The Provence Cure for the Brokenhearted (30 page)

We were all locked together in this frozen moment. No one spoke.

What broke our attention was a taxi, rumbling down the long driveway. It stopped fifty feet from us. We could see through the windshield the commotion of someone paying the driver over the front seat. The trunk popped open.

“A guest,” Véronique said. “This person has not made a reservation.”

The driver stepped out and pulled a suitcase from the trunk—a very old-fashioned suitcase, tartan plaid with a zipper and no wheels. And then a young man climbed out from the back door. He was short and thin, tan. He was
wearing dark jeans, faded at the hips, and a black band T-shirt too far away to read and slightly hemmed in by a suit jacket. His hair was massive—curly and frizzy—and it would have given the impression of a wolf man except that it seemed purposefully wild and all of his other details, including a pair of oversized glasses with thick black frames and clip-on shades, the kind my father used to wear, were self-consciously artsy. And wolf men are so rarely self-consciously artsy. He must have tipped the cabbie pretty handsomely, because the man looked down at the cash and gave him a hug that knocked him off balance for a moment.

“That’s no guest,” Charlotte said with some disgust but also a hint of admiration. “That’s Adam Briskowitz.”

risky?” I said. “I thought he was only going to write a letter.”

“You gave him our address?” Charlotte said accusatorially. “You?”

“I really thought he was only writing a letter, a lovelorn apology,” I said. “You know, like he was being old fashioned and romantic.”

“Arriving from America in person is old fashioned and romantic,” Julien said with a pretty clear understanding of the situation. “It would be better only if he’d taken a ship.”

“Is he staying the night?” Véronique asked.

As the taxi drove off, Adam Briskowitz walked up and
stood there in front of us, holding his plaid suitcase by its plastic handle. Now he was close enough for me to read the T-shirt—vintage Otis Redding, of all things. He was wearing Top-Siders, tan leather with white laces, a little dusty from the road, no socks. He smiled at all of us and then pointed at Abbot, who was sitting cross-legged on the ground next to the box. The bird rustled. Adam flipped up the plastic shades attached to his glasses and said, “What have you got in there, scout?”

“Injured swallow,” Abbot said. “We’re going to nurse it back to health and then throw it off of a roof or some other place high.”

“Interesting plan,” Adam said, and then he turned to Charlotte and said, “Is that what you’re going to do with me?”

“Why are you here?” Charlotte asked, over-enunciating each syllable as if talking to someone who’s slow-witted.

He dropped his suitcase to the gravel and said, “You know why I’m here. Everyone knows why I’m here.”

“No,” she said. “We really don’t.”

He turned and stared at all of us then, mystified. “Look, I’m not some snob. I’m not an elitist, if that’s what you’re thinking. I dropped out of Phillips Exeter in the ninth grade, for shit’s sake, because I wanted to embrace the proletariat. I’m … I am …” He was at a loss for words. He took off his suit jacket in a kind of angry protest. “I’m one of the good guys.”

Charlotte closed her eyes and sighed. “Why do you talk like that?”

“Like what?”

“Like you’re giving a speech and everyone knows who you are?”

“But don’t they know who I am?” Adam said.

“Not really,” she said. “You’re just some guy who’s shown up proclaiming his desire to embrace the proletariat.”

“Is he going to stay for the night?” Véronique asked.

“Yes,” Adam said.

“No,” Charlotte said.

“I
am
going to stay the night,” he said to Charlotte.

She stormed off toward our house. “Do what you want to, Briskowitz! No one here gives a living shit!” She marched up the back steps to our house and slammed the door.

Adam spun around and kicked the end of his suitcase with one of his Top-Siders.

“Will you want to eat your meals here, too?” Véronique asked. “We offer breakfast and dinner.”

“Yes, please,” he said. “That would be very nice. Thank you.”

“I’m Abbot Bartolozzi,” Abbot said, standing up.

“I’m Adam Briskowitz,” he said, offering his hand.

Abbot stared at it a moment and then looked at me and then Julien, who gave a nod, and then Abbot grabbed Adam’s hand quickly and shook it.

“You all know why I’m here, right? I mean, with Charlotte being pregnant and all.”

“What?” I said.

“Oh,” Julien said. He put his hands in his pockets and
took a small step backward. “Abbot,” he said. “We will look for the flies to give to the bird.”

Abbot looked up at me. “Charlotte’s pregnant?”

“We’ll look for flies,” Julien said.

“Go on with Julien,” I said. “I’ll figure it out and talk to you later.”

Julien picked up the box with the bird and they walked off toward the vineyards.

“I knew,” Véronique said.

“You knew?” I said.

“I’m glad she told someone!” Adam said. “I mean, it’s not healthy to keep secrets. It really isn’t. It gums up your breathing, your blood flow.”

“She didn’t tell me. I saw that she becomes tired suddenly,” Véronique said. “Sometimes she puts her head on the table, and she walks heavy, like her center has moved. It’s evident.” Then she turned and walked back to the house. “Bring your suitcase. I will show you your room.”

Adam Briskowitz, I thought to myself.
Briskowitzed
. Is that what he meant?
I didn’t mean for her to get Briskowitzed
? “Adam,” I said, “are you sure?”

“It’s why I’m here,” he said. “I’m going to get a job or something. I think people quit school and sell cars, right? I was going to be a philosophy major, so what’s one less philosophy major? I’ll ask her to marry me and she’ll say no. That’s how it’s going to go, I think.”

“I don’t think there is just one way that people do this anymore,” I said. “There’s no blueprint.”

He looked at me with genuine surprise.

“Come!” Véronique said.

“Coming!” he said, and he flipped his sunglasses back down over his glasses, picked up his suitcase, and followed Véronique across the lawn toward the back door.

I looked at our house. In the upper window, I saw Charlotte. She looked down at me. Her face was full of light from the golden hour of dusk, her head tilted, her expression oddly serene, resigned, and I knew it was true.

harlotte?” I knocked softly on her bedroom door. I could hear the soft chatter of the radio. “Charlotte? Can I come in?”

The radio went silent. The doorknob turned, and I heard the latch release. If Henry were here, we’d have had a talk about this, and he’d have coached me. He’d have told me that there were things I was supposed to say. What were they? Henry would have known. He was good at these kinds of things. He knew instinctively how to be loving and open. This was my one opportunity to say the right thing. I was, most likely, never going to have a daughter—much less a pregnant teenage daughter. But I was, once upon a time, a teenager myself. What would I have wanted someone to say to me? Maybe I should start there.

I opened the door slowly.

Charlotte stood before me in Monoprix shorts and a T-shirt, and I remembered what she looked like in the shop
with Elysius and my mother in that dress on a leash and her fishing boots. She was so strong, so incredibly tough. “He told you,” she said.

“Charlotte, I don’t know what to say.”

“I haven’t told anyone,” she said. “It’s a huge relief, more than anything.”

“How long have you known?”

“Since before the wedding,” she said.

“That’s a long time to carry a secret like this,” I said. “Charlotte, you could have told me.”

I walked over and hugged her. It took her a moment, but she hugged me back. She hid her eyes in the crook of my neck and started crying, and I thought not so much about the pregnancy and all that was to come, but really about Charlotte holding this heavy secret inside of her for all this time. I’d never told anyone that I’d thought I might be pregnant when Henry died, that there was a small hope, but only because I didn’t want to hand that hopefulness over to anyone else. But this was too much to ask of someone so young. She’d known during the wedding, in the boutique in that awful dress, throughout Paris and the robbery. I felt for her and started crying, too. We stood there until it grew dark outside, listening to the swallows twittering amid the noise of cicadas.

Charlotte was breathing steadily now. We sat down on the bed.

“I came here so I wouldn’t have to tell my parents,” she said, pulling a tissue from a box on her bedside table and
wiping her nose. “They would want me to look at all of my options. I just wanted to get to the second trimester.”

“Why?”

She didn’t answer.

“So you could keep it?”

She nodded.

“They would have supported any decision you made,” I said.

She shook her head. “Nope,” she said. “They would flip. All of them. But that’s not even it. It’s not them,” she said. “I knew I’d want to have an abortion if I stayed. I’d see school coming, and at my school, well, it would have been worse than death. I’m
privileged
,” she said, disgusted by the word. “Getting pregnant is like shitting on privilege.”

“Charlotte, this happens. It always has and it always will. Do you think that getting pregnant makes you some kind of ingrate?”

She laughed. “Getting pregnant makes me a
dipshit
. The kinds of friends I have come apart at the seams because of early decisions for Harvard.”

“How far along are you?”

“Eight weeks, medically speaking.”

“And how are you feeling?”

“A little tired, but weirdly like I’m on calm drugs or something. No morning sickness, and I’m not at all bitchy. It’s totally ironic, but I think pregnancy agrees with me. I mean, I’ve never been all that maternal. I gave my dolls bad haircuts, but I want to have the baby and do this right.”

“You’re so … 
sure
,” I said.

“It’s weird. But ever since I got here, it’s been completely clear.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“And Briskowitz? Do you think he’ll make a good father?”

“Briskowitz makes a good
Briskowitz
. He’ll be a lousy philosophy major, frankly. He talks a good game, but he’s way too scattered. As for fatherhood?” She thought about it. “He at least has a good one to model off of. Bert Briskowitz. He’s a well-mannered orthopedics man who doesn’t force Brisky to play golf. What more could you ask for in today’s fractured society?”

“You can ask for a lot more,” I said.

She looked at me skeptically and then down at her hands.

I thought of Henry after the miscarriage. When he was looking for that leak in the pipes, he had popped off an access panel and then took out the handles of the tub, leaving three holes in the wall. One night, I’d left the light on in what was going to be the baby’s nursery. And so, when I walked into the bathroom, the holes in the tiled wall were lit up. I stepped into the tub, fully dressed, sat down, and looked through the holes into the nursery. I was looking in on what my life could have been. It looked perfect and unattainable from there—like someone else’s life. Abbot’s old crib was back up with new brightly colored bedding. I’d bought a fuzzy, woolly white throw rug. I knew then what I would have said if Henry had been there. I’d have told Charlotte
that Henry and I would help her raise the baby. I’d have told her that she could move in with us. She could go to school, and Henry and I would manage the baby for her. We would create a new kind of family. We would make it work. But I couldn’t make this offer. What kind of a mother would I be to an infant and a sixteen-year-old in addition to Abbot? I was barely managing as it was. Instead, I said something very rational. “You have to tell your parents.”

“Look,” she said. “I just need time. My mother is kind of off her rocker. She’s not stable. She believes in gemstones, and then she can go hysterical like Alanis Morissette tripping on acid. It’s not pretty. And my dad’s great, but he and Elysius aren’t kid-friendly. I mean, they like kids in the abstract. They love Abbot, of course. But they’re not parents by nature. Seriously, the whole time they’ve been raising me it’s been painful to watch—like people playing racquetball left-handed in high heels. None of it came to them naturally.”