“Pour continuerle service en fran?ais, choisissez l’option deux.”
“I don’t care what bloody language you continue the service in. I want to talk to a human!” I grumble into the phone.
The tile company’s automated answering system has spent the last fifteen minutes shuffling me through a series of options that had to have been modelled on the Penrose steps; you think you’re at the top, but all you’ve done is climb straight back to the bottom. I knew the chances of someone picking up on a Saturday morning were slim, but I thought I’d at least get a shot at leaving a message.
I cancelled services with the company after the delivery fiasco, but they still billed me for a second shipment and then neglected to respond to any of my many emails. It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve faced the prospect of taking an issue to the Better Business Bureau, but things take forever to get sorted out through them, and I’m laying enough on the line to get this wine bar up and running. Having a few thousand sit in dispute for months on end isn’t part of the budget.
I know what my mother would say about that. She’d tell me we’re rich for a reason and that I should take as much as I need out of the family trust. She’s never understood why all I used to set myself up in Montreal and start my first restaurant was the life insurance money. Even Fleur didn’t really understand it, but she knew I wanted to build something on my own, how important it was for me to shape something with my own two hands—the handsPapagave me, broad and strong like the log drivers and tree fellers who made up his family’s past.
Fleur’s hands were always so small in mine, white and soft and slender. Whenever I’d come home at midnight complaining about the fact that we wouldn’t turn a profit again that month, she’d roll over in bed and ask why I couldn’t just use some of the trust fund money from back home.
Then we’d fight. We’d fight so hard we’d both be up on our feet shouting things across the bed. She’d get so mad she’d throw a pillow at me, and then we’d both be laughing at ourselves before we fell back onto the mattress in each other’s arms.
Until the night we didn’t. Until the night she left with only a suitcase and flew back to France. I found the engagement ring on the kitchen counter. She’d taken it off before we even started to fight.
“Connard!” I shout at the robotic voice in my ear. “Keep my money, then!”
I hang up and let myself fall back onto the couch, reaching to scratch Madame Bovary behind her ears when she’s whining on the cushion beside me.
It’s not even eleven in the morning, and I’ve already put out several fires—both literal and figuratively—across my businesses. I stopped by Frango Tango’s downtown location to let them know I’d be in for a meal tonight and walked into the back just in time to see a new chef send one of the stovetops up in flames. Thankfully, they hadn’t changed the whereabouts of the fire extinguisher since the days I used to help out in the kitchen myself.
I still haven’t decided just how I’m going to reveal to Monroe that she’s taking me to one of my own restaurants tonight. There’s a lot of potential there.
There’s a lot of potential inher. Despite having just been through one hell of a morning, I find I’m now sitting here smiling to myself likea complete idiot at just the thought of seeing her expression when she finds out she’s spent our whole meal complimenting chicken I used to help make.
Monroe is a torch lighting up parts of myself I’ve kept in the dark for far too long. I hardly know her, but somehow she cuts through the boundaries I’ve put in place and takes us both straight to the deep end, to the crumbling caverns I never even finished building before I decided to seal them up.
I don’t know if those places are safe. They caved in on Fleur. They collapsed like an aging cathedral and left us both crawling out from under piles of bricks and dust.
Your head is too big, and your heart is too small.
For a long time, I believed her. I believed there was something hungry inside me, something too hungry to leave room for anything else. It was like my father always said: your work isn’t done when you finish the first floor. You build up. You never stop pushing for more.
After Fleur, I decided I wasn’t cut out to bring anyone to the top with me, but that wouldn’t stop me from reaching it. Turns out you can only sit alone in a silent condo for so many nights before you start to wonder if the top is even worth reaching on your own.
My phone starts buzzing on the couch cushion beside me, and I pick my glasses up from where I tossed them down in frustration before looking at the screen.
As if I hadn’t just lapsed into enough family reminiscences for one day.
“Salut, Maman,” I greet her as I bring the phone up to my ear.
“Julien,mon cher,please try to sound a little more excited to speak to me.”
“Désolé,” I apologise, “it’s been a busy morning. How are you?”
“All of your mornings are busy. I’m surprised you picked up the phone.”
She sounds like she’s eating some kind of fruit—cherries or strawberries or something like that. A bowl of them always seems to appear in her lap whenever she sits down. I wouldn’t be surprised if she had the staff keep ready-to-serve fruit arrangements perpetually chilling in the fridge.
“How’s the season going?” I ask, ignoring the jab at my work ethic. “Were there many repairs to do after the winter? Did they get enough staff hired on for the work?”
My mother has people to handle the task of running the wineries, but everything is still in her name. She does more work than anyone in her family ever expected or approved of. Before we lostPapa, she’d wander around the fields with him, hanging on his every word and risking the perils of sun damage and insect bites just to hear him talk about all the things that went into making wine. When I was young, I’d trail along behind them, attacking blades of grass with a stick. Even at that age, I was almost as entranced as her by the things he said. He talked about wine like it was poetry, like it was the most intricate of dramas—a war song and a love story all wrapped up in one.
I know that being in the fields now makes her feel closer to him. Listening to the winery managers review their plans for the season keeps the memory of my father and his words from slipping away. When we talk about the trees and the trellises, we’re really letting each other know that we haven’t forgotten. Not yet.
“Winter was so mild this year. We’re ahead of schedule now,” she tells me, “but there aren’t as many people as they hoped looking for work.”
“They’ll come. It’s only April.”
