by Jessica Love
I didn’t stop at my parents,’ driving right to her house, hoping to decompress before seeing “the family.” It didn’t work. At the house were my father’s truck, the Japanese car my mother drove that I could never remember because I didn’t care, my sister’s minivan, and the pickup driven by her husband that he had bought from my father because “I know it’s been taken care of.”
When I walked in the house everyone stared at me. At first I couldn’t figure it out. My father, as always, provided the insight.
“Jesus, what the hell has happened to you?” he asked. I did not know what he meant at first.
“What?” I asked.
“What do you mean, ‘what’? Look at you. Look at your hair, your clothes. No wonder they wouldn’t let you back into a courtroom!”
“Oh yeah. We should probably talk about that, but not right now, okay? Where’s Grandmama?” Like I said, I’d learned that outrage was something that can be channelled.
“Honey, they took her to the funeral home about an hour ago,” said my mother.
“Well then, I suppose that’s where I should be. What are you all doing here?”
“Waiting for you, Jessi,” said my sister. “We thought we should all go down there together.”
“Okay,” I said, trying to avoid friction right off the bat. That was a fail, of course. As soon as we were in my mother’s car, my father behind the wheel, he started in.
“Did you call her? Did you know it? Did she call you. What’s with the hair? Your eyes are pretty dark. Is it supposed to be some kind of style or is it because you’ve been crying? What did… ”
“Hey, James. Enough with the twenty questions, okay?” I’d never before called him by his first name.
“Don’t you… ” he started to say, but my mother’s hand on his arm quieted him for the rest of the trip.
There is only one funeral parlor in town. We thought we were going to pick out a casket, but the funeral director, an elderly man, very dapper but very straight of bearing and of course all in black, his suit immaculate, sat us all down.
“Your mother visited us a week ago,” he said looking at my father, “and she made all the arrangements. She gave me these,” and he handed an envelope to my father, another to my sister, another to me. “I have no idea what’s in these, but she directed me to hand them to you, just as I have.”
We all sat there for a moment, trying to take this in.
“She was here a week ago? And you didn’t call me or notify the authorities?!” said my father. “What kind of operation is this? A sick, frail woman on the verge of death and you do NOTHING?!”
“She appeared neither sick nor frail, sir. And we have people come in to make arrangements all the time. It’s what we do.” Though his demeanor was very sorrowful and compassionate, there was steel in this man. Enough that my father ratcheted down his attitude.
Grandmere had been here just a week ago? She knew she was going to die. I thought about that for a moment and wondered if she had taken her own life. If so, she was ready to go. There were few accidents around Grandmere.
I wasn’t ready to open my envelope and didn’t want to in front of the others. I put it in my messenger bag. My father tore his open, as did my sister. As they read, they kept looking at me.
“Did you know about this?” my father asked.
“About what?”
“Why don’t you open your envelope?”
“I don’t feel like it right now,” I said.
“Have you been talking to her?” There was accusation in his voice.
“Um, I live in Seattle,” stating the obvious just to get under his skin.
“On the phone. Did you talk to her on the phone?” he asked.
“Oh yes because Grandmama was such a chatty person on the phone. Hard to break off the conversation sometimes.” This time the sarcasm was so thick that my sister and her husband sniggered. Even my mom had to hide a smile.
“Look at you. Look at you. You are just like her,” he said, throwing a thumb over his shoulder to someplace inside the building.
“Why, thank you. That’s the nicest thing you’ve said to me in years.”
“Don’t take it as a compliment,” he snapped back.
“James!” said my mother.
“Dad!” said my sister.
“It’s okay, “ I told them, keeping my eyes locked with my father’s, which could not conceal a smoldering mixture of pain and anger.
“Tout passé, tout lasse, tout casse,” I said.
“Don’t you repeat that,” my father snarled at me. “I had to listen to that garbage from that whore from the time I was born!”
This time the shock was universal and everyone gasped.
“James!” said my mother.
“My father told me everything,” said my father. “From the time I was ten, he told me how he met this woman, how he’d been wounded in France, how she tricked him into marrying her by getting pregnant with me, how he had to bring her back home. That she was nothing but a whore!”
“That was not true,” said the funeral director quickly, with surprising force.
“What do YOU know?!” my father nearly shouted.
“Your mother and I played backgammon every Friday,” said the funeral director.
“Where, right here? I’ll bet you did,” said my father. I could not believe the bile that was coming out of his mouth. I always thought his quiet reflected some sort of reserve. Instead, I was learning it hid a boiling pot of venom.
“Actually, no. Across the street at Tommy’s Cafe, after your mother left church.” The director nodded slightly toward the Catholic Church on the same side of the street.
“After my wife died, your mother and I would go over to Tommy’s and play. She usually beat me two games to one, or three games to two. She was very good,” he said.
“What’s this have to do with my father and how they met?” said my father.
“You see, I was in France, too. With your father, in fact. A number of us who enlisted out of Washington ended up in the same unit in Europe. Your father was wounded in a small town in France. Your mother was a nurse. She cared for him. They fell in love, and she came back with him,” he said.
“That’s not how my father told it,” said my father. “He said…”
“James.” I’d never heard that tone of voice from my mother to my father. It was quiet but anything but soft and seemed to fill the room.
“Your father was an angry, drunk man who lied often and blamed anyone and everyone for his own failings. He often came home late when he came home at all. Your mother told you he was at work, on the night shift. That was a lie to protect you. He was out tomcatting around and made passes at me on more than one occasion,” she said.
“He was a good father!” said mine.
“Just because he taught you to throw a baseball does not mean he was a good man. Now would be a really good time for you to stop talking,” said my mother.
I was more than a little surprised. My sister sat with her mouth gaping, her eyes open nearly as wide. Her husband was cleaning his nails.
“You weren’t there. You don’t know anything!” shouted my father. “You are just making this up!”
“Your mother and I talked often before he died, and on more than one occasion after, when I asked why she never left him. She said she had made her own decisions, and she had to own them. But this is not helping any of us. Just shut up. Now,” said my mother.
I don’t think I knew which confused me more: all this information or my mother’s transformation.
“Your mother will be cremated tomorrow at noon, according to her wishes,” said the funeral director to my father. “She asked me to read a few words, and the priest will be here to say a prayer. She has already purchased the urn.” He turned to me. “Jessica, you will wa
nt to read your letter before you come back tomorrow.”
With that, he stood from the table, tall, straight, handsome, impeccable in black, and I knew instantly why Grandmama would have sought his company. They were alike in so many ways.
The car was silent as we drove back to Grandmama’s house. My mother made noises about me coming back to the house, but I told her I would stay at Grandmama’s, something she knew already.
“Thank you,” I whispered to her with a kiss on the cheek as I got out of the car. She brushed my face like Grandmama had done so many times.
“You want company?” my sister asked in the driveway, already knowing my answer. I just shook my head and smiled, and she and her husband drove away. At last I was alone.
I won’t bore you with a lot of unnecessary details about that night or the next day. It was what it was. Except to tell you that not once that night, in that house, was I alone. Nor have I been since.
In so many ways, Grandmama is closer to me now than ever. It’s like she let go of her body so her spirit could be where it needed to be, and wanted to be, and that was near me.
I suppose I do have to tell you about the letter, and what happened next.
“Ma chère,” it started, in her careful, elegant script. “If you are reading this, then I have passed. I know you will grieve, but do not feel lost. Nothing is other than it should be. Everything passes. People, too. But love is immortal, as long as we allow it to reside within us. And you know my love for you.”
She left nearly everything to me, though there wasn’t much, really. In the envelope was also a small key, which she wrote would open a wooden box on her mantle. Which I did.
Inside, was another letter, fragments of the shattered tea cup I had dropped decades before, and another box. That one was latched, but not locked, and had “For Marcel” written on a small note on the lid.
“Ma chère, do you remember this tea cup? I saved it not because I want you to feel pain of that memory, but because I want you to be free. S’il vous plait, take this cup, the small box and my ashes back to France.
“There is a small graveyard there, in a small town not far from Bordeaux, named for my great-great-grandfather, who helped acquire lands for France in the New World. Some places in Louisiana and Canada have our same last name. You will find it easily. Here are the phone number and address that I have.” She listed one phone number and one address.
“I believe my brother is still there, making some of the world’s greatest wines. He was a naughty boy, and all the girls of the village were in love with him, but the woman he eventually married tamed him with gifts of wisdom. You will enjoy her, and learn much, I think.
“My brother was in the Resistance, survived the war but suffered injuries. If he recently passed, his family will still be there. Give them the small box and this letter. They will take care of the rest. Please place the cup fragments in the earth near the chateau and scatter my ashes in the hills. Thank you, Comtesse. You are my blood, my spirit.”
Comtesse? Countess? Grandmama?
I wanted to drive over and shove this letter into my father’s face with my fist. But her hand was on my shoulder. “No,” she said, stern, but with a smile in her voice. “He is not important. You are important.”
I went upstairs to the tiny house’s bathroom, the one we shared when I lived there with her. I looked into the mirror and saw the wreck my face had become from all the crying. I looked at all the wonderful soaps on the counter, not one of which could be purchased in the local Thriftway. I had no idea where she got them.
I washed my skin as she had taught me, thoroughly but gently, until all traces of tears and dark makeup were gone. I put on some lotion that smelled of lavender, then pulled the oddly uneven strands of my last modern haircut to where I could cut them off with scissors I found in the top drawer.
I brushed my now short dark hair straight back from my face, where it was held with a gel from a jar labeled in French.
It was amazing how much I looked like her. And her mother, whose photograph was in a frame by the mirror. This is how I look to this day.
I’d not thought to bring funeral clothes and knew there was nothing for sale in my hometown I would wear. But in Grandmama’s closet were several suits and a few dresses, besides the house dresses she wore at home or in the garden but never outside her own gate.
“Better a few of the best quality rather than many of no quality,” she used to say. There was a black dress that fit me like it was tailored, though I didn’t think we were the same size. Her shoes, though, were too small. The black ankle boots I wore down from Seattle would do just fine.
That’s how I arrived at the funeral home the next day, just before noon.
“Oh, my dear!” said my mother, tears filling her eyes. “You are so beautiful. So much like her!”
My father looked at me, and then away, anger or shame darkening his eyes. I didn’t care which.
“Oh my God!” said my sister. “That’s incredible! Are those her clothes, too?”
The ceremony was as short as the funeral director said it would be. When all was done, he handed me the urn in a box crafted out of walnut. I still felt her warmth in the wood.
“She was right about you, all along,” he said, and I saw the love he had for her in his eyes. He gave me the small board on which they played backgammon every Sunday afternoon after church.
• • • •
I called the number in France that Grandmama had given me then booked a Royal Dutch Airways, KLM, Seattle to Paris. Not the cheapest flight, but it didn’t stop where I didn’t want to stay. I immediately found a train to Bordeaux from which I could absorb the countryside.
When I got off the train, a distinguished man walked up to me and held out his hand. “Mademoiselle Love?”
“Yes?”
“I am Marcel DuBois. Your uncle. Great uncle, actually.”
“You are, were… ”
“Your grandmother’s brother. We have a car waiting. Let me get your bag.”
We didn’t speak much as we walked through the crowd leaving the station. Eventually we got to his car, an immaculate Citroen C5.
“I didn’t know the French still made automobiles,” I said to start a conversation.
“Yes, but probably not much longer, unfortunately,” he said. “It is very hard to compete against the ruthless efficiency of the Germans and Japanese. When the Chinese start building cars, I think French cars will be only a memory.”
“How did you know it was me among all those people at the station?” I asked.
He looked over at me and smiled.
“I will show you when we get to the chateaux.”
As we drove northeast out of Bordeaux, then east along D243, Marcel DuBois pointed out various wineries, talked about the character of the wines and the families. I didn’t recognize many names until we passed through Saint-Emillion, but then we kept heading east.
“Your English is perfect,” I said.
“Thank you. My mother insisted. She went to school in England before the First World War, and loved the people and the language. She was even engaged to an Englishman, but he was killed fighting Germany.
“She eventually married a local boy but never lost her love for things English. There was no money, so she taught me at home. She was a very severe teacher.”
“My grandmother didn’t speak nearly as well as you do. She never lost her accent even though she lived in the US.” I said.
“My sister put all her efforts in the kitchen instead of in her studies,” he said with a laugh. “But then again, this was what was expected, back then. And my mother knew, I think, it would be easier teaching me. My sister was very headstrong.”
“I’m looking forward to learning more about where Grandmama came from,” I said.
“Well, this is where she grew up,�
� he said as we pulled into a long, graveled drive. At the end was a lovely stone house, two stories. Not at all like my idea of a “chateaux” but very nice. It sat in the middle of a vineyard, but the house itself was surrounded by tall leafy trees.
“We’ll leave the car here for now,” Marcel said, putting on the parking brake.
A woman came out of the house wiping her hands on an apron as we got out of the car.
“You are Jessica!” she said, with an exclamation I didn’t understand.
“Yes…?”
“I am Genevieve, Marcel’s wife. I will NOT say I am your great aunt. Great aunt!? That makes me feel entirely too old!”
Her laugh had music in it. Her English didn’t flow like Uncle Marcel’s (as I had already decided to call him) but it was still quite good.
“So should I call you Aunt Genevieve?” I asked.
“Genevieve will do,” she said, but with a smile. “Please come in. Marcel, take Jessica’s bag up to her grandmother’s room. Everything is ready.”
Uncle Marcel looked at her, then looked at me. “But of course, my love,” he said in English. “Jessica, you see who is the real nobility here at Chateau DuBois.”
“Oh, Marcel,” said Genevieve, immediately taking his face in both of her hands and kissing him lightly on the lips. To me she said, “Men are so sensitive, and Marcel more than most.”
At that moment a feeling of familiarity washed over me like an embrace. I was suddenly and completely at home, in a way I could not remember having ever been.
“Would you like to rest or wash up?” Genevieve asked me.
“I would like to take off my shoes and wash my face,” I said. I’d also worn the same pair of black slacks since I left Seattle, which now seemed a gazillion miles and a lifetime away. I wanted to be in the long, loose dress in my bag and a pair of sandals that would let my toes feel the sun.