The Provence Cure for the Brokenhearted (3 page)

“Are you allowed to be here?” I asked. “You’re dressed like a wedding-party escapee.”

Abbot slipped around Daniel and stepped into the studio as he always did—with an expression of awe. He loved the narrow stairs to the loft, the espresso machine, the exposed beams, and, of course, he loved the huge canvases in various stages of development propped against walls.

“I had a little idea, so I popped in,” Daniel said. “It calms me down to take a look.”

“Shouldn’t you have shoes on?” Abbot said.

“Ah, yes.” He pointed to a pair of shoes just a few feet away. “See, if I get paint on the suit, it’s one thing, but the shoes are handmade. A cobbler out in the desert had me stand in powder, barefoot, and from that imprint he made a pair of shoes specifically for my feet.” These are the kinds of stories that he and Elysius had—a cobbler in the desert measuring bare feet in powder.

Abbot ran to the shoes, but didn’t touch them. I knew that he wanted to, but shoes tromp around on the ground and the ground is littered with germs. He would have had to scrub his hands in the bathroom immediately. The gesture of fake hand-washing wouldn’t do. “Where’s Charlotte?” Abbot asked, returning to the paintings. Charlotte was Daniel’s daughter from his first marriage. Daniel had been through a nasty divorce and custody battle over Charlotte, and he swore he’d never marry again—not because he was jaded, but, more accurately, because he was beleaguered. A few months after Henry’s death, though, he had a change of heart. There was a natural correlation, of course—what could make you want to cement love more than the reminder of life’s fragility?

“She’s up at the house,” he said; then he turned to me and added, “trying to fly under the radar.”

“How’s she doing?” I asked. Charlotte was sixteen and going through a punk phase that alarmed Elysius, though
punk
was outdated. They had new terms for everything now.

“She’s studying for the SATs, but, I don’t know, she seems a little … morose. Well, I worry about her. I’m her father. I
worry. You know what I mean.” He looked at me like a coconspirator. He meant that I understood parenting from the inside out, in a way that Elysius didn’t. It was something he could never admit except in this sly way.

“What’s this one supposed to be?” Abbot asked. All of the paintings were abstract, chaotically so, but Abbot had stalled in front of an especially tumultuous one with big heavy lines, desperate and weighted. It was as if there were a bird trapped somewhere in the painting—a bird that wanted out.

Daniel looked at the painting. “A boat far off with full sails,” he said. “And loss.”

“You’ve got to cheer up!” I said to Daniel quietly.

He put a hand on my shoulder. “You’re one to talk,” he whispered. “Are you designing?” I always felt honored that Daniel saw my work as a pastry chef as art. He wasn’t rarefied about art. He believed it belonged to all of us, and he always raved about my work. And, at this moment, he was speaking to me as an artist. “You’ve got to get back to creating. There’s no better way to mourn.”

I was surprised he put it so bluntly, but relieved, too. I was tired of sympathy. “I haven’t started up again, not yet,” I said.

He nodded, solemnly.

“Abbot,” I called, “we’ve got to go.”

Disappointed, Abbot walked back to me. He said to Daniel, “Your paintings make people feel sad, but you don’t know why.”

“A great definition of abstract art,” Daniel said.

Abbot smiled and rubbed his hands together; then, as if noticing it himself, he shoved them in his pockets. Daniel took no notice, but I did. Abbot was learning to mask his problem. Was this a step backward or forward?

“I’m late for mimosas,” I said.

Daniel was looking at an unfinished canvas. He turned to me. “Heidi.” He hesitated. “I’ve had to postpone the honeymoon for a few days to finish up work for a show. Elysius is in an uproar. When you see her, remind her I’m a nice person.”

“I will,” I said. “Can we leave these here?” I asked, looking down at my suitcase and Abbot’s bag.

“Of course,” he said.

“Come on, Abbot,” I said, disentangling his tie and cummerbund from the snorkeling gear.

Abbot ran to the door.

“It really is good to see you two,” Daniel said.

“You, too,” I said. “Happy almost wedding!”

ecause Elysius and Daniel had been living here together for eight years, the wedding seemed like a strange afterthought. I considered Elysius and Daniel as not only having a marriage but having an enduring one. For my sister, however, the wedding was monumental, and now, walking past the lush lawn, the back-and-forth tracks of a wide riding mower pushing the grass in stripes, I felt guilty for being so removed.

I should have at least agreed to make her wedding cake. Once upon a time, I’d had a growing reputation as a
high-end cake designer. People from all over Florida still call the Cake Shop for events a year or more in advance to reserve a spot. Weddings had been a specialty. But shortly after Henry’s death, I’d retreated to making the cupcakes and lemon squares in the early morning hours and working the counter. I’d sworn off brides—they were too overbearing, too wrapped up in the event. They struck me as ingrates, taking love for granted. Now I was embarrassed for not having offered to make Elysius and Daniel’s cake. It was my gift, the one small thing I had to give.

I looked up at the bank of windows, the kitchen and the dining room lit with a bright, golden hue, and stopped.

“What is it?” Abbot said.

I wanted to turn back and go home. Was I ready for this? It struck me this was how I felt in life now, like someone stalled on a lawn outside of a giant house who looked into beautiful windows where people were living their lives, filling flower vases, brushing their hair while looking in the mirror, laughing in quick flutters that would rise up and disappear. And here was my own sister’s life, brimming.

“Nothing,” I said to Abbot. I grabbed his hand and gave it a squeeze. He squeezed back and just like that he took a step ahead of me and pulled me toward the house—full of the living.

At that moment, the back door flung wide, and my mother emerged. Her hair was a honeyed confection swooped up in her signature chignon, and her face was glazed in a way that made her look “dewy and young,” which she attributed
to a line of expensive lotions. My mother was aging beautifully. She had a long, elegant neck, full lips, arched eyebrows. It’s a strange thing to be raised by someone much more beautiful than you’ll ever be. She had a regal beauty, but, set against this posture of royalty, her vulnerability seemed more pronounced—a certain weary softness in her expressions.

Her eyes fell on me and Abbot there on the lawn. “I’ve just been sent out to find you!”

My sister sent my mother to find me? This was bad. Very bad.

“How late are we?” I asked.

“You mean, how angry is your sister?”

“Have I missed the mini toasts?” I asked, hoping I had.

My mother didn’t answer. She bustled across the deck and down the small set of stairs. Her toffee-colored dress swished around her. It was a sleek design that showed off her collarbones. My mother is half French, and she believes in elegance.

“I needed to get out of that house!” she said. “And you were my excuse. Direct orders to find you and get you moving.” She looked agitated, maybe even a little teary. Had she been crying? My mother is a woman of deep emotion, but not one to cry easily. She’s the definition of the term
active senior
—she puts on a show of busyness meant to imply satisfaction but has always given me the impression of a woman about to burst. Once upon a time, she did burst and disappeared for the summer, but then she came back to us. Still, once a mother’s taken off without you—even if she was
right to do so—you spend the rest of your life wondering if she may do it again. She turned her attention to Abbot. “Aren’t you a beautiful boy?”

He blushed. My mother had this effect on everyone—the mail carrier harried at the holidays, the pilot who steps out to say bye-bye at the end of a flight, even a snotty maitre d’.

“And you?” she said, brushing my hair back over one shoulder. “Where are the pearls?”

“I still need a few finishing touches,” I said. “How is Elysius doing?”

“She’ll forgive you,” my mother said softly. My mother knew that this might be hard for me—one daughter was gaining a husband, one had lost one—and so she was trying to tread carefully.

“I’m so sorry we’re late,” I said guiltily. “I lost track of time. Abbot and I were …”

“Busy writing the speech for Auntie Elysius,” Abbot said. “I was helping!” He looked guilty, too—my coconspirator.

My mother shook her head. Her eyes filled with tears. “I’m such a mess!” she said, trying to smooth the ripples from her dress and then laughing strangely. “I don’t know why I’m responding like this!” She pinched her nose as if to stop herself from crying.

“Responding to what?” I asked, surprised by her sudden emotion. “The wedding? Weddings are crazy. They bring up a lot of—”

“It’s not the wedding,” my mother said. “It’s the house.
Our
house … in Provence—there’s been a fire.”

y sister and I went to the house in Provence with my mother when we were children—short summer stints every year that my father, a workaholic, was too busy to join. Then one summer my mother went alone, and we never went back. As my mother started to cry, there on my sister’s lawn, she wrapped her arms around me, letting me hold her up for a moment, and I remembered the house the way children remember things, from odd angles, a collection of strange details: that there were no screens on the windows, that the small interior doors had persnickety knobs that seemed to latch and unlatch of their own will, that along the garden paths surrounding the house, I thought there were white blooms clustered on the tall weeds, but when I leaned in close, I could see they were tiny snails, their white shells imprinted with delicate swirls.

The house and everything in it seemed virtually timeless, or maybe it would be more accurate to say that it was time-full—time layered upon time. I remembered the kitchen, which housed the dining room table, long and narrow, surrounded by mismatched chairs—each a survivor from a different era. The small, shallow kitchen sink was made of one solid slab of marble, brown and speckled like an egg. It was original to the house, which had been built in the eighteenth century, just past the edge of a small vineyard. In the yard, there was a fountain erected during the 1920s that fluttered with bright orange, bloated koi and was surrounded by wrought-iron lawn chairs, and a small table covered in a white, wind-kicked tablecloth. The house—fifteen minutes from Aix-en-Provence, nestled in the shadow of the long ridged back of Mont Sainte-Victoire—had belonged to my mother since her parents died, when she was in her mid-twenties.

There, my mother fed us stories about the house itself—love stories, mostly, improbable ones that I’d always wanted to believe but was suspicious of even as a child. But still I clung to them. After she told us the stories at night, I would retell them to myself. I whispered them into my cupped hands, feeling the warmth of my breath, as if I could hold the stories there and keep them.