A Pig in Provence (25 page)

Joanne and I had prepared greens for salads, but people were too full, so instead of serving salad, we cleared the dishes and waited awhile before bringing out pie and coffee, allowing everyone to take a stroll or a nap, typical in Provence following a long meal.

After dessert, the adults stayed at the table, sipping coffee as the sun began to drop behind the house, unwilling for the evening to end.

I have fond memories of that singular Sunday when friends came together to cook a
méchoui
, now a common feast in the area. The next year Ibn didn’t return with M. Meille, who would only say that Ibn had gone away. The fire pit, used once or twice again for barbecuing chops, was eventually filled in. Today, a dry space with sparse grass marks where it once was, just enough for Joanne and me to see in our mind’s eye the lamb turning on its spit, our children playing, our friends gathered, and Ibn smiling as he watched it all.

Cooking for a village. The Mayor dresses up. Lost dancer.

I arrived in Nice at 2:10 in the afternoon, on the Air France flight from San Francisco that I habitually take, but without the habitual load of books, new cookware, and the dual-season clothes that I usually migrate with now. This time I had only one bag lightly packed with a swimsuit, a couple pairs of linen pants, a few tops, a sweater, and two dresses suitable for a French summer wedding. The wedding gift, a pale green glass cake pedestal, was in my carry-on. Later I would realize that I should have brought a hat, a fancy, ribbon-bedecked, broad-brimmed hat.

When I drove up the familiar winding road to my house, I could see a dozen or more cars parked helter-skelter across the road at the Lamys’. It was going to be a big family wedding, with all the extended members in attendance. Robert and Françoise Lamy, almost eighty, were beginning to slow down a bit and I suspected this might be the last big, intact family event. Instead of putting on the wedding feast at the family home, as for previous weddings, this one would be at the
salle des fêtes
for only close
friends and family, with the ritual postceremony apéritif for most of the village held at home.

I opened up the house, turning the heavy key in the lock of the front door, and went directly into the kitchen. A bowl of peaches was on the table with a note from Françoise under it, inviting me to dinner at seven. I ate one of the juicy peaches, made myself a cup of coffee, then went upstairs and unpacked.

At seven, someone, probably one of the grandchildren, rang the big brass gong the Lamys use to call large groups of family to meals. A minute later, when I walked across the road, more than two dozen people were collected around and under the four spreading mulberry trees that shaded the vast flagstone terrace. Robert and his sons were pouring
apéritifs,
offering
pastis, vin d’orange,
or
kir,
while several of the younger granddaughters were passing bowls of nuts and olives, in between eating them. Long tables covered in an assortment of cloths were set in an L shape.

Just as I arrived, Françoise came out of the kitchen with a platter stacked double with
tapenade
toasts. With her short cropped gray hair, round blue eyes, and soft olive skin, and wearing her classic polo shirt, she looked the same to me as the first time I had met her more than thirty years ago when Donald and I lived down the road with our children and she bought the goat cheese we made. She put down her tray and, after we exchanged kisses, took my hands in hers and asked about me and my family.

Her grandson Laurent, the groom-to-be, looked not much different than when he had spent part of a summer with me and Jim in California at age fifteen. Only now, at twenty-three, he was taller. His thick dark hair still shot out at incorrigible angles, and his black-rimmed glasses were perched at that same slight tilt on his nose. His face, square jawed like his grandfather’s, broke into a shy smile when he saw me.

“Georgeanne! I can’t believe you came all the way from California, just for the wedding. My parents say you’re staying only six days.” He introduced his bride-to-be to me, a plump blonde with blue eyes and freckles, as talkative as he was introverted.

When it was time to be seated, Robert said I should sit next to him. “That’s yours.” He patted the pink-and-yellow floral print napkin holder set at my place. “You’ll be here all week, like the rest of the family.”

Thereafter, I could always tell my place, which changed with each meal, by my napkin holder, a tangible symbol to me that I belonged to this large, complex, and kindly family.

The younger grandchildren brought the first course to the tables, big bowls of sliced tomatoes from the garden, mixed with tuna, chopped eggs, and red onion and dressed with lots of olive oil, salt, and pepper. Robert doesn’t like vinegar, so it was absent. We all had at least two helpings, sopping up the juices on our plate with the abundant bread, cleaning our plates for the main dish, which was rice with
ratatouille
made with eggplants, peppers, zucchini, tomatoes, and basil from the garden just on the other side of the terrace where we were eating.

We sat until late under the mulberries, as we always do, sipping our wine and finishing our cheese and fruit. The younger children had cleared the table and started the dishwasher and were now off in their own world.

The moon, nearly full, illuminated the wheat fields and vineyards around us as we sat talking about the next day. More extended family on both sides were arriving, some in the morning, others later.

“So, we’ll need to prepare lunch and dinner tomorrow—we’ll be around thirty. We also need to fill and cook the tarts, and make the
tapenade
and
anchoïade
for the wedding
apéritif
party. We’ll be about one hundred twenty people for the
apéritif,
and we’ve already made the eight hundred tart shells we need,” said Delphine, the eldest granddaughter, twenty-eight, who was in charge of the
apéritif
foods. Like her brother she had spent part of a summer with me and Jim, and she and I had shared many food adventures in both California and France, including cooking live lobsters, digging potatoes, and planting vegetable gardens.

“It’s our last day to prepare, because the day after we have to be at the
mairie
at eleven,” she announced.

Marriage, by law a civil ceremony in France and the only legally valid one, takes place at the
mairie,
the city hall, which sometimes has a specifically designated
salle de mariage.
A religious ceremony is an option, but has no legal status in the eyes of the state. The civil ceremony is not unlike being in court, but the attendees are better dressed and generally include only the most immediate family, or intimate friends, depending on the size of the city hall and whether or not there will be a church ceremony as well. Donald and I had been married at the
salle de mariage
at the
mairie
in Aix-en-Provence, but that was a much larger setting than a village city hall.

The next morning, after a jet-lagged sleep behind my shuttered windows in the deep silence of the countryside, I went across the road to help. It was 9:30 and the tables under the mulberries held the remains of morning
café
au lait, bread, butter, jam, and cereal bowls. These were quickly cleared, and cutting boards and knives set out. Dinner that night was to be a big couscous.

“We’ll finish all the cooking this morning, then this afternoon we’re going down to the community center to decorate,” Delphine told me after the morning round of kisses. Then it was time to get to work on the couscous.

“Georgeanne, toi, tu coupe les carottes. Tatie, tu coupe les courgettes.”
She gave us each a task—chopping the onions, garlic, carrots, zucchini, and green beans—while she prepared the restaurant-size pot of chicken and the broth, adding local garbanzo beans that Françoise had purchased the previous fall. As we finished chopping the vegetables, she added those.

Françoise’s kitchen easily held the six of us around the long wooden table that served for both working and eating. The kitchen had been modernized several times, but the glossy, dark red tiles on the long counter holding the sink, dishwasher, and cooktop remained. The wall behind the counter, red tiles as well, is fitted with two built-in ovens. Above them is a shelf where she keeps a collection of old Provençal terra-cotta cookware. Best of all, the kitchen has a generous, thigh-low window that opens on the terrace. Light pours into the kitchen, and Françoise sets her flats of vegetables and fruits from the garden on the sill, working out of them as she cooks.

That morning the kitchen quickly gave up its smell of morning coffee to that of chicken and herbs and by eleven the broth for the couscous, rich with vegetables and tender chicken, was gently bubbling on the stove. All that remained was to cook the couscous itself that evening, just before serving, and for the men to grill the
merguez
sausages that would be part of the dish.

Delphine and her designated crew of cousins, clad in shorts and bathing suits, had been diligently at work in the dining room, forming an assembly line circling the large round pear-wood table, which was covered in plastic to protect it. They were filling bite-size tarts with various fillings, then storing the cooked tarts in boxes as they laughed and chatted. Delphine had made a classic
quiche
filling with a savory custard and Gruyère cheese and another with creamed spinach, and the crew spooned the fillings
directly into the partially baked shells. Some of the shells were being spread first with mustard before being filled and topped with slices of cherry tomatoes.

“Oh, that one was my mother’s idea. The mustard flavors the custard without being mixed into it. We’re making big tarts for lunch today, with the same filling as the little tarts, so you can taste everything then. Here, can you start filling the lunch tarts?” She indicated a stack of eight tart tins, each with a lightly golden, partially baked shell.

“Make three of the tomato—I know everyone likes those, and I bet you will too.”

I followed Delphine’s instructions, brushing a thin layer of pungent Amora mustard on the bottom of three tarts, ladling in the filling, and then covering the surface with fat slices of tomato.

“Drizzle a little olive oil on, then some fresh thyme—it’s over there.” She pointed to a bowl of fresh thyme leaves, all the stems removed.

“Nice,” I said as I picked up the bowl, inhaling the resinous aroma. “Who cleaned the thyme?”

“The little boys.” She nodded toward two of her cousins, about seven or eight years old. “We sent them out to cut it. They watched cartoons while they cleaned it. I told them no TV unless they cleaned the thyme.”

We cooked the lunch tarts in pairs and when we had finished our
apéritif,
this time rum, over ice, from l’Île de la Réunion, where Robert had been the
préfet,
or governor, during the 1970s, all the tarts had been baked, and the expected guests had arrived. Françoise rang the gong. I found my napkin holder between one of the younger cousins and Robert’s sister, an old friend of mine. We agreed that the tomato tart had an added piquancy, but it was so subtle that we would never have guessed that it came from
mustard. A huge green salad was served with the tarts, and we had our choice of red,
rosé,
or white wine from the bottles set at intervals on the tables. Sliced melons were brought to the table for dessert. Afterward, some of us, me included, opted for coffee, while others took a nap in the lounge chairs in the shade near the swimming pool.

That afternoon I went with assorted aunts, cousins, and in-laws-to-be to decorate the
salle des fêtes.
It sits on the village square with the
mairie,
across from the defunct wine cooperative, and next door to the one-room school where I once drank Champagne and ate cake with the other parents at the school Christmas party when Oliver was just a baby and Denys Fine the teacher.

The
salle des fêtes,
which has the same functional, uninspired architecture as the school and the co-op, consists of a large, empty room and a big commercial kitchen. We set about transforming the space for the wedding feast and dance.

The girls climbed ladders and hung garlands of twisted green, gold, and white crepe from the overhead lights. I helped set up the folding tables and chairs and covered the tables with green, gold, and white cloths. The girls, once finished with the garlands, put small glass jars they had filled with bouquets of lavender and wheat on all the tables, two or three per table.

Some of the women were busily making up packets of white-sugar-coated almonds, the
dragées,
in green net and tying them with yellow satin ribbon. Sugar-coated almonds are traditional for weddings, baptisms, and communions and are handed out or placed at every table setting, a memento to take home. In candy store windows, you’ll often see ready-made net packets filled with
dragées
in pastel shades of pink, blue, green, and yellow, as well as white.