Next to a carousel filled with actual French children, Cord slipped into a shop and bought some French cigarettes and French gum. He rejoined the group on the steps of a deserted, dusty arena. His mother was gazing up at the building, transfixed. Built inA.D.90 of Mesozoic limestone, their guide said, the Arles Amphitheater could seat twenty thousand. The two-tiered structure had 120 arches. The guide talked about chariot races, bullfights, blood, and famous artists.
“He took me here the afternoon I met him,” said Charlotte, leaning in and touching the sleeve of Cord’s shirt.
“What?”
“He brought me here. They served us paella. Nobody could believe I was with him. Nobody else got lunch! Only we got paella.”
Cord looked at his mother. She seemed upbeat and sane. She spoke with clarity. “I’m sorry, Mom,” he said. “What are you talking about?”
He felt apprehensive, waiting for her answer. Was this how dementia worked? Your mother was seemingly fine and then, boom, she was telling you she’d gone to a bullfight in Arles?
Charlotte shook her head. “I just wanted to tell someone,” she said. “I didn’t figure you’d understand. And honestly, I don’t care.”
Cord barked—sort of a laugh, sort of a gasp—as Charlotte walked away from him into the amphitheater, stepping swiftly down the stairs to the first row of seats. She moved elegantly in her hot-pink dress. Cord felt a rush of affection for his crazy mom. Her life hadn’t been easy: her snootiness was hard-won and (Cord knew) illusory. And now it seemed she was losing her mind.
“Picasso and his friends, all the painters, when they come here,” said the guide. “They serve them…paella!”
His mother must have read it somewhere.
Cord entered the hot amphitheater and located Charlotte. “How would you feel about a little excursion?” she said. Her eyes were actually shining; she raised her eyebrows coquettishly. “Come on, let’s go,” she said.
Cord smiled. He wanted to be connected to her—he always had. But why? Why did he feel so responsible for her? (“Because you’re codependent,” he heard Handy say in his mind. “Accept the things you cannot change, brother.”) But it wasn’t fucking fair. He wanted tomutehis exhausting need to protect Charlotte, not accept it!
He let himself be tugged outside the amphitheater and toward a taxicab. Was this acceptance or weakness? He’d have to ask Handy. Could they possibly be the same thing?
When they climbed in the taxi, the driver put down his copy ofLe Figaroand started the engine. Cord felt disoriented. His mother spoke in French to the driver. He’d forgotten she spoke French.
The taxi drove out of Arles, into grassy hills. Cord saw hedges of rosemary, towering almond trees, scrub oak. The air was clean and dry, the light diffused and lemony. Tangles of lavender and thyme grew wild. “Where are we going?” he asked.
“There are some things I’ve been meaning to tell you,” said Charlotte. Her tone was grave. The whole situation—the French taxi, the Provençal landscape so lovely it was almost surreal—struck Cord as suddenly terrifying, the folded mountains in the distance forbidding. Could Charlotte be ill? “What, Mom?” he said. “What’s going on?”
Her face was not the same face he’d known, or maybe he hadn’t looked at her in a while. There were deep lines, and her powdered skin—she didn’t wear foundation—was so fragile-looking. Her blue eyes, unadorned; her face, untouched by Botox or plastic surgery; her stare absolutely direct, gazing at him—gazingintohim. When was the last time he had locked eyes with Charlotte?
“I was sixteen,” she said. Her voice was matter-of-fact. “I met him in a café, Le Zinc. He invited me to a bullfight. His brother picked me up in a convertible. And afterward, we came here. He wanted to draw me, he said.”
“Are you talking about…” said Cord.
The taxi stopped, but remained idling. The driver spoke, and Charlotte answered. “He says we can’t go any closer,” she told Cord.
They climbed from the taxi. “There,” Charlotte said, pointing in the distance. “See that castle?” Cord could see a magnificent fortress with faded yellow walls and reddish shutters, rising against the north slope of the mountain.
“I thought it was love,” said Charlotte.
“Mom, are you saying…?”
“He told me I was beautiful enough to stop his heart,” said Charlotte.
Cord felt an eerie calm steal over him, the feeling he remembered from having exactly three gin and tonics. (The fourth led to a downhill slide.) Maybe Charlotte was mad and maybe she’d slept with a famous painter. What did it matter, really? Cord’s father had been a difficult, tortured man, and if this excursion brought his mother joy, who was he to mess around with it? “I never loved your father,” said Charlotte. “Or, I guess, he never loved me. It never occurred to me to wonder what I thought about it all.”
Cord grimaced. He didn’t want to get into it, his awful childhood. He didn’t want to admit the thud of recognition her words created inside him.
It never occurred to me to wonder what I thought about it all.
He looked around at the slim green cypress trees, the lush hills, the dense sky. He looked at the gorgeous structure—the butter-colored walls protecting the castle from…what? Charlotte and Cord?
“Others had painted these hills, but now he owned them. That’s what he said,” said Charlotte. It was like she was in a lucid dream. “I was a virgin, before,” she added, after a while. “It was painful. But I thought…”
Cord had seen pictures of his mother at sixteen. He remembered a shot of her in a schoolgirl kilt with knee socks, her look innocent but game. He’d never seen that expression in real life.
