My Grape Year: (The Grape Series #1)

by Laura Bradbury

“Can’t we help you down with it?” Franck asked.

  “I have all the help I need,” Mémé said, nodding to indicate her three daughters rushing around the kitchen, following her orders. “Allez!”

  We did as we were told. Did anyone dare not do what they were told where Mémé was concerned?

  We chatted with Olivier and Sandrine and Stéphanie and the other family members around us for about ten minutes, until the sound of laughter heralded Mémé’s arrival. She was holding a massive earthenware dish full of her coq au vin. I marvelled at the strength contained in her two biceps. Behind her, Michèle, Jacqueline, and Renée carried further dishes, plus potatoes, plus several more baskets of bread. Mémé’s arrival prompted another “ban Bourguignon” that went on several rounds as she jigged around the table with her dish.

  They served our plates at the head of the table, and as everyone dug in, the room was full of exclamations of Mémé’s prodigious culinary skills.

  “This is amazing,” Sandrine said as she dug in. “I think this is even better than my own grandmother’s coq au vin.” Her eyes shifted guilty “Don’t ever tell her I said that.”

  Olivier smiled like the cat that caught the canary. “I am so going to use that to blackmail you.”

  “Have you forgotten about the “Louise” evening in Savigny not so long ago?” Sandrine reminded him.

  “D’accord, d’accord, we’re even,” Olivier said, grudgingly.

  I chuckled, reveling in the feeling of being so completely included in this group of friends. I understood most of their in-jokes now and shared some of the same memories.

  The Universe snapped into focus for a moment, as it had the weekend after I met Franck as I waited for him in the deserted street outside his gate.

  All of those random moments, I’d thought meant nothing at the time—the man, who must have been Franck, following the Beaupre’s car with his gaze; the man who bumped into me on my way out of Sandrine’s uncle’s cellar on New Year’s Eve; the fact that things with Thibaut and I had never gotten off the ground—all of those seemingly meaningless events slotted into place to bring me where I was right then. Never before had I had such an intense certainty that, at that exact moment, I was exactly where the Universe conspired to put me. It was, quite simply, where I was meant to be.

  How was I going to leave all this behind? I felt like I had finally found the life I was meant to live; but I had to fly an ocean and a continent away to start a different life at university in Montréal. It seemed unimaginable.

  These thoughts warred in my mind as seconds of the divine coq au vin was served. Afterwards, we all helped take things back up to the kitchen, and once we were all shooed away, we went outside where everybody but me smoked. Franck and I watched as Sandrine flirted with a cute guy from Paris, who was Franck’s third or maybe fourth cousin. Then Franck gestured with his head over to the swing again.

  Once ensconced there, we swung back and forth gently while chatting with everyone. The sky was beginning to darken slightly, but no stars were visible. Still, I could sense them up there, aligning for me after eighteen years on this earth. I had to venture halfway across the world and learn a new language for that to happen, but it had happened. There was only one question—how could I perform the impossible and preserve this new life of mine?

  CHAPTER 32

  The cheese course was, of course, one of the most spectacular I’ve ever seen. It included cheeses of every texture and variety, from gooey Brie to crumbly Comté and everything in between. There were all my favorite Burgundian cheeses—the stinky l’Ami du Chambertin, its even stinkier cousin Époisses, Citeaux, le Délice de Pommard studded with mustard grains—how was I going to revert back to eating either yellow cheese or orange cheese in Canada? I’d never known these type of sublime cheeses existed, but now that I did, I couldn’t imagine living without them. I served myself an extra slice of l’Ami du Chambertin. I needed to begin hoarding the pleasures of life here to get me through the inevitable deprivation to come.

  There was more of Mémé’s fresh bread, studded this time with dried figs and nuts.

  Before we could dig in, though, Jean appeared downstairs, staggering under the weight of the biggest bottle of wine that I had ever seen, at least twice the size as the one served at Thibaut’s birthday party.

  “What the—?”

  “That’s a Balthazar,” said Franck. “It’s the equivalent of sixteen bottles of wine.”

  Of course Jean’s arrival caused the eruption of another “ban Bourguignon.” Jean came around to all of us, showing off the label of the bottle—an Aloxe-Corton Grand Cru from 1966. It had been bottled six years before I had been born.

  “I’m not certain it’s still going to be good,” Franck said to me, sotto voce. “It’s always a dicey business with these big bottles, especially ones that old.”

  Mémé kissed Jean and danced around some more. Franck’s uncle Jean-Marie from Provence helped Jean with the tricky business of extracting the enormous cork from the neck of the bottle.

  Jean tilted the bottle slightly and held it as Jean-Marie proceeded to insert a corkscrew with all the care and delicacy of a brain surgeon operating on the frontal lobe. A hushed silence, reverent and suspenseful at once, fell around the table.

  “I almost can’t watch,” I said, but at the same time I also couldn’t tear my eyes away.

  After what seemed like a very long time, Jean-Marie slowly extracted a blackened, but completely intact, cork. The “ban Bourguignon” erupted yet again.

  Jean-Marie and Jean quickly made their way around the table and poured the wine into everyone’s glass.

  I lifted up mine once it was full, and gazed in wonder at the ruby-and-rust-tinted wine. 1966. Hippies were swarming the streets of San Francisco. The Beatles were still together. My mom and dad got married

  I glanced over at Mémé who sipped her glass of wine. It was incredible how much food, kir, and wine she could consume. Granted, she was always hopping up and down between courses to ready the next one; but when she sat down, she applied herself to her plate and glass with impressive industry. I didn’t know many eighty-year-olds with such prodigious appetites. My only remaining grandparent—my grandfather—seemed to subsist on poached fish and vegetables, with the occasional indulgence of vanilla ice cream liberally doused in maple syrup.

  “Drink up,” Franck recommended “Sometimes, once uncorked, these wines don’t last long.”

  My first glass was delicious, but when Jean came by and poured us all a second glass and I took a sip, I almost gagged. It was like drinking balsamic vinegar straight from the bottle. Franck patted my back as I spluttered.

  “Sorry.” The last thing I wanted to do was insult Jean.

  “It’s not you,” Franck said. “The wine has oxidized. All the tannins that were holding its structure collapsed.”

  “But it was so delicious.”

  “It was, but as soon as the oxygen hit it, it couldn’t take it.”

  “That’s so weird,” I said. “Yet fascinating…”

  “Winemaking is an art and a science.” Franck was still rubbing my back and his fingers became more clever as they moved up to my neck.

  Just then Jean-Marie tasted his wine and spat it back into his glass. “Stop drinking the Aloxe!” he shouted, even in his haste, pronouncing “Aloxe” the proper Burgundian way with the “x” sounding like an “s.” “It’s over.”

  There was a muted chorus of “zuts” and “merde alors.”

  Panic surged through my chest. Were Franck and I going to be like that bottle of Aloxe? Briefly sublime and then forever ruined in an instant when I left for Canada? Was what I had with him right then only meant to last a brief moment in time?

  “Are you feeling all right, Laura?” Franck leaned over. “You look pale.”

  Melancholy at the image of a horrendous future rendered me mute.

  Luckily, Franck’s aunt Renée stood up right then, a sign that she was going to make a toas
t or a speech. She held up her glass of now-oxidized Aloxe.

  “It is a metaphor.” She made a sweeping arm gesture. This woman could certainly command a room. “Life is like this wine, to be savored in the moment.”

  Everyone cheered and then Renée broke off into a gusty French song. Mémé and a few of the older folk around the table joined in. A woman playing an accordion popped out from nowhere. Several more songs were sung. By the end, most people had tears in their eyes.

  “Those are all songs popular during the war,” Franck whispered to me.

  “Do they sing often?” I asked.

  “With that generation, the more they drink and eat, the more they sing,” Olivier said, repressively. “They’re all like that. Makes the meals interminable.”

  By then, I’d lost track of how long we’d been at the table…six or maybe seven hours? “Don’t you love the long meals here in Burgundy?” I asked Olivier, shocked. I knew I did.

  He groaned. “Non! I just want to eat and be done with it.”

  “I must differ with you there,” Franck said. “I’ve always loved them. When I was little, and the other kids would go off to play between courses, I would sit at the table and watch the adults eat and drink and chat.”

  Mémé crept us behind us just then.

  “Drink and chat?” she kissed Franck on the top of his head. “What are you talking about? It sounds most interesting.”

  Franck smiled up at her. “I was saying nothing makes me happier than a big table and lots of family seated around it.”

  “Ah! Just like me,” Mémé said. “That’s what is most important, you know, la famille. Are you très famille, Laura?”

  I raised a brow at Franck. I hadn’t heard this expression before, but I sensed the right answer was oui.

  “Oui,” I said.

  Mémé rewarded me with a vigorous shoulder rub. “I knew it! I just knew you were.” She jutted her chin out in Franck’s direction. “That last girlfriend of yours—she wasn’t very famille. None of us liked her very much, you know.”

  “I know,” Franck said. “But I’m with Laura now.”

  My heart felt like it was going to burst with joy.

  “A good thing,” Mémé said, “as long as you don’t follow her to Canada and get eaten by a bear.”

  “I would never let him get eaten by a bear.” I patted Franck’s arm.

  “Are you tired yet, Mémé?” Franck said, redirecting the flow of conversation. Even though we had hardly talked about the possibility between ourselves yet, both of us knew his family would not support the idea of Franck coming to Canada. In Burgundy, families stayed close to one another.

  Mémé did another one of her funny little jigs. “La Mémé? Tired? Never! I promised I’d be the last one to bed tonight, and I mean to keep my promise.”

  “We might give you a bit of competition,” Franck warned.

  Mémé swatted this idea away with her hand. “Phsssssst. You young ones have no stamina. I’m not worried.”

  The rest of the evening proceeded at the same leisurely pace. Mémé had prepared a buffet of desserts that was truly astounding. There were at least ten different types of cake, as well as chocolate mousse and homemade tuiles biscuits, and even some homemade chocolates.

  After the dessert, our gang sneaked off to Olivier’s car, where we took out our sleeping bags and carried them up the four flights of the rounded staircase, all the way up to the attic. The few standing lamps plugged into the walls allowed me to see that the space was massive, with huge oak beams every few meters. One beam, roughly in the middle of the room, had a thick rope swing tied to it.

  We all had a turn on the swing after we placed our sleeping bags on the numerous foam mattresses that had been laid out on the floor. It looked to me as though there would be at least twenty people sleeping with us in the attic—maybe closer to thirty actually.

  After the café, most of us reverted back to wine. Olivier, Franck, and Roland, and a few of the other men, moved on to calvados, Pear Williams, and other hard, home-distilled alcohols. They called these l’eau de vie, which I found highly amusing as it translated as “life water.”

  As we sat at the table arguing about philosophy with Roger and Franck, I rested my head against Franck’s shoulder. He rubbed my shoulders as he talked. My eyelids began to droop.

  I woke sometime later to Franck shaking me gently.

  “I’ll take you upstairs to bed.”

  I yawned. “Did Mémé make it?” I heard her laugh, and opened my eyes to see her across from Roger, sipping a glass of what looked like cognac.

  “The night’s not over yet!” she declared.

  “What time is it?” I stood up slowly.

  “I don’t know, maybe five o’clock?” Franck said. Indeed, the night was already beginning to pale into morning. When Franck tucked me into my sleeping bag, he leaned over and gave me a thorough kiss.

  “I should go back downstairs and finish the party with Mémé. It means a lot to her.”

  “Of course,” I said, yawning. In mere seconds I fell into a deep, dreamless sleep, still wearing my clothes. Franck had luckily had the forethought to unclip my silver barrette and lay it beside my pillow so it wouldn’t poke the back of my head as I slept.

  CHAPTER 33

  There were sleeping bodies all around me, some short and some long. Olivier was snoring softly nearby, and Sandrine seemed to be sharing her sleeping bag with the Parisian boy she had been flirting with all night. Stéphanie mumbled something in her sleep. I turned my head. There was Franck, sleeping soundly beside me, his handsome profile as still as a statue and his hand intertwined in mine.

  The sound of “weeeeeeeeeee” made me sit up. Three impish children—surely cousins of Franck’s in some manner or another—were swinging from the huge oak branch on the rope swing.

  I sat up too fast. “Ahhhhhhh,” I clutched my head. It felt as though it was going to roll off my neck.

  Franck started and woke up.

  “Laura?” He reached for me with his other hand.

  “My head!”

  “Do you have sore hairs from last night?”

  “Sore hairs?”

  “That’s what we call it in Burgundy, sore hairs.”

  I appreciated the euphemism, but what I had was a gigantic hangover. I knew I shouldn’t have been talked into that glass of Poire William last night…or the glass of Calvados for that matter, on top of the wine I’d already had.

  “Did Mémé win?” I asked. “Was she the last to bed?”

  “She was,” Franck rolled over to face me and groaned slightly. “I was the second-to-last, and she climbed all the way up here specifically to watch me lay down so she could be sure she’d win. Roland is most likely still asleep at the table in the cellar.”

  I chuckled then sniffed the air. “I have no appetite, but something smells good.”

  Franck’s nostrils twitched. “Waffles. Mémé’s waffles.”

  “There is no way Mémé could be up making waffles if she only went to bed like, two hours ago.”

  “Do you want to go see?” Franck lifted an eyebrow.

  Well…I was already dressed…

  We made our way down the stairs to the kitchen, stopping to compare headaches with everybody we passed on the four flights of stairs.

  In the kitchen, Mémé was pouring batter into the four waffle makers that were lined up on the stovetop and shooting instructions in regards to where to find plates.

  There were about fifteen people milling around the kitchen, and of course we had to kiss everyone good morning, which took several minutes.

  Mémé caught sight of us just as we were finishing up. “Ah! Les amoureux!” So what do you have to say of your Mémé now? I was the last one to bed, and you see? I am also the first one awake and making breakfast. Here!” She grabbed two plates from the hands of a man who made the mistake of lingering around waiting for a waffle. “You must try my waffles. The toppings are in the dining room.”
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  Dazed by such energy that early in the morning, I didn’t even consider refusing Mémé’s waffle. Franck and I meekly accepted our waffles and shuffled into the dining room to choose between about ten different toppings—a variety of homemade jams, jellies, and preserves, Nutella, and sugar.

  I chose apricot jam and was not disappointed. The waffles were air light and crunchy at the edges with a soft, almost creamy interior. It was true what Franck had been saying to me, in regards to food and…well…other things. “L’appétit vient en mangeant.” Appetite grows with eating.

  I was seriously considering wandering back in the kitchen to get a second waffle, until Franck made an offhand comment about lunch.

  “Lunch?” I asked, incredulous. “What time is it now?”

  “I have no idea.” Franck shrugged.

  Jean was lingering nearby, directing traffic to the waffle toppings, and overheard me.

  “Twenty three minutes after ten in the morning,” he said. “Precisely.”

  I got the impression that there was little that Franck’s uncle Jean did not do precisely.

  “Merci,” I said.

  “Lunch will be around noon,” he added. “I tried to get them to pin down the time more precisely, but they would not have it. They said it depended on what time everyone woke up and other such irrelevant factors.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Well, in any case, the attic we slept in last night is beautiful. We don’t have old houses like this in Canada…this is special for me, so thank you.”

  Jean flushed pink. “Would you like a tour?”

  “I would love that,” I said.

  So the next hour and a half were taken up touring the immense house and gardens, and I soaked up every one of Jean’s stories of the Occupation and beforehand. We toured the barns and the pig house and the cellars—all made with dry stacked stones—as well as the attics and the study with its collections of ancient books and dusty stuffed animals with beady eyes. The books probably would have been under lock and key in Canada—and in archival rooms at libraries and stored under humidity control and dim light. Jean let me open a few, but the pages were so fine and delicate that I shut them and put them back quickly. I loved books—especially old books—far too much to risk damaging them.