My Grape Escape (11 page)

“I noticed that.” Mémé handed over a neatly penned list to André. “I will need you to go into Beaune and get these things for me. Don’t try to palm any of those generic products of
f
on me. I can only work with
mes produits
.” André stared down at the list and his mouth tightened. Mémé whipped her dishtowel over her shoulder. “I’ll be needing those ingredients soon,” she said, nodding towards the door.

Michèle took a deep breath and rolled her eyes at Franck and me.

“Let’s go have a shower.” Franck pulled me up. When Franck had shut the bathroom door behind us he said, “I think now is a good time to go and inspect our house if we don’t want to be drafted in as sous-chefs.

Once we were clean, we let ourselves out the door and scurried across the frosty courtyard to the stone barn where we found André. He had wisely embarked on a thorough cleaning project of the barn to keep himself out of the way. Franck asked if we could borrow the Citroën and André took the keys from his pocket, handing them over to us. He waved good-bye as he shut the courtyard gate behind us and I’m sure he hightailed it back into the tranquility of the barn.

I cranked up the heat. “Maybe we should move to our place sooner rather than later.”

Franck looked grim. “We’re also going to need to buy a car, you know. My dad needs this one to get back and forth to work. ”

Merde
. I had never considered the obvious need for a car, nor had I budgeted for it. I put my hands in front of the air vent, but the air coming out was frigid.

“Do you realize how cold it is going to be in our house?” Franck asked me. “
Chez nous
?”

“I think I’m about to find out.”

Franck slid the car into one of the two parking spots in front of the church in Magny. There was a nervous flutter in my chest. It felt similar to the one I had when my friend Sandrine and I were driving to Franck’s house to pick up him and Stéphanie the night after Franck and I had first met. Within an hour of being introduced we were making out on the dance floor of a local discothèque. I knew I liked Franck, but I figured he probably only wanted a one-night fling like most other guys. Then, as now, I was filled with equal parts excitement and uncertainty.

I glanced up at the
tilleuls
which arched over our car. In the summer they had been covered with an explosion of pale green leaves. Now the leaves had fallen and the branches were all cut off, leaving only truncated stumps like a passel of fists gesticulating at the sky.

I clutched the bunch of keys as we crunched across the pea gravel that only scantly covered the frozen dirt of the passageway underneath our house. The stone stairs were frosty. I held on to the gray metal railing so as not to slip. Was I still going to see potential in this place? I rubbed the keys for luck.

Franck creaked open the metal door of the veranda. His parents had told us they had gone and unlocked it the day before.

“You do the honors,” he said, waving at the wad of keys in my hand.

I looked down and realized I had no idea which key opened the front door. “This could take a while.” I slid the biggest, most ancient looking key into the wooden door. I tried to turn it but it didn’t catch. I tried several others while Franck began to jump up and down on the spot to warm up.

Finally I wiggled in a mangled key – one of the last ones on the ring I hadn’t tried - but it didn’t seem to work either. Frustrated, I gave the door a shove with my shoulder. It swung open. The arctic air inside, combined with the overpowering stench of mothballs, stole my breath.

“How can the inside of a house be colder than outside?”

“I told you,” Franck said.

“But how?”

Franck tapped the wall behind us. “Welcome to the joys of very old houses. The stone traps in the cold and the humidity.” He pulled me toward him and planted a kiss on the numb tip of my nose. He had given me many lectures on the downsides of older houses through the fall, but I hadn’t really listened. “You never really believed me until now, did you?”

I shivered. “I guess not.
Mes excuses
.” A thought struck me. “I never really paid attention to what kind of heating system they had in here.” Please let it be central heating. The question hadn’t so much as flitted through my head in July.

“Luckily I did,” Franck said.

He flicked on the single light bulb in the living room and led me over to a behemoth beige metallic unit sitting against the far wall of the living room, underneath my beloved cheese cupboard. “I asked Le Maître about it while you were admiring the hinges on the kitchen door. He said these units are some kind of old brick refractor system. We’ll have to replace them with radiators of course, but at least they’ll heat things up for the time being. ”

Franck leaned down to try to coax the unit into turning on while I drifted off to inspect the rest of our house. Franck’s parents had warned us that it was still packed with furniture, and that the sellers had asked at the signing for us to call them when we arrived to set up a time for them to come and move it all away. They weren’t kidding. There seemed to be even more furniture in the tiny house than there had been in July. Or maybe that was just an impression, as the brick heaters took up so much floor space.

I ran a finger over the massive wooden buffet in the living room that actually touched the more than nine foot high wallpapered ceiling. The wood was so dark that it was almost black. The bottom doors were embellished with carved dragons and scary looking birds.

“I can’t wait to get rid of this,” I said to Franck. Before he answered the stench of burning rubber filled the air. “Is it supposed to smell like that?” I began to cough.

I hurried over to the window, wrenched it open and flung open the shutters, just like Papa in “The Night Before Christmas”. The shutters in that story must have been sturdier than ours. There was the ominous sound of splintering wood, then one of our shutters crashed to the street below.

“
Merde
,” I murmured. Definitely not a good omen.

Franck joined me at the window and looked dispassionately down at what remained of the shutter. “Unfortunately, you’ll have to go and get that by yourself,” he said. “I can’t leave the heater right now or I’m afraid I might end up burning the whole house down.”

When I came back up and put the pieces of wood on the table, the burning smell had become even more acrid. “Is that normal?”

“I’ll guess we’ll know in a few minutes if we don’t pass out or die from carbon monoxide poisoning first,” Franck said. He stood up and gave the radiator a kick. I sidled closer to the window and the fresh air.

Franck, meanwhile, crossed the room and studied the hideous buffet himself. “I’m not sure I agree with you,” he said. “It’s hard to tell with the wallpaper and everything, but I think I actually kind of like this thing.”

I stared at my husband, feeling like I had never really known him up until this moment. Had he really become such a stranger to me in the past two years? I put a hand on the windowsill to steady myself. Our time in Vancouver had been so busy with finding an apartment and then work. We never really had time to reconnect and rebuild after Oxford. We had a big chasm to bridge, and something told me that these next four months would be crucial to our future together.

Franck patted the sad looking plaid tweed couch that was pushed up against the wall beside the buffet. “And this will be the conjugal bed.” He gave me a wink that turned into a gasping cough at the puff of dust that billowed up. As far as beds went, it didn’t exactly invite languorous reconciliations.

I reminded myself that every journey starts with a first step. I sidled over and sat down gingerly on the couch. The springs poked the backs of my thighs through my jeans. My eyes began to water. I sneezed six times in a row.

From this angle, the buffet looked as though it had every intention of squashing me in my sleep. The open window let in the cold winter air, but it was no match for the stench of burning rubber coming from the strange radiator. This wasn’t how I had pictured our first visit back to our house at all. I had pictured something far more …well… romantic and comfortable. This was an adventure, I reminded myself sternly, and adventures were rarely comfortable.

“Home Sweet Home,” I said to Franck. I reached up and pulled him down beside me. As for the romance, that was up to us.

Chapter 13

Both of us started to feel wonky with jetlag, and possibly radiator fumes. We needed to eat and take the car back so we headed back to
chez
Germain
for lunch.

"When should we plan to move in?” I wondered out loud, as Franck pulled out of the parking spot in front of the church. A week, or better yet two, from now sounded about right.

“After lunch,” Franck said. “We’ll sleep at our house tonight.”

I thought back to the thick cloud of dust that had billowed up from the couch. “Tonight? On that couch?”

“
Bien sûr
.”

“I’ll die of an allergy attack…or of that
armoire
falling over on me during the night.”

“Laura, it’s not going to get any more comfortable. We only have four months. We have to start right away.” Franck was preoccupied during lunch and told us as we were finishing up the cheese course that he had already arranged with his friend Olivier to have our cafés at his house. I knew that was a lie, but I wasn’t going to argue.

Olivier was one of Franck’s oldest friends; he lived across the street from Franck’s parents and just up from the village
boulangerie
with his wife Dominique and their son Marcel.

“Don’t get me wrong. I love Olivier,” I said to Franck as we bundled up in our coats. “But don’t we have other things we should be doing this afternoon, like finding a clean set of sheets for the sofa bed?”

“First we need to consult with the
L’Oracle
.”

“The Oracle?”

“Yes. Olivier is like the village oracle. You saw how much work that house needs. Olivier will give us good advice.
Wise
advice,” Franck added, tapping his temple.

Luckily
L’Oracle
was in. We were kissed on both cheeks and quickly seated at the kitchen table where Olivier was enjoying an after lunch cigarette. Dominique poured us thick and bitter cups of espresso. Marcel pulled at our legs from under the table and pleaded for
sucre
.

“He’s obsessed with sugar cubes,” Dominique explained. “Don’t give him any.” I saw Olivier’s hand slip under the table with a few cubes in his palm.

Olivier then turned to Franck. “You’ve got that troubled look.”

Franck didn’t need any further encouragement. He plunged into a detailed explanation of our house dilemma: the mammoth amount of renovations needed, the fact that we had no idea where to start and no contacts in the trades, our woefully limited budget…it took several minutes, during which the room started to tilt and my heart began to beat erratically. I sucked in as much air as I could, but it didn’t seem like enough. What did I think I was doing, embarking on this crazy venture?

I twisted my hands in my lap and tried to concentrate on Olivier. He soaked in every word that came out of Franck’s mouth. Even though he was shorter than me, and looked ten years younger than both Franck and I, Olivier had the definite air of a wise man around him. Even in
École primaire
, Franck had told me, people sought him out for level-headed advice and a sympathetic, yet never complacent, ear.

I had done exactly that two years before, the day before my wedding. I had been decorating the wine cellar in Nuits-Saint-Georges for the reception, trying to mediate between two of Franck’s garrulous extended family members about the correct way to position the crêpe paper flowers between the stones in the walls. The squabbling continued despite my best attempts at diplomacy and I eventually stormed up the stairs for a much-needed breath of fresh air. Exiting the cellar, I stood up too fast and whacked my head on the vaulted stone entrance so hard that I saw not only stars, but planets too. I swore viciously, clutched my head, and sank down beside Olivier, who was perched on the little wall at the top of the stairs, enjoying a cigarette,
comme d’habitude
.

“
Ça va
Laura?” he asked. To most people I would have answered a stony and completely untrue “
ça va
” but something about the tone of his voice – like he actually cared – or the crinkles at the corners of his eyes, gave me pause.

“This wedding business is more trouble than it’s worth,” I grumbled. “I’m exhausted. All day long people have been accosting me with questions like ‘when do the dishes arrive tomorrow at the cellar?’, ‘when are you supposed to pick up the croquembouche?’, ‘do you want the
soupe à l’oignon
with or without emmenthal on top?’ Every question makes me realize how much could go wrong tomorrow.”

Olivier clicked his tongue.

“My father just informed me that he checked the weather forecast and that it’s going to rain.” I plucked the cigarette out of Olivier’ fingers and took a deep drag, asthma be damned. “Franck and I should have eloped to Las Vegas.”

Olivier patted me on the knee. “Tomorrow will be the best day of your life, Laura.”

I snorted. “Yes. That is if the croquembouche magically shows up and we find someone who can pick up the flowers from Beaune and - ”

“Tomorrow will be the best of your life,” he interrupted. “None of those other things matter. What matters is that tomorrow you are marrying Franck and you will be surrounded by people who love both of you. Everything else will work itself out. Even if it doesn’t, it won’t matter. That’s how it was for me. That’s how it will be for you.
Promis
.”

I opened my mouth and then shut it again. I passed his cigarette back, then leaned over and gave his scratchy unshaven cheek a kiss.

“
Merci,
Olivier.”

It did rain the next day but Olivier had been right – it didn’t matter. Besides, as Franck reminded me as we led the wedding party in the traditional walk from his house to the village mayor’s office,
mariage pluvieux, mariage heureux
or “a rainy marriage is a happy marriage”. The croquembouche had even showed up right on time, although I’m still not sure by what miraculous means.

“Leave it with me,” Olivier said when Franck reached the end of our tale of renovation woes. “I need to think about your dilemma for a day or two.” My heart felt soothed, like it had done after I had talked to the Virgin Mary statue in the church in Magny.

Then Franck launched into “Franck and Laura’s problems - Part Two: A Car.”

Olivier, contrary to Franck and me, had always been interested in cars. Franck had very much the same view on vehicles as me, meaning that as long as they had four wheels and moved in a forward direction one was as good as any other. Franck and I needed a used car – a very,
very
inexpensive used car. And we were poorly equipped to come head to head with unscrupulous used car dealers.

“
La!
” Olivier exclaimed. “There I can help you right away. I’m going to send you to René.”

“I thought he had moved down to Provence after his divorce,” Franck said. I was intrigued. I had heard a lot about this enigmatic René from Franck and his friends. His first claim to fame was that he talked so continuously that his friends couldn’t figure out exactly how he breathed. The second was that he and his now ex-wife decided to get divorced at their very own wedding reception, mere minutes after making the first slice in their wedding cake.

“He’s moved back to Louhans. He works in a garage there. He didn’t find people very friendly in the south.”

“Maybe they weren’t deaf enough,” Franck said.

Olivier smiled. “If they weren’t when he arrived, they surely are now.”

It was settled. Olivier would call René that very moment and see if he wouldn’t take us under his wing to find a used and cheap car.

When he hung up the phone, Olivier took a long, evaluating look at my husband. “Now, I need you to do a favour for me.”

“Name it,” said Franck.

He walked over to the huge ornamental buffet against the far wall that had been his grandmother’s and which looked like the long-lost twin of ours. He extracted an unlabeled dark green glass bottle from its murky depths as well as a well-worn pack of Tarot playing cards.

“Taste some of this
calvados
and tell me what you think, and play a hand of tarot with Dominique and me.” Franck’s face relaxed instantly; I didn’t have the heart to remind him that we still had a million things to do. They could wait, I supposed, one more day.

After our visit with Olivier, we returned to our rubber smelling money pit with not only lighter heads, but lighter hearts. We tossed the cushions off the sofa, trying to ignore the dust that billowed off with them, and pulled out the rusty pull-out bed.

“Our first night in our new house,” Franck raised a suggestive brow.

I sneezed.

We fit on the sheets we had brought from Franck’s house and plopped down fresh pillows. I must have been exhausted because our bed looked almost inviting. I turned my back on the looming buffet and stripped off my clothes. I wasn’t going to look at it tonight, or even think of it falling on me.

“I’m going to have a quick bath to warm up,” Franck said. He plopped down a huge wad of mail and brochures on top of our duvet. “I found this in our mailbox. Do you want to start sorting through it? It’s probably mostly ads.”

I snuggled, shivering, under the duvet. “Hurry back,” I said.

With my head pleasantly buzzing and the feel of clean sheets as a barrier between me and the rotting sofa bed, I flipped through the brochures and ads until I came across a thick beige envelope with Le Maître’s dark blue seal stamped on the upper corner.

I pulled out the wad of official looking papers entitled “
Acte de Vente
” – the final Act of Sale that proved this house was really and truly ours. I’d had too much
kir
to do more than flip through the pages of French legalese. I paused when I reached the house plan and stared hard at it, hoping for a flash of inspiration as to the best strategy to attack our renovations.

The house looked much smaller on paper. I narrowed my eyes at the piece of paper in front of me. A lot of alterations and mutations had surely happened since 1789. Maybe it was an old house plan. My eyes flicked to the stamp from the land registry at the bottom of the page. It was dated from two months ago.

All of the
kir
in my system evaporated instantaneously. It wasn’t just that the house looked small on the plan. It was missing some essential rooms, such as the one I was lying in at that moment.

“Franck!” I hollered.

I flipped back and forth through the
Acte de Vente
, paying close attention now. There had to be a rectified version of the house plan as we bought it: two bedrooms, a tiny kitchen, the hallway, the living room, the bathroom, and the WC…except that there wasn’t. There was only that one plan and it showed that our entire house, the one we had paid two hundred and seventy thousand francs for, consisted of only our two bedrooms. No kitchen. No living room. No bathroom or WC. Where were they? That was when I noticed the thick red line that halved them off and counted the missing rooms as part of our next-door neighbour’s house.

Et merde.

“
Quoi
!?” Franck came running back into the living room, drying his hair with an old towel.

“We didn’t buy the whole house.” I waved the sheaf of papers at him. “We only bought two rooms of it!”

“What are you talking about?” He climbed into bed beside me and pulled me towards him. “Come here.” I hit him over the head with the
Acte de Vente
.

“Listen to me! According to this, for two hundred and seventy thousand francs, we only bought the two bedrooms.”

Franck sat up and snatched the document from my hands. His eyes darted back and forth across the plan like minnows.