A Pig in Provence (26 page)

At six, when we left, the
salle des fêtes
was fully decorated, and the tables set. A space had been cleared for dancing, and the refrigerators filled with the olives, bite-size
pâté
s in puff pastry, smoked salmon, beef tenderloins, roasted red peppers, marinated eggplants and artichokes, salad greens, and cheeses that would be served buffet style the night of the party. The wine and Champagne had already been delivered and were chilling in the cold room next to the kitchen.

That night, over couscous, I learned that I was included in the family group that would accompany the bride and groom to city hall the next morning where they would be married by the mayor. I was to be ready at 10:30.

Of my two dresses, I decided on the pale green crepe with short sleeves, with a pair of strappy, copper-colored sandals. More suitable for daytime wear, I told myself. I’d save the short black one to wear to the evening party. Laurent’s three sisters and his mother, father, and grandparents were all ready when I arrived.

Laurent’s sisters—he was the only boy of five siblings—were wearing long satin dresses in shades of mauve, rose, and blue, and matching wide-brimmed hats of organza and silk. Françoise and Laurent’s mother wore simple dresses, but no hats. Ah, I thought, not everyone will be wearing hats, already regretting the vintage black wide-brimmed hat with pink satin roses I had left behind in California. When Laurent’s aunts joined us, they all wore what I’ve come to call French wedding hats—hats of the most extravagant confection that I normally see only in movies or in the celebrity photographs in French magazines.

“Ah, mes belles filles,”
said Robert, the patriarch, proudly. “What a lovely array of hats. All women should wear beautiful hats at weddings.”

The women in the bride’s entourage also wore glamorous hats. The bride’s, a wide-brimmed silk in creamy white that allowed wisps of her piled-up hair to escape, matched her white brocade suit.

We climbed into various cars and made the three-minute drive down the road to city hall where we were escorted into the mayor’s office by his secretary. The office was just large enough for six chairs, the mayor’s desk, and the French flag, and allowed standing room for everyone else.

Laurent, his bride, and their flanking parents took the six chairs in front of the desk, and the rest of us lined up behind them. Minutes later the mayor appeared, looking more regal and official than I had ever seen him, dressed in a dark suit with a tie. Across his chest was the wide red, white, and blue satin ribbon, complete with rosette, of the French République.

He greeted us with kisses or handshakes, depending on whether he knew us, then opened the small ceremony with a few words acknowledging his modesty at performing an official cérémonie de l’état before a dignitary such as his friend Robert Lamy, the former préfet of Champagne and la Réunion. We all laughed a little and then the mayor began asking the official questions of the couple and their parents demanded by the state. Papers were filled out, signed, and passed back and forth, and the couple was pronounced man and wife.

Later that day, as I stood on the steps of the sixteenth- century church in the
vieux village
with the rest of the guests, waiting for the bride and groom to emerge into the late-afternoon light, my thoughts went back to the other Lamy wedding I had attended with Donald, Ethel, and Oliver. We hadn’t known we were invited until we arrived for our annual summer sojourn and were given an invitation for the wedding, only a week away.

That time, more than twenty-five years ago, a hundred or more of us were waiting on the same church steps and in its courtyard, dressed in our summer finery. Baskets of ribbon-tied packets of rice had been passed around by little girls in smooth pink dresses. When the double doors of the church were flung back and the groom came through, arm in arm with his new bride, we undid the ribbons and showered them with rice as they hurried down the steps to the back of a truck decorated with garlands of ivy, geraniums, white lace flowers, and long streams of white and lavender ribbons.

The groom lifted his bride by her waist and set her onto the tailgate of the truck. She was a vision from a fairy tale with her dark olive skin, black hair, and green eyes catching the light of the late-afternoon sun, and her dress, a bouffant of white tulle, surrounding her like clouds. Her veil, attached to a crown of white flowers, billowed behind her, and her ankles were crossed, showing little white sandals. Handsome in full morning-coat attire, complete with top hat and a
boutonnière
of lavender, her new husband was the perfect escort.

Once settled in their modern-day version of a Provençal wedding cart, they started off on the single-lane road that snakes from the perched village to the Lamy home. We and all the other guests followed the couple, who were merrily blowing kisses and waving from the back of the truck, honking and joining in the cacophony that escorted them.

We parked our car down the road from our house, letting other guests have the closer parking spot we normally used. Walking toward our house we could already hear the music coming from the Lamys’. The sun had begun to dip behind the
roc de bidau,
the rock outcropping that overlooks our little valley, bringing the lavender glow that pervades the countryside during
the long summer dusk. White lights, strung across the patio and through the mulberry trees, around the new swimming pool, and back again along the top of the cypress hedge, were already lit.

Set back on the deep lawn were long tables covered in white linen and decorated with small bouquets of lavender and greenery. Robert’s mother was still alive then, a small woman dressed in black as always, and she sat in the center with several other women of her generation, while the younger children were running and playing. Robert, tall and handsome in his summer linen suit, jacket now removed, was serving planter’s punch. I remembered it from my parents’ days and had only two glasses.

“Ah, c’est très bien,”
he said when I declined a third glass. “We have wonderful wine tonight, cases of Grand Cru Bourgogne, a wedding gift from the bride’s uncle who owns a
domaine
in Burgundy. It’s
superbe.
” He laughed. “I know because we opened several bottles last night.”

Platters of samosas, the folded and fried pastry packets that Françoise had learned to make while living in Réunion, and that had become a Lamy family tradition, were passed around. Rolled-up slices of ham filled with cheese and capers, and toasts topped with spreads of sweet peppers and eggplant, smoked salmon, or smoked herring completed the appetizers.

To be honest, I don’t remember the meal, which became a blur after the appetizers and the wine. A magnificent tiered wedding cake was eventually cut and we toasted the bride and groom with Champagne. Under twinkling lights and the stars we danced until two in the morning. Donald danced with Robert’s mother and Françoise, as well as with Ethel and Aileen, Georgette Fine, and Marie Palazolli, and with me, of course. Ethel and I danced with the Lamy sons, with Robert, Denys
Fine and his sons, and several of the bride’s male relatives we didn’t know. Oliver would allow only the bride, on whom he had a crush, to dance with him.

Now I was back at a Lamy wedding, this time helping behind the scenes as well as being a guest. All my family had been invited, but I was the only one able to come.

As I waited there on the steps, I half expected to see a flower-bedecked truck pull up in front of the church, but instead it was a white
deux chevaux,
driven by Delphine’s boyfriend and decorated with streamers of green and gold ribbon. The newly married couple hurried down the steps, laughing as they dodged the rice we threw at them, and climbed into the waiting car, the streamers waving behind it as it pulled away from the church and followed the winding road to the family home.

About one hundred fifty people, including nearly half the village’s entire population, gathered at the Lamys’ for the celebratory
apéritif.
I spent the early part of the party in the kitchen, keeping the
hors d’oeuvre
trays amply filled with the tarts we had made and spreading
tapenade
on toasts. When most of the tarts and toasts had been served and I emerged to join the party, I realized that I knew most of the people, many for more than half my life.

Some had been children when I first met them, hiding behind their mother’s skirts like Ethel and Oliver. Others were farmers and their wives, plumbers, electricians, and masons with whom I’ve had a nodding or better acquaintance since first coming to the village. Some, like Adèle and Pascal and Marie and Marcel, were among my best friends. Others were relative newcomers that I had come to know later. There were people
I had dinner with long ago, whose faces, but not their names, I remembered. Others were community fixtures, the remaining members of a generation almost gone. A good part were the sons, daughters, grandsons and granddaughters, cousins, brothers, sisters, and attendant spouses of Robert and Françoise, most of whom I knew well.

After an hour or so, the guests began to drift away, except for those of us invited to the
fête de mariage
at the community center. I drove down on my own, suspecting I might want to leave earlier than some of my compatriots. I arrived about the same time as everyone else, about sixty-five of us, and Marie grabbed my arm, saying, “Let’s sit together.”

I shared a table with Marie and Marcel and an assortment of Lamy relatives, including Robert’s brother and sister, feeling more than ever a part of the family.

Platters of smoked salmon,
pâté
in puff pastry,
cornichons,
thin slices of salt-cured ham, almonds, and olives had been set on all the tables, and we served ourselves the first course, passing the platters among us, commenting on the wedding, how happy Laurent looked, and how good the wine was.

When the first course was finished, Marie and I got up and went back to the kitchen to help the caterers, friends of ours from the village. We arranged thin slices of cold beef tenderloin on one set of trays, thin slices of cold sliced pork on another, garnishing all with quartered tomatoes and sprigs of basil from Françoise’s garden. Then we brought the trays out to buffet tables already groaning with bowls of roasted red peppers and eggplants, tomato and mozzarella salad, potato salad, and green salad, all liberally dressed in olive oil.

Recorded music had been playing when we arrived at the hall, then stopped for the first course, starting up again about
the same time Marie and I had headed into the kitchen. It was music that could be called suitable for all ages: waltzes intermingled with American rock ‘n’ roll classics from the 1960s and 1970s, French cabaret songs, and world music. By the time the platters of local goat cheese, Camembert, Brie, Époisses, and Roquefort had been fully sampled, the music began again, and Laurent and his bride opened the dance floor, followed by family members, young and old. An hour or more later, after a three-tiered chocolate-raspberry wedding cake from the local bakery had been cut and served, world music dominated, and all the young people were dancing, dresses flying, high-heeled sandals kicked off under the tables and jackets hanging from chairs.

Marie and I both wanted to dance, but Marcel and the other men at our table would have none of it. Finally, the two of us simply joined the people on the dance floor, as did other women accompanied by reluctant men and the young children.

While we were dancing Françoise and Robert slipped away. Marcel came onto the dance floor and told Marie he wanted to go home, so I left too.

As I lay in bed, snug in a bedroom familiar to me for half my life, looking at the ceiling of hand-hewn planks and the smooth, plastered walls lined with bookshelves, I thought how lucky I was to have such a life, one in California, another here. In just six weeks I’d be back, bags loaded, to teach another series of cooking classes. But first I’d spend time picking tomatoes and melons and cooking with Marie and Françoise and enjoying long, leisurely meals with all my friends who have become my extended family.