Brioche in the Oven

by Victoria Brownlee

  We drove back to the farm chatting about their flight and the train trip out here. They’d been to the restaurant car on the train and were buzzing from the little bottles of wine they’d ordered while zipping through the countryside.

  “It’s a very civilized way to travel,” Mum chipped in.

  “Especially at this hour of the day,” I added with a laugh.

  Arriving at our house, I gave Mum and Ray the grand tour, first showing them to the guest room, which we’d furnished sparsely the weekend before their arrival. I’d added a few rugs to cover the worst of the old chipped floorboards for now, but eventually they’d need replacing.

  Thankfully, Mum and Ray didn’t even look at the floor, preferring to admire the view of the garden. Ray couldn’t resist telling me that it would be perfect for this and that type of plant.

  “The garden will have to wait,” I said, punching Ray’s arm in what I hoped was a loving gesture. “Moving on.” I shooed my parents out the door. I was fully aware that I was being bossy, but I had a firm idea of the things I needed help with, and the garden wasn’t high on that list. To emphasize that point, I opened the door to the nursery, which had turned into a bit of a dumping ground for odds and ends.

  “This is where your baby will sleep?” Mum asked, a look of horror on her face.

  “Well, obviously it’s not finished,” I said.

  She gasped. “And what if my grandchild comes early?”

  “My child would prefer to arrive on time,” I told her. And while I obviously had zero control over this, I’d already had a quiet word with bébé asking if he/she wouldn’t mind staying put at least until the nursery was finished.

  “We’ll work on this room first,” Mum said, determinedly.

  After we’d finished the speedy house tour, we headed out to see the goats and the cheese room. The farm was bright with the beauty of early spring. The grass looked fresh and dewy, wildflowers had popped up in the fields, and the trees were looking less naked, little green leaves breaking away from the starkness of the bare branches.

  I could tell Ray was already enjoying being outside; he was commenting on the goats, the equipment, and the set-up. Mum mostly remained quiet, until we got to the cheese room. Over the phone, I’d explained as best as I could my idea for the space but all she’d told me was that she’d prefer to wait and see it in person. She couldn’t visualize it without being there. I felt oddly desperate for her approval.

  “So, I’m thinking the coffee machine here,” I started out once we were inside. “Then over here, tables and chairs will line the windows, with big outdoor picnic tables just outside here. Eventually I’ll put in one of those concertina doors so it becomes an indoor/outdoor space, but until then, people will have to use the door.”

  Mum and Ray paced around the empty room, footsteps echoing loudly as I waited for their assessment. Silence.

  “And then over here,” I continued, “I’ll have the cheese cabinet, and I’ll do cheese platters, cheese quiches, and a cheesecake. We’ll mostly use Serge’s cheese and some local ones, helping to show off the region. And then we’ll also do takeaway cheese sales. And perhaps even jams and desserts once we’ve really got things up and running. And scones. I’ve been craving scones like crazy recently, so I’d like to add them to the menu.”

  Mum was first to comment. “So what will you do with the baby?”

  “We’ll just make it work, won’t we, Serge?” I said, with an almost pleading look over to him.

  “Of course, and there will be help if needed,” Serge rushed to add. “A good friend of mine, Marie, has offered to assist in the early days once the baby arrives. She’s quite the cook, too.”

  “And besides, we’ll only be open Thursday through Sunday, so there’ll be three days a week for everything else.”

  “Ella, babies are hard work,” Mum said.

  “I don’t need a lecture on this, Mum. We’ll figure it out. And if not, we’ll just shut up shop, or hire someone permanently,” I told her, brushing my hands together in an attempt to end the discussion. “Anyway, come see the toilets,” I said proudly.

  The renovation we’d done in the bathrooms reinforced how great our house could look if we ever had enough money to renovate properly. We’d gone for white-tiled minimalism, with gold fittings and big porcelain sinks. The cubicles were clean, bright, and, most important, practical. I showed Mum and Ray the “before” picture from my phone and received nods of approval.

  “It looks like something from one of those renovation rescue shows you’d see on the telly,” Ray said. “Bloody good job, too,” he added, inspecting the grouting.

  “Thanks, Ray. It’s amazing what you can pick up on YouTube,” I told him.

  “You did this yourself?” he asked.

  “Hah, not really. But I did assist the tiling guy. Got a free French lesson out of it, too. These guys get paid pretty damn handsomely so I figured he wouldn’t mind.”

  “Quite nice,” was all Mum said, but this comment was enough to tell me that she thought I’d done a good job.

  “Anyway, you guys must be hungry,” I said. “Let’s go back up to the house.”

  We sat down at the table to have lunch and, before I knew it, Mum had a pen and paper in her hands and was crafting a tight schedule of things to do to get the nursery looking less like a death trap, and the cheese room finished before Easter.

  “So, you don’t just want to do the house renovations at the same time?” Mum asked. “It’d probably be easier that way.”

  “No, no,” I rushed to say. I hadn’t had the chance to tell Mum the ins and outs of our financial situation, and I didn’t really want to do so in front of Serge.

  Since I’d very quietly, and hesitatingly, accepted Chuck’s offer of a loan a few weeks prior, I felt like I was spinning a few different plates in the air. I needed to be careful who knew what. I could only imagine how disappointed Serge would be if he found out Chuck was the man behind my brand new, and much adored, coffee machine.

  “I mean, we’ll paint the nursery and furnish it, but that’s it,” I said to Mum firmly. I could justify accepting Chuck’s financial assistance when it came to the cheese room, but there was no way I was going to spend any of his money fixing up our house.

  Mum nodded and, to my relief, didn’t pursue the topic any further.

  After we finished compiling the to-do list, I realized that we had our work cut out for us, but thankfully Mum and Ray’s energy renewed ours. And after a good lunch, coffee, and a homemade chocolate tart, we all got to work.

  “How are things between you and Serge?” Mum asked, after the men had gone back down to the farm.

  “They’re good,” I said. “We’ve just been so busy. Honestly, it’s been kind of stressful.”

  “I noticed things were a little tense.”

  “You did?” I asked, surprised.

  I changed the subject and while Mum twittered on about her rose bushes, I replayed the morning’s events, trying to figure out what had given her the impression something was off. Yes, Serge and I hadn’t been communicating like we used to, but I didn’t think that things had been “tense.” Even when Mum eventually moved on to talking about her plum tree, I was still none the wiser.

  Chapter

  21

  WITH EACH SPRING DAY THAT passed, there were a few extra minutes of daylight, which suited us perfectly, because progress in the cheese room was slow and our to-do list was long.

  Perhaps unsurprisingly, the nursery was quickly finished. From the get-go, Mum had been determined that it was the priority, and despite my efforts to tell her that the bébé wouldn’t mind if the walls didn’t match the bed sheets, she was taking her grandmothering duties very, very seriously.

  And she’d taken to life in France surprisingly well. She navigated the country roads like a pro and managed to accomplish tasks that I’d been putting off since arriving here. After finishing her work in the nurser
y, she’d moved on to the cheese-room renovations, coordinating deliveries of new appliances and bossing around workmen in her rudimentary but very practical French. Seeing what she was capable of simultaneously impressed and stressed me. I wondered if she’d always been so efficient and perhaps I just hadn’t realized it. Does that mothering gene surface when the baby does? I wondered. Perhaps it’ll skip a generation, and I’m destined to always rely on Mum for help. I couldn’t help but feel a little inept in her shadow.

  Gradually, though, things in the cheese room were slowly taking shape. Theoretically, all that we needed in order to open was the oven and more furniture, which I still needed to hunt down either on second-hand sites or at the local trash-and-treasure markets. While we were close, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something wasn’t quite right.

  “It’s just a little cold,” Mum said one afternoon while Ray was installing the dishwasher, and I was sitting in the sun taking a tea break.

  “Turn up the heater, then,” I said, annoyed at the prospect of standing up.

  “Not physically cold, just, you know, cold. Not very inviting. For a café, it’s a little stark.”

  I felt hurt.

  “But it’s not finished yet,” I told her.

  “I don’t know if an oven will necessarily change that,” she said.

  “Just you wait,” I told her. “It’s meant to be a clean space, nothing too frou-frou. It’s not an English tea shop; it’s more of a café, or rather a hybrid French–Australian cheese-tasting room and café all in one. It defies categorization, really,” I explained, feeling like my pitch was getting more confused with time.

  “Well, I’m just saying that it could do with a little something extra,” she said matter-of-factly.

  I looked around and wondered if she had a point. “I’ve still got some decorating to do,” I told her. And although I hadn’t planned anything in detail, I figured a quick hunt around Instagram would be enough to give me some ideas to cosy things up a little.

  “And when will the cheese cabinet arrive?” she asked.

  Oh shit!

  I’d totally forgotten about the cheese cabinet. Serge had offered to order it for me but I told him I’d take care of it.

  “It should be here any day now,” I lied, panicking. I wondered if I could blame this slipup on “baby brain.”

  “Good. You wouldn’t want Serge to think you’ve forgotten him,” she said.

  “Hah,” I laughed uncomfortably, pulling out my phone to find out where I could order a damn cheese cabinet to be delivered in the next few days. I’d been so focused on the café side that I’d completely forgotten the point of this whole venture was to help sell Serge’s cheese. How could I have been so thoughtless?

  “And perhaps a couch or two in the corner against those walls would be nice,” Mum added, still pacing around.

  “Mum, stop. I’ve got this,” I told her, adding “find some damn couches” to my to-do list.

  She looked at her watch and reminded me it was time to get to the doctor.

  “Ah, shoot, I totally forgot,” I said, wondering if anything else important had slipped my mind.

  “That’s why I’m here, darling. To make sure you don’t lose your head in all this.”

  In the doctor’s waiting room, I had one of those “What on earth am I doing here?” moments. I had to be the only patient in the room under sixty, and Mum and I were definitely the only ones without walking canes.

  “So, tell me about your doctor,” Mum said, looking around skeptically.

  “He’s fine,” I told her. “A little old, perhaps. Anyway, he just gets me through the monthly checks. He won’t be at the delivery. I’ll just have a midwife, and a doctor on call if I need one.”

  When it had come to choosing a GP, Serge had mildly insisted we meet with his family’s old doctor, Doctor Gerard. I’d blindly agreed, as I didn’t really mind whom I saw. What I hadn’t realized was that Serge’s old family doctor was extraordinarily, well, old.

  When I first met him and shook his hand, I could feel him shaking and figured he must have been at least eighty. How is he still practicing? I’d wondered. His office looked like it’d been untouched in decades, and I didn’t even see a computer. The bookshelves, however, were lined with medical books, which instilled some confidence, although I didn’t dare look at when they’d been published.

  Age aside he was delightfully sweet, and after our first appointment, I hadn’t had the heart to find somebody else. Besides, women had been growing babies for much longer than even Doctor Gerard had been around.

  “And is it normal for French partners not to attend these appointments?” Mum asked, reminding me that Serge wasn’t by my side.

  “Of course not. French men are generally very supportive. Serge just has a lot going on right now,” I said in his defense. I wasn’t sure why I was sticking up for him, though. After reassuring me multiple times that he would come, he’d pulled out at the last minute because Cecile the goat had apparently gone missing. It’d taken a lot of deep breathing during the drive over to stop myself from bursting into tears.

  And now the lump in my throat was back.

  Thankfully, we were called in shortly after.

  “Good news,” Doctor Gerard said in French after we’d sat down.

  I looked at him, feeling nervous. “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “We’ve got a new ultrasound machine,” he said, rubbing his hands together.

  Mum looked to me to see whether she’d understood correctly. “I’ll get to see the baby?” she asked, rubbing her own hands together with glee.

  “Le bébé, yes!” he said excitedly.

  “Oh, great,” I said flatly, devastated that Serge was going to miss another opportunity to see his child growing. Now that Mum was here, he seemed to have happily handed over the role of looking after me to her. He was working even longer hours, and when I did see him our interactions were efficient and practical—mostly discussing what we’d done in the cheese room and what was left to do.

  “Shall we do the ultrasound first, then?” Doctor Gerard asked. “Get to the more boring bits after.”

  I wasn’t sure how comfortable I was with Doctor Gerard referring to a medical discussion as “boring,” but I, too, was eager to see the baby.

  Seconds into the scan, and just as I was about to tell him we were keeping the sex a secret, he blurted out, “Oh là là. Elle est grande, votre fille!”

  “Elle? It’s a girl?” Mum echoed, squealing. “What brilliant news!”

  “We weren’t planning on finding out the sex,” I told Doctor Gerard, crestfallen.

  “Why on earth not?” he asked. “How will you know what color clothes to buy? Not knowing is very unpractical.”

  I shrugged. It seemed the concept of gender neutrality was lost on my old doc.

  “So, you’re certain?” I asked him. “About the sex.”

  “Mostly, yes. I guess we will know for sure in a couple of months,” he said, laughing. “Anyway, all looks good as far as I can tell.”

  The remainder of the appointment passed in a blur as I was consumed by excitement about having a baby girl.

  As we walked out, Mum said, “Serge is definitely going to regret not coming now.”

  Although she didn’t mean anything by it, her words stung.

  I couldn’t help but wonder what else Serge might end up regretting if he continued to remain so absent.

  Chapter

  22

  IT WAS THE NIGHT OF the village spring party, and I think we were all excited to be getting out of our work clothes and into something a little prettier. Although things had been a little tense between Serge and me following my doctor’s appointment, I wanted to put my frustrations aside for the evening and have some fun. I needed to remember what life was like before we’d gotten so busy.

  Seeing Serge walk out of our bedroom in a white linen shirt and dark pants, I felt so
mething deep in my stomach that for once wasn’t our baby girl kicking me. When I’d told him about the doctor’s gender-reveal slipup during the scan, he’d been overjoyed. I don’t think he’d stopped smiling since.

  “It’s nice to see you out of your farm clothes for once,” I said.

  “And you,” he replied, spinning me around.

  Mum and Ray joined us in the living room, both giggling, seemingly riding high on the same emotions as we were. We piled into Serge’s Citroën. The four of us squeezed into the car, heads bopping along to a Françoise Hardy song, must have looked like quite the comical French cliché.

  The fête was in full swing by the time we arrived. Serge had told me about these village parties, but I’d had trouble believing him when he’d explained that nearly everyone would be there, with long dinner tables set up and huge vats of incredible-smelling food bubbling away on makeshift stoves. It was the kind of French occasion that had to be seen to be believed.

  There was a rag-tag band playing in the corner of the tent and a small dance floor set up in front of them. A few kids were spinning around and laughing. Mum smiled and looked at me as if to ask, “Is this for real?” and I just looked back and nodded. A real sense of community filled the air and, with summer around the corner, it seemed as though my countryside compatriots were ready to celebrate.

  Mum dashed off confidently to the bar to get everyone drinks while Serge, Ray, and I chatted with Jacques and Marie. Moments later, she was back, balancing a tray filled with glasses.

  “Ella, I just had the strangest conversation,” she whispered to me. “I was ordering drinks in French and, from my accent alone, the man next to me guessed I was from Melbourne. Isn’t that bizarre!”

  I wonder if she just met Chuck? I thought.

  “This is him, now,” she said quietly, confirming my hypothesis. I couldn’t help but smile. I loved the idea of him messing with her.