Page 13 of Grape Juice
“It’s true.” Ruby loosens her makeshift ascot as if prepping her vocal cords to begin. “Since you lot seem incapable of delivering, I’ll tell you something that’s actually interesting. Withhold your judgment...” She tucks a few rogue wisps of hair behind her ears, emitting a palpable eagerness—as if she’s been waiting for precisely this pack of pseudostrangers, cloistered in this precise patch of no-man’s-land, for her disclosure. “The truth is, I’ve been sleeping with a married man.” She pauses, gazing at each of us slowly, gauging reactions—but no one seems particularly scandalized. We know so little of one another beyond the scope of these vines. As comfortable as I am with her, I can barely envision Ruby transposed into the real world, party to its ethical guidelines. “I don’t know how you feel about infidelity,” she continues, “but I, myself, would have said I was opposed until, well, right now.”
I consider my own stance. Surely, I’d have said the same—opposed!—but then again, nothing about her admission inspires a sense of righteousness in me. It does little to change my perception of her. Ruby, a three-dimensional person, is moving through the world, making choices, submitting to romance, perhaps wreaking a bit of havoc along the way. We all wreak our havocs of varying degrees and intensities, don’t we?
“Anyway, he’s quite a bit older; he’s been married for longer than I’ve been alive.” Her attention is back on the vines. “They don’t have sex anymore, he and his wife—which, I know, not a rare issue. But the thing between us, whatever it is, is very real. And no, I don’t mean that in a deluded way. I don’t pretend like I’d like to marry him, and I certainly don’t want him to leave his wife. But in this particular moment, I think we’re both giving each other exactly what we need. And I have to believe that’s a good thing.”
“And what’s that thing?” Henri asks. “What’s the thing you both need?” I’d wanted to ask the same question.
“To feel like we’re both deserving of being heard, and adored, and ravished. Or maybe just being looked at in certain ways.” She pauses, squinting her eyes up at the sun in thought. “I think people require that sensation, or at least a piece of it, to move through the world. And sometimes you’ve been with your partner for so long, they don’t see you anymore. It’s nobody’s fault, but everyone needs to be noticed.”
“I’m not sure I’ve ever felt that desire,” Julian admits.
“Maybe that’s because you’ve never been without it—that sense of being witnessed. At least, not at an age where the lack-there-of-ness would feel palpable,” I offer. I know, in the marrow of my bones, what it feels like to have your partner look right through you. It requires extreme measures. Leaving. Cheating. Demolition of some kind.
“The problem with things like that is they always become uneven. One of you always wants more than the other,” Henri chimes in. As my finger throbs, I attempt to interpret his meaning. Whetherwant, in his terms, is a burden or a gift.
VII
By the time we’ve all undergone our six-minute cleansing rituals, it’s dark outside. Clad in soccer shorts and a white button-down, I comb my hair while Ruby weaves her mania of copper curls.
“Have you ever wondered what makes French braids French?” I ask her, watching the way her fingers dovetail nimbly, over and over again, at the back of her skull.
“It’s probably just Europeans culturally appropriating something else.”
“God forbid there was a trend the French couldn’t take credit for.”
She chuckles and winds an elastic band around her braid’s bottom tassel, then plops herself beside me at the foot of my bed. “You want one too?”
I nod, touched by the offer. It seems childish to ask, but I love the affectionate tug that comes from having your hair done—especially at the mercy of hands that feel familiar.
We turn to face the headboard, both of us cross-legged, her behind me, like children miming the act of driving a car.
“So, now that I have you to myself...” I feel her gently parceling my hair into three even portions. “Whatcha gonna do about Henri, honeybee? We’re days in, and it practically takes work for you tonotgo at it in the vines. It’s pretty full-on.”
I feel my face grow warm, and I’m grateful to have my back turned to her. I am not, by nature, coy in this way; I’m not sure I’ve felt myself blush romantically in years... probably not since the tried-and-true days of (age-appropriate) slumber-party hair plaiting. I’ve forgotten that there is a certain humiliation that comes with infatuation. A certain mortifying nakedness. How embarrassing it is to feel some palpable, physical yearning for the simple fact of someone else’s proximity. How bizarrely juvenile.
“The thing is, we’re not here forthatlong. And I have absolutely no interest in blowing up his life, or his relationship, regardless of the wholebreakthing. I’m not gonna, like, stand outside of his window with a boom box or anything. But... I mean, I’d pick him.”
“You’d pick him? Like out of a hat? Off of a vine?”
“No, ha ha.” I enunciate the syllables, suddenly too exposed to laugh in earnest. “I mean, I often feel like I’m circumstantially in relationships. Someone’s there and it makes sense. But I’m not the one who did the choosing. With Henri, well, I’dpickhim.”
“In a very evasive,Aliceway, that’s actually quite tender.” She ties off the end of the braid and stands up to examine her work from the front. “C’est parfait, my dear. Henri will love it.”
I giggle, responding both to her prodding and to the quiet relief of having relinquished some part of thisthingto someone else. I’ve been told this is commonly referred to asletting someone in. “It’s been a long time since I’ve had a crush. I think maybe it feels easybecauseit’ll never work out. He has a sort-of girlfriend. We live on different continents. It’s all just hypothetical.”
“You think too much for your own good. It’s supposed to be fun,chérie. Let’s go eat. I’m starving.”
Downstairs, the table is already set. The group that remained among the central vines returned early enough to prep dinner. They’ve already taken their places, so just a handful of spots remain for us at the end of the table. Ruby and I sit, surveying the spread by lantern light: an enormous grain salad alongside platters loaded with enough sausage to feed a small army. Julian is directly across from me, Henri to his left.
When Antoine strides in, he looks like he could part seas if he wanted to. I watch as he sidles into the empty chair to my right and promptly loads his plate with so many sausages, I wonder if he’s doing so satirically. “Not all for me!” he clarifies, seeing me eye his plate. “Bringing these back to Bea—she’s at home with the dogs.”
“Ah! That’s kind,c’est gentil.”
He smiles. “Doing well so far? You seem to have taken to things quite quickly.” He gives me a delicate bump onthe shoulder with his knuckles. I listen closely for accusatory undertones, snide subtext, but I don’t register any. “This year’s a good harvest crew. Everyone fits together so nicely. Doesn’t always happen that way, does it now, Henri?”
Henri, who has what appears to be half a sausage in his mouth, swallows in one enormous, haphazard gulp. “I... yeah.”
I can’t read the rapport here; I’m convinced I’m missing something in their dynamic, and the not knowing is laced with a taught anxiety. I’m entirely uncertain what sort of conversations they’ve had in my absence. Whether our so-called flirtation—a word that feels too crass, too easy, too unserious—is a problem for some reason. One that’s substantial enough to cause a rift between them.
