Free My Grape Escape by Laura Bradbury

him to inform us of the purpose of this visitation. He looked back at us with an amused glitter in his eyes.
    “ Alors , how have you been keeping , Mon Père ?” André finally asked.
    “I come for toilet paper rolls.”
    Michèle, who had grown up around the Père Bard , did not seem particularly surprised by this pronouncement. “Empty ones?” she asked.
    “ Oui . As many as you have. I’ve been making dolls with the children and we’ve run out. So you see, I have no choice but to come begging.”
    He foraged around in his black cape and drew out a toilet paper roll with twigs sticking out of it for arms and silver tinsel hanging down in a fringe around the top for hair. “Do you see? These are what we are going to make. Isn’t she lovely?” He danced the toilet paper roll doll across the air as he hummed a jaunty little tune. I was riveted.
    “I’m not sure I have very many for you, but I’ll see what I can find,” Michèle warned as she got up to look.
    He placed the doll down tenderly on the table and tapped his fingers on the polished wood. “Now then, how are you all today?” he asked Franck and André and myself. “As for me, I quite fancy a coffee. Am I the only one?”
    “Of course!” André leapt up and Franck followed him. “We’ll go and make a pot right away.”
    Le Père watched them go, then beckoned me closer with a crooked finger.
    “What do you think of my dolls?” he whispered once I had leaned in.
    “Very nice,” I said. “The children will have fun with them.”
    “Yes.” He beamed at me with a mostly toothless smile, picked up the doll and danced it around some more. He stopped suddenly and fixed me with translucent blue eyes. “I always did believe, you know, that God has created all of this because he wants us to have fun.” He twirled his hand around, encompassing the kitchen table, the house, the whole world. He began to hum again as his words sunk into me like pebbles thrown in a river.
    God put us here to have fun ? What about hard work and not quitting and climbing the career ladder? I tried to think of the last time I had done something just because it was fun. Nothing came to mind. Nothing at all.
    Le Père Bard thrust the doll into my hand. “I’d like to see you try,” he said. I made a half-hearted attempt at jerking the doll through the air. He rolled his eyes. “It doesn’t work if you don’t sing .”
    I began to hum and then encouraged by his nods, broke into a rollicking chorus of row-row-row your boat while flitting the doll around above my head.
    “Very nice.” He cut me off just as I was getting into the swing of things and gestured at me to hand the doll back. “I must hurry back, you know. Perhaps you should go and check on how they are coming along with the toilet paper rolls and my café. ”
    Just then Michèle came back into the room. “I could only find three,” she handed them to him and he tucked them somewhere under the folds of his cape.  
    “Three is marvellous.” He winked up at her. “ En plus , I still get a free coffee.”
     
     

     
     
    Franck glanced at the clock just after we waved au revoir to the Père Bard .
    “Let’s go upstairs,” he said. “I’ll set the phone up for you in the bedroom.” I checked my watch. Mr. Partridge would be calling in about ten minutes’ time. I nodded and headed towards the stairs like a condemned person heads towards the scaffold.
    Up in Franck’s bedroom he set up the phone on the bedside table using a huge red extension cord. “This way you can lie on the bed and watch the clouds while you’re waiting,” he patted the mattress. “Do you want me to stay here with you?”
    “Stay with me until the call comes,” I said. “I think I need to be alone after that.”
    I lay back on the bed and Franck lay down beside me. I reached over and grasped his hand. We lay like that , side-by-side for I don’t know how many minutes; I saw a dragon float by in the rectangle of blue sky