The French House: An American Family, a Ruined Maison, and the Village That Restored Them All

by Don Wallace

  It was part of a row of houses, not one of which seemed inhabited. At the north end, a pile of stones was all that was left of what, a couple of hundred years ago, might once have been somebody’s home. At the south end, at the bottom of the narrow rutted lane, was a rude, windowless stone hut. There were two candidates for the one that was ours: first, a small, squarish boxy thing, with a pair of windows and a date chiseled above a door, which had real possibilities, and then…oh dear…could this really be it?

  Two years later, and a long way from home and the USA—two days’ travel by plane, rental car, and boat, to be precise—at last we were standing before our house. Here it was, after nine years of rented bungalows and apartments, the first place we could truly call our own and a convenient 2,500 miles from where we actually lived. My heart was in my mouth. It was all on me, this folly. As I tried not to watch Mindy throw up, all I could think was: Oh my God, what have I done?

  Mindy really was seeing this thing for the first time this very minute, because, try as we might after Gwened told us it was on the market, our memories always drew a blank as to what it actually had looked like. Despite passing within a couple feet every single day for three months during our winter visit, we couldn’t have picked it out of a lineup. Our eyes must’ve just instinctively turned away. Which should have told us something.

  We also should have hit the pause button in May, when Mindy’s supervisor refused to give her any time off to fly over and inspect the place. I’d wrangled an overseas trip from my boss, but with only twenty-four hours on Belle Île in which to evaluate and then say yes or no. Mindy had insisted I go ahead, even though my spoken French was barely up to ordering un grand café. After consulting with a French lawyer in Manhattan, she’d filled a little notebook with phrases and questions and shoved me onto the plane. Bon voyage!

  Now, despite all I’d seen and rued on my brave expedition, there was a heavy wrought iron key in my fist. Our key. Meanwhile, Gwened and a neighbor, Franck, were waiting politely for Mindy to finish retching. As if this was only to be expected when inspecting one’s newly purchased home.

  Mindy was pregnant, something we discovered weeks after I’d said oui-oui-oui to our brand-new ruin. Long hair flowing down, she bent over at the waist, pale, not only from morning sickness but from our visit the day before to a one-star restaurant en route to the ferryboat. Having allowed herself a drink for the first time in a month, Mindy had gone upstairs to the ladies’ lounge. Ravished by the sight of a pear tree blossoming in the back garden, she’d tugged at a closed window to inhale the scent.

  The window didn’t open up, however, but swung out, smacking my poor girl on the back of her head. She woke up hanging halfway out of the window, arms flung out, rump in the air, without any recollection of how she got there. She didn’t make it back downstairs until thirty minutes later. The waiters, having stoically returned our entrées to the kitchen, re-served them under silver cloche lids without a hint that anything was out of the ordinary. As there were only two other customers that day, maybe nothing was.

  Mindy has a great poker face when it suits her. She never let on what happened at Chez Melanie until after we’d finished, paid up, and were back on the road—just as she now straightened up, wiped off her lips, and looked around, asking brightly, “Is the door unlocked? Can we go in? What’re we waiting for?”

  I didn’t try to read Mindy’s expression or her mind. I just felt an overwhelming sense of error and exhaustion. Because this wasn’t a house. One hundred fifty-five years old, it looked much older. It looked like a hovel.

  “See the wall and foundation stones? And the roof slates?” asked Gwened, with a cheerful professorial air. “They came from a quarry in the ravine behind my field.”

  We’d seen the quarry, now filled with trees and blackberry vines. Too bad the roof slates were cracked, shattered, and stained with orange lichen, destined for the dump. Not five minutes after putting my signature on a proffer, I’d been informed by the notary that if we didn’t put up a new roof this winter, the house would collapse. Surely this was premature. We were waiting for a second opinion, from a real expert who was on his way to meet us, an architect and general contractor whose name was Denis LeReveur.

  We’d exchanged incredulous smiles the first time we heard it: Denny the Dreamer?

  At the front door, Franck and I joined shoulders and gently but steadily pushed until it creaked open. Ancient boards sagged underfoot during our initial walk across the kitchen, which ended when Franck plunged through and up to his shins. “Oh-la-la! Quel désastre!” he cried, staring down at his missing feet. Our relief when he laughed verged on hysteria.

  From that point on, we tightrope-walked where underlying beams supported the floor. I clutched Mindy’s elbow as we both stared at the fireplace, a blasted black hole of a hearth that sent soot tendrils extending outward across the walls. They looked like octopus tentacles. Ugly gaps reminded us where the stove, sink, and counter used to be, outlined in black furry mold. The kitchen walls were stained and covered in yellow filth—old cooking grease, one hundred and fifty-five years of it.

  There was a doorway to our left. “Is this the bedroom?” At the door, Mindy stopped short at the sight of the dank, peeling plaster and dangling, ripped-out electrical wires. It was like the room was reaching out for her with rotted, corpselike arms. I watched her take it all in. When her lips tightened, I suddenly realized that the dark tomblike space, with just the one window facing out on the square, matched our New York apartment’s layout. Mindy was big on cross-ventilation and natural light. She hated our apartment. Why hadn’t I noticed the unfortunate resemblance?

  “I know, it needs work. But you said if it was…”

  “I smell mold.”

  What a comedown. When we’d first heard about it—a small house in the village!—we imagined it would be like Gwened’s place up the lane. We’d fallen in love with those dark, low beams, lace-trimmed windows, and white hand-plastered walls hung with copper pans and Quimper plates. Although Gwened had described the years of work she’d done to restore her farmhouse, we hadn’t listened.

  It’s embarrassing to admit this, but we were under the impression that our house would somehow resemble hers. That it would have been left unattended, yet intact, like the gingerbread house in the Brothers Grimm fairy tale, ready for immediate occupancy once we dispatched the old crone standing by the oven door.

  But no. This was a wreck, a true disaster. This was not even a house—not really. It was once a house, and maybe could be again. But at the moment, the best you could say would be: an extreme fixer-upper. Gwened’s trail of cake crumbs had led us to a ruin. Which I should’ve known, but was too blind to see before signing on the dotted line.

  “The house has always had the most sun in the village,” said Gwened, implacable as ever. I could hear the steel in her voice. Now was not the time for vacillation. We were here to map out our plan of attack. “It will dry out when the old plaster is removed. The walls are stone. You cannot build a house like this anymore.”

  “I can’t breathe!” Racked by a coughing fit, Mindy clawed at her shoulder bag. Gwened frowned.

  “Can’t breathe!” Mindy blindly pushed past and rushed toward the door over creaking, groaning floorboards, which fortunately held up. I followed her out and supported her bag so she could dig out her inhaler. Wide-eyed, she sucked down a hit of albuterol, waited for half a minute, then hit the inhaler again.

  Giving an indignant wheeze, she shook her russet mane. “Great—house makes me asthmatic.” Her rapid, panicky breathing and eye-rolling were familiar to me from trips to the emergency room. Suddenly she gripped my forearm. “The baby! Do you think it’s hurting the baby?”

  I draped an arm around her shoulders while not quite touching them, knowing how that would only increase her claustrophobia. “Don’t worry. Baby’s fine. House is fine. It’s gonna be good. You heard Gwened
—and remember, it’s been shut up for five years. Give it some sunshine and a paint job. You’ll see…”

  I was almost convinced. But through the open door I could see Gwened and Franck deep in discussion and looking quite serious. Franck had done much of the interior carpentry in Gwened’s house to supplement the pittance he made leading charters on his sailboat. Our age, he’d been a high school teacher before moving to Belle Île with his wife, Ines. They’d been our great friends during our winter in the village and were excited to see us return. But the look on Franck’s face was grave.

  “Where will we get the money?” asked Mindy.

  “We don’t have to rush into anything,” I replied. “We can wait until next year before we start any renovation. By then, I’ll get a promotion and a raise…”

  “But the dollar is falling now.”

  Among the many curious things Mindy had taught me about France, an obsession with currency rates had to be the most arcane, right up there with spotting the difference between a skinned rabbit and a skinned cat in a Mouffetard butcher’s stall. But I caught on fast after a 3.41 franc-to-dollar ratio had translated into No croissants for breakfast, mon amour.

  That was during my first visit to France, back when America was weak. In the past year, between Gwened’s first letter about the house and my visit two months ago, the rate had gone to 10-to-1, in effect dropping the price by nearly two-thirds. Also during the year, with the goal of this place in mind—still unseen, but not unimagined—Mindy had landed a job at Glamour magazine and I had gotten a raise at MotorBoating & Sailing. We’d cut our expenses and saved every penny. We’d freelanced, applied for writing grants, entered contests.

  Somewhat shockingly, our efforts had paid off. Our novels-in-progress each won a $7,500 prize from James Michener’s Copernicus Society. I won a $500 award from the Secretary of Mexican Tourism for an article about Baja California and took home a set of luggage from the American Zipper Association (I’m not making this up) for a cartoon I’d drawn of a Central Park tent enclosure designed to house Donald Trump’s expanding ego.

  So much good stuff happened that we both came to believe that Belle Île and Kerbordardoué were affecting our luck. For instance, it seemed I couldn’t attend a press lunch or conference without winning the drawing for the door prize. Steak knife sets, free stays at industrial-park Ramada Inns, hot-air balloon rides. It was hard not to feel that we were suddenly living a charmed life, albeit one weirdly overstocked with knives.

  Just as our bank balance hit $15,500, the owners caved. It turned out they were five squabbling siblings, none of whom had ever lived in Kerbordardoué. Worn down by our long year and a half of hesitation, they threw up their hands and cut the price in half, to 150,000 francs—exactly $15,000 at the new rate. Taking this as an omen, I figured out how to piggyback a detour onto an overseas story for my magazine, flew over, spent a couple hours going over the house with Gwened and Franck, and… “Oh my god, what have I done?”

  Spent every penny we had and then some—forgetting to factor in that twelve-point-five percent tax, for starters.

  Gwened now strolled out the front door and smiled with all her considerable charisma. Inhaling deeply, spreading her arms wide, she said, “It’s a wonderful house, Mindy. You will be very happy here. I can feel it.”

  Loath to show weakness in front of her old professor, Mindy straightened up and puffed out her chest like a soldier on parade. “What do we do now? Is that man coming?”

  “Denis LeReveur should be here any moment.” Gwened turned on her heels and gave the house another once-over. “He is a sensitive young architect, and of course, he is Bellilois. That is the important thing for the renovation.”

  But being sensitive and young and Bellilois, Denny the Dreamer was late. We circled the square, eyeing the house, pacing off its length, and peering behind at the adjoining shed, its exposed stone wall showing signs of collapse. “Do we own this?” asked Mindy.

  “No,” said Gwened.

  “I’m worried it could bring down our wall. Maybe we can buy it?”

  What? Here we were, flat broke and looking at an expensive renovation, and Mindy wanted to expand our little empire. I didn’t know it, but this was the first indication that my wife had caught the French peasant’s disease: a compulsive desire to add to one’s holdings, regardless of reason or need.

  “I think not.” Gwened sounded brusque, wary. Was she, perhaps, feeling a bit guilty about what she’d gotten us into?

  More likely I was hearing the new Gwened. On my inspect-and-commit visit a couple of months ago, I’d been taken aback to see that she’d cut her hair. Once a shoulder-length swirl, it was almost brutally short. She’d also lost a lot of weight, twenty pounds or more. And since then she’d lost more. It had sharpened her chin and cheeks, and not entirely in a good way. Now I couldn’t help but wonder how much was the chemo and how much was the divorce.

  So far today Gwened hadn’t brought up either bombshell. It was all a guessing game. Although I’d reminded Mindy of what I’d heard and observed during my visit, I could tell that it still hadn’t sunk in or else she hadn’t quite believed me. Perhaps she felt my limited French was at fault. But even after we’d arrived and she’d seen that at least Gwened’s physical changes were real, Mindy had scrupulously avoided bringing them up. This was her beloved professor, after all, and mentor. When Gwened was ready, she’d talk.

  Not for me, such exquisite patience. I was at the end of mine, in a state of utter panic about my decision. Especially with Mindy blithely dreaming of buying new ruins, the question seemed unavoidable: Is Gwened—our mentor and muse and sponsor in Kerbordardoué—dying?

  • • •

  In May I’d sensed something different about Gwened, even when waving to her from the upper deck of the ferry. In person there were kisses, a little minuet of alternating cheeks, un, deux, trois…quatre. The fourth kiss among very close friends, a little late, was always a surprise to me. Then Gwened smiled and spoke in French, making the overture as if to see whether, by some miracle, Don had awakened this morning fluent at last.

  Stealing sidelong glimpses as she drove, I realized she’d cut her hair. She looked modern, younger. Well, a haircut will do that. I asked in French if her husband had made the trip.

  “No.”

  “He’s well?”

  “He’s well.”

  “And your son? Daniel?” Liking that she kept her answers short to allow me to establish a rhythm.

  “Superbe! If I could live twenty years longer, what I would give to see how he turns out.”

  This threw a wrench into my translation processes. Surely I’d misheard? I glanced at Gwened. She drove straight on, serene, but also awaiting my reply with a puckish smile. So she did say it, or something like it. Trying to construct a suitable response before too much time elapsed, I blurted out: “Peut-être c’est necessaire d’acheter un coeur artificiel.” Perhaps it’s necessary to buy an artificial heart. Whatever that meant.

  In Kerbordardoué she had wasted no time in showing me our prospective house, joined by Franck. With the electricity shut off, it made a terrible first impression. We lingered, like guests at a party no one has attended, trying to make conversation until dusk made it impossible to see.

  At her own door, Gwened asked me if I meditated. No? Well, if I would excuse her, she and Franck and his wife, Ines, would be in the dojo. Dojo? She smiled. “My old cowshed.”

  The mysteries continued. At dinner she served a miniature vegetarian meal that left me, ravenous from my travels, in despair afterward, lying on my bed with a hole in my stomach. What had happened to my Gwened, the toreador of home-cured ham?

  My mind was also crowded with other thoughts. We’d put Gwened to so much trouble already, yet I was now certain that Mindy would not want to buy the house, once I described it. Then I’d be alone with Gwened’s famous disappointed smile. Th
e prospect almost frightened me.

  The next morning, walking by Gwened’s bedroom, I saw a new black-and-white photo on her wall, of a middle-aged balding Japanese man in a plain white kimono, sitting cross-legged on a straw mat. This was not at all what I would have expected from my personal symbol of France. More than disappointment, I felt bushwhacked. Was this karma, irony, God’s idea of a joke? I already had a Sikh-turbaned, breath-of-fire yogi-turned-lawyer brother and a pair of lacto-ovo vegetarian sisters, plus a Christian Scientist mother who was a devotee of food faddist Adele Davis and libertarian cult goddess Ayn Rand. The last thing I expected was to have Kerbordardoué turn into a New Age commune.

  There was another tour of the house that morning, just as depressing, and then, after lunch, we took a walk down our valley, through an alley of cypresses to a meadow and a marsh. We continued along the base of grassy sandhills to our wide crescent beach, Donnant, bookended by steep cliffs, each rock face pierced with a knowing, somnolent eye: a camouflaged German gun emplacement.

  At the top of a tall dune, Gwened tucked herself into a hollow and gestured for me to take the one beside her. “Now you have been here long enough to remember what it is like. You have seen the house. What will you do?”

  “Go home, talk to Mindy, show her the pictures.”

  “Would you like to call her tonight?”

  The thought of Gwened’s stolid black telephone, which rang so infrequently that neither Mindy nor I ever recognized the bell, had never occurred to me. “I guess that would make sense.”

  “Because the notary doesn’t think the house will be on the market much longer at this price. He says it’s getting rare for any of the old houses to come open. It’s only the lack of land which has kept this one from being snapped up. Are you at all interested?”