Aix Marks the Spot

by Sarah Anderson

  Find where we were sitting. The clue will be down there. But do me a favor and remember to sit when you get there. Sit, rest, and take in the view. This is Provence. This is home.

  So much Love,

  Your Pomme Noisette.

  I was shaking now. Before I knew what I was doing, my fingers were already pulling up Valentin’s number and dialing him. He picked up on the first ring.

  “Jamie,” he exclaimed, my name on his lips like the first breath of a drowning man, “Mon dieu. Are you all right? Are you…”

  “I’m sorry,” I sputtered, “about all the things I said. Don’t interrupt me, I’m not quite sure where this going, but if I stop speaking I’ll lose the thread entirely. But I’m so sorry about your dad. And I’m sorry I somehow made it about me. When it’s not all about me, I see that now. You were right, my parents didn’t kick me out. I’ve been spending this whole time here trying to understand why they didn’t want me that I didn’t see what they were trying to give me. I read Mamie’s book, you know, the creepy one with the second grandmother at the ending, and I don’t understand a thing, but I think that’s the problem in my family. We don’t talk. I mean, we talk, but we don’t understand each other. We say words and half the time they’re in the right language but they are never the right ones and never taken the right way. I’m so sorry, I should have listened to you when you were trying to talk to me and I should have…”

  I took a deep breath, realizing I was out of air. I practically coughed on the receiver. But just as I asked, Valentin waited for me to finish. Even if I had been right in guessing I would lose my own train of thought.

  “I don’t know how you found the last letter,” I said, tears welling up in my eyes, “but I can never thank you enough. Thank you, Valentin, thank you.”

  He waited a second, hesitant. I wished I could see him in person, connect with him and tell him all the things I truly wanted to say. And I could, right now: there was nothing holding me back, not any more. But it was not the right time, and I knew it.

  “I like it when you talk,” he said, slowly, “I like the way your voice sounds. I like the way my language slips into your words. And I really like it when you say what you mean.”

  “You do?” I stammered, “it’s not… I don’t know, rude? Out of place?”

  “No. When I met you, I was afraid everything you said was to make me get along with you. I didn’t know if I liked you, or the idea of you.”

  “And now, you know?”

  “I know that I like you,” he replied, and my shattered heart started to flutter, “Isn’t that the problem with so many stories? Everything would end sooner if people just talked to each other. If they all just said what they meant. Romeo and Juliet might have had a happy ending if everyone had just… talked.”

  “Talked. And listened.”

  “When you told me in the train that I never did anything, I knew you were right, though I didn’t want to admit it. And I knew I had to prove you wrong. I contacted every antique dealer in Isle-sur-la-Sorgue: most did not reply. Those who did were usually a little… as you say… snippy. But one sent me to the vendor’s sister, who had the record of sales. I emailed them, and they replied.”

  “You… you wrote to all those people.”

  “I did. And before you ask, I did not do it for anything, as you so angrily accused me of doing. I did it for you, because you are my friend.”

  “Valentin… I can never thank you enough.”

  “You will never have to. Do you need help for the clue?”

  “No, I solved this one,” I said, wiping the tears from my face, “and I think I need to do this one on my own.”

  “I understand,” he replied. Did I imagine the drop in the tone of his voice? Maybe I did. But this was between me and my parents now. I had to finish this alone.

  “But Valentin? You will be the first to know what the treasure is. We will celebrate the end of this hunt together. I could not have done it without you.”

  “It was my pleasure,” he replied, “and if you need anything, call me. The hike is not difficult, but it is long all alone. I will be with you every step of the way.”

  “I know it,” I said. And as we hung up, I felt three words on my lips, words I had only ever reserved for my parents and friends until today. Words that, in any language, were more than the sounds they were made up of.

  I don’t know if he heard it, but I, Love, and You slipped out before I could reel them in.

  Demain, dès l’aube, j’irait.

  I slouched across two seats of the early morning bus, the sun so low on the horizon I wondered if anyone had reminded it to get up yet. I clutched Dad’s tattered and annotated copy of Victor Hugo’s poetry, trying as hard I could to wrap my head around the nuances of the words. Fat chance. I understood them, but they did not come alive for me the way they did for Valentin. Still, there was something beautiful in reading a poem about dawn when you were riding across the twilit countryside the poet himself had been talking about.

  Well, he had apparently been talking about Normandie, but hey, I was in the right country for once.

  Oh. And it was about love after death. Oops. Still beautiful, though.

  The sun was up by the time the bus reached the station in Aix, and I made my way down the terminal to catch the ride to the mountain. I felt pride swelling in my gut as I took the avenue, knowing I was doing this alone, and that I didn’t need any help to navigate this strange foreign world anymore. And while I had only been in Aix once before, on the day my heart shattered, I found a piece of it here, and stuffed it right back in my chest where it belonged. There was something about this city that accepted who I was, flaws and all.

  The bus, per usual, drove past the stop later than scheduled. But unlike before, this did not make me angry: it came at its own time, scooped me up and took me along on my way all the same. At this hour, there was just me in the bus, sitting all the way in the back, and a couple of hikers with their large packs taking up their own seats. I looked at my tiny backpack, suddenly realizing that I had probably not brought enough at all.

  The bus rolled us out of town, where the city ended abruptly, suddenly replaced with fields of vines and forests of thick, dry pines. We flashed past the stops faster than I could read them, taking the winding turns faster than I ever would have had the confidence to drive on my own.

  At this rate, I was going to miss my stop. I gathered my courage with both hands and scooted up the rows of the bus.

  “Excusez-moi,” I stammered, “Parlez-vous Anglais?”

  “Yeah mate,” the guy with the gorgeous blonde hair replied, “kiwis, not frenchies.”

  “Not all of us,” said the brown-haired boy, “Texas, hi.”

  “You alright?” Asked the girl.

  “Oh, thank god,” I laughed, “I couldn’t figure out how to say the next bit in French! Are you going to the St Victoire?”

  “Yup, you too?” asked the girl.

  “Yeah, if I don’t miss the stop. I have no idea where to get off.”

  “Barrage de Bimont!” the driver bellowed from the front seat, “The Barrage of Bimont! American?”

  “Yes!” I turned to the man, who was now wearing a Stetson, of all things. I was quite sure he wasn’t wearing it when I climbed onboard, or I would have noticed.

  “I have got you!” he said, his voice booming like a DJ’s. “Australien?”

  “Nahn, Nouvelle Zealande!” said the two kiwis. New Zealand, I think.

  “Do you like country?”

  “This country? Yeah! C’est tres beau!”

  “Non, country! La musique!”

  All of a sudden, the PA speaker flipped on and out came the most country song I had ever heard. Sung in southern twang by what really sounded like a cowboy, whose girlfriend left him and whose dog died (not the doggy!). It was the kind of music I heard at ho-down themed parties back home.

  “I love country!” the driver exclaimed, “I love America! One day, I will go
!”

  “Really?” I couldn’t help but climb up to the front of the bus, ignoring the sign that told us not to speak to the driver. I mean, it was in French, I could pretend not to understand it. It seemed the backpackers were coming too, leaving their bags in their seats and moving up close so that the man didn’t have to yell, though he still did. “That’s awesome! Where?”

  “South Dakota! I want to drive big bus there. Where you from?”

  “Philadelphia?”

  “Ah! Rocky!”

  “That is so cool,” said the Texan. “I’ve always wanted to go! I’ve been to Cali but never the east coast.”

  “East coast: Washington, New York!” The driver said with a big grin. “East coast France: Marseille, Nice, Monaco!”

  “Oh yeah, we’re going to Nice next,” said the girl, “we’re going to see as much of Europe as we can. Living out of our backpacks and everything.”

  She pointed at her bag, and I practically sighed in relief. It wasn’t like I was going to need all that for my hike in the end. But they were crazy if they were going to hike a mountain, in this heat, with all their belongings on their backs.

  The driver pulled up to a fork in the road, and stopped, opening the door as he pointed frantically up the hill.

  “You walk up, up,” he explained, “and then up more. When you reach cross, is top.”

  “Thanks so much!” I said, as the kiwis grabbed their bags, “I hope you get to South Dakota one day.”

  “It is the dream! Bye bye! Nice walk!”

  We watched the bus drive away, basked in the song of the cicadas. The kiwis hitched up their backpacks, preparing for the ascent.

  “Hey, what’s your name, kid?” asked the guy with the curly hair.

  “It’s Jamie,” I replied, “and you are?”

  “I’m Matt, and this is Hazel and Dutch,” he replied, pointing to his friends. “You hiking alone? Want to join us?”

  “Maybe for a bit,” I said, “but I’m actually here on a mission.”

  “Yeah? What kind of mission?”

  We made our way up the roadside, finding the trail quickly and starting our march. It wasn’t steep at all: maybe Valentin had just been trying to intimidate me into asking for him to come along.

  “I’m trying to find the treasure my dad hid for my mom before I was born,” I replied. It felt surreal to unload the story: like a jinx had been lifted off of it, freeing me to speak my mind. “He actually set up this entire treasure hunt across his favorite cities in Provence.”

  Dutch wanted all the details of the hunt so far. He wanted to know everything: why dad had made the hunt in the first place, why mom had never even made it to the first clue, all that. And I found myself answering him, unabashedly.

  Then we reached the top of the hill, and we were definitely not in Kansas anymore.

  We had somehow been transported to the top of a gorge, great cliffs slicing a thin but immensely deep ravine through the limestone. Up ahead was a great dam, the lake behind it a deep sapphire blue, while the St Victoire mountain rose up from the depths.

  And there, at the very top, the cross of Provence. My goal literally in sight.

  “Everybody ready?” Asked Hazel, “it’s going to be a tough one.”

  The talking stopped once we had crossed the dam, and the steep ascent began. I didn’t even realize that Dutch had stopped asking questions until I was too out of breath to even try answering them. The incline felt vertical, and with the sun beating down on my back, every step was torture. For the kiwis and their bags of personal belongings, it must have been a hundred times worse.

  And then some runner would flash past us, either on their way up or their way down, tossing a quick bonjour at us which we replied in breathless unison.

  Every time I thought the trail evened out a little, it got steep again, repeating flat areas and steep until we broke through the line of pines. Now there was no hiding from the sun, no matter what we tried: the trek was just going to keep getting worse.

  Why was I doing this again? I had nothing to prove to myself, to you. Mamie didn’t know or care that I was here today. Valentin was the only one who wanted to join, and I had pushed him away out of what, personal pride?

  It was probably the heat just getting me, well, heated. I took a swig of now hot water and pushed on.

  I will not describe to you the pain of hiking in the hot summer sun. I will not detail the three-hour trek to the summit - not even the summit, I learned later, the cross was not the actual summit - or how much sweat was dripping off me after just the first hour. I will tell you how nerve wracking it was to walk up a trail so close to sheer cliffs, watching the ground drop farther and farther away from you until you wondered how you could be stuck so high.

  “The priory,” said Hazel, “I can see it!”

  From that point on, the trip felt like minutes. We casually strolled into the shaded alcove of the priory, along with the other hikers who were resting in the cool breeze. The priory itself was smaller than I expected, just a few squat buildings around a stone floor, caught safely between the cliffs of the St Victoire.

  “Ready to go to the top?” Asked Dutch, hoisting his bag higher on his back. The shirt there was drenched in sweat.

  “Actually, this is the part I need to do myself,” I said. The trio nodded.

  “We’ll meet you back here for the way down, if you want,” said Hazel.

  “That would be great, though don’t let me hold you up.”

  “Nah, don’t worry about it.”

  They made their way to the path to the summit, but I had a detour to do first. The most terrifying part of the lot.

  Instead of following them up the path to the cross, I turned right, to where a massive pit seemed to dig into the mountain itself. This wasn’t in dad’s letter: a sign there bragged about a recent archeological dig, with eight-hundred-year-old chapels. It was hard to believe anyone climbing this mountain so long ago, let alone building a chapel on top of it. Dad hadn’t mentioned that at all in his letter.

  But where I wanted to go was behind the pit, around it. To where a slice through the cliff showed a beautiful blue sky. To where a short rock wall was everything between me and a few thousand-foot drop to the earth below.

  Dad had made it sound like you stood right on the edge. Maybe you did, but you would have been much braver than me. I was happy enough for the solid rock wall to keep me from the fall. I stood as close as I dared, staring out at the horizon, taking in the breathtaking view. The miles and miles of rolling hills and pines, the very view that brought you and dad closer together all those years ago. Were you pregnant with me, the last time you climbed? Was I here with you, when you stood out, facing the view?

  I felt like I stood there for hours. It could well have been. The long summer days meant the sun seemed to move quickly across the sky. But there was no point in denying the inevitable. It could well be that the last clue was not where it was meant to be, and that I had climbed this whole way, done all this nonsense for nothing.

  But I owed it to you to finish this.

  I owed it to me.

  I turned, walking away from the cliff, and made my way along the last stretch of the hike to the cross. And there I was; on top of a mountain I had seen all my life in paintings. Standing before a cross that had been carried to the top of the mountain on the back of donkeys, a beacon inviting all to find safety and peace in this turbulent world.

  It was a little smaller than I expected it to be. Especially when I had just spent weeks seeing it from everywhere I went. And yet, it was perfect. Hikers sat on a bench, admiring the spectacular view. It was breathtaking from here, without the cliffs to make you feel small: up here, at the peak, I felt like a giant. I breathed in the hot dry air and let myself feel my victory. I had made it. I was at the top. I had done it, all on my own. I had slain the dragon.

  And then, for the first time since the accident, I truly wanted to draw.

  I sat on the bench, between
a French couple who were eating baguettes stuffed with tuna and eggs, and a man in a tight running outfit dripping with sweat. My pencil flew over the pad, picking up the details I hadn’t noticed before: the steam from a far off nuclear plant, a farm making fluffy clouds; the edge of the sea, in the distance, Cassis if you squinted hard enough; the lake held back by the dam, the blue something so deep I wanted to dive from here.

  “We’re going to the guest center,” said Matt.

  His voice made me jump: I hadn’t realized he was anywhere near me. The trio smiled in the most relaxed way I had ever seen: I would have thought they were stoned, if I wasn’t smiling the exact same way right now. Just conquering this mountain was enough to give anyone a high.

  “Feel free to leave without me,” I said, and I was content with that, “if I see you when I come down, I’ll join you. If not, don’t worry about me: I can manage by myself.”

  “Let me know if you find the treasure,” said Dutch, “message me on Facebook!”

  I laughed. I was comfortable if the story had no ending. I found another piece of my heart on top of this mountain, and I was full to the brim with joy.

  Joy. I hadn’t felt this in months.

  I ate my sandwich, a half stale baguette with butter and ham I had thrown together before leaving Mamie’s house that morning. And then, when I was finally ready, I went to the foot of the cross, and I hunted for the treasure.

  But it wasn’t the stone dad had written about, was it? Of course, now that I was ok with myself, the universe had withdrawn its helping hand. The entire podium was made of some re-enforced concrete, smooth and white and not at all the rocky stock I had expected.

  Oh, crap. Maybe I had climbed up here for nothing after all.

  It was quicker to walk down the mountain than up it, that was for sure. I flew down the mountain, taking the steep hill steps at a time. I didn’t know why I was rushing: the clue had remained hidden for seventeen years, until someone had moved it: it could wait a few minutes more.