Ellen Crosby - The Sauvignon Secret

“That’s because so far no one in the family has found her Off switch,” I said. “And now we’re all pretty sure she doesn’t have one.”

Jasmine smiled.

“Where did you work before you came here?” I asked.

She shrugged. “Everywhere. Most recently a restaurant in Portland, Oregon.”

“Virginia’s a long way from Oregon.”

“Umm.” She turned off the gas and set the saucepan on another burner. “I’d better get busy. Dominique will have my head if this evening isn’t perfect.”

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to distract you. I’ll just say hi, then disappear,” I said and slipped out the side door.

My cousin glanced up from grinding her cigarette butt under the heel of a black sandal. She looked like she did the time I caught her in the kitchen adding a can of broth to her made-from-scratch chicken stock.

“ Merde , you scared me,” she said. “I thought it was Juliette. She believes cigarettes are the devil’s creation. They’re totally banned from the house.”

“Serves you right if it had been Juliette. When are you going to quit? You’ll get cancer.”

“Pépé smokes like a chimney. He’s eighty-four and he doesn’t have cancer. We’ve got good genes,” she said. “Where is he, by the way?”

“Visiting the greenhouse. Juliette is giving him a tour.”

“Just the two of them?”

I nodded and Dominique shot me an unreadable look that I didn’t like.

“Where’s Charles?” she asked. “She sent him to the library to talk to a guest who’s on oxygen. You know, I think I’m the only person here tonight except for your staff who is under sixty. Maybe even under seventy.”

My cousin didn’t smile. “Merde,” she said again. “I knew it.”

“What?” I asked.

“She’s still in love with him. After all these years.”

“What are you talking about? Pépé and Juliette?”

Dominique automatically slipped her pack of cigarettes out of the pocket of her slim-cut black trousers and I glared at her.

“Oh, all right,” she said and shoved them back. “But it calms my nerves when I smoke.”

“Forget the cigarettes and tell me about Pépé and Juliette.”

“I forgot that you wouldn’t have known. It started after Grand-mama died. My mother told me the story one night when we stayed up really late and drank too much champagne. He was so lost on his own. Juliette … well, she lived in the same building on Boulevard Saint-Denis, so they all knew each other.” She bent and picked up her cigarette butt, holding it between her thumb and forefinger like it was some rare specimen that needed to be preserved. “She got in the habit of coming by to bring him dinner. She’d say she just cooked a little more than they needed and that he would waste away to nothing if he didn’t eat. Sometimes my mother and I would drop by his apartment and there’d be a pretty bouquet of flowers, or pastries from the boulangerie across the street. My mother said she always knew they were from her. Juliette was married at the time to a troll who beat her. She finally left him.”

“And?”

“Well, I think she was hoping … you know. ”

“That Pépé would ask her to marry him?”

She nodded.

“Were they, I mean did they … I mean …”

“Did they have sex? Is that what you mean?” Dominique rolled her eyes. “And who do you think was going to ask him that? You know Pépé. Mon Dieu , he’s so private. They could have done. The troll traveled a lot so it wouldn’t have been difficult to arrange, living in the same building. To be honest, I don’t think they did. He’s too much of a gentleman and she was married.”

“But after the divorce?”

“He was sent to Brussels for a year since he was still doing some consulting for the foreign ministry. It was a blessing, kept him really busy, but of course he was living in Belgium. Then my mother heard Juliette was moving to Washington to take a job as a secretary at the embassy. She thought Pépé pulled strings to get her the position. Juliette left France and apparently decided to turn over a whole new broom.” Dominique spoke English fluently but despite years of living in America, idioms continued to baffle her.

“You mean forget about Pépé?”

“My mother always thought that’s why she left,” she said. “Juliette met Charles in Washington right around the time he was named ambassador to France. She married him and moved home, into the residence on the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré with her new husband, and all of a sudden she’s living down the street from the Élysée Palace. Parties, balls, receptions, lots of fancy entertaining, and a huge staff to help. My mother said she was absolutely aux anges . She was such a beauty, too—her picture showing up all the time in Paris-Match and Vogue .”

I nodded and thought about the portrait in the library. Maybe that teasing smile had been for my grandfather and he’d been there when she posed for the artist. It would explain why he’d been so abrupt when I asked him if he knew where it had been painted.

“Charles and Pépé never got to be close friends, did they?”

“You know Pépé,” she said. “He’s such a gentleman and always polite, but I don’t think he ever warmed up to Charles. And Charles didn’t strike me as so dumb he didn’t realize his wife still carried a torch for another man. It wouldn’t surprise me if Juliette married Charles just to get back at Pépé—then she had to live with her decision. The irony of it is that Charles has a reputation as a womanizer, though he’s discreet and they pretend to be a happy couple.”

“My God, how complicated.”

Was this what Charles wanted to talk to us about after dinner? Something personal? His marriage? The kitchen door opened and Jasmine’s head popped into view.

“The lady of the house is asking for you. I told her you were in the bathroom.” She waved something at my cousin. “Breath mints. I figured you could use them.”

Dominique and I exchanged glances. “Well,” she said, “here we go.”

On our way inside I said, “I like your new chef.”

“She’s amazing,” Dominique said. “I was lucky to get her.”

“How’d you find her?”

“She contacted me. She was born in France, spent a lot of time there, but grew up here. Her father was Iranian, a university professor. American mother, died last fall. Apparently she brought up Jasmine in a home that only ate organic produce, anything locally grown. They owned chickens, a goat, that sort of thing. Jasmine worked with Juliette on tonight’s menu, so all the fruit and vegetables could come from her garden.”

“I’m impressed,” I said. “At least the food is going to be fabulous.”

“It is. Which reminds me. We’ve been planning a dinner at the Inn where everything on the menu was grown or raised within a hundred miles of here. We’ve had so much interest that I was wondering if we could move it to the vineyard.”

“Sure, no problem. Talk to Frankie and we’ll get it on the calendar.”

“There won’t be time. It’s next Friday.” She saw my alarmed look. “Don’t worry. Jasmine’s got it all organized. There’s nothing to worry about.”

“You’re letting Jasmine run this?”

“It was her idea,” Dominique said. “She’s very capable, Lucie. Besides, you know what they say—never let a gift horse in the house. How could I say no?”

“When you put it like that,” I said, “I suppose you couldn’t.”

Juliette seated Pépé at her table and exiled me to a remote corner of the living room with an elderly crowd who talked about the old days at their various foreign posts and the new days with their aches and pains, and the hassles of dealing with Social Security and Medicare. Mercifully everyone began leaving at eleven. By eleven thirty Pépé and I were the only guests remaining. Charles took me aside after Juliette excused herself to settle up with Dominique and her staff.