My Grape Escape

by Laura Bradbury

  Franck sped up to pass a vineyard tractor puttering along the road. “Laura, it’s not going to happen for a long time, if it happens at all.”

  “But we have to know how much he wants.”

  “He would be offended if we started talking about money now. You don’t want him to leave us, do you?”

  “Of course not. I don’t know what we’d do without him.” Gégé had become the wry rudder of our crazy project and was an invaluable resource and sounding board. Without him, we would be back at square one.

  “You’ll have to trust me then. We can’t ask him about money now. I’ll know when the time is right.”

  I crossed my arms and frowned out the window as the chateau of Clos Vougeot and some of the world’s most prized vineyards whizzed by. This did nothing to alleviate my stress, or tie up one of the many loose ends. Anger flared up my neck. Again I was frustrated that I had no choice but to do things Franck’s way, especially as I had a hunch that Franck might be wrong. Surely Gégé wanted to know how much he was being paid too. He couldn’t be spending day and night helping us for free.

  Franck read my silence perfectly. “I’m not wrong about this, you know.”

  “Hmph.”

  “It’s hard for you to accept that some things will just resolve themselves without your help, isn’t it?”

  “There’s no guarantee that things will resolve themselves on their own.” I took my glasses off and picked plaster specks off my lenses.

  “Is anything ever truly guaranteed?”

  “Don’t go all Jean-Paul Sartre on me.”

  “You could do with a little more French philosophy and a little fewer control needs.”

  Franck could be annoying, especially when he was right. Still, I couldn’t help feeling uneasy about digging a debt hole with Gégé that we might never be able to repay. I liked him too much to fall out over something like that.

  At the home renovation store I narrowed my tile choices down to two: a stone coral or a more neutral white with grey wiggles. I meandered back to find Franck in the plumbing section. In front of an impressive display of toilets, Franck was chatting with one of our neighbours from Magny, a winemaker who I had only ever heard referred to as La Patate or “The Potato”.

  In small Burgundian villages like Villers-la-Faye and Magny-les-Villers almost everybody had a nickname. I ruminated on this fact as we sped back to Magny, our trunk almost scraping the road under the weight of several bags of plaster and a mysterious assortment of pipes and joints.

  When we got back home I was surprised to see that Gégé hadn’t arrived yet. I poured myself a cup of coffee and waited for him by the kitchen window, contemplating how the March wind rattled the bare branches of the two tilleul trees across the street. The reconverted Parisian bus used by Le Jacky as a mobile shop squealed to a halt in front of the church.

  Another neighbor, La Grenouille (The Frog) came staggering down the road to buy a baguette from the bus accompanied by his friend Le Bud. One of Le Bud’s hastily pulled up suspenders slipped down as he broke into a trot. Le Zech zoomed by in his car and honked and waved at Jacky’s bus. Gégé’s white camionette pulled up and I watched as he got out – he was moving slowly today for some reason - and ambled over to shake hands with Le Bud and La Grenouille and smoke a companionable cigarette with them. Gégé had begun to refer to Franck as Le Fou, “The Crazy”. Franck’s childhood nickname had begun to stick again – no doubt because he had married a demented Canadian woman who had convinced him to purchase this disaster of a house.

  Everyone had a nickname, it seemed. Everyone except me.

  I would have settled for a simple “La” in front of my name. In these Burgundian villages most people had earned the designation of Le or La (for example, La Josette) in front of their nickname, sort of like the Scottish “Himself”. It was not only a way of expressing playful affection for that person, but also a way of recognizing that he or she was irreplaceable, one of a kind. Even though there were about three Josettes in the village, there was only one La Josette.

  I scratched the fine layer of white plaster dust off the windowpane with my nail. Franck had gotten to the finishing coat of plaster in the living room and had begun his first attempt at sanding the day before. It had taken him two weeks to get to this point in one room and he still wasn’t satisfied with the result. I hoped he would pick up speed as we still had all the other rooms left to do.

  Gégé bid the men good-bye with another handshake and began to walk over to the passageway under our house. I poured him a coffee while wondering just what it would take for people here to accept me as one of their own and start calling me “La Laura”, or better yet to be referred to as “La” and then to have a nickname bestowed on me as well. It probably would never happen. After all, I wasn’t from these villages. The couple from Paris who moved to Villers-la-Faye twenty-five years ago were still referred to as “The Parisians”.

  So far nobody called me anything but a respectful “Laura” or worse yet, “Madame Germain.” They probably referred to me as “La Canadienne” as well but never within my earshot.

  “Bonjour, Laura.” Gégé had let himself into the kitchen, the usual brown paper package of croissants and pain au chocolat under his arm. We kissed each other on the cheeks and he passed me a pain au chocolat. Franck came in, gave me a kiss, and shook Gégé’s hand.

  We all sat down for a late breakfast and within seconds our patisseries were speckled in plaster dust. Now that the sanding of the walls was well underway there was no escaping the fine white powder that settled on every surface. Gégé had informed us three days ago that he was actually shitting plaster when he went to the WC. I was too afraid to look.

  “I’m still sanding.” Franck grimaced. “It’s harder than it looks and some of the plaster still isn’t dry enough.”

  “Can’t we just throw some drywall up in front of all the holes?” I asked for the umpteenth time. I felt like we had been in this plastering stage for a century already.

  Gégé shook his head and picked at his croissant. “I’ve told you Laura, it will start to bubble and weep within months. It would be like stitching up an abscess before draining it first.”

  I was so put off by this analogy that I put down my pastry.

  “You don’t look very good this morning.” Franck studied Gégé. “Are you feeling all right?”

  “I’m depressed,” Gégé answered, picking at his croissant.

  This got my attention. Maybe it was the gray March skies, but I had also been feeling despair lurking around the edges of life the past few days.

  “About what?” Franck asked.

  Gégé gave the saddest shrug I had ever seen. “Everything.”

  “Everything what?” Franck probed.

  Gégé took a drag on his cigarette and his eyes teared up. He tried to laugh but it came out as a gulp. “Where should I start?”

  “Start with the thing that is bothering you the most,” Franck said.

  He looked down at the table top, his chin quivering. “I want to have a girlfriend. I see you two together and I want that. I’ve been lonely for so long. Olivier and everyone say it’s going to happen any day now, that I’m going to meet someone, but merde! Where is she? I’m starting to think that there’s nobody. I’ll be lonely forever.”

  I sat perfectly still in my chair, riveted. Didn’t Gégé know that adults weren’t supposed to admit to feelings like that, even to themselves?

  “Olivier sat across from me a few years ago saying the exact same thing as you,” Franck pointed out. “Now he’s married and has a son.”

  Gégé’s mouth twisted. “Just because it happened to Olivier doesn’t mean it’s going to happen to me. Is it because I keep making the wrong choices? I mean, look at me. No girlfriend, no place of my own, not a lot of money…what is the point of it all? I’m completely lost.”

  I gasped. Even at my most discouraged, I could never bring myself to actually admit to the feeling. I had alwa
ys assumed that feeling lost meant something was defective with me because weren’t we supposed to feel happy all the time?

  However, I didn’t think Gégé was at all defective for feeling depressed. Instead, I was impressed by his courage in admitting how he really felt, even though it scared me. It made me feel as though he were dangling me over a cliff. If I followed his brave example – which I longed to – I would surely drown in years of pent-up emotions.

  Large tears began to roll down Gégé’s cheeks. I didn’t know where to look and stared down as I began to dissect my pain au chocolat. Franck, being from a family who aired its emotional distress with the same nonchalance as t-shirts on the laundry line, munched through his second croissant while watching Gégé, concerned but nonplussed.

  “Tell me some of your problems,” Gégé said after a few minutes of crying. “S’il vous plait. That way I won’t feel so alone.”

  “The walls,” Franck said, his voice muffled with pastry. “I dream about those holes every night. Most nights I get up to look at them to see if they are really as big and as bad as they are in my nightmares, only to find that they are actually worse. Then I can’t get back to sleep for a long time afterwards. I’m also scared that we’re running out of time, not to mention money.”

  Gégé nodded sympathetically and his brown eyes shifted to me. “Et toi?”

  I blinked. Everything felt wrong! I felt utterly overwhelmed, but I couldn’t say it. I had to keep it in, didn’t I? Wasn’t that my penance for having these feelings in the first place?

  “Don’t get me started!” I laughed, taking the coward’s way out. “The holes, of course, and the other things Franck said.”

  Gégé watched me for a few more seconds than was polite. He didn’t buy it. Thankfully he pushed back his chair and beckoned to Franck. “We can’t do much about my problems today, but let’s see if we can’t do something about those holes.”

  A few days later, Franck had rounded up as many muscular friends and family as possible to help move the turquoise fixtures out of our bathroom. Gégé reported for duty the morning of the move.

  “Ça va?” I asked as I did every morning.

  “Still depressed,” he informed me, as he had done every morning since he had broken down at our breakfast table. He said it in a resigned, matter-of-fact way, as though reporting the weather.

  I had felt strangely on guard around him since that first morning. I tried to convince myself that it was merely because I wasn’t as comfortable sharing negative emotions as a French person, but the truth was that my unease went deeper. I was jealous of him.

  It was clear that he never even considered for a moment trying to hide his depression. To actually admit to the distressing feelings that often spun inside me…it would be so freeing, so indulgent, so…terrifying. I was certain in that deep, visceral spot inside my soul that the universe would cave in if I dared. I was jealous of Gégé’s courage and jealous of the freedom that his courage bought him. I knew he wouldn’t understand this.

  That morning, like the past few mornings, I found myself circling warily around Gégé, desperate for him to ask me what was wrong and dreading that he would.

  Luckily Franck’s father and Olivier and Martial arrived and in a wave of testosterone everyone swept into the bathroom and removed all of the turquoise fixtures in under half an hour. Gégé complained the most about the weight of the cast iron bathtub yet he was actually the happiest I had seen him in a long time, joking and egging the others on.

  I was smiling as they drove off to the dump but as I went back inside and surveyed my now empty bathroom my smile vanished. The stained wallpaper around the edges of the holes reminded me that everything we were doing here would eventually be undone by time or by new owners. Everyone died in the end. What was the point of it all?

  My breath couldn’t seem to come fast enough; nausea climbed up my throat. This was all terribly wrong. Something catastrophic was going to happen because of the choices I had made.

  I stumbled outside and took gulps of air yet couldn’t seem to fill my lungs. I didn’t think I could bear this panic for one second longer. I lowered myself to the top step. I was certain that at any second the universe was going to cave in and it would be entirely my fault. Black spots danced in front of my eyes. I was certain I would suffer like this forever. The anxiety kept subsiding for a few moments, then rushing forward again in waves, each one more disorienting than its predecessor. I clutched my chest.

  Gégé’s whistle came around the corner. I knew I needed to escape inside but I couldn’t seem to move.

  “There was a man at the dump who took everything!” I heard him say but his voice came through to me as though he were above water and I below.

  I raised my head.

  One look at me and his expression of delight melted away.

  “What’s wrong Laura? Do you need me to call the doctor?”

  “Non…Yes…” I gasped. “I don’t know. I don’t know…it’s just…so stressful.”

  Then Gégé, a shy man who seemed to have to gear himself up for the touching required by our daily bises, placed his hand on my shoulder.

  “I know,” he said. I still couldn’t look at him. The panic began to ebb, only to be replaced by excruciating embarrassment.

  “Laura,” he ordered, “Look at me.” I did. His brown eyes were full of understanding.

  “I just…”

  “I know,” he said. I knew then I had never needed to tell him anything. He knew exactly how I felt and he had felt that way too. The fact that I wasn’t alone meant everything in that moment. I burst into tears. I sobbed so hard that I had to cling to the cold metal railing for support. Gégé didn’t try to hug me or tell me to stop. He just rubbed my shoulder and murmured “I know” over and over again.

  “It’s hard being alive sometimes, n’est-ce pas?” Gégé said when my tears began to subside.

  I nodded and took a shuddering breath.

  “He was thrilled with the bidet.”

  I wiped my eyes, confused. “Who?”

  “A man at the dump ended up taking all the fixtures home with him. He was thrilled with the turquoise bidet in particular.” The thought managed to bring a little smile to my face, and it was reflected in Gégé’s.

  “I guess that’s something.”

  “It is something,” he said. “The others will be coming back soon. Do you need to go and blow your nose?”

  “Yeah.” I scrubbed my face with my hands to try and even out the splotches. “Merci Gégé. Maybe we could keep…”

  “Ne fais pas du souci.” He gave my shoulder a final pat. “No one will know there was anything amiss with La Lolo. We all find life hard sometimes.”

  It wasn’t until I went into the WC to blow my nose that I realized Gégé hadn’t called me Laura. He had called me “La Lolo.” My new nickname.

  Chapter 22

  The day after the bathroom had been stripped of its turquoise fittings and I had earned a nickname not by being strong, but by being vulnerable, Franck informed me that he had invited Gégé, Le Paulo, and an electrician they called Momo over for dinner the next night.

  I surveyed our kitchen, which was covered in plaster dust and had frayed electrical cables hanging from the holes Franck and Gégé had excavated in the ceiling.

  “Are you insane?” I asked.

  “A bit,” he admitted. “But I may need to call Paulo in to help again if we’re going to get the plastering back on track and” - he pointed up at the dangling cables overhead - “I think you’ll agree with me that we need an electrician sooner rather than later. Thierry has a friend named Momo who’s an electrician. We’re going over to their place tonight to get the information and I want Momo to be at the dinner too.”

  I turned around to the kitchen again. “How are we supposed to cook in this mess? Can’t we just take them out to a restaurant?”

  Franck shook his head. His usually black hair was almost white. “That’s not the way it�
��s done in Burgundy. It would be an insult.”

  I ran my hand through Franck’s hair, unleashing a shower of fine white dust. “More of an insult than feeding them chunks of plaster in their food?”

  Franck nodded. “Definitely.”

  Renovation-wise I had less to do than Franck who was up to his ears in plastering, so I knew the onus was on me to feed the guests at dinner the next night. This was Burgundy, where sublime food and wine counted more than life itself. If my cooking was bad we might, in all seriousness, be abandoned by our helpers for good.

  “You’d better plan on serving lots of wine.” I pulled down Franck’s T-shirt and found a clean spot of skin on his collarbone to kiss.

  “You can count on that.” He swatted me on the bottom with his trowel. “Merci, mon amour.”

  Momo, we learned that night at Stéph and Thierry’s house, was an electrician who lived two villages over and was a childhood friend of Thierry, Stéphanie’s husband. In the village, Momo went by two nicknames. In polite circles his actual name Maurice was shortened to “Momo,” but his friends knew him as L’âne or “the donkey”.

  “Is it because he’s stubborn?” I asked. We had been in front of the fireplace and Tom was crawling around us, executing laborious u-turns every time he bumped into our legs.

  Thierry smirked. “Ah…non.”

  “Why then?”

  Franck caught Thierry’s eye and the two of them started to laugh.

  “Quoi?” I didn’t like the idea of having this donkey person fool around with our electrical cables until I knew the whole story.

  “Have you ever seen a donkey?” Thierry asked.

  “Bien sûr. My grandmother used to have one on her farm. His name was Tex and we used to try to feed him carrots and stuff. He would spit at us. He died eventually and we buried him under my grandmother’s apple tree. He was a nasty, spiteful thing. He used to bite us all the time. Three years later my cousins and I pretended that we were archaeologists and dug up all his bones.”