“A kid who believed in a ghost.”
I stiffened. “Are you calling Henry a ghost?”
“No, Henry is real. Patricia is real,” he said. “Right now, the problem is that you and I, we are the ghosts.”
I thought of my ghostly reflection in the fogged wardrobe mirror in Daniel’s studio loft. But Julien in this moment was real to me, beautiful and real.
“I should head in,” I said. “It’s late.”
“You didn’t sing.”
I stood up and slipped on my flip-flops. “The song is about Brandy,” I said. “She’s a fine girl, but the sailor can’t commit to her because he’s married to the sea.”
“That isn’t singing,” he said.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” I said.
“And tomorrow you’ll sing?”
I walked to the door. “I don’t think so!” I said.
“But maybe yes?”
“But maybe no.”
ver the course of the next three days, Abbot managed to put off throwing the bird. He opened the kitchen windows and let the flies buzz in. And then he hunted them, with quiet intensity and pretty good marksmanship with a swatter, then fed them to the swallow. He always seemed to have his trusty notebook tucked under one arm.
This was bad, of course. Julien whispered to me, “He is attaching to the bird. It’s going to more difficult if …”
“I know,” I whispered. “I get it.”
“A miracle?” he said. “In the middle of the night? It flies away?”
I shook my head. “He’ll know.”
Adam Briskowitz and Charlotte had loud, heated fights. Sometimes I’d see Charlotte walking calmly while Adam lapped around her like she was a maypole. Each time I overheard one of their arguments, it was never about motherhood, fatherhood, their parents’ potential for freak-outs, or a baby. It was always something abstract: Middle East politics, talent versus a strong work ethic, corporate greed, the religious upbringing of Michael Moore, and once I could have sworn I heard the word Reaganomics. I couldn’t help but think, What is it with kids these days?
Meanwhile, was I listening to the house? Was I feeling and connecting and allowing decisions to form? I was trying to.
Véronique’s project manager was named Maurice. He was broad and tan, her age but more weathered, and hunky by any standard. In fact, when he arrived to talk with me and Véronique, who was supposed to jump if translation issues arose, I could have sworn the two were flirting with each other. Plus, we needed no translation help. His English was impeccable. He’d lived in California for a time and knew how to surf. He seemed dumbfounded by the fact that I’d never surfed. “Really? But you have such waves!” I apologized for my obvious lack of appreciation for my homeland.
We walked the grounds and around the house. We talked about my mother’s ideas, and Maurice took notes. We sat at the kitchen table and discussed structural changes, appliances, fixtures, lighting, plumbing, tile, color, and money. He offered me more catalogs.
“Timing?” I asked. “Is it really going to take two to three months before we get started?”
He smiled. “The ox is slow, but the earth patient.”
“Is that a French saying? Do you all have a lot of oxen?”
He and Véronique smiled. No, not much oxen in France.
I called my mother and told her that I’d decided on Maurice as the project manager and recounted the conversation.
She said, “I can’t sleep at night.”
“Because of the house renovation?” I asked, trying to make a connection.
“No,” she said. “It’s not that.”
“What’s wrong?” I was hanging a load of our wet clothes on the rickety wooden rack in Charlotte’s room.
“I don’t know. I’m restless. I feel like things are coming apart at the seams.”
I wanted to tell her that she was right, that she was prescient, that all hell was about to break loose, but of course, I couldn’t. It would put her in an impossible situation. How could she not call Elysius and tell her? And if she knew, even if it was only a day away from Charlotte’s telling her parents herself, it could damage the trust between Elysius and my mother. “What are you worrying about when you can’t sleep?”
“I can’t help but imagine you there with Abbot and Charlotte, and as soon as I do, I remember the last time I was there. It was a hard time for me. You know that.”
“I do,” I said. “Of course I do.”
“What else has Véronique said to you?”
“I told you what she said. She called you a thief, though she didn’t say it maliciously.”
“I know,” she said, “but has she mentioned anything else?”
“She said that you had lessons for me.”
“Oh, please!” she said. “I don’t have any lessons!”
“Tell me what happened that summer.”
The line was quiet.
“Tell me,” I said.
“I was lost,” she whispered.
“Did someone find you?”
My mother was quiet. Finally, she said, “It’s ancient history.”
“Ancient history that keeps you up at night.”
“Your father doesn’t know anything about any of this,” she said. “I want to keep it that way.”
“If you’re telling me not to tell my father, you’re overestimating what I know. What would I tell him? I don’t have any idea what happened. Did you have an affair?”
“It was worse than an affair,” she said. “I fell in love.”
I couldn’t process this fully. My breath caught in my throat. “Why did you fall in love?”
“I didn’t mean to!” she said, almost childishly.
“But you came back, so how did it end?”
“Maybe it didn’t really end,” she said. “You’re the one who asked me why I can’t sleep at night!”
“You still think about him now?”
“It’s not that I think about him.…” She was quiet a moment. “It’s that I think about this other life that didn’t get lived.…”
This made me think of Henry, of course. I would always now have a life without him, a life that wouldn’t get lived. It would be a hole that I would carry with me forever. Was this one of the lessons that my mother had to teach me? “But you didn’t stay. How did it end?” I asked.
“There were fires,” she said. “Huge fires. You can’t imagine—an entire mountain on fire. That was a sign, wasn’t it? I didn’t need a bigger sign than that.”
“A sign that told you what?”
“To come home.”
he next day—the day Adam and Charlotte were supposed to call their respective parents—happened to fall on Bastille Day. I had vague memories of my mother’s celebrations in the backyard, which amounted to a replay of the Fourth of July—getting red, white, and blue bunting at post-holiday sale bins, minus the American flags. And we’d also celebrated Bastille Day here a few times. I remembered taking a promenade with Elysius, Julien and his older brother, and other children from the village through the streets at dusk with paper lanterns suspended from short sticks. That morning, I saw Julien in the yard and asked, “Do they still parade through the streets with the paper lanterns?” I was wearing my painting jeans. I’d finished my blue room and Abbot’s ruby-colored room. Now I was working on Charlotte’s, so there was a new layer of green flecks.
“I don’t know,” he said. “But I’ll find the answer. Do you want to go to the celebration in the village?”
“I’d like to pretend we fit in,” I said, and, too, I wanted to know if it was like my memory of it, the image of the globes bobbing again in my mind after all of those years. I thought of my mother, how strange it must have been for her to have so many memories like these that turned in her mind, and how it must have been to wonder if she would ever return to this place. Would my memories of Henry be the same—drifting and gliding, losing detail, becoming more imagistic? The idea of it made my chest ache.
Julien and Abbot were in the newly fixed swimming pool, taking an inaugural swim in celebration. It was a vacation day for everyone, and so they were supposed to relax. I could hear Julien teaching Abbot the French national anthem. The swallow was in its box under a shade tree—always nearby, Abbot made sure of it. His notebook was probably propped beside it.
“Merci,” the plumber said, and he took his check, folded it with one hand, and pocketed it. He smiled at Charlotte as he passed, which Adam picked up on, and it made him stand up tall, arch his back some, take a step in closer to Charlotte. I took this as a good sign. I didn’t quite get why an incoming college freshman would be heated about Reaganomics, but I got this—a little jealousy.
“We’re ready for fish,” I said.
“They had fountains in this region during the Gallo-Roman era,” Adam said.
“Yep,” I said. “Actually, the dig out there has uncovered a good bit of a villa. Fountain included.”
“Really?” he said. “That’s very interesting.”
“It’s day three,” Charlotte said, getting to the point.
“And?” I asked. “How do things stand?”
“We have talking points,” Adam said.
“Have you sorted out global politics?” I asked.
“No,” Charlotte said.
“Kind of,” Adam said. “We might be as close as we can get.”
“Are you a united front?” I asked, rubbing green paint from my palms.
They looked at each other warily, but both nodded.
“We’re still different nations,” Adam said. “But we’re part of the UN, and we plan to invite other countries to the table for talks.”
“Do you know what you would like the day-to-day to look like, in a perfect world?”
Adam was going to say something, but Charlotte reached out and put her hand on his chest. “No,” she said. “We don’t. We have to see what everyone else says, where they stand.”
“Bert and Peg are going to be very laid back,” Adam said. “They were almost like hippies. I’ve seen both of them stoned.”
“You go first then,” Charlotte said.
“You want me to call right here in front of all of you?”
“However you want to do it,” I said.
“I’ll just take a little walk,” he said. He pulled his phone out of his pocket, stared at it for a moment as if he’d forgotten how the instrument worked. Then he flipped it open, glanced back at Charlotte, dialed, held the phone to his ear, and started walking. I could hear Julien singing a bit of the French national anthem, “Aux armes, citoyens, formez vos bataillons,” and Abbot’s faint, high voice repeating after him.
“How is it really going?” I asked Charlotte.
“Terribly,” she said. “I love him.”
“Oh,” I said. This wasn’t what I expected.
“I know you don’t believe me. I wouldn’t. I don’t believe sixteen-year-olds fall in love, not really. But I don’t know how else to put it.”
“I believe you. We’re wired to fall in love.”
“Wired,” she said. “That makes us sound like animals, like we have no choice.”
“We are mammals,” I said, thinking of the beluga whales and their belly buttons.
“My mom is incapable of real love. She just can’t handle it. And with Elysius and Daniel it’s complicated. It’s something like love, but it’s not love, or it’s not the kind of love I want. It’s something else—like a lifetime arrangement to take care of each other. But you and Henry,” she said softly, “it was love from the beginning, right?”
“But you can’t dismiss these other kinds of love. I mean, maybe your mother is capable of real love, but isn’t good at showing it. And Daniel and Elysius have something that will endure, I think. It’s already endured eight years. Maybe …”
“I know, I know,” Charlotte said. “But I want to know, honestly, was it love from the beginning with Henry? I mean, it wasn’t something … else?”
I didn’t want to push my own definition of love. It was narrow, and I knew it. It was all I really understood, though, and I also had to tell the truth. “It was love from the beginning.”
“And it lasted,” she said.
“It is lasting,” I said.
She nodded. “That’s what I want, whether it ends up being with Adam or not.”
“Yes,” I said, “that’s what I want for you. The problem is, being in love with Adam Briskowitz is almost a separate issue right now.”
“I know, I know. Will he make a good father? Can I trust him to be there for me?”
“Yes,” I said. “How involved do you want him to be?”
“Is it up to me, really?”
“You should know what you want.”
She sighed and looked up at the mountain, the sky. Adam was standing in the distance, staring at the dirt, with one hand on his hip. “I think about all the stories you told me about this place. All the love stories, all of the enchantments. But maybe it’s only enchanted for all of you—the women in your family, the direct line. What do you think?”
“I don’t know that I believe them.”
“Huh,” she said. “I didn’t at first, but now I might. But they don’t apply to me.”
“You don’t know that,” I said. “You never can tell …”
Adam, still off in the distance, spun around. He was shouting, but we couldn’t hear what he was saying. “I don’t think it’s going as well as he thought it would,” Charlotte said.
“He strikes me as a strange kind of optimist.”
“He thinks his mother will want to take care of the baby. He’s actually said that we could move in together and live in the guesthouse by the pool. That’s insane! I’m sixteen. I can’t live in a guesthouse by the Briskowitzes’ pool, hand my baby off to Peg in the mornings, and then run to first period.”
“Does he love you?”
She nodded. “I think he does, but he’s scared shitless, really. That’s what he’s not saying. He’s scared shitless.”
Adam kicked the dirt. A small cloud lifted into the air. He yelled something, then raised the phone over his head and snapped it shut, as if this were the formal ending of a flamenco dance.
“He’s funny,” I said.
“He’s not trying to be funny,” she said. “But he’s funny.”
Adam strode toward us now, head down. “Plan A,” he shouted, “is not going to work out! Peg and Bert have really burnt their bridges!”
“What happened?” Charlotte called out.
“They’re demanding I come home directly.” He walked up to us and put his hands on his knees, breathing hard. “Peg is fixating on the fact that I lied to her about taking a course on famous French painters.”
“Did you tell her that you are, at this very moment, standing in the shadow of Cézanne’s Mont Sainte-Victoire?” Charlotte asked.
“I did make this clear. She was unimpressed.”
“And the pregnancy?” I asked.
“Now, that made an impression!” he said, straightening up.
“What was her response?” I asked.
“They suggested that I come home and be grounded.”
“Grounded?” I said, rubbing my forehead. Bert and Peg Briskowitz. I imagined them at this very moment sitting like two stuffed-doll versions of themselves propped on their sofa stunned, completely stunned. One might say to the other, Did we try to ground him? Was that what we said? And maybe the other wouldn’t even respond. Just numb silence. “It’s a little late for grounded. They need some time. That’s all. You’ve caug
ht them off guard.”
“This is very bad,” Charlotte said. “If that’s how the hippies who’ve been through the fire handle their fourth child, I’m screwed!” She threw her hands up. “Completely screwed!”
“No,” Adam said, “screw them. I’m glad I’ve seen their dark side. We’ll just move on to plan B. No guesthouse by the pool. You weren’t completely cool with that, anyway. We’ll just move on to plan B.”
“What’s plan B?” I asked.
“We move in to an apartment in town together. Just the two of us. I commute to UF, taking only night classes, and Charlotte finishes high school, maybe online. And our parents pay no more than they’d normally pay for our current existences, but we both take on small jobs just to cover the additional costs of diapers and wipes and things like that.…” He was really talking only to himself now, pacing in small circles.
“Wait,” I said. “Let’s slow down.”
Now Julien and Abbot were singing full bore. “Marchons! Marchons! Qu’un sang impur abreuve nos sillons!”
I fixed my attention on Charlotte. “Listen,” I said, “can you call? Are you ready for it?”
She didn’t look at me. “I want to get it over with,” she said. “We need to have some definites.”
“Okay,” I said, “do you want me here or …?”
She’d already opened the phone, hit speed dial, and was waiting for a voice on the other end of the line.
dam and I waited together, sitting side by side on the edge of the fountain.
He said, “What am I supposed to be doing?”
“You need to remain flexible.”
“Flexible,” he said. “Remain flexible.”
“The thing is that it’s not about you. You’re orbiting. She and the baby will be the sun. You simply need to remain flexible. Keep orbiting. Be ready when called.”
“I’m just a planet.”
“Yes.”
“But the baby is half of my genetic makeup.”
“That’s kind of immaterial now,” I said.
“Oh.”
“Trust me,” I said. “You’re getting off light in this whole deal.”
“I know,” he said. “Respectfully speaking, I’ve never been so relieved to have been born male—even with all of the socio-economic privilege and societal bullshit, I’m just happy to be a boy on pure anatomy alone.”
The Provence Cure for the Brokenhearted Page 23