The Provence Cure for the Brokenhearted

by Bridget Asher

  But Henry wasn’t here to help strike that balance. I had to make up for his absence and worry for two. What would happen if Abbot did touch them and then later regretted it? Would he melt down? Was this a breakthrough, or was he not himself really yet, still dazed by the knocks to his head? If I had to worry for two, didn’t I also have to encourage for two as well? I felt paralyzed. Finally, I just blurted, “Do it, Abbot! You’re a kid. Do what kids do!”

  Abbot stared up at me, baffled, as if he had no idea what kids do.

  “They will not bite you,” Julien said gently. “They feel like rubber.” Julien reached out and pushed his hand to the fence near a warthog’s nose. The warthog shoved its snout into Julien’s hand, its tusks scraping against the fence. “They are ugly but very tender.”

  Abbot looked up at Julien, and then he pulled his hands out of his pockets. He lifted one hand and then flattened it, just as Julien had, against one of the holes in the fencing. Another warthog wobbled up on his little hooves and pressed against the fence, then nuzzled Abbot’s palm, probably rooting for food.

  Abbot turned around but kept his hand pressed to the warthog’s grunting mouth. I thought for a second, Is this the miracle? Is he enchanted? Because there was Abbot, biting his bottom lip with his two oversized front teeth, smiling, and then laughing. “It’s a real snout!” he shouted. “A real live snout!”

  hen you’ve felt shut down and then begin to open back up, what comes alive first? You think of all the usual suspects: the senses, the heart, the mind, the soul. But then maybe all of these things are so interconnected that you can’t differentiate a stirring of the heart from a scent, the rustling of the soul from a breeze across your skin, a thought from a feeling, a feeling from a prayer.

  If I were pressed now to pinpoint a moment when I began to open up again, I don’t know that I could. Maybe it was the jolt of being terrified in the rain after the robbery. Maybe it was the gravity and expanse of the mountain. Maybe it was in the bakery, amid the heavy scent of bread in the oven and carmelized sugar and cocoa. Or was it watching my son, doubly blessed on his head, holding his hand up to the rubbery snout of a warthog?

  Or was it, quite simply, while eating?

  That night, we ate a Provençal feast at the long table in the dining room, dimly lit by the late-day sun. The chairs were uncomfortable. The seats were lumpy. They put you at the wrong height and tipped you forward. But I was so tired, so hungry, I allowed the seat to seat me at the angle it wanted.

  There were no guests, no spare archaeologists, and so it was just the three of us with Véronique and Julien. Charlotte set out the bread I’d bought at the bakery with a grainy, dark spread made of crushed olives to put on the slices.

  Julien walked Abbot through the syrups that sat on one of the lowboys in a metal tray, the kind that milk may have been delivered in once upon a time, with a metal handle. But these were bottles of thick syrups—blueberry, mint, raspberry … He taught Abbot and Charlotte how to mix the syrups with water to make sugary-sweet non-carbonated drinks, the syrups swirling and thinning to just the right shade of blue or green or deep purple.

  Véronique then limped into the room, placed the Crock-Pot on the center trivet. When she pulled away the lid, a breath escaped, and the room filled, and my mind emptied.

  I could see the pale gold chicken resting in its deep sauce of tomatoes, garlic, peppers. I could smell the garlic, wine, and fennel. Véronique served and the juices ran sparkling to the edges of my plate, carrying a hint of citrus. And the smell bloomed.

  “Lemon?” I asked.

  “No, orange,” she said. “This is chicken. It is common.” Véronique put the serving spoon back in the Crock-Pot and seemed to wave the contents away as she sat. “There’s more, if you like.” She seemed disdainful of the meal, which also included beautiful russet potatoes and a brimming salad. It was as if this was what she cooked when she didn’t really feel like cooking.

  I began to eat, and it was like eating for the first time since Henry’s death. Why now? Was it because I was someplace else? Was it because my senses had already begun to give in? Was this what it was to feel enchanted?

  The first bite was almost too much for me, so much flavor, and I was so hungry. Julien offered a bottle of rosé from a local vineyard. I said, “Yes, please.” He poured me a glass, and I took a long drink and let it all wash down. I usually avoid rosé, tending to think of it as too girly, too sweet. But the Provence rosés were complicated, the cool bringing out the fruit, but not allowing it to topple into sugary sweet.

  I couldn’t remember anything, not the day, not the night. I was entirely focused on what was in front of me. With the next bite the sweetness of the onions and peppers swelled quickly with the lightly salted, melting chicken. The orange and fennel came later but finished the mouthful sweetly.

  I looked over at Abbot, who was head-down and shoveling. This was its own type of compliment. Abbot is fine, I thought to myself. Look at him. He’s fine. He’d washed his hands before eating, per usual, but he didn’t scrub them. He’s fine.

  Julien said, “This is a meal of genius.”

  “No,” Véronique said. “It is simple.”

  “It’s so good,” Charlotte said. “I won’t even be able to ever explain it!”

  I, myself, was speechless.

  And then the cakes. Véronique set them out, one little cake after the next, a long seemingly endless row that ran the length of the table. I picked up the citron tart and tasted it. It was almost how I remembered my mother’s tarts tasting that fall when she came home from Provence, and I followed her around the kitchen. “My mother made French desserts after she came back … and we almost got it right. We were close,” I said to the air.

  Véronique looked at me and then Julien. She raised her fork in the air. “She started baking when she came home?” she asked.

  “Yes.” I nodded. “It’s when I first started baking myself.”

  “Yes,” she said. “Your mother told me that you have a bakery.”

  “I don’t do much baking anymore, but I’m a pastry chef, by trade.”

  Véronique nodded. “So that is what stays. How funny, these things.”

  “What things?”

  “No things,” she said. “Eat. Enjoy.”

  I caught Charlotte staring at me from the other side of the table. “So you’re really tasting this, right?” she said. “I’d hate to have to describe it all to you later.”

  “Yes,” I said. “I’m here.” And I thought of the verb “to be,” être. I thought of being. I thought, Here I am. In the present. I am.

  “Are you okay?” Julien asked.

  I probably looked a little crazed. Glassy-eyed, I imagined. Exhausted and enthralled.

  Without thinking, I said, “I am. I’m amming.”

  He looked at Charlotte for a translation. She shrugged. “Is that an expression?” he asked.

  “It’s not even a word,” Charlotte said. “Am I right?”

  “Yep,” I said. “It’s just how I feel.”

  “I’m amming,” Julien said, trying it out.

  “I’m amming, too!” Abbot said.

  “I’m definitely amming,” Charlotte said, slipping more chicken into her mouth.

  “Are you amming?” Julien asked his mother.

  “Amming?” she said.

  “Are you living in the present?” Charlotte said.

  “The present? What is the present?” she said. “I am le passé. I am the past.”

  hat night as I was walking across the Dumonteils’ yard to our house, feeling full, my chest warm with wine, Julien called out from the back door, “We didn’t eat all the cakes. Come and have them for breakfast.”

  The air was clear, the night cool. The mountain was a deep, velvety purple. Abbot and Charlotte weren’t too far away. They’d fought through some weeds, clearing spots to sit down on the edge of our broken fountain. Abbot had his hands cupped to his ears, fluttering them to modulate the sounds of c
icadas. Charlotte was staring up at the night sky.

  “We will and thanks,” I said to Julien. “For everything. For today, really. It was great. Abbot touched a warthog! Maybe it was a miracle.”

  “Maybe,” he said.

  “He’s a little high strung,” I said, “like his mother.”

  “High strings?” Julien said. “Abbot has good strings, like his mother.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

  “It is a compliment,” he said.

  “You’re a very nice little boy,” I said.

  “I thought I splashed you too much,” he said.

  “You’ve outgrown the splashing,” I said.

  “And you’ve outgrown the flower barrette.”

  “Are you flirting with me, Monsieur Dumonteil?”

  “Me?” he said. “Of course not. I’m too miserable.” And he smiled, dipped back into the doorway, and disappeared.

  hen I woke up the next morning, I called my mother. It had been too late yesterday, what with the time difference, but nine in the morning our time would be three in the afternoon in Florida.

  She picked up and I started in directly. “So, two to three months for permits and just to get quotes? Is that the bureaucracy you were talking about?”

  “Heidi, what are you talking about?”

  “I’m not going to get anything rolling here. I’ll be lucky to nudge this renovation in six weeks’ time.”

  “Ah,” she said. “Yes, but—”

  “But nothing!” I said. “You made me come here under false pretenses. Feeling and connecting and allowing decisions to form! Listen to the house?”

  “And I stand by it. I want you to do all of those things.”

  The line was silent. Of course, the renovation was only the surface issue. I had told myself that I didn’t want to know about her lost summer, but I couldn’t help myself. It seemed only fair that I should know what was going on. I was here, after all, feeling haunted by her lost summer. I hit her with this question. “So, do you mind if I ask you a question?”

  “Anything,” she said.

  “What did you steal?”

  “Steal? What are you talking about?”

  “It seems you have a reputation in the South of France as a thief.”

  “I do not.”

  “Well, maybe not the entire region, but certainly right in these parts here.”

  “Who told you I stole something?”

  “Véronique.”

  The line went quiet.

  “I don’t know what she’s talking about.”

  “Huh,” I said.

  “What do you mean, huh?”

  “You’re blushing or something.”

  “I’m in America. How would you know whether I’m blushing or not?”

  “I can tell by the sound of your voice.”

  “Okay, then.” She cleared her throat. “I did not steal anything to my knowledge from Véronique.”

  “I didn’t say that she said you stole something from her.”

  “Yes, you did.” She was flustered.

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Actually, she says that she also has something for you. Something you left behind. It was found after the fire.”

  “In the kitchen?”

  “She didn’t say. But the fire was mostly in the kitchen.” I remembered how rattled my mother was the day of Elysius’s wedding. She’d started crying. She said she didn’t know why she was reacting that way, but now I thought I might. “Is this why you were so upset by the house fire?” I said.

  “No. I just didn’t want anyone to have been hurt or the house to be ruined,” she said.

  “But you knew no one was hurt and you knew it was a kitchen fire,” I said. “What was in the kitchen that you left behind?”

  “Did Véronique say what was found?”

  “You didn’t answer my question.”

  “I didn’t answer your question on purpose. I don’t know what she found in the kitchen. How could I?”

  “You left something behind in the kitchen, something found because of the fire. So it must have been hidden and the fire exposed it somehow.” I thought of what Véronique had told me about the air in Provence in the summer: because it was so dry, it made the mountain ripe for fires, and that the fires of 1989 were what made it possible for the archaeologists to dig. Maybe it wasn’t a metaphor, as I’d thought it was. Maybe it was a fact. Maybe she was speaking of what had been unearthed in our own kitchen. “Were you afraid that the fire had destroyed it?”

  “I really don’t know what she’s found. I don’t know what it is!”

  But I knew that she had a very good idea of what it was. “Véronique said it was nothing, really, but that it would be important to you. What is it? Take a wild guess.”

  “Well, I’m sure it’s nothing important or I would have asked to have it returned a long time ago. Right? How is my Abbot? How is Charlotte doing away from that Adam Briskowitz?” She was now diverting attention. I let her. What more was there to say? I was convinced that she was a thief, and she had hidden something in the kitchen, something that she likely knew she’d never find again but couldn’t give up.

  ulien had gone to London to do some work for his main client. He hadn’t said goodbye. That morning when I went to the Dumonteils’ for breakfast, he simply wasn’t there. His mother said, “It was an emergency. Work. He told me to say that he will be back in a week or so.”

  “A week or so?”

  She looked at me a little startled. Had I said it like I was disappointed that he’d be gone so long?

  Was I disappointed? I pushed the thought aside.

  I realized that there was no way that I would be able to navigate the complexities—cultural and bureaucratic—of renovating the house. I asked Véronique for the equivalent of a contractor—a project manager or, as the French say, an entrepreneur. It would cost an additional 10 to 15 percent, but what alternative did I have?

  “I know a man who is very good and honest and well known,” she told me. “And the economy isn’t perfect, so maybe you will not wait.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “I really appreciate this.”

  She nodded. “Not a problem.”

  In the meanwhile, I was bent on doing everything that we could do ourselves. I made a list of things that didn’t require permis de construire and devis: weeding, planting, painting, removing ash from tile and stone.

  As those first few days progressed, we learned quickly not to sleep in. The morning hours were cool, best for working outdoors, not to be wasted.

  Every morning, Abbot shook out our shoes, still on the lookout for scorpions, but now, oddly enough, he seemed frustrated that he didn’t find them. “Where are the scorpions?” he said one morning. “I mean, the book said there would be scorpions!”

  “I was here a lot as a kid,” I broke it to him, “and I never saw a scorpion.”

  Abbot, Charlotte, and I worked the yard, uprooting weeds, clipping vines. We planted, too. Charlotte asked Véronique what was best to put in this time of year. She produced a list of annuals—marigolds, cosmos, petunias—and the flowers that would bloom in the fall after we were gone—chrysanthemums, asters, colchicums.

  I worked in the kitchen without the kids, wearing one of Véronique’s handkerchiefs over my nose and mouth. I jettisoned the braided rug, demolished the burnt cabinets. Véronique gave me free use of all the tools in the garage. She called in a few locals to pull out the oven and take it away in the bed of a truck. I scrubbed the stone with a wire brush and a hot, sudsy mixture that Véronique conjured up for me in a large bucket. I wiped down the tiled backsplash, the tiled floors. It felt good to strip the kitchen down. It felt personal and cleansing. It was a transformation that was gratifying because it was so visual.

  I kept tabs on the Cake Shop from afar. Véronique let us use the computer that she kept in a quiet corner off the kitchen, and I checked emails sporadically. Jude kept me posted
on all things to do with the Cake Shop, including sales of a popular ice coffee she’d invented called the Cooliocino. Abbot even checked in on his own email, but Charlotte had no interest. She refused to even peek.

  The rental car agency brought us a new Renault, and I drove into Aix often, so that I could begin to get a feel for what might be out there, begin to connect—like new tiles for the bathroom and kitchen backsplash—without making decisions. While we waited for a proper oven to be installed—a process that, with all of the damage, would take time—I bought a hot plate, a microwave, and a Crock-Pot so that we could survive. Still, Véronique often insisted that we eat our meals with her.

  My favorite errand was to the patisserie. I visited every couple of days for fresh pastries. The baker was always pleased to see me because, I assumed, I always bought so very much and always wanted to try anything new. He spoke to me only in French and told me once that he remembered me from when I was little and came in with my mother. He remembered that it was my sister who looked like my mother back then.

  But he told me now that I was like my mother. Your quick eyes and your gestures.

  I told him, as I had Véronique, that it was my sister who looked more like her, really.

  But he raised his finger and shook his head. I’m right, he assured me. I’m right, absolutely.

  I didn’t disagree. Maybe there was something the same about a mother and a daughter at a certain time in their lives when they’re both lost—something that shines from within and is undeniable.

  Once he asked how my mother was doing these days, and it made me think of Julien, the way he’d waited for news from us as kids. I imagined all of the shopkeepers in the tiny village getting used to us one summer and then, like migratory birds, we would reappear the next year or maybe not until the one after that.