Corked (18 page)

She summons Yves, the salon's sommelier, who is also the B.O. man, to open five bottles of wine. The convergence of the smells destroys my last minuscule hope that I might extract some secret private joy out of this experience.

My father is asking the appropriate questions, he is being so gracious, are the oak barrels new or old, what qualities have they given the wine, oh, this one is called
Un Des Sens
, what a clever name, how did you come up with such a witty double-entendre, one of the senses/indecency, oh ha ha, tell me about this year's harvest, would you like to hear a clever quote by a famous writer, because I would like to tell you this clever quote by a famous writer.

Chantal Comte and my father are laughing. I am seething.

“You know, Mme. Comte, we've been traveling for a week and a half now and I still don't know how to spit properly. When I do, it dribbles down my chin,” I say sweetly.

I plant my splayed hand on the base of the glass to do a proper swirl. The glass scrapes and screeches on the marble. My father and Chantal Comte cringe. I stick my nose into the glass, inhale deeply, then drink, making the appropriate kissing noises to run the liquid over my tongue. Mouth facing the sink, I spit. The wine sprays outward, a flat, wet, red triangle, all over the counter, my sleeves, and my father's sleeves. Some goes into the sink, but not much.

“Do you see?” I say. “My father, however, is the champion of spitting! We've met many sommeliers, and many winemakers, and none of them spit as gracefully and stylishly as
mon papa!
When the wine comes out of his mouth, it's like a laser!”

Mme. Comte shoots me a look of distaste and reengages my father, who has turned his head away from me.
If you want me to be a child, Dad, if being a child is the only way we can relate, then I will be a child for you
.

We continue the tasting. I hear the words. I drink the wine. Château de la Tuilerie, 2004. Accolades, 2004, made, I think, with alicante. Alicante? This is a new grape.
You are being a grouchy asshole
. Château de la Tuilerie, Carte Blanche, 2004. Syrah and Grenache, grapes I know from the region. The wind cleans the grapes. I know this.
Maybe you should start trying again
. Château de la Tuilerie Cuvée Eole Rouge, 2001, an older wine, but not so old. Un des Sens, 2003, made only with Syrah. Chantal Comte and my father chat. They chat and chat. They laugh more.
No, fuck trying. You've been trying the whole time. He's the one who hasn't been trying with you. You learned the language pretty well for a while. It's he who hasn't bothered to learn yours
. I look down at my boots to hide the fact that my eyes are brimming with tears. Several minutes pass.

I am still looking at my boots when a different smell, one that's astringent and nauseatingly familiar, wafts into my face.

“Tou Tou. Taste Mme. Comte's rum. It's from Antilles,” my father says. He says this for her benefit, not mine.

Rum. Christ. Anything but rum. Red wine over rum. I take it all back. I can't taste the rum. I suppress a burp. Somewhere along the tube of my esophagus there's a gurgling sting.

“
Oh, non, merci, Madame
…
mais
….” There's no chance of me finishing the sentence. I have been avoiding rum like rats and ebola since I was 17, after The Night of My First—sorry—Second Poisoning, a night that left me spent and sick in a hotel bathroom, a night that involved me sleeping in a pool of my own vomit. Rum is the stuff of my nightmares.

They are laughing again. Yves is taking away the balloon glasses, their rims stained burgundy and smeared with saliva and lipstick. He leaves. It is an orgy of smell.

Rising, I excuse myself from the table, I march quickly through the salon and into the storage area where the bathroom is. I lock the door and drop to my knees, heaving into the toilet, exhaling in one long, red stream all of Chantal Comte's wine, her perfume, their laughter, which I can still hear, floating under the closed door. All of it.

 

T
he car is no longer a car. It is a clear Lucite box that only a contortionist could bend into, but we have both somehow found ourselves crammed into it. I am driving west, but there is nowhere to go. The air is like soup. Something—some reflex—I don't know, I don't know if it's a reflex but it is something…something is blocking this air from finding a settling place in my lungs. I can't breathe in fully. I have no tools.

After leaving Chantal Comte's châteaux, we spend an endless amount of our (now separate) futures winding along roads, making wrong turns, becoming lost in a field where there are vines and then, later, goats. We are back at the beginning of the trip. The difference is that he no longer feels like my father. He feels like a stranger. And I refuse to register what he is experiencing. That is no longer my solemn duty.

The large converted barn doors of the small hotel we're meant to stay at are barricaded. My father has exited the car and returned with the note that was taped to the wood. It reads,
Au marché. Retour: 17h
. The owners would be returning at 5 p.m. It is 2 p.m. My spirits sink lower. I want to eat by myself, and lock myself into my room for the rest of the day. As we were getting lost, I resolved that I would call my mother from the privacy of my hotel room, explain the situation, describe how my father was acting in plain terms, allow her to understand the impact it was having on me, and ask her to help bring me home. All I need is a hotel room, some safe distance away from him.

“I'm not waiting here,” I say.

Map in lap, my father points to the nearest city, Ales. I wind back down the road and follow the signs.

Without exchanging a word, we drive for another few hundred years. Pastoral village turns into gray industry—stores, neon-green
pharmacie
crosses every few blocks, a city hall made of stone. Noticing a red panel on one of the pointed green road signs, I make out the familiar icon of two red flowers,
Ibis Centr'Ales
. It's the French equivalent of a Holiday Inn.
This will do
.

I lock the car and throw the keys in the direction of my father's chest, trying to hit the red knighthood stripe he has pinned to his blazer.
What a joke
. After almost 10 years of what was said to be unparalleled leadership at the Château Frontenac, his work was noticed by the French government, and in 2001 he received the
Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur
designation, France's equivalent of knighthood. I throw the keys at him as hard as I can. I want to knock off his dumb little red stripe. I miss his chest, he misses the keys, then picks them up as I walk ahead to make a reservation and check-in arrangements. He's not far behind. We arrive at the desk together. It appears as though Ales is in the midst of some sort of festival. The young woman at the desk is wearing a billowy, humiliating period costume.

She hands us the keys to our separate bedrooms, on separate floors. I am hit by a typhoon of relief. Distance from him. Now I can make the phone call.

In the elevator, I press 3 and he presses 5. The doors open, I get out. He follows.

No
.

No goddammit
.

I whirl around. “What are you doing,” I demand.

He shrugs and wrinkles up his face. He's conceding something in this shrug, in this expression.

“Eh, well, Tootsie, you know, I just…I just…wanted to check to see how crappy this room is.”

“No. Leave me alone.”

“Okay, Tou Tou.” He turns and moves back toward the elevator. Before continuing the walk down the hall, I make sure he enters it. I watch his face disappear as the metal doors slide shut.

I slip the key card in and out. There is suction as I push the door in. The room isn't bad. It smells a bit of cigarette smoke. I am completely worn out. Sitting down slowly on the bed, I unzip my boots and throw them in the corner. I shift into a supine position and close my eyes. I pass out immediately.

It is early evening when I wake up. I am hollow and hungry and I have to take a piss. Flipping on the light on the bedside table, I scan the room. My bag, which contains the phone, is by the door to the room. Next to it, there's a piece of hotel stationery, folded in half. I can suddenly feel all the muscles in my body. I walk over and pick up the note, unfold it, and read my father's flat, near-illegible script.

My Dear Tou Tou
,

You were right. There are ways in which I really have failed you. Last night I did not know what to do. You were throwing so many emotions at me—this is not bad really! This is good! I need to know these parts of you. You were telling the truth about you, and I did not respond. I have not killed that mean man you saw in the car last night and today, but I have banished him to another planet. Please come and talk to me when you can. I promise I will listen to you. I can see you are becoming a girl of real weight. You know what I mean—Beethoven moving from his first to his second period
.

Love
,

I blink at the page and see that I've left impression marks on the sides of the page, from where my now moist, clammy fingers have been clamped.

In my stocking feet, I walk down the hall, achy and stiff from the nap, carrying in my gut a good, anticipatory warmth. I trust these words. I take the stairs to the fifth floor.

“Hi.” I'm standing in the doorway.

“Tootsie.”

He invites me in.

“I took a nap. I needed some sleep.”

“Good.”

“Thank you for writing that note.”

“Bah.” He squeezes his shoulders into a sheepish
mea culpa
shrug. “You're welcome.”

“You know, I was going to leave today. I was going to find some way to leave you,” I say.

He opens his arms. I walk over and let myself be folded within them. My eyes well up and my nose begins to run. Rubbing my face back and forth on his sweater, I wipe my face clean, leaving a trail of snot and tears. Putting his hands on my shoulders, he pushes me back gently and notices the mess.

“Thank you for this gift of your
morve
.”

“You're welcome. For the snot. And the rest. It's the least I can do. Your note was pretty great.”

“Alors, on va manger?” Yes. We will eat
.

“Yes.”

“Yes.”

As we walk into the street, the day is new. The sky has changed colors—a rainstorm has just passed through. The city looks better, cleaner. My dad chuckles and pokes his finger up at the sky.

There's a huge rainbow, a huge, seriously huge and hugely cheerful rainbow. I buckle and flop over in hysterics. I shake my fist at the rainbow.

“Our lives are a cliché,” my dad says.