Cooking for Picasso (43 page)

O
N THE MORNING THAT
J
ULIE
was finally coming home to France for a visit, Ondine awoke early in her bedroom in Mougins feeling oddly apprehensive.

After all these many years, she'd just had a dream about Picasso. His ghost was right here at the
mas,
wandering into her kitchen, looking hungry and alert, yet wearing only a long nightshirt, and barefooted, which she found disturbing. And when he spoke to her, his voice was oddly thin.

“Where is my painting, Ondine?” he asked, looking bewildered. “Did you put it in a safe place? There are lots of thieves around the Riviera, you know.”

She awakened with the strong feeling of Picasso's physical presence in her house. But that was impossible, for he'd died ten years ago. She'd been startled and sorry when she heard it on the radio; somehow she thought he'd go on living and painting forever like Zeus on his mountaintop, unseen but very much alive. Predictably his art was now fetching prices that were sailing into the stratosphere.

Yet in all this time Ondine could not bring herself to show her portrait to anyone. She'd kept it under wraps at the café, until Monsieur Renard died, and then she moved all her possessions to set up house here at the
mas
—on doctor's orders, because he would not permit Ondine to continue living above the café and climbing those stairs to the bedroom every night.

“It's your heart,” the doctor said. “You must learn to listen to it. You've had a small attack already.”

Ever since then, the Picasso portrait was Ondine's secret companion, propped up atop a chest of drawers in her bedroom. She'd never had it framed; Picasso once told her that nothing kills a painting like a frame. Nobody was permitted to come into this room, so no one else knew it was here.

Today, as she snapped on her light and peered across her bedroom, she was relieved to see that, despite the warning in her dream from Picasso's ghost, the painting was still here. These days, at sixty-four years old, she preferred waking to this image of her younger self, full of confidence and hope and flush with love, rather than peering into a mirror and scrutinizing her face for further evidence of age.

Ondine reached for her cane, got out of bed and dressed carefully. She went into the kitchen and drank her coffee standing up while making plans for the day. There was so much to do, now that Julie was at last coming home!

“I must make it clear to her that I am no longer angry,” Ondine reminded herself. She
had
been resentful at first; in all these years since Julie and Arthur eloped they hadn't once returned to France, nor even invited Ondine to visit them in America. All she got were the annual Christmas cards they sent everyone else—professionally printed with a proud family photograph showing the twins' progress.

Ondine kept all her photos in an album in her bedside table. Strangely, Luc's image from so many years ago seemed more alive than Julie's most recent Christmas photo. Year after year, standing amidst the aggressive-looking Arthur and his children, whom Ondine had never met, poor Julie seemed to be fading away, growing more pale and ghostly, her mouth forced into a smile for the camera while her unfocused eyes gazed off in the distance, appearing all the more sad to anyone who cared to notice.

“A well-loved woman doesn't look like that,” Ondine fretted each time she saw another photo. She was not the kind of mother who felt smug about accurately predicting an unhappy marriage; on the contrary, she heartily wished she'd been wrong about Arthur.

Then came the joyous news that Julie was pregnant. And, just as gratifying, Julie longed to be near her mother, and wrote that she was accompanying Arthur on his business convention in Cannes, so they would finally come to visit.

When Ondine got the letter she surprised herself by bursting into tears.

“I'm going to get my daughter back! And, soon I'll be a grandmother,” she boasted to the ladies in the market and at church, who'd always patronizingly pitied Ondine for not having any family in town, nor any grandchildren.

This morning she hummed to herself as she prepared for her visitors. But, busy as she was, she paused to telephone that nice young Madame Sylvie, who was so gifted at reading one's fortune, and had become such a considerate, dear friend.

“You've got to come and tell me what you see,” Ondine said excitedly. “My daughter arrives today with that husband of hers. I need to know what will come of this.”

“I can't do it this morning,” Madame Sylvie said pragmatically. “Perhaps tomorrow?”

“No, this can't wait,” Ondine insisted. “Julie will be so anxious to hear what you think about the future.”

“She's going to have a healthy girl,” Madame Sylvie said patiently. “I told you that last week!”

“Yes, of course,” Ondine replied, “but, there's something else on my mind. I've had a dream. I saw Picasso. You know I cooked for him. He was warning me to protect a treasure he gave me.”

“Ah! Well, perhaps I'll manage to stop by this afternoon, then,” Madame Sylvie conceded, sounding curious now.

When Ondine got off the telephone she felt better. She'd hired a new chef at the café who was eager to please her, so she'd instructed him to prepare a nice feast tonight for Julie and Arthur, and send it up to the
mas
with a waiter to serve.

“The sun is bright today, yet the weather might be too windy to dine on the terrace up here,” Ondine mused. “We may have to eat indoors, but that will be all right.”

She'd created separate cooking, dining and sitting areas in the spacious farmhouse kitchen, all elegantly decorated with Provençal ceramics and fresh flowers from her own gardens; and upon the yellow walls she'd hung paintings done by local artists who'd assembled here at the
mas
one autumn for a retreat she sponsored. They had wandered the fields and orchards, painting landscapes of the many lovely views. And like their Riviera forebears, they'd paid for their dinner by giving the proprietor some pictures.

“It feels like a real home, even though it's just me living here,” Ondine observed, glancing around approvingly.

Within a few hours she heard a knock at the door, and when she opened it, there was little Julie, already looking much happier than her photos, her modest face lit with an unusual expression of joy, as if a candle glowed from within her. She stood there shyly, almost tentatively, touchingly uncertain of whether she'd be truly welcomed by the mother she'd abandoned so many years ago.

She forgets that I, too, ran away from home when I was a girl,
Ondine thought, amused. She opened her arms wide with a cry of
“Bienvenue, chère fille!”

“Dear sweet
Maman
!” Julie cried, rushing to hug her. Arthur waited politely, looking grudgingly relieved that his wife was happy. Ondine quickly invited them both inside, surprised by how very pregnant Julie looked. Ondine had lost track of the months.

“This is my miracle baby!” Julie declared, her eyes bright with joyful tears.

Ondine took them to the terrace so they could assess whether to dine indoors or out. For awhile, mother and daughter sat companionably on the
chaises longues,
chatting animatedly. Ondine had decided to be gracious and welcoming to Arthur, but this only seemed to make him wary. He remained standing at the edge of the terrace with his hands in his pockets, jingling his loose coins and hardly seeming to notice the impressive property. It was clear that he had not wished to take this detour from Cannes, and now he roamed restlessly around the terrace as if plotting his escape.

He knows I detest him, as he does me,
Ondine thought ruefully.
I guess it can't be helped.

When prompted by Julie to participate in their conversation about France, Arthur announced rather belligerently that he thought the French were politically ungrateful to America. Julie shushed him and he sulked, finally sitting in a chair to bury his nose in an English financial newspaper he'd brought.

I should have invited my young lawyer, Gerard Clément, so Arthur would have a man to talk to,
Ondine realized. Aloud she told Julie, “Madame Sylvie says your baby will definitely be a girl!”

Julie squealed with delight, but her husband snorted. “Arthur wants a son named after him,” she explained. “But if it's a girl, what shall we call her?”

Ondine had already given this some thought, lying awake last night under a full moon. So she said, “You should name her Céline, after the moon goddess Selene.”

“Céline,” Julie repeated as if tasting the name on her tongue. “That's pretty,
Maman
. I like it.”

She looked so confident about this pregnancy, as if it had restored her faith in the future. “I'm redecorating our house for
le bébé,
” Julie confided. “Now you'll
have
to come see it. We'll take little Céline down to the beach in New Rochelle as you did with me, remember,
Maman
? Oh, we'll all be so happy again!”

Ondine could see that Arthur's prosperity had made it possible for Julie to have a comfortable domestic life; and now this coming child was giving Julie another chance to love and be loved, to carve out a happier existence for herself.
Well, at least she has this pleasure in her life,
Ondine observed gratefully.

Arthur was still hiding behind his newspaper as if it were a brick wall, so Ondine gave up on him, and brought Julie into the kitchen to show her how she'd decorated it. And as it turned out, this was Ondine's only moment alone with her daughter.

“I wish I'd paid more attention to your cooking!” Julie said, gazing admiringly at the impressive array of copper pots and specialty cooking pans. “Won't you share some of your recipes with me now?”

Ondine hesitated, then pulled down the old leather-bound notebook that she'd kept all these years on her kitchen shelf. They sat together at the table, and when Julie turned the pages she exclaimed with delight over the recipes. “I must copy these down before I go home,” she said, her eyes shining with pride in her mother's work.

“You can keep the notebook,” Ondine said, feeling the familiar, protective instinct she always had around Julie. “But take good care of it. Then one day you must hand it down to
your
daughter.”

Julie had become thoroughly absorbed in the pages. “All right. But which patron was all this for?” she asked, fascinated. Ondine paused, made Julie promise not to tell a soul, even Arthur, and then began explaining to the stunned Julie about how she'd cooked for Picasso as a girl in Juan-les-Pins, and that he had even given her a painting of his.

Despite her promise to Luc, Ondine felt herself on the brink of saying,
Do you remember that man we visited together in Vallauris? That was Picasso, and he was your father!
But before she could utter these words, Arthur called out for his wife in an irritated tone, and Julie jumped guiltily to her feet.

“We must talk more about Picasso later. But I'd better go see what Arthur wants,” Julie said, going out dutifully. A moment later she reappeared with her husband at her side, her arm tucked in his.

“Doesn't
Maman
have such a pretty place here?” she said, nudging him. He allowed a nod.

Ondine opened a bottle of sparkling water, and she and Julie settled into chairs in the sitting area near the fireplace. Arthur refused a glass and remained standing. When Julie told him about all her mother's hard work to make the
mas
and the café a success, he obligingly gave the big room an appraising glance. Something seemed to dawn on him, but all he said was, “So—you are the sole owner of the café and this entire
mas
?”

Ondine chose to ignore his social
faux pas
of asking a pointed question about her finances, but Julie answered earnestly, “Yes, but these days
Maman
doesn't do all the cooking anymore!”