Corked (20 page)

“No, I am a lucky guy because you are brave and patient.”

“Thank you.” I reach across the table and with a clumsy hand cup his cheek and give him a few avuncular pats, which are really more like slaps, and joke, “See, Dad, we
did
get to go to Bordeaux on this trip…sort of.”

“Fuck Bordeaux,” he says, and laughs.

“Yeah, fuck that place,” I say back to him.

We weave through the narrow streets of Ales, all of which are jammed with revelers for some festival that is about to begin. They jostle us as we force our way through what was becoming a standard small-city mob scene, full of awkward, thick-lipped teens looking for make-out partners and tacky 40-year-old couples with thinner lips who are nevertheless dressed like the thick-lipped teens. On another night, on a night like two nights ago, my father would be cursing and lamenting his poor knee, his poor knee, and I would be frantically making the peace, but tonight we have opened our Cracker Jack boxes and traded decoder rings. We navigate the crowd without needing to say a word, for once.

Before climbing into bed, I stand barefoot on the clammy, smoky hotel rug, catching the faraway party sounds in my ears and rising street smells in my nose. Then a popping sound like a gunshot—
PAF!
My heart beats fast and the space behind my eyes grows tingly with panic until I notice the lion's mane of gold glitter in the sky. For a while I look at the fireworks, think a little about destruction and creation, then leave the window to watch
Top Gear
on the BBC World Service.

 

I
push at the tacky dark green and dirty gold comforter and breathe in the manky hotel room air. I kick up my legs so the leaden thing pops off my body, then parachutes around me, landing with as much of a thud as a comforter can make. It is a combination of a poof and a thud. I do it a second time, but this time I punt both legs simultaneously to the left. The movement works. The comforter sails off my body and I look down at my crisp sheet-swathed body and feel a swell of relief: it is our last day on the road. And then I get up like girls do in Disney movies, all precious and motivated, waiting for the little birds to come and help them get dressed.

I take a very hot shower and then a very cold shower, use the hair dryer, put on clothing, and take the elevator downstairs to my dad's room. Anticipating my arrival, he has wedged a folded room service menu between the locking mechanism and the door frame. I enter, letting the door click shut behind me. The room smells of soap, the bathroom door is open.

“Are you decent?” I call.

“Yes, yes, Tootsie. My Tou Tou, come in.”

I peer around the corner to find my dad with a towel around his waist and a look of utter rapture on his face. In his ear, there is a Q-tip. He's rotating it around slowly, counterclockwise.

“There you go, doing that,” I say.

“What?” he asks.

“What you do with your Q-tips—your rapturous exercise of cleaning your ears. I know how much you love cleaning your ears. I love it too.”

“It is like sex without the effort.”

The room service menu is in my hand. Flicking my wrist hard, I send it sailing into the bathroom. It rotates fast—the corner hits my father on the right side of his ribcage and leaves a mark.

“You say gross, horrible things, and you must be punished for them.”

“That is fair.”

He finishes his ear excavation and puts the used Q-tip back in his shaving kit.

As we drive into the courtyard of our final stop, Clos Bagatelle, I think about his lecture to me the day before we boarded the plane. The day now feels like thousands of millions of years away. He talked about Languedoc, and the new identity of the region. He'd said the winemakers here had not recognized the raw material they had under and all around them—how their wines had been blunt and lacking complexity, stuff that was meant to be drunk pragmatically, to quench thirst, maybe render one intoxicated. And now, the region was being blessed, for the first time since the identity shift, with a legendary vintage.

The Clos Bagatelle winery is paradisiacal. The color palette knows no pastels. It is fiery red earth and cyan sky, the vivid green of the vines and the mushroom gill brown of the surrounding bluffs.

Two wiry German shepherd teen-dogs bound toward us, barking their heads off. They trot around us in a circle, round and round, wet noses poking our thighs.

“Bonjour, les chiens.”
My father lets them sniff him all over.

I stroke one of them between the eyes.

An angular woman with a tomboyish haircut and sparkly eyes hurries out of the stone house at the end of the drive. She's in jeans and a big knit white sweater and approaches us, waving with both arms like she's standing outside a gate at the airport and we're family members getting off the plane. Grabbing my father's hand with her right and enclosing it with both of hers, she shakes the mess of fingers and palms enthusiastically. She turns to me and brings me in for
la bise
. I air-kiss her cheeks and giggle, dumbfounded, but mostly charmed. It's as though scientists created an antithetical cloning machine and put Chantal Comte in it, then transplanted the result to this vineyard in Saint-Chinian. Her name is Christine Simon. Clos Bagatelle belongs to her.

“Did you get lost?”

“No, amazingly,” I respond.

“Amazingly?” This woman cares about my qualification. I become flustered.

“Oh, yes, I mean amazingly because we've been getting lost a lot. You're our last stop on what's been a long trip.”

She eyes my father, grinning. “You've been trapped in the car with each other for how long?”

“
Environs deux semaines
,” my father says.

“Two weeks!”

“More than 1,000 kilometers,” I say.

“And you haven't killed each other yet?”

“Almost,” I say. The image of the tree scrolls by. I giggle again, through tight lips. The result sounds like a combination of a toad and a bird's mating call.

“Bien fait!
” she congratulates me, and slaps my arm. “So, you're tired of tours, I assume. I'll take you around. We'll make it quick, and then
une jolie dégustation
.” This woman reads minds.

Walking briskly, dogs in tow, she gives us the movie trailer tour. Old family-owned property, old vines, old casks, 39 hectares, red grapes: Syrah, Grenache, Mourvèdre, Carignan. They plop in some white grapes when making red wines, a smattering of Muscat mixed with the Mourvèdre; Viognier with the Syrah. Many of the wines are named after family members—Camille, Juliette. She stops and turns, her eyes scanning ours.

“Our best wine is called
La Gloire de Mon Père
,” she says. The Glory of My Father. It's the title of a Marcel Pagnol book I read when I was a child.

“My brother and I dedicated our top
cuvée
to our father, Henry. He died seven years ago.”

I nod. My father nods. She nods.

“A table!”
she says, and marches off in the direction of the tasting room. We follow. My dad looks amused.

“What?”
I whisper.

“
Eet's
nothing,” he says.

“Come on,
what?
”

“She is a good daughter, to make a wine for her father. You too are a good daughter, but how are you going to honor me when I am dead in the ground?”

“First, I will take you to a taxidermist and have you stuffed like a sailfish. Then, I'll have your joints replaced with nuts and bolts so that on weekends I can turn my living room into a theater and make you perform humiliating dance routines in front of all the people who once respected you.” I whisper back to him, slowly and methodically, wearing my creepiest smile.

“HA!” He reaches out and squeezes my shoulder.

“You asked.”

At the table, which is heavy and thick, sit three people who are ready to drink. Christine is Inspector Gadget, with a corkscrew thrusting out of the sleeve of her sweater, opening bottles and bottles and bottles, introducing them to the group while letting us continue to introduce ourselves.

“Who's the expert here?” she asks.

My dad and I both point to each other. I take his index finger in my hand, and fold it back into his fist.

“It's my father,” I say. “I've been trying to learn.”

“And what have you learned?”

“The list is long.”

“Well?” She swirls and sips one of her 2002 vintages. My father and I do the same. I look into the glass and allow some air to roll into my mouth. The flavor expands and blooms into prunes and cloves.

“Well, mostly I figured out that it's impossible to force a connection—that sometimes, if I'm not in the right mood, no matter how great the wine is, there's very little chance that it'll have any impact.”

“Good answer.”

“I also learned that it's important that I learn how to spit properly. Watch this,” I say. Pulling in the spittoon, I hold my head over the opening and dribble a mouthful of wine into it. This time, the liquid not only runs down my chin, but down my neck and into my cleavage. I dab at the mess with the sleeve of my sweater. My father cackles into his knees. Christine touches my wrist and spits, sending a perfect jet of wine into the receptacle.

“Make a little fish face, like this,” she says, puckering her lips and making her cheeks go concave. “Next, you want to push your tongue against your top two teeth, then widen it out so that it's touching all the teeth in the top row.”

“Okay.”

“Now try.” She hands me a glass.

I expel the wine with as much technique and gusto as I can. The first half jets out cleverly, while the rest finds its way into my sweater.

“
Presque!
” Christine says, applauding.

“Almost there, Toots.” My father pats my knee.

A group of Austrian tourists bursts into the room, interrupting our moment with loud questions about the price of the rosé. Christine's brother Luc appears, deals with their queries, and ushers them out. We make fun of their ridiculous hats and sense of entitlement. And, oh my God, do we ever laugh—at the Austrians, at everything, but especially at the Austrians and their Tyrolean hats with feathers and cords. We're having a party.

Before we leave, Christine gives us a bottle of Henry's wine. On the label, she writes two words, “
Moment magique
.”

It takes us a day and a half to get back to Paris. We retrace our steps almost exactly, even staying over in the same hotel in Burgundy. We drive up, up, up, until we get to the middle of the top of France. Driving toward the
centre-ville
gives me the type of feeling I imagine Olympians have when they're sitting in crisp suits in convertible cars and the sky is raining confetti. I am a float of myself in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade. I am over 300 meters tall and so shiny, and I can shoot heart-shaped lasers out of my eyes and wine out of my mouth like a semipro, though apparently I'm still useless at following road signs as we get lost while trying to find the Gare de Lyon, where we're meant to drop off the rental car.

In the underground parking lot, which smells of urine and trains, my father steps out of our home-on-wheels for the last time. He says he needs to do a big stretch.

With his hands on his hips, he arches his back. Without looking at me, he says, “Tootsie, make sure the car
eez
clean.” His tone indicates he will be taking no part in this cleaning.

“Sure thing.” I find a flimsy gas station plastic bag and begin pinching up the garbage. Bits of soft old Kleenex and dirty pipe cleaners and ink-smeared receipts. Plastic Nescafé cups and one hair elastic. A cork, a different type of cup. I go through the backseat pockets and into the inset rubber troughs attached to the bottoms of the car doors. More receipts, a package of plastic-wrapped hotel Q-tips. There are three, and they are clean. I put them in my satchel. There is some loose change, grit, and dust. I find two wrinkled Michelin maps of France. One has been folded properly, the other not. I attack the backseat. We've amassed a collection of gift bottles from everyone: Rémy Gresser, Manou Massenez, Bernard Nast, Marie-Anne Nudant, René Aubert, Chantal Comte, Christine Simon. I carefully roll each one in my sweaters and pants, placing the wine-clothing sausages into my backpack, releasing the plastic clasps and the nylon straps to accommodate them. I throw my father's untied running shoes into his big rectangular mega-briefcase, as well as the navy blue briefs that are hanging to dry on the car coat hanger by the back passenger window. I do a final sweep. I pop open the glove compartment. There is a third Michelin map of France and the vinegar book.

Outside the window, I catch a glimpse of my father. He has completed his stretching routine and is now quizzically flipping through his day planner, checking that all his ID and credit cards are in there. He snaps shut the leather cover and in a loud voice says, “So, Tootsie, let's get this show on the road,
hein?
”

“You are a show,” I say.

“No,
you
are a show,” he says.

I haul out our things and lock the car. I pile all the trip viscera next to a tire and stare at it. We hear footsteps coming toward us, echoing ominously against the pillars and low concrete ceiling. My father turns in the direction of the footsteps. I do too. A priest is walking toward us in full black robes, his hands clasped behind his back. He has a little blond mustache and is wearing black sneakers. My dad gawks openly at him as he sweeps by us. It's embarrassing, so I reach out and pull out one of his ear hairs. Wincing in pain, he reflexively reels around and smacks me in the bicep.

“That
hurt
,” he cries.

I rub my bicep.

“I wanted you to stop staring at that man!”

“Sorry.”

“It's all right.”

“He looked like a pedophile, don't you think?”

I crinkle my nose at my father, then adjust the angle of my head so that I can see over my father's shoulder. The priest's robe is swishing stiffly, left and right. A tuft of blond neck hair sprouts out of the back of his collar. I look back at him.