My phone feels like it’s burning a hole in my pocket, and I’m about ready to risk electromagnetic interference to see if Monroe has returned any of my messages or calls.
I asked that Fournier clown to let me give her the news myself after admitting to our ‘friendship,’ but now that I’ve been summoned out of the country and still haven’t managed to get a hold of her, I doubt he’ll keep his mouth shut for long.
She’s going to be furious. Worse than that, she’s going to be disappointed. Again. I could take anger from her. I could take screaming and fists pounding against my chest, but that’s the thing about Monroe. She doesn’t get furious; she gets righteous instead. She makes it clear you’ve let her down, and somehow, that’s a million times harder to accept. When she tossed my words back at me before walking out my apartment door, I thought the floorboards would crack open to let me tumble into the pit of my own shame.
The first day I met her, I felt like I’d failed a test. As I paced my apartment in the moments after she left, I realized I couldn’t live with feeling that way again. I tracked down Félix Fournier and called him myself before he’d even made me his offer. We had the deal complete within a few days.
The only thing left is to hand the whole place over to Monroe.
Only she doesn’t know that yet. I’ve been trying to get a hold of her ever since, but she won’t answer my calls.
When I called my mother and told her I’d need to speak to our family lawyer about finally receiving my trust fund money, she asked me what was wrong in a horrified voice that suggested my legs must have been crushed in a tragic accident or something equally cataclysmic. Even after several minutes spent trying to convince her I was fine, she wouldn’t believe I simply decided I wanted the money. I ended up being forced to tell her I met a girl.
This of course prompted another round of convincing wherein I tried to tell her I wasn’t being fleeced by a gold digger. It took me the better part of an hour to actually get the damn lawyer’s contact information.
WhenMaman’sname showed up on my screen yesterday, I was expecting to face another interrogation. Instead, I picked up to hear her sobbing into the phone. For the past year, we’ve been living with the knowledge that my grandmother didn’t have much time left. It was down to a question of when, andwhenseems to be now.
The plane lands in Paris, and the first thing I do is switch my phone on. There’s still nothing from Monroe. I find my grandparents’ driver waiting for me in the arrivals area. It’s only once I’m buckled into the back seat of the Audi and settling in for the five hour trip to Bordeaux that I realize I haven’t felt even a flicker of hesitation since I heard my mother crying. Before I even knew what she was crying about, I made the decision to go to her.
There was a time in my life when even my own grandmother’s impending death would have made me consider the pros and cons of taking an unexpected absence from work. There was a time when I would have asked just how certain the doctors were. I would have tried to wait it out and see if things got better—not because I didn’t care and not because I didn’t want to be there, but because there was always a much stronger compulsion than any of my cares or wants. There was always this gnawing, teeth-gnashing need to succeed. I was like a horse being spurred on by a carrot dangling over its head, and I never stopped to question who had their hands on the reins.
I’m starting to see past the fucking carrot.
Paris streaks by the windows, imposingly beautiful with those blue and white Haussmann houses stretching up from the meticulous grid of the city in all their chilly splendor. They’ve been softened by time and human hands, by flowers in the window boxes and cracks running up the walls, but I’ve always found Paris to be cold.
I only feel like I’m home once we’re past the finalarrondissementand headed into the countryside. I roll down my window to get a breath of the afternoon air, baked by the sun and seasoned with the earthy tang of the grass. That’s when I know I’ve arrived. I haven’t breathed that air in six years, but I’d know exactly where I was even if I’d woken up in this car with a blindfold on.
The gravel drive leading to my grandparents’chateauis long and winding. I remember the way those rocks felt slicing into my knees and palms when I hit the brakes on my bike too fast and flew over the handlebars. My mother carried me back up to the house, blood staining the pink silk of her blouse.
It’s suddenly agony to wait even another second to be with her.
They’re keepingGrand-mèrein a room on the first floor.Mamantold me she knew things were bad when the hospital doctors suggestedGrand-mèremight be more comfortable at home. The housekeeper shows me into the room, and I find my mother sitting in an armchair, reading out loud from the book in her lap. The figure in the hospital bed beside her is frail and shrivelled, with an IV in her wrist and a cannula under her nose. She almost appears translucent, like she’s little more than a hull. The shallow rise and fall of her chest is a shock when she’s this close to gone.
Mamanstops mid-sentence and looks up toward the door. The tears flood her eyes in an instant.
“Mon fils!” she gasps, jumping up from her chair. “My son! My Julien! My son.”
She knew I was coming, but she latches onto me like the shock of my arrival has completely knocked her over. I steady her with my hands on her back, and she sniffles into my chest until she manages to collect herself enough to step away and look at me.
“You came!”
“Of course I did.” I say it like I had no other option, but she knows as well as I do that she’s right to be surprised by it—happy, but still surprised, like this is an outcome she didn’t dare hope for.
“Where isGrand-père?”
Maman’s expression darkens. “Probably locked up in his study again. He says he can’t look at her like this.”
“Did he know I was coming?”
Mamannods. “I told him you’d be here this afternoon, but I doubt we’ll see him until dinner. He didn’t leave her side for days, but after they told us it’s not likely she’ll wake up again, he—he just...he couldn’t—”
The tears threaten to spill over again, and I put my arm around her as I lead her back to her chair. Part of me wants to be furious at my grandfather for leaving her alone like this, but the other half of me understands. I can barely look at the figure in the bed, the one who is nothing like the woman I remember, with her thick white hair piled high on her head and those long, slender fingers like my mother’s always wrapped around a teacup. Now they look like skeletal where they rest on the bed sheets at her sides.
Papadidn’t fade away like this. The cancer moved fast. He got thinner, yes, and his voice lost the lustre that seemed to draw everyone to his words like a warm fire on a cold night, but even at the very end, he still looked like he would spring up out of bed and ask for a glass of wine.
The housekeeper brings tea and a tray of biscuits neither of us touches; we’re too busy talking to eat. It’s been over a year sinceMaman’s last trip to Canada, and even though I already know how the wineries are doing and she’s already aware of all my business plans, we discuss every facet of our day to day lives like we’re sharing them for the first time. The stories all sound new when we’re sitting here in the same room, breathing the same air.
I think that’s how it always is with mothers: you don’t realize how much you miss them until you’re back by their side.
