Page 14 of Grape Juice
“Everyone has a little more life in their eyes this year, no?” Antoine addresses the larger group now. “And well, the harvest. The grapes are looking so beautiful. Not nearly as much frost as last winter.” I watch as he heaps a sandcastle’s worth of farro salad onto his plate. “Alice, I’ll need your help in the morning withpigeage. Come meet me in the cave at 6:00,ça marche?”
“Oui!” I look up expectantly. Henri still has his head turned down to his meal, gazing so committedly at his food, he might be saying grace.
“Mais... pigeage...?” I wonder aloud, directing my inquisition to no one in particular. Well, to Henri, but not to Henri.
“Pigeage, ‘foot stomping.’” Julian maneuvers his handsback and forth in the air as if operating a bicycle with his arms. “We foot stomp the grapes we don’t load into the press. Americans always make jokes aboutI Love Lucywhen they hear about it, but I’ve never seen that movie.”
“It’s a show,” I correct.
“I’ve never seen that show.”
“I have!” Ruby chimes in.
“It’s good experience for you,” Julian continues, making me feel that much lesschosenwith his typical manner of Germanic precision. “But it’s not as fun and silly as it sounds. It’s like marching in place in wet sand. For a long time.”
“Itisfun and silly,” Ruby interjects. “But yes, hard.”
“The folks in the cave don’t speak much English, though. So don’t be surprised when you mistake instructions,” Julian goes on.
“Ta gueule,” I fire back.Shut up.
“Hey,elle a un bon accent,” Henri tells him in French.Her accent is good.
“She’ll be just fine,” Antoine says firmly, his party platter of encased meat still poised in front of him.
VIII
I stand at the sink, feeling my fingers prune in the soapy water. Dirt clings resolutely to the skin under my nails, holding fast even in the pool of dish liquid. There is a certain catharsis to washing dishes—the tactile ease with which a situation can be resolved, debris expunged.
One by one, I pull from the precarious stack of plates beside me. As the others mill back and forth from the table, clearing away dishware, the pile grows steadily in size. I feel a surge of gratitude for the silence of my task. No French to be spoken, decoded. It dawns on me that this is the closest to alone I’ve found myself since arriving—that I haven’t had the opportunity to get acquainted with my own brain material for some time.
I decide that after the clean plates are stacked, the sink drained, and the compost loaded, I’ll call Emma, who will love nothing more than the news that I’ve developed a crush. I can imagine the tinge of hyperbolic awe in her voice:A crush? Is thismyAlice we’re talking about? Tell me everything.
I’ll start by telling her about harvest writ large: Thegeometric impossibility of vines reaching toward some unknowable horizon. The ways in which French has started to change, has fermented into something more available to me. The earnest, endless confessions amid the sacred space of the vineyards.
And then Henri. I want to talk about Henri. I can’t figure out where, exactly, to place him. I know that all of it—the whole of being here—feels so decidedlylarge, so worthy of reflection. He, however, is different. Separate from the Experience, a more novel plot point for me. I can feel it—whatever it is that I’m feeling—in my sternum. Not quite my heart but the pulsing, vibrating space around it. It feels like hunger.
I finish sponging the countertop clean, and when I turn away from the sink to wipe my hands dry with the dish towel, there he is. Like some willed hallucination.
Henri leans against the doorframe, arms crossed over his chest, watching. I pause, wondering if it’s possible that he’s just stared right through my skull, read the full transcript of my interior dish dialogue.
“What?” I shrug like I’ve been caught.
“Didn’t wanna interrupt you. You looked very zen.”
“I like doing dishes.”
“In that case, you’re welcome to come visit me in Lyon any time.”
“How generous.”
“Wanna take a walk?”
I do, of course. Want to. But the two of us alone, without a grapevine barrier, feels more concrete thanhypothetical. Part of me, I’m aware, prefers to enjoy him as a metaphor—some bit of evidence toward my capacity for feeling and being felt, but at arm’s distance.
I can see him register my hesitation, the slight false start. My body’s involuntary draw toward him while my feet remain rooted in place.
“Come on, it’s just a walk. Harmless.”
