The French House: An American Family, a Ruined Maison, and the Village That Restored Them All

by Don Wallace

  Both parties understood you would eventually accept the offer of coffee. Both knew you wouldn’t mind a sweet. But you didn’t want to seem too eager, in case your host was in tight circumstances. Perhaps she didn’t really have any lump sugar! Truly, it would be a terrible person who would take her host’s last lump of sugar, or worse, reveal that she had none. The only thing worse would be to embarrass or insult your host by acting as if you thought she didn’t have any coffee or lump sugar to offer. Of course there were limits, and certain offers had to be declined: a string bag of live escargot still in their slimy shells, for example.

  Formulating the Game of No was Mindy’s shining hour, really, because when we remembered it in time, and if we had the patience and steel nerves to go the distance to that third no, which became “no—well—perhaps—if you insist,” it always worked like a charm. The parlor would become suffused with a warm glow. The conversation would flow. Soothing, diplomatic, always stressing the other’s person’s welfare over your own, the Game of No had become our basis for finding friendship among villagers from Imerovigli to Kerbordardoué.

  • • •

  Visits to Le Palais in search of Denis increased in frequency, cutting into our dreamy days, but we felt these visits were a matter of honor. Once on the way into town we caught sight of him, driving down the central road in the opposite direction; he flashed his high beams in the universal salutation. Once we saw him sauntering down the street in the company of a couple of local men. We rolled down our window and begged for an audience. “Of course! Just come on by the office.”

  “But we’ve come by…”

  “Oh, I’m there all the time now. Really. Come now. We’ll have a coffee.”

  “We’re just going to park. We’ll be right there.”

  He was only out of our sight for five minutes, but he was gone by the time we got to his door. He was avoiding us, clearly. But why? We owed him a lot of money; our best guesstimate came in at close to ten thousand dollars! He had to need the money. More to the point, as Gwened had pointed out, his subcontractors definitely would be expecting to be paid, and here it was, already a year late, more likely two years.

  With pheasant season upon us, strangers began showing up in Kerbordardoué, men with dogs, often pairs of Brittany spaniels. The men wore Wellingtons and carried long sticks in the crooks of their elbows, like shotguns. Which is the impression they intended to give to the wary pheasants: pay no attention to that man with the stick. He means you no harm. You can safely ignore him.

  But in a week, when the season began, things would be a little different.

  Mindy hated seeing the hunters in our valley and feared for the pheasants. But she also understood that this was the way of the island. Still, when she burst into the cabane one morning, breathless, and started babbling about a hunter in the valley, I thought she must’ve gotten into an argument. But no—she’d run into a fierce older man with a bristling mustache who’d given her a piercing stare. Somehow she found the courage to introduce herself and, when he merely grunted, to ask his name in return. At first he’d actually seemed disinclined to reply. But he’d probably guessed that, from the look of her, you snub Mindy at your own peril.

  “Monsieur Borlagadec!” Mindy looked at me expectantly. The name meant nothing; I shook my head. “He’s the main subcontractor! Once Denis got him on board, we got all the best on the island: the plumber, the electrician, the carpenter, and the roofers…”

  “Did he know who you were?”

  “He…” Mindy paused to take stock. “He knew. He got this look when I said my name and said I lived up the valley.”

  “Well, did he look like a man who hadn’t been paid?”

  “That’s the thing.” She went over to our suitcases and pulled out the brown legal envelope that held our devis, our title, our dream house on paper. “Right, right, right.” She leafed through the sheets. “He’s the specialist in foundations and floors and staircases. The best stair man on the island. The only one who can do an old house like ours the right way, Denis said.”

  “And we’ve stiffed him? Great.”

  “No, we haven’t. He’s not done a thing yet.”

  “So…what’s it mean?”

  “Nothing. But it’s important that we met.” Mindy’s brow was furrowed with intense concentration. “Yes, it’s important that he saw me. That I’m not just some abstract American woman who doesn’t know what she’s doing. I just feel it.”

  • • •

  When Denis called Gwened to invite us to dinner at his house on one of our last days on the island, we made a difficult decision: to simply write him a check for 31,750 francs—about five thousand dollars—and leave it on the table, telling him to send us a bill for the remainder. Everything about this felt wrong, un-Bellilois, crudely American. It felt worse when we met his wife, a tall and beautiful brunette, a little shy at first, then warm and funny. The two children were bright Celtic elves, a tawny blond girl and a dark curly-haired boy with enormous eyes.

  There was a pause. Mindy hesitated, then reached into her purse for our checkbook. Just then Denis gave a huge smile and asked if we’d like to see the bathroom. This seemed a little odd and at first we declined, once, twice, three times. But he insisted, and since everyone was laughing harder and harder, we realized something was up and gave in.

  Indeed it was a large and impressive bathroom with a skylight over the tub. Which was pink. With gold faucets and taps. “Le bain Américain!” they cried, applauding.

  As the night wore on, it became obvious that we would be friends. And friends, in this part of the world, don’t spend social evenings settling bills. They especially don’t leave checks under their dinner plates, as if in a hurry to get to the theater. So we chickened out.

  Gwened made disapproving noises when she found out we’d missed the opportunity. But her expression was wry. “These are strong people,” she said. “They will do things their way. I guess Denis has decided that, for whatever reason, he can afford to carry you. Perhaps he has paid the subcontractors out of his own pocket. Perhaps he has explained your situation to them and they have agreed to hold off.” She shrugged and rolled her eyes, a distinctly American affectation she must’ve picked up from her students.

  Then it was time to go. We had a ferry to catch.

  “Please,” Gwened said with a farewell kiss—four of them, on alternating cheeks—for both of us. Rory briefly suffered to be held, then broke away with a wild-eyed look: another conquest for Gwened Guedel.

  “Don’t let this go on any longer. Finish the house. For yourselves…and for the village.”

  On the way to the port in our rental car, we swung past Denis’s office. The sign on the door said: Ouvert.

  “Pull over!” shouted Mindy, digging in her purse. I squeezed into an illegal space and yanked on the parking brake. She jumped out and darted into the office. Telling Rory to stay put and read his book, I followed Mindy.

  Inside, Denis was sitting at his paper-piled desk with a bewildered expression on his face as Mindy counted out giant, colorful banknotes like fall leaves—we’d visited the bank twice for this eventuality. “Please, Denis. We must pay something.”

  “No.”

  “Denis, too much work has been done. You cannot carry us another year.”

  “No, no. I am not carrying you.” He held his hands up. “Please, stop it. Take your money. This is not proper.”

  “Denis.” Mindy took a deep breath and visibly composed herself. “We can’t wait any longer for the bill. Here is thirty-five thousand francs. That isn’t enough, I know, but it’s a start and you can pay the subcontractors something…”

  “Stop it! Stop it, please.” By force of will and a deep Celtic glower, Denis silenced Mindy and scared me a little. He looked on the verge of an explosion. And, indeed, when he spoke, he sounded like a sputtering fuse. “You, you are too”�
��a hand flung at the sky seemed to help him find the right words—“too American! It must always be your way. Always money, money, money.”

  “That is not true,” Mindy said. “You are unfair. We deeply appreciate what you are doing for us. The work is magnificent. But you must allow us to pay our bill. To do otherwise is to place us in an impossible position. We are personally embarrassed. Why, the other day when I met Monsieur Borlagadec in the valley, I could not be sure that he wasn’t looking at me like a, a, a…”

  Mindy never did find the word for “deadbeat” in French. But Denis understood. He also seemed intrigued about something else. “You met Monsieur Borlagadec?”

  “Yes. He was walking his dog, I think getting him ready for the pheasant season.”

  “It opens this weekend. So that’s where old Borlagadec is planning to shoot?” Denis got a crafty look on his face. “Tell me, are there a lot of pheasant in your valley?”

  Mindy stiffened. “I’m not going to tell you if you’re just going to shoot them.”

  “I think you answered the question, thank you. It’s good you met Monsieur Borlagadec.”

  “Do we owe him money?”

  “No, no money. It’s just that, well, he knew Jeannie, who lived there in your house all her life. He was very fond of her. He knows the house well. So it’s good he met you.”

  By this time Denis’s expression had completely softened. He smiled, then began to laugh to himself, quietly shuffling and arranging the banknotes according to denomination. “Monsieur Borlagadec, when he heard about your bathtub, made a special trip over to see it himself. The whole village turned out. Some of the ladies took turns lying in the tub.” He snapped a rubber band around each of the piles, stacked them neatly. “With their clothes on, of course.” He laughed, pleased with the joke, and caught my eye to see if I, his fellow kidder, was impressed. My slow head shake of bemused disappointment seemed just what he was looking for.

  “Now. This is not the way to pay,” he said gently, shoving the stack over to our side of his desk. “Please, put this away somewhere safe. When you are home in New York City, which I someday hope to see with my wife and children, you will receive a bill. You may have questions. If so, please do not hesitate to write or to telephone. Okay?

  “Have a safe trip.” He turned and offered me his hand. “Be careful in the train station at Montparnasse. There are so many pickpockets in Paris.”

  It was the proverbial third no, but this time we wouldn’t prevail.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Belle Île-en-Hudson

  It’s like a scene from a nineteenth-century novel as the little family from Brittany arrives in the Big City, wide-eyed and gawking. The husband isn’t afraid of these Parisians and their sophisticated ways. Watch how with cunning and élan the cash mule Wallaces evade those slinking pickpockets of Gare Montparnasse!

  As we take to the streets of Paris, Don brazenly wears a leather dress belt stuffed like a sausage with five thousand dollars in enormous, gaudy French banknotes. Thirty-five thousand, two hundred twenty-five francs! It feels like I’m holding my pants up with a rope of money. But better to be embarrassed and safe than blasé and robbed.

  Yet, somehow, when we reach New York City, a half-inch of the circumference of the sausage is mysteriously gone. Missing in action. Main suspect: Paris.

  It began innocently enough. We’d set out to enjoy the city we’d once tried to live in. We visited our old neighborhoods: Mouffetard, Les Halles-Beaubourg. Rory was still strollerable, though the cobblestone streets of the Latin Quarter made him bounce around like a bobblehead doll. We went to all our old haunts: Jardin des Plantes, Arènes de Lutèce, Jardin du Luxembourg, and that pâtisserie with the perfect tarte au citron on rue de Fleurus. Yes, there was a visit to a couple of dress shops on rue Jacob. (Nothing happened, officer, I swear. We were just looking.)

  And after an evening meal at an outdoor café on a side street, we started walking back to the hotel. The night was warm and bewitched by warm breezes. Most stores were closed or closing up, but one bright, modern, all-glass storefront glowed: Agnès B. Homme. Mindy tugged on my arm. “Let’s go in.” I knew what was up. Maybe something had happened on rue Jacob. My memory, officer, it’s not so good anymore.

  Up until entering Agnès B, I’d resisted any clothes shopping. Although I’m a cheerful mule for carrying cash and Mindy’s purchases, shopping for myself reminds me too much of those annual trips to outfit me for middle school, my mother picking out shirts with too-bold stripes and button-up sweaters over my moans of dismay. Even in New York she sent me bright pastel golf shirts for every special occasion. It’s so hard to feel hip in the West Village when you’re sporting alligator and whale logos.

  But a half hour later I walked out with a coal-black, stovepipe-legged, narrow-lapeled suit of flat, tightly woven cotton. “I’ll never wear this!” I halfheartedly complained, knowing that it didn’t matter if I ever wore it. The main thing was that it was from Paris and it was cool and it was mine.

  We don’t mention the losses. We take them in stride. In our account books, they come under the heading “Blame It on Paris,” chalked up as an occupational hazard to owning a house, or even just half a house, in France.

  • • •

  After we return, fall floats past like a dream. By December, though, life reverts to dreary, a darkness without end. What’s changed? It was too early to count the days before we could return to Kerbordardoué. But we did, and it feels like a fatal mistake. Now we’re haunted by the prospect of not being there for another ten months.

  My editor in chief also rues letting me go to Belle Île. (How did I ever put that one over on him? What was in those french fries?) I inherit every crummy assignment he can think of—which I have no choice but to accept with a big smile on my face. Ultimately he’s doing me a favor, as I begin to understand that I’ve been sending mixed messages.

  I know I’ve got the chops to rise in the business, but I’m always hesitating, my head full of dreams of what I’d rather be doing: reading novels and trying to write them, staying on Belle Île, tramping and traveling with Mindy. A nice life if you can pay for it, but we’re not independently wealthy. And so far it hasn’t been happening. What’s the plan here?

  Mindy is in a similar fix. She wants to write, too. So day after long, dark winter’s day, she pushes Rory to a park where a circle of strollers, lined up end to end like Conestoga wagons in a Western movie, provides protection from the bums. She stamps her feet and blows on her hands for as long as she can stand the cold before retreating to that notoriously dingy, transvestite-hooker, heroin-addict haunt: McDonald’s on Eighth Avenue and Twenty-Sixth Street.

  There she drinks watery coffee and Rory slides down the tongue of Ronald McDonald over and over with a score of screaming, snotty kids, some of whose parents are barely off the nod. Like several others, Mindy carries sanitizing wipes to dab handrails and Ronald’s tongue before Rory’s ascent and descent. Perhaps as a result, he’s robust and never sick. But she gets every cold in town, as do I, and then we give them back to each other. After a couple of months, Mindy can hardly remember what it feels like to sit down alone and enjoy some peace and quiet, let alone try to write.

  Hard to believe that only a couple of months before we were building sand castles on the beach at Donnant.

  By spring of 1989, it’s time to ponder Rory’s education. We’re late out of the starting gate; the maneuvering for September has already begun. The postcrash recession is biting down hard, too. But as gloomy friends assure us, picking a pre-K program is really picking a college. Of course this spells p-r-i-v-a-t-e s-c-h-o-o-l. As in ex-pen-sive. A public-school product, I balk. But P.S. 44 in our ZIP code is already oversubscribed before we even hear there was a list. God, I love New York.

  So there goes the rest of what we owe Denis LeReveur. At least for the moment we’ve dodged the question of what come
s first, Belle Île or Rory. Even to us, our priorities seem a little suspect.

  • • •

  Naturally, at this point Denis LeReveur sends along the devis. Ah, dear me, where did the money go? All those banknotes we flourished in Denis’s office? Mindy sends a paltry check, less than a third of what we owe, makes excuses, and promises the rest tout de suite. A promise we can’t honor, realistically.

  Once again we’ve got no money—but, a voice whispers, we sure did go to France, didn’t we? The apartment is darker and smaller than ever, and escape farther away—but surely not because we went to France, right?

  How much is this obsession going to cost us?

  We wonder. And ask ourselves: Are we the brave cultural adventurers we think we are? Maybe Belle Île would’ve been better off left as a memory.

  If only there was something at stake in our village life, something noble like removing land mines from the beach at Donnant, bringing sliced bread to the boulangerie or the Word of God to the heathen Suzanne, or at least ending silly fights over parking in the square, something defensible, so that when we go home at Christmas and Uncle Frank cracks jokes at our expense, we can retain our dignity.

  But all we have to show for it are a pair of bedrooms and a bathroom twenty-two feet up in the air without a staircase.

  • • •

  Belle Île and the devis ever on our mind, we take on more work, freelance articles. Most of mine are about business: “10 Ways to Improve Your Cold Calling,” “How to Close the Sale,” “Join the Entrepreneurial Revolution,” “How to Pick a Power Suit.” I kid myself by thinking that 2.5 articles equal a one-way plane ticket to Paris. Counting a return ticket, trains and boats and taxis, I figure I’ll need to sell a baker’s dozen. And if all goes well, once I have this summer’s trip in the bank, then I’ll write for Denis LeReveur. Articles are my new currency.