Brioche in the Oven

by Victoria Brownlee

  “I will be quick,” Serge reassured me, leading me to a little tree by the pond.

  I was chatting away idly about how delicious Michel’s cheese was when Serge suddenly got down on one knee and took my hands in his.

  Oh, shit, what’s he doing down on one knee? I thought. This can’t be what I think it is, can it? I shook any possible feeling of excitement out of my head and decided that the last thing I needed on top of what had already been an eventful week was a pity proposal from my boyfriend just because I was up the duff, knocked up, had a brioche in the oven. Au revoir, romance! I lamented.

  “Ella,” he said, looking deep into my eyes.

  My mind sped through how I should respond. There was no way I was going to accept. I didn’t want him to ask me to marry him out of some archaic sense of obligation just because we were going to have a baby together. But what was the best way to let him down gently?

  “Will you move in with me?” he asked, quickly shaking me from my marital flight of fancy.

  Huh, I thought, momentarily offended that he didn’t actually want to marry me, despite my intention to turn him down.

  “Serge, we already live together,” I said.

  “But not here,” he replied, motioning to the farmhouse with his hand.

  “Oh, do you mean as a holiday house?” I asked, suddenly feeling relieved. I could definitely get on board with us having a country farm if it meant we still lived the majority of the year in Paris.

  “Non, non, non! We’ll move here permanently,” he confirmed.

  I looked at him, trying to figure out if he’d gone mad.

  “It is fantastique, non?” he prompted. His cheeks were flushed from the excitement of the “proposal.”

  “Perhaps we should discuss this back in Paris,” I said, looking over to see Jean, Jacques, and Marie still waiting by the cars, and Clotilde, mouth agape, giving me a “What the hell is going on?” look.

  “Too late,” Serge said, joyfully. “I bought it for you!”

  “You what?” I yelped. My head started pounding in panic.

  “It’s ours,” he said. “I’ve already paid the deposit. We will move here in a couple of months!”

  Considering what Serge would be giving up in Paris—his apartment, his fromagerie, his whole life—I couldn’t figure out why he looked so happy.

  “But, Serge, I don’t want to move here. I love Paris.”

  “You don’t love the farm?” he said, his smile fading quickly.

  “God, no!” I said. “I mean, the farm is fine. But it’s not for us . . .”

  “Merde. I thought you’d love it,” he said.

  I was speechless. If it weren’t such a clichéd move, I would have pinched myself to make sure I wasn’t dreaming. My mind was spinning, trying to figure out how my perfect Parisian life had just been sliced through like a slab of Comté.

  “Why would you have thought I’d love it here?” I asked.

  “I saw how your eyes lit up when I mentioned us moving somewhere with a garden. I thought this would be a step up.”

  Oh, God! This wasn’t how I’d imagined our country weekend panning out.

  A wave of nausea rushed through me, either from fear or from the pregnancy. It was impossible to say which major life change caused my need to run behind the tree and be sick, but as I lost my breakfast, I decided it wasn’t a good sign.

  In the absence of a tissue, I used the printout of the baby scan that was still in my jacket pocket to clean off my shoes. This is definitely not a good sign, I thought, apologizing to our unborn child for using his or her first baby picture so appallingly.

  Chapter

  6

  “OK, SERGE,” I SAID, GEARING myself up once we were back in the privacy of our room at Jacques and Marie’s B&B. “Please tell me you can get your deposit back.”

  “Well . . .,” he stalled.

  After the initial shock of the morning had worn off, I was finally feeling recovered enough to unleash some of the thoughts and emotions that had been buzzing through my head since he “popped the question.”

  “Serge, this is crazy! What about our life in Paris? Did you even think any of this through?” I asked.

  “Of course, I have thought this through. I’ve done nothing but think about what is going to be best for the baby,” he said.

  “Thousands of people have kids in Paris, and they seem to get along just fine,” I reasoned, a little more gently now I knew the intention behind his hare-brained scheme was to give our baby a proper home. “Yes, we might have to make some slight adjustments when he or she arrives, but I feel like this is perhaps an overreaction.”

  It’s next-level panic! I wanted to add, but held my tongue.

  “Ella, I don’t want to raise a child in Paris. The noise, the pollution, the cold and dark winters; these are not good for little lungs, hearts, and brains. We need to leave the city if we’re going to do this right. Don’t you want our baby to be happy?” he asked.

  To me, the baby’s happiness was still a faraway concept. A future travel plan you made with a friend that neither of you planned to commit to, but you enjoyed discussing anyway. And now I suddenly felt like Serge was trying to guilt me into agreeing to move to the farmhouse. Yes, this might have been his vision for his family, but surely my vision had to count for something, too.

  “And what about our happiness? Could you really be happy living out here?” I asked.

  “I could never be happy knowing our child is not getting to experience nature and fresh air,” he replied.

  “But the house is a mess.”

  “We’ll renovate!”

  “Do you even know how to renovate?” I asked.

  I’d never renovated anything before and had zero concept of what Serge and I would even be capable of. And isn’t renovating supposed to be as stressful as the death of a family member or a divorce? I thought nervously. We haven’t even made it to marriage!

  “I’ve done a few odd jobs in my life,” he said, rather unconvincingly. “And did you see the lake outside? I can already see the family picnics we could have. Perhaps there are even some fish.”

  I couldn’t believe how cavalier he was being. Does he really expect me to move to the country? And if I don’t agree to go, will he move without me? I closed my eyes and focused on my breath for a few seconds.

  “And what about the fromagerie?” I asked, trying to bring some focus back to our discussion. Clearly Serge was emotionally invested—or perhaps emotionally unstable—when it came to discussing anything baby-related.

  “That is the best news,” he said.

  Merde, I thought.

  “I do not even need to sell,” he continued. “Fanny had already agreed to manage things for me full-time when I was planning to open the new store. So, there is really no risk. And financially, the farm is a great investment.”

  “You’ve completely given up your dream to open a second store, then?” I asked.

  “I have already messaged the real-estate agent to let him know my plans have changed,” he said. “Some things are bigger than dreams.”

  Since I’d met Serge, he’d always been tenacious in going after what he wanted, me included, and now he seemed determined to make the farmhouse his next project. He appeared to have already committed fully to the idea.

  “So, you know how to farm, then?” I asked.

  “It’s only a hundred goats. And why walk when you can run?” he said.

  “I’m not sure that’s how the expression goes.”

  “Besides,” he added confidently. “My father was a farmer, so I guess I’ll just be going back to my roots. It’s in my blood.”

  Serge didn’t talk about his parents often, but I knew he’d chosen to leave his family’s farm as soon as he’d finished school. I got the impression that his parents had wanted him to take over, Serge being their only child and all, but that he hadn’t been interested.

  After
Mama Serge had passed, Serge had asked his father for help establishing his fromagerie, sort of rekindling their relationship. They’d worked together for a couple of years, but visiting suppliers was really as close as Serge had gotten to “working the land” himself. A few years later, Serge’s father had died from a heart attack, and although Serge treasured those memories from the early days in his cheese shop, spending time with a farmer did not necessarily a farmer make.

  “Can’t you see this is absurd?” I asked Serge.

  “No, I think it will be perfect,” he said with a frustratingly adorable grin, which only served to make me angrier.

  “What part?” I asked. “The run-down house? The goat farm you don’t know how to run? Cheese you don’t know how to make?”

  I was on a roll now.

  “And what about my job?” I continued. “I doubt I’ll be able to find work in Chinon. And my visa is tied to my job.”

  “There are ways around this,” he said with a wink, and I quickly ran through all the alternative visa options I’d researched, and wondered if he was implying that I could get a spousal one.

  “Serge, enough!” I said, raising my voice. As if adding a tiny human into the mix wasn’t an adequate shake-up, now he wanted to add renovations, a possible wedding, and a bunch of goats—was it a herd? A flock? A tribe? The fact that I didn’t even know the appropriate collective noun reinforced how little I understood about life in the country.

  “Enough what?” he asked.

  “This is ridiculous. We’re not packing up our life to move here and start a farm. Honestly, I think you’re just freaking out a little about the baby. And don’t worry, so am I, but we just need to get through these early days together. In Paris. And then see how we’re feeling.”

  “We don’t need to move immediately,” he said.

  “Oh, great,” I said, sarcastically, although my tone may have been lost on Serge.

  “Yes,” he added. “There will be a few months before we move.”

  “No, no, no,” I said.

  “What do you mean, ‘no’?” he asked, earnestly.

  “I mean exactly what I said. I’m not moving. I think you’ll come to the same conclusion after you’ve had time to properly process our news, and in the meantime, I think it’s for the best if we don’t discuss it any further.”

  Looking at Serge’s disappointed face, I almost started to feel guilty. But then I reminded myself that my boyfriend just unexpectedly bought a farm in the French countryside without even consulting me. And yes, he may have done it all for our unborn baby, but in the process, he seemed to have forgotten about me completely.

  Besides, this whole absurd idea revolved around a pregnancy that was still in its most fragile trimester. I’d be a fool if I let something like this drive Serge and me apart now. End of discussion.

  Chapter

  7

  A COUPLE OF WEEKS LATER, back in Paris after our life-altering weekend in the Loire Valley, the ice had finally started to thaw.

  The relief I’d felt at returning to the buzz of the city had been immediate, because although autumn in the countryside had been pretty, in Paris it felt magical. With the leaves changing color across the city, there seemed to be a sense of excitement in the air as people squeezed the last moments of warm weather out of the year. Christmas was still far enough away not to need worrying about, and every sunny day was treated as though it would be the last—terraces brimmed with people, and the parks filled with picnickers and families enjoying time out of their apartments.

  That first week, Serge and I had hardly spoken. Any time he’d mentioned anything to do with moving to the country, I’d cut him off. We’d fallen into a semi-awkward existence of him wanting to talk and me resisting. He’d surely quickly come to realize, I thought, that he should have at least consulted me before ambushing me at the farmhouse.

  With time, though, my feelings toward the whole experience had actually started to soften somewhat. As the days passed, and as I reflected more on what had happened, my emotions edged away from anger to doubt and then, eventually, a little toward guilt. I tried to imagine if our roles were reversed, and if Serge had left me in a similar state of limbo after I’d gone out on a limb for him.

  After ten long days of us essentially not speaking beyond the minutiae of daily life—a rather dramatic first fight—he’d almost begged me to talk it through with him properly. And he really pulled out all the stops, compiling a cheese plate including all my pasteurized favorites, even though I’d already had a few “accidental” soft cheese slipups that week. He also baked a Mont d’Or (possibly the world’s most comforting cheese, and also the variety that had prefaced our first kiss) and promised that he’d researched the necessary cooking temperature to make it safe for me to eat.

  Not that I was going to allow any amount of cheese to convince me to leave Paris, an idea that I was still—mostly—firmly against.

  I came to the table armed with a list of arguments against Serge’s plan, but also prepared to listen to his take on things. After all, he’d shown nothing but good reasoning and judgment since we’d started dating, so not hearing him out now would have been unfair.

  The mountain of cheese sat between us, waiting for one of us to yield. I hesitated before ripping into a baguette and cutting a slice of Comté, because despite feeling like I was accepting Serge’s peace offering, I was hungry.

  Serge talked while I chewed.

  “Ella, let me start by saying I’m sorry,” he said.

  “Mmm,” I said, thinking things were at least getting off on the right foot.

  “I should not have surprised you.”

  “No, you shouldn’t have.”

  “But now that you’ve had time to consider the move, you must think it’s for the best,” he said.

  Oh, God, I thought. Nothing’s changed!

  “Serge! It’s not just the way you went about telling me that’s the problem, it’s the whole concept.”

  “What whole concept?” he asked, and my frustration returned.

  “You’re forgetting that my whole life is here in Paris. I moved to France for Paris. This is where we met, where we fell in love. I have friends, a job, a life here.”

  “But you could have an even more wonderful life in the Loire,” he said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

  I struggled to see how. Unlike when I’d moved to the City of Lights, fuelled by thoughts of becoming a glamorous, cheese-eating Parisian, I couldn’t even imagine what a move to the country would look like. Raincoats? Tractors? Herding animals? It didn’t have quite the same appeal. And it wasn’t me, at all.

  In fact, the idea of starting again out in the country, of meeting new people and having to make new friends, made me anxious. I knew we’d have Jacques and Marie, but they were more Serge’s friends, not mine. And establishing relationships with the French was a slower process than with Australians. I thought back to when I’d arrived in Paris and it’d taken weeks of living with Clotilde to establish trust and get to that “comfortable in silence” point; with Billie, all it had taken was a couple of pints.

  For each concern I raised, Serge remained blinded by the romanticism of moving to the country and of giving our baby the best start to life that we could.

  “Ella,” he said. “So many people want to do this, but they don’t have the means. We can actually make it happen.”

  His words reminded me of something Billie had said when I’d spoken to her earlier that day. “It actually sounds really dreamy, and kind of reasonable,” she’d said once I’d explained the situation. “Some people spend their whole life wishing they could move to the French countryside. Why not just give it a go?” Billie had always been a guiding light for me in moments of panic and indecision, but could she be right on this occasion? Could I actually get used to a gum-boot lifestyle?

  I sighed and cut a slice of Cantal, wishing I could explain my apprehensions to Serge
as easily as I could to Billie. But that’s the thing with old friends: you can let down your guard, and there’s not quite as much at stake. How could I sit here and ask Serge outright if he thought our relationship was strong enough to withstand the pressure of moving, renovating, and having a baby all in the same year?

  “I just think we should wait until after the baby arrives and see how things go,” I said, reiterating my perspective that we didn’t need to give up absolutely everything in order to raise a child.

  “But why wait?” he said.

  I felt like Serge was already too emotionally and financially invested in this country move. The mere fact that I thought we could, and should, stay in Paris seemed to bother him. I couldn’t figure out whether I was being selfish for putting my desire to stay in the city before the supposed well-being of my child, or whether Serge was being unreasonable asking me to even consider it.

  We were both showing signs of frustration as we went back and forth discussing the pros (mostly from Serge) and the cons (mostly from me) of leaving Paris, and as we spoke late into the night, part of me began to wonder if Serge knew something that I didn’t about having a baby here. He was French, after all, and perhaps he’d had firsthand accounts from friends or customers about life in the city with kids.

  Eventually, exhausted, Serge reached across to hold my hand and made a final plea.

  “I’m not asking you to move there for the rest of your life, Ella,” he said. “I’m just asking you to consider it. To try it.”

  “And what if I hate it?” I asked.

  “If you really hate it, I will not force you to stay,” he said.

  “Seriously? You’d leave just like that?” I asked.

  He nodded, his face softening; perhaps he realized I was finally breaking down.

  “Do you trust me?” he asked, grabbing my other hand.

  “I do,” I said, after a moment’s hesitation, wondering where this question was leading.

  “So, trust me that this will be a wonderful experience. And if it’s not, we will move.”