Tender at the Bone (13 page)

Remove from oven and allow to cool while making filling
.

FILLING

¾ cup blanched almonds

¾ cup sugar

3 tablespoons butter, softened

3 large egg yolks

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

4 cups raspberries

Put almonds and 3 tablespoons of the sugar in food processer and grind to a fine powder
.

Cream butter with remaining sugar. Add egg yolks, stirring until smooth. Add ground almond–sugar mixture and vanilla extract
.

Spread almond cream into bottom of prebaked tart shell
.

Carefully cover the tart with 2 cups of raspberries
.

Sprinkle with 2 teaspoons sugar, bake at 350° for 40 minutes. Remove from oven and cool for 2 hours
.

Just before serving, cover the top of the tart with remaining 2 cups of berries. I don’t glaze it, but if you like you can melt 2 tablespoons of currant jam with 1 tablespoon of water in a pan, allow to cool, and then brush the glaze over the berries
.

Serves 8
.

“Vous commençez maintenant,”
said the woman at the Gare d’Austerlitz, pushing nine small boys in my direction. She handed me a sheaf of tickets, turned, and disappeared into the crowd. The boys eyed me speculatively, shifting their knapsacks from one hand to the other. Then the smallest, a child with dark skin, black hair, and huge brown eyes gave me a challenging stare and began whooping like an Indian. They all followed his lead.

Passengers running for their trains turned and looked disapprovingly in my direction. The disappearing woman turned too; even from a distance I could see her mouth working. She came back, a look of anger and resignation on her face. “Nikili,” she said fiercely, whacking the smallest child on the back of the head.
“Taisez-vous,”
she said to the others. The noise subsided instantly.

Looking sternly at me she said, “You will have to maintain discipline. Do you know what to do?”

“No,” I said, thinking I was about to get an instant course on being a counselor. But all she wanted was to get me off her hands. She pointed to a group of boys in the distance, gathering by a gate. “The train leaves in twenty minutes. Go wait with them,” she said, turning to leave. She turned back, murmured,
“Bonne chance,”
and fled.

I herded the boys toward the group she had indicated.
“Maison Heureuse?”
I asked the cute guy standing with them.
“Très heureuse,”
he replied as the gate opened. The boys all dashed for the train, my group galloping happily behind. I ran to keep up and then looked around for the cute guy, but he was no longer in sight. Disappointed, I settled the boys into their seats, told them a thousand times to be quiet, and watched the station slide from view.

An hour later I discovered that Nikili had disappeared. I was frantic, imagining an international scandal. “Incompetent American!” I muttered to myself, shaking Nikili’s pal Roland and pleading,
“Où est-il?”

Roland grinned irritatingly and said nothing. I gnawed at my fingernails and contemplated getting off at the next stop and disappearing into the French countryside. How could I admit that I had already lost one of the campers? The boys snickered in their seats and threw things at each other, while I wondered what to do. Just as the tears were gathering under my eyelids I looked up to see a girl about my age dragging Nikili down the aisle by his ear. She had a thin athletic body, thick black hair, and startlingly blue eyes, but she carried herself like someone who had no interest in her own beauty. She wore drab clothes, no makeup, and looked like business. As she hurled Nikili into his seat she threatened to take him to the director for a good spanking the minute we arrived if he dared to move.

He didn’t.

“
Et vous autres
,” she said sternly before going back to her seat, “I’ll be watching you too.”

I followed her to the back of the car where the other counselors were seated. Watching them, I soon got the hang of French child control. It was mostly a lot of screaming. Volume was important and threats seemed to help. When all else failed the preferred strategy was to invoke the name of the dreaded director. “We certainly are a pathetic group,” said the girl who had found Nikili. “All counting on a director we have yet to meet.”

I smiled wanly and said nothing. I was tired and homesick, and I wished I were at the Dairy Queen with Julie. I felt sorry for myself and when we straggled into camp and finally met the man in charge it did not help. Standing on the stone terrace that ran the length of the main building, the director outlined the rules. There was to be no shoving, no shouting, no disrespect. Showers would
be taken once a week. Most important, everyone was to eat everything on his plate. Campers would be weighed once a week and the government expected everyone to get fatter.

“If there are any problems …” he said, pausing significantly, “you will come and see me.” And he held up a thick paddle. We were dismissed.

“Welcome to the army,” said the cute guy from the train as we led the boys to the long, low dormitory. Rows of cots stretched down the length of the room, each with a trunk at its foot. The counselors were housed next door, four to each tiny bedroom.

I began to unpack, setting the framed picture of Tommy on the little table next to my bed along with a box of chocolate-covered cherries and the book I was reading,
Bonjour Tristesse
. Monique, in the next bed, pulled out a huge bottle of cologne, a pile of movie magazines, and a small mountain of cosmetics. Suzanne was meticulously covering her table with pictures of Johnny Halliday. When they were arranged to her satisfaction, she carefully extracted from her valise an embroidered pillow with “Johnny” written across it, caressed it lovingly, and set it gently on her bed.

Meanwhile Danielle, my savior from the train, was arranging a colorless stack of books. She set herself primly on her bed, donned a pair of glasses, and opened one of the books. Monique tilted her head to read the title. “
La Nausée
,” she giggled, “very heavy. No wonder you need glasses.” She examined Danielle critically and said, “You know, you could be very pretty if you’d let me make you up.”

Danielle looked up irritably. “Please,” she said, “I am trying to improve myself.”

Monique made a comical face. “I was just trying to help.” She turned to me and said, “Want to go meet the guys? Let’s see if any of them want to take us into town.”

“Good idea,” said Suzanne.

“Why not?” I said.

“’Bye,” said Danielle. She did not look up.

“
Salut les copains,”
said the cute guy from the train when we walked into the Boyardville Café. He signaled to the waiter for three more glasses of pineau, looking as if he owned the place. I fell instantly in love. Georges took no more notice of me than he had on the train; he devoted the entire summer to the seduction of Monique. At night I dreamed about him; during the day I consoled myself with eating.

That was not hard. When we woke up in the morning the smell of baking bread was wafting through the trees. By the time we had gotten our campers out of bed, their faces washed and their shirts tucked in, the aroma had become maddeningly seductive. We walked into the dining room to devour hot bread slathered with country butter and topped with homemade plum jam so filled with fruit it made each slice look like a tart. We stuck our faces into the bowls of café au lait, inhaling the sweet, bitter, peculiarly French fragrance, and Georges or Jean or one of the other male counselors would say, for the hundredth time, “
On mange pas comme ça à Paris
.” Two hours later we had a
“gouter,”
a snack of chocolate bars stuffed into fresh, crusty rolls. And two hours later there was lunch. The eating went on all day.

It was the main activity; Happy House offered no sports, no games, no crafts, no organized activities of any kind. The island was wild and beautiful, a tangle of thick virgin forests bordering endless miles of empty beach, and the campers were expected to entertain each other. Our job was merely to make sure that none of them got lost and all of them gained weight.

We spent most of the day at the beach. Danielle worked hard, earnestly teaching her campers to swim; the rest of us just worked on our tans. The only thing we taught our groups was to dig up the
delicious cockles that lay just beneath the wet sand and share them with us for a late-morning snack. Thus fortified, we walked back across the beach and through the woods to lunch.

It was always a magnificent meal. To begin there were often big piles of petits-gris, small shrimp steamed in a mixture of wine, water, lemon, and herbs. When you broke off the heads, the rosy shrimp came tumbling out of their shells; they were a lot of work to eat, but worth it. Afterward there were stews made of fresh country chickens or rabbits, or sometimes small, tasty, tough steaks with big piles of just-made frites. And then salad and bread and cheese and fruit. And, for the counselors, the sour country wines of the region.

After lunch the campers took a two-hour nap. Only a couple of counselors were required to stay and break up pillow fights; those of us who were not
“de service”
were free to go to town. We wandered the little streets of Boyardville, writing postcards to our parents and eating the unsatisfactory ice-cream cones sold at the
tabac
. But sooner or later we all ended up at the Boyardville Café.

I was sitting there alone one day, sipping a cup of coffee and looking wistfully at Georges, when a voice above me said,
“Tu permets?”

It was Danielle. She sat down and said accusingly, “I have just discovered that you are American.”

“Yes?” I said.

She was quiet for a moment and then she said shyly, “Tell me, do you know Tony Curtis?”

I burst out laughing. “Do you know Jacques Brel?” I replied.

“I am from Reims,” she said, as if that answered the question. “I am studying to be a nurse. It is useful work.”