Cooking for Picasso

by Camille Aubray

  We went down to the pool to join our classmates, who’d run out of gossip about the fate of Gil and his mas, so they were now happily talking about their own plans for the free days we had left.

  Maurice snapped the pictures as Lizbeth informed our class, “For the rest of the afternoon you’ll have the pool all to yourselves; and tonight you’ll be served a champagne dinner at the pergola here.”

  So now everyone was gleefully climbing into their bathing suits, determined to kick back and have fun. But my phone buzzed just then, with an e-mail from Grandmother Ondine’s lawyer:

  Chère Céline: In answer to your recent inquiry, I have arranged for you to meet Madame Sylvie, the neighbor of your Grandmother Ondine, who was with her just before she died. Madame Sylvie is believed to have the “second sight” and she has consented to read your fortune at two o’clock today if that meets with your convenience. You may telephone her directly at the number below. In any case, please let her know if you cannot attend, as she is in great demand and normally does not give appointments to first-time clients until the end of the year. Sincerely, Monsieur Clément

  “Good Lord,” I grumbled, “I didn’t ask to have my fortune told. Now I guess I’ll have to pay her for this visit!” But I still had my rental car, and I had nothing to lose.

  “Want to come and get your fortune told?” I asked Aunt Matilda after telling her where I was headed. She glanced across the pool and observed that the men were deeply engrossed in a game of boules in a nearby pit.

  “It’s like a cross between horseshoes and croquet,” she observed, sounding bored. “They’ll be at it for hours. Sure, I’m game.”

  —

  MADAME SYLVIE LIVED in Vence, high up in the hills above Nice. We got lost in the outskirts several times, and once found ourselves trapped in the dead end of a street so narrow that I couldn’t turn the car around; I had to back up, inch by inch, on a road that was really just the perilous edge of a cliff. At the end was an old graveyard.

  “Bet it’s filled with dead Victorian tourists who fell off this cliff,” Aunt Matilda said, terrified.

  Finally, we found my soothsayer. She lived in the center of town, in a building wedged among many others, with pretty window boxes full of geraniums. Her narrow front door squeaked as we entered a small, dark front parlor where she met with her clients. When she greeted us I had to stop myself from saying, You don’t look like a fortune-teller! No wild gypsy scarves here.

  Madame Sylvie had only been in her twenties the year that Grandma Ondine died, so now she was in her late fifties. She was still slender, with straw-colored hair and green eyes, impeccably dressed in a well-tailored beige suit and matching pumps. I introduced her to Aunt Matilda, then we sat down before a small, round table with a black marble top. A deck of gilt-edged cards lay upon it.

  “A pleasure to meet Ondine’s grand-daughter. But why have you sought me out?” Madame Sylvie said. Her fingers were long and nimble as she dealt the cards out in three neat rows of seven cards each. Aunt Matilda watched, wary and fascinated, since she loved playing card games.

  Unable to resist a subversive urge to test Madame Sylvie, I said, “Maybe you can ‘see’ what’s on my mind?”

  I half-expected her to betray some guilt—a flicker of the eyelid, a tightening of the mouth—to reveal that she’d been the one who pilfered Grandma’s Picasso. Instead she continued to study the cards, then answered serenely, “Yes, I understand that you wish to protect your mother. But I also see that she did not defend you from the first man in your life. By forcing you to take on the role of her protector—against the father who should have guarded you both—your mother robbed you of the delight of being the younger one, the innocent one. So, now you have come to France to reclaim your right to be cherished as a woman. Your mother has her own destiny; she only wants you to find yours.”

  Aunt Matilda nodded meaningfully at me. I caught my breath in shock, experiencing a peculiar feeling, as if my entire face were in peril of slipping right off like a mask. “Look,” I said abruptly, “I’m not really here to have my fortune told. I came because I heard that you were the last person to see my grandmother alive, and I just need to know what happened that day.”

  “What happened is that you were born early,” Madame Sylvie said with a kindly smile. “Your mother and father had already gone off to the hospital when I stopped by to visit Ondine. We had some tea, and she was excited about you and your destiny! But then, God took her that day.” She paused, and looked at me keenly. “Now you are seeking to learn Ondine’s secrets. Why?”

  “I need to know one thing especially, just to set my mother’s mind at ease,” I said. “Did my Grandmother Ondine ever own a Picasso?”

  There was a moment of silence. “This is possible,” Madame Sylvie said finally.

  If this woman stole the painting, would she dare say that? I wondered. Sure, why not? It could even be upstairs hanging in her bedroom right now; although I doubted it, based on nothing more than when a trail feels hot or cold. I supposed that Grandma might simply have put the damned thing into a safe-deposit vault and died before she got the chance to tell Mom where it was.

  Tentatively I asked, “I mean, have you actually seen the painting? Not in a vision. For real.”

  “Non. But Ondine said Picasso gave her a valuable ‘gift’. She was worried about protecting it.”

  “So, what happened to it?” Aunt Matilda interjected eagerly.

  Madame Sylvie’s expression remained calm and benign. “I do not know. She didn’t say any more about it. I don’t think dear Ondine expected to die that day,” she added softly, turning to me. “Even someone as practical as your grandmother always believes she’ll live just one more day.”

  Then, gazing meditatively off into the distance, Madame Sylvie said admiringly, “Ondine didn’t do anything in the usual way. She was fearless about trying the unexpected, putting this-with-that. It not only made her a great chef; it made her a femme très formidable.”

  “Can’t you—predict—where the painting is?” I asked. I was surprised at how pleading I sounded. Madame Sylvie obligingly closed her eyes, breathed deeply and became so still and quiet that I could hear a lizard scurrying on the path outside beneath her open window.

  “She put it in a—placard—” She paused, searching for the English word, miming opening a door.

  “A cupboard,” I supplied, startled.

  “It’s painted blue,” she added, opening her eyes now.

  “Oh, my God,” I said, remembering the photo of Grandmother Ondine in the café’s kitchen, with a bright blue cupboard in the background. “But that cupboard isn’t at the Café Paradis anymore,” I said, feeling panicked that it must have been sold off to some antiques market.

  She nodded her head vigorously. “Yes, I see it at the mas.” That made sense to me; Grandma could have brought the cupboard with her to Mougins when she stopped living in Juan-les-Pins. And, I thought cynically, my fortune-teller might have actually seen it there and was just now remembering.

  Madame Sylvie collected and swept away all the cards. I felt I wouldn’t be able to hold her much longer, so I cut to the chase. “But I haven’t seen that cupboard at the mas, either. So exactly where is it now?” I demanded.

  Madame Sylvie passed her palm in front of her face from top to bottom. “Il s’est déplacé.”

  “It moved?” I pressed her. “The painting? Or the cupboard, or both?” At this point, in spite of myself, I was hoping that her so-called psychic powers were operating like a GPS tracking system.

  Now she only shook her head. “That’s all I can tell you. I see nothing more.”

  She was dealing out the cards again, but this time when she studied them, she gave Aunt Matilda a quick, sympathetic look. I didn’t catch on right away. Madame Sylvie returned her gaze to the cards, not so much to study them as to avoid having to speak.

  “I haven’t got very long, have I?” Aunt Matilda said dryly.

  “It all
depends,” Madame Sylvie said gently. “You must learn not to worry. If your heart is more at peace, you may live a lot longer than you’d expect.”

  —

  I WAS IMMENSELY glad to leave Madame Sylvie’s dark parlor after that. Deeply unsettled by everything she’d said, I was only too ready to shake off the dust of that strange woman’s house, which seemed to have enveloped me with an unwanted air of inevitability. I couldn’t believe what had just transpired with Aunt Matilda.

  “What was that all about?” I demanded as soon as we got into the car.

  Aunt Matilda took a deep breath, then said, “You heard her. It’s my heart. Doctor said the same thing about stress.”

  “What stress?” I prodded. I’d always assumed her life was as peaceful as it appeared.

  “Money,” she said shortly. I suddenly remembered what she’d said when she learned of what my father did with all the money in his will. Aunt Matilda had commented, No surprise there. My father did the same thing to my mom and me.

  “But all these vacations you take—you always seemed not to have a care in the world,” I said.

  She smiled wryly. “Oh, it was fine while I was still teaching. And for awhile the pension held out. But then the medical bills kicked in, and I took out a reverse mortgage on the house. Frankly, I’m already living longer than everyone told me I would. So when your mother asked me to go with her, I knew she needed a friend. And I figured, what the hell? Might as well go out with a bang.”

  I leaned over and gave her a big hug, then and there in the car. She allowed this for a moment, then said, “Oh, go on! Start driving.” And the farther away we drove from Vence, the more we felt the sun and the salty air reviving us, bringing us out of the dead past and into the lively present.

  “At least the painting did exist and made it as far as the mas,” Aunt Matilda said encouragingly.

  “So Madame Sylvie says! But if I find it, Aunt Matilda, we’ll have enough money to help Mom and to keep you sitting pretty in that house of yours!” I said resolutely, determined to keep her alive and kicking.

  She said, “Great. I’ll take it.” Then she added meaningfully, “But you know, there’s somebody else you ought to take into consideration. Gil. You saw those gorillas he’s dealing with.”

  I had been afraid all along that someone might suggest Gil had proprietary rights to anything found at the mas, and therefore owned the Picasso. “It belonged to Grandma,” I said with a stab of anxiety. “If it’s there, it’s Mom’s. Not mine, and not Gil’s. If he finds out about the portrait, he might want to keep it all to himself—he wouldn’t care about my mother.”

  Aunt Matilda eyed me speculatively. “Listen, that Madame Whatsis who just read your fortune may have been right—maybe it’s more important for you to find yourself, not just that painting.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” I muttered, feeling embarrassed by today’s discussion of my psyche.

  “I think what you’re really looking for is somebody you can trust,” Aunt Matilda remarked.

  “I have you,” I answered.

  “And as you heard, I won’t be around forever! You know, Céline, people don’t necessarily have to earn your trust. In the end, trust is a choice we make. We decide, ‘I choose to trust this one’. Sometimes, you just have to roll the dice.”

  —

  WHEN WE ARRIVED back at the mas Aunt Matilda said, “I for one could use a swim and a cocktail.”

  I smiled, knowing that she was eager to see Peter. “Go ahead,” I said, dropping her off in front. “I’ll park this buggy and catch up.”

  I drove on and pulled into a good space in the parking lot. I was thinking that if Grandma Ondine died before she could tell Mom that her Picasso was hidden in her blue cupboard, then either the dairyman who bought the mas found the painting in the cupboard and sold it; or, the painting was still hidden somewhere in that cupboard. But where was the cupboard now?

  It wasn’t until I arrived back at the front door of the mas and spotted Rick walking out that I recalled what Gil said: The dairyman who sold me this mas left some old country-style stuff, which my business partner’s got in storage.

  “Then Rick probably has it!” I reasoned. As I got closer I noticed that he was looking supremely pleased with himself, and I wondered if he’d convinced Gil to sign his contract.

  “Hi, there, Rick,” I said in the most charming way I could manage.

  He glanced up quickly, with the look of surprised pleasure that a guy gets when a woman who’s been inaccessible suddenly becomes nice to him. “Hi, yourself,” he said. “What are you up to today?”

  “I’m hoping to convince Gil to decorate the pigeonnier with some of that lovely country furniture from here that you guys put into storage,” I said blithely. “But you know Gil. He’s so stubborn.”

  “That he most definitely is,” Rick said knowingly.

  “I’m thinking I should show Gil, rather than tell him,” I went on recklessly. “You know, just pick out a few good pieces and bring them back here to convince him. I think he said you put them in a storage vault for him? Are they kept very far away?”

  For a moment he had to think about it. “Oh, that stuff. It’s in Monaco,” Rick said easily. “Forty-five minutes, if the traffic’s not too bad. I can’t take you there today; I’ve got meetings. Tomorrow afternoon, okay?” His voice was low and sexy now, as if he’d just asked me for a date.

  “Okay,” I said. Then I found myself adding in a conspiratorial hush, “But look, please don’t mention this to Gil. I want to surprise him.”

  Rick laughed as his driver arrived with his car. “Your secret’s safe with me, babe,” he said.

  When I went into the lobby Maurice was engrossed in his computer until I greeted him directly. Then he glanced up distractedly and said, “The farewell dinner is being served down by the pool.”

  “Maurice—what’s happening with Gil today? Is everything—okay?” I said in a low voice.

  He answered carefully, “We are fortunate. The blog review for the restaurant was très bien.”

  “But Rick was just here. Does that mean he and Gil have come to terms?” I asked. After all, Gil would have to repay his loan by Thursday. Today was Sunday.

  Maurice glanced around first to make sure no one was listening. “The game is not yet finished,” he murmured, as if the whole thing was too much of a burden to bear silently. “But I think we have reached la crise.”

  Crisis time. Not just for Gil, either, because this was surely my last chance to find that Picasso.

  —

  I CHANGED INTO my bathing suit and went down to the pool to join the others. The poolside bar had opened and everyone was getting a little high-spirited, even frisky. Joey, Magda, Lola and Ben were all lying on inflatable floats, which had armrests with circles for holding their drinks. Aunt Matilda and Peter sat under the pergola, side by side on matching chaises longues, nibbling canapés and sipping champagne. And Martin was skateboarding all around the pool, performing more and more daring stunts, egged on by the applause he was getting from his elders.

  “Gil was here for a bit, but he’s gone off somewhere again,” Aunt Matilda told me. “I take it things aren’t going swimmingly for him?” I nodded. I kept getting distracted by Martin, who’d disappear around a bend and then come wheeling back from a completely different direction.

  This time he was heading directly toward the pool. Even placid Aunt Matilda sat up alert.

  “He’s not going to try to vault across the water, is he?” she asked in trepidation.

  But that was exactly what Martin intended. Apparently, as he told us later, he’d done it successfully before; but there hadn’t been any people in the pool then. The distraction of those paddlers must have thrown him slightly off his expert timing, because this time Martin leapt up into the air, skateboard and all, and came down just a bit too short. With a yell, he smashed right into the water, plunging deeply and then, on the way up, he got conked on the head by his own skateboa
rd.

  Nobody else in the pool was hurt, because they’d all scrambled to the other side. Aunt Matilda sprang to her feet, but I had already dived in, stroking rapidly over to Martin. He’d been so stunned by the blow that he began to sink. I fished him out, scooped him in my arms and dragged him to the side. Joey, Ben and Peter all helped me pull Martin out and lay him on the ground like a beached baby seal.

  “Anyone know CPR?” Ben asked worriedly, checking the boy’s pulse. “He doesn’t seem to be breathing.”

  I summoned up my first-aid training and bent down to Martin’s little face. Gently as I could, I pushed on his chest again and again, then, seeing that he really wasn’t breathing yet, I pinched his nose, covered his mouth with mine and breathed into his until I saw his chest rise. I had to do this several times. The whole thing was one of those incidents that just seem suspended in time.

  At last, Martin choked, gurgled and gasped. He opened his eyes, but it took him awhile to realize where he was. Then, his first words were, “Don’t tell Dad.”

  “Bollocks,” said a familiar voice behind me. Someone had telephoned Gil and he’d rushed over here. His voice was shaky with high emotion, but what he said to his son was, “You’re bloody lucky you’re alive, you little shit.”

  Céline and Gil: A Gamble in Mougins

  THE NEXT DAY WAS A free-for-all, with everyone arranging outings and day trips, now that the working part of our class was over. Lola and Ben were taking off to make various stops along the coast, ending up in St. Tropez, so they weren’t coming back. Magda, Joey and Peter invited Aunt Matilda to join them on the ferry to Corsica for an overnight trip.

  “Want to come?” Aunt Matilda asked. I told her about my little rendezvous with Rick.