All Over the Map (13 page)

“Okay,” I say, attempting a smile. I refill our glasses. We’re quiet for a few minutes. “You know,” I finally say, “The thing that pisses me off is that I was having such a great time in Samoa, it was such a high. There were gorgeous beaches, I found this amazing warm pool with a waterfall to swim in, and a perfect little hotel run by Italians.”

“There you go. Focus on the waterfall.” Sandra raises her glass. “To forgetting about this,” she says. “And that surfer? Shark bait.”

I can see his shark’s tooth necklace in the sand. I pulled so hard I ripped it off his neck. “To the sharks.” We clink glasses.

I
head to Nevada for several weeks and stay at my friend Maya’s ranch, away from the world, a place I’ve loved to visit since I befriended her daughter fifteen years ago, when we drove around the state doing a political story for
Vogue
, interviewing showgirls, ranchers, prostitutes, and casino workers. Since then her daughter has gotten married and had two children, and has a lot less time to roam around, but she is one of my few married friends who still includes me as family and who makes time for us to take walks on our own. There is plenty of space on the ranch, with its wide-open view of the plains, and the only thing I have to be afraid of is catching a mouse and having to reset the snappy trap.

I wake up each morning and sit in the hot tub with Maya, who comments on the pink-streaked sky and mentions that a coyote went skulking through the pasture right before dawn. Then, at nearly ninety, she dips into the cold pool, and I, at half her age, have no choice but to splash in after her, shivering awake and ready for strong coffee. She dresses, and we go inside where she begins to knead her sourdough bread. I go off to spend the day
writing and hiking in the hills behind the ranch with a big dog by my side. In the evening, after a swim, I chop vegetables, drink wine, and talk about politics with Maya and whichever of her diverse friends has arrived from distant parts for dinner.

Maya has a lot to discuss, since she’s lived quite a life. After her divorce in the 1970s, which seemed to light a fire under her, she became passionately involved in political causes, from welfare rights to Central America, supporting grassroots movements, particularly those organized by women; along the way she ran for the U.S. Senate. After her husband left and her children grew up, she expanded her family to include taking care of the wider world, and in return, so many people look after her. She lives modestly on her ranch, for all the money she gives away, and doesn’t travel much anymore, but she enjoys hearing about my trips.

She has created a wonderful atmosphere in her old age, surrounded by friends. The ranch is self-contained, full of calm and simple pleasures, with people always within shouting distance if you need them. It’s good to stay in one place for a while, peaceful and comforting to feel part of an extended family, safe and protected and loved.

B
UT
I
CAN’T
hide out in Nevada forever.

Even back when this was a divorce ranch, the society women had to leave after six weeks of carousing with the cowboys and take the train back to New York. I have to go back to work, back out into the world, and get past my fear. Because as afraid as I suddenly am of being alone, of being hurt, violated, victimized—all
the worst-case scenarios of being a single, independent woman—I am more afraid that I am going to lose touch with some essential part of who I am. I’m not sure who I would be if I were not, at heart, that kid who wanted to hop freight trains, was unafraid to walk around the cobblestone streets of San Miguel de Allende and try to chat with the locals, who idolized glamorous Brenda Starr, went three thousand miles away to college, and then set off to travel in the Mediterranean alone. I only know I would be depressed, and I am not, by nature, depressed. I have to get over this.

So I wave good-bye to Maya, put the top down, and drive over the Sierras back to San Francisco. It is one of the few times, at home, when I wish I had a regular job to get up and go to every morning, instead of trying to engage in the optimistic and uncertain business of coming up with ideas and stories and trying to sell them. I pitch a bunch of article ideas, none of them quite right, nothing moving, until one day an editor calls and asks if I could please do a quick story about bicycling in Provence, focusing on the food and bringing along a female friend who also likes to ride. This is one of those moments when you scrub and scrub and then a fairy godmother appears and waves her magic wand. Of course I’d like to go to Provence with a friend, in safe company.

Because I’m still feeling nervous about traveling, I ask someone very familiar and comfortable, whom I’ve known my whole life, to come along—my cousin Charlotte, who is an extraordinary cook and speaks perfect French. I know she will be as eager as I am to sample the ratatouille, tapenade, figs, pastries, and wines of the region, to taste the simple, rich pleasures of a cuisine
that Roger Vergé, one of the greatest chefs of the south of France, describes as “gay, healthful, and natural, gathering together the gifts of the soil like an armful of wildflowers.”

Arriving in the center of Avignon by train from Paris is like stepping out of a high-tech transportation corridor into a medieval fairy tale, with fourteenth-century stone palaces and narrow, winding streets. Charlotte greets me at the hotel with a bottle of Côtes du Rhône to inaugurate our trip. From the start, it turns out to be a comfort to travel with someone I’ve known my whole life and a pleasure to expand not only our relationship but also my understanding of all things French. Whereas I speak only a few phrases, Charlotte is fluent; though I can appreciate an extraordinary meal, she can dissect its ingredients and technique.

In the morning, we wander around, stepping out onto the Pont d’Avignon bridge that stretches over just half the Rhône. We could admire the town’s imposing palaces and whimsical shop windows all morning, but our noses lead us to the market instead. There, we are overwhelmed by the baskets of baby vegetables, bunches of fragrant lavender and thyme, mounds of olives and capers, and perfect rounds of cheese. We buy a few ripe figs and then meander to a pâtisserie, where we savor a flaky pastry stuffed with spinach and goat cheese. Charlotte is so knowledgeable about French food that I nickname her “Cousine Cuisine.”

We meet up with our group in the morning and begin our cycling in a tiny hilltop town, Crillon-le-Brave, which has a splendid view of Mont Ventoux, the bald-headed mountain that dominates the region (and that the poet Petrarch climbed in 1335, becoming
the first person in recorded history to go mountain climbing for fun). The hotel is a collection of centuries-old stone houses cobbled together with lush pocket gardens. When we check into our suite, Charlotte opens the latches on the windows overlooking the villages and valley below, then twirls around the room. “Okay,” she says, clapping her hands, “I’m happy.”

We take a warm-up spin around the Plateau de Vaucluse, where the fields are thick with lavender. As we ride side by side on the empty country roads, catching up, I realize that Charlotte is as anxious as I am to get back in touch with something deep, true, and unafraid about herself. This is Charlotte’s first trip since her daughter, who is three, was born. She both revels in the freedom to be in adult company—which I take for granted—and aches for her little girl. Since childhood, Charlotte, a petite strawberry blonde, has always been a dynamo—a gymnastics champ, ballerina, concert pianist, artist, caterer, competitive runner. She’s entirely focused, and it seems there’s nothing she can’t do well. But the birth of her daughter brought her low, bluer than she’s ever been, and ever since she’s had bouts of feeling guilty about being depressed when she has such a darling baby, out of touch with her athletic body, her identity lost, feeling trapped in the house, uncertain of her future. Cycling in the Provençal countryside seems to restore us both to our stronger selves, at least out there in the lavender fields.

And so does the food. At a picnic lunch with the world’s best baguettes, olives, tapenade, fresh fromage de chèvre, and charcuterie meats, we regretfully refuse the local rosé wine since we want to finish the ride. “This is going to be the most difficult
decision of the trip,” Charlotte says, eyeing the bottle, “whether to drink the wine at lunch.”

Charlotte and I make a great team: we both love bicycling between villages and coming back to our posh medieval-era hotels exhausted and hungry. We finish a long day of bicycling and climbing hills with a six-course French meal and a view of the sun setting fiery red over the hills. We lose everything but the moment as we eat lobster in a tomato shell; pan-roasted fois gras with peppered toast and wine sauce; roasted pigeon with ginger, white beans, and tomato; local cheese; roasted figs with cinnamon crème brûlée, everything finished off with a warm and crunchy chocolate parcel. It’s a memorable dinner.

But the meal we enjoy most is the next day, and much simpler. We ride past silvery olive trees through the Calavon Valley, landing at a bistro in the tidy, picturesque hill town of Eygalières. There, under an outdoor grape arbor, we eat a tangy goat cheese melted on toast, niçoise pizza, runny chocolate cake, and a chilled pear soup. “Now, this,” says Charlotte, sighing, “is real Provençal food.”

When we start in on our first glass of wine, I realize that even though I am here in paradise, I have not felt entirely happy since the day I floated under the waterfall in Samoa. Our first course arrives, the wine warms our cheeks, and we gasp at the freshness of the flavors, so transporting that my eyes start to water.

“What is it?” Charlotte asks. I don’t want to tell her that I haven’t been myself lately and that this is the first time since then that I’ve started to feel a tingle, a deep, warm sense of everything being all right again. I forget about the power of food, friendship,
and family to revive and comfort me. I don’t want to say all this out loud; to talk about my new sense of vulnerability would put too much of a burden on her, on the trip, and it’s something I want to forget entirely for the moment. Instead, I simply say how wonderful the meal is and how it reminds me of another meal I had a few years ago.

At home, I tell Charlotte, I keep a framed photo of myself clinking glasses with a friend at dinner. It’s not flattering: I look wan and worn out, with red-rimmed eyes, cheeks flushed. But the expression the camera caught is one of pure contentment. The photo was taken on May 8, 1997. I remember the date because on May 7, my husband left me. Up until dinner, May 8 was probably the worst day of my life. I spent most of it in bed, trying to grasp my new reality, that the man I had loved and married and planned to have children with had left me, abruptly, for someone else. I’d been lied to, cheated on, and abandoned, and I had a dinner reservation at Chez Panisse in Berkeley, the restaurant Alice Waters made famous for its local farm-to-table approach and simple presentation of exceptional ingredients.

Ironically, the dinner with my longtime friend Larry was payment for a bet I’d lost about which of us would get married first. We’d made the wager years before, when I’d thought I was too free-spirited to settle down, before I met the man who changed my mind. After I wed, Larry got married, too, and each of our lives got busier. Finally, our schedules coincided with a day we could get a reservation. That it turned out to be the day after my husband left me made me laugh at the universe in spite of my sadness.

When I told Larry the news, he asked if I wanted to cancel
dinner. But I needed a reason to get out of bed, and that day, dinner at my favorite restaurant was the only one that would work. I might cry through every course, but I was going.

I met Larry at the entryway to the dark-wood Arts & Crafts building, greeted by a spray of wildflowers and a large bowl of fruit in season. We were seated in a cozy corner, with a view of the kitchen and its copper plates. We started with a glass of champagne and a plate of Hog Island oysters on the half shell with little sausages. The oysters were so fresh they tasted like my tears. I closed my eyes to feel the sensation of the sea.

Larry chatted about wine with the server, chose something French, and started telling me about novels he’d enjoyed recently. He knew better than to ask how I was feeling.

After the oysters came a fish and shellfish soup, with a delicate broth of fennel and leeks. The flavors were so subtle and perfectly balanced that my mind had to close off everything else to rest on my taste buds. There was no room in my consciousness for heartbreak, divorce, and having to move out of my house, only space for a soup whose flavors shimmered like gold.

The server poured a dark-hued Bandol wine, ripe and inviting. The flavors spread across my mouth into a smile. The main course arrived, an earthy grilled duck breast with rhubarb sauce and roasted turnips. The rhubarb took me back to my childhood, when I would pick the bitter stalks from my grandmother’s garden and we would make my favorite pink stew. Grandma is gone, but rhubarb is as permanent as my memories of her. The rhubarb duck comforted me with its familiarity; no matter what happens, in spring there is always rhubarb.