blond hair, dimples, and neat little figure always encased in tight jeans, she was the socially acceptable focus of all the boys’ desires.

  She twinkled up to the front to be crowned beside Thibaut. He pointed at his cheek for a kiss, and at first she declined but finally ended up giving him a peck. Thibaut played to the audience of his friends, giving a triumphant thumb’s up and then high-fiving his way back into the crowd again.

  As for me, I felt like a royal fool. Of course he wasn’t going to claim me in front of everyone. He didn’t even want me as his girlfriend. I forced myself to look at the facts—he was just biding his time until something better came along.

  As we exited the gymnasium to go back to the school, Thibaut materialized beside Sandrine and me once again.

  “You’re not mad, are you?” he whispered to me.

  I shook my head. “Don’t be stupid.” My eyes were smarting with tears, but I would never let him see them. I wouldn’t let anyone see them.

  “I was right,” Sandrine said to Thibaut.

  “Right about what?” Thibaut asked.

  “To warn Laura away from you. You have never known how to treat women, and you never will.”

  The next few days were a misery. It was cold, it was snowing, and it was late January. The only bright spot was that the Girard’s loved galettes as much as I did, and I had eaten two more since that fateful PE class.

&n
bsp; My gut reaction was to act angry with Thibaut and give him the cold shoulder. The problem was this behavior would only show him I was hurt. My pride wouldn’t let me do that. All I could do was act like I didn’t care or long for a relationship where I was secure enough to be able to show that I did, indeed, care very much.

  Thibaut had been extra attentive to me, but I worked very hard to treat him just like I would any other friend.

  On a Friday after school he said to me, “You’re still mad at me, aren’t you?”

  “What are you talking about?” I answered off-handedly as I scanned the arriving buses for the one I needed to catch back to the Girards.

  “About the galette. About me choosing Rose.”

  I snorted. “Get over yourself. I wouldn’t have wanted you to say my name. Hardly anything happened between us and hardly anybody knows. It’s for the best that way.”

  “You are acting different,” he said.

  I probably was. I was probably acting like I didn’t care rather than feeding his ego with needless glances and attention paid in his direction. “You’re imagining things.”

  He looked around us and furtively ducked to kiss me. I jerked backwards.

  “See?” he said. “You didn’t used to jerk away.”

  “We’ve always been alone. I don’t want anybody to see.”

  With a screech the school bus came to a stop in front of me, and the doors flipped open. The driver was there in the same filthy wool sweater he wore everyday, with a cigarette that was permanently hanging out of his mouth.

  “Allez,” he grunted, which I had learned meant Get on now or I’m leaving without you.

  “See you Monday,” I said to Thibaut, and walked up the steps.

  Out the window, as the bus pulled away from the curb and into the maw of the crazy French traffic, I could see Thibaut still watching.

  CHAPTER 21

  Saturday I was woken by the most horrible squealing sound. I ran downstairs, wondering if someone was being viciously attacked. Madame Girard met me in the hallway.

  “We have a special treat for you today, Laura,” she said. “We’re making boudin noir.” I had no idea what boudin noir was, but if it had anything to do with the dreadful shrieking sound, I wanted no part of it.

  “You must come watch,” she said. “It’s happening at our neighbor’s house. Hurry!”

  I flung on some clothes and went back downstairs. All I really wanted to do was have a quiet café au lait and maybe some breakfast, but non, I had to trudge over to the neighbor’s house in the cold.

  The neighbors also had a farm, and the closer I got the louder the squealing became. When I walked behind the courtyard to where the farming operations took place, I found its source—a large pig tied to a stake with a rope around its neck.

  Dread filled me. The sound tapped right into my central nervous system and made me want to run away or hit somebody. I had forgotten my gloves and a toque, I realized, as my fingers began to go numb.

  Bruno came over to me. “Come closer so you can get a good view.” He put a hand on my back and steered me to a spot at the front of the crowd of assembled villagers. The neighbor came out of his house brandishing a fearsome knife and a plastic pail. I did not like where this was heading.

  “I forgot my gloves,” I mumbled and began to back up.

  “You can’t leave now!” Monsieur Girard caught my arm. “It’s the most important part.”

  I heard a particularly piercing squeal, followed by the gush of something, which—I saw when I turned around—was the pig’s blood pouring into the bucket.

  “Oh God,” I said in English, horrified.

  “It’s the blood for the boudin noir,” Bruno said. “Nice and fresh. It’s going to be delicious.” I knew they made coq au vin sauce with blood, but that was something I tried hard not to dwell on. I had a strong foreboding that boudin noir was not going to be to my taste.

  The ensuing silence was worse than the squealing beforehand. I was hardly a squeamish person. My father was a hunter and a fisherman. It wasn’t uncommon for me to come home from school to find two flayed deer carcasses hanging up on the rafters of the garage or an entire moose being butchered on the kitchen table. I could gut a fish and chop a crab in half with an axe.

  Still, there was something uniquely bloodthirsty about slitting the pig’s throat with everyone standing around watching as if it was a public execution at the guillotine during the Revolution. I loved a perfect slice of saucisson sec or a good pork cutlet, so I realized how hypocritical this was of me, yet something about seeing all that fresh pig’s blood splattered on the white snow made me want to vomit.

  “My hands are cold,” I said to Bruno. “I’m heading back.”

  “All right,” he said. ‘Tell my maman that I’ll bring the blood soon.”

  I nodded, blinking back tears. I couldn’t figure out what was wrong with me. Why did I feel like an exposed nerve? A deep sadness pervaded my bones. The ache was back, stronger than ever. My feet crunched in the snow as I walked to the Girard’s house. Fat flakes began to fall, and I stopped and stood on the side of the road for a moment. The church bell rang out. Where was my missing piece? It clearly wasn’t Thibaut.

  I sometimes wondered if I had already loved the person I was searching for in a previous existence and had vowed to find him in this one. Or maybe that was just my overactive imagination playing its tricks again…

  I began walking again, and when I got home I delivered Bruno’s message to Madame Girard, who was busy in the kitchen with her mother, sautéing onions and spices. I retreated to my bedroom where I wrote in my journal and cried, then lay on my bed and watched the snowflakes fall from the leaden sky until I fell into a disturbed sleep.

  I was woken by Madame Girard calling my name up the stairs. I rarely napped, but when I did I felt like I was coming up from one thousand leagues under the sea when I emerged from my slumber.

  I stumbled out of my room and down the stairs, still rubbing my eyes. I went into the dining room, where the table was set and the neighbors and the Girards had all taken a place. There was one empty seat left for me at the end of the table.

  “I’m sorry.” I pulled out my chair and sat down. “I fell asleep. I guess I was more tired than I realized.”

  Monsieur sweetly waved away my apology. “It is no matter,” he said. “Are you ready to enjoy my wife’s famous boudin noir? It is a true delicacy. Nobody in Burgundy makes it better.”

  I had forgotten about the boudin noir. I hoped it would be something akin to coq au vin, so delicious that I could forget about the fact it contained blood. I felt my heart trip with nerves but smiled and said oui, which seemed to gratify the assembled guests immensely. I got the impression that this special treat of boudin noir was partly being done in my honor.

  “To think I had heard that Americans were unadventurous eaters,” said the neighbor—a bearded, woodsy sort who liked to hunt wild boars on the weekends.

  “Not Laura, here,” said Monsieur Girard proudly. “She loves snails and paté and well…everything.” I had never mentioned the pied de cochon incident with Madame Beaupre and never would—as far as she knew I had loved every bite. “Unlike some French girls I know.” He added, and raised a pointed eyebrow at Élise, who glowered at me from across the table.

  “Voilà!” Madame Girard came into the dining room, looking almost confident, carrying a huge eathernware platter. She was strong for such a tiny thing.

  Piled on the platter were huge black sausages. Oh my God. Was that boudin noir? If so, it was even worse than I had imagined.

  She came to me first. “I’ve picked the biggest one for you,” she said, and plucked the sausage from the top of the pile and placed it on my plate. It lay there, hanging over the edges of my large dinner plate by about an inch on either side. The thing was massive.

  “Merci,” I managed, but stared down at it in horror.

  “So have you had these before?” the neighbor asked.


  I shook my head. “Never.”

  “You are in for a treat!” he declared. “Bon appétit!”

  “I’ll wait for everyone else,” I demurred.

  “Non. Non. Start while it’s still hot,” he insisted.

  I took a large gulp of wine and then cut off a slice of the sausage. When I cut through the casing, the interior of the sausage popped out, as if contained under pressure. I stared at it in horror. It was deep, brownish red, the color of congealed blood. I poked it with my fork. It was basically congealed blood. Congealed blood of that pig that they had killed that morning.

  I forked a tiny bit and put it in my mouth. It had the metallic taste of blood, like a cut on the tongue or lip. I contemplated with horror the size of the thing on my plate. It was far worse than the pied de cochon.

  I looked up and saw that everyone around the table was watching me.

  “Do you not like it?” Madame Girard asked in a tiny voice, sounding hurt.

  I cut off a huge chunk and shoved it in my mouth. I was eating congealed blood, my brain kept chanting. I swallowed. Please don’t let me throw up. Please don’t let me throw up…

  “Wonderful!” The table erupted in cheers and everyone launched into a “ban Bourguignon”—all except Élise, who’d been given a piece of goat cheese quiche from the night before, which I glanced at with longing. She sent me a baleful look, but I felt like telling her that she wouldn’t be nearly so angry with me if she knew how much I hated boudin noir.

  It was the longest, most torturous meal of my life. The only thing that got me through it was being able to wash the revolting mouthfuls down with wine.

  I made a getaway upstairs as quickly as I could and walked circles in my room trying to will myself not to barf. I was victorious, but as I lay awake at three o’clock in the morning with one of the worst stomach aches in my life, I started to question just how far I should go to be a good guest for my Ursus families. Maybe I had just pushed the limits of politeness beyond self-preservation.