Authors: Gina Elle
There’s another image of Marc, this one, standing beside an attractive shorthaired blond woman who looks to be in her late thirties or so herself. I squint my eyes to read the woman’s name…Yvonne
Tricon.
Tricon?
Hmmm . . . I scroll down some more and find yet another image of Monsieur Marc with this Yvonne but in this one there are two young children in the photo with them…
Marc Tricon et sa famille.
His family…his
wife
Yvonne and their beautiful daughter and adorable baby boy. Immediately, I click on a few of the web links to try to find anything I can find in English. After a few tries, I stumble upon a British newspaper article written last summer about the
Durand Tricon
winery. I scan it rapidly for what I’m looking for. And here it is:
Taking over his late father’s share of the decades-old winery is his son, Marc Tricon, pictured below with his wife Yvonne and their two young children, Alice, 4 years and Christophe, 6 months. The family home is located right on the winery right next to the Durand residence.
I stare at the screen blankly. The only thing that I can think about is that conversation Caroline and I had at the 7 West Café a few weeks ago when we were talking about all the things we had in common. I sit here numbly realizing that I just found something else we share in common…
our secret lives…with married people.
I feel fucking sick to my stomach.
No wonder she said it was complicated…why she’d never take over her father’s business…why she was less than proud of this relationship…
And that’s where the difference lies… she has had an on again, off again, not to mention long distance, relationship with a married man for the past four years. Didn’t the article mention that his daughter was 4 years old?
The families have been in partnership for decades. They’ve known each other their entire lives. Clearly, she’s been in love with him…
and maybe still is.
I take a deep breath. Actually, a few of them. Time to take the bull by the horns, I tell myself, and find out.
“Cate!’” I holler from the top of my lungs and she appears in seconds at my door.” I need you to book me on the next flight to Bordeaux, please.”
“Sure. Paying a surprise visit to the woman who called this morning, I take it?” She asks on her way out the door.
“That would be one way of putting it,” I am reminded of Victor Hugo’s definition of romantic love; ‘that love is not a thing of the mind, but of the heart, a feeling.’ My mind would tell me you are crazy to fly all that way to see her, especially with her former lover so close by, but my heart is the one I’m listening to.
From: Eric Martin
Date: Monday, June 25, 2012 1:55 PM
Subject: Just one LINE for Caro
line
To: Caroline Durand
Counting the hours until I see you in person.
Eric
In a flurry, I hit send. For the next several hours, I rush through mountains of work as efficiently as I can. Once I told Cate to hold all my calls and all interruptions, I was able to get a lot accomplished. With a 10:00 P.M. flight booked to Bordeaux for this evening, I’ve only got a couple of hours left to get home, pack a few things and make it to the airport. I’m scheduled to be back on Wednesday in time for an important meeting with senior management on Thursday. Making this rash decision to go to France and see Caroline, particularly at this time with everything that the company is going through, is nothing short of crazy on my part. But if anyone knows crazy, that would be me.
After a quick goodbye to Cate, who is working late tonight, I make my way towards the elevator when I feel my iPhone vibrate in my breast pocket. I fish it out of my jacket. It’s Claudia.
“Hey, JFK, Jr., is this a bad time?” she asks with the grimmest of voices. My heart drops.
“Is everything okay,
Claud?”
“He’s gone, Eric. Mr. Callahan died a few hours ago.” I stand numbly watching the elevator doors open and then close. I remember wondering when I was hugging him goodbye yesterday how much longer he’d live. Words do not come to me.
“Look, I won’t keep you,” Claudia continues, “but I wanted you to know that the funeral is scheduled for tomorrow afternoon. Not much time, I know, but Mrs. Callahan wanted the whole funeral piece over with as quickly as possible. Oh… and Mary asked me to ask you if you could be a pallbearer?”
Slowly, I walk back to Cate’s desk and ask her to cancel my flight. Instead of the elevator, I decide to take the stairs all the way down to the underground parking garage, allowing me time to collect my thoughts. On my way down, I think about the irony of my day. Celebrating the beginnings of a new life with the news of Cate’s pregnancy while honoring the end of a very decent man’s life. Then, I think about my conversation with Leslie from earlier this morning and shake my head at this thought; by finally unburdening myself from the full weight of my secret life, I find out Caroline has been harboring secrets in her own life, far too similar to mine. And for some reason, that’s when today’s song of the day comes to me. I hear it.
We are all the
same, aren’t we
? One of the best songs of the 90s by none other than U2. “One.”
I approach my car and unlock the doors while Bono is singing in my head. That’s when I spot the note on my windshield. I pull out the envelope tucked inside the windshield wiper blades and read my name handwritten on the cover. Carefully, I pull out the plain white card and read what it says:
I’m closer than you think. See you soon
. Very soon.
AXC
We are all massed together in a large semicircle facing the burial ground. I’m standing in the front row with Claudia on one side of me and Lara on the other. Next to Claudia is Ryan and then my parents who are standing by Mary and Mrs. Callahan. Rob is here as well, standing on the other side of Lara. My hands are resting on top of David’s shoulders who is in front of me. Claudia and Ryan wanted David to be here at Mr. Callahan’s funeral since he too has grown up knowing the Callahans. Various neighbors, relatives, and old work friends of Mr. Callahan’s are also here. Although I haven’t seen many of these people in years, I recognize them and remember them fondly. When you grow up and live on the same street all your life, your neighbors become your family and you become theirs. It is with sadness that I concede that the only person missing is Danny.
I look up and turn to my left and see Raj standing by himself on the roadside between parked cars. With the stalker leaving the note on my windshield last night promising me the grace of her presence sometime soon, Raj thought it a safe idea that he follow me from now on. It’s not as though I’m afraid of this woman but you can never be too safe when there’s a psycho in your midst, I guess.
Just then, I feel the vibration of my phone in my left breast pocket, a text coming in. I resist the urge to pull my phone out and check it. I haven’t heard a word from Caroline since I sent her that email yesterday afternoon. Now, a day later, all I do is picture her running, like you see in those romantic movies, straight into the arms of her beloved Marc. Jealousy is a new emotion for me…another issue to add onto an already long list.
I turn my attention back to the service. Mary is standing beside Mr. Callahan’s casket and begins to read the poem titled
He is gone
.
When she is finished,
Mary places a single rose on top of her the casket. Mrs. Callahan, frail and weathered, follows behind her and does the same. Soon, a line of mourners each resting flowers cut from Mrs. Callahan garden on the mahogany casket bid their final farewell to their friend. I stand back and watch the procession of guests thinking about Danny and find myself repeating some of the last lines of the poem Mary read in my head
.
Mrs.
Grandy, in the book
Tear Soup,
allowed herself to cry, to close her mind and turn her back. It was her grief journey. I’m not sure we should deny ourselves the pain of the grieving process. The celebrating of a life, cherishing their memory or smiling because they lived, that will come in time. The pain of loss, I’m learning, is better felt and experienced than denied and expected to just be accepted. I now see more clearly through the facade we sometimes put up or feel we should carry because society expects us to. I think of Mrs. Callahan and Mary and hope that their grief journey is an authentic one.
As the priest recites final prayers, the cemetery workers begin their work of lowering the casket into the already dug ground.
The mourners’ eyes are focused on the workmen and apart from the creaking of their tools, silence envelops us. David, watching a burial for the first time, is mesmerized. I pull him closer to me and rest my hands on his shoulders.
Just then, a buzzing in my right ear jolts me out of my trance. I move my hand to swat the annoying fly away. And that’s when I see, out of the corner of my eye, a woman at the back of the crowd, staring at me.
What the fuck?
As nonchalantly as I can, I look over my shoulder once again to confirm her presence. She smiles at me. I turn away and place my hands back on David’s shoulders.
She’s here? Gorgeous Blond from Chicago is here . . . how can she be here?
My breathing quickens and sweat starts to form on my brow.
Why is she here?
And then it hits me. My stalker. Gorgeous Blond from the Equinox gym in Chicago has been following me.
Right now, that hole where they’re lowering Mr. Callahan’s casket isn’t looking like such a bad idea. I turn towards my left and look for Raj. Still standing there on the roadside between two cars looking oblivious. He has no idea who she is. Probably thinks she’s one of the mourners. It looks like I’m on my own on this one.
But she’s at Mr. Callahan’s funeral . . . with my family, my nephew, Lara, holy shit . . . Danny.
My worlds are clearly colliding right here and now. How careful I was in trying to keep my secret life hidden for so long and it’s about to blow like a volcano. I hope she doesn’t make a scene.
She?
Holy shit, I realize I don’t even remember her name, only those initials from the email,
AXC.
I hear Leslie’s voice inside my head asking me yesterday morning what I was going to do about this mess. I guess time’s up. Gotta step up and take responsibility for all this.
But of all times . . . why the fuck now?
“I’ll be right back,” I whisper to Lara and turn to my left to make my way out through the rows of people behind me. As I excuse myself I hear David behind me asking Claudia where I was going. I walk quietly and coolly towards my target. Watching me
make my way towards her, she moves off and up to the side about a hundred feet or so away from the crowd. Dressed in a black sleeveless silk dress, high-heeled black sandals and wearing large dark sunglasses, her majestic frame almost towers above me.
“And we finally meet again, Mr. Martin. Or should I say
Dan?”
I cringe at the sound of her voice.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” I scowl in the lowest voice I can manage without drawing attention to us.
“How can you possibly be surprised to see me? I did tell you it would be soon,” she smirks while folding her arms across her chest. At the corner of my eye I see Raj approaching us.
“What the hell do you want with me?” I ask her while looking back at all the mourners at the burial site. No one has turned around to look at us. Raj comes closer. I hold my hand up to him to signal him to stop. He slows down but doesn’t fully stop. Slowly he inches his way towards us.
“I don’t like to be ignored. Why didn’t you reply to my emails?” She asks.
“Because I don’t reply to emails from strangers,” I grit through clenched teeth.
“Me? A stranger? Surely, we weren’t strangers in that locker room at Equinox nor in the back of my car…not even inside the hot tub.” she says mockingly. I take her arm and guide her farther away from the crowd. This conversation is not heading in a pretty direction.
“So, we fuck once or twice and you stalk me like a fucking psycho?” I glare at her menacingly.
“You lied to me about your name. I don’t like being lied to.”
“But why are you here? What do you want?” I ask with the coldest tone. I am so fucking pissed. She hesitates briefly before answering.
“You. I want you.” She takes a slight step closer to me. Quickly, I recoil from her closeness. Raj is metres away. For the second time, I raise my hand up to him to stop him from coming any closer. I want to handle this as calmly as possible.
“If I can recall, you have
someone
. A husband. In Chicago.” If I were a smoker, I’d be pulling out a cigarette right now. I take the deepest of breaths instead.
“I still want you,” she says, “I want both of you; a husband and a lover.”
“I’m not interested. Go place a fuckin’ ad somewhere else,” I growl not taking my eyes off hers. From my peripheral vision, I see that Raj is steps away. If I stretched my arm I could touch him, he’s that close.
Why isn’t he staying away?