Once upon a time there was a man named Monsieur Blanchard, who fell in love with hot-air balloons. By lucky chance, he also fell in love with a woman (Madame Blanchard) who herself was enamored of balloons. Together, they cast their ballooning spells, performing sky shows all over France.
Madame Blanchard was a sensitive soul who could not stand the clamor of noise. Often, of an evening, she took her balloon into the sky, and remained there, with the moon, until dawn.
Sadly, Madame Blanchard died in a balloon crash. It was during a fireworks display over the Tivoli Gardens in Paris. From the basket of her balloon, Madame Blanchard sent gold! and silver! in cascading stars to the delight of the crowd below, and then she sent a great burst of fire. The crowd cheered happily, not understanding that this burst of fire was an error, and signified disaster: In fact, the balloon was on fire.
She crashed onto the roof of a house in the rue de Provence, and broke her neck.
Maude Sausalito, now older, and married (and in fact not Maude Sausalito anymore), wore her hair long and flat like a shawl. She was telling her husband about the Blanchards, the legends of ballooning, while he polished his shoes. She herself was icing cupcakes on the one clear corner of the kitchen table; he had spread newspaper across the remainder and was nodding as he dipped a brush in polish. He had just been promoted to Assistant-Manager-in-Training at the menswear store where he worked, which is why shiny shoes were important.
When Maude told how Madame Blanchard took to the sky of a night, her husband, David, chuckled to himself, and said, “Not a bad idea!”
They both glanced down at their first child, Fancy, who was sleeping in the pram that Maude had found abandoned on the street (David had refurbished it completely). Lately, Fancy had been teething, so that their nights had become precarious affairs: They did not sleep so much as teeter in suspense. The baby’s cries were so sharp, they both felt the cut of the tooth.
Maude and David had married two years before, and honeymooned in a tent in the Hunter Valley. Maude had secretly arranged a dawn balloon ride for the second day of the honeymoon, but, during the wedding reception, David’s brother made several jokes about his vertigo.
“What’s vertigo?” Maude whispered.
“A fear of heights,” David whispered back.
He had never told her! Secretly, she canceled the balloon ride.
They never mentioned his vertigo, but both acknowledged it silently—for example, when Maude’s kite got caught on the chimney, she herself climbed up to retrieve it, while David watched, trembling and pale.
Generally, David was happy to hear her balloon stories, but when Maude finished the story of the Blanchards, he said sternly, “She died in a balloon crash? That’s not a nice story, Maude. Why tell me that story?”
“Okay, here’s a nicer story,” said Maude at once. “About Monsieur Blanchard. The husband. About how he crossed the English Channel in a balloon! Just rock the pram with your foot, would you? We’ll trick her into going back to sleep.”
As she told the story of Monsieur Blanchard, Maude daydreamed about the journey they would take in a hot-air balloon, once David was cured of his vertigo. (If she told enough balloon stories, then surely…?)
The pilot would have long curling hair, almost to his shoulders. In the creaking basket of the balloon, one night, he would point out a powerful owl. “Is that actually a bird?” David would say. “Isn’t it just a bit of dust?” But the pilot, his muscular arm reaching up to tug a rope, checking the wind with a private little nod, would steer them closer to the dust, which would turn into a powerful owl. He would glance at her reaction, shy for a moment, but then he would grin, mischievously, and turn to the care of his balloon.
Blushing, she would look down at the slice of lime, perched on the side of her martini.