“Oh, no, thank you.”
“Suit yourself. Bonne nuit, Rosalyn. See you in Paris.”
Chapter Four
Rosalyn closed her eyes in hopes of getting some rest, but quickly gave up. It was a struggle for her to sleep in her own bed, let alone in public.
She read a novel for a while, but although the bestselling true story of a plucky woman’s fight against the violence and corruption in an inner-city school had Hollywood blockbuster written all over it, it failed to hold her interest. Then she scrolled through the selection of in-flight movies, but the stories seemed trivial: the comedies puerile, the dramas unremarkable.
Finally, Rosalyn eased Emma’s bright yellow folder of letters over to her tray. Peeking inside, she gently grasped a fat military envelope. It was foxed with mildew, the scent reminding Rosalyn of a used bookstore.
It dawned on her that sorting through musty old letters probably wasn’t routine in first class. As if on cue, the well-dressed man across the aisle glanced at her, his elegant nostrils flaring. Rosalyn ignored him.
The onionskin paper crackled as she slipped it out of the envelope. The handwriting was as before, with that peculiarly French upright script.
Rosalyn used her French travel dictionary as well as her computer to translate, but there were words she didn’t recognize and couldn’t find in the reference book or online—she imagined they were names of weapons or otherwise war related. The ink was faded in spots, and the stylized cursive was difficult to decipher. And with the occasional phrase cut out or blacked out, it was slow going.
Still, she managed a few paragraphs.
Lucie tells me that one morning the bombing began again, and the clock was chiming nine o’clock, but it did not have a chance to finish. . . . A xxx burst in through the wall, covering all in dust and chunks of plaster. . . . The tinkling of broken glass . . . The shock of concussion is so hard to describe; it makes one feel injured, even when whole.
Rosalyn perused the abused pages, struggling to understand the language, imagining a long-ago war-torn world, until her eyes grew heavy, and she slept.
* * *
She dreamed of the medicine cabinet.
Kneeling on the aqua blue bath mat in front of the open cabinet, Rosalyn wondered if the medications within would be sufficient to kill her.
She felt strangely detached from the question, and even more so from its implications. When Dash died, Rosalyn had fractured. Something deep down had broken, fragmented, splintered into pointy, stabbing shards. She was a shattered mirror. She was seven years of bad luck.
If it wasn’t for bad luck, I wouldn’t have no luck at all.
The words of the old song came to Rosalyn’s mind, crooned in Dash’s husky voice. He wasn’t a morning person, but if she gave him his space, he would be humming by the time he emerged from the shower, singing disparate lines of old and new songs, mostly the blues, laughing at the absurdity of the lyrics because, as he had declared on their wedding day—an extravagant affair held outdoors among the grapevines—Dash considered himself to be the luckiest man alive.
His prescriptions were lined up in neat rows on the shelf: amber vials and bottles and bubble packs of painkillers that had cost every cent they had, and then some. All marked with the name of the man Rosalyn had married six years ago and lost two and a half years ago and still loved: Dashiell Anthony Acosta.
Take with food. Do not crush or chew. Take as needed.
What if she crushed and chewed them, popped handfuls into her mouth on an empty stomach, as needed? She could wash them down with a lovely bottle of Napa Cabernet, as Dash had suggested he do toward the end, when he was trying to celebrate his thirty-eighth birthday—knowing he would never have another birthday—but was too sick to hold anything down. Good reminder: Rosalyn should take an antinausea pill before the others.
This was the sort of thing a person learned when watching her husband struggling to survive, to eradicate murderous cancer cells through chemotherapy and radiation and surgery and drugs and prayer and sheer force of will. Not that any of it mattered in the end.
Ninety-seven days—that was all it took.
Ninety-seven days, from diagnosis to death.
Chapter Five
Upon landing in Paris, Emma and Rosalyn exchanged business cards.
“I’m sure I’ll see you in baggage claim, or passport control, or customs,” said Emma, urging Rosalyn to go on ahead while she waited for an attendant with a wheelchair. “Sorry to say, none of us is getting out of this airport quickly.”
Rosalyn disembarked to the terminal, stopping in a restroom to comb her hair and splash water on her face. She snuck a look at herself in the bathroom mirror and immediately regretted it. Not that anyone looked their best after a transatlantic flight, even in first class. Still.
The face staring back at her was haggard and wan, dark circles underlining her sherry-colored eyes. Her mother would have been appalled, but then, that was nothing new. The Rosalyn-That-Was would have primped for an airplane voyage; she would have kept a makeup bag close at hand. Today’s Rosalyn wore no makeup to take the edge off. Her dark brown hair was shaggy and badly in need of a trim; she should have taken care of it before this trip, but the thought of being trapped in a salon chair while a chatty hair stylist fussed over her had been too much to contemplate.
Now she wished she had toughed it out. Somehow it felt worse to look so unkempt in France, among Parisians known the world over for their sense of style. The women at the mirrors on either side of her were well-coiffed and chic, stunning in spite of the harsh fluorescent lighting. Rosalyn hoped standards might be more relaxed out in the countryside, in Champagne.
She practically fell asleep on her feet as she waited, glassy-eyed and bovinelike, in the swollen line for immigration control. Later, at baggage claim, she spotted Emma.
“Still time to change your mind,” Emma said as she directed her escort to grab her many bags. “Want to ride with me?”
“I really do appreciate the offer, but I need my own car. I’ll be driving all over the region, visiting wineries. And I’m booked in a hotel in Paris for the first couple of days anyway.”
“Well, I can hardly argue with Paris. But Champagne’s a small place,” said Emma. “I’ll be staying in Épernay, which is a ways from Cochet, but I feel sure we’ll cross paths. If not, give me a shout. Honestly, I would love the company. If for no other reason than that it would be nice to speak English over dinner.”
Rosalyn thanked her. On the one hand, she didn’t have the bandwidth for any new “friends.” On the other, as Hugh tried to hammer into her, the wine business was all about socializing. She really should inquire about tasting the wines from Emma’s vineyards, if they weren’t yet represented in the U.S. market. And . . . she would love to find out what had happened with those letters.
“It was really good to meet you,” Rosalyn said.
Emma stilled, fixing Rosalyn with that disconcertingly direct gaze. “I try to stay away from giving unsolicited advice, Rosalyn, but believe me when I say: You’ll muddle through. Life’s not easy, and it sure as hell isn’t fair. But we’re survivors, you and I. Just keep putting one foot in front of the other.”
Rosalyn watched as Emma, the wheelchair, and her escort were swallowed by the crowd milling about the spinning luggage carousels. A second man trotted behind, pushing a trolley loaded high with Emma’s matching luggage.
If she hadn’t felt so empty inside, Rosalyn would have sworn that she felt bereft.
Almost as if she had lost her only friend in France.
* * *
Just keep putting one foot in front of the other.
Emma’s parting words reverberated in Rosalyn’s mind as she progressed through customs and finally departed from the main terminal to find the taxi stand.
This was the same thing her grandmother had told
her at Dash’s memorial service, and as far as advice went, it was helpful. Far better than “You’ll meet someone else someday,” or the ever-popular “He’s in a better place; at least he’s no longer in pain.” Much less the exquisitely painful: “It’s a shame you didn’t have children so you’d have someone to remember him by.”
For the past two years, Rosalyn had been putting one foot in front of the other, like a good soldier marching off to war.
The directive had kept her upright and working, with only intermittent sessions on the bathroom floor, gazing at the medicine cabinet. One foot in front of the other kept her functioning while she settled Dash’s estate and came to understand the full extent of her disastrous financial situation. It kept her going while she represented Hugh’s wine selection to restaurants, grocery outlets, and liquor stores; pretended to enjoy an occasional get-together with friends; and now landed in France on a trip most would envy.
One foot in front of the other had kept her marking time. Feeling more and more isolated with each passing day, not only from her life with Dash but from the world as a whole. From herself.
Rosalyn had practiced meditation and breathing exercises and yoga. She had hiked in the redwoods and strolled by the ocean. She had tried journaling but stayed away from art projects—it was too raw, too emotional, to return to the creativity that had once sustained her but now served only to remind her of what it had been like to be happy.
She had stopped going to therapy when the counselor mentioned—tossed off in an almost passing way—that “In this life, pain is not optional, but suffering is.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” had been the response screaming inside Rosalyn’s head. Suffering is optional? She had rolled the concept around in her mind for a few days but couldn’t absorb the meaning. It felt too much like blame.
Rosalyn canceled her next appointment and didn’t go back.
The truth was that there was no remedy to losing a loved one. No way to reframe it, no matter how talented the therapist. No one could say anything to make it better; nothing could be done about it. It was just there, hunkering down, a malevolent, unbearable weight she was forced to carry.
“I’m still alive, aren’t I?” Rosalyn felt like saying to anyone who suggested she wasn’t coping well. It was just that . . . mere survival didn’t feel like enough anymore.
One foot in front of the other.
Chapter Six
Lucie
In the before time, the time of sweet oblivion, we had no idea what was to come.
I recall once I threw quite a fit of pique because the pink of my ribbon was not the right hue. I had wanted the ashes of roses of a woman, not the brash, rosy pink of a little girl. After our home was destroyed, I found the length of ribbon in the ruins and used it as a tourniquet on a young soldier whose leg had been blown off by a mortar.
I am quite certain he did not mind which shade of pink was the ribbon.
After war was declared, my father insisted I finally accept an offer of marriage, and so I acquiesced to a young man from a fine family. Like everything else, he was taken away by the war. He rarely writes, or if he does, the letters don’t come through. It is hard to imagine him on a battlefield; he had soft hands and an easy, dandified way about him. He is now an officer with the army, but when here in Reims, he had enjoyed parties and dancing and dressing just so.
In the before time, we couldn’t believe our German neighbors to the north would decide to take possession of us. It would be like someone in the house next door, a friend and colleague, coming by and announcing: “This is now my house. You will stay and serve me, or you will die.” The invasion seemed just that absurd.
Under whose authority does a country, a people, a government, decide such things? Back when my father taught me lessons as I idly spun the big globe in the corner of his study, he would explain that war was terrible but was sometimes necessary.
Father was wrong. This war is indeed terrible, but it is in no way necessary.
I remember the first shell that smashed through the walls of our house. I had been descending the stairs—the massive spiral stairs of which my father was so proud—and the clock on the wall was chiming to tell us it was nine o’clock. It had struck only four chimes when the world exploded.
My ears rang, and I saw but could not hear the tinkling of the shattered windows, shards of glass raining down upon me. I fell several steps down, covered in the white plaster dust of a wall that had disappeared.
Concussion is so . . . odd. It leaves one feeling sure one is dead, even without showing any apparent injury. I could not believe I remained whole.
Later, my nose would bleed and my head would ache, perhaps from injury, or maybe my mind itself was damaged and scarred. Later, I would muffle my cries in a pillow while Maman carefully picked out the hundreds of tiny splinters of glass embedded in my skin. Later, she would apply her special salve of thyme and lavender, telling me my young flesh would heal with very little trace of the wounds I had suffered.
Much later, I realized that I had survived a shelling, probably by inches. Had I been one step higher or lower on the stairs, I might have lost my legs, or worse.
But at the time I could think only: Am I dead? Have I died this easily?
* * *
Papa was too old and frail to join our boys who went to fight; our sweet Henri does what he can, but he, too, was rejected by the military as unsuitable.
So we all remained at our poor, wounded house—a home once so fine it had its own name: Villa Traverne. Several refugees helped us to cover the gaping holes with tar paper to protect us from the rain, and we stayed living there, as though in a giant dollhouse, pretending it was normal to mount stairs that no longer had a wall.
Ours was not the worst on the block. What had once been an esteemed neighborhood now lay open and vulnerable like a stripped carcass, its streets clogged by piles of masonry and broken furniture, and even the bodies of friends and neighbors.
Our homes, our haven, our Reims, in ruins.
In September of 1914, the Germans shelled us for half an hour even though they had already taken control of the city. They wanted to frighten us, make us small. And they did. The streets looked like an artist’s conception of hell: iron girders contorted into tortured angles, massive wooden beams splintered into kindling. I am still haunted by the doors and windows that remained, even when all around them had been destroyed. Naked stairways leading into the sky, into the void.
My father begged us to evacuate, but my mother refused.
Maman is unusual for a woman of station. Eugénie Dubois was raised as the daughter of a farmer in the hills outside of Besançon, and learned from her own very humble grandmother how to make salves and ointments from herbs and oils. Though she took on the airs of a fine lady after marrying my father, war changes things. She started knitting sweaters and scarves for the children when the first war refugees arrived in Reims; later, when our neighbor’s son showed up on our doorstep in need of care, she took him in and tended to his wounds.
Word spread quickly, and soon enough our once-fine Villa Traverne became a makeshift clinic, providing refuge to those unable to fight but not so gravely injured as to be evacuated to the military hospital.
My mother taught me to wash wounds with salt water and honey; she applied plasters made of mustard and calendula. We concocted salves from lavender and beeswax, and balms with olive oil and thyme. Rosemary, yarrow, and comfrey leaf reduce itching and scarring; Saint-John’s-wort helps with aching joints and nerve pain. Teas of slippery elm bark, sage, and peppermint cure all manner of intestinal ailments, and a shot of pear brandy from our rapidly dwindling cellars was always appreciated.
We didn’t have much, but we brought the poor, aggrieved soldiers bowls of soup, crackers with honey, slices of pain ordinaire au levain. I do not care for nursing, and am not by nature a physici
an, but more than anything, these unfortunate men, some merely ailing while others are permanently mutilés, needed rest and recuperation, so the nursing was not strenuous.
Through it all, my father left his study less and less; his wool business had included a robust trade with our neighbors to the north, and was now abandoned. Some of our fellow Rémois had looked upon us with suspicion because of those German ties, but now none of that matters.
After the invaders marched into Reims, two soldiers pounded on our still-standing door and demanded to know why we had not evacuated with the others. I explained, in their own language, that we were tending to the sick. They laughed, less interested in the fate of the “dirty French poilus” than in the fact that I spoke German. They thought it was a fine thing, and suggested that I could teach the children of Reims to be good German subjects.
I barely refrained from spitting on them.
After a mere eight days, our valiant French forces wrenched control of Reims away from the Boches, but the invaders squatted down on the surrounding hills and pelted us with their weapons from afar.
What they could not hold, they were determined to destroy.
Chapter Seven
According to the itinerary Hugh had prepared, Rosalyn was to take a taxi from the airport to a small hotel in the Saint-Germain-des-Prés neighborhood of Paris. She would spend a couple of days getting over jet lag while playing tourist, and then pick up a rental car and drive to Champagne.
Even wrapped in her heavy winter coat, Rosalyn shivered as she dragged her luggage to the taxi stand and joined the long queue. But as she progressed toward the head of the line, her heart started to pound. Nausea roiled in her belly.
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