Page 30 of The Bar Next Door
It might as well still be February here in this frigid wasteland, but back in Bordeaux, spring is always in full bloom by now.
“I hope so,”Mamanagrees. “So much of this business relies on chance. I’ll never get used to that.”
“At least your castle will always be waiting for you whenever things don’t work out,” I tease.
“Julien, it isnota castle. How many times do I have to tell you that? It’s a country estate.”
It’s a castle. She grew up in a modest—relatively speaking, at least—chateau, and her parents can’t wait for her to take it off their hands, but she’s spent the six years since my father died at the wineries.
“How is the woman of the house?” she asks.
It’s sad when I call my dog that. It’s even sadder when mymotheruses the title.
“She’s doing well. She’s sitting beside me right now. Actually, she’s getting a bit of an attitude. She sort of starts growling whenever I stop petting her.”
I let my hand still, and Madame Bovary voices her discontent.Mamanlaughs into the phone.
“Alors,” I ask after a pause, “did you need something?”
She makes a very French-sounding noise of indignation. “Do I have to need something to call my son?”
“Not at all,Maman.”
A moment of silence passes between us, one that she fills with the sound of her biting into a strawberry.
“I do have a...suggestion for you,” she finally admits.
There it is. I knew it was coming. She brings this up every spring.
“What if you came home this summer, Julien? Aah, aah, aah, don’t start saying no until you hear me out,” she warns before I even have a chance to protest. “It would only be for a few weeks. They need someone to get the restaurant up and running again. No one is as good at it as you. You could come do the hiring, get the season started...”
“Maman.” I do my best to hold back my sigh. “You know I can’t just leave. It’s our busiest time of the year, and I’m hoping to open the new bar this summer. I’m needed here.”
She doesn’t say the words out loud, but her reply hangs between us all the same.
I need you too.
“I would if I could,Maman. I would love to see Bordeaux again, but I’m—”
“Busy,” she finishes for me. “My busy boy. That’s what you used to tell me when I’d call you in for dinner or ask if you’d done your homework. You’d look at me with this glare on your little face and say, ‘Mother, I ambusyright now.’ You were always working on something, even when you were just arranging rocks or building sandcastles. Do you remember those sandcastles you used to build?”
I’m not sure if the guilt-trip is intentional, but it’s certainly working. I hunch forward and rest my elbows on my knees, dragging a hand down my face.
“I do remember them.Maman, I’m sorry I can’t come home.”
Her question is so quiet I almost miss it.
“You can’t, or you won’t?”
It’s like a punch to the gut, hearing that from her. Fleur used to ask me the exact same thing.
You can’t make it to dinner, or you won’t? You can’t come to my best friend’s wedding with me, or you won’t? You can’t give me more than a half-assed relationship, or you won’t?
I never liked thinking about the answer. Deep down, I knew it was a choice. It was a choice to stay out late working when I knew she was waiting at home. It was a choice to put my phone back in my pocket when I saw her name on the screen, convinced I would call her later.
It’s a choice to turn my mother down every time she makes a casual request that barely masks just how desperate she is to have what remains of her family back home. I make these choices again and again, but they never feel like an act of free will. The pull inside me, the ceaseless tug to keep moving, keep going, keep building—it’s stronger than everything else. It’s stronger thanme. It wakes me up in the middle of the night, a sharp current shooting up my spine that leaves me covered in icy sweat. It can’t be ignored. It can’t be denied.
I have no way to explain that to her.
