Aix Marks the Spot

by Sarah Anderson

  “Just try to have a good time,” you said, finally taking a deep breath. “ Thanks for being so understanding about living with your Mamie while I recover. It’s good to know that I don’t have to worry about you still having a great summer. It’s just easier this way.”

  “Sure, sure.” Just because you and dad both had said it, didn’t make it true. I knew you resented me for what I did for you. I knew you needed time away from your life-crushing daughter. You needed space: space to walk again, and space from me.

  I gave you that space. I ruined everything, and I would do anything to make it right again.

  “I love you, baby bear,” you said. And for a moment, I believed you. Using almost forgotten nicknames as terms of endearment was a low blow.

  “I love you too, mama bear.”

  “And I love you!” Dad piped in. “Sorry, I’m trying to work things out with billing. But I love you!”

  “I love you too, Dad,” I said, feeling a pang to my heart. He didn’t really have to do that right now. It was just another stab to remind me what I had done.

  I hung up, staring up at the rafters again. If I stared long enough, I could imagine lines of ants walking up and down them, living the world of Mamie’s upside-down house. I wondered if I could live upside down. It was better than living pushed to the edge of things, unwanted by my parents or my grandmother.

  At least there was one person who wanted me, and that was Jazz. The two of us had spent weeks planning our summer: me, with my brand-spanking-new driver’s license, and her, with her mother’s old Toyota. We were going to get out of the city and explore as much of the state as we could. Well, within reason: we had to be home by curfew, but that wasn’t hard. All we wanted to do was sketch.

  When we both got into the Barnes’s Foundation’s summer program, we knew that the universe really did want us to be artists. Together, because that’s what best friends do. But my parents didn’t care how prestigious it was, after the accident: the only thing that mattered was getting me far, far away from them.

  So now she was learning the secrets to the finest of fine art, while I was trapped in this house, with not even my own language to comfort me.

  I needed the internet. I pulled out my computer, feeling relief flow through me as I heard the familiar boot-up jingle. Now I would just have to ask Mamie about the Wi-Fi password, if she had one.

  What I didn’t count on was her not having Wi-Fi at all.

  I had 3G on my phone, though, which made a small difference. It was enough data for my parents to call me (pre-approved oversea numbers and all) and have a trickle of internet. I looked up Jazz on Messenger, realizing she was probably at Barnes right about now.

  Jazz,

  Message me when you get out? I need to talk to someone. I’m going crazy over here.

  Don’t call tho. I don’t have much data and I don’t think my parents got your number approved. I have a lot I need to say, and I honestly can’t handle another phone call right now. If I hear your voice, I’ll probably have a(nother) break down.

  I didn’t get a message back until the middle of the night, but I was already awake: you’re a jerk, jetlag. Not to mention the entire French countryside trying to start a concert. At one point I thought a woman was screaming, but it turned out to be a bird. A flipping bird.

  Jazz was just getting off from the second day of studio art training, and it was obvious she loved it, despite how much she played it down for my sake. She told me how the teachers hated her work and made her redraw the same apple over and over again to get the shading right.

  She might have said it to make me feel better, but it turned my insides to knots. I needed that kind of criticism. I would never improve my portfolio if people kept lying to me about my work. I was mediocre at best, but passionate. I would have killed to be in her place right now, apples and all.

  I told her it was late, and I was going to sleep. There’s nothing like seeing your best friend live your life without you to make you feel the brunt of this punishment.

  It was my fault. I deserved this. I rolled over in bed, pushing the pillow over my ears, and tried to cut out the noise of the frogs.

  Every night had a perfect moment. The cicadas signed off, one by one, and quiet fell over the rolling hills of Provence. This moment was pure bliss. The sun set fast here, so there were only a few minutes of twilight, where the world looked odd, all filtered in blue, while some of the cliffs still shimmered in pink.

  And then. Then. Taking up the relay from his cicada friends, you would hear a lone and tearful ribbit.

  It sounded like a rubber band being stretched, about to snap. Another responded, lower than the first. Then a third. And then the entire world sounded like it was the seat of a frog concert. Birds would join, hooting or screaming. It sounded like a drunken rave that just wouldn’t end.

  That’s also when the mosquitos came out to play. With all the frogs chatting back and forth, I would only hear the whine when it was too late. The high-pitched hum shot past my ear, but I missed it because I was already too busy scratching the new bite on my arm.

  So, I closed the windows. For a minute, I had perfection: no mosquitos. No frogs. My ears would ring as they noticed the absence of sound.

  And then the air itself would try to suffocate me.

  It was so hot in the room I could feel myself sweating through my pajamas. So, I was faced with the dilemma: do I open the windows and breathe, but leave all this exposed skin at the mercy of the mosquitos, or did I close said windows and suffocate in my sleep?

  I switched every night. When I would wake up from a mosquito free sleep, I was so covered in sticky sweat I swore - never again. But the next night, after waking to new mountains on my legs, I couldn’t remember the pain of those sweats. And the next morning I… and so on. That was all considering I fell asleep at all.

  I still managed to get into the semblance of a routine. Slowly, I was waking up earlier and earlier, falling asleep more or less when my head hit the pillow. Even so, there was nothing interesting to report at all.

  I wasn’t quite sure what I was allowed to do: I swam in the pool and read the books I brought along. Mamie didn’t have a car, so I couldn’t go anywhere. She didn’t have internet, so I couldn’t do anything. All of her books were in French, so I couldn’t read. How dad managed to grow up here at all completely baffled me. I could completely understand why he left.

  But the worst was that it had gotten to the point where I just couldn’t draw anything. I was in Provence, the land of artistic inspiration, but every time I picked up a pencil, I got the shakes. Nothing in my head made it onto the paper.

  Mamie had made a roast on the first day, but since then most of our meals had been salads, meatballs, and fruit. She seemed really into Swedish meatballs, though I’d never seen her leave the house once to buy them.

  During the day, she had this terrace outside her room where she would sit and hammer at a typewriter for hours on end. Sometimes, she would call me things like choupette which I think were supposed to be affectionate, but then she would turn cold and lock herself in her room again for hours on end. I asked her about the Wi-Fi, but she said that whiffy is distracting, and I couldn’t get over that.

  Friday morning, despite managing to wake up at the very reasonable hour of 9 am, I came downstairs to find the entire house abandoned. Mamie must have locked herself away in her study already, which was not exactly new, but she usually greeted me in the morning and shared her coffee. I took some, though I hated the taste, just to try to impress her, to spend a few more minutes trying to bond, but she would always leave before I was anywhere near finishing my mug. I would dunk it down the sink.

  This morning, instead of Mamie and the coffee, there was a note waiting for me. A short list of groceries she needed, and a crisp blue 20-euro bill folded in half sitting on top of it, pinned down by a key ring with a large beeper on it.

  Hungry, and finding the fridge sorely in need of a refill, I was caught in
a tight place. Usually, if you told me to pick up groceries, it was an easy chore to do, especially now that I could drive on my own. But it dawned on me that I had no real way of getting into town even if I wanted to.

  My stomach grumbled; my cue to leave. I strode up the stairs to Mamie’s room two at a time, finding her room locked. Lovely. I knocked. No answer.

  I stuffed the note into my pocket with the bill and ran downstairs and outside, taking a step away from the house to see if she was on her terrasse. My hunch was right: she was sitting on her little overlook, hunched over a typewriter, cigarette hanging limply from her lips.

  “Hey!” I called. No answer. “Mamie!”

  “Quoi?” she yelled back, neither pausing not looking up, “Je travaille! Ne me dérange pas quand j’écris, tu comprends?”

  I certainly did not comprend any of that. Except maybe the word comprend.

  “Comment… How do I get to the village?” I shouted again, cupping my hands around my mouth to make sure she understood every word I said.

  “En velo!” she said, “en bas!”

  Velo, velo… velociraptor was the only equivalent I could think of.

  “Velo?” I asked up again.

  “Bicyclette!”

  She wanted me to bike into the village? With groceries? I could have laughed, but there was nothing funny about this. I felt sick to my stomach, which wasn’t great considering how hungry I was.

  “Passe à la boulangerie en premier,” she said, of which I only picked up the word boulangerie: bakery. She must have heard my stomach rumbling all the way from her perch. Suddenly, the idea didn’t seem all that unappealing anymore. The thought of a real French croissant melting in my mouth was enough of an encouragement to leave the house as any.

  I found Mamie’s bike leaning against the wall beneath the kitchen window and pushed it down her steep driveway. There was a basket in the front, properly convenient. I clutched the gate beeper tight in my hand: this was my first freedom in five days, and no matter how small, I would embrace it.

  The cicadas were singing with a vengeance this morning, so loud that they drowned out the sound of me tapping the kickstand and pushing myself onto the road. I remembered the way to the village easily enough, as there was only one real road here, after all. One road, but no bike lane, and a ditch on either side of the asphalt. Worst design ever. If you’re thinking of biking across Provence… don’t.

  The bike was old, but once it got going, it handled rather well. I kept to the side of the road, cringing every time a car even came close to me. The cicadas were covering up the sound of motors, leaving me terrified I would get run over at any moment.

  The village of Lourmarin started right across the street from the castle. I hadn’t paid any attention to it as we had driven by it the first time: I mean, there was a freaking castle there, for goodness sakes. Now that I had time to focus on it, I could see the clocktower reaching up from the center, and the tightly wound homes and houses that spun up to it.

  Was I allowed to bike through? There weren’t any signs telling me not to. I picked up the pace and rolled into town.

  The place was gorgeous, like I had fallen into a postcard. Clinging plants covered the street corners, flowers bursting from pots and terraces. Fountains trickled, replacing the sound of the diligent cicada’s chirp.

  The streets were narrow, homes on either side close enough together to give me small relief from the sun. They were a mishmash of ancient and crumbling, along with recently renovated, smooth stucco next to peeling old plaster. A woman sat in a metal folding chair outside her home, smoking a cigarette as her little poodle slept under her feet. I rode past her, feeling her eyes on me, though I supposed there was nothing else to look at anyways.

  Everything seemed to be sloping upwards. I kept pedaling, though the streets were getting steep, until I reached the top. There was a church, bell tower and all, and no bakery to be found. People were already out and about even this early, but when I started to ask for directions, I found the words dried up in my mouth.

  I truly had no idea what to say.

  I turned the bike around and picked another road at random, riding down the slope and keeping my feet on the pavement in case I needed to brake. There, finally, I saw something promising: bread in the window, so I parked the bike and went on in.

  Fresh loaves rested in wicker baskets along the wall, while the counter was full of pastries and tarts. The smell was heavenly, like melted butter and hot sugar. My mouth watered in an instant, and my stomach responded with its now familiar rumble.

  “Bonjour,” a woman walked in from the back, wiping flowery hands on an apron. “Puis-je vous aider?”

  “I… um… English?” I sputtered, and she smiled.

  “What would you like?” she asked again, the words heavily accented, but clear. I felt relief wash over me.

  I checked Mamie’s list, recognized the word baguette, but nothing else. I handed it to the baker.

  She pulled down two seed covered baguettes, an olive filled loaf from under the counter, and a flat, golden bread with leaf shapes cut out. Each she slipped into a separate paper bag, placing them on the counter beside her.

  “Ce sera tout?” she asked, handing me back the shopping list, “Is zat all?”

  I just couldn’t help myself. The massive pile of beautiful flaky pastries was just winking at me from under the glass, arranged from left to right from the classic to the elaborate: mounds of croissants and pain-au-chocolats, moving into rows of sweetened buns, until reaching the lines of glazed eclairs and carefully balanced cakes. Small tarts full of fruit or just plain chocolate preceded the larger versions of themselves, works of art every single one.

  My eyes fell on the bun in the middle, a beautiful, golden thing with white icing on top so smooth it looked like princess Elsa’s doing.

  But as I tried to find the name, I froze up. I couldn’t get the words out of my mouth. Instead, I found myself falling into the familiar.

  “Un croissant?”

  I hated the way my voice sounded as I said the word. I would never get the slick French accent like Mamie who spoke like silk. The baker didn’t seem to mind, or maybe she didn’t notice my embarrassment. I fed the bill Mamie had given me through the change machine, thanking her for the food as I took the bags - the only French I could manage, but it seemed to make her smile grow.

  “A bientôt!” she said, as I left.

  “Merci! A bientôt!” I replied, beaming as I went back to the bike and placed all the bread in the basket. There, I had done it: a successful, semi-French interaction. The conversation had me bursting with confidence.

  Well, semi confidence. I would have to figure out what that gorgeous silver bun was in order to get one next time. The croissant looked so usual and familiar beside it.

  It didn’t taste familiar, or even usual for that matter. The second the flaky pastry touched my lips, the butter seemed to melt on my tongue, filling my mouth with sweetness, magically still warm from the oven. I practically tumbled backwards, falling onto the stoop of someone’s door. I couldn’t blemish this experience by biking at the same time, no: this was something I would have to take the time to enjoy. I tried not to scarf it down, I really did. But there was something simply magical about warm butter pastry flakes in the morning.

  France: where even your cheap breakfast is a delicacy.

  Riding my bike through the small streets of the village, baguettes poking out from my basket, I felt like I was living the French ideal. All I needed now was my beret and my striped shirt. Instead I was in a t-shirt from a charity fun run, my running shorts riding a little too high up for comfort. Even though it was the middle of summer, many people around me were wearing full length dresses and even slim fitted jeans. I couldn’t understand them.

  I turned a corner and practically crashed into a market stall. I slammed on my breaks just in time, as my wheel delicately bumped the table.

  “Oh mais, fais attention!” An older woma
n - not even the stall owner, mind you - swiped an arm at me, batting the air instead of my face.

  “Sorry!” I exclaimed, and she rolled her eyes.

  “Touriste…”

  I got off the bike and decided to push it instead. It was still early enough that the marketplace wasn’t too busy. The stalls were bright and clean, close together in this cramped space. There were tables set out with massive wheels of cheese, others with baskets full of dried hams and meats. Touristy looking stalls had bundles of lavender, and berets on display, though I had yet to see an actual French person wear one yet. A farmer had all of his fruits and veg in wooden crates, calling out prices to people as they walked by, who then usually stopped to exchange banter.

  I went there first, sure that most of the things Mamie wanted me to get were veggie based. Luckily, the man had signs up, so I could match the words on her list to the names of the food. I rehearsed what I was going to say in my head, how I would pronounce the words, how much of each I wanted… should be easy.

  “Vous avez choisi?” he asked, leaning out over his stall and beaming at me, his moustache bristling.

  In an instant, all the confidence I had gained from the bakery was gone. The words dissolved off my tongue. I found myself staring at the farmer, mouth suddenly dry, at a complete loss of what to actually say.

  “Vous voulez un peu plus de temps?” He asked, and it was obvious he was trying to keep the patronizing tone from his voice. Or maybe I was just imagining it out of sheer embarrassment.

  How could I go from knowing what to say one second, to a completely bumbling idiot in the next? Faced with a real Frenchman, who looked so much like a stereotype that it hurt, I couldn’t utter a word.

  “Je voudrais… je veut… s’il vous plait…” I managed to blurt out, but none of those were actual orders. I shoved the shopping list forward in shame.