An Afternoon that Begins With a Wine Cave and Ends With a Mail Truck

It is another rainy day and this is unusual for the south of France. Alan Phoenix says that Madame Colombe told him that this is the wettest year in thirty years. Usually, the grass here is dry and there are bald patches. But now the ground is covered with vegetation and even the mountains are green all over.

Yesterday afternoon I went with my mother to a wine cave where she tasted eight different wines but did not get drunk. I tasted some wines too and they all tasted like fish. Beside the wine cave was a wine museum, started by the great-grandfather of the man who owns the wine cave, and my mother paid ten euros for each of us to go through and see the wine-making artifacts. The temperature in the museum was a pleasant 19 degrees Celsius, according to an old thermometer on the wall, and there were six rooms painted beige. One of the rooms contained old equipment for cutting the vines and I hadn't realized how many different varieties of scythes and sickles there were for slicing the stalks by hand. Another room contained the presses that squeezed the grapes into juice. I found out what makes the different colors of wine: it's the skins of the grapes. The red skins are left in the mix for only a short time to make rosé wine, but left for a longer time to make the red wine.

The presses had big tubs with lids slightly smaller in diameter than the tubs themselves; these lids hung over the tubs on wooden nuts and bolts. By swinging a lid, you could force it down tighter and tighter onto the grapes. This would feel very comforting if you were a person sitting inside the tub and if the pressure was just right. If it were built correctly as a "human press," I could control the pressure by manipulating the lid to come down on top of me as I sat curled up in a tight ball. For me, that would replace things like rolling up in sheets and squeezing under furniture for the calming effects deep pressure offers. I wonder if anyone has ever made a human press.

One of the rooms was full of bottles and the oldest ones had no seams because they were blown by hand. You could see that these bottles weren't a regular shape due to human error. The bottoms rose up a long way inside most of the bottles; this makes you think you are getting more wine than you actually are. There were also bottles shaped like animals and people. There was even a bottle made to resemble a Canadian Mountie. This was the only reference to Canada in the museum. It is strange that, since I have been in France, this is the only thing I have seen that represents Canada. It is interesting to me how a place as big and complex as Canada can be reduced to one thing: Mounted Police.

It was a pleasant afternoon, except that my mother was in it. She kept telling me to look at things I didn't care about and she distracted me from what I was really interested in. I wanted to spend more time looking at those wine presses. I thought about coming back to the wine museum on my own, except I'm not sure how I could get here.

"Maybe you would like to take a cooking course that teaches how to match wines to the food you eat?" my mother asked. "I could sign you up for one in Lourmarin. That kind of knowledge would be very useful."

"I am not going to take a cooking course," I told my mother. "I am going to work for the summer as a personal care assistant and then I am going back to university in the fall where I will be taking more biology classes."

"We'll see," said my mother. "It's important to be practical, Taylor."

As soon as I think about this conversation, I start feeling as trapped as if I were Stanley in Harold Pinter's play. Maybe I am just like Stanley, even though I wish I wasn't. Maybe when I get back to Saskatoon there will be a list of students for a cooking course—and my name will be on it. I cross my arms, pinch my earlobes, and do the deep knee bends my psychiatrist showed me as a calming strategy. Quite possibly I should use this strategy before talking to my mother, but that would mean doing it all the time and this would be very disruptive.

I wonder when my mother started making me anxious, instead of making me calm. When I was little and she was in my classroom, sitting on a chair with her flowered handbag on the floor, I felt happy and relieved that she was there. She doesn't make me feel happy and relieved any more. This might be the difference between an island of stability and a prison.

Martin Phoenix still has his rash. The doctor said that his rash was something called Pityriasis Versicolor. She said it would eventually cover his whole body and then go away, and that it wasn't contagious. Alan Phoenix said that this was ridiculous and that it was just diaper rash, but you cannot buy the creams here without a prescription and the doctor wouldn't issue one. Luke Phoenix said that the consultation was an easy way for the doctor to make twenty-seven euros.

My mother said to shake some cornstarch onto the rash, because that is what she had successfully used with me when I was little and I had diaper rash. It is embarrassing when my mother talks about this. I would prefer that my friend and potential brother Luke Phoenix not know about my diaper rash as a baby. People's childhood rashes should be private.

"That is a private thing," I told my mother when she started talking about my diaper rash.

"Never mind," she said.

Martin Phoenix used his Tango to say that the doctor was hot and could he go back there tomorrow. Alan Phoenix laughed at him and said the doctor was too old for him, although she is probably rich and might be helpful around the house. Martin Phoenix said that age and money aren't a factor if you're really in love.

"Just beauty," said Alan Phoenix, and kissed my mother on the cheek. I looked the other way. They'd just better not get married this summer or this personal care assistant job won't count. It has to count or I can't put it on my resumé. And if it's not on my resumé, there will be an empty space representing this summer—and empty spaces do not look good to prospective employers.

"Over and under," is the phrase that irrationally sings in my brain. "Over and under, over and under." I sing it seven times, and then I stop.

From my window as I type this journal onto my laptop, I can see the yellow mail truck turning into the lane. I avert my head or I know I will sneeze because of the yellow. I listen carefully to the neighborhood sounds. There are different barking noises depending on the progress of the truck. At the beginning of the lane, there is deep, chesty barking. Next there is short, sharp, high-pitched yipping. After that I hear growling and snapping—this is from the big black dog that they keep on a chain in the yard. When somebody passes, it runs toward the fence where it is brought up short on the end of the chain. Finally there are many barking sounds at once, because the last house has five dogs. When these five dogs bark, the first ones start up again, but by the time the truck gets to our driveway, which is a long one banked by olive trees, the barking has stopped. I have not seen any cats along this street. I like cats but I do not like dogs. It's not that I'm afraid of dogs. I don't like them because of their smell and their barking.

I wonder if barking is an obsession, like cleaning was for me before I went on medication for Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and worked with the psychiatrist on self-management. Maybe there is medication and therapy for dogs, but I doubt it. I still want to clean sometimes when I'm feeling anxious, but I can usually talk myself out of it. And when I am in my rage circuit, I mostly just swear inside my head, not in the open. I put my anger in the soles of my feet, where it can't hurt anyone, like my psychiatrist taught me to do.

The mail truck drives right up to our door. I watch as a man in a uniform rings our doorbell. Alan Phoenix is in his studio and might not hear the bell. My mother has taken our rented car to the Hyper U to buy chocolate-filled croissants because we are out of them, and that's all people seem to want for breakfast these days. Luke Phoenix has taken Martin Phoenix on a walk to Vaugines, where they both wanted to see how much fun it was to go down the hilly streets with the wheelchair, even though they both had to wear their raincoats and my mother said Martin Phoenix had to wear his bike helmet and that both of them should watch out for cars.

I wait for a minute to see whether Alan Phoenix will hear the doorbell after all. He does not, so I go down to the front door.

I dislike opening doors to strangers because these are people I do not know and anything could happen. I am like Stanley in the play when Stanley confessed to being afraid of a van coming with a wheelbarrow in it. When I was little I was especially afraid of delivery vans. Today I know that when I open the door, the yellow mail truck will be in the street and I will try not to look at it. But when I

open the door, I do look at it—I can't help it. Then I sneeze.

"A vos souhaits," says the man.

"Merci," I say. "Parlez-vous anglais?"

"A small bit," says the man. "I have package for Taylor Jane Simon. Is she in the house?"

"That is me," I say.

"Sign on the ending," says the man, holding out a clipboard on which is fastened a piece of paper. There are many different colors of ink on the paper, and some things that I think are called logos.

"Where did this come from?" I ask.

"J'ne sais pas," says the man. "Sign on the ending. Your name. On the line."

"But what is inside?" I say.

"Open and see," he answers. "Ouvrez." He gets back into the van and I try not to look at the vehicle, but I do look and then I sneeze again.

I put the big envelope on the table. There could be good news inside, but there could be bad news. Or it could be a mistake and something not meant for me at all. Or someone mailing a poisonous substance—I've heard about people doing that. Part of me wants to open the envelope and part of me doesn't want to open it. I can hear the dogs barking together all down the lane.

The envelope is covered with French writing. I don't know anyone in France. Who could have sent me this? I move the envelope from the table to the buffet and from the buffet to the coffee table, where I put a pile of art books on top of it. Then I go and wash my hands. This is not part of my ocd, it is just being smart because of the germs that could be inside that mail truck with all the fingerprints it has collected during all the time it has been in operation.