What the Light Touches

5 A SEA WORTH GAZING AT

5

A S EA W ORTH G AZING A T

My grandmother is a duck.

The story of the day Barbara told everyone at school her grandmother was a duck would live in Hébrard family lore forever. She must have been seven years old at the time, and she’d made everyone laugh when she smiled and showed off the gap between her front teeth and chattered like a bird.

When her maternal grandmother was a kid, she had gone to see a performance of Peter and the Wolf from wooden seats in the main orchestra section. On the way to the theater, where her father worked, she was told that every instrument represented a different character and that she shouldn’t worry: there’d be a happy ending. She went into it with the curiosity of a little girl who still believed everything her parents told her. She sat between her parents and fell under the spell of a distinct sound. She would never want to be Peter or the wolf. She knew that from the outset. She didn’t like Peter because of the mop of bangs on the musician who played his chords. And being the wolf seemed even worse. He was the evilest of villains, with his French horn. Sitting there, dazzled by the spectacle and without even knowing who Prokofiev was, Margaux had a sudden revelation unlike anything she’d ever experienced. She wanted to be the duck. She knew immediately. Margaux was hypnotized the moment she heard the very first notes of the duck’s voice played aloud. She fell in love with the carefree sound of its gleeful music. She asked her parents what instrument it was, and, after skimming through the program in their hands, they responded, “That’s an oboe.”

“I want to be the duck. I want to play the oboe.”

Barbara had heard the story so many times, complete with the same tone and pauses, that she had it memorized by heart. In speech class, when the teacher at school asked Barbara Hébrard to come up to the board and talk about an animal, she chose the story of her grandmother’s musical revelation. With her hands in her pockets, she recounted for the class the adventures of Peter and the wolf. She told them her grandmother was a duck and that she played the oboe like an angel. Without even realizing it, she’d just told the story of the day that Margaux Dutronc decided to be one of life’s side characters rather than the main one.

Mamie Margaux was simply Barbara’s grandmother. She didn’t need a more defined role. Barbara didn’t think much about the label, as everything about her idol was perfect. She was flawless, and the feeling was unconditional. Mamie Margaux was young, fun, playful, and she knew how to spark Barbara’s curiosity in, say, a Cubist painting, or a dramatic reading of a story, or the squeaking handle of the coffee grinder atop the kitchen counter on those occasions when she’d let Barbara turn it. Grandmother and granddaughter didn’t see one another throughout the year as much as they would’ve liked. One lived in Paris, the other in Arles. One in gray, one in blue. It was difficult for Margaux to leave her apartment in Montmartre, where she’d spent her entire life. Barbara’s parents, Clément and édith, were always too busy to get in the car, leave Provence, and drive all the way up to Paris—a five-hundred-mile schlep—to see Mamie, who they already knew would be doing fine.

That summer, though, grandmother and granddaughter had completed a crash course of sorts. They spent two whole months together after Barbara’s eighth birthday, less than a week after she’d finished the school year. July and August, all by themselves, in a hotel on the beach of Sainte-Maxime. It was the summer Barbara’s mother couldn’t get out of bed. Barbara always called it that because she didn’t know what else to call it. Day after day, she’d noticed her mother acting sad and listless, lacking the energy or motivation to do anything. édith had shut herself in her room and asked for the shades to be lowered, then, for weeks on end, wouldn’t let anyone wake her or air out the room. A life full of darkness. Hardly a life. She only slept. She didn’t want Barbara’s father to wake her, either, not even at dinnertime. Only when the doctor stopped by and asked her how she was doing that day did she let someone turn on her bedside lamp, revealing her pale complexion. It was a bitter case of depression. There was no family history, as far as they knew. It struck quick as lightning.

When Margaux found out about the diagnosis, she packed two suitcases, loaded them up in her Citro?n—her beloved Geneviève—and drove down to Arles to hug her daughter. She hadn’t been able to muster much more. In the darkness of that room, she’d discovered a body that, now shying away like a wounded animal, had practically forgotten how to speak, much less smile. After a three-day uphill battle of trying to care for a patient who wouldn’t let herself be cared for, Margaux made a proposal that sounded good enough to Clément, and édith didn’t have the strength to argue. Margaux didn’t want Barbara to spend summer vacation shut up in the dark house. It wasn’t good for her to see her mother struggle to get out of bed without understanding why. And nobody knew what to tell her when she asked about it. Somewhere beyond the evasion and vague answers—behind the rotting smell of half-truths—she’d begun to notice things being hidden from her. And if your parents and grandmother are hiding something from you, chances are it isn’t good.

“I’ll take her to a beach, a hotel, somewhere close to here,” Margaux had urged without leaving room for an alternative. “For now, all of July. She’s a kid. She needs to experience the summer, sun, and sea ... She can’t see her mother like this. It’s the best we can do for her.”

For two hot months in 1975, they’d stayed in room twenty-one of a hotel in Sainte-Maxime on the C?te d’Azur. Margaux, having been to the Centrum Hotel before, was after some small-town peace and quiet, narrow streets, and a familiar beach. Sainte-Maxime didn’t have the bustle of Nice, or the ambition of Cannes, or the luxury of Monte Carlo. It had none of the tourism of the more famous seaside locales, or the opulence of Saint-Tropez, which stood across the horseshoe-shaped bay, carved out over the years by the unrelenting swell. These were all places where they wouldn’t have been comfortable. And Sainte-Maxime still had the air of Provence, along with an all-enveloping cheerful blue sky. In the evenings, a gust of refreshing cold air signaled the proximity of the Alps, sleeping over the sea.

Uncertain how long they’d be staying there, Margaux knew they needed to feel at home if they were going to have the vacation Barbara deserved. The Centrum Hotel wasn’t luxurious, but Margaux had known that the hotel’s owner would be absolutely tickled pink at having a little eight-year-old girl around. She’d also known that, if anything serious happened and they needed to head back to Arles, they could make it there in just a few hours.

The hotel was wedged between old, two-story seaside buildings, whose earthy colors were reminiscent of rustic Italy. From the terrace, which was more like a generous balcony, they could see the port near the entrance to a path that invited sunset strolls. Every so often, the city had installed stone benches in the middle of the boulevard for the casual observer. From their room Barbara and Margaux could see all kinds of people sitting there. There were vacationers who set their dogs loose and watched them from a distance, people exhausted by the journey from the other side of the Gulf of Saint-Tropez, and those wise enough to have discovered a great secret: that the Mediterranean Sea was a sea worth gazing at.

Grandmother and granddaughter had liked not having a routine. Besides the hotel’s fully accommodated mealtimes, which were sacred, the rest of the day was at their whim. They made the most of it by starting early in the morning. Only the sun was up earlier than the pair, who slept side by side in a queen bed because there hadn’t been any other options without a reservation, especially during the busy season of early July. Margaux liked going to the beach before the crowds arrived, and they would often set up camp near the water. With the whole beach to themselves, they could relax however they wanted. They played hangman in the sand and spent hours making sandcastles before the undercurrent of a wave washed over their fort. On some days, they would bring bocce balls with them; whoever lost the game had to be buried in the sand. And every morning, before going for a swim, Barbara would ask her grandmother to bury her like a mummy, with the sand packed firmly on top of her body. Margaux had of course been careful to leave her granddaughter’s face uncovered, since Barbara was afraid of suffocating and didn’t want to be left there. Once weighed down and completely rigid, she’d fight to break free from the sand armor with the sheer force of her arms, sometimes hurting herself in the process; then, once she was free, she would run toward the sea. The two of them, holding hands, would sprint headfirst into the water until one of them fell and took a knee in a sign of surrender.

Once the euphoric blue hour of cloudless sky arrived, when the horde of tourists finally ambled down to the beach, Barbara’s grandmother pulled her in close and wrapped her in a towel so she could change into a dry bathing suit beneath it before returning to the hotel. They showered, relaxed on the terrace, and, while they waited for lunchtime, painted each other’s nails and confided in one another, which made Barbara feel very grown-up.

After lunch, they would read a story and wait for the chance to ride Carole, the red bicycle that Margaux had rented for Barbara. “By the time you go back home, you’ll be riding without training wheels,” her grandmother promised her on their second day in Sainte-Maxime. Barbara wanted it as badly as she feared it. It was time for her to learn how to pedal and keep her balance without any help. It was the goal of the summer, and every evening they would go down to the path and practice. At first, her grandmother held on to her with two hands, one on the bicycle seat and the other on Barbara’s shoulder to help guide her and make her feel safe. After a few days—the first Sunday of the summer probably hadn’t even passed yet—Margaux let go of Barbara’s shoulder and kept one hand on the back of her seat. By the end of August, Barbara was already confidently biking in a straight line, but would repeat to her grandmother, “Don’t let go of me! Hold on to me, okay? Hold on to me!” without realizing that she had already been riding for some time with her grandmother’s hand hovering inches away from the seat. Once practice was over, Mamie Margaux revealed the miracle: her granddaughter had been riding solo for a while. Barbara could hardly believe it. She got back on the bike and started to pedal. Standing in place, her grandmother let her go, and, once she was around twenty feet away, Mamie Margaux called out to her, as if they were parting ways, “Come back soon, Barbara! Hope you make it in America! Don’t forget about me!”

They’d celebrated the day with ice cream. Margaux, who had the biggest sweet tooth in the family, opted for a small cup of coffee ice cream and a plastic spoon. Barbara had earned herself chocolate ice cream on a cone, the biggest one. Afterward, her grandmother had lent Barbara her Jean-Michel to clean her sticky fingers, nose, and cheeks. Jean-Michel was one of those useful, all-in-one handkerchiefs that Margaux always carried in her bag. Much like her plumber in Paris, Jean-Michel fixed anything broken.

Mamie Margaux gave objects names. Not just the handkerchief, but Carole the bike, Vincent the pigeon, Benoit the stoplight. Geneviève was what she called her car, a small, white Citro?n that she’d driven from Paris to Arles entirely in the slower right-hand lane. On the only day it rained all summer, she’d named their umbrella René. She referred to her bra as Georgette and to her bosom as Madeleine. Barbara would burst into fits of laughter whenever she heard it, and hoped that she’d have big boobs like her grandmother when she grew up. They were symmetrical, firm, and still perky, with lightly colored “buttons,” as Barbara thought of them.

The oboe, however, was just a plain oboe. It didn’t have a first or last name. Mamie Margaux had forgotten to baptize the instrument she carried with her everywhere.

One evening, at the hour when the facades of Sainte-Maxime turned into pumpkins, Barbara opened the oboe case. She’d taken it out and was trying to assemble it when her grandmother yelled at her.

“Hey, honey! Don’t you even dare.”

The girl was a little spooked. She’d never been yelled at like that by her grandmother.

“I only wanted to—” A tear ran down her cheek before she could get out another word.

“Did you touch the mouthpiece? Did your lips touch ...” Mamie Margaux signaled to the reed of the instrument.

“No, no ...”

Expressionless, Margaux snatched the bell of the oboe, put it back in place, closed the case, and, with one foot on the mattress, placed it on top of the room’s dresser where Barbara wouldn’t be able to reach it.

“It’s very fragile, you know? And I don’t want it to get damaged.” She pulled the girl closer and placed her in her lap to try to make peace. “Did you know that that oboe has a lot of history to it?”

“It’s not yours?” she asked, sobbing.

“It’s mine, but it actually belonged to your grandfather.”

“Grandpa Dédé, the one I never met?”

“Yes. Damien. He played for a well-known orchestra in Paris.”

“And what about you?”

“Me? I’m hopeless when it comes to the oboe.”

“You play really well.”

“I’m hopeless compared to him. Trust me. He was a musician.”

The evening had ended happily. Whatever regret Margaux felt for being harsh offset Barbara’s remorse for touching something that wasn’t hers and angering her grandmother. All this and she hadn’t even put it to her mouth! To return to more peaceful waters, they’d need to throw caution to the wind and become sweeter to each other than ever before that summer. It was an unspoken pact.

“Mamie, do that thing you used to do when I was little.”

“What thing?”

“The thing where I dance on your feet.”

“Oh, I don’t think I can ...”

“Come on, Mamie ... Pretty please.”

“How old are you?”

“I’m eight. You know that already!”

“Eight. Just think, we used to do that when you were three or four. Now I’m an old lady.”

“Grandma, you’re only fifty years old.”

“Fifty already?” Mamie Margaux was appalled. “It’s not possible.”

Barbara grabbed Mamie’s hands and tried putting her bare feet on her grandmother’s espadrilles.

“How about we do this.” Margaux slid Barbara off her feet and then hid her hands in her flower-patterned dress. “I’m proposing a pact.”

Barbara, whose heart was racing, looked up at her with wide, round eyes, knowing that whatever Mamie proposed would be brilliant.

“If you tell me how many years there are between us, I’ll let you climb up.”

“Forty!”

“Forty-two, perfect. You guessed it.”

Happiness was putting her feet on top of her grandmother’s, holding hands, putting her head on Mamie Margaux’s belly, and letting herself be carried.

“What about the music?” Barbara had asked after they’d begun dancing slowly and rhythmically. Her grandmother began to hum the first thing that popped into her head.

“J’attendrai ... le jour et la nuit, j’attendrai toujours ton retour ...”

Every forward step her grandmother took was a step back for Barbara. It was a fun game of pulleys, one of push and pull, up and down, here and there. When her grandmother exaggeratedly lifted one leg, the girl’s knee rose up high and she’d start to laugh. Her mind on the dance, Mamie could hear Barbara but didn’t pay much attention.

For Barbara, the two months of happiness with Mamie Margaux had flown by. She never found out that, before she went to sleep, when her grandmother said she was going down to the reception desk to ask for a bottle of water to keep on the nightstand, what she was really doing was calling home from the hotel telephone booth. Clément kept her up to date on her daughter’s progress. It was slow but progress nonetheless.

At the end of August, when the figs were ripe in Provence, Margaux knew that it was time to return home. édith had welcomed them on the street, all dressed up and with her hair done, with what looked like a forced smile on her face. Barbara had swung the door open and jumped out of the car, running to hug her mother.

“You’ve gotten so big!” édith gave her a bunch of kisses and looked at her again. “Did you have fun, my love?”

“It was the best summer of my life, Mom.”

“That’s wonderful, honey. That makes me happy. I’m so happy that you’re home.”

“Guess what? I know how to ride a bike now.”

The very next day—everything in order once more with édith on the right dosage of pills—Barbara and her father began putting covers on her schoolbooks for the new academic year, and the routine of acting like nothing had happened continued. Mamie Margaux packed up Geneviève and drove slowly to Paris in the truck lane.