Randy poured my glass first and stood back.
“Go on, let’s see you taste it,” Mr. Whitehouse said in a challenging tone.
I smiled to myself confidently. If there was one thing we all knew how to do in my house (even Emmie, as young as she was, had begun and enjoyed doing it to please my parents), it was how to taste wine.
I held it up and checked its color and clarity, then swirled it in the glass, sniffed it, and took a sip, rolling it around in my mouth before aspirating through the wine by pursing my lips as if I were going to whistle (Mama’s directions), drawing in some air. Finally, I swallowed it. Mr. Whitehouse sat smiling throughout. Randy’s smile was warmer, his eyes full of pride, as if I were his sister or someone he cherished passing an important test.
“Well?” Mr. Whitehouse asked.
“May I see the bottle, Randy?”
He moved quickly and turned the label toward me.
“I’ve had this wine,” I said. “The year before this one was a better year for sauvignon blanc, but this is adequate.”
Randy’s eyes nearly popped.
Mr. Whitehouse sat back. “Adequate? Well,” he said, looking at Randy, “I’m impressed. Aren’t you, Randy?”
“That I am, sir,” Randy said. He quickly poured Mr. Whitehouse his glass. “But I must say that the moment I set my eyes on this one, I thought, now, here’s a winner.”
“Let’s have a toast, then,” Mr. Whitehouse said. “To a very promising new Brittany girl.”
He reached forward to clink his glass against mine, and we both took sips.
“Do you know why we clink glasses with lunch and dinner guests?”
“Yes,” I said.
His eyebrows looked as if they had been attached to invisible wires and hoisted with his surprise. “Tell me,” he said.
I recalled my mother’s explanation years ago. “People used to drin
k from the same bowl passed around a table, with the host drinking last. Sometimes there was a piece of bread in it, and he would eat that, too. It reinforced trust and loyalty and friendship. When people began drinking from their own glasses, they toasted, clinking them, to share good feelings for the occasion.”
“I see. And what if you are too far across from another guest at the table?”
“You just hold your glass up and make eye contact,” I said. “Some clumsy people reach too far and knock something over,” I recited, just the way my mother had.
He laughed. “Who taught you all this?”
“My mother,” I said.
“She ought to be working here,” he muttered, both in admiration and in disappointment. I could see there was so much he wanted to be the one to tell me. I imagined that not too many candidates could give him the answer. Maybe Camelia could have, I thought, maybe not.
How ironic this was. In a real way, Mama might have prepared me for the new life I was about to begin. After all, she was a Parisian. She was always interested in fashion and beauty, stylish clothes, wonderful wines, and good food. I was sure she never realized how much of an influence she had on me. It was as if I was always looking at her surreptitiously. I couldn’t explain why I was so unwilling to admit how much I admired her and how many ways I wanted to be like her. My best excuse was my resentment of how devoted she was to my father, how obedient, and how careful she was in not riling him up when she attempted to defend me or disagree with something he had said. I think that had a lot to do with why I was so determined to be disrespectful and defiant, even to her.
Whatever, I knew she would not appreciate how I was going to utilize the sense of style and appreciation of the finer things in life that she had bestowed upon me. You separate from your mother when you are born. You separate from her again when you begin an independent life of your own. That’s expected and understood. You still hold on to each other in so many loving ways, but what I was doing now was leaving her so completely and clearly that it would be as if I had never been born.
Probably, I would please Papa after all, I thought with a mixture of anger and sadness.
Mr. Whitehouse went on and on about different foods, ways to eat them, how to sit properly at the table, and, building on what I had said about toasting across the table, how not to reach for things. He stressed the importance of using my napkin, keeping my lips cleared of any food remnants. I was tempted to ask him if it would be all right to enjoy something or even to digest it, but I kept my mouth shut and listened, even though I knew a good deal about what he was saying. He made it clear that he would be at the dinner table tonight precisely to be watching to see what I had absorbed from this first lesson and what I had not.
When lunch ended, I realized it was the first time I had sat and taken so long to eat a lunch, even at home.
“We did a lot more here than is normal,” he explained, “but one thing you never want to do is eat too fast, rush through a lunch or a dinner like so many Americans do.”
“Yes, that’s been one of my mother’s favorite comparisons between us and the French.”