The Provence Cure for the Brokenhearted

by Bridget Asher

  “Don’t leave me here with them! You can’t! You need my help and I need yours.” She was the one to hug me, the water from the bowl sloshing over its sides, and for a moment, I felt warm and safe—still gutted, still lost and shaken, but for a moment, safe. “Think about the whole idea,” she whispered. “Will you?”

  I nodded.

  “Goodnight,” she said, and headed off to bed.

  I was frozen there. Charlotte was so sure of herself. Why wasn’t I? I heard myself saying, Here I am, Henry, trying to do the right thing, and I’m pretty sure I’m doing it all wrong.

  walked down the stairs and there in the kitchen, standing by the sink, was Julien, waiting for me. His face was streaked with dirt, his shirt muddied from Abbot’s hands, one leg of his pants ripped at the knee. He folded his arms on his chest and sighed. “Your mother called my mother. She and your sister were delayed in Marseille. They’ve had dinner and are getting a hotel for the night. They’re tired.”

  He was beautiful dirty like this—dirty from having searched the wilds for my son. He was so beautiful that I wasn’t sure what he was saying. I loved his full lips, his teeth, the slight upturn at the corners of his eyes. I wanted to walk up to him and rest my head on his chest, and if I had done what my mother told me to do—to feel, connect, allow decisions to form—I would have done just that. But I knew that it wasn’t possible. I had Abbot’s permission, but that wasn’t what I’d been waiting for. I couldn’t afford the weakness that falling in love demanded. I was tired of losing and being lost. I must have looked dirty myself—and dazed, too. “My mother and Elysius are what?”

  “They’re staying in a hotel in Marseille tonight. They’ll arrive in the morning.”

  “Yes,” I said. I walked past him to the sink, where I dumped out the bowl of water and wrung the washcloth and started cleaning my scraped knee. It stung, but it felt good to clean it out, to feel like I was fixing something.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Fine,” I said.

  Julien was quiet.

  “Did she tell them about Abbot?” I asked.

  “No,” he said. “I didn’t want them to worry. Is he asleep?”

  “Yes,” I said, and I straightened up, setting the washcloth on the edge of the sink. “And I’m sorry. Really. I shouldn’t have said what I did. I was terrified. I didn’t mean it.” I refused to look at him. Instead I cast my eyes on the charred box sitting on the table that I was to give to my mother. At this moment, the box seemed like an important reminder—of what? My mother’s longing—I’d inherited it after all—or was it her ability to pack up the past and go home?

  “I understand,” he said. “I just wanted to tell you about your mother and make sure that you are okay.”

  “I’m going home,” I said. “I made a promise to myself. Abbot needs me. My life is too complicated. And I think going home is best. The sooner the better.”

  “But you have more time. Three weeks?”

  “Yes, but we’ve seen what we need to see. It’s time.” I paused a moment. “And I want to thank you for everything.” Awkwardly, I held out my hand to shake his. I don’t know what I was expecting—that I would be saved by a sudden formality?

  He was surprised by the gesture. He took my hand—gritty with dirt, like his—but he didn’t shake it. He simply held it. “I wasn’t trying to be his father,” he said. “Or your husband.”

  “I know.” I slipped my hand from his and looked at him.

  He smiled—a weary smile—and shook his head. “I guess I’ll go home, too. I was only staying here for you.”

  “I thought you were helping your mother,” I said.

  “But she doesn’t need my help. I can call the girl from the village to help her with cleaning, but that is all. My mother is the strongest person I know.”

  I nodded nervously. “That’s right.” He’d stayed here for me? I was trying to take this in.

  He reached out and touched my hair, gently, a wisp that had swept forward on my cheek. “I miss the flower barrette,” he said. “I will continue to miss it.”

  I wanted to tell him that I would miss the sulky boy in the lawn chair, the one without the pogo stick, the one driving the convertible in the rain. But I could barely breathe. I wanted to go home, to go back, but what was home? How could I take Abbot back and start a new life when he called this place home? Nothing would ever be the same. Julien existed here in this kitchen. This moment alone meant that everything had shifted. I was silent.

  He rubbed his collarbone as if it was an old ache, or maybe it was a sign of the restlessness that I first saw in him. “Listen,” he said. “I understand. Have a good night. Have good dreams.” And he turned and walked out of the house.

  I stood there, stalled in the kitchen with its burnt walls and stonework. I remembered the kitchen of my childhood, hovering around my mother after she’d returned home—the sweet fragrance of all of our failed desserts. I’d met Henry in a kitchen swirling madly with caterers—Henry in a borrowed jacket, looking so young, so handsome, alive. And now I was here again in this kitchen in the house in Provence, with my son who’d run away now fast asleep overhead, in this kitchen where I let Julien go.

  slept fitfully and woke up wondering if I’d slept at all. The night before came back to me in crisp, stark flashes: the miracle of the injured swallow, my breathless sprint through the house calling for Abbot, the weak, bobbling light on the mountain, Charlotte’s hug in the doorway of Abbot’s bedroom, the way Julien touched my hair in the kitchen. Abbot was alive. I couldn’t really be Charlotte’s mother. I let Julien go. Did I have a vision of the future? Not really. I knew only that I had to be vigilant. I had to be strong.

  Once Elysius and my mother were here and they were in charge of Charlotte, I would call the airlines and start packing. But when I heard Abbot clattering around in his room, I decided it would be better to hold off on packing. I wouldn’t do it in front of him, at least. “Abbot?” I called, getting out of bed and padding quickly down the hall.

  He was putting on his shoes.

  “Did you shake them first?”

  “No scorpions,” he said. “I guess we won’t ever see a scorpion now that we’re going to leave.”

  I didn’t want to get into a discussion about heading home. It was final, and talking about it might make it seem negotiable. I wanted to stand firm. “Are you feeling better?” He was wearing a new outfit. His hair was wet. “Did you take a shower?” His scraped hands and knees were still raw. “How’s your ankle?”

  He’d knotted one sneaker and was moving to the next. “It’s still puffy. It hurts. I have a limp like Véronique!” He said this with that strange pride kids have when they get glasses, braces, and casts.

  “Auntie Elysius and Grandma stayed the night in Marseille. They’ll be here at some point today,” I said. “Will you help me with the flowers? Would that be too hard on your ankle?” I wanted him close.

  “Julien said he was going to teach me soccer tricks, but I guess I can’t with my ankle.”

  His name had come up more quickly than I’d hoped. I felt a pang. It was worse to hear it coming from Abbot. “Julien might be leaving,” I said, and I wanted to add, This is for your own good. It’s best for both of us.

  “Where’s he going?”

  “Work,” I said. “He has a job, you know. Like I do. We can’t give up everything and live in a dream.”

  Abbot glanced at me. “It’s not a dream,” he said defensively.

  “We have to be practical.”

  Abbot sat on the bed and looked at me. “Wait,” he said. “Are Grandma and Elysius going to take Charlotte home?”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  I helped Abbot hobble down the stairs to the kitchen. I got him set up with some cereal and croissants with butter and apricot jelly.

  My mother’s box sat there, with its charred edge, on the table. I picked it up and put it in the cupboard. But then I stopped. The box belonged out in the ope
n. The fire had come along, and this is what had become exposed. I wanted my mother to have the charred box. It was hers. I didn’t want to keep it in the kitchen, where she could pass it by, ignoring it, ignoring the past. What if she continued to ignore it, refusing to get at the root of it once and for all?

  I said, “I’ll be right back, okay?”

  I lifted the box and quickly jogged up the stairs. My mother and Elysius would stay in the spare bedroom at the end of the hall. I opened the door and stepped into the room. There were two single beds. My mother always read at night to fall asleep and always put her glasses on the bedside table, resting on top of her book. I put the box there, where she would have to see it and deal with it, and where she could do so more privately. This, I reasoned, would allow me to feel like I was doing what my father asked me to do without having to do much at all. It was a relief in some small measure to have delivered the box, to have it out of my hands, and I was proud of myself for not having peeked.

  Abbot and I finished our breakfasts and headed out to the patch of flowers we’d planted. I taught him how to rub his thumb along the wilted cosmos to feel for the sharp teeth of mature seeds. We gathered about fifteen seeds each, a few of which were still a little green. We made rows near the other, taller cosmos and planted the seeds, covering them with loose dirt and watering them and the rest of the garden. Abbot took breaks, propping his foot in the wrought-iron chairs.

  We saw Charlotte through the Dumonteils’ kitchen window. She was already talking with Véronique, most likely about the plans for the day’s meals. Charlotte needed to focus like this today, and Véronique must have known it. They were up working in the kitchen much earlier than usual.

  There was no sign of Adam Briskowitz. I was starting to get a little nervous. Had he really freaked, as Charlotte put it, about Abbot’s running away? Was he terrified of Elysius and my mother—perhaps rightfully so? I was a little terrified of them, personally.

  And no sign of Julien. I assumed he was in his mother’s house, maybe packing his own bags to go. It was impossible for me not to notice that the garage doors were closed. I couldn’t see if his father’s old convertible was still there or not. I wanted to see him again, just once more, but I was afraid of the possibility, too. What would we say that we hadn’t already?

  Aside from everything that I knew was about to unfold, the morning took on an ordinariness. If I hadn’t been so anxious, it would have been lovely in its ordinariness. I let the sun warm my back as my hands wheedled through the flowers. Abbot was quiet, though I could hear him humming the French national anthem from time to time. I thought to myself, I won’t forget this. I won’t ever forget this. I wanted to pretend that my longing would subside as soon as I got home, and I would be able to appreciate these moments. Hadn’t I learned something here? My Henry stories—I thought of how desperately I’d been holding on to each and every one of them, because I believed that if details from one slipped away, it meant Henry was slipping away. But maybe instead it meant that the details were burrowing deeper within me, becoming a different kind of memory, not crystal clear, but more imagistic and just as full—Cézanne’s portraits of the mountain, Daniel’s canvases of loss, my memories of Henry …

  Of course, I knew that the ordinariness of this day would not last, and it didn’t. When Abbot and I were inside having lunch, I heard voices in the yard—my mother and Elysius, chattering to the taxi driver. The engine was growling in the driveway. Car doors and the trunk were slamming.

  I walked to the back door and saw the driver, a stout man with bowed legs, carrying the bags that couldn’t roll on the gravel. My mother and Elysius appeared, holding their pocketbooks. My mother paused momentarily to gaze at the mountain. She sighed and then looked up at the back door where I stood.

  “You made it!” I said.

  “Finally,” she said.

  Elysius was paying the cabbie, practicing a little French.

  Abbot popped past me, hobbled out the door, hopped down the steps, and I followed.

  “What’s wrong with you, young man? Why the hobbled gait?” my mother asked.

  Abbot glanced at me and then back at his grandmother and Elysius. “I let go a swallow and it flew, and then, on the mountain, I slipped some and my ankle is sprained.”

  They seemed to accept this answer, and I was glad, not wanting to get into it. Luckily, Abbot often rambled like this. There were hugs all around. I ushered them inside. “Are you hungry? Tired?”

  “We’re fine,” my mother said, looking around the kitchen. Was she disapproving? It didn’t seem so. Instead, she looked like she wasn’t seeing what was there but was overwhelmed with memory, as if with each glance she was running through things that had happened here over the years. The house was charged for her, deeply.

  “I feel steamy,” Elysius said, plucking at her blouse. “It’s hotter than I remember.” She plopped down in a kitchen chair.

  But my mother was lit up. She hugged me again for no reason. I loved the smell of her perfume and her high-gloss hairspray. She then took hold of my hand. “Remember all of the stories I’ve told you all of these years?” she said. “And the butterflies? Remember when we went off with binoculars to see the wedding on the mountain and the butterflies were everywhere?”

  “The Bath whites,” I said. “Of course I remember.”

  “I know that story!” Abbot said.

  “And you didn’t believe me, after all of those years and all of the stories I’ve told you.” She stared at me. “But something’s changed. Things have happened. I can see it in your face. What is it?”

  “Lots of things have happened,” I said flatly. I wanted to tell her that I was going home, that this was over. I’d failed. I’d gone on the pilgrimage and maybe there had even been a miracle or two, but none for me.

  “No, something in particular.” She stared at me. “Elysius, look at her. She’s different. Isn’t she?”

  Elysius shrugged. “She’s gotten some sun, thank god. You were so pale at the wedding.”

  “Did something go wrong?” my mother asked. What was she seeing on my face? Melancholy? Homesickness? Or, worse, did she see longing?

  “Well, yesterday was awful,” I said, patting my cheeks. “But I’m fine! We’re fine!”

  “I ran away,” Abbot said contritely.

  “You did what?” my mother said.

  “Why did you run away, Abbot?” Elysius asked.

  “There were a lot of factors,” I said. “But, aside from the ankle, he’s fine.” I gave Abbot’s shoulders a squeeze, meaning, Let’s not get into it now.

  “Where’s Charlotte?” Elysius asked. “Is she okay?”

  “Yes,” I said. “She’s been a huge help. She’s at Véronique’s. They cook together like crazy.” Where was Adam? Maybe Elysius was wondering that, too. I walked toward the stairs.

  “You do have a plan with this house, right?” Elysius asked, looking around at the kitchen.

  “I’ve been trying to listen to the house,” I said. “But I think the house could use a new listener.”

  “Oh, no you don’t,” my mother said. “You can’t weasel your way out of the job.”

  I wanted to tell her that I was weaseling my way out of more than the job. I was going to weasel my way all the way back home.

  “I’d go crazy living with it like this!” Elysius said.

  “I hear that the ox is slow,” I said, “but the earth is patient.”

  Elysius cocked her head and stared at me and then changed the subject. “We have to have a meeting,” she said. “You, me, Charlotte, and Mom. And then Adam. We’ll talk to him after …” I knew without a doubt that Elysius had written down an agenda. Just like the brunch where this entire trip was first proposed, they’d first talked and designed a strategy. Once again, I didn’t know what the agenda entailed. But I knew it would be compelling and hard to get out of. Charlotte and I hadn’t even been able to joke our way out of a dress shop with them. What would we be able to
do in the face of a defining family moment?

  “I want to see Véronique first,” my mother said. “I need to.”

  “Can we reconvene in one hour?” Elysius said.

  “Yes, yes, of course,” my mother said. Would she see Julien at Véronique’s house? Would she read his face as well and see something there? Or did Véronique already know and would she simply tell her about Julien and me? For some reason, I didn’t want her to know—or anyone. My mother put her hand on her heart and said, “We’re here again, the three of us.” She looked at Abbot. “Anything can happen now. Did you know that?”

  Abbot nodded. “The house stories,” he said. “I’ve heard them all.”

  “Not all of them,” I said to my mother.

  She looked at me sharply. “One hour,” she said. “And then we’ll talk.” My mother walked out of the house. She was gripping her pocketbook like it was a canteen and she was heading off on some kind of mission. I moved to the window and watched her march to the Dumonteils’ house. “She’s a woman with secrets,” I said to no one in particular.

  My mother knocked on the back door, a formality we’d abandoned some time ago, and Véronique opened it. She and my mother hugged each other, swaying back and forth. It was a strange reunion—two people bound together by shared secrets that I would never really understand. This is what sisters are, I thought to myself. Elysius and I were girls who grew up together and knew what no one else could know about our existence. No matter how much I ever told Henry about my childhood, he would never know it like Elysius, from within it. My mother and Véronique shared this kind of bond—not of a fractured childhood, but of fracture nonetheless.

  • • •

  n hour or so later, my mother walked out of Véronique’s house into the sun just as Elysius emerged from our house, freshly showered. I was watching Abbot feeding the koi in the little fountain, wobbling on one foot, and trying to pet them. He missed the swallow.

  “Where’s Charlotte?” my sister asked.