Ellen Crosby: The Sauvignon Secret

I threw myself in my mother’s favorite Queen Anne chair next to the demilune phone table, picked up the receiver, and cut off the answering machine. My grandfather’s voice, which would almost certainly be filtered through the acrid smoke of a Gauloise and a snifter of Armagnac, sounded subdued as it echoed through the two-story foyer of the old house.

“I’m here, Pépé,” I said in French. “I was outside watching the sunset.”

Across the hall in the parlor, the mantel clock chimed eight. Two in the morning in Paris. It would be at least another hour before Pépé, a notorious night owl, would be ready to go to bed.

“Is everything all right?” I asked. “How was your trip to Vietnam?”

“ Formidable . A couple of vieux potes decided to rent a junk and sail the Halong Bay in the north. Did you know the name means ‘where the dragon descends to the sea’?” As usual, he didn’t wait for my reply. “It was spectacular, ma chère , the sea the color of emeralds and hundreds of stone grottoes rising from the water like cathedral spires or the scales on a dragon’s back. Someday we’ll go back together. You must see it.”

I smiled. Pépé kept in touch with a far-flung network known as “the old chums” who were friends from his years in the French diplomatic service and, before that, in the Resistance during World War II. No ten-countries-in-ten-days senior citizen package tour for him. My eighty-four-year-old grandfather chased dragons in exotic lagoons.

“I’d like that,” I said, “but I’m glad you’re back in Paris, even if it’s only for a little while. When are you going to Morocco? Sometime in the fall, isn’t it?”

Like the song went, you couldn’t keep him down on the farm after he’d seen “Paree.” In fact, it was hard enough keeping him in “Paree.” Ever since he lost my grandmother almost forty years ago, he’d been a restless soul bereft without the love of his life. The wanderlust and the trips were how he coped with loneliness.

“Yes, yes,” he said. “Morocco in September. A camel safari along the southern border, plus the usual cities … Fez, Rabat, Tangiers. But first I am coming to les États-Unis . I’m sorry to surprise you at the last minute, ma belle , but it just came up.”

I straightened up in my chair. “You’re coming here ?”

I’d long ago stopped being astonished by my grandfather’s spur-of-the-moment trips, especially when he announced he was about to show up on my doorstep, but something in his voice said this time was different.

“Let me guess,” I said. “You’re already at the airport, aren’t you? On the plane?”

He chuckled and I heard him sip his drink.

“Not quite, but I am packing my valise . I arrive in Washington on Thursday afternoon. No need to put me up. I know how busy you are. I’ll stay in a hotel,” he said. “Though I would like you to come with me to a dinner party Friday night. Juliette and Charles Thiessman are having a few friends in to celebrate le quatorze juillet . Bastille Day. You know the Thiessmans, bien sûr ?”

Old family friends, they were Pépé’s generation. I’d always found them hard to warm up to and the feeling seemed to be mutual. A dinner party at their home would be a very dull evening.

“Of course I do,” I said. “Though Charles has become quite a recluse in the past few years so I haven’t seen him for ages. Juliette pops into the shops in Middleburg every now and then. And you’re staying here, by the way, not in some hotel. We have this discussion every time you spring it on me that you’re arriving in the next few hours.”

“If you’re sure—”

“Pépé, you know I am. How long are you staying? Awhile, I hope?”

He sighed. “Not this time, chérie . I’m flying to San Francisco on Sunday to give a talk in a place called Monte Rio. It’s in Sonoma County, near the Russian River.”

I barely heard his description of the place. Another hit-and-run visit. Next time I’d tie him to a chair.

“Only three days? That’s all?”

“It looks that way.”

“Will you at least come to our Bastille Day party at the vineyard on Saturday night?”

“Of course. And I promise, the next visit I’ll stay longer.”

“You always say that.”

“You do know that airplanes also fly from Washington to Paris, n’est-ce pas ? You remember flying? It’s very convenient, very quick,” he said. “Do you want to call Charles and tell him we’ll both be there on Friday?”

“Ouch. Okay, sorry for nagging. I know I’m overdue to come to France,” I said. “It’s just always so busy here. And would you mind calling Charles, since you seem to be in touch with him? I think their number is unlisted now.”

“And you don’t have it?” He sounded surprised. “A shame, since your mother used to be so close to Juliette. She practically adopted Chantal when she moved to America after marrying your father.”

“That was a long time ago,” I said. “Mom used to take me over to her house to visit. I remember Juliette talking about you all the time, the old days after the war when she first met you.”

Pépé cleared his throat. “She was very kind to me when your grandmother died. Back then she wasn’t married to Charles. I didn’t meet him until they returned to Paris after Nixon named him your ambassador to France. She always made sure I was invited to their parties and dinners at the embassy.” He paused to exhale a long breath of smoke and I knew he, too, was recalling old memories. “Frankly, I was surprised that Charles called me about this dinner on Friday, rather than Juliette … he especially asked for you.”

“Me? Why?”

“I believe he has planted a small vineyard now. Perhaps he wants to ask you for advice.”

“Pépé, he does have a vineyard and it’s strictly off-limits to everyone,” I said. “He makes his wine by himself, but he doesn’t sell it anywhere. No tasting room, nothing. The other winemakers call him the Lone Ranger because he doesn’t mix with any of us or show up at any of the wine festivals or competitions. It’s really odd.”

“Well, perhaps he wants to give you a private tour,” Pépé said.

“If he did, I’d be the envy of every winemaker in two counties,” I said. “I wonder what he really wants.”

“I would imagine we’ll find out on Friday.”

“I guess. I’m dying to know what he does in that ‘sanctum sanctorum’ all by himself. You never know, it could be alchemy.”

I heard Pépé’s quiet laughter before he said goodbye and hung up.

By the time I got to the international arrivals waiting area at Dulles Airport after leaving Paul Noble’s barn, the Air France passengers were already exiting customs, passing through double metal doors into the terminal. I scanned the crowd for my grandfather, hoping I hadn’t missed him and he’d decided to take a cab to the vineyard. The fare—probably in the neighborhood of two hundred dollars—wouldn’t faze him in the least. Finally the doors opened with a hiss, and a solitary figure emerged, gingerly pushing a luggage cart with a small brown-and-tan plaid suitcase and beat-up leather briefcase laying on it. The surprise was the cane, which he’d hooked over the cart handle.

At his age, and after that long transatlantic flight, it shouldn’t have upset me, but it did. I had a quick moment to study him before he spotted me outside the metal guardrail. For the first time, his skin seemed nearly transparent, taut against the bones of his face in a way that sharpened his features so they looked sunken and almost hawklike. He must have sensed me staring because he glanced up and waved his arm like an infielder waiting for a pop fly, a smile lighting his frail face. I smiled back and went to the exit to wait for his kiss and our usual wrangling over who would push his luggage cart. Pépé was old-school chivalrous, and no amount of women’s liberation or talk of equality between the sexes would ever persuade him that the small gallant courtesies a man performed for a woman—holding a door, helping her on with her coat—were passé.