Julien grinned. “You know I love it when you get mad.”
“Actually, what I was going to say is I think you might be right.”
“I like it even better when I’m right,” Julien teased. “Now, if you will just help me load all these tools into the wheelbarrow, I will take you home and show you what a real Prince Charming can do.” He winked.
“What, now I’m some sort of damsel in distress?”
He waved his trowel in a curlicue motion and bowed, then tossed his trowel into the wheelbarrow, retrieved his tape measure and level, and picked up the old door. “Grab that wheelbarrow,” he instructed.
“I thought I was a damsel in distress.”
“Well, studies show that shoving a wheelbarrow around is the first step to recovery.”
We locked the house and loaded the tools into his car. The sun had begun warming the day. The frost made the vines and the grass sparkle like an illustration in a children’s book. A bird called out from somewhere on La Roche. Behind that new terrace door, the house was gray and cold, settled in for another long slumber. And up the hill in Alba, there was a fire in the fireplace, soup for dinner, cats on the sofa—a home. Julien is my home now, I realized. And then sadness crept over me again, because in a few days, I would have to leave him, too.
PART III
A photo of my grandparents found in my grandfather’s papers after this book’s manuscript was completed, dated July 12, 1944—their wedding day.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
IN DECEMBER 2004 I RETURNED TO ASHEVILLE FOR three months in order to apply for a visa at the French consulate in Atlanta, hoping to spend another year in France. I still clung to the idea that an additional twelve months would represent nothing more than an extension of this parenthetical period of my life. I believed I would return to America soon enough, pick up the thread I’d dropped when I graduated from college. I hadn’t measured—or even fully acknowledged—how potent that feeling of homecoming had been the first time I set foot in Alba. I didn’t realize how far I’d proceeded along the path Grandma had laid for me. A second year to finish my book and spend more time with Julien didn’t seem like much of a commitment, no more than the first year had.
In those three months, I needed to find a job in France that provided me with a visa—either that or prove to the French that I already was a citizen. By all rights, I should have been one: both my grandparents and my mother had held French passports for significant portions of their lives. I set about assembling the papers to prove it.
Since searching for work abroad and negotiating with French bureaucrats does not keep a girl in fans and feathers, I found a job reading fortunes at a local New Age bookstore—which made my grandmother crow when I called to tell her I was making use of my fallback skill: “See, I told you it would come in handy!” When it wasn’t my shift to read cards, I stocked the store, helped customers, wrestled with the intricacies of shelving New Age books—with channeled materials, do you alphabetize by the name of the channeler or the name of the spirit being channeled?—and considered such thorny questions as whether the store needed a special permit to carry ritual daggers for pagan ceremonies and which stones worked best in pendulums. Then I’d drive home to my papers and notes with Utah Phillips and Ani DiFranco on my car stereo: “No matter how New Age you get, old age gonna kick your ass.”
I arrived overprepared and half an hour early for my visa appointment at the French consulate, armed with a giant stack of birth certificates, death certificates, marriage and divorce certificates, naturalization papers, and more. I included pictures of the house in La Roche and writing samples from my book. My parents temporarily transferred money into my bank account to make it look like I was independently wealthy or at least had enough to live on for a year. I brought proof of insurance, proof of robust physical and mental health, and a letter from Julien stating that he would house and support me, all in triplicate.
The man at the consulate tossed everything aside but the letter from Julien. He held it out to me as if he were presenting evidence to a guilty party. “If you’re going to live together, why don’t you just get married?”
“Well … um …,” I stammered, “I mean, we’ve only—”
He cut me off. “You’re already living together.”
I nodded.
He gave me an accusing glare, and an image of the Monty Python sketch about the Spanish Inquisition popped into my head.
“Yes,” I suppressed a smile, “but we’ve only been together six months.”
“What do I care?” he said crossly, indicating my file. “This is just an inconvenience to everyone.”
“But I don’t want to get married.”
He looked me in the eye. “You are already living together,” he repeated, enunciating like a cop talking to an unruly drunk.
I pulled myself up in my seat, the Spanish Inquisition forgotten. “Sir, you’re not advocating I marry for papers, are you? Isn’t that illegal?”
“YOU. ARE. ALREADY. LIVING. TOGETHER. It’s up to you. I’m just saying, if you get married, you can go back now. Otherwise you may be stuck here indefinitely.”
“But maybe we don’t want to get married!”
“Then why are you living together?”
“But I fulfill all the requirements,” I argued. “I have all my papers in order.”
“That remains to be seen. There’s no guarantee you’ll be granted a visa.” He stood up, impassive now. “We’ll contact you in six weeks or so.”
“What about going back?”
He shrugged. “You can always go back on a six-month tourist visa next year.”
“But I need a job. I need a real visa.”
“That’s not my problem.”
I stormed out of the consulate in tears, convinced I would be stuck in America forever. On reflection, I see that I was what the French would call allumée—inspired and blinded and a little bit crazy from a light that colored everything I saw. Luckily, Julien was home when I called, sobbing, from the parking lot.