My Grape Escape (15 page)

Within ten minutes René, Franck, the butchered blue-footed chicken, and I were ensconced in a snug table at the local
routier
– the French version of a truck stop.

“Where are the menus?” I asked after the waitress deposited a huge glass bottle of red wine on the red gingham tablecloth beside a basket full of chopped up baguette and another carafe filled with water.

“There are no menus at
routiers
,” Franck reminded me. “You just get whatever they feel like cooking.”

“It’s always delicious,” René assured me. “Just last week I had the most amazing
andouilettes
here.”

Andouillettes
were one of Franck’s favorite things in the world. They were sausages made of pigs’ intestines. They smelled like a cow pie and I couldn’t imagine they tasted any better. Please God, no.

René served me a large glass of wine and I took a big gulp.

The patroness came out of the kitchen bearing three steaming plates. It didn’t smell like offal. I almost crowed with relief when she set my plate down. Tomatoes. Stuffed tomatoes, or
tomates farcies
, to be exact. I picked up my fork and dug in. The meat was a succulent mix of sausage and beef infused with the tomato juice. They were served with rice which soaked up the delectable sauce.

Just when I thought that my bliss couldn’t be more profound, the patroness replaced our clean plates with steaming plates of stewed rabbit and prunes in a white wine sauce. It was so succulent that if the market hadn’t been over I would have seriously considered going back and buying a rabbit of our own.

Next came a huge platter of cheeses, then an individual
crème brûlée
for each of us, and finally, of course, an espresso with a perfect little piece of dark chocolate.

René’s flow of anecdotes and stories washed over me like soothing music. I watched the other tradesmen come and go until we had been the last people in the restaurant for quite some time.

“I wonder what time it is?” Franck asked, though his tone suggested that he didn’t much care.

“No idea,” I murmured. Even though I was wearing a watch – I always wore a watch – it seemed like too much effort to check it.

René checked his. “It’s three o’clock. What time did you have to get back?”

“My dad needs the car by five,” Franck said, and sat up a little straighter. “It will take us at least an hour to get back. Do we have time to look at a few cars before we go?”

“Maybe a few,” René said. “Come on.”

An hour later we had to conclude that the car part of our day had been just as unsuccessful as the market portion of our day had been successful. René had taken us to the garage where he worked and, in a desultory fashion, showed us the two used cars that were parked out back. We would have taken either one for the right price, but after giving them a thorough once-over, René deemed them both pieces of junk. I tried to assure him that neither Franck nor I were at all averse to pieces of junk, but René proved stubborn.

Franck reached over and checked my watch. “We have to go if we’re going to get back in time.”

“That was a fine day!” René remarked as he helped Franck rearrange our purchases in the back of the car.

“It was a fine day,” I agreed. “Thank you.” I tried to muster up a little disappointment about not finding a car but it proved impossible with the memory of our lunch and the Emile Henry haul fresh in my mind. René grasped me by the shoulders and planted a hearty kiss on each cheek.

“
Au revoir
.” He passed me our chicken as I climbed into André’s car. As Franck turned the engine René leaned down to my open window.

“Remember Laura” - he tapped on the roof twice - “never confuse what is urgent with what is truly important.”

Chapter 17

I woke up the next morning turning over René’s parting words in my mind. They had been a revelation yesterday evening after our
routier
lunch and a significant quantity of the house red, but now I felt more muddled than ever. How was I supposed to know the difference between what was urgent and what was important? Getting the car was urgent, but it had also been important - hadn’t it? The chicken which was now safely entrusted into Mémé’s capable hands had been important, of course, but it still didn’t change the fact that we were stranded in Magny-les-Villers without a car.

I pulled on my clothes and tried to make a mental list of important things in my life while I heated up a saucepan of milk and turned on the coffee. Franck, of course. Our families, for sure. Delicious food. Good wine also deserved a top spot. I ran my finger over my new blue bowl, slowing down over the splash of blue paint on the white. It felt important. Wait - that was ridiculous. It was a salad bowl for goodness sake.

I drank my
café au lait
, picked up my wallpaper stripper and trudged back into the bedrooms to continue stripping the walls. I had felt more triumph in finding my salad bowl than I had when I learned I had earned a 2:1 in my law finals. How could
that
be?

Franck came in quite a while later after smoothing things over with his parents about the car, or rather our continued lack of one.

“I’ve got an idea,” he said.

“About what?” I asked.

“Our car.”

Another big chunk of plaster fell on the floor beside me. I had gotten used to this and just threw it into my pail and kept on working. “Let’s hear it.”

“
Alors
…the thing is
,
I know somebody in Chalon. Somebody who sells cars.” There was an odd note of hesitation in his voice. I shifted around to get a better look at my husband.

“Why didn’t we go and see this person to begin with?”

Franck squinted at a hole in the plaster.

“An ex-girlfriend?” I guessed. It wouldn’t be the first time I was brought face to face with one of Franck’s numerous ex-girlfriends. Girls had caught Franck’s interest at an early age, ten to be exact. We routinely stumbled over Franck’s ex-girlfriends when we were in Burgundy, but I was secretly thankful he wasn’t the type of man who stayed friends with them after breaking up.

“Not exactly,” he mumbled. “He is the father of an ex-girlfriend.”

“Which ex-girlfriend?” I was not a jealous person by nature, but some ex-girlfriends definitely counted more than others. “Have I met her?”

“Juliette.”

My heart sank. She wasn’t AN ex-girlfriend - she was THE ex-girlfriend.

Juliette grew up in the neighboring village of Meuilley and she and Franck went out for three years. They broke up about eight months before Franck and I met; Stéphanie had told me that after the rupture Franck remained holed up in his bedroom with the an enormous pile of philosophy books and tried to commit metaphorical suicide by overdosing on Nietzsche and Sartre. It was only a summons from the
Président de la République
himself in the form of a letter saying that Franck had to report for his mandatory military service that finally dislodged him from his refuge. He was legally obliged to emerge from his room, get a buzz cut, and rejoin the human race.

I met Juliette just before I left France at the end of my exchange year
,
in a café just off the
rue de la Liberté
in Dijon. Franck had brought me there because he was giving me a tour of his favorite haunts from his university days. I had my hair twisted back and anchored messily with a tortoise-shell barrette and wore a chiffon scarf with little light blue flowers all over it tied nonchalantly around my neck. The spring air was magical and I was feeling very much in love.

Franck settled me at a table by the window then went to the bar to order our espressos. I played with the sugar packets for a while but when I looked up for Franck I was startled to see he was talking earnestly to a woman. Her back was turned but I noticed her blond hair waved most of the way down a narrow, graceful back. She was shaking her head but Franck nodded, insistent. I had no idea who she was; however, I did find myself hoping to discover that when she turned around she had a low forehead and a moustache.

Just then she did. No such luck. Franck prodded her and she stalked resentfully over to where I was sitting. I turned my face up to Franck in question. Franck set our coffees on the table but remained standing, his face grim but determined.

Her aquamarine eyes examined me. They were set in a perfect oval face that was set off by full, beautifully shaped lips. White-hot envy shot through me.

“Laura,” Franck said. “I’d like you to meet Juliette. Juliette, this is my girlfriend, Laura.”

My heart contracted like a sea anemone poked with a stick, but I could
not
let it show. I stood up and leaned over to give her an awkward
bises
. I bumped the table and scalding espresso sloshed down one leg of my white jeans. Juliette stared at the spreading stain, mumbled something, then kissed Franck on the cheek and hurried away.

I collapsed back into my chair.

“Are you burnt?” Franck snatched up a napkin and rubbed my leg.

“
That
was Juliette?” A minute ago I had felt beautiful. Now…

Franck brushed a finger across my blazing cheek. “Does it hurt very much?”

“I’m fine,” I lied. As fine as a hedgehog beside a unicorn could ever feel, that is to say, not very fine at all.

“I’m relieved Juliette has met you now,” Franck said. “That should be the end of that.”

“The end of
what
?” I fought for breath.

Franck stirred his espresso. “She has been phoning me and saying she wants to get back together.” I wanted to curl up in a ball but I forced myself to sit up straighter.

“And?” I asked.

Franck looked up at me. The clanking of the coffee cups and the murmur of conversation at the bar seemed very far away.

“How could you even ask that?” he said. “I have told her that I am not interested. I told her that I am in love with you.”

I reached over, twisted his T-shirt in my hand and kissed him. Relief coursed through my veins. It hit me then how what had begun as an exotic whirlwind romance had deepened into something else entirely. If I lost him, I knew I would regret it for a very long time. Maybe forever.

Even now that we were married
,
the mere mention of Juliette had the power of hurtling me back in time so that I felt exactly like that eighteen year old sitting in that smoky café. Especially now, when I was covered with plaster dust and feeling somewhat lost in my own life.

“Her father is really nice.” Franck picked up another scraper lying on the floor and knelt down beside me. “I always got along with him.” He began to scrape slowly, thoughtfully. “I don’t want to have to ask to borrow my parents’ car again; I think we can borrow Stéph’s today. She’s off work.” I knew Franck was waiting to hear my decision.

“Do you want to go now?” I asked. “If we can borrow her car maybe we can go and see Juliette’s father before lunch.”

Franck dropped the scraper and went off in search of the phone.

Thirty minutes later, I was in Chalon shaking Juliette’s father’s hand.

“Please, call me Antoine,” he said. He had sparkling aquamarine eyes like his daughter and professed to be enchanted to finally meet me. Juliette was of course mentioned, but just a quick update that she was living in Lyon now with a boyfriend named Giles.

In a stark contrast to René, Antoine quickly brought the conversation back around to the subject of the kind of car we were looking to purchase. While Franck filled him in, he led us outside to the lot at the back of his dealership. We began looking at price tags. Everything was light-years beyond our budget.

“What is your budget exactly?” Antoine asked finally.

He paled when Franck named a figure, but led us to the very back of the lot where there were four vehicles that had clearly seen better days. Antoine led us right to the worst one in the lot – a white car speckled with spots of rust peeping through the flaking white paint.

“A Renault 21,” Antoine tapped the hood. “Doesn’t look like much and she has lot of kilometers on her but I think she will hold up for you” – he frowned - “for a few months anyway.”

“How much?” Franck asked. A half an hour later, we were signing the purchase papers.

“
You see?
”
Franck tapped Stéphanie’s steering wheel after we had arranged to pick up our car the next morning. “Everything works out in the end. Now we don’t only have a car, but we are going back to my parents to feast on a delicious chicken for lunch.
Elle n’est pas belle la vie?
Isn’t life beautiful?”

As we wound up through the vineyards on our way back to Magny-les-Villers, it did seem that my chronic attempts to control the future were unnecessary. After all, Franck and I had managed to stay together and even get married despite the ravishing Juliette. If I just relaxed, maybe both the urgent and the important and everything else would take care of itself. We had an epic task ahead of us in the months to come. I would have to remind myself often that in looking for a car, we ended up with not only a car but also a delicious chicken lunch and a pile of gorgeous Emile Henry tableware. On that gray December day,
la vie
did seem
belle
indeed.

After the excitement of the chicken expedition combined with the heady possession of our new car, Franck and I seemed to be stuck in the monotony of scraping off every inch and every layer of wallpaper throughout the house. The world outside seemed to grind to a halt, suspended by the frost. The temperature had plummeted and villagers were saying this would be one of the hardest winters of the last fifty years.

The days took on a routine. We woke up shivering, showered in the cold, scraped off wallpaper in the cold until we got down to the crumbling plaster, and then went to bed in the cold. I asked myself several times a day what the hell we were doing. Progress seemed slow and, at times, virtually non-existent.

“We need to get someone to help us with the re-plastering,” Franck moaned as yet another chunk of the wall disintegrated between his fingers. “I should call Olivier and see if he’s thought of anybody.”