“Many believe that their unrivalled taste comes from the fact that the soil around here is lacking in calcium which makes their bones unusually fine,” René said. “Me, I am convinced that it is because they are fed only milk, sweet corn, and other hand-picked grains.” René stopped in his tracks, struck by a particularly plump specimen. He lifted its red wattles, ran a practised hand over the white feathers, and inspected its feet, which were indeed the same shade of indigo as the well-worn berets in the bistro.
René began to debate with the chicken’s equally robust owner who was dressed in a blinding fuchsia and orange patterned housecoat under her wool jacket. I glanced at my watch. Ten o’clock already. I wanted to be negotiating cars, not chickens. Besides, what was René going to do with a live chicken? Use it in some voodoo ceremony to help us decide on a vehicle?
I gave Franck a nudge and tapped my watch pointedly. He shrugged. He couldn’t, however, hide the shine in his eyes. He was enjoying himself. Immensely.
I had never been blessed with a patient nature, and my stint at Oxford had only compounded the problem. In the past two years, I had been so hard pressed to get my weekly reading and essays completed that I had to stay up two to three nights a week just to be able to get all the work done. Any minute spent doing something unproductive filled every cell of my being with guilt. Even now, this meandering through the day when we had something urgent to do made an invisible iron band tighten around my chest. I had to remind myself to breathe. Black dots danced in front of the white plumage of the chicken René was extorting me to admire.
I must have been looking as distracted as I felt, because René firmly pulled me closer and lifted my hand so that I could feel the glossiness of the chicken’s feathers for myself.
“This is the one,” he announced.
I eyed the chicken, who eyed me back with a knowing look. “Très jolie,” I agreed without enthusiasm.
René pointed his cigarette at me. “You’re not looking, Laura. Really look.” Shame washed over me. If the chickens were this important to René I had to at least make an effort. “She will be my gift to you,” René added.
“Quoi!?” The word popped out of my mouth, incredulous, before I could stop myself. “But I…we…can’t accept it. You shouldn’t be buying us gifts when you have already agreed to take your day off and help us. Besides…how would we carry it?”
The seller held up an empty crate from behind her stall and offered to give it to us for free.
“There you go!” René patted my arm. “Everything has a way of working out, n’est-ce pas?”
“I would have no idea what to do with a live chicken!”
The woman narrowed her eyes at me, and then turned them accusingly on René for foisting such an incompetent on her. She pulled the chicken back to the safety of her fuchsia housecoated protection. “You wouldn’t know how to cook her?” she demanded.
“I would,” Franck said. “My grandmother used to make poulet de bresse au vin jaune et morilles all the time. She used to flambé it in Calvados - what is your opinion on that?”
The chicken’s owner visibly softened. She enlightened Franck on why Calvados should never be employed, but solely vin jaune, or yellow wine from the Jura region.
René beamed.
“Franck, do you also know how to butcher a chicken?” I asked pointedly. Franck shot me a dirty look. The seller arched a brow, waiting for his answer.
“Not really,” he admitted. The woman removed the empty crate she had deposited on the counter and muttered something in unintelligible patois.
“My wife is right,” Franck said. “We would botch up the butchering. We’re all but camping in our house as it is now. We don’t even have the correct knives.”
“Don’t you worry.” She smiled at Franck’s obvious regret and pulled out a knife capable of terrorizing a pirate from underneath her housedress. “I’ll butcher her for you. She won’t be quite as good as freshly butchered, but it will still be better than any chicken you’ll find elsewhere.”
René clapped my shoulder. “When should we come and pick her up?”
“In about an hour or so,” she said, pursing her lips. She took out a whetstone and began to sharpen her knife.
“Perfect,” René said. “That will give us just enough time to choose a rabbit.”
“I could use a petit café,” René mused after our interminable visit to the rabbit section on the far side of the Place de la Charité.
We somehow managed to dissuade René from buying us a rabbit, but instead of being disappointed he was much refreshed from an edgy debate with one of the rabbit vendors during which both parties insulted each other’s intelligence and eyesight, all while addressing each other in formal “vous”. It ended in a cordial handshake and a promise from René to return without fail and visit the seller at next Monday’s market. By the end, I was hopping from one foot to the other with impatience.
We followed René again as he plunged us back into the heart of the narrow market street. We resurfaced in a 1900s-era café with scarred wooden tables and chairs polished by decades of elbows and derrières. René ordered three espressos then settled down beside Franck and me with a satisfied sigh.
“This is my favorite café,” he said. I took in the patina of the painted panels that ran up to the thirteen or fifteen foot ceiling. It was stunning, but I was far too annoyed to admit that. We sat in the café for about an hour after we had finished our espressos. René chatted with acquaintances who came and went while I fidgeted and tried to keep a lid on my temper. The day was almost half gone and we hadn’t even begun to look for a car. Without a car we couldn’t begin our renovations. Our first guests arrived in four months. How could Franck just sit there, looking so content?
At long last René consulted his watch. “Your chicken! We have to go and pick it up.”
On the way back through the throng to pick up our chicken, I felt a surge of optimism – stalls were being dismantled, the market was drawing to a close. With any luck, the woman would be gone by the time we got back to the place and so would our chicken.
We passed by the stand I had seen earlier with the towering Emile Henry cookware. “Factory Seconds,” the sign read. “Today only.” An amazing mixing bowl caught my eye – big enough for cookie dough or even a massive summer salad. It was cornflower blue with the purest white inside. Without realizing it I had slowed down.
René held his arm out and stopped us. “You like that?”
“She loves Emile Henry,” Franck answered for me.
“I do but I have nowhere to put anything right now anyway. You should see our kitchen.”
“There is always a place for something we truly love.” René sallied up to the seller and introduced himself. They chatted for a bit while I examined a cobalt quiche dish and a sunflower yellow terrine, but my hands kept going back, running themselves over the cool surface of the blue bowl.
“Show me which things you like,” René instructed.
“This bowl is really nice,” I murmured. I couldn’t seem to let go of it.
“It’s your colour,” Franck said. “Buy it.”
“Wait, wait, wait!” René held up his hand. “How much?” he asked the vendor, and then proceeded in a lively and lengthy negotiation that sliced the initial asking price in half. My eyes alighted on six cherry red ramekins.
After half an hour of negotiations, chatting, and choosing, we made our way back to André’s car, René and Franck staggering under the weight of my purchases. With the exception of knives and forks, I had completely outfitted our new kitchen at La Maison des Deux Clochers. Maybe we didn’t have a car, but we did have a lemon yellow terrine dish, those adorable red ramekins, two cobalt casserole dishes, a lime green pie plate, and my treasured cornflower bowl - and, thanks to René, all of it came at a ridiculously low price.
We had filled the trunk of Franck’s father’s car and had just managed to shut the hatch when René slapped his forehead.
“Your chicken!”
Franck and I raced after him through the thinning market thoroughfare and back out to La Place de la Charité. I felt a curious sensation in my chest, like a shiny soap bubble about to burst. The sensation was strangely similar to the anxiety that had become such a constant companion, yet also completely different. I felt a kinship with the other market goers and the beautiful cobbled street, and even René.
I was having fun. The realization hit me as we caught sight of our chicken’s seller packing up her table.
“I had taken you for lost,” she said, crossing her arms across her majestic bosom. “I had decided to eat this pretty beast for lunch, but seeing as you are here now…”
She handed Franck a brown paper package tied together with twine. He took it as carefully as you would a newborn baby.
“Merci.” René was still gulping for air. “You see we were buying some bowls and we got talking…”
She twitched a shoulder. “It happens.” René began to peel French francs out of his wallet.
“We can’t let you pay for it,” I said. I opened my bag but René pushed my money away.
“Non, non, non. It must be my treat.” He looked so insulted that I blushed and slid my wallet back.
“Then you must let us treat you to lunch,’ Franck said.
René thoughtfully patted his non-existent gut. “I am getting hungry.” A new gleam flashed in his eyes. “I know the perfect place!”
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.
My Grape Escape Page 13