Our Old Roman Roads

ONE

France, 1989

Summer began with late lunch.

I was still nursing a nose bleed and the now sour taste of chardonnay in my mouth when my three sisters, my father and I packed into a peugeot, a car that hardly had enough room for two of us let alone five, making idle conversation about the unusually balmy weather. The backseat smelled faintly of fresh laundry and potently of the rosemary on my father's hands, which he used to convey every word he voiced and to caress the wiry bristles of his beard, sleek with pomade and musk, as he drove.

Tourists, in the summertime, began to trickle away, and our sandy Roman roads were void of traffic. They returned to New England, London, or wherever it was they hailed from, and business in France became a transaction between neighbor and neighbor. And so, when we heard that over in the commune of Lourmarin, a few miles away, the proprietor of Le P'tit Resto was offering a six-course lunch with pink champagne to his amiable clientele, we had all stripped to our sundresses and clam-diggers, and my father dragged us along to meet Victor Delorge, a restaurateur from Gordes.

By twelve-thirty word had circulated throughout the commune and the little stone-walled restaurant was full with locals sporting bibs and enormous, strapping guts. Victor Delorge was already engrossed with customers as we entered, kissing the tips of his fingers so often he must have caused blisters, waving his hands so frequently his arms must have been sore. Sporting a velvet smoking jacket and bowtie in eighty-degree weather, Victor had long perfected the art of hostess, and mastered the ability to hover as he greeted every client by name, with passive gestures and sweeping pleasantries that had an air of possessiveness to them, and when he greeted my father, whom he had worked with for over twenty years before I was born, he pulled out a chair at our white-linen table and stuck his elbows on the glass tabletop.

"Peter Collette, the luckiest man in France. Four beautiful women, delectable food, peerless venue. What more could a man desire?" One hand found perch on his narrow little hips. "Surely Nadeleine is not jealous?"

"Oh, it is very possible that she is. You know my wife," my father replied as though no time had passed between them, and he was no longer bitter over Victor's decision to leave their firm and start a restaurant on the blissful French coast. It was not until I was fifteen that my father followed in stride and purchased a villa, miles from where Victor had relocated, spending six months there each year with a renewed sense of happiness. "Victor, these are my daughters, allow me to introduce you. Mireille, Paulette, Zeila, and Ambrosia. Mireille is thirty, Ambrosia is twenty-one. Say hello, girls. You remember Victor? The old partner of mine."

"Oh, daughters!" Victor's smile grew impossibly wider. It is hard to imagine, now, that this flamboyant and animated man had once worked in a stuffy conglomerate beside my father, forced to fetch coffee, grouse over printers, and wear Oxford shirts and penny loafers. I could envision him prowling vineyards and hole in the wall theaters and condemning the bureaucracy for his whole life. "Four of them? What a delight."

"Four," my father repeated, and his shoulders rolled backward. "Last I counted, anyway."

"Yes, four. Thank you for having us, Victor," Paulette greeted, reaching over my plate to grasp his hand. She turned to father with a telling wink. "Surely, papa, this is not the Victor who would always cheat at cards?"

Victor barked out with laughter, "your father is still a sore loser!"

"Better a sore loser than a cheat," he said while he shook his head. "Anything but a cheat."

"Cheater or not, the food smells exquisite. Must be some sort of witchcraft you're brewing here."

"It tastes even better, allow me to assure you." Victor pecked his fingertips once more. "Alas, the summer has taken a toll on business... I'm afraid we haven't made up for last years' arrears just yet. But I had rather beg for scraps than work for scraps in a law firm, so all is well."