The Provence Cure for the Brokenhearted

by Bridget Asher

  “She’s coming,” my mother said.

  “Have either of you seen Adam?” I asked.

  “He’s coming, too,” my mother said, taking a seat in one of the wrought-iron chairs. “Véronique was supposed to tell you that Julien is sorry he didn’t get to say goodbye.”

  I felt a jolt. “What did you say?”

  “Julien?” My mother over-enunciated his name. Now I was sure that Véronique had told her something. “I think you know who I’m talking about.”

  “Julien was here?” Elysius asked, sitting in a chair next to my mother.

  Julien had left. He was gone already. Where? I was stunned. He’d left so quickly. That was it. “When did he leave?” I asked.

  “This morning.” My mother glanced at me quickly and then she called to Abbot. He looked up from the fountain. “Véronique needs someone to garnish something for her. Would you help?”

  Abbot looked at me for permission.

  I nodded. “Sure. Just don’t leave the house.”

  Abbot started limping toward the house as Charlotte was coming out of it and walking across the yard. She was wearing a loose black tank top and a long skirt, coming toward us with her head down, her hands knit together at her chest, like a monk who prays while walking.

  “Where’s Adam Briskowitz?” my mother asked.

  And just then the back door of the Dumonteils’ house opened. Adam’s old-man’s suitcase nudged out first and then he followed. He looked as he did the first time I met him, wearing his jeans, his Otis Redding T-shirt, Top-Siders, and his oversized glasses with the clip-on shades flipped up. I now took this to be Briskowitz’s traveling attire.

  Charlotte stood in front of us now. She was nervous, glancing around quickly at everyone’s faces, trying to predict what might come her way. She reminded me of the swallow in the box before Abbot pitched it off the balcony.

  “Where’s Adam going?” I asked.

  “Home,” Charlotte said. “He’s grounded.”

  Adam and Abbot met in the yard. “I’ll see you later, Abbot.” He pretended to shoot him with an arrow.

  Abbot grabbed his shoulder, wounded, and let out a groan, staggered around, and then croaked. I didn’t like him even playing dead and was relieved when he popped up, gave a big wave, and quickly limped to the house.

  Adam looked like he might cry. He flipped his shades down. He walked to us. “Sorry about the timing, but my cab is on its way. I’m going to meet it at the end of the driveway so it doesn’t miss the sign. It’s a very small sign.”

  “It would be better if you stayed just for a little bit,” my mother said.

  “So we can all talk,” Elysius added.

  “I’m sorry, but I just can’t,” he said. “I’ve got to catch a train and then a flight. It’s all been worked out by my parents.”

  “But Adam,” I said.

  “I know, I know. You don’t think I know?” he said. I wasn’t sure what this meant. “I need time to get my head together. I can’t even form whole sentences. I want to be a great father. I can do it, but I just can’t do this.” He waved his hand in a circle, indicating … the conversation, our family, France? “Not yet.”

  “You seem to be forming sentences just fine,” my mother said angrily.

  “Why are you leaving now?” Elysius asked.

  “Seriously,” I said. “Tell us what’s going on.”

  He put his suitcase down. “Abbot was lost and I couldn’t find him. Shit. This is a nightmare. I heard of this couple who left their kid sleeping in a car seat under a restaurant table. A very nice, smart couple. Ivy Leaguers. They just forgot and got up and left. That’s me. What if I can’t do this? I’m going to college in a few weeks as a philosophy major. Who can raise a kid as a philosophy major? I have to go home. I have to talk to my family.”

  “He’s lost it,” Charlotte said to me. “He’s totally Briskowitzing himself.”

  I was furious. As calmly as I could, I stood and grabbed Adam by the elbow and pulled him a little bit away from the others. “We’ll be just one minute,” I said.

  “What is it?” Adam said.

  “Look at me,” I said.

  He paused and then lifted up the shades while still looking at the ground. I waited. He slowly raised his chin and met my eyes.

  “You’ll get it together,” I said. “You’ll learn to be a better man because you’ll have to.”

  He started crying and was embarrassed by it. My mother and Elysius were sitting behind me. I imagined their faces—perhaps tired, most of all. Here were all the women together, expected to fix this, to make it right. Adam glanced at Charlotte and whispered her name.

  She shook her head. She couldn’t help him.

  He cleared his throat. “I’ve got to go,” he said. He reached down and picked up his suitcase. “The cab might miss the turn,” he said.

  “Adam,” Charlotte said. “Brisky.”

  No one moved.

  Finally, he turned and walked down the driveway.

  harlotte took a seat in one of the wrought-iron chairs, too. Instinctively we pulled our chairs in to make a tighter circle.

  “I’m so sorry he left,” I said. “He needs time.”

  Charlotte was silent, her face expressionless and therefore beyond sadness. She shrugged. “Maybe we could go after him.” She wasn’t really suggesting it, more just pointing out the fact that life didn’t work that way.

  “He’s really just a boy,” my mother said.

  “And Charlotte’s young, too,” Elysius said. “Regardless of the situation, we can’t forget that.” This seemed to come from Daniel. Charlotte was his little girl, and I suspected that he’d urged Elysius to make sure everyone kept this in mind.

  “Age is relative,” Charlotte said.

  “In this case, your age has some very serious practical concerns,” Elysius said. “And those have to be addressed.”

  “And I suppose you’re going to tell me how to address them?” Charlotte said defensively.

  “I can’t do this if you’re going to be hostile,” Elysius said.

  “She’s not being hostile,” I said. “She’s sixteen and pregnant and the father just walked out and she loves him.”

  “Oh, please,” Elysius said. “Love! For shit’s sake.”

  “Who’s being hostile now?” Charlotte said.

  My mother stood up. “Listen to me. Elysius has offered to build an apartment onto the current structure of her house—a place where Charlotte can feel like she has independence. And Elysius and Daniel will pay for a baby nurse and then a nanny. Charlotte can still go to school. Daniel will still produce art. I’ll certainly help with the baby as much as possible, as I’m sure you will, too, Heidi. It will be a group effort.”

  “And in the process, we won’t forsake all normalcy,” Elysius said. “Our lives will be able to go on. Charlotte will get her degree. She’ll segue to Florida State, which is close by, maybe even full-time.” Elysius smiled, proud of her plan. “And we’ll make it possible for Charlotte’s mother to visit her instead of having to uproot the baby.”

  “This sounds expensive,” Charlotte said.

  “Money is no cure-all, but it does help,” Elysius said.

  “Well, it’s a very nice offer, but I’ll pass,” Charlotte said.

  Elysius arched her back. “Excuse me?”

  “I’ll pass. But really, thank you so much. It was really thoughtful and generous.”

  “Do you have an alternate plan?” my mother said.

  I sat back and held my breath.

  “I want to live with Heidi and Abbot.”

  Elysius glared at me, and before she opened her mouth to say a word, I knew that she would launch into the same old argument—Charlotte as ingrate, and I would be her conspirator. My mother reached out to pat Elysius’s leg to calm her, but Elysius was on her feet. “I just offered to build you your own apartment! Your own place! And you’re saying no to that? Do you know how hard this is on your father and me?
Do you have any idea?”

  “I said thank you. It was thoughtful and generous.” Charlotte’s face had gone blank. She seemed to be reciting definitions from her SAT prep book.

  Elysius turned to me. “I can’t believe you put this in her head. A new baby and you get to play the savior—that’s the idea, right? It won’t bring back the dead, you know!”

  It felt like a slap. In fact, my cheeks burned. I felt hot deep in my chest. I couldn’t say a word.

  “Heidi didn’t even say yes to it,” Charlotte said. “No one put anything in my head. It was my idea. All mine.”

  My sister was wrong. This wasn’t about trying to bring Henry back. But maybe much else in my life was, making my sister as right as she was wrong. Undeniably so. I could pack up. I could go home. But I couldn’t go back. Nothing could bring back the dead. Still, what followed wasn’t an attempt to punish my sister. Maybe I was listening. Maybe I was feeling and connecting and the decision simply formed. “I’m willing to try,” I said to Charlotte.

  “That’s all I’m asking,” Charlotte said.

  Elysius walked to the stone fountain and sat down. She looked broken. She stared out across the vineyards, her face slack, her eyes drifting.

  “Heidi,” my mother said, “are you sure?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I want to help Charlotte however she needs it.”

  My mother raised her hands in the air and said to all of us, “Get your chairs. Pick them up. Follow me.”

  “What are you talking about?” I asked.

  “Come with me,” she said. “Up, up!”

  “Come where?” my sister asked.

  “We’re going to watch the mountain,” she said, and she began dragging her chair out of the shadow of the house across the gravel driveway into the grass, where the mountain was in full view.

  Charlotte grabbed her chair, and I grabbed mine. We pulled them through the gravel and set them next to my mother’s.

  “Are you all crazy?” Elysius said.

  “No,” my mother said. “This is how we’ll come to our answers and how we’ll find our resolve to stick to them.” I remembered Véronique’s explanation of the mountain, the wide canvas, as she put it, and how she said that my mother used to stare at the mountain that lost summer when she first arrived.

  “Staring at a mountain?” Elysius said.

  “What do you think the mountain is for?” my mother said.

  “It changes colors all throughout the day,” I said.

  Charlotte said, “There are people who go on tours and spend a lot of money to pay a guru to take them to the mountain so that they can get answers by watching it change colors.” I was fairly sure this was a lie but one that would grab Elysius and pull her in, and that made me a little proud of Charlotte for coming up with it on the fly like that.

  “There are?” Elysius said. “Gurus?”

  “Come on, Elysius,” my mother said. “Line up.”

  Elysius picked up her chair and put it next to mine.

  “We won’t talk about anything, not until sunset at least. And then we can talk as much as we need to, but for now, quiet,” my mother said. “We’ll sit here all day and the answers will come.”

  And so we sat down, in silence, and started watching the mountain, waiting for answers.

  he mountain was a force. I’d been feeling its pull since I arrived. It had given my mother answers in the past. She’d gazed at it when she first arrived, and maybe it told her that it was okay to fall in love, to be a heart thief, and, in the end, when it was on fire, it told her to go home.

  I didn’t expect anything that dramatic. Maybe this gazing would simply allow us all a little time to think—to measure our words, at the very least. And so this was where I found myself, and I was more than willing to give in. We needed something beyond ourselves. Why not this? Why not attempt to find a few answers and some resolve?

  The day went on. Abbot resurfaced. He played waiter and brought us drinks, jambon sandwiches, olives, and more of Charlotte’s homemade peach ice cream. Charlotte got out of the chair and sat on the ground. Abbot brought out a blanket and pillows, and I lay down, my ankles crossed, my hands behind my head. Charlotte curled to one side, her hands tucked under her head.

  Elysius found all of this nearly impossible, as you can imagine. She was a deeply anxious person. She’d have to break every once in a while to pace around a little or do a few restless yoga poses and then some squats. But she took it seriously. In fact, early on, she handed Abbot her BlackBerry, a great act of sacrifice. She was trying, as she’d said in the dress shop earlier that summer. Deep down she knew that quiet observation and contemplation weren’t her strong suits, and she was an overachiever, bent on getting things right.

  Véronique emerged at some point in the afternoon and asked what we were doing. My mother told her.

  “Oh,” she said. “Can I sit with you?”

  “Of course,” my mother said, and they sat side by side. I imagined them as kids again, their childhood selves looking on at the grown-up women they’d become. There were no guests in the house. It was empty. They kept their eyes on the mountains, and sometimes their eyes closed, and they dozed. I couldn’t fall asleep. I was committed. I didn’t want to miss answers.

  The swallows appeared. Together we watched them scatter and swoop against the backdrop of the mountain. Abbot drew pictures in his notebook. This time he drew each and every one of us, and we all had wings and were flying with the swallows—Henry was just another person in the group, flapping among us. That seemed right. He wasn’t a ghost. We weren’t ghosts. We were all together.

  And when the mountain was a dusky, bruised blue, I was struck by how incredibly beautiful it was. I thought of Henry after the miscarriage, how I finally confessed that I felt sorry for him. He told me not to. I’m only a beggar here. This mountain, the arched back of the earth risen before us, it made me feel humble, like a beggar, just lucky to be here at all, even briefly. And in light of this mountain, we’re all here only briefly. I started to cry, very quietly, because of the ache of missing Henry. A simple ache, and the tears were simple, too. Abbot noticed right away, and he wiggled over and rested his head on my stomach.

  Véronique warmed leftovers and Abbot helped her serve. After dinner they disappeared into the house and returned with a tray of candles, red wine, glasses. We set the candles down around us, filled the glasses with wine, and kept on watching the mountain, as the stars began to appear in the night sky.

  There we were—Charlotte, my sister, my mother, Véronique, and I—all of us sitting now in a ring of candles, with Abbot falling asleep on my lap. It was strange how loud the world was when you weren’t filling it up with your own noise. It was strange how brilliant the colors of the mountain were. Even though I thought I’d been paying attention, I really hadn’t. There was the scent of the lavender, still in season, pungent and sharp and sweet, rolling on the wind.

  I thought of Henry and, this time, not how much I loved him, but how much he loved me. That was how Julien had put it. Everyone thinks that it is a gift to have someone love you, but they’re wrong. The best gift is that you can love someone—like he loved you. How had Henry loved me? It was as if he was the world’s leading expert on the arcane subject of Heidi Buckley, the only expert on the arcane subject of Heidi Buckley. He knew me in exquisite detail, in contradiction, in all of my little vanities and falsehoods and flaws. I would catch him studying me in the kitchen of the Cake Shop, laboring over a cake.

  “Stop it,” I’d say.

  “Stop what?” he’d say back, knowing exactly.

  “You look stupid,” I’d say, smiling.

  “Can’t a man show that he’s in love? Is that allowed in contemporary society?”

  “Yes, but you have a stupid look on your face.”

  And he did. It was dreamy, almost drunk. “It’s weird,” he’d say, “it’s like I’m having a stroke and all the edges of things fade away and it’s just you there and you are
the ether and every element in the room gets out of whack, and it’s all particles and I’m in the presence of love and I can’t believe it, and it’s you, and I can’t believe I found you, and you found me, and you actually love me back. It’s really a wonder I don’t fall down and hurt myself when all this washes over me. Yes, I’m love-struck. I’m stricken. I’m a stroke victim and I have a dumb look on my face. I love you.”

  Henry could go on these little verbal rampages about love. When we were first dating, they were short, like, “I love you and I want to spend the rest of my life with you.” But as we grew older, it took him more words to get at love and how he loved me.

  And these were my fears. As many versions of Henry that I lost, I was losing his version of me. I loved that version—the one he invented when he watched me while I worked, the one he invented when we first met in the crowded kitchen, the one without her pocketbook, locked out of her house demanding to be kissed, the one who got out of the car in the middle of the intersection to tell him she was pregnant, the one who was so sure she’d die in childbirth, the one who had a miscarriage, whom he lifted from the empty tub and put back in bed.

  Where had those versions of Heidi gone? Were they lost forever?

  But there, in the presence of the mountain as the sun slipped away and the dark purples emerged and the sky took shape overhead, I realized that every time that I returned to the world at hand—for Abbot, mostly—I grew stronger. And maybe Henry’s Heidi wasn’t gone but still here, only tougher. What if Julien truly loved me and I loved him? What if there were more versions of myself out there and I had shut them down?

  Eventually Charlotte stood up, the candles glowing at her feet, and said, “I’m sorry. I know I didn’t get knocked up on purpose or anything, but I’m sorry that I’ve put everyone through this.”

  Everyone started talking at once. There was an outpouring. My mother said that she loved Charlotte, that of course she hadn’t meant to get pregnant. I said that this was what family offered each other. We were here for her. Even Elysius started to say something, but Charlotte raised her hands and cut us off. “You don’t have to tell me everything,” she said. “I get it. And I’ve also realized that I love Adam Briskowitz, but I’m not interested in him right now. He’s pulling me away from my focus. And I’d rather let him go.”