Tender at the Bone (40 page)

It does.

“I am so sorry, but you cannot expect all of France to change their bottles at some whim of the American government.”

“Damn!” said Kermit as we drove down the hill.

“Was that a wasted afternoon?” I asked sleepily, feeling full of wine and sunshine and sausage.

“Oh no,” said Kermit. “I’ve made the contact and I’ll come back next year when he’s used up his supply of bottles and bought some I can import. But I’d feel better if I were able to buy it now.” He looked more cheerful as he added, “At least I know that won’t happen at the next place. We are going to St. Valerin to see Monsieur Vachet. I’ve been buying his Montagny for a long time. You’ll like him, I think. Around here they say that Vachet is just like his wines: austere at first but friendly at the finish.”

We were in flat land, so we could see the house in the middle of the vineyards long before we reached it. And they could watch us coming. When we got there, Monsieur Vachet, a small spare man with fingers gnarled like grapevines, was standing in front of the house waiting for us.

There were no pleasantries. “We’ll taste the wine now,” he said, leading us into a small old cellar filled with vast concrete tanks.

“Where are the barrels?” I asked.

“I don’t have any,” he replied, climbing up a ladder propped against a cement vat. “I believe that wine should taste like wine, not wood.” We tasted down the row of tanks, slowly working our way to the door. “It will be good,” he said, more to himself than to us.

“Do you want to taste how the wine you bought last time is now?” he asked Kermit, indicating a neat pile of green bottles glistening dimly along one wall. Kermit nodded. Monsieur Vachet held out a glass. “This is the one you bought,” he said. He handed him another. “I like the other wine better.”

The two wines tasted exactly the same to me. But the experts did not agree. Kermit swirled and sniffed and nodded to himself. “I was right,” he said firmly. “This one has more depth. How much do you have left of this lot?”

“About a hundred cases.”

“I want them,” said Kermit.

The fog rolled in the next day, a soft mist that obscured everything. Kermit cursed softly; we were going to Beaujolais and it was a long drive.

Monsieur and Madame Trenel were waiting, their faces painted with huge smiles. “You must have bought a lot last year,” I said as we got out of the car.

“I did,” said Kermit.

“Are you going to buy a lot this year?”

“That depends on the wine.” There were no formalities; the Beaujolais nouveau was waiting and Kermit took a sip. His mouth went down. Madame Trenel twisted her hands anxiously as Monieur Trenel went to fetch another bottle. He opened it, poured, and they both peered at Kermit’s face. It was eloquent: he looked as if he had tasted something foul. “It is too round,” he said finally. And then he asked to use the restroom.

I sat there with the Trenels, profoundly uncomfortable; I didn’t know where to look.

“He doesn’t like it,” Madame Trenel hissed at her husband. “He said twelve point eight degrees alcohol was too much. I don’t think he’s going to buy.”

“Yes, yes, he will,” he soothed. “He bought a few hundred cases last year. Where will he find better?”

Madame Trenel turned to me. “We are not young,” she said. “It is a hard business. We have been at it thirty years.”

When Kermit returned she scanned his face but the signs were not optimistic. Kermit looked decidedly unhappy. “I’ll take twenty cases,” he said finally. A sad silence descended on the room.

Outside it was even foggier than before, and as we twisted down the narrow roads Kermit put a blues cassette on his tape deck and cursed the weather.

“They were upset,” I ventured.

“Good!” he said vehemently. “Twelve point eight degrees! That’s outrageous. Beaujolais nouveau should be low in alcohol. They’re putting in too much sugar; they don’t have to do that.”

“But couldn’t you sell it?”

“Of course I could,” he said. “It’s the best Beaujolais I’ve found. But if I take a stand this year maybe next year they won’t chaptalize it so much.” He seemed really angry. “Do you think I’m
trying
not to find wine? I was counting on that one. But I can’t assume the wines will be the same from year to year. And if I start importing wines I don’t respect, I might as well go into another business.”

Kermit slowed the car and turned so he was looking at me. “Don’t you see?” he said, as if I had missed the whole point. “That’s why I have to keep making these damn trips. I have to keep tasting.”

THE BRIDGE

“When are you going to do something worthwhile with your life?”

I had a respectable job. I was making real money. Every month my name appeared in print. I was even starting to write food articles for magazines in New York. Did this impress my parents? Not in the least. “Food!” said my mother disdainfully. “All you do is write about food.”

I tried to get her voice out of my head, but it was always there. The more other people approved of my work, the louder my mother’s voice became. “You’re wasting your life,” she mocked.

Then the panic attacks returned. One day, driving to lunch, I suddenly stopped breathing in the middle of the Bay Bridge. I was so ashamed and embarrassed I did not tell anyone, not even Doug. But I started finding excuses to use public transportation or tricked other people into driving.

“Why this?” I asked myself. “Why now?” I didn’t have any answers.

My fear of driving became so intense that when I was invited to a party honoring James Beard I almost didn’t go: it was in San Francisco and Doug wasn’t invited. In the end I decided that was stupid; the party was on Russian Hill, an easy bus ride.

But when I got there I was sorry. I stood in the corner of a magnificent house looking at the view up Lombard Street, the crooked one, and thinking that I was wearing the wrong clothes. I was by far the youngest person at the party. Out of sheer nervous shyness I ate too many deviled eggs and wondered how soon I could politely leave.

Everyone there knew “Jim” and they swarmed obsequiously around his massive figure. I watched from a distance, entertaining myself by writing a bitter little piece about the party in my head. Then a small man with glasses reached past me for a deviled egg, turned and said, “Hello.”

He was very short, with thick glasses and a bookish air. His clipped British voice made him sound like a pretentious American who had once gone to Oxford. I thought he was probably a professor, although what he was doing in this gathering of foodies I couldn’t imagine. When he introduced himself I was so busy thinking all these things that I didn’t catch his name. Too awkward to ask him to repeat it, I asked the obvious question: “And what do you do?”

“I work for a milk company,” he replied.

I was first surprised and then pleased. Clearly he was not one of the great man’s famous friends. I relaxed and chatted with him, happy not to be a wallflower anymore. When he said, “Let me get you a glass of wine,” I revised the nasty little piece. Maybe the food mafia wasn’t as bad as everybody said.

He returned with two glasses of wine and a towering woman; they looked like Mutt and Jeff. With her turquoise eyes and silvery blonde hair pulled back in a low ponytail she was absolutely the
most beautiful older person I had ever seen. I guessed her at about sixty.

“Hello, hon,” she said, taking my hand in a firm handshake.

“This is Marion Cunningham,” said the man, “I thought you should meet.” He handed me a glass and moved off.

The tall blonde began asking questions in such an easy, interested way that it took me a while to realize that she had found out everything about me in ten intense minutes. Finally she said, “You must meet James.” Grabbing my hand, she barreled forward. The crowd parted and suddenly he was sitting in front of me in all his glory. I tried desperately to think of something to say to this famous person. I tried to remember the names of books he had written or some well-known recipe he had created. Suddenly the words “tomato pie” came to me.

“My husband just loves the tomato and mayonnaise pie in your American cookbook,” I offered. “We eat it all the time.”

He swept me with a contemptuous gaze. “Do you?” he said. He seemed utterly bored. I fished around for something else to say. He did not seem to feel the same compunction to keep the conversation going, and I felt like a fly buzzing around a fat Buddha. He waved his hands with irritation and I subsided. He sat. I stood. Finally I thought to ask, “Can I get you something to eat?” and he replied that he could do with a few of those deviled eggs. By the time I returned with the plate a new crowd had moved in, so I could hand it to him and melt back into the party.

“He is much nicer to boys,” said Marion sympathetically when she found me. “I should have stayed with you.”

“Yes,” I said, “I preferred the milkman.”

Marion looked blank. “Milkman?” she asked.

“You know,” I said, “the man who introduced us.” Marion put her head back and laughed, a deep sound of pure glee. I watched, thinking that I had never heard anyone laugh with less malice; it
didn’t make me uncomfortable or embarrassed and I waited for her to let me in on the joke. “He must have told you that to put you at ease. That’s Gerald Asher.”

“The wine writer? Are you an important person too?” I asked, slightly embarassed.

“Oh no, dear,” she said easily, “I’m the last living home cook. I’ve just revised the twelfth edition of
Fannie Farmer.”
She put out her arm, scooped up a passing man, and said, “Let me introduce you to our host.”

Suddenly there were a lot of people standing around making a fuss about an article I had written and I started thinking that these food people were really very nice. The nasty little piece vanished forever.

Marion drove me home. We met for lunch a week later. And then again, a week after that. Before long we were talking to each other so regularly that when she answered the phone I didn’t have to tell her who was calling.

She knew everyone in the food world, and she told me great stories about Julia, James, and Craig. And Gerald. All of these people interested me. But none of them interested me nearly as much as Marion, who had reinvented herself in middle age and did not seem to think there was anything remarkable about it.