The Provence Cure for the Brokenhearted

by Bridget Asher

  I nodded, but the nod wasn’t for Julien. I was agreeing to a new promise. If we found Abbot safe and sound, I would give up on this lost summer, this pilgrimage for the brokenhearted, this house of supposed miracles. Abbot and I would go home and return to our safe lives before we were seized and hent. Home, I promised myself, home.

  It was this promise that kept me climbing. I didn’t look at Julien. We both were calling for Abbot. Our throats now sounded rough. My own was raw, and my hands and knees were scraped.

  Julien trained the flashlight up the mountain, sweeping it from side to side, and then, finally, he stopped. “I think I see something,” he said.

  “What, what is it?” I said, my eyes skittering wildly.

  He pointed the flashlight at the ground. “There’s a light.”

  And then I could see it, too. A small, bobbling light up ahead, near what looked like a white wall, switching on and off at a slow pace.

  Julien started climbing as quickly as he could. He was faster and more agile on the mountain. “Abbot!” he called. “We’re coming. Don’t move.”

  “Abbot, keep the light on!” I shouted. “We’re here.”

  I wanted to reach him first, but Julien was there, kneeling beside him. He shone the light on his face. I could see a quick glimpse of Abbot’s cheeks, his clenched eyes as he winced away from the brightness. I felt a wave of relief that made my knees buckle.

  “He’s okay!” Julien called to me, running the flashlight down Abbot’s skinny legs, bruised and bloody. “He’s fallen. But he’s okay!”

  Julien was whispering to Abbot when I scrambled to Abbot’s side. I knelt on the rocks. “I’m here now,” I said to Julien, still angry at him. He stood up, giving us room. “Abbot,” I said. “Where does it hurt?”

  “My ankle,” Abbot said, his voice strained.

  Julien lit Abbot’s knees again, which were skinned. Blood smeared down his shins, and then his ankle, which was visibly swollen even through his short sports sock.

  “It might be broken,” I said.

  “Maybe. I don’t know,” Julien said.

  Abbot lifted his hands, which were red, scratched up.

  “Abbot,” I said, my voice choked with emotion. “Why did you run off?”

  “I wanted to see the chapel,” he whispered softly, his chin quivering, and then he shut his eyes—so much like his father’s eyes—and turned his head away from me.

  “He came very close,” Julien said. “Look.” He pointed his flashlight just a bit farther up the mountain, and there was the humble entrance to the chapel. Several rounded steps, like a tiered cake, led to a dark door—more a portal, because there was no actual door to the chapel, just a door-shaped entryway. Two stone buttresses held up the right side, and it looked like the mountain itself was the left and back side of the chapel.

  “Let’s take him in and lay him down,” Julien said. He flipped open his cell phone, probably checking for bars, then shut it. “I’ll make calls. The police for the mountain are young and strong and know the mountain very well. They have lamps and can light up the path. They can carry him down the mountain gently, safely. Okay?”

  “Yes, yes.” I picked up Abbot’s flashlight, and he gripped Julien’s flashlight. Julien lifted him and held him closely to his chest while Abbot trained the bobbing light on the path. “A little higher,” Julien instructed. “Good.”

  The mountain was steep, the gravel shifting underfoot. Julien carried Abbot up the last switchback, then up the steps and into the mouth of the chapel, and I followed. I could see Abbot’s fist gripping the back of Julien’s shirt, and for some reason, this was what broke me. Tears started streaming down my face. I wiped them away.

  I set my flashlight on the floor pointing up into the cool, dry air; it barely lit the small space. Julien lay Abbot down on the stone floor. I sat next to Abbot, cross-legged. I put my scraped hand on his forehead. The chapel was small and still, very much like a cave, not some high holy place like the cathedrals we’d visited, but maybe even holier in its simplicity.

  Julien picked up his flashlight. “I’m going to find a place where the phone will transmit. I will be fast.”

  “Thank you,” I said quietly. I was embarrassed now that I’d turned on him. “Thank you for everything. Be careful.”

  “It was nothing,” he said. “Anyone would help.” This wasn’t true. Not just anyone. He walked out of the chapel, his cell phone open and glowing. The crunch of his footfalls quickly disappeared and the hollow quiet of the chapel surrounded Abbot and me.

  “Abbot,” I said. He looked up at me, his eyes teary. “Why did you run away? I was so scared. You can’t do that! I thought you were gone. Do you understand me?”

  He wrapped his arms over his face.

  This wasn’t the time to teach him a lesson. I tried to calm myself down. I took a deep breath. “Were you upset about the bird?” He didn’t respond. “But you saved him. He can fly.”

  Abbot shook his head. No, it wasn’t about the bird. I wasn’t sure I could handle the deeper sadness right now—the picture of his father as a bird. Was that what all of this was really about? Or was it also about Julien and me? I wasn’t sure I could bear this blame, either. It wasn’t just Julien’s to shoulder, and I knew it.

  “Why did you do it? Please, tell me.”

  He rolled away from me and shook his head more violently.

  I looked at the altar rail farther back in the chapel and the walls cluttered with graffiti. I had to know. I couldn’t allow him to keep this bottled up. It was too dangerous. “Okay,” I said. “How about a multiple choice test, like Charlotte’s SATs? You pick A, B, C, or D.”

  He peeked at me with one eye. His face was streaked with dirt.

  “Okay?”

  He nodded.

  “Roll over and I’ll wipe your face.”

  He rolled over. I brushed some dirt and pushed back his hair. “A. Does it have to do with the swallow? B. Does it have to do with Daddy somehow because you miss him? C. Does it have to do with Julien and me? Or D. All of the above.” My voice warbled with emotion.

  He stared at the ceiling. “D. All of the above.”

  I didn’t say anything for a moment. I stared around at the small chapel, this holy place. I placed my hand on his head and whispered, “I saw your picture of Daddy as a swallow. It was beautiful.”

  “The swallow flew away,” Abbot said. “It didn’t die, but I took care of it and it flew away. It left anyway and didn’t come back.”

  “Why were you climbing to the chapel? Why here?” I asked quietly. “Were you looking for Daddy’s soul?”

  “Daddy’s soul can’t be here. He didn’t die on the mountain. He died in America.”

  “Yes, so why were you climbing here?”

  “Maybe I would see the phantom,” he said. “If he’s a protector of souls, maybe he might know something.”

  “About where Daddy’s soul might be?”

  He was embarrassed. He nodded quickly and looked away.

  “Daddy’s soul is everywhere,” I said. “He’s with us all the time.”

  Abbot clenched his fists and pounded on the stone floor. “I hate that bird. I got it all better so that it could fly, and it just left. You can’t trust birds!”

  “But you can trust me. I’m never going to fly away.”

  “You could die.”

  “But the chance of that is so remote, Abbot. Daddy was in an accident, a bizarre accident. It didn’t make sense.” I remembered Henry saying, I think we should be honest when the world doesn’t make sense. I was trying to be honest. “I’m probably going to live a very long time. You’ll have to wheel me around in an old-lady wheelchair.”

  Abbot was quiet. I looked at the altar, where I’d once stood as a kid, Julien holding my hand, asking me if I heard the phantom. The altar looked gray in the dim light, more like a fence than an altar.

  “You know Daddy used to tell me stories about you. I guess they were Heidi stories.”
r />   “What stories did he tell you?” I asked.

  “He told me that when you were little your mom came here and left you guys there, and your dad said that you might have to choose between your parents. It was a sad story.”

  “How did that come up?”

  “One day, you were mad at me at dinner. I thought you weren’t being fair. And he was telling me that you’d been a kid once, like me. But that everyone has different kinds of being a kid and yours wasn’t always good.”

  “Well,” I said, “it’s true. That’s what I thought for a while one summer, that I’d have to choose between my mom and my dad, which one I’d want to live with.”

  Abbot pressed his eyes shut with his fingers. Tears slid along the sides of his face. His cheeks grew flushed.

  “What is it?” I said softly. “Abbot, tell me.”

  He took a sharp breath and then said, “I would have picked Daddy.”

  This confession surprised me. I was stung by it for a moment, but there was Abbot. How long had he been suffering, holding on to what he thought was a dark secret? “Abbot, it’s okay to tell me that,” I said. “Have you felt guilty about it? You shouldn’t. It’s okay.”

  He said, “But then I thought that maybe you would have picked Daddy, too. That’s what I thought tonight. If you had a choice … you would have picked him, not me.” He curled away from me and started sobbing.

  “No, Abbot, no,” I said, and I lay down on the cool floor next to him, wrapping my arms around his small ribs. “First of all, the world doesn’t make us pick, and second of all, Abbot, I would have picked you. Daddy would have picked you. It’s an instinct in parents. Once the baby is born, you both know that you’d give up your life for that baby. That’s the truth. And I’m not going anywhere. I’m not flying away from you,” I said. I wrapped him in my arms and rocked him back and forth on the cold stone. “I’m not flying away.”

  hree rangers arrived on the scene like miners, lights slashing the darkness from their headlamps on their helmets. They were young and strong and knew the mountain extremely well, just as Julien had said. They arrived with a stretcher, checked out Abbot’s ankle, cleaned up his knees and hands. They decided it was only a sprain, a nasty one, but nothing was broken. Julien spoke to them in French, explaining the situation, and I was relieved. I was too exhausted to rehash things. I was still reeling. Abbot had run away. He’d almost been lost. I needed to focus on him and nothing else. Not Julien. Not even Charlotte and Adam. Elysius and my mother would take over. I’d made a promise to go home. I was sticking to it. I spoke to Henry in my head—Abbot is alive, safe. His heart beating. I’m taking us home, Henry. We’re going back home. Two of the rangers fastened safety straps over a thick blanket, immobilizing Abbot’s leg, and tucked a rolled blanket under his head. Abbot stared up at the cloudless night sky, calm, peaceful. The two stretcher-bearers counted un, deux, trois, and hoisted Abbot to hip level, and they were off, chattering away to each other in chipper French that I was too tired to translate. I trusted them. They were experts, after all. The third ranger held my arm, helped to keep me steady. I was thinking about swallows and the voice of a ghost in the chapel and my son, not lost, not gone, whole and safe. I kept saying to myself, Home, home, home.

  When we got to the bottom of the mountain, in the light thrown from the house, I saw everyone collected in the yard—Charlotte, Adam, Véronique, the guest who’d jumped in to help. Julien had already phoned ahead, telling them that Abbot’s ankle was fine—only bumps, bruises, a sprain. Oddly, Adam Briskowitz looked the most upset of all. He was sitting on the ground, knees up, head in his hands.

  Véronique opened her arms and hugged me. “It’s okay,” she whispered. “He is home. He is good.” I wanted to tell her that she was wrong. This is not home.

  She released me. “Thanks, everyone,” I said, and then to the rangers especially, “Merci. Merci pour tout.”

  The rangers unhooked a sleepy Abbot from the stretcher.

  “Do you want me to carry him to his bed?” Julien asked.

  I shook my head. “I can do it,” I said. I was still blaming Julien even though I knew it wasn’t fair. I lifted Abbot, and he wrapped his arms and legs around me. I’d have thought he was too big for me to carry like this, or just about, but maybe I’d gotten stronger that summer, hauling paint up and down ladders, ripping weeds from the ground. Abbot held tight, and we headed for the house. I heard Julien saying some final words to the rangers. Charlotte jogged ahead of me and opened the back door.

  I walked into the brightness of the kitchen. “Charlotte,” I said, “will you get a bowl of warm water and a washcloth?”

  “Yep,” she said, and she darted off.

  I carried Abbot up the steep stairs then into his room. I felt the pain of my own bruised knees, the palms of my hands burning. I set Abbot gently on his bed. The bed had two pillows, so I used one to prop up his swollen ankle, then covered him with the sheet.

  “We’re home,” he said.

  “Not really, not home home,” I said. “In fact, while I was searching for you, I promised myself that if you were safe and sound, we would pack up and go back home, to the way everything was before, immediately. I think we can be home in a matter of days.” Elysius and my mother would be arriving any time now. They would take over with Charlotte. Abbot and I would retreat. I thought he’d be relieved.

  But he stared at me, wide-eyed, as if suddenly afraid. “No,” he said. “That’s all wrong. I want you to be happy!”

  “I am happy!” I said. “We found you, Abbot! You’re safe!”

  He rolled his head back and forth on the pillow. “The swallow wasn’t happy in the box. The box stunk, and it didn’t want to eat dead flies. The swallow wanted to fly away.”

  “Abbot,” I whispered, and lay down, put my head on the pillow. “I already told you that I’m not flying away from you. Remember? And I promise you that I won’t.”

  Abbot and I were nose to nose. “I want you to fly away a little,” he said.

  “You want me to fly away a little?”

  He nodded.

  “You want me to fly away a little and then circle back?”

  He nodded again. “Julien is good,” he said. “He’s a good guy.”

  I was completely startled. “You want me to fly away with Julien and circle back?”

  He nodded again and then pushed his nose into my nose and said, “Bing bong.”

  I wasn’t sure what to do. He was just a child. I was the mother. I was the one who had to keep him safe. I couldn’t do that with Julien around. I’d proved that I wasn’t capable of handling that kind of distraction. The world was too dangerous. It wanted to take people from me. We were going home. We had to. In fact, all I wanted to do was start packing. Normally, I’d push my nose into his and say, “Bing bong.” But I couldn’t. “We have to go home, Abbot,” I said. “I’m sorry. We just do.”

  He closed his eyes, shutting me out.

  harlotte walked into the bedroom with the soapy water and the washcloth. She helped me get Abbot cleaned up. We worked together in almost complete silence. We undressed him to his underwear, wiped down his face, arms, and legs, going gently over the scrapes on his hands and knees. He winced but didn’t whine much. He was too exhausted to whine. By the time we were done, he was nodding off to sleep.

  “He’s doing pretty well, considering,” Charlotte said, holding the bowl, its water now clouded with dirt. “I tried to run away once and only made it as far as behind a sofa. He’s a bold kid.”

  “My heart’s still in my throat. I can’t shake the feeling that I almost lost him,” I said.

  “Don’t forget to take care of yourself,” she said, pointing to my bruised knees, one of which was caked with blood and dirt.

  “I will.” I dropped the washcloth in the bowl and held out my hands. “I’ll take it downstairs.”

  Charlotte handed me the bowl, and I started for the steps.

  “Wait,” she said.

&
nbsp; I stopped and turned to face her. “What is it?”

  “They’re coming, Elysius and Grandma, and I lied when I said that I didn’t have a vision of the day-to-day in a perfect world.”

  “What does it look like?”

  “I want to stay with you and Abbot.”

  “I’m a disaster area, Charlotte. A complete mess!” This was the wrong time to ask anything of me.

  “You need me, in a way, I think. Don’t you?” Her face was serene and hopeful. Hadn’t she proved that I needed her already? Charlotte was steady. She was calm in an emergency. She was patient and strong and, most of all, sure of herself. “And I need you. I only want to be with someone who’ll see it as fair. A give and take.”

  “But what about Adam?”

  “We’re not ready to play dress-up at marriage. I mean, it’s an institution and all. We’d like to date. Have at least one kind of normal thing.” She paused. “He’s all shaken up. I don’t know what it is. Something about Abbot running away made him freak.”

  I looked at Charlotte’s wide eyes, her dimpled chin. She was a kid, really, only sixteen, but she was already smarter than I was in some ways. Charlotte had said that she had felt sure of things here from the very start. I wanted to feel sure. My own vision of returning to the past was already deeply shaken—by Abbot and now by Charlotte. My father had said that she’d already chosen me, and he was right. If Henry were here to help me, I’d have said yes. I’d have hugged her and whispered, “Anything, anything you need at all. We’re here for you completely.” But I was alone, barely hanging on. I looked down at the bowl, the sudsy, dirty water shifting within it. “I can’t say yes, Charlotte. There are too many moving pieces. I think I’m packing up tomorrow and looking into flights. Abbot and I need to go home. We can’t prolong this, this …”