Aix Marks the Spot

by Sarah Anderson

  I met her gaze, and we held it for a few seconds. Maybe even minutes. Neither of us knew what to say: a grandmother meeting her granddaughter was supposed to be one of the first things in a baby’s life, but I was no longer a baby. Far from it. Right now, we were two strangers who happened to be related by blood, who happened to share hair and a nose, who were excited and terrified by the prospect of living together for the next few months.

  Finally, she dropped her hands from my shoulders, cracked a smile not unlike Jean-Pascal’s, and slowly, very carefully, enunciated in English.

  “It is so very nize to meet you,” she said, the ’s’ sounds scooped up by the chirping around us, leaning in to kiss me on both cheeks. I would have to get used to this. Her skin was cool against mine. “My darling Jamie, I am so ‘appy you are ‘ere.”

  “Enchanté, Mamie,” I said. “Merci for having me.”

  “Bon, je vous laisse,” said Jean-Pascal, returning from the house suitcase-less. The sweetheart had taken it inside for us without even asking, leaving us to our moment. He leaned down to kiss Mamie on both cheeks, though she had to wipe away her tears first.

  “Merci, J-P,” she replied, and added a string of words I couldn’t pick up. He reached down and held her hand in both of his, exchanging a sweet smile with her before walking over to me.

  “A bientôt,” he said, leaning forward. I did the cheek kiss thing, proud of myself for understanding without too much prompting.

  “A bientôt, Jean-Pascal,” I repeated in my broken-up accent, which made him beam. One word learned today: ten thousand more to go.

  And then, it was just the two of us. My grandmother and me.

  And we had no idea what to say.

  The initial excitement of our first meeting was already wearing off, replaced by an urge to get to know each other. I wanted to burst out with questions, to ask why I had never met her until today, or why she was so different from all the things I had heard about her. And it was obvious she had questions too: she kept starting to say something, then closed her mouth, only to open it again, all without making a sound.

  “Je te sers de l’eau?” she finally asked, so awkwardly it looked like she was cringing.

  “Um, what?”

  “Tu parles Fraçais?”

  I shook my head. No, I did not speak French. I barely understood it, for that matter. My parents had tried, but languages had never clicked for me. I was a much more visual learner: colors were my language, paints my words.

  Mamie’s entire face fell at this, and she emitted a soft, almost heartbroken, “Oh.” Shamed cascaded over me like a wave.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, and I meant it

  “T’apprendras,” she shrugged, but whatever enthusiasm she had had just minutes ago had already faded. “De l’eau? Water?”

  “Yes please,” I replied, adding the new words to my mental list, but they would be gone within a few hours for sure. “Oui, Merci, S’il te plait, beaucoup.”

  She laughed, though the smile never reached her eyes. I must not have been saying any of this right. But if I had been making mistakes, she didn’t try to correct me.

  She reached for my bag, but I grabbed it first, worried that she wouldn’t be able to lift it. Her arms didn’t look like they had any muscle on them. Empty handed, she waved me along to follow her, taking me into the house through a small door on the side.

  It wasn’t the front door, though I’m not sure which door was supposed to be. This one led to what seemed to be a cave. The second I stepped inside, the heat of the day was suddenly gone, and in its place, I felt the cool and refreshing cold of darkness.

  It was like being underground. The light came through the doorway and a single small window above an old sink, where Mamie went to fill a glass with cold water. I took it eagerly, chugging it down. The water tasted cool and crisp, though a little salty.

  “How waz your airplane?” she asked, not that she sounded all that enthusiastic for a reply. She had probably expected me to speak a little French, and for this to have been something, I don’t know, cute between grandmother and granddaughter. Instead, now, it was coming off a little patronizing.

  “Très bien,” I replied. Very good, the same words my French teacher Madame Lemaitre used when I occasionally replied correctly back in her class. Not that anything I learned there seemed to be helping. I could tell Mamie my name, age, and ask many questions about monkeys, but couldn’t tell her anything about myself.

  “Do you want to see your room?” she continued, struggling over the vowels. I nodded, handing her back the now empty glass.

  The house was surprisingly dark, and difficult to navigate. Most of the shutters were closed to keep out the heat of the day, though propped slightly open so that some light could filter in, but it wasn’t much. The hallways were tight, my bag scraping along the wall as we walked.

  Mamie led me to the top floor, taking so many turns I wondered how I would ever remember the way back down. There, at the very top, at the end of the hallway, a door was ajar, light flowing in through the open window. It filled the hallway with a warm, caramel glow, the world basked in sepia. Mamie turned around as if making sure I was still following.

  “Your fazer’s room,” she said, indicating the door, “I ‘ave not touched.”

  She took a step back, indicating I should go in. It didn’t look like she would be following me. But I didn’t care: I was instantly in awe.

  The room was small, square, furnished simply with a matching wooden desk, bed, and wardrobe that looked like they were out of an antiques catalogue. The bed was massive, dressed in white linens, a lavender wand sitting on the end and filling the room with the gentle, calming scent. The desk and bookcase were stuffed full of books, some ancient hardcovers, others old paperbacks: my father’s books, from when he was still a student.

  “Bathroom,” said Mamie, opening a door next to the wardrobe, revealing a small room with yellow and green tiles. I realized it shared a wall with the cliff face, keeping the room cool.

  “And ze toilet,” she added, almost an afterthought, pointing to a door directly outside my room. “Séparé. Az you say, separate.”

  I dropped my bag next to my suitcase, which sat on the chest at the end of the bed, waiting for me to unpack it. Jean-Pascal had been immensely kind to bring it up for me. I wondered idly how well he and my grandmother knew each other, before getting distracted by the window and rushing to it, practically flinging myself outside as I took in the view.

  The entire valley spread out before me. Green exploded on the rolling hills, dotted here and there with small traces of civilization. In the distance, I could even see the Lourmarin castle peeking through the trees. Right below the room, I could see my Mamie’s patio, and, of all things, a bright blue swimming pool.

  “Thank you,” I said, so overwhelmed with emotion I couldn’t figure out what to say next, “thank you, Mamie.”

  “I am so ‘appy to see you,” she said.

  She placed her hand on my cheek, running her thumb over my ear. She looked once again like she had something important to say, licking her lips to make difficult words slide out more easily, but instead she returned her hand, and smiled.

  She left without another word.

  One thing people never tell you - or they do, I just chose to ignore them - is that travelling makes you tired. Even though I had tried to sleep on the plane and even managed to catch a short nap in the car ride over, the second I hit the bed I felt so overwhelmingly exhausted that I fell backwards and was out like a light.

  When I woke up the next morning, the room hadn’t changed at all. The only thing to tell me an entire day had gone by was the way the shadows seemed to have moved in a single blink. It was hot, my skin was sticky, and my face itched like you wouldn’t believe.

  I sat up, groggy. I hadn’t even bothered to take my shoes off, so I did now, blinking the film of haze out of my eyes as I freed my toes from their rubber prison cell. I let out a breath of relief a
s they expanded in the heat.

  The room seemed smaller today. Maybe it was a trick of the light, but after a good night’s sleep it was almost claustrophobic. So, this was going to be my cell for the next three months. My punishment for my near deadly mistake. Like Napoleon at St-Helens, only reversed: trapped inside France instead of kept out of it.

  I took a deep breath and pushed myself onto my feet. My back creaked, echoed by the floor as I put my entire weight on it. I shuffled to the bathroom, where I practically fell on the toilet. It was lower than back home, and uncomfortable to sit on without a seat. I stood up to flush, before realizing there wasn’t one. Oh. Crap.

  I had just gone in the bidet.

  Who the hell puts a bidet in a bathroom but doesn’t put the stinking toilet? I vaguely remembered Mamie mentioning the separate room last night, but… why?

  Grabbing the showerhead, I threw the water on full blast and aimed it at the tiny porcelain bowl. Water flew up the ugly yellow tiles of the wall. I held back tears of frustration as I drenched the bathroom. I couldn’t even use the toilet properly in this country.

  I threw my sticky clothes into the corner and stepped into the shower stall, putting the head back where it was supposed to be, which was far, far too low to be convenient. Mamie had left soaps and shampoos for me - shampooing was both self-explanatory and hilarious, Après shampooing I could guess was conditioner, and gel-douche must have been the soap, because I sure as heck hoped my grandmother wasn’t buying me a douche. There was a lot of guessing - and I melted into the warm embrace of flowing water.

  I did have to duck to get the hair. I wondered how on earth any woman in this country could shave in a cubicle so small. I could hardly bend over. Maybe that’s where the stereotype of hairy European women came from: small, insufferably tight showers.

  Clean and starting to feel more awake, I shuffled to the sink, inspecting my face. I almost screamed: in just a single night, I had either developed acne from the plane, or become a banquet for mosquitos. By the itch, I guessed the latter. As the steam began to dry, the red in my face remained, and with the burning, the urge to scratch.

  Not even one day into this country, and already I was having a bad reaction. Was it possible to be allergic to France?

  I left my clothes in the corner and grabbed new ones from my suitcase, slipping on gym shorts and a baggy old tee. Finally, clean, dressed, and sufficiently awake, I grabbed my phone.

  6:34 am.

  Impressive, I had slept through the night and emerged from my exhausted nest as a morning bird. Equally impressive was how high the sun was in the sky, how loud the cicadas were chirping, and how many missed calls waited for me on my phone now that I actually opened it.

  Realization hit me like a punch to the face. I hadn’t set the correct time zone. It was already noon, and I had slept through half the day.

  I flew down the stairs, realizing halfway down that I had no idea which direction anything was in this crazy house. I stopped at a landing that could well have been a living room, with an old purple couch in the corner and a wooden coffee table covered in magazines that couldn’t actually say Philosophie, could they?

  A door leading outside stood ajar, and I walked through, emerging into the summer heat and right in the middle of cicada song. I didn’t know how I would ever get used to the sound, how anyone could get used to it. It was like living inside an electrical socket.

  We were on the second floor, the door leading to stairs that brought me right down to the pool, and, thank god, to the kitchen. Inside, Mamie was sitting on a stool, round glasses that hadn’t been replaced since the seventies perched on the tip of her nose as she read a worn white paperback.

  “Coucou, ma puce!” She exclaimed, catching me staring at her through the kitchen window in a totally non-stalkery way. “Bien dormi?”

  Not sure what any of that meant and catching a whiff of something meaty and magical wafting out her window, I gave her a smile.

  “Bonjour, Mamie,” I replied, stepping into the kitchen. It was so much cooler down here, no wonder she was reading in the dark. “Did my parents call?”

  “Tes Parents?” she looked a little taken aback, though I wasn’t sure what by. “Ils ont appelés hier soir. Rapelle les après qu’on déjeune?”

  “Um…” I wet my suddenly dry lips, “Je comprends pas?”

  At least I knew how to say I didn’t understand. But the look on Mamie’s face was heartbreaking, as if she had expected me to emerge from the room having fully assimilated the French language in my sleep, and now her only granddaughter was stabbing her deep in the back.

  “Late-her,” she said, making the phone symbol with her hand, “telephone later.”

  “Thank you,” I replied, then added “Merci,” for good measure.

  “Tu m’aides a mettre la table?” she asked, making no attempt to sprinkle in any English. She pointed to a cabinet, and from context I understood she wanted the table set. She pointed out the door, towards the shaded spot near the pool, where a wooden table waited, alone.

  I took the plates and utensils, walking them out to the table in silence, my mind racing to make sense of the situation. She was obviously frustrated I didn’t speak any French, but she wasn’t trying to speak English, either. What was it dad was always saying? Conversation goes both ways. And this sure wasn’t a conversation.

  I don’t know what she had expected: the perfect bilingual granddaughter to waltz into her life, now that she was finally ready for her. For us to act like we had known each other since I was born, that she had watched me grow from a baby to the person I was now. But she had waited too long for any of that.

  Mamie came out to the table with a heavy cast iron casserole in her hands. I reached to help her, but she had already made it all this way without any trouble - she was strong, and younger than she looked.

  She dished out a massive slice of pork roast and potatoes, covered in a sweet-smelling mustard sauce with chunks of garlic sitting on top, handing me the serving spoon while she returned to the kitchen for a bottle of water and a bottle of pink wine. She poured us glasses of water first, pointing to the wine while saying, in her drawn out, rolling French accent, “later.”

  The roast was excellent, so moist that it melted on my tongue, and the mustard had just enough kick to balance out the gentle creaminess of the sauce and juices. I dove right in, not realizing how hungry I was. I hadn’t eaten since we had lunch on the plane.

  “Iz too… lourd for summer,” she said, struggling to shape the words, “but I make for you.”

  “I’m so happy to be here, Mamie,” I said. Well, lied.

  “Um-hum,” she replied, utterly unconvinced.

  The tension was so thick I had an easier time slicing the pork. I wanted to say something, anything, but the words stuck in my throat, unable to pass the language barrier.

  “Say Tray Bon,” I said, and Mamie smiled gently. But it was not enough to win her over.

  I ate a meal with this familiar stranger, trying to sort through all I knew about her. I knew she was a writer here, which is part of what inspired dad to study literature at university, where he met you when you shared graduate classes. You had wanted to study abroad, left in search of a degree, and came back with a husband and, later, a daughter.

  But there was an entire chapter I was missing between “(French) boy meets (American) girl” and “man leaves his homeland, vowing never to come back again, his own mother refusing to see him.” What could he have done that was so horrible his mother disowned him so completely?

  I finished my water and she poured me a little wine. We clinked glassed. Drank. I wasn’t a fan: it was too sour, too sharp, like licking a cold fork. I didn’t finish my glass.

  After lunch, Mamie and I cleared the table, washed the dishes together (me drying), and she went upstairs, with no intension of coming back down again. I didn’t particularly mind. I had had my awkward fill of her for the day, and didn’t want to draw out all the tense, one-wa
y conversations.

  I finally spotted her up on a terrace, like she was on top of her own little tower, typing away madly on an old mechanical typewriter.

  Huh. So that was how it was going to be.

  “Yeah, it’s sunny here,” I said to you. Understatement of the century: the heat was so astoundingly strong that I could barely move. My own sweat kept me stuck to every surface I had the misfortune of touching for too long.

  I had thrown myself back onto the bed, keeping the phone a little distance from my ear, as that too was, astoundingly, sweating as well. I stared up at the ceiling, at the cracking white plaster and sturdy brown beams that held the roof above my head.

  The windows were closed against the cicada sound, but it made the room so stuffy I couldn’t think. I experimented with closing the curtains while the windows remained open, but it wasn’t much better.

  “And what are you doing so far?” You asked.

  “I had lunch with Mamie, but she’s working now,” I said, extrapolating, “it’s hard to talk to her. I don’t think she likes me.”

  “Nonsense, of course she likes you!” dad interjected, “you’re her granddaughter. What’s not to like?”

  The fact that I put my mother in a wheelchair, for starters, maybe? How much had dad told her about the accident? About why he was sending me away?

  “Have the two of you made any plans yet?” you asked, your eagerness seeping through the phoneline. “Is she going to take you to Aix? Oh, how about the St Victoire?”

  “We haven’t really talked at all,” I said, too tired to filter my words. “I don’t think she wants anything to do with me.”

  “Don’t stay cooped up in the house,” you said. “Go out. See things! Do stuff! Practice your French!”

  “You mean, my non-existent French?”

  “There’s nowhere to go but up, darling.”

  There was a silence, and for a second I thought the phone had gone dead. But the longing in your voice remained like a string knotting us together, you wanting to be here, me wanting to be home with you. If I could drag you through the Atlantic network cables, and somehow download workable legs along the way, you know I would.