Corked (17 page)

“Is this the only reason you're calling? I have to order a pizza now.”

“But how are things going?”

“Fine. You're not missing anything here.” This, he says quietly, carefully.

I lower my voice too and say, “Oh.”

“Listen, Kathryn,” he says, sounding as though he is choosing his words delicately. There is a pause. “I don't love you anymore.”

My body goes still. I snap shut the phone. He'd separated the two parts of the last word and spoken them firmly, individually.
Any. More
. Like he'd been shaking his head while saying the syllables. Like he'd shaken me right out of his head forever.

For the next seven hours, I watch the development of blue. The ultramarine blue of midnight, the dark sinking that happens at around 3 a.m., when everything becomes entombed in thick, dead black-blue…the blue that's in the scene in the movie when two people must bury a corpse in the woods…then the cautious plum blue of dawn light.

The room brightens, the objects in it grow more defined. Inside here, inside me, it is the opposite. Inside, I have a blobby creeping sensation, like a bike mechanic has rigged a nozzle to my stomach, and he is slowly pumping me full of air. I am empty, but I am also becoming excruciatingly pressurized. As the day grew up, a very large conclusion dawned on me. I had taken advantage of him—all of him—more than just the Jell-O-making and the key-delivering, though that was part of it. I'd abused his dogged generosity, his piety of our love. I had used him.

I continue to lie in bed while the morning birds continue to scream their songs.
You are selfish, as selfish as
he
is
. I replay last night's events on a loop, and every time the loop begins again, I feel like my face is going to cave in, just cave in to the back of my skull, through these sheets, through this bed. With all the violence I can muster, I kick off the bedclothes and starfish. It's still so early. Closing my sticky eyes, I stop the loop and divert my energy into orienting myself. I try to do it successfully this time. I do an inventory of beverages I would rather be drinking today.
I want orange juice. I want fresh-squeezed orange juice, definitely, and I would settle for certain brands found at the grocery store, though not the ones with so much pulp it feels like you're drinking a glass of citrus-flavored sperm. Chocolate milk in the 500-milliliter container. I would prefer to drink chocolate milk out of a cardboard box. I would not care that the poorly waxed spout always gets all pink-tinged and saturated and floppy so that every time you take a sip, tiny wet balls of paper get stuck to the inside of your upper lip
.

I go to the bathroom and fill the clawed tub with hot water.

Give me any color of Gatorade. On the topic of aggressively colored drinks, I would also willingly consume Red Bull, TaB Energy, POWERade, and that fluorescent carbonated type that dyes your tongue the scariest shade of green. Perrier, with its menacing bubbles. Earl Grey tea with homogenized milk. Plain homo milk. An $8 coffee from Starbucks. Tap water. Cooking sherry. French fry grease. The blood of 12 Vietnamese children. A glass of a syphilitic's urine. Coca-Cola. Anything. Just no more red wine
.

Directing the shower nozzle toward my face, I blast myself with glacial water. It enhances my ice cream headache.

Today, I will really and honestly puke if I have red wine
.

As the ceiling fan whooshes around, I make an inventory of pain: My father, Matthew, the trip. I have reached the kind of saturation point that adults reach when they decide they should take a night class in something they have no natural predilection for. These decisions are generally based on whims that are fueled by two dangerous mental states: self-affirming idealization
(“I will learn how to become a Mexican chef because I can do anything!”)
and delusion
(“It's never too late to become proficient in quantum mechanics!”)
Family, love, wine, the correct execution of the recipes, the answers to the equations—maybe they will elude me forever.

And then, right on time, my father knocks at the door. I open it. Though I cannot feel it, the universe appears to be in order: He is standing on my patio dressed in nothing but a cream-colored towel and the eternally untied running shoes. In his right hand, a yellow Nike resistance band, which he always brings on trips.

“How are you? You look pale,” he says neutrally. I remember what he said in the car, driving away from Burgundy. “
I move on
.”

“I didn't sleep.”

“At all?”

“I don't think so. I talked to Matthew last night.”

“Ah, you connected.”

“Yes. On the phone. To say we connected is an overstatement. He told me he wasn't in love with me anymore.”

“But, eh, it is you who broke up with him.” He states this with zero emotion. My stomach begins to churn again. He is now doing chest extensions with the elastic, making choppy growling sounds every time he stretches out his arms.

“Sure, yes, I did, but it's not that simple. Dad, I've explained this to you already. Jesus.” I pause, searching for an outlet for my fury, which is going into its second bloom. Peering at his towel, I spit,
“Where are your pants?”

“Rr. Rr. Eh. Rr. I am working out,” he says.

“I can see that, but why aren't you working out in your room?”

“I wanted to see
eef
you were ready for breakfast. Rr. Eh. Rr.”

“Yes. I am. I have pants on. I am dressed, but you're not, so I'm trying to figure out why you decided it was necessary to come and knock on my door to see if I was ready when you're at least a half-hour away from being ready yourself. It doesn't make any
sense
.”

He finishes his chest extensions and slowly turns to contemplate the vineyard. Where there was gold yesterday, there is now frost. It's gradually misting away in the washed-out morning sun.

“You see this sun?” he says.

“I see that sun,” I snap. He ignores my bitchiness.
Is he ignoring me out of choice or incomprehension?

“This is the sun that gave van Gogh's paintings their light, their luminosity. This region is famous for this sun. The way this sun shines and the way the wind blows make the grapes healthy. It cleans them of the gray rot.” The wind—
le mistral
—that's what Aubert was laughing at. On another morning, I would want to make the connection out loud, so that he would notice and be pleased with me. Fuck it.

He pauses.

“I want ham for breakfast,” he concludes.

He walks distractedly back in the direction of his room.

We sit in the little pitbull lady's house, assembling our breakfast plates. Dozens of flies are perched, probably hatching eggs, all over the food: the spread of pink charcuterie, the rounds of soft yellow washed-rind cheeses, the fresh crusty chunks of baguette, the jams and jellies and the French-ily requisite tub of oozing Nutella, its droopy chocolate-hazelnut folds studded with the crumbs of breakfasts past.

If today were better, I would be slathering gobs of the spread onto toast. I would be reveling in the wondrous notion that France, ostensibly, has been raising at least two generations' worth of children with the belief that the only civilized way to start a day is with enormous spoonfuls of a transcendent chocolate substance, one with the miraculous ability to blur the line between liquid and solid. I would be delighting in the bucolic landscape outside this beautiful restored barn, with its airy, creaky windows and splintered supporting beams. I would be poking little Camille, who is on the floor playing with a discarded box, in her little toddler belly, thinking about the magnificent day ahead, anticipating the first gluggy splash of rubescent wine in a balloon glass.

Instead I am watching my father eat ham. I am watching him eat ham with an intensity that is vicious and judgmental. Every time he reloads his plate with more ham, he absentmindedly waves off the flies, staring into the middle distance at nothing in particular. The room is mostly silent, save for Camille's cooing and my father's jaw, which makes a muffled popping sound when he clamps his molars shut.

I hate this pop. This man is unaware of the pop. How can he not be aware? The popping is in his jaw. His jaw is next to his ear. The sound is coming from a place that is in the same physical territory as the part of his body that absorbs sound. The man cannot hear
.

His stare is unbearable, inscrutable. When he stares at nothing, he looks like a recently caught fish, still alive, but barely, in its last pathetic death flap, breathing poison air through its heaving gills, staring up calmly with a glossy eye that does not move, not a bit. My father's eyes are fixed, like the fish; they happen to be looking outward only because that is the direction they point, but he is not seeing anything. Or, if he
is
seeing something, it is certainly not me.

I am in the car again, waiting. The car is not moving, because my father is looking for his
bréviaire
.

“Tootsie, have you seen my
bréviaire?
I have lost it,” he says, rooting through the backseat of the Citroën.

“You have lost it? I am shocked,” I say.

“Thank you,” he says.

“Has it ever occurred to you to put it in the same place?” I ask.

“
Thank
you,” he says. The words are a gunshot. He gets what I'm doing, but isn't acknowledging it.

The drive is silent for what feels like hours. There is some crunching of the little car's tires on the fat loose gravel of the narrow
route départementale
. There is some cantankerous wind whooshing through the anorexic tops of the cypress trees.

“Why aren't you talking to me?” I prod.

“I have nothing to say,” he says.

“Are you going to be this quiet when we get to the place? Because I'm
really
not in the mood today.”

He's staring out the window, at the sky.

“I just feel like you don't even care about this conversation I had with Matthew last night—like it bores you, like it doesn't matter that I'm hurting, that I'm not myself. What is it about my situation that's making you act this way?” I avert. I skip around the periphery of last night.

His chill thaws for a split second.

“Ah, Tootsie. I'm sorry. I'm sorry about your pain.
Mais, tu sais, l'amour, c'est banale et unique
.” He tosses this off as if he's throwing a handful of salt over his shoulder.

“THAT'S YOUR ADVICE?” My head becomes encased in a helmet of mercury. Why is he always saying this shit while I'm driving?

My father goes back to staring out the window.

In a final, futile, demented attempt to calm myself, I do an inventory of people I would rather be on this trip with. It is longer than all the other lists I've made on this trip. Longer than the wine-name lists, the drink lists, the pain-inventory lists, the lists of facts I've learned about his history. All of them.

My father navigates us to the Château de la Tuilerie using two fingers and monosyllables. I park. Our two-man funeral procession enters the main building. My father announces our arrival to a man with gray hair and stunning body odor. The man replies that Chantal Comte is on her way. We thank him like a couple of strangers who have arrived early for a job interview in a factory.

I turn my back to my father and scan the walls. I make the Face of Intense Contemplation.

I turn around only when Chantal Comte sweeps into the tasting salon. Chantal Comte seems to be the type of woman who sweeps into every room she enters. She is a woman built for sweeping, and dresses herself in clothes that have a high sweep factor. Surely she has paid a good deal of money for the fancy outfit she is wearing, but she is a Rubenesque woman, so it really just looks like a bias-cut designer muumuu. Her hair is brown and thick and glossy. She approaches my father and me, smiling vaguely, businesslike, arm outstretched but with a limp wrist, the way high-society ladies do. She doesn't look like any of the other vintners we've met. It is harvest season; her hands should be stained black from the skins of the grapes. She should be wearing boots and smelling of the sun and dirt, but she smells of expensive perfume. Perfume! No one puts on perfume in the morning when they know they'll be tasting wine! Even
I
know that, and I know nothing! How am I going to be able to smell her wine with that expensive perfume getting in the way?

I did not like Mme. Nudant, but I do not trust Chantal Comte.

My father has plenty of experience with women like this. He has dealt with 700,000 Chantal Comtes in his life. Chantal Comtes love my father because he is handsome and charming without being sleazy at all. He softens his eyes for them and he asks them probing questions, but not too probing—insightful, interested questions, with eyebrows arched and mouth parted in anticipation. Then when the Chantal Comtes are responding, he cocks his head at a perfect angle, which makes them believe the entire universe has ceased to exist, and they are now alone, just two people, floating on some parallel plane, and only Chantal Comte is talking and only my father is listening and it is so, so,
so
special.

“Bonjour madame. Enchanté. Philippe Borel. Ma fille, Kathryn Borel.”
He smiles a small, elegant smile.

“Monsieur, mademoiselle, bienvenue,”
she responds.

Chantal Comte is running an empire. She is a busy woman, she has meetings, one that is in a few short hours. We must get down to it, and soon enough we are sitting on curly ornate metal stools around a small marble-topped island in the middle of the salon. There is a copper sink carved into the marble, for spitting.