by Jessica Love
“Of course. I’ll take you up.”
The stairs were very narrow, with a landing half way that let them double back. At the top we turned left.
“We’ve upgraded a couple of times, but not since our own children left to their own lives. It may be somewhat old-fashioned from what you’re used to,” said Genevieve.
“I love every inch of it!” I said, and with no exaggeration.
“This was my daughter’s room,” said Genevieve, opening a door at the end of the hall, “and your grandmother’s before that. And yours, for as long as you will stay,” she said, stopping and putting a hand on my shoulder.
How could these people I’d never met be so generous to me?
“I don’t know what to say,” I said.
“Welcome to your family,” she smiled, walking into the room. The bathroom is right here,” she said as she opened the door to a huge bathroom in the corner of the building. It didn’t have a door into the hall, its only entrances from the bedrooms that shared it.
“We’ll be out on the veranda when you want to come down. Take your time. A glass of wine will be waiting for you.”
I took a quick shower to wash off the grime of travel, changed, and grabbed the small wooden box of my grandmother’s and went downstairs. I heard voices and followed them out to a warm veranda by the front door.
“Hello, dear. May I pour you a glass of wine?” said Genevieve.
“Thank you,” I said. But before I sat down, I walked over to where Uncle Marcel was settling back into his chair and handed him the wooden box. “What’s this?” he asked.
“Grandmama left me a note that I was to give this to you, or your son or daughter if you had passed away,” I said.
He looked at me, and at the wooden box. “Did she tell you what it was? Have you looked?”
“No,” I said in answer to both.
He pulled up on the lid, which stuck just a bit as he opened the box. Inside was an envelope and underneath it, something that I couldn’t see but that seemed to startle him. He opened the envelope and took out the two sheets of paper inside. I could see my grandmother’s handwriting and could tell it was written in French.
Uncle Marcel had not read for more than five seconds when tears began to run down his cheeks.
“Marcel?” said Genevieve.
“C’est bien,” he said softly.
When he was through reading, he handed the letter to Genevieve. Unlike Uncle Marcel, her eyes stayed dry, but very softly she said in English, looking at me, “How beautiful, how sad.”
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Genevieve… ” Uncle Marcel cautioned.
“Marcel, I make these decisions for myself,” said Genevieve, firmly but with kindness.
“We shall talk after I have thought about this,” she said to me, and got up and went to the kitchen where something incredibly good was cooking and sending aromas into the kitchen and out to the veranda. I sipped my wine and enjoyed the golden warmth of sun on my face.
“What do you know about your grandmother?” Uncle Marcel asked at last.
“She was very hard to know,” I said. “She was very private. She didn’t talk much about what she was feeling.”
Uncle Marcel smiled. “That was always the case,” he said, “even when she was young Your grandmother and my mother had a difficult relationship. They were very much the same.
“During the war, my mother wanted us to stay very far away from the fighting. She said nobody knew who would win, and it was best not to be identified with either side.” He paused, taking a sip of wine.
“I still remember the argument. It was in the kitchen of this very house. The Nazis were in Paris. Your grandmother, who knew I was in the Resistance, told our mother there was such a thing as right and wrong, and she would not let others fight and die without doing what she could to help good defeat evil.
“My mother said Renée was naive. That war did not know the difference between good and evil, only the strong and the weak, and that Renée’s duty was to her family, not to some idealistic merde. Renée stormed out and joined the Resistance. I still remember hearing my mother cry deep into the night.
“Our family goes back many generations, hundreds of years before the founding of your country. In fact, this very farm was bestowed on the family for exploration and the securing of French holdings in the New World. And this… ”
Uncle Marcel reached into the box and pulled out a large ring. In the center was a deep red ruby, surrounded by diamonds.
“During the chaos of 1792, this was looted from the crown jewels. It found its way to our family, who returned it to Paris. But then it was bequeathed to our family for “safekeeping by one who did not want it to fall into the hands of the Corsican.” It was always said that a family who would return such a thing to its rightful owner could be trusted forever.”
“May I?” I asked, reaching for the ring.
“May you? Of course you may. It’s yours,” said Uncle Marcel, looking at me.
“Mine?”
“Our family tradition has been that the holder of the ring hands the ring to one she feels would protect it, in honor of our tradition. My mother was the holder, but never told us where the ring was before she died, and we assumed it was lost.
“I did not know until now it went to my sister. I’d hoped as much, but it was not right to ask. Which explains other things they said that night. I remember my mother demanding something be returned, and my sister saying there was no giveback demand in the tradition.”
“But why does that make it mine?” I asked.
“Your grandmother gave this ring to you.”
“No, she asked that I return it to you,” I said.
“Non.” He held up the two-page letter. “She gave the ring to you. This is what she says here, quite plainly.” He handed the ring to me and the letter, which I hated being unable to read.
I looked into the ruby depths and tried to understand everything that had happened since my grandmother died. Changes I had no ability to anticipate.
“But why? I’m hardly an heir of the DuBois name or lineage.”
“She felt you were.” Uncle Marcel said this simply, as if there were nothing else to say, and stood up to pour me a bit more wine.
“No, thank you. I’ve had enough. May I walk through the vineyard?”
“Of course. Would you like a guide?”
“That is kind of you, but I’ll find my way back. How long before dinner?”
“When the sun touches that hill,” Uncle Marcel smiled, pointing westward to a hill covered with vines. “About an hour.”
I walked from the porch past a shed with mechanical equipment and ancient wooden rectangular bins to the hillside behind the house. I took off my sandals. The earth was still warm from the sun.
Uncle Marcel’s words, the dirt into which my toes sank, and the setting sun blended into a serenity I could not remember having ever experienced. I smiled out at the valley that lay before me and sat on a patch of grass beneath a giant oak tree left standing in the vineyard.
“Thank you,” I said, intending it for Grandmama, but feeling it was received beyond her.
As the sun neared the hill across the valley that signaled dinner, I headed down. When I neared the porch, Genevieve came out the kitchen door. “You can wash your feet there,” she said, wearing a warm and wide smile and pointing to a small washbasin and hose on the side of the house.
Uncle Marcel appeared behind her.
“How did you find their tree?” he asked.
“Whose tree?”
“That oak,” he pointed up the way I had just come. “Your grandmother sat under that tree whenever she needed calm. My mother, too, sat under that tree for guidance,” said Uncle Marcel. His smile matched Genevieve’s.
We had dinner t
hat night, and many nights after. I heard countless stories of my family that I never knew, but don’t worry, I won’t subject you to a slideshow or photo album of those stories or to details of the weeks I spent at Chateau DuBois.
Except for one thing. It was morning, and I’d gotten up early when I heard Uncle Marcel leave the driveway in the Citroen. Genevieve was also up, even though dawn was just throwing a glow in the eastern sky.
“Marcel has work in Bordeaux,” she said when I told her I’d heard the car. “We are negotiating with one of the grand crus to buy our grapes this season instead of bottling our own wine. It has just gotten so expensive,” she said.
After breakfast, she invited me out to feed the chickens, which we often did together. I loved the way she said “chick chick chick,” and they came running from wherever they were in the yard to be fed grain.
“Where’s Sam?” I asked.
“Who?”
“Sam, the rooster. The red one,” I said.
“Oh, no. You never name them,” she said.
“Why?”
“Because naming them makes them into something else, makes it too easy to have a relationship with them.”
“But they just eat and give eggs. What’s wrong with naming them?”
Genevieve looked at me with a mixture of sadness and mild frustration.
“This is something about Americans. Your idealism is wonderful, but you ignore reality. Sam, as you call him, was dinner last night.”
I looked away so she would not see the expression on my face. “That just seems so cold.” I’d liked Sam.
“Jessica. The French are simply aware there are consequences if we do not control our feelings, if they control us. This can be a matter of survival. So, we do not name animals we intend to eat. We do not fall in love expecting it to last, but know it must become something else. We mourn, but accept that the world can be indifferent.”
“Tout passé, tout lasse, tout casse. Everything passes, everything wears out, everything breaks,” I said to her. “My grandmother used to say that.”
“Exactly,” said Genevieve, putting a hand on my shoulder. “But that’s only part of the saying.”
“I’m sorry?”
“That’s how the saying is most often given, and what most people know. But there is also another ending: Everything passes, everything wears out, everything breaks everything must find its place.”
“I never heard that.”
“That’s why Renée stayed in America and raised you. So you would know these things.”
“What? Why?”
“Oh. Marcel did not tell you this? I should not have said anything.”
“Please.… ”
“This too was written in the letter, in the box you brought. This was her decision, to stay in America, and care for you. She felt from the time you were born that you were her legacy. That you needed her nearby, and, I suppose, that someday she would give to you the ring.”
All the times I’d asked Grandmama why she did not return to France, and not once had she said this to me. I was instantly overwhelmed.
“I think I need to walk up through the vineyard,” I said, and headed to the oak that looked out over the valley.
That evening at dinner I asked Uncle Marcel why my grandmother stayed in America, especially after her husband had died. He looked over the top of this wine glass at Genevieve, and out of the corner of my eye I saw her give a small nod.
“She felt that you needed her nearby, that she had things to teach you that you could not learn otherwise.”
“But why was that so important, when she could have been here!” I was nearly in tears from a mixture of guilt and gratitude.
“It was more important for her to be there for you,” he said with the French shrug, indicating the answer was obvious.
“My God, I let her down.”
“Non, I think not,” he said, with a slight smile.
“I lost my license to practice law. I lost my marriage. I’ve been wandering around with no job, no purpose, pissed off at society and everything about it. I’ve not done much to earn the sacrifice she made.”
“This is not how she saw it,” said Uncle Marcel.
“How do you know?” I said, with some skepticism, thinking no one knew my Grandmere like I did. I’d forgotten somehow I was talking to her brother.
“Well, the letter she sent with you for one thing. And this letter is not the first correspondence she and I have had, you know. She was very proud of you.”
“I lost my marriage.”
“My sister felt that was a victory, of sorts. She thought your husband was, how did she put it, ‘hollow,’ I think she said.”
“She didn’t know I lost my law license.”
“Oui, this is true. But it would not have mattered. She believed in you and would have believed you would overcome such a setback.”
“I hate the injustice, that I got crushed. I hate that society won.”
“Non, this is not true,” he said shaking his head. “This can not be true.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Society can’t ‘win,’ as you say. Society is not an adversary. Society is simply water in which we swim. It is not conscious; it can’t be an enemy. Yes, it has rules. You may accept those rules. You may break those rules. You may seek to change those rules. Each choice has consequences. But society does not win, as you put it.”
“If I broke the rules and lost my law license? Didn’t society win?”
“To feel helpless is a choice as well, I suppose,” he said with his shrug. “But if you fight and you lose, society does not win. There are people; there are rules. You fight the people; you change the rules. Such as my sister. She broke rules, then showed her allegiance to your membership in our family — something she did not want to be lost.”
“Uncle Marcel, I didn’t deserve that. That she should live out her life for that, away from all this…”
“This was not your choice to make,” he said, with a soft, sad smile. “I asked her often to come home. But it was not my choice to make either.”
“Why don’t you two go outside and have this conversation while I do the dishes?” said Genevieve. “Marcel, aren’t you in the mood for a cognac?”
“I’ll be right back down,” I said. And I went up to my room. When I returned, Uncle Marcel and Genevieve were still at the dining room table, talking softly.
“I want you to have this. To pass it on within the family,” I said, putting the small wooden box on the table in front of him.
“You are sure of this?” was all he said.
“Yes. I have no children, and I think it belongs here, in France. You know best who would protect it.”
Uncle Marcel nodded. “I want you to meet her,” he said.
“You already know?”
“It’s been obvious since she was born.”
Two days later Uncle Marcel’s grandson brought his wife and two children down from Tours, where they lived. They did not speak much English, but I was picking up a little French and Marcel and Genevieve translated easily and quickly enough for us to share an immediate bond.
I knew who the ring would go to as soon as she got out of the car. Soleil was twelve years old, I guessed. She had a very direct gaze, thick dark hair. She looked very much like I imagine my grandmother looked at that age. She looked very much like I did at that age.
Now with more of the family in town, we had the ceremony for which I had ostensibly come to France. We took my grandmother’s ashes to the small graveyard behind the chateau, and I took a small handful up to the oak in the middle of the vineyard. There I mixed them into the earth.
They stayed five days. Soleil followed me around the house, watching me intently, asking questions in English that I barely understood and that made us laugh, kn
owing we had so much in common. When I went for walks, she went too. When I sat under the oak, she sat nearby, not saying much, as we gazed out over the valley.
I left a few days after they did.
“Thank you for coming, for bringing her back,” said Genevieve as I loaded my bag into the Citroen. “Please come back any time. This is your home.”
“I will. You know I will,” I said to her.
She gave me a quick kiss on each cheek.
On the way into Bordeaux, Uncle Marcel asked “What will you do now?”
“I have some unfinished business to take care of. After that, I don’t know. We’ll see,” I said.
At the airport, he extended his hand. “You are changed, I think, from when you arrived.”
“I don’t know how to thank you.”
“There is nothing to thank anyone for,” said Uncle Marcel. “You simply received what was already yours.”
• • • •
I’d set up my laptop in a booth at Sullivan’s and looked just like all the other lawyers who came in from upstairs with work to do and an eye out for a possible date. On occasion I even let a few of them buy me a drink. I wanted to see if I would be recognized.
Men, I will let you know something: There’s a very good chance that unless you have seen her right out of the shower, you may have no idea what your date really looks like unless she wants you to. Between what we do with our eyes and our lips, to say nothing of the hair, we can be anyone.
Add to that the fact that men often see what they want to see, depending on their age, lust, and inebriation, and well, many men would have a hard time picking their dates out of a police line-up.
A good-looking guy about my age asked if he could buy me a drink. I had actually met him a couple of times, a lifetime ago it seemed, when Mark and I were still married — first at a fundraiser for the Seattle Children’s Hospital, and then again at the Boats Afloat Show on Lake Union when Mark and I were thinking of selling the island property and buying a boat.
The guy, I’ll call him Steve, came up to where I was sitting at the end of the bar at Sullivan’s, “working” on my laptop.
