Corked (13 page)

“it's too bad.”

My brain began screaming into a canyon.
It's too bad? WHAT'S TOO BAD?
I clicked over to the “sent messages” folder, but there was nothing.
The phone doesn't save sent messages? What kind of piece of crap phone doesn't save sent messages? What the FUCK did I say in the last message? Elephants. The colonial elephant wallpaper. That's what's too bad? That I was cooped up in a luxury room with esthetically threatening wallpaper? Or it's too bad about us? About my tricks? About my slatternly ways? About our relationship? About the condition of his condition? About the condition of our condition? About the melting of the polar ice caps? About the Khmer Rouge regime? About American foreign policy? ABOUT WHAT????

“Tootsie, the phone.”

My father dialed numbers while I used them to count backward. An amorphous panic overtook me, like I was on a crazy game show that involved trying to survive a haunted house where there is an ax murderer in any one of the closets. I counted backward.
Ten, nine, eight, seven…. What's the use? What a worthless tip—that is, to count backwards from 10. Count backwards from 10. Don't worry. Be good to yourself. Take it easy. Stay positive. Don't be so hard on yourself. OH? REALLY? Why, THANK YOU! I hadn't thought of those options. Whatever would I do without you and your Chicken Soup for the Neurotic's Soul HORSE SHIT PLATITUDES?

No. Really, though. There is a better-than-average chance that this is about wallpaper and paste and pachyderms and men in hats with monocles
.

I fixed my eyes on the quiet panorama outside the windshield. I heaved in as much oxygen as my lungs could handle. Best-case scenario: My quip about the elephants was weak, and warranted an equally tepid response. And he knew about all the guys I had slept with while keeping him and his terrible love as my primary self-worth food source, but his heart remained solid and intact. Worst-case scenario: he's a mess of human tissue and it's my fault and now I will be obliged to admit that I want him to feel good not because he deserves to feel good, but because it would alleviate my tremendous guilt about what I've done to him, and how that is the most brutal articulation of my pitiable character.

Fuck. I hope it is the elephants. Also, I cannot control this situation from this continent
.

“Bonjour?”
A tinny voice came out the receiver. My father was holding the phone in front of his face, as one would a baby who has just vomited on itself. I steadied myself and thought about the nice, neat metaphor of the DRC harvest of 1975. Good berries amid a ruined harvest.

“Bonjour, M. Borel.”
The tinny voice belonged to a woman. An impatient woman.

“Is this Mme. Nudant?”

“Yes?”

“Ah, hello. I'm calling to confirm our appointment with you at two this afternoon.”

“Yes, yes, 2 o'clock.”

“So 2 o'clock it is.”

“We're right in the middle of the harvest.” Mme. Nudant was huffy.

“Of course.”

“We're very busy, you know,” she barked, “but of course we're very much looking forward to receiving you.”

My father glanced over at me. I mimed a big shrug and chuckled a little.

“Mme. Nudant, it's not imperative we come. We understand it's harvest-time, and how busy you are. We're happy to call off the visit, truly.”

“I wouldn't think of it,” she said flatly. “We're just scrambling because of the harvest.”

“Yes, the harvest. Naturally it's terribly busy. You're sure?”

“Absolutely sure. We wouldn't have it any other way, but please respect how overworked we are at this time of year.”

My hands were now clamped around my mouth, choking what was coming from my diaphragm. I rolled down the window, opened the door, and exited the car as quietly as I could. I let out a few whispery giggles, then stuck my head back into the car.

“No, but please,
madame
, we can cancel.”

“No,
monsieur
, we wouldn't have it. You will come, but we're very busy.”

“We will make it a short visit. We thank you so much for your kindness.”

The phone beeped, she hung up.

“What the HELL was that?” I said. “What passion! What passivity! What aggression! What passionate-passive-aggression…passionivitygression….” I started laughing again.

“She's out of her mind,” he said.

“Well, Dad, you know, it's harvest season, and she's very busy.”

“Am I crazy? Did I not suggest we cancel the visit three or four times?”

“About that.”

“Was I the only one who heard that?
Venez, venez, monsieur, non, j'insiste
….”

“She was adamant.”

“She was, wasn't she?”

“She was.”

Pulling into the cobbled drive, I noticed my father's expression change.

“This woman does not want us here. She does not want us bothering her. This is going to suck,” he intoned.

“Oh no, don't say that.”

“We will not be treated well here. I do not want to be in a place where I am not treated well.”

“It'll be fine, I'm sure. Please, Dad. Cheer up.”

That's the game. Tha-aat's the game. He's doing it
. I thought about how he used to do it not only at my tennis games, but at my basketball games as well. It enraged my mother. There are stories of him sitting in the stands with the same aloof fatalism he showed at my outmatched tennis matches, amid the rah-rah, apple-cheeked American parents, watching me play exhibition games with my community basketball team in Dallas (the Stratoblasters!). These games were always shamefully low-scoring—I was eight—and if our team gave up the ball, say, twice, my father would look at my mother gravely and state, “That's the game.” And we would lose. We were terrible; many of us thought dribbling was optional.

Standing in front of the stone enclosure surrounding the Nudant property, my father reached out to ring the bell with a look on his face that said, “I'm not here.” I wanted to hang a Do Not Disturb sign around his neck.

The wooden gate flung open, and there she was, the embodiment of what her voice had indicated: black-stained hands, fraying collared shirt under a splattered navy blue sweater, rubber boots chunky with mud, hair blown horizontal. Glancing at my father's unblinking face, I stretched out a champion smile, the broadest, sparkliest smile I could muster.

“Oui, oui, les Borels, entrez, entrez.”
We were scum. I continued to beam. I was the sun. I was a heat-seeking missile of positivity. I denied myself all the doubts and worries and dread that I was having at Romanée-Conti, and focused on my massively overstretched mouth. I was a paper crane, perfectly folded, not allowing the rain to take away my structural integrity.

She led us out to the vineyard behind the house.

“These are the vines. They have been harvested. These are part of the AOC, obviously. Do you know how that works?” she asked.
Oh God
. Now I was an army of paper cranes.

“Mostly!” I nodded, hoping to seem curious, but not so curious that she would grow annoyed with having to explain AOC in detail.

“So you know, then, that AOC stands for
appellation d'origine contrôlée?
”

“Indeed.”

“Here, it is more complicated than anywhere else.”

“Practically impenetrable!” I agreed.

“As you know, in most regions, wines are classified according to what château they've come from. Château XYZ produces a bottle of wine, and that wine is given the name of the château XYZ. You were born into the Borel family, so you are given the name Borel.”

“Right, Borel, sure!”

“But in Burgundy, the classifications are based on geography and
terroir
, the exact area in which that bottle of wine is made. If you were a bottle of wine from Burgundy, your name would be….”

Worrying that she had forgotten my name, hoping my father would reengage, I blurted, “Kathryn Toronto General Hospital, room A-187, or something. What room was I born in, Dad?”
I made this joke for you, you ghost of a human
.

My father shrugged. She went on, unsmiling.

“The bottle is given the name of the village in which the vineyard is located, and that name is displayed prominently on the label. But not all vineyards are classified as AOC, and there are different quality classifications within them. And there are blends from various villages.”

Reeling, I tried to follow along but became lost and quietly sad.
Why can't we just do a tasting? This morning, I had all of the words to describe this wine. I wanted to describe myself, through the wine, to my father. And now we're doing none of this, and this woman is not being very nice to me, and he is not protecting me
.

“Do you understand what I am telling you about the system?”

“Sure I understand,” I said, unsure of which part of her monologue she was referring to. “But of course I don't understand the idea of AOC as much as you understand it, so maybe you can explain it a little more?”

She sighed.
I can't win. Today I will settle for being a loser
.

“
Vous voyez, AOC
….” She launched into more of an explanation, sighing and placing her knuckles on her hips. Her eyes flickered.
Did she just roll her eyes?
As I was watching her body language, I had lost the thread. Now I was well and properly lost. Scrambling to seem as though I were following her thread, I concentrated on picking up my social cues. When her voice hit an upswing, I said “aHA!” or “
A bon!
”

He is not protecting me like he didn't know how to protect me from that lecherous man in Alsace, like he didn't know how to protect me from the emotional fallout after the accident
.

We whirled through the cellar, her arms pointed this way—“This is our family tree; we've been making wine since the fifteenth century…”—and that way—“Those bottles there, the ones under the barrels, those are extremely old; they're full of mystery wine that we share with friends, for fun. We open them on special occasions
with friends
.” She looked pointedly at my father and me—we were not her friends, and she would not be sharing this mystery wine with us, for fun. This was not fun. For anyone. My father had still not opened his mouth. I was putting myself through Expression Charades worthy of a goddamn Oscar, eyes huge, lips parted in delight, nodding as if I were a bobblehead in a bumper car.

Mme. Nudant had whipped out a wine thief, a small glass sampling tube, and she was thieving wine from one of the barrels, filling us in on the vintage, the growing conditions, yapping nervously as she shot the liquid into glasses and handed them to me and my mute companion. Swirl, sniff, glug, I threw it down the hatch. She watched me for one second, waiting for a descriptor or a reaction, but I gave her none of my metaphors.
There's no point
. She went on to the next barrel, pulled out two more glasses and more explanation. Up the stairs, over to the vats where the wine was heating. She was stabbing her finger at a chart specifying the various temperatures at which the wine would heat when—oh dear Lord, have mercy—her husband and son walked in.

“
Monsieur et Mademoiselle Borel?
” M. Nudant asked.

“Oui, M. Nudant?”
My father spoke.
Oh, now you're not a monk anymore?

“Bonjour, bienvenue. Mon fils, Guillaume.”
We all shook hands. Mme. Nudant saw her chance to escape and hurried by us.

“So, my wife has given you the tour?” he asked.

“Yes. It was generous of you to meet with us. It's clear you're in the thick of it,” my father responded. His quiet violence had disappeared.

“It was our pleasure, really,” he said, sincerely. “Why don't you come into the kitchen for a cup of coffee? The harvesters are eating lunch.”

“Perfect,” my father said.
Perfect
? We followed M. Nudant.

The lunch table was a joyous clattering mob scene of family tree foliage—Grandma Nudant, Guillaume, Papa Nudant, six or seven ruddy-faced harvesters, a young aspiring winemaker from New Zealand who had come to Burgundy to apprentice. Grandma served us cups of instant coffee. Suddenly, I was wise to what was going on—with Mme. Nudant, at least. For her, we hadn't interrupted the harvest, we'd interrupted a kind of birth, something deeply personal. We were strangers who had swanned into the hospital as the baby was crowning. As we drained our small porcelain cups, my father chatted graciously with the group. Relieved but confused by his behavior, I said nothing. I clattered my cup down on its dish and shifted, signaling that I was ready to go. My father rose, then I rose. M. Nudant held up his hand and rushed out of the kitchen, returning with two beautiful bottles for us to take with us. As we thanked him, I bowed my head in tacit apology.

I carried the bottles, trailing my father, feeling silenced and slighted by him. I kicked the tips of my toes into the pebbly driveway, sending small rocks in the direction of his ankles, hoping they would fall into the backs of his shoes and cause him discomfort, a similar discomfort to what I'd just endured. But I wasn't really kicking hard enough to get them in there. I watched his body sway back and forth, as nonchalant as could be. I measured my movements against his—they were choppy and stiff, like those of a wind-up metal toy. Huffing, I plowed my toe hard into the ground. A spray of pebbles cascaded into the backs of his legs. He didn't turn around.