The Provence Cure for the Brokenhearted (25 page)

“I think that making your own rules, making your own happiness is good,” I said.

She glanced at me and I felt immediately transparent. Had I closed the doors to my heart out of fear, and were they locked? She started walking again. “So, after so many years, was your father worth it? Is she happy?”

I nodded. “I think she’s happy. They have a strong marriage.” This was my attempt at telling her that my father hadn’t cheated again. It had been a one-time thing.

“I see,” she said, without a hint of emotion.

I wanted to edge away from my mother’s life. It frightened me now. I could see how powerful it must have been for her to be here, on this solid ground with this mountain’s gravity, and, from here, how very small and frail her family must have seemed, so far away. Did she try to imagine Elysius and me in our swimming lessons, singing at day camp, trying to fall asleep at night? Did she wonder if we had wandered into poison ivy, had sunburn, had gone hiking without our hats and now had a tick crawling through our hair? These were the things she was supposed to take care of. My father knew nothing about any of these things. Elysius and I took care of each other that summer. I got my period for the first time, and Elysius was the one who showed me the box of pads hidden in the linen closet, and who taught me to use cold water and salt to scrub a spot of blood from my sheets. Did my mother know that we were going through the motions and waiting, holding our collective breath, for her to return to us? I said to Véronique, “My mother told me that you’d have information for me about renovating the house, about the … 
bureaucracy
? Maybe you have some people to recommend? I’d like to get things under way, you know, really have the construction going before I leave. Then I can check in and see if we’re on track.”

“You are here for how much time?”

“Six weeks,” I said.

She started laughing.

“What’s funny?”

She laughed so hard now that she had to stop and try to catch her breath.

“Seriously,” I said, a little offended now. “What’s so funny?”

“Your mother,” she said, shaking her head, regaining composure. “She is a very funny woman.”

“What do you mean?”

“This is France!” she said with a wave of her arm. “You will wait one to two months to obtain the
permis de construire
and to obtain the
devis
from the workers,
le cahier des charges.
”

“
Permis de construire
, you mean construction permits?”

She nodded. “From the government.”

“The
devis
is the
cahier des charges?
The quote?”

“The
devis
is, how do you say it, when you ask the worker for his price?
Le cahier des charges
is a very long document here with very specific details. And you want these with
les tiroirs.
”

“With drawers?”

“Of course,” she said as if this explained what drawers had to do with a bid. “And it is difficult to make the workers arrive and make this document. You have to call them and ask them many times and you must tell them that you have heard spoken wonderful things about their work,
bouche-à-oreille
, ‘mouth to ear.’ If they’re quick to arrive, do you really want them?”

She talked a bit more, but all I understood was that some things about construction were universal. Everything would
take longer than they predicted. Everything would cost more money than they predicted. And one thing that was predictable was that something unpredictable would happen in the course of something seemingly small and predictable. Then she looked at me very seriously. “It may be that no one will touch a thing for months.”

“I won’t be here months from now!”

“This is good. Because when they begin to break the walls, you will be living in dust. You will breathe the house into your lungs and taste it in everything. It is better to not be here.”

“And you think that my mother knew this all along?”

“She wanted you here. She pulled you here.”

“Was the fire faked?”

She shook her head and made a
tsk, tsk
noise as the French do. “The fire was real, but she used it to bring you here.”

I looked up at the mountains, the ground, then at the house itself. “But she also showed me magazines completely devoted to tile! She gave me paint samples! She lectured me about bringing in a modern touch. She told me to feel and connect to the house and allow decisions to form!”

“Ah!” Véronique raised her finger in the air, smiling. “
Et voilà!
All of these things you
can
do!”

By this point we were standing by the gate around the empty pool filled with dead leaves.
Months? It would take the French months of bureaucracy? I would have to kiss up to the workers just to get them to give me a quote?

“The pool is not broken, but it has a crack,” Véronique said.

“How many months will
that
take?” My tone was surely pissy.

“I can arrange this. I know someone who will come for the pool,” she said.

“I’d like to get it filled with water.”

“Water is possible.”

“Can I get the fountain going again? Maybe put in some koi?”

“Koi?”

“Fish.”

“The pump,” she said, “is broken. That we can fix without permits. We can put in water, but finally you will want to work on the stone.”

“I’d like koi,” I said, aware that I was sounding petulant. “At the very least.”

She looked out toward the excavation and pointed at the mounds of dirt with her cane. “These are the real workers. They found a tomb,” she said.

“That’s what Julien told us,” I said, trying to shake off my frustrations with my mother, what now felt like a fake mission.

“Bones,” Véronique said. “We are all eventually bones.”

“That’s true,” I said. “Well, not always
eventually
. Some die before they get to
eventually. Eventually
is a gift.”

“Your mother told me about your husband,” she said.
“I’m sorry, but I promise to you I will not force sympathy on you. I have always hated sympathy.” She smiled.

“Me, too,” I said.

“I have something of your mother’s. Something that was found after the fire.”

“What is it?” I couldn’t imagine what this could be. My wily mother. I thought of the yellow swimsuit in the picture of her by the pool. I never saw her in that swimsuit at home. Had she bought it here and left it behind? This thought made no sense. Of course Véronique wouldn’t have held on to a swimsuit all these years.

“I will give it to you before you go. It is small. But I think it will be important to her. Only a small box of things.” The wind rippled her shirt. And before I could ask her to tell me what it was, she said, “You know that your mother is a thief.” She said this without anger, just stating a fact.

“A thief?” I said. No one ever said anything bad about my mother, not ever. On the other hand, she wasn’t the kind of person people gushed about. No. People didn’t stop me in town to tell me that my mother had brought over a casserole at their darkest hour or that she’d done a wonderful job raising money for charity. But no one ever said anything bad about her. “My mother? Did she take something from you?”

“A little thief. A heart thief.”

“What does that mean, a heart thief?”

Véronique shook her head. She wasn’t going to talk about it. It dawned on me now that there must be some misunderstanding. A heart thief sounded like a nice term for
adulterer, mistress, home wrecker. Was my mother a home wrecker? Had she somehow played a part in the departure of Véronique’s husband? I thought of a story my mother had told me once about a friend of hers who was treated badly by her relatives in a foreign country for years after the death of an aunt. One of the relatives finally explained that she’d never given them the ring she’d promised. “What ring?” my mother’s friend said. They explained, “You told us you would give us a ring, and it never arrived.” My mother’s friend had to explain the expression—give you a ring, a call. There was no actual ring. Maybe this is the kind of thing that had happened here. I decided that it was a simple misunderstanding that we could unravel and then laugh about later.

Véronique hooked the cane on her elbow and crossed her arms. “I am worried about the house and the land. What will happen when I’m gone.”

This took me by surprise, the confession as well as the fact that she’d chosen me to tell. I was a little afraid of her, but also drawn to her. This conversation was loaded and vexing and hard to follow, but it was strangely exhilarating. I had no idea where it might go next.

“I’m old,” she said.

“Would Julien want the house?”

“The boys would fight. They have problems, as you know.” I didn’t know anything about the boys’ problems. She shook her head. “The children want money these days. They will sell the house.”

“Have you asked them?”

“No,” she said. “When they sell, this will be a good time to sell your house, too. Someone may want both of the houses and the land.”

“It’s not mine to sell,” I said.

“I see.”

“What about Pascal?” I asked.

She shook her head and clucked her tongue.

“Look,” I said. “I think you should tell the boys that you’re worried. They might love the chance to make it their own. They might surprise you.”

“Voilà,” she said, touching my arm. “I hear it so clearly. Your voice, you are like your mother, no?”

“Not really,” I said. “Elysius is the one who …”

“No. Your sister has your mother’s face, but you,” she said, “you have your mother in you.” She tapped her chest. “The way you look at the mountain. Your sister never looked at the mountain like that. She is …” Véronique snapped her fingers in the air around her head, her eyes darting from one snap to the next.

“Distracted?”

“Distracted,” she said. “Yes. But you.” She shook her head and really looked at me for what felt like the first time. I wasn’t sure what she was seeing. “Have you asked yourself why your mother never returned here?”

I knew there were many very complicated reasons. My mother loved this place, always wanted to return, but it was a sore spot between my parents. Even I had come to associate
this place with her abandonment of us. “It’s far,” I said. “It’s expensive to get here.…”

“No,” she said. “It’s not that. Ask your mother. She has lessons.” She faced the wind and let it blow her hair back. I pictured Véronique as a little girl. She and my mother had known each other during their childhood summers. I imagined them doing something idyllic, running through the vineyards, row after row. Véronique said, “You know the Provençal summers are dry, which makes the earth and the air perfect for a fire, like the one that your mother saw before leaving. The fires burned the trees, cleared the earth, and that is why it’s possible for the archaeologists to dig.” She tapped her cane on the grass. “It is interesting, no? A tragedy, the fire, but it makes it possible to dig into the past.”

“Yes,” I said. This was a metaphor, of course. Was the tragedy my mother’s, the near loss of her marriage that summer, her heartache? Or perhaps Véronique’s own failed marriage? Or was she talking about my own tragedy, Henry’s death? Was it now time to dig?

Regardless of how I was supposed to read the metaphor, it was a conclusion. The tour was over. Véronique started to walk back to her house. Her hobbled gait was so quick and strong that it seemed her limp was propelling her forward, not holding her back. She called out, “In the end, your mother, that thief may surprise you.”

She already had.

n the gusty wind of the convertible, Julien explained that we shouldn’t mistake Saint-Maximin-la-Sainte-Baume for Saint Maximin, another cathedral not too far away, in Arles. “The main difference is that this one has the body of Mary Magdelene and that one doesn’t.” We were on our promised outing of a cathedral and warthogs—cathedral first, as warthogs were the reward for enduring a cathedral.

“Wasn’t Mary Magdalene hanging out in the Middle East with Jesus?” Charlotte said.

“She was,” Julien said. “But then!” He lifted his finger in the air. “She got on a fragile little boat without a sail, without a rudder, along with Maximin, before he became a saint. And there were others—and they found themselves in Marseille. A miracle.”