The Provence Cure for the Brokenhearted

by Bridget Asher

  “There’s also a show on whales today,” Abbot said. “Whales have retractable nipples. They’re mammals, like us.”

  “Baseball players are mammals, too!” my dad said.

  “But they don’t have retractable nipples,” Abbot explained, undeterred.

  “They don’t,” I admitted. Abbot is a very smart kid, and in the world of kid-logic, he’d won this argument. “Whales,” I said. “Blubber it is!”

  “Bring on the blubber!” my father said.

  My mother turned away from us. “I hear your sister calling,” she said. I could, too, a shrill voice coming from the upper reaches of the house. She started marching toward the stairs then called to me over her shoulder. “Don’t dawdle!”

  My father reached out and touched my arm. He lowered his voice. “She told you about the fire, no doubt. She’s upset. You know how crazy your mother is about that place.” He’d never been to that place, not once. The house had become a point of contention between my parents—at first because my father was always too busy to go and later because it represented my mother’s abandonment of us after my father’s affair. “It turns out the woman in charge over there fell and broke something.”

  “She told me, but she didn’t mention Véronique,” I said. Véronique’s house stood about two hundred feet from ours and had also been in the family for generations. Over scattered summers of my mother’s childhood, she and Véronique had grown up together. My mother didn’t have siblings and Véronique had only brothers, and so they’d said that they were like sisters. A few years after Véronique’s divorce and after we’d stopped visiting, she’d renovated her larger house, turning it into a bed and breakfast. In return for minimal upkeep, she used my mother’s house for overflow during the summer months. This was the arrangement that had stuck and was still in place. “What did she break? Did it have to do with the fire?”

  “I don’t know the details,” my father said. “Your mother’s being emotional. I just warn you. She’s more hyped up than usual.” Hyped up, that was the expression my father used to describe what I saw as my mother’s restless longing for something else. For what, I don’t know. I knew only my own longing, the kind I’d likely inherited from her. I knew the shape it took now—I longed for Henry, for him to come back to life.

  My father’s affair didn’t strike me as being filled with this kind of longing. I’ve always assumed that he stumbled into the affair, that it happened the way pilots are taught a plane crash happens. It’s never just one thing but a number of contributing factors at once—ice on the wings, coupled with an electrical issue and some clouds.… Or maybe it was, more simply, a midlife crisis. He’d saved my mother from the typing pool, and here was his chance to relive that drama. His affair was with a woman at work, though I’m not sure what she did. She was younger, per usual, newly divorced. He had a soft spot for women in need. Did this other woman need him in a way my mother had outgrown?

  My mother picked him off immediately. He was a useless liar—part of the plane crash scenario—and, too, his inability to lie proficiently is probably a good trait. At the very least it indicated that he wasn’t practiced in it. At six, I broke him down under cross-examination about Santa Claus. I blamed him for his affair but forgave him, too. The affair wrecked him deeply, and my mother’s disappearance nearly killed him.

  After my father’s affair was revealed, my mother fled to Provence, and we weren’t sure if she was going to come back. Elysius and I pushed my father on this point, and finally he said, “I guess you should be prepared to make a decision between the two of us. Who knows how this cookie will crumble?” He was fiddling with a handheld can opener at the time and a dented can of soup—baffled by the instrument. In my mind, at that moment, I picked him, but only because he was there and I saw something valiant in that. It’s easier for daughters to blame mothers, and mothers to blame daughters—I’m not sure why.

  When my mother came home, she forgave my father and he forgave her for leaving—although we were all just so relieved that she was home, there was no need for forgiveness, really. And our upended family life, abruptly and without ceremony, righted itself again. My parents’ marriage proved sturdy—but sadly so, like a harshly pruned dogwood.

  “Mom will be fine,” I told my father now. “She always is.”

  He nodded. “True,” he said. “Very true.”

  Abbot pulled the satiny cummerbund and bow tie from my hands. “Pop-pop can help me with these things,” he said.

  “Sure I can,” my father said.

  I looked around the kitchen one last time, and just as my father and Abbot were about to head off to the den, I paused. “Do you remember my wedding?” I asked my father.

  He and Abbot both looked up at me, surprised. I rarely mentioned things so closely tied to Henry like this.

  “Yes,” my father said, sadness in his voice. “You were beautiful.”

  “You kept referring to my veil as the wedding hat and the rehearsal as the warm-up drill.”

  “I’ve never been good with words,” he said.

  “They saw each other the morning of the wedding,” Abbot said, “which you’re not supposed to do, because it’s unlucky.” Abbot knew all the details of our wedding because instead of bedtime stories I told him Henry stories. The Henry stories were the only time I’d allowed myself to linger over memories, for Abbot’s sake. I wanted him to remember his father.

  “But they were lucky,” my father said, “because they found each other in the first place. It’s a big world full of people.” My father wasn’t a wordsmith, but he could get things right.

  I felt suddenly teary, so I changed the subject. “How much trouble am I in with my sister?” I asked.

  “Moderate to heavy,” he said, laying the cummerbund on the table and trying to press it flat. “I’d brace yourself.”

  lysius’s house had high ceilings fitted with recessed lighting to strike the art that filled the walls. Banks of windows overlooked the surrounding hills, stands of thick oaks, their own well-tended gardens. The furniture was spare and modern. Four of my living rooms could fit in Elysius’s living room. As sleek as it all was, I couldn’t imagine calling it home—maybe because Henry and I had a definition of home that didn’t include the word sleek. I always felt a little disoriented and ill at ease in my sister’s house. My mother, on the other hand, felt completely at home. She told me once, a little drunk on Dewar’s, “I’d have made a wonderful rich person.” I told her that everyone would—I meant it politically. She shook her head and raised her finger in the air. She was right. Some are more suited for it than others.

  I tapped on the door to the master bedroom and opened it. “Sorry I’m late,” I said.

  My sister was sitting on the edge of the bed, looking wistful, cradling a half-filled glass of mimosa with an orange slice floating in it. Elysius had creamy skin and my mother’s honey-colored hair. It was swept in a loose but stiff swirl at the back of her head. Her ivory gown was long and fitted, with a plunging neckline.

  She smiled up at me. “You look pretty,” she said, and that’s how I knew she was drunk. I didn’t look pretty. My hair was still frizzing; my makeup wasn’t finished. Normally Elysius would have jumped up from the bed and stridden over to fix me. Elysius was a natural strider—long legged, purposeful. She strode everywhere. She even was striding at Henry’s funeral, which I hated her for at the time, but I turned on a lot of people for the smallest of things that day—the way they tilted their heads when they talked to me, too much sympathy. I was angry at my father for coughing into his fist, and then realized I was really just angry that Henry was gone.

  “How many mimosas has she had?” I whispered to my mother while glancing around the room counting empty glasses. “And where are the other bridesmaids?” I realized that I wanted them here—an excitable distraction.

  “She sent the maid of honor and the other two bridesmaids down to the lawn to coordinate with the woman with the BlackBerry,” my mother
said. “She’s so efficient with that little handheld machine!”

  “Did you tell her about Nix?” Elysius asked.

  “That was your idea,” my mother said. “I thought I’d leave it to you.”

  “Nix?” I said.

  “Jack Nixon,” Elysius said. “He’s coming to the wedding, and I didn’t let him bring a date. No plus one.”

  “Jack Nixon? And he goes by the name Nix?” I said.

  “Well, back in college, they called him Crook,” Elysius said, smoothing her hair. “I kind of told him that you’d be here, and that maybe you two would hit it off, and, well, it’s a blind date without the pressure of a blind date, really.”

  “Did you fix me up without my permission with a guy named Crook Nixon?” I asked.

  “He’s a sweetheart and a liberal. He does nonprofit work. Don’t get all arch!” my sister said.

  “I’m not arguing with his politics one way or the other. I don’t like people trying to fix me up without my consent—on principle.” My voice was pitched. Did I sound as rattled as I felt? How was it possible that my sister could immediately set me on edge?

  “If we don’t try to fix you up, you’ll never date again. You have to keep in some kind of dating shape. Can I tell you honestly—your natural flirting skills, which were suspect to begin with, are really starting to atrophy.”

  “How do you know what my flirting skills are like? I don’t flirt with you!” I paused. “My natural flirting skills were suspect to begin with? What’s that mean?”

  Elysius rolled her eyes.

  “Nix is very handsome,” my mother said. “I saw a picture. And he can’t help that his last name is Nixon. You could just talk to him. What harm would that do?”

  “I don’t want to be a charity case,” I said. “That’s not too much to ask.”

  My sister teetered ever so slightly, waggled her face, raised her V-for-victory fingers over her head, and said, “ ‘I am not a crook.’ ”

  “Seriously,” I said, “how many mimosas?”

  “She’s fine!” my mother said.

  “I’m fine!”

  Flustered, I switched gears. “Dad told me about Véronique. Is she okay? Was it related to the fire?”

  Elysius glanced at my mother as if they held a secret.

  “Her ankle. I don’t think it was related, but I don’t know,” my mother said. “I tracked down one of her sons. He was sketchy about the details. He hadn’t seen her yet but was on his way.”

  During our last visit, Véronique’s younger son dared me to climb up the mountain to a small chapel haunted by a hermit whose ears had been chopped off and who was later beheaded. I remembered the chapel now, as if still feeling the force of memories set loose by the mention of the house fire. The chapel was dark as a cave, the dim echo of our voices. The boy slipped his hand around mine and led me to the altar, where we held our breaths and waited for the hermit to appear as a ghost. Then he confessed that the hermit was a good ghost. “Écoute,” he kept saying. “Do you hear him whispering your name?” I listened so hard that I thought I did.

  “We can talk about it later,” my mother said, then smiled at Elysius. “Today’s your day.”

  “It’s almost time, isn’t it?” Elysius said. She stood up, with the slightest wobble, and looked at herself in the full-length mahogany-framed mirror. She wasn’t much of a drinker, I should add—unlike my mother, who could put it away. “I wish Daniel weren’t being such a workaholic. He’s like Dad, you know. Am I marrying a version of my father?”

  “Daniel is a very nice guy,” I said, sticking to my promise.

  “And you could do worse than a version of your father,” my mother said, a little defensively.

  “Have you seen Charlotte?” Elysius said. “Where is she? I just don’t have any patience for her today. Can’t she just let me have a day, one single day, without some crapola from her?”

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “She and I had an argument about communism, of all things,” she said. “Her hair has become an indicator of her mood. It is now dyed blue with black tips. She’s a walking mood ring.”

  “And what does blue with black tips mean?” I asked.

  “It means moping. Her mother couldn’t stand her moping around anymore and sent her to live with us for the summer—as if we love moping—at our wedding!” Charlotte’s mother wasn’t particularly well balanced. She’d tried going back to school for various advanced degrees. She was often going to various retreats when Daniel felt she should be going through some kind of rehab. For what? He didn’t really know. In any case, Elysius and Daniel always picked up the slack. Elysius resented it, but she knew that it meant the world to Daniel and so, by and large, tried to keep her mouth shut. She didn’t want to have children of her own, but there was something to be gained by the title of motherhood, and she was happy enough to have that common ground to share with other women when the conversations turned—as she complained they inevitably did—to kids.

  “Why is she moping?” I asked.

  “A: She’s Charlotte. She mopes.”

  “She’s a good kid,” I said. This was my refrain, really—Charlotte’s a good kid. She’ll turn out just fine. She’ll own all of us one day once she sets her mind to ruling the world. I didn’t know her very well, but I liked her and had confidence in her—a luxury afforded me perhaps by some distance.

  “And B: Adam Briskowitz,” Elysius said. “She’s obsessed with him.”

  “She has a boyfriend?” I asked.

  My mother sat down and rubbed her bunion through the leather of her high heels. She refused to wear comfortable shoes, claiming that they made her look orthopedically aged. “She doesn’t have a boyfriend. She has a disaster. He’s going to college next year.”

  “Heidi, go round her up and make sure she’s getting ready. You’ll be able to talk her out of showing up in camouflage. Sometimes, I swear she’s trying to get profiled as a school shooter.”

  “Okay,” I said, picking up a brush and running it through my hair. “I need another coat of makeup, I think.”

  My mother looked at the clock on the bedside table. “We’re supposed to be lining up on the deck so we’re in the right order for the procession.”

  I started for the door.

  “Wait,” my mother said. “Your private toast for Elysius. The one that you and Abbot worked on?”

  “My toast!” my sister said, raising her glass.

  “Yes,” I said, and then patted my dress as if it had pockets. “I think I lost it!”

  My mother looked at me suspiciously—was this a sign that I was backsliding? Henry was the one who’d kept track of everything. If he’d been alive, he would have found the toast, even probably typed it up for me and kept it folded in his pocket until I needed it. He wore a watch so I didn’t have to. He kept a real to-do list—for both of us—whereas I would start a to-do list with things I’d already done so that I’d have the pleasure of crossing them out. I was dependent on Henry, even though this made me feel like a child. “I don’t need you to herd me around like a lost sheep!” I’d say. Sometimes this started a little argument that he usually won, because I did, in fact, need to be herded. And sometimes it was part of a larger argument between us—maybe both of us were afraid I would drift too far, as my mother once had.

  Maybe it would have been better if I had lost the Cake Shop—if I’d hit rock bottom and needed to get back up on my own two feet in order for Abbot and me to survive. I knew, deep down, that Daniel was right—I should have been pouring myself into my work. In the past, I’d done just that when I was trying to mourn a loss. Henry had loved that about me, that I could turn my sadness into something beautiful. He would sometimes confess at the end of the day that he’d watched me from the small window in the door while I was swimming in my work, without any sense of self-consciousness. I lost track of time sometimes then, too, but Henry said I did it in a graceful way, “a thing of beauty.” I was afraid to work lik
e that now, afraid to look up at the empty pane of glass.

  It was hard to say what this lost toast meant, exactly. Regardless, my mother knew that I was still a mess, that I hadn’t really even begun to recover from Henry’s death. In all honesty, I wasn’t sure that she had fully recovered, either. She loved Henry, deeply. She called him her boy. Daniel was too close in age with her and so clearly a man when she met him. But Henry was her boy. She once whispered to me, “I couldn’t have saved him.” “Of course not,” I’d said. We all shared the mostly unspoken language of guilt. My family and his, too—we passed it among ourselves with quiet absolutions. There was nothing we could have done. It was an accident, a fluke. We couldn’t have stopped it.

  And so, with no reference to Henry except this very associative one—my lost toast wouldn’t have been lost if Henry were here—my mother reached out and held my hand and said, “I miss him, but he’s here. He really is here with us.”

  My sister looked at me and then away, as if to give me privacy. I wondered what kind of expression of grief I was wearing.

  A toast, I thought. I should give my sister a toast—a real toast. The only thought that came to me was this: Don’t die on each other. Was that what I’d scribbled down on the note I’d lost? I took a step forward and said, “You have beautiful teeth and you give wonderful presents. And Abbot and I love you.”

  Elysius tilted her head, her eyes glassy. She walked over to me and cupped my face in her hands. “My sweet sister. My Heidi. That was a bullshit toast,” she said, “but it almost made me cry.”

  walked down the long hall past one beautiful bedroom and then another beautiful bedroom. But I stopped before I got to Charlotte’s door and leaned against the wall for a moment, just to feel something stable hold me up. Nix? I thought. I shook my head.