The Provence Cure for the Brokenhearted (38 page)

“Do you want me to do it?” Julien offered. He was somber, his voice steady and deep and calm. We all knew what might be coming.

“No,” Abbot said. “I can do it.” He reached in and cupped the bird’s fine ribs.

“You’re like a veterinarian,” Véronique said. “You are so good.”

Abbot walked to the edge of the balcony. The railing fit under his arms. He whispered something to the bird and then said, “One, two, three!” And in one swift upward motion, he threw the bird into the air.

The swallow was stunned. Wings still tucked to its body, it rose with the trajectory of Abbot’s throw, its eyes beady and wide, and then began to fall. I reached out, instinctively, and grabbed Julien’s shirtsleeve, gripping tight. Julien turned and looked at me, his face, for a split second, bright and golden in the dying light. I let go.

Abbot gripped the railing. “Fly!” he shouted. “Fly! Fly!”

The swallow’s wings popped open, but they flapped awkwardly at the sides of its body, like wild oars.

And then, as the bird fell with skittering wings, it gave one solid thrum. This slowed its descent, momentarily. It gave another thrum, and another, and then, as if its body remembered what it was supposed to do, the bird began to beat its wings rhythmically. The muscle memory was still within it. It was still losing ground, but it was flapping, at least.

I drew in my breath and held it.

“Yes!” Abbot was crying. “Yes!”

The bird batted the air.

“Up,” Julien urged the bird,
“Monte, monte!”

Abbot repeated after Julien. I supposed it had dawned on him that the bird spoke French.
“Monte! Monte!”

As if it were listening, the bird began to hold its own, and then its wings powered it upward. Its flight pattern had hitches, but it was making it. It was flying toward the other swallows.

Adam and Charlotte clapped and cheered from below. Charlotte whistled through her teeth like a sailor.

“He flies,” Véronique said, astonished.

“He flies!” Abbot said.

“He flies,” Julien said, looking at me. “A miracle bird! An enchantment.”

“It’s another house story!” Abbot said, his face lit up with joy. “A real one!”

“I can’t believe he flies,” I said. “But he does fly.”

“You did it, Abbot,” Julien said.

“Yep,” Abbot said, but he still seemed anxious. I thought that maybe he was simply charged by the miraculous bird, but in retrospect, I wonder if he was feeling a little undone by it all, that this wasn’t over. He turned back to the railing, folded his arms on it, and then rested his chin on his hands.

“Dinner!” Véronique said.

“And not chicken or fowl. Nothing with wings,” Charlotte said.

“Let’s go eat,” I said to Abbot.

He shook his head without looking at me. “I’m going to stay here for a while,” he said. “Leave the notebook, okay?”

“Okay,” I said. I set it down near the box. I put my hand on the crown of his head. “Are you happy?”

He nodded.

“Come down when you’re ready,” I said.

He nodded again.

e stepped into the bedroom. Véronique asked Julien to go downstairs and help Charlotte and Adam begin setting the tables. “I want to talk to Heidi,” she said.

He looked at his mother and then me. “Do you think Abbot is okay?” he asked.

“The swallow flew!” I said. “We were practicing joy, living a little, and it worked!” I could still feel Julien’s shirt in my fist. I’d grabbed ahold of him to steady myself. Maybe I needed steadying. Maybe I shouldn’t have cut things off. And, too, I was wondering if this was a second miracle for Abbot.
Was it a clumsy miracle that he ran into the Plexiglas guarding the alleged remains of Mary Magdalene and then touched the warthogs and had since stopped compulsively washing his hands? What would this second small miracle lead to?

Julien nodded but still looked worried. I was getting used to this expression on his face. There was something deeply tender about it. He was a father, after all, and a good one, I was sure. He walked out of the room, closing the door gently, leaving me and Véronique, with a view of Abbot through the balcony doorway. Abbot—the bird flew! I was still ecstatic, awash in relief.

Véronique sat on her bed and nodded to the bedside table. There sat a wooden box. “For your mother,” she said. “She’s coming, and so
you
can give it to her.”

“This is the thing that she left behind?”

Véronique nodded. “She will open the box and understand what is there.”

I picked up the box. It was slightly charred on one end. I held it in my hands. “And what is there?” It was light. When it transferred from her hands to mine, there was no shift—as there would be if it were jewelry.

“The proof,” she said. “Proof of her love for you.”

“Does he still live here, the man she fell in love with?”

She shook her head. “He moved to Paris after she left. He dedicated himself to his work. He became well known in his business. You would like him. He was handsome. He had a great presence and a beautiful voice.”

“He sang?”

“Beautifully.”

“It just seems so strange. I can see why she didn’t tell me, but still …”

“I saw him not too many years ago. I was in Paris and found him. He asked me if I talked to her. He wanted to know everything. I told him all I could.”

“Do you think he’s a good person?” I asked. I wasn’t sure why this was important, but I had to ask.

“Yes,” she said. “And he loved her deeply, as she loved him. It was one of those types of loves.”

I nodded.

“She told me her secrets. I told her mine.”

“One of those loves,” I said.

“You have a heart like your mother.”

“No, the doors are shut,” I said.

“Yes, but the doors do not have locks.” Did she know about Julien? I assumed that she did. She seemed to know everything.

“I didn’t know that Patricia was with Pascal now,” I said. “Julien didn’t tell me.”

“Pascal,” she sighed. “He didn’t know how to build it himself. He stole his brother’s life. That is a real thief. I love Pascal, but this will not continue.”

“His relationship with Patricia?”

She nodded. “It will end.”

“Then what?”

“Then nothing. We live in the ruins.”

The box—was it filled with papers? “Are these love letters?” I asked.

She thought about this for a moment and then nodded. “Yes,” she said. “Love letters, in a way.”

In what way? I wondered. They were love letters or they weren’t. “She can barely talk about that summer and what happened,” I said. “She refuses to hand down her lessons.”

“But she is coming here,” Véronique said. “Things will change when she is here again. It’s necessary to have hope.”

“J’espére,”
I said,
I hope
—and in the word I heard
despair, air
 … I heard
I’m air
.

couldn’t go to dinner. I excused myself quickly and walked to our house. I stood in the kitchen with the box in my hands.

I looked at the charred stonework where the new stove would soon be installed. Was that where she’d hidden the box? And why? What was in it? I set it on the kitchen table. I wanted to open the box, of course. But it wasn’t mine to open.
It was one of those types of loves
, I thought to myself. The type that I’d had with Henry. Was that what she had sacrificed for me and my sister? If she did, well, it was too much to ask for and too much to give, I decided.

I was unable to be still. I paced the kitchen. My father wanted me to help my mother get to the root of this. How? I was in no shape for that kind of role. I was trying not to fall for Julien. This took all of my effort. Was I going to hide
some memory of this summer in this kitchen somewhere? Was that to be my future? Was I going to allow Elysius and my mother to swoop in and take over, packing up Charlotte and hauling her back home? And then would Abbot and I stay on without her until our six weeks were over, and then we’d pack up, too? Abbot and I would go home, pretending that it never really happened at all?

I decided that I couldn’t stare at the box. I had to get on with my life. Abbot had probably gotten hungry and come down for dinner. I should eat, too, I thought, even though I wasn’t hungry.

I let the box sit there and walked back to the Dumonteils’ house. I walked past the kitchen, where I saw Julien’s back, his shirt stretching from shoulder to shoulder. He was washing the dishes. Véronique was talking to a lone guest, a French woman wearing a floaty dress and sandals. Charlotte and Adam were in the front yard, in serious discussion, in the dim evening light. They were likely gearing up for Elysius and my mother, who would be arriving before long.

I walked up the stairs, down the hall, and opened the door to Véronique’s bedroom. “Abbot?” I called. “Time to come down for dinner.” I could see immediately that he wasn’t on the balcony. There was only the empty cardboard box and his notebook, which was splayed open in the corner of the balcony as if it had been thrown there. It was open to a page where Abbot had drawn his father wearing a Red Sox hat. This time his father wasn’t connected to the earth at all. He
was darting around with the birds. He had his human face but giant wings and a swallow’s forked tail.

I stood up and looked down to the ground below the balcony, out across the backyard, the vineyards, the distant archaeological dig. It was hard to see. It was getting dark.

“Abbot?” I shouted. “Abbot?”

I turned and raced down the stairs. “Where’s Abbot?” I shouted to Julien in the kitchen.

“He is upstairs?”

“He’s not there!” I shouted.

I ran past Véronique in the dining room. The French woman, a guest, looked up at me, shocked. I ran to the front yard. “Abbot’s gone!” I shouted at Charlotte and Adam.

“I’m sure he’s fine,” Charlotte said, knowing that I had a history of panicking over Abbot for no good reason.

“Start looking!” I said.

Adam looked stricken. “What? Where is he?”

“I don’t know!” I shouted at him.

Charlotte started calling for him in the front yard, and Adam followed behind her, dazed.

Véronique searched the house. Even the French woman, a complete stranger, took to looking for places a boy would hide.

“Listen for him!” I heard Charlotte shouting to everyone. “He sings when he’s alone.” She was right. I’d been too panic-stricken to think of that.

I ran out the back door into the yard.

Julien was already ahead of me. He was searching to the left of the dig. I could hear him calling Abbot’s name, and I could see the flash of his white shirt.

I took to the vineyards. I ran up one row and down another. “Abbot!” I called, and I could hear the echo of all of the other voices calling for him, too. “Where are you? Dammit, Abbot!” I said. “Don’t do this! Where are you?”

Was this a delayed reaction to seeing Julien hold my hand at the Bastille Day celebration? Had that frightened him? Or was it something about the bird and his father? I couldn’t shake his drawing of his father among the swallows. I ran until I couldn’t run anymore. I wished I were in better shape. I needed to be able to run forever. What kind of mother was I? I dropped to my knees in the soft dirt, breathless. It was almost completely dark now. “Abbot!” I shouted again.