Amour Provence (22 page)

“Your harebrained idea of coming back here makes no sense. And I certainly hope you don't expect any sort of financial support from me at this point in your life!” Her father leaned back and closed his eyes in an effort to shut Gilberte out.

Her shoulders ached from the long journey, and even though it was only midafternoon, she wished she could go straight to her new place rather than try to explain what even to her was unexplainable. Not wanting to prevaricate, she said softly, “I have my own money,
Papa
. I want simply to take the time to see if I might be happy here.”

“But that's ridiculous. How can you expect to reclaim something from a life that was over and done with decades ago?” Clément squeezed the armchair's wooden paws again and laughed. “Unless,
ma chère
, the truth is you've come home in order to await our finish!” He gave her that thin-lipped, mocking smile that he mustered when he wished to mask something that disturbed him. “Your mother and I are in good form, you know,” he declared. And then added, “At least I am!”

Gilberte noticed that even the fine cut of his clothes couldn't hide the fact that her father was much diminished. He had always been a man of the earth, a person who could fit a harness to a recalcitrant horse or seal up tiles on a leaky roof, and who still occasionally pulled on his Gauloise-blue overalls to work in the vines. Despite his vigor, he had always remained mulish and intransigent. During all the years she was away, her father never wrote or came to visit, declaring Scotland an inhospitable place inconveniently located across a frigid body of water that had nothing to do with the Mediterranean.

“You are no doubt aware that your mother and I are well taken care of,” he said, crossing one slender leg over the other. “Philippe is in charge of the vineyards, with my direction, of course. And Marco comes by every day.” Her father cupped a hand by his mouth and with a sly grin quipped, “The truth is, Marco chiefly comes here to be fed.” Gilberte remembered her younger brother as a child, tall for his age and painfully thin with wide bony cheekbones. Marco silently wolfed down his food at the dinner table each evening, always wiping up the last of the sauce
with a crust of bread before telling his parents that he had homework to finish and wished to be excused early, his way of avoiding the eagle eye of Clément. Though Marco was still slender, he had grown into the stark geometry of his face, and the last time Gilberte saw him, she felt he had become quite handsome except for the slight stoop that cramped his elegant frame. Whether or not he was still afraid of their father, Clément, she did not know.

“Marco won't ever marry, I'm afraid,” said her father in a bored tone. “Too moody. But he's useful just the same. He cemented down those
tomettes
that clicked like castanets on the dining room floor. A month ago your mother tripped on one while holding a tureen of hot soup and it slopped right down the front of her dress.” He let out a jolly snort. Though her parents had been together for more than half a century, she and her siblings were aware that for years now each parent had taken an unseemly pleasure in the sufferings of the other. Gilberte wondered how her mother had fallen that morning and if her father once again had been amused. She found herself perspiring in the close, darkened salon and wished to be outside once again in the warm embrace of the southern sun.

“Shall we go to the hospital to see
Maman
now?” she asked.

Clément shook his head. “I'm not going. Philippe telephoned to say he is handling everything. This evening we'll discuss what's to be done.”

“Well then, I'll see you later,” said Gilberte. Her father gave her a cold stare as she stood up from the ottoman.

Before leaving, she drank two glasses of water from the
kitchen tap and then brought one to her father, who said nothing in response. She found her mother's gray Peugeot in the garage, and as she came down the hill from the village, the wide blue sky filled up all the space before her and she opened the window. The air batted pleasantly through her hair. Her own rental car wouldn't be available until the following week. She had taken a six-month lease so she could remain flexible in the event that her decision to move back to Provence turned out to be the wrong one.

“Don't let all this frighten you,” the nurse told Gilberte when she entered Liliane's room and saw the small inert figure surrounded by tubes and monitors. “Your mother is fine for now. The doctor gave her a sedative, so she'll sleep until morning.”

Gilberte sat down beside the bed. Even in sleep, Liliane Perra's prominent nose and delicate bones gave her the patrician look of landed gentry. Liliane's parents had been the tail end of what was long ago a wealthy and aristocratic family. Though the Petitjeans were impoverished, they'd retained the fierceness of their ancestors, who considered land to be sacrosanct and had never sold a hectare of their property even in times of dire need. Their only child, Liliane, possessed that same attachment to her family heritage and had never been afraid to stand up to her husband regarding the running of the vineyard. Indeed, the family domaine had gone from producing what had been a barely drinkable table wine to wide acclaim for a variety of prize-winning vintages. In addition, Liliane Perra was a great favorite around the village, a sort of queen bee, capable and efficient, and when she flirted and joked with her fellow
vintners, almost exclusively men, it had caused Gilberte and her sisters to suspect that some among them might have at one time been in love with their mother, whether before or after her marriage they did not know.

As she caressed Liliane's hand, Gilberte wondered what her own life would have been like if she'd stayed bound up in the warp and weft of the small wine village instead of choosing the near anonymity of a city where, in the end, she hadn't had much success or happiness. A sound of footsteps in the hospital corridor made her turn, and the bronzed face of her brother Philippe peered into the room.

“Well, if it isn't the prodigal daughter!” he said, coming through the doorway. His wife, Marie-France, followed. Gilberte couldn't help but stare at her sister-in-law, dressed in a well-cut suit with a strand of black pearls cinched at her neck. Her hair was dyed the purplish henna that so many women in the south found attractive. She saw Marie-France hesitate for a second, and then, probably realizing it would be bad form not to embrace Gilberte, her sister-in-law advanced to give her three kisses, the Provençal
bise
.

“We're not sure how
Maman
did this to herself,” Philippe said. “She must have tripped coming down the back staircase. The doctors say it's serious.”

“Liliane must have been in a rush getting ready for your arrival,” Marie-France added quickly, as if she had rehearsed what she would say in advance. “
En plus
, she's very nervous about your coming back here, Gilberte. Both parents have been on edge since you announced your plans!” She hesitated and then added, “You should be aware that they find your decision to return here very odd. And now,
due to this accident caused by the stress of it all, your poor mother will be in the hospital for months!”

Gilberte managed to maintain a professional distance of the sort that she had employed as a teacher in conference with an irritable parent. “I'm sorry this has happened,” she said. “I don't believe my mother's accident was caused by my return. But now that I'm here, I'll be glad to be of help in any way that I can.”

“You have to excuse us, Gilberte.” Philippe's face colored slightly. “We've been dealing with doctors all afternoon. We're both pleased that you've come. Somebody's going to have to be around to see to
Papa
while our mother recovers.”

“What do you mean? Can't
Papa
live on his own?”

“He hasn't been himself lately. But we don't have to decide anything right now. I'm glad that we can count on you.” He turned to look at his wife. “We'd better go. May we drop you back home, Gilberte?”

“Thank you. I prefer to stay here a bit longer.”

Marie-France looked as if she was poised to make another remark, but Philippe took her by the arm and escorted her out the door.

When they were gone, Gilberte laid her head down on the edge of her mother's bed and closed her eyes. Her sister-in-law was certainly no longer the sweet, simple girl who had grown up above the appliance store that her parents ran on the edge of town. Philippe would eventually be the head of Domaine Petitjean and Marie-France had scrapped her jeans and T-shirts for apparel befitting her new station in life. She had also obviously adopted the hauteur she deemed
appropriate to a woman married to a well-known and prosperous
vigneron
.

The walls of the dimly lit room glowed pale celadon. It was the same shadowy green of the park that Gilberte used to gaze at from the balcony of her flat near Dean Terrace when the twilight turned the trees slowly from emerald to gray. The beauty of those occasional, clear spring evenings in Scotland always reminded her of a natural world with which she was rarely in contact. Sitting out there in the calm of the evening, she had found herself conceiving of a future that had nothing to do with the citified life she'd been living. It became clear that she'd been so fixated on raising her sons and then working toward her degree that she had habitually denied herself simple pleasures like going to the cinema, dining out, or even having a glass of wine. When she thought of the last time she'd had sex, she realized it had been several years. She'd had a brief affair with a Londoner who had been quite taken with her. But when she sensed that he wished to make their relationship a more permanent one, she feared that her hard-won independence might evanesce and she'd once again be locked into the same sort of suffocating relationship she'd suffered through with her former husband, so she'd broken things off. Gilberte didn't feel like a spinster, not yet, but all at once she'd begun to feel the sensation of time's inevitable passage.

She must have dozed there next to her mother, because she was in the midst of a deep dream of mountains and blossoming trees when she found herself being gently patted awake. Then someone leaned down and kissed her on the temple.

“
Ma chère
Berti! It's so wonderful to see you!” said Marco. Tears came to Gilberte's eyes at the sound of her childhood name and she smiled up at her younger brother. “Come on, I'll take you home,” he told her, taking her hand.

“I drove here in Mother's car.”

“All right, then, let's go get a drink together. We have plenty of time. Our father always takes a siesta before dinner anyway.”

The café in town was at the edge of a square where a fountain reflected the cloudless sky in its circular basin. Marco ordered a demi and Gilberte chose syrup of red raspberries mixed with sparkling water, which she immediately gulped down, surprised again at how thirsty she was.

Marco rolled a cigarette, and then reached over to tug one of her black curls. “You're looking pretty, Berti. Are you back here to find a man?”

She laughed. “Not at the moment. What about you? Do you have a girlfriend?”

“No one interesting.”

“Maybe you have to go farther afield to find someone nice. When was the last time you took a holiday?” Marco sold heavy farm machinery on the outskirts of Carpentras and made a decent living, but he rarely traveled.

“Now doesn't seem like the right time, given the circumstances.” His lips pursed in a pained half smile. Above them the canvas awning luffed as the evening breeze began to rise.

“Dear
Maman
,” Gilberte replied. “At least now that I'm home I can help more. But I'm afraid that Marie-France and Philippe are not particularly pleased to see me.”

“They're probably afraid you'll take charge in some way that they won't like.” Marco puffed his cigarette and then picked a fleck of tobacco off his tongue. “However, if they can maneuver you into behaving like their servant, then they'll be quite content.”

Gilberte remembered Philippe's words about taking care of their father. But she decided against bringing it up for the moment. Instead she asked, “What's new around here? Anything that I've missed?”

“Not too much. Your old friend Eva got a big job at Domaine du Chermon, so she and Sébastien can finally afford to buy a house. That's about it. Oh, but there was one thing.” Marco leaned forward and lowered his voice. “Didier Falque and his wife, Christine, had a nasty divorce.”

“Really? I thought they were happy.”

Marco shrugged. “Who knows! But Manu Dombasle accused Didier of sexually harassing his mother—you know, Sabine—who must be in her seventies by now! I doubt Didi ever did anything to the old lady, but it became a public scandal and he didn't refute it. Of course, that's all anyone talked about for a while. Then came the divorce. Now he lives somewhere up around Mont Ventoux.”

Gilberte remembered her classmate with his mat of untamable hair. He'd been awkward as a young bull during their years at lycée, yet she'd always known that at heart Didier was a gentle person and she'd been quite fond of him. Once or twice on her brief returns home, she'd crossed his path and found that his formerly unrefined virility had transformed into something subtler and more attractive. Many women would consider Didier Falque a
bel homme
.
She wondered what the truth could be about her former schoolmate's relationship with Sabine Dombasle, a person old enough to be his mother.

“Does he still own his vineyards?” she asked.

“Yes, I see him there on his tractor,” Marco replied. “But he never comes into the village anymore.”

Gilberte didn't want to hear anything further. It was true that in the Midi everyone knew everyone else's business, and part of the pleasure of small-town living was discussing the peccadilloes of others. Yet Gilberte had always felt that due to the success and prestige of Domaine Petitjean, the Perra name had been beyond reproach, and she, by association, had been immune to the sort of cruel innuendo and mocking sidelong glances that were reserved for the more vulnerable. Still, she was aware that she'd been the victim of gossip herself, including wild speculations of what her life had been like in Scotland, especially when she'd been married to the wealthy Simon MacLean. But she had always felt that these silly rumors were unimportant and they touched her not at all. That night, however, she was upset to hear about the sufferings of her former friend and was sorry that Didier's troubles had been the object of amused insouciance.