“Oh…” My heart – shattered as it was – was returning to its usually beat in my chest. The racing was slowing, basked in the soft, gentle tone of Jazz’s voice. She radiated calm, even though the phone.
“Oh is right. I can’t believe you thought I had abandoned you.”
“You stopped talking to me.” I muttered.
“I stopped talking because you stopped listening,” she said, “I told you that you needed to move on and enjoy your trip. That your mother is fine. That it’s not your fault. But here you are, still moping in France. In Provence! You realize I’ve dreamed of going there, right?”
“Not like this… not with your mom… my mom…”
“If you want to blame anyone, blame me,” she said, “I’m the one who took your keys that night. I knew you would want to drive, and it was a terrible, terrible idea for you to be behind the wheel. I didn’t expect any of that to happen. And I don’t beat myself up about it, no: if you had been driving, I am convinced you would be dead right now. And I can’t imagine a world without you in it. You got me?”
“You took my keys?”
“And I don’t regret it. So if you want to blame me, go ahead. If you never want to talk to me again, go ahead. I’d rather you be in this world and giving me the cold shoulder than live in a world where you’re six feet under.”
“Oh my god, Jazz,” I stammered, “I’ve been… I don’t think there’s a word in any language to full describe how much of a big fat idiot I’ve been.”
We talked for as long as we could. I told her everything about my time in Provence, the good, the bad, and the ugly, everything. She told me about the art intensive I had missed, and how much she had learned and grown in such a short time. I told her about Valentin, and how confusing and weird and maddening it had been trying to figure out what we were. She told me about her current unrequited crush on the art TA who had been managing the still life portion of their course, and the funny new word her dog had learned to say.
The weight that now lifted off my shoulders didn’t come from knowing she had taken the keys. I knew I couldn’t be like Valentin and blame her for that night. Instead, I realized that I could trust this girl with my life. I had known it before, but this was more proof than I could ever have imagined.
I was not alone.
“I have been a terrible friend,” I told her, as we realized we would have to go.
“You’ve had a lot going on,” she replied, “It’s ok. Just recover. And call your parents, ok? They’re so worried about you, your mom’s resorted to texting me. And trust me, she does not know how to use emojis.”
You had been worried about me? All this time I’m panicking about your recovery, and you’re the one worried about me? I opened up the family group chat, scrolling through our conversations since I got here. My end had all been either one worded, or complete lies about everything being great.
I had to call you. I needed to talk.
I found the landline sitting next to the microwave in the kitchen and dialed up the house. It took a few tries to get the country code right, and I would probably owe Mamie a ton for making an international call, but she wasn’t around to stop me.
You picked up on the first ring.
“Jamie-baby!” you sang, “how are you? How is the land of lavender and sun?”
I burst into tears. Everything I had been holding back since the train came barreling out of me, and as it rolled it brought with it the pain from long before. The pain of what I put you through. The horror of knowing I would be the reason you would never walk again.
“I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry,” I sobbed, cradling the phone to my cheek. “I’m so sorry for everything.”
“Darling!” you sounded more baffled than anything else, “oh, honey, what happened?”
“Blue Jay?” Dad’s voice cut in, “are you hurt?”
“No, I’m just… so sorry… for everything.” I repeated. I couldn’t think, no other words could go through my foggy mind. A chorus of sorries filled the receiver.
“Calm down, catch your breath,” said mom, “start at the beginning.”
“But you were there,” I hiccupped, “I should never have called you that night, I should never have asked for…”
“Sweetie, no.” Dad snapped so loudly I though there had been a break in the line, “Jamie, if you hadn’t called us, you would have been at the wheel that night. You could have been the one to…”
And now he was sobbing, all attempts to hold himself together failing. I missed him, his strong arms, the way his hugs could squeeze all worry out of me.
“Jamie, if you had been at the wheel, you would never have made it home,” you said. “We always want to help you. It is not your fault that this accident happened. Do you hear me? It was not your fault. And if you thought that for a second, then I’m the one who should say sorry.”
“But you sent me away,” I blubbered, “you wanted me out of your lives…”
“What?” Dad interjected, “we wanted you safe. We wanted to give you space to heal. We never wanted you gone!”
“I thought it was time you meet your Mamie,” you said, “she’s an amazing woman. What with mother’s house… We thought you would be happier there.”
“We thought you dreamed of Provence, like we did.”
“Not without you,” I said, “not without you.”
And together, we sobbed across an ocean.
I fell asleep with the phone pressed against my ear, off but reassuring all the same. When I awoke, it had fallen between two pillows, and my wild, tired-self thought it was lost forever.
I found it, clutching it close. I had missed a few messages during the night, including a few from Jazz, probably wondering how it had gone with my parents. I wasn’t ready to answer her just yet: I would have to write her a full-blown letter.
I opened up Amazon: Mamie’s book, what was it again, La Fin du Printemps? The end of spring. I found it easily, with the orange bestseller tag boldly next to it. The cover was simple, a black and white picture of a child’s feet, the hem of a white dress hanging down before it.
Scrolling down, I came upon Mamie’s author portrait, and my breath caught in my throat. She was stunning: her hair had been shorter when it was taken, a perfect shade of silver that would have been an insult to call grey. She rested her chin on her hand, looking out at the reader, as if to say, ‘I know you, don’t I?’
Looking into those flat, two dimensional eyes, I connected more with my grandmother than the entire two weeks I had been here.
I bought the book on kindle, in English: then went downstairs to grab a French copy that I had spied sitting on a shelf in the living room. Now armed with the two editions, I threw myself on my bed and began to read.
I didn’t know what quite to expect from the book: I hadn’t even read the blurb before purchasing it. Jean Pascal was the one who wanted me to read it, after all. It opened on a stormy night, where three women, a mother, a daughter, and the grandmother sat around a fire. The granddaughter was only three, and her whole world was this little wooden ball, carved with intricate faces of animals. The grandmother had made it from the wood of the olive trees in her garden.
The grandmother was telling her daughter about her farm. She told her about a great freeze, that came down from the mountain and killed all the olive trees in the region, including hers. That hundreds of farmers gave up, leaving their now dead olive orchards, took up a new crop or moved into the city to start a new trade.
The forest grew up around the dead orchards, but olives are resilient. Over the years, little olive trees grew under the thick branches of pine, pushing past the carpet of needles and juniper to become not beautiful trees, but spindly olive bushes. Ugliest things you could imagine.
The grandmother swept her arm towards the olive grove outside their window. She told her daughter how before her own father died, the two of them went into a thick pine forest and lifted the olive bulbs from the earth. How they split th
e knotted root at every stem. How every planted bulb became a new tree, and those were the trees in their grove now.
The mother praised the grandmother for a good tale, but she did not seem to believe a word of it. She sat on the floor and played with the daughter. At the end of the night, she said goodbye, and took the toddler home. The little girl forgot the ball.
The grandmother tended her olive trees, growing the twigs big and strong for her daughter and granddaughter, but they never came home.
Townspeople came. They brought news of the granddaughter, now thriving. First, she was five. Then she was ten. Then she was a gorgeous young girl, brilliant at school. Or a beautiful bride, with a respectable husband.
The grandmother wrote letters, which she gave to the townspeople to deliver, just to be sure they were reaching her young girl. But the girl never replied.
Her mother did.
Each letter brought news of the granddaughter, but none were in her own words. The grandmother had only barely heard her toddler babble, and now she would never see her granddaughter speak.
Her grove was now a flourishing, beautiful place. Her farm was large and each tree produced the most gorgeous olives. She had grown her production so much that she had now built a press, to make olive oil, and later a little shop, to stock and sell.
But she was old. She wrote to her granddaughter, to ask if she would take the reins of the farm she had spent years building. Generations supported her until this very moment. She was ready for her lineage to take the reins.
No answer.
Finally, she drove across the country, to Paris, to find her once little girl. However, she was a farm woman, and was not made for a place as loud or as bright as the capital. She struggled to find her daughter’s home, but people recognized her from the oil she made, and helped her find her way.
She finally reached the building where her granddaughter lived. Climbed the four flights of stairs - no elevator - to the apartment. Knocked on the door.
When the door opened, she saw herself.
And that’s where it ended.
Trust me, I didn’t understand it much, either.
I reread it quite a few times, French version in my left hand and English in my right. Just to be sure I didn’t miss anything in the translation. Sure, I paraphrased a lot of it above: it was long enough to span three hundred pages and had apparently been deemed so good that not only had it won some award but had also been used during the French Literature Baccalaureate as the extract to study. Apparently, those were important things.
The latter had asked students to write a dissertation on the statement: “The grandmother’s opening the door upon herself at the very end of the book represents building a future for oneself, while ignoring the needs of others.” If I were to make it an SAT question, I would go much easier - The grandmother’s opening the door upon herself at the very end of the book represents:
A) The granddaughter never existed;
B) The author’s fear of dying alone;
C) The author really has a thing against mirrors;
D) Some really deep personal turmoil which could have been resolved if the grandmother went to talk to the daughter and ask her why she just randomly started coming over when she told her the awesomest way to start an olive grove from nothing? Metal, grandma, metal.
I put the books down and landed on my bed again. I couldn’t believe how long I had spent reading it, rereading it, analyzing it, as if would hold all the secrets my Mamie had been hiding from me. The anger and resentment you all had been keeping from me, as it kept this family apart. The internet tore the book apart in every possible way, examining it under different lights, but they never reached the root of the problem.
A mother and daughter don’t just stop talking to their grandma from one day to the next without good reason.
Maybe that reason was because the grandmother called the mother a whore. Or told her son never to trust her. Or told them both to get rid of the child and…
It was just a story. Just a story. It wasn’t our lives at all, only one side of it, altered to become fictional, changed by editors and who knows who else. It was an award-winning novel, and real life was never a novel.
It was all told from the grandmother’s point of view, after all.
I turned on my hotspot for the first time since arriving in France and picked up my computer. Friends were asking how I was, where I was at. How much had I even told them about the accident, before I was pushed on a plane and sent away?
No. Not sent away. I needed to stop blaming myself; For things I could not control and blaming others for the things I should have. You didn’t kick me out. I should be enjoying my time here.
I spotted it, then, just as I started packing my life back together. The only message with an unreadable name. Valentin.
Why was he trying to reach me through Facebook?
The message he sent was brief and took me a minute to realize what was happening. Just a copy paste of an email, since I had never given him my address.
Dear Valentin,
This is so exciting! It’s like being in a spy movie! Thank you for reaching out to us and inviting us to take part. If they ever make a movie about this moment, please let us know!
My husband and I were thrilled to receive your email. He loves this desk: I’m proud to say I bought it for him, for his last birthday, having fallen in love with it when we toured France together. We wanted to bring a small piece of it home and knowing the history of this particular piece made it all the more fascinating. And now, adding this modern history to it makes us love it even more: a love story, hearts crossing boundaries and countries to be together… it makes the desk all the more real!
My husband and I spent a few hours trying to find it. The letter was well hidden and must have gotten lodged deeper into the woodwork as it was shipped here. But we found it in the end, and it took both of us a lot of restraint not to read it.
We scanned the letter and have mailed you the original. Let us know what the treasure is when you find it.
Sincerely,
Dana and Louis Brown
He had done it. Despite everything we’d said, he’d still fought his way to find the clue. With shaking fingers, I clicked the letter.
Mon Amour,
My darling, look at how far you’ve come! This is the last clue I have to give you. At your next stop awaits your greatest prize - at least in my opinion. If you haven’t broken up with me at this point, well I’m pretty sure you’re going to like what you find there.
Your next clue is: Across from Provence.
Ok, I’m going to tell you where. Exactly where. Since it’s your last clue, I’m going to make you work for it. So I’m sending you to the top of the St Victoire. You’ll find the clue hidden under the cross.
I lost count of how many times we hiked the mountain. That one time we climbed through that thick soupy fog might have been my favorite: it was almost impossible to tell how far we’d come, and how far we had yet to go. And at the very top, the cross looked like it was just any old phone pole. It was astounding.
But think back to the first time we hiked it together. The first time we realized we needed a respite from our work and needed the sunlight to survive. We packed our sandwiches, grabbed our water, and went.
It was nothing like Cezanne made us think it would be. All his gorgeous paintings almost made me think it would be a gently sloping stroll. Nope. It might have been March but the sun was scorching without any tree cover, and it was steep - so steep! I was out of breath five minutes into the walk.
When we finally reached the top, we had to stop by the monastery first. It was amazing how many people were up there at this hour, and how small the place actually was. I had always thought it would be, you know, an actual monastery. Like something out of a fantasy novel. But there was barely room for any one person to stay there.
You pointed to where the rock was cut clear through, a shelf of stone in its place: the par
aglider’s launching point. We dared each other to stand there, at the edge. You were far braver than I was: you walked out to the metal edge, one hand poised gracefully on the rock, and looked right down at the sheer drop. Just watching you made me dizzy.
I went next. I had you stand by me, to hold me in case the worst happened. I held the wall and looked down. Oh, how the wind blew through my hair! I thought I would be pushed clear off! And I realized in that moment that I was facing my worst fears, and I was surviving. That I was standing there in the midst of one of the most terrifying drops I had ever beheld, and I was alive. I felt alive, truly alive, more alive than I had ever been before.
Since when did feeling so small make anyone feel so strong?
When I finally managed to pull myself from the view, you pointed at the words carved into the metal of the edge. CHOOSE YOUR FREEDUM. We laughed at them, while all the while I stood there, thinking about how today, we had chosen to be free. Chosen to do what would make us happy, even if it was hard.
You reminded me we had to go higher to reach the cross. The last bit was the steepest, and my heart was pounding so hard through my chest that I thought I was going to throw up. The walk went quickly. The ground leveled out and we were finally here: the cross was there before us, and it was so small. I mean sure, it’s a big cross. Like what, twenty meters tall? But you’d think it being so visible that it was twice as high. I mean, I guess it’s not the Eiffel tower, but…
Anyway. Slightly disappointed, and with my heart still beating from the drop off point earlier, we sat on the side facing our beloved Aix and tore into our sandwiches, saying nothing, just admiring the view. I put the sandwich down for a second, to drink my water, and this random dog runs up, grabs it, and runs off. I mean, come on! What were the odds?
You laugh, and without even asking, rip your sandwich in half and hand it to me. We pop open the paprika pringles and silently revel in the wonders of Provence.
Aix Marks the Spot Page 22