Chapter 3
CHAPTER THREE
Marlow eyed the Summer Summit budget and polished off Noah’s very good bottle.
She needed to rethink the guest list: Canadians with a film coming out soon who were local.
She thought back to Yves. What a dick, to think he could just add himself to tonight’s celebration.
He hadn’t visited Sabine in years. If he could see her now, so full of promise—to cure cancer, solve climate change, or both—he’d regret having checked out.
She was the future of the universe. Anyone who met her knew it.
Marlow moved to the crappy bottle of bubbly and pulled up the internet. Five minutes on social media to cyberstalk Yves, then back to Oscar’s budget.
When she and Yves were both twenty-one, he, boy genius that he was, opened RIFF with an exquisite film made for a thousand euros.
At the time, she worked at reception in the industry office, dealing with the mayhem of every filmmaker needing a hundred things each.
Her French was much better after a few glasses of red and they’d talked about filmmaking big time—such a turn-on.
They’d had seriously good fun in his king-size hotel bed with very high thread-count sheets overlooking Yorkville, and they’d returned to that bed between every festival meeting, screening, and party for the next ten days.
After the festival was over, he returned to France, and that was that.
Then she missed her period. She didn’t think anything of it, because the festival was always insanely stressful, and she’d missed her period before.
But when she missed a second period, the midnight purchase of a pregnancy test confirmed it.
Somewhere in between epic fucking and discussions about creative process, they’d talked about life, and Yves had said he never had intentions of settling down, marrying, or having a family.
But given Marlow had been feeling for a while like nothing much mattered, and this pregnancy did, she decided to keep the baby.
Bitter disappointment for her parents. They’d expounded on what they were sure was next: life as a trashy single mother “on the dole.” Noah, two years her senior, told her how much he appreciated Marlow, because whenever their parents’ scrutiny of his life got too close, she screwed up again, and Noah got a pass. Best. Sister. Ever.
Once Sabine had been born, healthy and perfect, Noah had convinced Marlow to let Yves know.
Give the guy a chance to do the right thing—move to Toronto, be a father, contribute financially—something.
So without even having a name for the baby yet, Marlow had sent him a message.
It had taken Yves a couple of days to respond, but finally he’d called over Skype.
“Félicitations,” he said. “It is going well, with the baby, I mean?”
“Yes,” she said, holding up the tiny, swaddled baby to the laptop camera. Yves didn’t say anything for a long time, just looked at her perfect, sleeping face.
“The purple area?” he asked, gesturing to Sabine’s temple.
“It’s a little bruise, from where they used forceps to pull her out. It’ll go away.”
“Oh. Was it all right? For both of you?”
“Yes. She was just too comfy in there. Had to be persuaded.” Marlow laughed but could just as easily have cried—the hormones were raging, and she had no idea how she felt moment to moment.
“And what’s her name?”
“I don’t know yet. I’m thinking.” He pondered this. Looked like he might suggest something but then thinking better of it.
“I’m sorry it took me some time to call. It was … C’était un peu un choc, je crois.”
“I can imagine. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you earlier.”
The baby opened her teensy eyes at that moment, burbled and gazed out—maybe she couldn’t see anything yet, maybe she looked straight at Yves, who knows. The effect on him was instant. His lip quivered.
“She is very beautiful,” he said, voice wavering. “Did you—I mean—had you thought about what we—what I should do—or what you perhaps expected … of me? Because yesterday I … but then today …”
And he trailed off.
He trailed off in the face of the most exquisite thing Marlow had ever seen, and the great miracle that this fully formed human being had come from her uterus.
And suddenly, pure, unfiltered hot-lava fury coursed through her veins because of this pathetic man, if you could call him a man, who had contributed nothing more than one infinitesimally small sperm from one ejaculation during one night in a Yorkville hotel room.
“Because I have two films lined up,” he said, “both of which have so much travel in the shooting schedule, both on a nothing budget—in truth, I am using any savings I have—so I’m not sure how, how, helpful I could be.
And you know, it’s étrange, I never really saw myself as a father.
I may have told you that when we were first, when we were together a year, I mean, nine months ago. I would be terrible at it …”
“You are not being asked to step up in any way,” she seethed, if only to put him out of his misery. His shoulders slumped in relief. He leaned back in his chair, almost as if to distance himself from them through the laptop screen. He was off the hook.
Over the years, Yves had met Sabine a dozen times, or so.
He was enthralled by her in the moment but never sure of boundaries, and he was always swimming in commitments anyway, which meant that, some years, he didn’t show up at all.
He sent birthday and Christmas money, or a card.
Marlow allowed these bits of contact, but for the most part felt he should be either in or out—the casual drop-in-dad vibe would not be good for Sabine’s self-esteem.
He’d respected that. Deep down, Marlow had wanted him to protest vehemently—state his uncategorical love for both of them—but that wasn’t how life worked.
Marlow scrolled through Yves’ feed. He had a new feature coming out, still made for under 10k, supposedly his most brilliant yet.
It had even gone to Cannes last month. Jesus.
How had she missed that? Plus he had a second feature he was completing right now.
Victor was for sure trying to get that one for Renegade.
And if Yves came, Marlow would have to coordinate his visit through the industry office, and—bonus—being in TO, he’d find a way to get into Sabine’s life. Shitballs.
She texted Gustavo:
Marlow: I know you’re packing for LA, but is Yves Barrat doing RIFF in October? He has a new film. Also did Cannes—again—with his last one. Now I hate him.
Gustavo: You hated him before. You can’t newly hate him.
Marlow: Yes I can. Intel?
Gustavo: Um … Not that I can share.
Marlow: You are terrible at secrets.
Gustavo: Why do you care?
Marlow: Exactly. Thx. Gnight.
But she did care. Marlow was personally offended by how disinterested Yves was in Sabine. That he was a successful filmmaker only made it worse.
She ripped herself away from Yves’s social media feed and doomscrolled friends’ five-star vacations, dreamy romances, and perfect lives.
She checked in on everyone from her graduating class.
Four were directing on one-hour TV series, three were making big-budget features, one was the programmer at a festival in Norway.
Marlow was making fourteen-second videos on her Instagram feed.
She drank more, making the presentation retrofit unlikely. She’d wake up early, do it then. She wolfed down some cake to cancel out the booze but kept drinking, so the cake had no effect.
She could be spontaneous. Redirect her life. “Pivot,” as they say, which made her want to barf because it was such a word du jour. But she wanted to, goddammit. She wanted to pivot. Maybe she could do one thing before the end of today. Take one tiny step to crawl out.
It was 11:47 PM. Thirteen minutes to do something. Anything.
Don’t be ridiculous. Redo this presentation, send it to Oscar, get the full-time job, and be happy Sabine is launched. Well. Almost.
More doomscrolling. More drinking. More cake.
It was 11:56 when she came upon a “Suggested For You” Facebook post, a Guardian article titled, “Buying a house for a single euro in France changed my life forever.” It was about abandoned rustic “maisons de campagne.” France, like Italy, had adopted a one-euro program to stop the ghost town problem in rural areas, a result of the exodus of, first, young people to the city to find a job, and then, of old people following them because they needed care.
A US couple, tired of their lives, had bought a one-euro house and, voilà!
—their lives had magically transformed. The house was rustic to be sure, but basically the most charming thing ever.
The article promised this, too, could be yours. For one. Single. Euro.
There was a link to an info page in French.
Marlow clicked on it to see a cornucopia of picturesque medieval villages, some perched high atop a hill, some nestled in a valley.
The stuff of dreams. There were a few bigger houses with terraces covered in vines, and even chateaux.
Those were not for one euro. But when Marlow clicked further, she found an assortment of appetizer-sized houses.
Sometimes you could see photos of rooms, sometimes just the quaint exterior, with a hobbit-sized heavy wooden door and chunky doorknob.
But you could conjure the simple yet classic inside; picture yourself in a nook on a cool, crisp night with a big sweater, reading by candlelight.
She toggled back to the article, the American woman and her husband making boeuf bourgignon in their rustic kitchen.
Eating on a stone patio overlooking the vineyards at sunset.
Truffle hunting. Yes, that happened in France, not just Italy. Imagine!