Invitation to Provence (13 page)

She and Clare were attempting to establish some order from the current chaos in Clare’s room. Looking at the clothes overflowing from the closet onto the bed, the chairs and even the floor, Franny said, “You’re going to need a huge apartment for all this stuff.”

Clare stopped arranging a couple of dozen pairs of shoes around the perimeter of the room and, hands on hips, surveyed the scene. “I should open a shop,” she said with a grin, “except I’m nothing without my clothes—just another woman on the downside of a divorce.”

Franny looked at her.

“Oh, let’s just leave it.” Clare shrugged, dismissing all her
worldly possessions with a grin. “Come on, hon, I’ll buy you some lunch.”

In Shutters beachside café, they were surrounded by cool L.A. women with the latest L.A. look. “Check them out,” Clare said, eyeing Franny through squinted lids, mentally making her over. “You too could look like that.”

Franny laughed and sipped iced lemonade through a bendy straw. “I’m not like them and I could never look like them,” she said.

“That’s exactly your trouble.” Clare tackled her chicken Caesar salad with her usual hearty appetite. “You don’t look like the woman you are
now.
You still look like the girl you were ten years ago.”

“The Oregon girl, that’s me,” Franny agreed comfortably. “Come on, Clare, give it up, why don’t you. You’ll never make an L.A. woman out of this vet.” She pointed a finger at her chest.
“This
is reality.”

“Honey, you are
a grown-up
now, you’re
a woman.
You just don’t know it.”

“You bet I do! I’ve had to be grown-up since I was seventeen. In fact a therapist would probably tell me I’m just longing to stay the little girl I used to be before my father died.”

“Well, you can’t go to a château looking like this,” Clare said. “At least the Heidi pigtail has to go.”

Franny clutched a protective hand to her blond braid. “I’ve had this hair for years and I’m not going anywhere without it.”

Leaning over the table, Clare swept the braid up on top of her head.
“Now
you look like the woman you really are,” she said, but Franny shook her head so her hair tumbled free onto her shoulders.

“Even if you changed me, I’d still be the same underneath. I’d still be the tomboy in the hiking boots and the cutoffs and the T-shirt, I’d still be the vet in the white coat, and the woman in the flip-flops and the dangly earrings from the drugstore.” She sighed. “No dress, no haircut can ever change who I am at heart.”

Clare sighed too, mentally canceling the proposed shopping trip to Fred Segal, where she just knew that with the wave of her magic wand and a fairly large amount of money she could have turned Franny into a new woman.

“Besides,” Franny said, “I don’t want to give the family the wrong impression. This is who I am, this is who they get.” She tethered her braid using an elastic band with a plastic flower on it. “See, I’ll never be a sex kitten,” she said, laughing.

Clare sipped her mango tea. “Hmm,
sex kitten.
Is that what you were for Marcus?”

“Clare!” Franny was shocked. Marcus was a taboo subject.

“Of course you know he could get quite kinky,” Clare said mischievously. “Marcus liked to try whatever was going.”

“And you went along with that?” Franny was saucer-eyed with curiosity. Her sexual experiences with Marcus had been okay, but never anything out of the ordinary.

“We tried everything,” Clare admitted, “including threesomes.” She laughed at Franny’s shocked expression, lifting an elegant bare shoulder in a little shrug. “Marcus liked it. I tried to think of it as a porn movie. You know, the kind where they always seem to be having a much better time than you ever do when you have sex.” She shrugged again, slurping up the last of the iced tea. “Huh! It turned out to be just ‘movie
dust’—all sparkle and no content. For me anyhow.” Franny still looked uncertain. Clare grinned and said, “Fact is, Franny, I like a man in my bed, not a woman.”

“Oh thank God,” Franny said, letting out a breath of relief, and they dissolved into gales of laughter.

Clare signaled the waiter for the check. “Trouble with men is, after a few weeks of putting up with them and their foibles I tend to say what I really feel—and bang! There goes another relationship.”

“I know exactly what you mean.” Franny eyed her new friend doubtfully, then said, “Oh, Clare, I did it again!”

Clare didn’t have to ask what Franny had done again. She could tell by the guilty look on her face. She sighed, wondering when Franny would ever learn. But then God only knew it had taken
her
long enough. “He’s married,” she said.

“He was. He said she died.”

“Huh, that’s a new one!”

“Oh no, I believe him.”

“Why?” Clare was at her firmest.

“Well,” Franny hesitated, remembering Jake as he’d told her about it. Exactly how did she know? “It’s like with the dogs,” she said finally. “Somehow you can just tell when they’re basically good.”

“So if he’s good, why haven’t I heard about him before? And where did you meet him? And what happened to him anyhow?”

“He came into the clinic. He called later, asked me to dinner. I went. He came back home with me and I asked him in for tea. He tripped on the loose plank and sprained his ankle.”

Clare groaned. “You’ve got to get that fixed or someone’ll
be suing you for something.” Alarmed, she said, “He isn’t, is he? Suing you?”

“Nope. Well, not so far anyway. The thing is, Clare, well …” Franny broke off, blushing.

“You slept with him on a first date?”

Franny nodded.

“And is that what happened with Marcus?”

She nodded again and Clare sighed.

“Bad habit, girl. You’ve got to stop.” She held up her hand as Franny started to speak. “No, don’t tell me… . He never called, you’ve never seen him again. Hey, honey, what d’you expect? A lifelong love affair after a dinner and a little nookie? Come on, Franny, you’re just asking for heartache.”

“He sent flowers,” Franny said defensively.

“Oh, big deal. ‘Hey, thanks for keeping me warm in bed… . See you around.’ ” Seeing Franny’s miserable face, Clare stopped her lecture. “Okay, so just promise me one thing. Next time you’ll stop and think before you jump into bed with a stranger. Trust me, you’ll be a happier woman. And if it makes you feel any better, I speak from personal experience. Besides,” she added thoughtfully, “nobody wants to be considered a slut, now do they?”

“I’m no slut,” Franny said indignantly.

“Then, honey, try not to give the wrong impression by behaving like one. I speak as a friend.”

“I know you’re right,” Franny said humbly. “And I’ve got my pride back now. No more men unless I pick ’em, and no sex until I say so.”

They looked at each other in silence. Franny’s thoughts drifted to the trip to France and how much she would miss Clare.

“I’ll miss you, y’know,” Clare said, leaning across to pat Franny’s hand. “I feel like we’re comrades in arms, in battle against the enemy—Man!”

“Man!” Franny agreed, and that lonely feeling swept over her again, a feeling she couldn’t bear. “Clare,” she said hesitantly, “Would you … I mean, why not? … Well, why don’t you come with me?”

“You mean to France? Well, for one thing, I’m not invited.”

“I’ll bet Aunt Rafaella would love to meet you,” Franny said. “I can send her a fax, ask if it’s okay.”

“You’d do that? For me?” Clare was so touched there was a lump in her throat.

“Just say yes,” Franny pleaded.

“I’m the fastest packer you ever saw,” Clare said, and they laughed so loud people turned to look.

Suddenly the château in Provence gleamed like a good-luck token for both of them, and they talked and talked about their new plan until Franny said she had to go.

Clare watched her walk to the exit, in a hurry as always to get back to her animals. Her long, loping stride put a sexy swing in her hips of which she was totally unaware. Clare thought Franny was like a well-kept secret: there was a lovely woman under that pigtail.

She had to admire Franny’s integrity, though. No Cinderella makeover for her. Franny believed in who she was, even though she still wasn’t exactly certain who that might be, except as far as her vocation with animals was concerned. She certainly was not sure when it came to men. This uncertainty hadn’t got her far with Marcus, but then,
Clare had not gotten far either, and she had put years of effort into it.

The waiter refilled her glass with mango tea and Clare stared moodily into space, thinking about her past and her indefinite future. She hadn’t been exactly truthful with Franny, and it bothered her, but it was too late—or perhaps too soon—to do anything about it now.

D-I-V-O-R-C-E. The word spelled itself in her mind. Dolly Parton wrote that song. Now
there
was a woman who knew about men—Dolly knew what she was talking about all right. Clare thought you had to admire her spirit. Only a woman who knew exactly who she was could pull off that look.

Clare had turned thirty-five a few months ago. The realization that life was speeding by and there was a lot she was missing out on because she was still hooked on that unfaithful asshole Marcus had prompted her finally to leave him.

There were other lives to be lived, she’d decided, instead of the Marcus trap. At the time, marrying Marcus had seemed safe, and it had saved her from an increasingly hard life.

Clare sighed. She was just a dumb kid from a small Georgia town and all she’d ever wanted was what she’d advised Franny to look for: a salt-of-the-earth guy who’d always love her, a guy who’d be faithful, a guy who’d look after her.

And what, Clare wondered, would she give him in return? What had she to offer a man like that? A great wardrobe? A nice line in “I don’t care about anything,” when the truth was that at heart she was just another divorced woman licking her wounds.

She drank the last of her mango iced tea then paid the bill, leaving a big tip because she knew most waiters were marking time working for a living while waiting for real life to start, and besides, she believed in karma, small acts of goodness. What if I were to tell them there is no “real life”? she thought as she sauntered to the exit, waving thank-you. What if I said, “Look, girls, this is all there is, better make the most of it.” She wondered if they’d believe her or just keep holding on to their dreams.

She pressed the elevator button and stepped in, alone. Alone in her room, she decided to pack for the trip to Provence. She did not like “alone.” The very word sent shivers down her spine.

She thought about the château and the old woman who wanted to reunite her family. She wondered who she might meet there. Her spirits rose—she’d always loved adventure and this was something special, new faces, new places, new everything, and about as far from her past as she could get.

“It’s the simple life for me,” she sang, flinging clothes into an expensive suitcase.

Then she threw herself onto the bed, kicking her feet in the air. “Wow!” she yelled. “Oh, wow! This time next week, I’ll be in
France
!”

O
N HER WAY HOME,
Franny thought about what Clare had said, and she stopped off at a small boutique, where she bought a pretty silk skirt, yellow with a pattern of tiny blue flowers, and some T-shirts. She also bought a couple of pairs of shorts and some turquoise-beaded thong sandals. She
popped across the street to a shop called Only Hearts and picked up some cute underwear—just in case I get run over, she told herself with a grin. The purchases would cut into her small savings a bit, but Clare was right. She couldn’t go to meet her aunt looking like the poor relation. And what the hell, she was going on the first real vacation of her life. Next week, she was flying to Paris!

R
AFAELLA WAS WAITING AT THE
Café des Colombes for Scott Harris to show up for their weekly business lunch, a pleasure she always looked forward to. He knew as much about wine as Rafaella did, if not more, since he’d been brought up in a famous wine-growing region of Australia. Ten years ago, when she had finally “retired,” he’d come to run the Domaine Marten for her. And he’d done it most successfully.

In addition to his knowledge of wine, Scott was an attractive and amusing man, something to which she had always been partial, and besides he managed to make her feel young again.

She sat at her usual table by the French doors leading onto the vine-shaded terrace with the view of the church and the sandy
pétanque
court under the plane trees where, in the cool of the evening, the village men played highly competitive
games. The dogs flopped, panting beside her, and the sun cast deep shadows under the arcade where Alliers greengrocery was already closed for lunch. The bronze bell in the monastery in Saint-Sylvestre tolled the hour. Life in the village of Marten-de-Provence was the way it had always been, slow and ponderously sweet.

Laurent Jarré threw a pink cloth over the table and brought a bottle of his own rosé, which he plunked on top, along with a fresh baguette and a saucer of new olive oil for dipping.

Laurent was the son of the original proprietor of the café. He was a big, flamboyant-looking man with olive skin, a full head of thick black hair, a bristling mustache, and eyes like shiny black olives. He always wore a collarless white shirt and black pants, with an immaculate white apron slung loosely around his hips.

“The gypsy,” Rafaella called him, and he agreed there must certainly be Romany stock somewhere in his bloodline. With his fierce expression, he looked a man to be reckoned with, but Rafaella knew he was at heart a gentle man. Laurent’s wife had died some years ago and he was without a lady in his life.

As she did every week, Rafaella asked him if he was seeing anyone from the village or the neighboring town who might make him a suitable wife.

“After all, you’re still a young man,” she told him sternly. “You need a woman in your life.”

Jarré said there was nothing doing, nobody he fancied. “I might just have to take a trip to Paris and find myself a wife there,” he said gloomily.