Picnic in Provence (14 page)

I don’t know why this should hit me so hard; I’ve been gone a long time. Maybe that’s just it. Without saying a thing, my parents are making plans around the assumption that I’m never coming back. This seems at once obvious and terribly sad. It’s my final permission slip.
Go on, pussycat. I’ll be fine.
My mother’s generosity, not for the first time, humbles me.

I recently started to give English lessons to Julien, the ten-year-old son of Alexandre’s old babysitter. We started with adjectives. We made little stickers for the wall. Today is
hot, cold, sunny, cloudy.
I am
happy, sad, smart, funny
(I left out
stupid,
on purpose). I told him to change it every day. When I went by last week I realized that I’d also left out
perfect. Perfect
is a word I use in English all the time. How’s one o’clock for lunch? Perfect. Can I get back to you next week? Perfect. How’s the tiramisu? Perfect. The French equivalent,
parfait,
is not something you hear very often. No student ever gets 100 percent on a term paper. Perfection is considered prideful, even ridiculous. This is depressing, but also true. I am
perfect.
It’s a tall order.

Most people are nostalgic about childhood. Not me. When I was a kid I couldn’t wait to be an adult so I could control things. Surely, I thought, this would make life easier. I would have the perfect job. I would meet the perfect man. I would make perfect decisions. There have been moments—I stick to my American guns—that have been downright perfect. But as I get older, my decisions have become more tangled, less perfect, harder to uproot.

Gwendal and I wanted the garden to retain some of its disorder, some of its surprises. He had trimmed the rosebushes in the fall. Jewel-like buds, round and tight, had begun to form on the branches; a bed of tiny violets grew at their base. The new mint, insistent as a hormonal teenage boy, began to poke through in inch-high sprouts. We had never seen the garden at this season before. I rubbed a sage leaf between my fingers; the musky oil stuck to my skin. I’d like to greet the unknown with pleasure. If I could just manage my fear, there might be something wondrous about not knowing what will pop up next.

MIREILLE’S MOTHER,
Marcelle Pons Sidoine, passed away yesterday. I saw the announcement, a simple black-and-white photocopy, posted on the tree in the place des Marronniers.

We’d had the good fortune to meet Marcelle several times when we first came to Céreste. Even at the age of ninety-four, she was a decisive woman—short of sentence and sure of opinion. The first time we met was for a lunchtime aperitif. Mireille brought out her homemade peach wine for the occasion.

Marcelle was seated in the garden when we arrived. She was petite and wore several layers of sweaters under a blue housecoat. In his poems, Char refers to her as
la Renarde
—the fox. Her quick eyes were hidden now behind large glasses, but her hair still had the pompadourish rise that I recognized from photos of her younger self.

The wine was a deep rose color, infused with the leaves of local white peach trees. When her son-in-law tried to serve her a second time, Marcelle covered the top of her glass with the palm of her hand.
Pas moi,
she said—“one more and I’ll dance the Charleston.” I had a sudden flash of a girl in sensible brown shoes and an A-line dress secretly practicing the steps in her bedroom.

When we asked about Char, she said: “He was always hanging around,
ce grand,
being nice to my mother.
Il m’agaçait, celui-là.
He annoyed me.” I imagined a large bee buzzing around the head of a pretty young woman. I guess love is always the same; when he starts cozying up to your mother, you’re in real trouble.

THE FUNERAL SERVICE
was held in the local church. The walls were frigid. This is the season in Provence when the locals have stopped spending money on heat; it’s often colder inside than out. We sat discreetly on a wooden pew near the back; the crackling of the antiquated sound system blotted out most of the eulogy. Marcelle had been a recognized member of the French Résistance, so there were two men in uniform in attendance, nearly Marcelle’s age themselves. Heavy gold epaulettes sagged a bit on their shrunken shoulders.

On foot, we followed the hearse to the local cemetery. After the chill of the church, the sun was warm and welcome. The cemetery is on a hill overlooking the village and the surrounding fields. Not a bad place to spend eternity.

When we got home, the house looked slightly different. The first thing that struck us when we’d visited the house was the danger and, at the same time, the warmth of the memories associated with the war. The following event took place in what is now our living room:

Looking for Char, the Gestapo decided to do an impromptu search of the entire village. They ordered the townsfolk out of their homes, instructing them to leave the doors ajar. There was no way Char could present himself at such a lineup. Even if the soldiers didn’t recognize his face, they’d know him because he was a full head taller than any man in Céreste. Marcelle and her mother wrapped a bandage around Char’s jaw so he looked like an old woman with a toothache, and they left him in bed, pistol in hand and the covers pulled up to his chin. The room is just a short flight of stairs off the living room.

When the Germans arrived, Marcelle was standing in front of the door, holding the key. “Leave it,” said the soldiers. “Go to the square.” “I don’t trust these people,” she said. “There are thieves in this village. If you want to search the house, go ahead, but I will stay here and lock the door behind you.”

The Germans came in, looked around the living room, went out into the garden. They got halfway up the stairs—it’s only six steps—to Char’s room and turned around. “We don’t have time for this. There’s no one here. Let’s go.”

It was only after the soldiers left that Marcelle saw the grenade lying carelessly on the table in front of the wood-burning stove. How had she—how had
they
—not noticed it? Possession of any kind of weapon (to say nothing of hiding a Résistance leader with a pistol in the bedroom) would have been enough to get the whole family shot.

It’s hard to describe the room where all this happened—how small it is. “I was sick for eight days after that,” said Marcelle when she told us the story. As if risking your life were like coming down with the flu.

That afternoon, I went back to my spring cleaning, making the house our own. But we will never forget why we first came to this place, drawn by the good-luck lilies of the valley and an extraordinary history.

It will always be her garden.

SINCE MARCELLE’S FUNERAL
, Jean has been looking a bit down; feeling his age, perhaps.

“It’s a blow,” he said, leaning against the gate. They had been good neighbors but were hardly the best of friends. Mireille used to complain about Jean grilling sardines under the window of her daughter’s bedroom all summer. Jean still talks about the 637 empty yogurt pots he had to clean out when he bought the property from the Pons family. No doubt if we stay another forty years, they’ll find a story like that about us.

“
Tiens,
if it rains on Wednesday, this weekend there will be mushrooms.”

My ears perked up. I’d been waiting for this moment since we arrived. Mushroom hunting in Provence is veiled in secrecy, second only to truffle hunting in the level of dissimulation and suspicion it inspires. If you are lucky enough to find a good spot, you might unearth skinny yellow and black
trompettes de la mort
(trumpets of death) or flat meaty
pleurots
(oyster mushrooms) or even small spongelike black morels. If you are not sure exactly what you’ve found, you can take your basket to the local pharmacy, and the pharmacist will help you sort the culinary from the potentially deadly—it’s part of their training.

“I’ll show you
mon coin,
” he said, looking pointedly at Gwendal. Being taken to a good spot is like Bluebeard drawing you a map leading straight to his buried treasure. Jean and Paulette don’t have any children; we were touched that they liked us enough to bestow this legacy.

“I’ll go,” I piped up in my uniquely American way.

“You’ll be home with the baby,” responded Jean in a tone that brooked no argument.

I made another attempt to stick my nose into the breach. “Gwendal can stay with the baby.”

He waved this notion away with a flick of his hand. Like a gold pocket watch, a mushroom spot was clearly something to be passed down among men.

They started out early on Saturday morning. “You must hide your
sac
. If anyone sees the bags, they will follow us.” Jean had a large walking stick in hand, for camouflage. “We need to look like we are just out for
une balade
.” I watched them disappear around the corner with a twinge of envy.

They were gone all morning. Alexandre had just woken up from his nap when Gwendal walked in the door.

“Did you find any?”

“No. Someone must have been there before us. But it’s a beautiful walk, across the river, up around the edge of the cliff on the rock face.

“He would never say so,” said Gwendal, trying to console me, “but I think he wanted me there instead of you because he was afraid he might slip.”