The Provence Cure for the Brokenhearted (33 page)

“Yes.”

“I told Abbot the story of Saint Ser tonight, the protector of souls. I believed in him some, you know, when I was little and you made me trudge up that mountain.”

He stood up.

“What is it?” I asked.

“That is a good example. There was no ghost. I invented the ghost because I wanted you to be afraid. But then I was
afraid myself, and so I said he was a good phantom, a protector. When we rang the bell and called the ghost, and we waited by the altar, you heard him whisper your name.”

“I was a kid.”

“A kid who believed in a ghost.”

I stiffened. “Are you calling Henry a ghost?”

“No, Henry is real. Patricia is real,” he said. “Right now, the problem is that you and I, we are the ghosts.”

I thought of my ghostly reflection in the fogged wardrobe mirror in Daniel’s studio loft. But Julien in this moment was real to me, beautiful and real.

“I should head in,” I said. “It’s late.”

“You didn’t sing.”

I stood up and slipped on my flip-flops. “The song is about Brandy,” I said. “She’s a fine girl, but the sailor can’t commit to her because he’s married to the sea.”

“That isn’t singing,” he said.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” I said.

“And tomorrow you’ll sing?”

I walked to the door. “I don’t think so!” I said.

“But maybe yes?”

“But maybe no.”

ver the course of the next three days, Abbot managed to put off throwing the bird. He opened the kitchen windows and let the flies buzz in. And then he hunted them, with quiet intensity and pretty good marksmanship with a swatter, then fed them to the swallow. He always seemed to have his trusty notebook tucked under one arm.

This was bad, of course. Julien whispered to me, “He is attaching to the bird. It’s going to more difficult if …”

“I know,” I whispered. “I get it.”

“A miracle?” he said. “In the middle of the night? It flies away?”

I shook my head. “He’ll know.”

Adam Briskowitz and Charlotte had loud, heated fights. Sometimes I’d see Charlotte walking calmly while Adam
lapped around her like she was a maypole. Each time I overheard one of their arguments, it was never about motherhood, fatherhood, their parents’ potential for freak-outs, or a baby. It was always something abstract: Middle East politics, talent versus a strong work ethic, corporate greed, the religious upbringing of Michael Moore, and once I could have sworn I heard the word
Reaganomics
. I couldn’t help but think,
What is it with kids these days?

Meanwhile, was I listening to the house? Was I feeling and connecting and allowing decisions to form? I was trying to.

Véronique’s project manager was named Maurice. He was broad and tan, her age but more weathered, and hunky by any standard. In fact, when he arrived to talk with me and Véronique, who was supposed to jump if translation issues arose, I could have sworn the two were flirting with each other. Plus, we needed no translation help. His English was impeccable. He’d lived in California for a time and knew how to surf. He seemed dumbfounded by the fact that I’d never surfed. “Really? But you have such waves!” I apologized for my obvious lack of appreciation for my homeland.

We walked the grounds and around the house. We talked about my mother’s ideas, and Maurice took notes. We sat at the kitchen table and discussed structural changes, appliances, fixtures, lighting, plumbing, tile, color, and money. He offered me more catalogs.

“Timing?” I asked. “Is it really going to take two to three months before we get started?”

He smiled. “The ox is slow, but the earth patient.”

“Is that a French saying? Do you all have a lot of oxen?”

He and Véronique smiled. No, not much oxen in France.

I called my mother and told her that I’d decided on Maurice as the project manager and recounted the conversation.

She said, “I can’t sleep at night.”

“Because of the house renovation?” I asked, trying to make a connection.

“No,” she said. “It’s not that.”

“What’s wrong?” I was hanging a load of our wet clothes on the rickety wooden rack in Charlotte’s room.

“I don’t know. I’m restless. I feel like things are coming apart at the seams.”

I wanted to tell her that she was right, that she was prescient, that all hell was about to break loose, but of course, I couldn’t. It would put her in an impossible situation. How could she not call Elysius and tell her? And if she knew, even if it was only a day away from Charlotte’s telling her parents herself, it could damage the trust between Elysius and my mother. “What are you worrying about when you can’t sleep?”

“I can’t help but imagine you there with Abbot and Charlotte, and as soon as I do, I remember the last time I was there. It was a hard time for me. You know that.”

“I do,” I said. “Of course I do.”

“What else has Véronique said to you?”

“I told you what she said. She called you a thief, though she didn’t say it maliciously.”

“I know,” she said, “but has she mentioned anything else?”

“She said that you had lessons for me.”

“Oh, please!” she said. “I don’t have any lessons!”

“Tell me what happened that summer.”

The line was quiet.

“Tell me,” I said.

“I was lost,” she whispered.

“Did someone find you?”

My mother was quiet. Finally, she said, “It’s ancient history.”

“Ancient history that keeps you up at night.”

“Your father doesn’t know anything about any of this,” she said. “I want to keep it that way.”

“If you’re telling me not to tell my father, you’re overestimating what I know. What would I tell him? I don’t have any idea what happened. Did you have an affair?”

“It was worse than an affair,” she said. “I fell in love.”

I couldn’t process this fully. My breath caught in my throat. “Why did you fall in love?”

“I didn’t mean to!” she said, almost childishly.

“But you came back, so how did it end?”

“Maybe it didn’t really end,” she said. “You’re the one who asked me why I can’t sleep at night!”

“You still think about him now?”

“It’s not that I think about him.…” She was quiet a moment. “It’s that I think about this other life that didn’t get lived.…”

This made me think of Henry, of course. I would always now have a life without him, a life that wouldn’t get lived. It would be a hole that I would carry with me forever. Was this one of the lessons that my mother had to teach me? “But you didn’t stay. How did it end?” I asked.

“There were fires,” she said. “Huge fires. You can’t imagine—an entire mountain on fire. That was a sign, wasn’t it? I didn’t need a bigger sign than that.”

“A sign that told you what?”

“To come home.”

he next day—the day Adam and Charlotte were supposed to call their respective parents—happened to fall on Bastille Day. I had vague memories of my mother’s celebrations in the backyard, which amounted to a replay of the Fourth of July—getting red, white, and blue bunting at post-holiday sale bins, minus the American flags. And we’d also celebrated Bastille Day here a few times. I remembered taking a promenade with Elysius, Julien and his older brother, and other children from the village through the streets at dusk with paper lanterns suspended from short sticks. That morning, I saw Julien in the yard and asked, “Do they still parade through the streets with the paper lanterns?” I was wearing my painting jeans. I’d finished my blue room and Abbot’s ruby-colored room. Now I was working on Charlotte’s, so there was a new layer of green flecks.

“I don’t know,” he said. “But I’ll find the answer. Do you want to go to the celebration in the village?”

“I’d like to pretend we fit in,” I said, and, too, I wanted to know if it was like my memory of it, the image of the globes bobbing again in my mind after all of those years. I thought of my mother, how strange it must have been for her to have so many memories like these that turned in her mind, and how it must have been to wonder if she would ever return to this place. Would my memories of Henry be the same—drifting and gliding, losing detail, becoming more imagistic? The idea of it made my chest ache.

Charlotte and Adam found me by the fountain talking to the plumber, someone whom Véronique had called in to fix the pump. He was a young man wearing thick, industrial-looking boots and, as was often the case with him, a very loose tank top. He was there on the holiday only to pick up his check. The fountain was now filled with clear water, the pump pumping. The water was burbling nicely. I was planning on buying the koi that week.

Julien and Abbot were in the newly fixed swimming pool, taking an inaugural swim in celebration. It was a vacation day for everyone, and so they were supposed to relax. I could hear Julien teaching Abbot the French national anthem. The swallow was in its box under a shade tree—always nearby, Abbot made sure of it. His notebook was probably propped beside it.

“Merci,” the plumber said, and he took his check, folded
it with one hand, and pocketed it. He smiled at Charlotte as he passed, which Adam picked up on, and it made him stand up tall, arch his back some, take a step in closer to Charlotte. I took this as a good sign. I didn’t quite get why an incoming college freshman would be heated about Reaganomics, but I got this—a little jealousy.

“We’re ready for fish,” I said.

“They had fountains in this region during the Gallo-Roman era,” Adam said.

“Yep,” I said. “Actually, the dig out there has uncovered a good bit of a villa. Fountain included.”

“Really?” he said. “That’s very interesting.”

“It’s day three,” Charlotte said, getting to the point.

“And?” I asked. “How do things stand?”

“We have talking points,” Adam said.

“Have you sorted out global politics?” I asked.

“No,” Charlotte said.

“Kind of,” Adam said. “We might be as close as we can get.”

“Are you a united front?” I asked, rubbing green paint from my palms.

They looked at each other warily, but both nodded.

“We’re still different nations,” Adam said. “But we’re part of the UN, and we plan to invite other countries to the table for talks.”

“Do you know what you would like the day-to-day to look like, in a perfect world?”

Adam was going to say something, but Charlotte reached
out and put her hand on his chest. “No,” she said. “We don’t. We have to see what everyone else says, where they stand.”

“Bert and Peg are going to be very laid back,” Adam said. “They were almost like hippies. I’ve seen both of them stoned.”

“You go first then,” Charlotte said.

“You want me to call right here in front of all of you?”

“However you want to do it,” I said.

“I’ll just take a little walk,” he said. He pulled his phone out of his pocket, stared at it for a moment as if he’d forgotten how the instrument worked. Then he flipped it open, glanced back at Charlotte, dialed, held the phone to his ear, and started walking. I could hear Julien singing a bit of the French national anthem,
“Aux armes, citoyens, formez vos bataillons,”
and Abbot’s faint, high voice repeating after him.