Chapter 12
CHAPTER TWELVE
Marlow woke at dawn. A mid-July breeze came in through the open windows.
She lay there in her T-shirt and underwear, feeling well-rested.
They’d been doing so much manual work, she was sleeping better than at home.
Her mind floated to Guillaume last night: his hands on her hips, his lips on hers.
Then she remembered Luc had seen the kiss.
Her eyes flitted to the window. His curtains were closed.
Had she not told herself to avoid the whole romance thing? Was she now seriously thinking about not one man but two? They were so different. It made no sense. She got out of bed and pulled on some clothes.
Sabine was up and dressed. She was meeting Aubin in Nenier for a day trip to visit his high school friends. They could walk down together.
The streets were quiet. It was overcast and still cool.
“Everything good?” asked Marlow.
“Yep, you?” asked Sabine.
“Think so,” said Marlow. “A bit complicated but, good, I think?”
“You don’t sound convinced.”
“It’s a lot. The house, impossible Rémy foiling me at every turn—”
“And two guys?” asked Sabine.
“Hey. You’re not supposed to notice that stuff.”
“I’m not twelve, Mum.”
“And you’re not thirty-nine, either.”
“Are you leaning one way or the other?”
“If we must discuss this … I’m weirdly torn. Guillaume has sort of, let’s say, made his intentions clear. Luc was about to, I think, but didn’t get a chance—”
“Oooh, romantic intrigue.”
“But I pretty much get the picture. I know, I think, how that sentence was going to end.”
“And so?”
“Luc and Guillaume are very different. It seems unfair to be attracted to them both.”
“Haven’t you ever heard of a roster?”
“A what? That isn’t what I think it is, is it?”
“Yup,” said Sabine. “These days, it’s totally cool to have a roster of guys you’re sleeping with.”
“I’m not sleeping with either of them!”
“Not yet.”
“Mind your own business.”
“And as long as they’re OK with it,” said Sabine, “I say go for it.”
“Daughter-sanctioned romantic activity. Strange. It just … doesn’t feel very respectful.”
“It’s mutually respectful. And then you’ll have a situationship or two going, and—”
“Oh man. What is that?”
“Exactly what you think it is. Somewhere between casual hook-up and committed relationship. You like each other, but you’re not exclusive. And everyone’s OK with that.”
“Until they’re not.”
“Communication’s vital.”
“How do you even know about this? Oh. Wait. Reality TV.”
“Willa, actually. Who watches reality TV.”
As they reached the parking lot, there was Aubin and his little red car.
“Honestly, Mum, I’m OK with it. I think you should do what you want here in France. Other than working on the house and getting a refund, that’s the point, isn’t it?”
Marlow gave Sabine a hug and turned to Aubin.
“Thanks for introducing Sabine to your friends, Aubin. She worked hard in school and deserves some fun. But not too much fun, if you get my drift. Drive safe.” She smiled and continued to the boulangerie.
As they drove past her down the hill, they honked twice and waved.
Warm baguette in hand, Marlow walked back up toward Mirabelle, her mind crowded. The house. Guillaume. Luc. A roster and situationships!
Luc had urged her to get back to recording Instagram moments on her phone. What should she shoot?
A magpie landed on the stair railing, as if answering the call.
Marlow slowly pulled out her phone and filmed it assessing her, readjusting its feathers as it was considering flying off but standing its ground.
A beam of sunlight broke through the clouds, illuminating the bird’s shiny, iridescent feathers, and suddenly it took flight, white wing tips splayed out to catch the wind, tail shaped like a blue-green diamond.
A sign of something, though Marlow wasn’t sure what.
Nenier didn’t have its own train station, so Sabine and Aubin drove to Neufchateau and took the early morning fast train to Paris from there.
Sabine watched the countryside zoom by and napped.
She’d stayed up half the night worrying about the excursion.
It was another lie, but this one felt … exciting.
Yves’s text about where to meet read: Outside Shakespeare and Company, 11 am.
Then he’d texted again to say he’d be an hour late.
Sabine kept her expectations in check. Although her mother had resisted ragging on her father throughout Sabine’s life, she’d grumbled that he was undependable or at the very least had a different sense of responsibility than they did. So this might be par for the course.
They took the train to Saint-Michel Notre-Dame station. When they surfaced to street level, there was the Seine. Right. There. And Notre Dame, too, like something out of a storybook. They looked up and down the water. A long, thin boat passed by.
“That’s a bateau mouche,” said Aubin. “Tourist boats that go along the Seine all day. And this is the fifth arrondissement. Paris is arranged in twenty districts, spiraling out from the center. Everyone has a postal code that ends in their arrondissement, and each arrondissement also has a name for some major monument. So over there is the first, to the north is the second, to its right is the third, there across the Seine is the fourth, and we’re in the fifth.
And it goes around like a snail shell. This one is the oldest quartier, called the Quartier Latin, because scholars who went to the Sorbonne, just up the road, spoke Latin. ”
“Where you’d be going to school.”
“If I had marks like you. Oh—and my favorite shawarma place is right down here.”
“I wish we had a year.”
“I told you it’s absurd to come for a day.” Aubin led them down Rue du Chat Qui Pêche—maybe the narrowest street in Paris, he said—and leaned on one wall with his hands and climbed the opposite wall with his feet, so he spanned the entire width of the street.
“Take a photo, take it before I fall!” he said, laughing, wobbling, and she pulled out her phone and then dropped it by accident, which made her laugh, too, but she managed to snap the picture before he collapsed on the ground.
At the bottom of Rue du Chat Qui Pêche was Rue de la Huchette, filled with tourist shops selling Paris-themed everything.
Restaurant owners enticed passersby to look at the prix fixe menu and dine in their establishment.
“Déjeunez avec nous, messieurs-dames, venez, entrez!” From there they made it to Shakespeare and Company. It was five minutes to noon.
People milled outside the green and yellow bookstore, heading in the “in” door or out the “out” door.
Sabine suddenly realized she wasn’t sure what her father might look like—she hadn’t seen him recently—and asked Aubin to Google him.
All sorts of articles came up about Yves’ last feature at Cannes, and the fact that he was now up for much bigger movies.
He seemed fancy. And yes, she did remember what he looked like. Predictably, he looked like her.
They waited. She shifted her weight from one foot to the other. Adjusted her clothing. Checked the time. Where was he? Would he disappoint again, as he had so many times, saying he’d swing through Toronto, then changing plans; saying he’d write, followed by radio silence?
Maybe there was a second entrance. She yanked Aubin around the corner and found the bookstore’s side door for deliveries.
The window had parcels piled floor to ceiling and on the glass was printed: “You think your pain and heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive or who had ever been alive.”—James Baldwin.
It made her feel less alone. She could make a chapbook with the quote as her text but didn’t want to linger lest they miss her father. So they returned to the front doors.
In one store window was a quote by Margaret Atwood: “This isn’t climate change—it’s everything change.”
“I keep saying this to my mother,” said Aubin, “but she says it will sort itself out. She wants to live in a world that drinks champagne—her champagne—and forgets.”
No Yves. Sabine had set herself up for a fall but did not want to cry in front of Aubin.
“We fight,” said Aubin. “I don’t like her, and I don’t think she likes me. She’s centered around the self. All she thinks about is the vineyard, winning awards, and marrying someone new. She is onto number three in the husbands department.”
Sabine clenched her fists at her sides. Had she been tricked by Yves again? She was more responsible than he was. More responsible than her mother and father put together. And she was tired of being the responsible one in the family—if you could even use that term.
“Not one word of encouragement about my terrible mother?” he asked, smiling.
“What? Oh. Yes. Sorry—I’m just tense. Maybe we should start a terrible parents’ club.”
“Excellent idea.”
“Is your father a member?” she asked. “You never talk about him.” She looked up and down the street for her own terrible father.
“Yes, definitely. He moved to Australia after they divorced. Now he has a girlfriend who is maybe ten years older than I am, if that.”
“Oof. That gets him a special sad-face sticker on his terrible family membership card, I’d say.”
“Agreed. And as for my mother,” he said, “she insists I carry on the Fortin name, go to school, learn how to manage a corporation, and make a profit—the only thing that matters to her. I care about the future of our family, but I care about other stuff more. And what good is a future if you’ve wiped out the entire species?
They say someone else will take care of it.
That I will run Maison Fortin, point final, fin de l’histoire.
So she gets a sad-face sticker also. Maybe two. ”
“Why are you telling me all this?”
“To distract you from your own terrible parent being late. Is it working?”
“Sabine?”
They turned and there he was. Yves Barrat, in a black T-shirt, jeans, runners, and a jacket, a satchel strapped across his chest, looking very much the filmmaker. He kissed Sabine on both cheeks. She introduced him to Aubin.
“Have you been inside?” Yves asked.
“No, we were waiting,” she said, her palms now sweaty with nerves. She didn’t want to reprimand. She wanted to seem cool and casual.
“I’m late,” he said. “It happens too often. One of my least likeable qualities.” Her mum could think of a few more. “Let us step into this place of wonder. And I’ll show you something cool.”
Here we go, thought Sabine, insides aflutter.
Luc was all business with Marlow. “Move the furniture into the middle of the room and cover it with sheets. We must pull together the plaster and the wood strips beneath to anchor the plaster so it doesn’t crack again.
We’ll drill holes around the cracks, then clean them of loose plaster. Tell me when you’re ready.”
He went off to work separately. She was adamant she wouldn’t be made to feel weird by one guy about kissing another guy, but also, maybe, she was a little flattered to have two men vying for her attention.
He came back to drill the holes and vacuum the dust. “The old way is to screw the plaster wall all around the crack, leave the screws in the wall, and plaster over. But here, we will glue the wall back to the wood, pull out the screws after it’s dried, then plaster over. It’s smoother.”
He gave her the caulking gun, but seeing her confusion, placed his hands over hers to demonstrate how to use just enough adhesive.
Time slowed down, but her heart rate quickened.
He got a bit awkward and pulled away. He brought over a sponge and bucket, and showed her how to wipe down the wall, slip washers over screws and drive them into the adhesive-filled holes, clamping the wall to the wood behind it.
“Now, we wait for this to cure,” he said. “A day or two.”
“What should we do in the meantime?”
“Anything you like. I have things to stay busy.”
She wanted to lessen the tension. Clear things up. After all, the two men weren’t in a competition.
“Guillaume took me to the spa in Vittel,” she ventured, kneeling down by the bucket to wash her hands and dry them with a towel.
“Ah. Did you like it?”
“What’s not to like?” she asked. “Fluffy bath robes, sitting in baths with little plates of fancy appetizers, showers bigger than my Toronto apartment with jets everywhere … and then a dinner that blew my mind. Have you been?”
“No, and even if I had the money, that is not how I’d do it. The source water is not for sale. You do not have to spend a dime to enjoy it—it is there for everyone. Guillaume misunderstands the point.”
It was absolutely a competition between the men. Wow.
“How would you do it?” she asked.
“As a local, of course.” He eyed her dead on. “Do you have time, or do you have to work?” He said “work” like it was a dirty word.
She eyed him.
“Then come,” he said, taking the towel, letting it drop to the ground, and offering to pull her up. She grabbed his hands—calloused and strong—and stood so that they were an inch from each other for just one second. She felt magnetized to him and full of complicated feelings. “Let’s go.”