Chapter 22
The next morning, we woke early and had coffee and hot rolls with Laurent’s parents before anyone else (and one person in particular) was awake. I tried to help his parents prepare for dinner, but they declined all assistance and told us to enjoy ourselves.
We could have taken the Peugeot, but it was a beautiful day, one of those crisp-cold ones with a brilliant blue sky, and Laurent and I both wanted some fresh air.
We strolled along the country road into town, passing farms and little clusters of houses.
Every time a car drove past us (which wasn’t often), the driver inevitably rolled to a stop.
Recognizing Laurent, they got out and greeted him effusively, explaining that they were an old classmate/neighbor/librarian who was thrilled to see their prodigal son back home for Christmas.
Bouc-Bel-Air was full of Christmas cheer when we reached it: fairy lights strung across the trees, window decorations in every storefront, and a towering fir tree, bedecked with ornaments, in the currently-dry village fountain.
As we walked, Laurent pointed out key places from his youth: the tiny cinema, the street where the monthly antique market that his mother never missed was held, the primary school with cheery drawings hanging in the windows, the sprawling formal gardens, which were closed for winter but were apparently gorgeous the rest of the year.
Despite it being Christmas Eve, plenty of people were out, walking with their families or shopping for last-minute gifts.
Plenty of them stopped Laurent here too, and although I could see how life in such a small town might be suffocating, I found it heartwarming that Laurent came from such a tight knit community.
It was worlds away from how I grew up, just me and my mother, moving every time she got bored of a place.
As we continued our stroll, I glanced at Laurent. He looked gorgeous in Provence’s golden light, and I was overwhelmed with the desire to kiss him. So I did. We were still caught up in each other when a car honked very close by. The sound startled us apart.
“Merde, Noelle, what are you scaring people for?” Laurent said, frowning as his sister rolled down the window of the Peugeot. She beamed at us, not looking a bit remorseful.
“I’ve been sent to Aix to pick up missing ingredients, and I thought you two might like to join.”
We hopped in the back seat and sped to Aix as Christmas songs poured out of the radio.
Noelle dropped us off close to the center of town, promising she’d meet up with us once she’d finished her shopping.
I’d be happy to spend the entire day wandering Aix, admiring the honey-colored buildings, verdant town square, and understated elegance of it all. But Laurent had a place to show me.
“This way,” he said, pulling me along. We walked along the sidewalks, passing shops selling lavender and olive oil and stepping into the street to let carolers, children looking longingly into store windows, doe-eyed couples, and everyone else pass by.
Laurent finally turned down a narrow stone street and stopped in front of…
“An Applebee’s?” I said, looking between him and the restaurant. Was this some sort of joke? Did Laurent really think my love of American chain restaurants was so strong that I wanted to eat at one on Christmas Eve? (I mean, he wasn’t wrong.)
“Oh,” I said, as the pieces fell into place. “This was your restaurant. This was Les Champs D’Or.”
Laurent didn’t hear me. He was looking at the building. He had the deep scowl he always wore when he tried to hide his feelings, but I saw the anguish breaking through beneath it.
“There isn’t much sidewalk here, but the town would let us shut down the street and put tables outside in the summer,” he said softly, looking through the windows.
“My Aunt Lisle stitched all the tablecloths. We had a bouillabaisse special every weekend, and every Friday I’d drive to Marseille’s fish market and pick out the seafood.
” He paused and cleared his throat. “We had an Easter lunch every year, and the place would be full of families, people I’d known my entire life, spending their holiday enjoying food I’d made. ”
Laurent’s jaw went rigid, and I knew he was trying hard not to cry.
“Isn’t it awful,” he continued, his voice strained, “To reach a point in life where you think you’ve figured it all out and the hard parts are over, and then it all falls apart on you?” He leaned his head against my shoulder, still unable to wrench his eyes from his former restaurant.
I took his hand. “Hard luck that they turned it into an Applebee’s, of all things.
Although, have you tried their boneless buffalo wings with the lemon pepper sauce?
I hate myself for saying it, but one time at university we ordered them—again, don’t hate me—and they weren’t half bad. Want to get an order to go?”
I was doing my best to make Laurent smile, and he rewarded me with a tiny upturn of his mouth.
“You’re always cheering me up,” he said, planting a kiss on my hair.
“That’s the duty of a sunshiny person.”
He turned back to the restaurant. “It had a terrible kitchen setup,” he said, trying and failing miserably to sound blasé. “And it echoed like crazy.” He put an arm around my shoulders. “It’s hard to go home again.”
“Don’t I know it.”
Laurent pulled me closer, so that I was cocooned in his arms. “I’m being too morose, even for a grump. I can’t be dragging you down with me. Come on, we’ll look at Aix’s Christmas tree.”
When we returned in the afternoon, Celine’s daughters ran up to me, begging to make cookies.
I took over a corner of the kitchen and taught the two girls, and Laurent, how to make mantecados, an anise-flavored shortbread recipe I’d learned in Madrid.
The cookies came out of the oven just as it was time to sit down for dinner.
Laurent’s family followed the traditional Provencal menu for Christmas Eve.
There were seven dishes of vegetables and seafood local to the region and thirteen accompanying desserts, mostly small things like figs, candied fruit, and walnuts.
I’d contributed nougat, made from one of the very first recipes my mother had taught me.
The next day, Christmas dawned cold and bright. There was no shortage of cheer in the Roche household. Happiness pulsed from every corner of the home, but I couldn’t get myself to take up the feeling. Every time I tried, it was as though it slipped past me.
Laurent’s family suddenly felt like too much: too big, too loud, too happy. While Laurent prepared the Christmas dinner duck, I slunk back to the shed and lay in bed, Beau purring in my arms.
Nestled in the blankets, I stared dully at the ceiling. I’d really hoped this would be the year I enjoyed the holidays again. I had everything I should have needed: loving boyfriend, his welcoming family, a beautiful setting. But it all fell flat.
They annoyed me suddenly, the Roche family. They did Christmas all wrong with their Provencal food and suffocating village and so many people and so much noise and so many chairs crammed around the table that you hit someone with your elbow whenever you moved a centimeter.
Of course I wouldn’t enjoy Christmas here.
Christmas meant Coq au Riesling simmering away on the stove, and gingerbread baking in the oven.
It meant board games with my mother and carols playing quietly on the radio and my grandparents arguing good-naturedly about whether we needed to throw another log on the fire…
Squeezing my eyes shut, I pictured my mother in a dress and pearls, looking elegant as she tested the top of the kugelhopf to be sure it sprung back perfectly.
“Here, Margot, feel it for yourself,” she’d tell me, watching as I touched the top of the cake with a fingertip. “It’s important to get it right. Good baking can brighten any day of the year, but on Christmas…that’s when you really can make food people think is magic.”
You need to get on with your life, I told myself. It’s either that or you spend every holiday crying with—at best—an indifferent cat for company.
I looked at Beau. “No offense,” I assured him. “I’m tired of me, too.”
Beau twitched his tail and turned so that his fluffy cat backside faced me.
I sighed, then got up and scrubbed my face in the bathroom. After brushing my hair and applying some makeup to cover the blotchiness crying always left me with, I felt well enough that the wave of cheerful noise didn’t make me want to flee back to the shed when I re-entered the Roche home.
Laurent was in the kitchen, finishing up the duck.
“Are you alright?” he asked, looking concerned as he chopped a pile of olives.
“I’m fine,” I said brightly. “I just took a nap to make sure I had enough energy to devour all this food you made.”
“Speaking of food, how’s it coming along?” Noelle called from the other room. “We’re all starving, Laurent.”
“Just another few minutes,” Laurent said, then grumbled under his breath as his knife worked back and forth across the olives.
“It’s OK if they aren’t chopped perfectly evenly,” I told him. “Your family would probably much rather eat uneven olives than wait until midnight for dinner.” Which was when things would be ready if his pace continued, although I didn’t mention that part.
I could tell Laurent was about to make a grumpy remark, then he turned and saw me holding back laughter. He grinned, his shoulders relaxing.
“You’re right. Let the barbarians eat their uneven olives. It’s all they deserve, anyway.”
As Laurent plated the food, Noelle laid out the dishes, and I lit candles so that the entire dining room flickered with their light. Then I heaped my plate with everything and sat between Laurent and Noelle, laughing as their parents argued over whether they should take up beekeeping.