The Provence Cure for the Brokenhearted

by Bridget Asher

  Eventually, I was able to whisper that I felt sorry for him. “I got to hold the child inside of me, and you never did.” It seemed like a gift to have been able to carry the baby with me, for a short time.

  “Good God,” he said, and he got out of bed and paced. “You cannot be sorry in any way. I’m only a beggar here.” I understood what he meant. He was a beggar. He’d gotten more than his share. We’re all beggars, really. He climbed back into bed and put his face next to mine on the pillow. He was so beautiful—his soft blue eyes, his beautiful teeth that were so very slightly crooked.

  Then there was the sterile hour that Henry spent alone while I was having the small surgery that often accompanies a miscarriage—as if the emotional loss weren’t enough, there was the physicality of it all. Henry read about sports. He told me later that he’d never felt farther away from me. He looked around the waiting room: old men turned inward, women his mother’s age knitting some fabric out of idle chatter, the news prattling on in high spirits. He didn’t know that what would come next would be a flood of miscarriage stories. It seemed like everyone we knew could tell at least two miscarriage stories: mothers, daughters, children, wives, friends. Henry said, “Miscarriage. It’s another secret society, like the secret society of married people, but this one we joined by accident, just by living.”

  “How many more secret societies are there?” I asked him.

  “I don’t want to know.”

  I would find out later about the secret society of young widows—the way people would introduce one young widow to another, how they would want you to talk about your losses. How many times did my mother tell me that I should spend time with my Aunt Giselle? “Maybe she’ll have something important to say.” I already knew the truth, that when it is only you and another widow, there is nothing to say. Nothing at all.

  After the operation, there was a leak in the house. Henry tore up the bathroom tiles, went rummaging through the house’s piping looking for the source of the leak. Henry wanted desperately to make something right.

  And I tore into pastries. My mind was filled with elaborate designs. I created gorgeous wedding cakes. We had the Cake Shop by this point, but we hadn’t yet developed more than a small, local following. Henry called in professional photographers. The business began to rev up.

  A few months before Henry died, he confessed to me that he still wanted another child. “I don’t care about money or stuff. And I don’t mind the diapers or the sleeplessness, of course. I am not in it for the pride in that first step or any of that. It’s more of you that I want—one more angle, one more topic of conversation, one more knowing glance we give each other in the day before we both fall asleep. That’s what children offer, isn’t it? Isn’t that what Abbot’s given us—a lifetime of more conversation, our own common ground? He’s given us more of each other. Is that wrong, to want more of that? Is it greedy?” His face was so open, his eyes clear.

  “I don’t care if it’s wrong,” I said. “Do you?”

  “We could really hone our greediness, really blow past our amateur status, and play on the professional greed tour.”

  And so we started trying again.

  Leading up to his death, we felt new to each other, and because no one else knew that we were trying to get pregnant, our sex life took on a kind of covertness that made it feel secretive, urgent.

  “Don’t you feel like we’re romping?” I said. “I just keep thinking of the word romp.”

  When Henry died, I was waiting to find out if I was pregnant.

  I wasn’t.

  There was the blood proof. Another loss. Gone.

  What would I have done with a new baby to raise without Henry? I didn’t care about the details. I didn’t care about how hard it might be for me and for Abbot, too. I knew only that I’d had a chance to have more of him—to have life in the face of death—but then only death. One more part of Henry, one more potentiality, lost.

  found myself walking into a dress boutique with my mother, Elysius, and Charlotte a few days later, an event orchestrated by guilt. Normally this would be the kind of thing that I would find any excuse to avoid, and certainly, so close on the heels of our brunch—“You have to keep living in the world,” and “Every woman needs one lost summer in her life,” and “You weren’t heartbroken yet.” I was feeling cornered, but guilt was creeping in, and my mother knew how to work with guilt. She was going to keep circling until she got what she wanted. Right now, I wasn’t taking Charlotte to the house in Provence. I didn’t know if Charlotte would want to go if given the chance, and, furthermore, she had no idea that there was a possibility of an offer, but still I felt I was denying her something. And I felt sorry for my sister, too, what with the honeymoon on hold, and so I was also doing a good deed by helping to orchestrate a distraction.

  Elysius and my mother charged into a large, airy, overpriced shop called Bitsy Bette’s Boutique, occasionally stopping for a brief moment, like butterflies alighting for two wing flaps, to pinch some fabric and decide whether it was “delicate” or “luscious” or “dreamy.” Charlotte and I followed with much sighing and eye-rolling. Charlotte despised the place more than I did, but every time Elysius or my mother remarked on an article of clothing, Charlotte and I would whisper to each other the store’s slogan, “Forever elegant.”

  Elysius turned to Charlotte and said, “I’ll buy you anything you want in here. A couple of new summer outfits. Your choice! Anything in the whole store.”

  Charlotte’s eyes widened with fear.

  “I’m serious,” Elysius said, misreading the fear for excitement. “Anything!”

  Charlotte looked pale—paler than usual. A whiter shade of pale, one might say—and I’d never understood that lyric until this moment.

  Charlotte pulled on my sleeve. “Make it stop.”

  “Just pick something and let her buy it,” I whispered. “It shouldn’t take too long.”

  “You don’t even know,” Charlotte said. “Time has no rules in this place. Years can pass and she doesn’t even know it.”

  It wasn’t long before all of the sales staff was fawning over Elysius and my mother. The fawning was so thorough that I was pretty sure they worked on commission and that they’d made some money off these two in the past—a lot of money. There was a regal woman a good six inches taller than I was and reed thin named Rosellen, a horsey blonde named Pru, and a man, Phillip, who was bogged down shoving shoes onto an old woman’s foot, trying to glom on to the Elysius conversation from afar. They didn’t look at either Charlotte or me.

  “You should see the silk dupioni bolero!” Rosellen said. “Let me go get it in your size.” Elysius’s size was obviously common knowledge here.

  “Oh, but you know,” Pru said, undermining Rosellen, who’d gone off in search of the bolero, “you’d really look better in the pleated georgette cocktail dress.”

  “Don’t forget the tulle with gardenia appliqué,” Phillip cried out. “I’ll get it when I’m through here.” This was a nice way of saying, Hurry up, old lady. I’ve got real paying customers on my hands.

  “I’d love to get something for Charlotte,” Elysius said.

  “Something a little youthful,” my mother added. “And something for you, too, Heidi. Something lightweight and cool.”

  The three salespeople froze, as if they’d just seen Charlotte and me for the first time. She was wearing her baggy camo shorts and a suicidal-smiley-face shirt, and before leaving the house she’d slipped on a pair of authentic knee-high fishing boots. I was wearing jeans and a tank top with a sweater over it, an old, ratty cashmere sweater. I wore that sweater a lot those days. It was soft, familiar.

  If Elysius knew Charlotte better, she’d have been aware that Charlotte didn’t want to be youthful anymore. She didn’t want to wear old-lady Bitsy Bette’s Boutique clothes and look “forever elegant” either. She wanted to be grown up, deep, appreciated. She was well aware that the real world is painful and violent and sometimes ugl
y, and she needed her awareness of this to be evident. She couldn’t go fluffing around in youthful Bitsy Bette’s Boutique–wear. But Elysius could go on these kicks to help others. She saw it as an act of generosity. I’d been the target of many of these kicks throughout my life. When I was little, she was the one who gave me bangs. In middle school, she gave me my first makeover. She made me wear makeup to the roller rink, where some other kid called me a “clown whore.” She tagged along and then commandeered my prom dress shopping. Luckily, she was disdainful of weddings when I got married, not being married herself, and so boycotted it, much to my relief. Her desire to fix me up with Jack Nixon came from this same instinct. Although it seemed like she was trying to help—and I was pretty sure she thought she was—it came across as a criticism, as if she were saying, “You’re a mess. Let me take over for a few minutes and make your life better … more like mine.” Charlotte and I had Elysius’s do-good bullying in common. Our suffering was an unspoken understanding between us.

  “Do you want to take a peek at the stretch-twill ankle-length pants and/or walking short?” Rosellen asked Charlotte. There were so many things wrong with luxury stretch-twill ankle pants that I wouldn’t know where to begin. Stretchy twill? I imagined twill grasping at women’s doughy thighs. And then some sadist thought to fashion stretchy twill into ankle pants? Poor Charlotte.

  And then Phillip added, “Oh, I know, the authentic crochet-trimmed sweater vests. You can’t go wrong.”

  An authentic crochet-trimmed sweater vest? As opposed to an … inauthentic crochet-trimmed sweater vest? “You couldn’t go wrong if you were eighty years old,” Charlotte muttered, and then she whispered to me, “Did Bitsy Bette’s Boutique have the authentic crochet crocheted on by authentic little old ladies in nursing home sweatshops?”

  “Charlotte, what do you think? Would you like to try that on?” Elysius asked.

  “Forever elegant!” Charlotte said.

  “There’s also the belted dress,” Pru said, noting the sarcasm. “It’s youthful, but elegant.”

  And here I could no longer stop myself. I blurted, “It looks like a dress on a leash.”

  The salespeople stiffened.

  Charlotte laughed. It was the first time I’d heard her laugh in as long as I could remember.

  I imagined telling this story to Henry: “And then I said that it looked like a dress on a leash!” I had a backlog of such stories and nowhere for them to go.

  Elysius said, “I think it’s very tailored and polished. One day soon, you’re going to have to start thinking about outfits for college interviews. This is a good start!”

  “And what size are you?” Pru asked Charlotte. This was a painful moment, and I wondered for a brief second if it was an unfair payback for Charlotte’s laugh at my dress-on-a-leash line. It had a tone that seemed to indicate that it was. Charlotte is bigger than Elysius. No one has Elysius’s obsessive-compulsive workout habits. But because Charlotte was wearing baggy camo shorts and baggy shirts with suicidal smiley faces on them, it was impossible to tell how much bigger she was than her stepmother.

  Charlotte shrugged.

  The three salespeople were staring at her. (The old woman had been left to buckle her own shoes.)

  “Where should we start?” Rosellen said.

  “I don’t even know,” Phillip said.

  Pru said, “A ten, a twelve?”

  “Really?” Elysius said.

  “Just try a few sizes,” my mother said, trying to intervene gently. “Every store varies so much these days, no one knows what size they are anymore!”

  Pru grabbed a few different sizes of the belted dress and led Charlotte to the dressing rooms.

  Once she was out of sight, I said, “Let’s not go with the belted dress or the ankle pants. It’s not her thing.”

  “But it could be her thing, if she tried,” Elysius said. “She needs to look professional every once in a while. Refined. She’s Daniel’s daughter and she needs to start acting like it.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked.

  “We’re not some middle class family hanging out in a remodeled basement playing GameCube,” she said. “Jesus, have you looked at her? She can barely make eye contact. She lives in her own head, and who knows what it’s like in there?”

  “She’s just going through a phase, dear. Don’t you remember some of your artsy phases?” my mother said, the second time she’d mentioned Elysius’s phases in just a few days. This was, I assumed, some kind of delicious payback for my mother, who’d suffered Elysius’s phases—her moving to New York to be an artist had surely caused a lot of sleepless nights.

  Elysius stared at her. She didn’t want her days as an aspiring artist to be referred to as a phase. This was dangerous territory.

  I diverted. “She’s just trying to be taken seriously,” I said.

  “I am trying to take her seriously. One day, someone will take her to France, and what will the French think of her?” Elysius said.

  “I don’t really care what the nation of France might think of Charlotte, and neither does the nation of France!” I said.

  “She could use some adult touches, some refinement!” Elysius looked me up and down. “You could use some refinement yourself.”

  “Your way to live isn’t the only way to live. Your decor has all the coziness of a morgue. You know that, right?” I regretted it the moment I said it. But I didn’t apologize. I just walked away.

  “Girls,” my mother said.

  “Fine,” Elysius said. “But I’m trying. I am trying.” She was trying. I could tell that much. It wasn’t my place. Motherhood is hard. Stepmotherhood is a land all its own. Elysius was still saying things, but I’d stopped hearing them. I didn’t want to talk about this. Moments like these, a buzzing would rise in my ears and the world went muffled, and I felt like saying, “Henry’s dead, so you’ll have to speak up.”

  Charlotte appeared in the belted dress, wearing the fishing boots. The belt was too tight. She looked like she’d been shoved into a tube. Her cheeks were bright pink.

  “You look beautiful!” Elysius said, with too much desperation in her voice.

  “We could go a size bigger,” Phillip said.

  “I hate it!” Charlotte said. “It’s awful and corporate.”

  “Look,” Elysius said. “I had to work to get where I am today. You have been given everything. And you’re squandering it.” This comment was irrational and everyone knew it. The salespeople suddenly dispersed. They’d seen this argument before.

  “To squander,” I said to Charlotte, trying to bring back some levity. “It’s probably on your SAT vocab list.” I hadn’t realized how bad things were between Elysius and Charlotte. This was a car wreck.

  “I’m not squandering anything,” she said to Elysius. “You squander our money on all of this stuff that doesn’t matter. Stuff, stuff, stuff. This dress costs one-hundred and sixty-eight dollars and it’s just a stupid dress on a leash! But if you want me to wear it, I’ll wear it. Let’s buy it. Go ahead. Let’s squander.”

  I’d never seen this side of Charlotte, this assertiveness. She stood there in the dress, folded her arms across her chest. She was on the verge of tears but was refusing to cry. Her face was stoic except for an occasional bobble of her chin.

  Elysius stared at her and then at me and back to her. Some new customers were buzzing at the entranceway to the store.

  “Um, okay,” Pru said. “Why don’t you go back to the dressing room, and then we’ll ring it up.”

  “I’ll wear it now. Thank you,” Charlotte said.

  “Charlotte,” Elysius said. “Just take it off. I won’t buy it.”

  “I’ll wear it now. Thank you,” Charlotte said.

  “I’ll go back with her,” my mother offered.

  “No, thank you,” Charlotte said.

  It was this moment when I felt my loss lift slightly. Here was Charlotte in pain, and she was showing her pain, not hiding it. Although her
pain wasn’t the same as mine, it was the same. It was dark and deep. It was beautiful. And what if the world has only so much suffering to offer? If so, Charlotte was shouldering more than her share, and it allowed me to take a breath.

  The people at the front of the store were inching back toward us. Elysius glanced over her shoulder. “Damn it, Charlotte,” she whispered. It was obvious Elysius knew these people—a perky young woman in a spiky haircut, pushing a stroller, talking to her husband—I could see only the beefy back of the man in a pink polo shirt.

  “Okay,” Elysius said, fishing out her wallet, “we’ll just wear this home, then.” She put her card on the counter.

  Pru looked at her and then began ringing it up. Rosellen disappeared and then reappeared with a bag of Charlotte’s clothes, retrieved from the dressing room. She handed it to Charlotte with more tenderness than I’d have given her credit for. Charlotte still wasn’t crying, an incredible act of restraint. She held her chin up high.

  My mother took the bag from Charlotte. “I’ll hold this for you,” she said, trying to be helpful.

  Elysius folded up the receipt and said, “Let’s go out this other way,” pointing in the opposite direction of the woman with the stroller.

  The ride home was quiet. I sat next to Charlotte in the backseat.

  At one point, I reached over and gave her shoulder a light pinch. “That was one way to cut the trip short.”

  She gave me a sad half smile and pinched me back. “Forever elegant,” she said.

  “Forever,” I said.

  hat night when I was putting Abbot to bed—the dictionary back on his bedside table—he asked for a Henry story. It had been a long day and I wasn’t up for a long story. I said, “Well … when your dad was a kid, his parents would sometimes take them to their friend’s house on a lake in New Hampshire in the summer. There was a farm next door that had about six Great Pyrenees, huge white dogs that worked the farm. They dug little pits in the yard. And when he and his brother Jim rode by on their bikes, the dogs would come bounding out, howling, all joyfully. They were so happy to see them, but they were so big, and they skidded on the pavement. They were terrifying with all of their happiness, and your dad said it was like trying to ride a bike through a big-dog avalanche. Can you imagine all those massive white dogs coming at you all at once?”