November 2002 Issue - Essay # 2
The
House at Garche
By Tessa Dratt
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Monsieur
Lullier had a piece of shrapnel lodged inside his left cheek, and his
skin was pulled tight across it, which made his face lopsided. In fact,
the left side of Monsieur Lullier's face scared me half to death. But he
understood my squeamishness and always arranged for me to sit to his
right during the long, formal lunches we were served whenever my mother,
my father and I came to the house at Garche.
Garche
is a very small town, some twenty miles from the center of "He
taught me everything I know, Tessa," my father told me time after
time. "Never forget
that. He was good to me when I was young and ignorant and just starting
out in life." My father would sigh deeply, stroke his mustache with
middle finger and thumb and stare right past me at something I couldn't
see, something from before I was born. "He
took me under his wing when I came over from At
seven years old, I wasn't too clear about what a "mentor" was.
It sounded a lot like "meteor," like those I'd seen with my
first grade class at the New York Planetarium and over time, I came to
associate Monsieur Lullier with a ball of brilliant matter that had
streaked across a dark sky one night to explode inside his left cheek
and leave a piece of itself embedded there forever. Aside
from Monsieur Lullier's face, there was nothing frightening about the
house at Garche. On the
contrary, I loved to visit the narrow gray stone house, with a
wrought-iron fence all around its well-tended grounds, its pots of
geraniums and marigolds in the front yard and its vegetable garden in
the back. The
inside of the house always smelled of good cooking overlaid with the
scent of violet. The rooms
were small and filled with fussy, breakable objects, glass eggs, crystal
vases, porcelain figurines and old furniture.
"Antiques,"
my mother said, "not old furniture." "What's
the difference?" I asked, but my mother rarely explained, she
merely corrected. Everything
in the house at Garche was different from what I knew. The knobs were
set higher on the doors than at home in Even
the toilet was entertaining. It was encased in its own tiny room. The toilet seat was made out of dark wood, and the tank hung high
up on the wall, near the ceiling. A long chain with a wooden handle at
the end angled from the tank. And,
there was a cat, Antoine, a small, gray and white tabby that chased the
rabbits in the garden or slept for hours under the peach tree or in the
sun-drenched kitchen, near Yvonne. Yvonne
was the Lullier's maid. My
mother told me she'd been with them since she was sixteen. By the time I met her, she seemed neither young nor old, only
very slender and somewhat plain. But Yvonne had the most beautiful hands
I'd ever seen. Yvonne's
hands had long, graceful fingers with pale, white nails that reminded me
of the delicate, translucent shells I'd collected at the seashore. With
those lovely hands, she would knead the bread, slice the tomatoes, clip
the string beans brought in from the garden, season the leg of lamb with
mint or basil. Her hands were steady and able and always occupied. During
those early visits to Garche, I was easily bored by the adults'
conversation. I was anxious
to run about outside and explore rather than to sit in the parlor, still
and solemn, on one of Madame Lullier's hard velvet chairs with little
doilies on the arm rests, listening to her voice drone on while she
patted her chignon every few minutes and readjusted her flowered shawl
around her delicate shoulders. "Ah,
ma chère Olga," Madame Lullier would exclaim to my mother and
sigh. "Ah
oui, Madame, ah oui," my mother would murmur with a matching sigh. After
an initial polite half hour, during which I tried to memorize every
china and glass object on the mantelpiece to keep from falling asleep,
my mother would signal me with a little shift of her head, and I was
off. I
spent a lot of time in the garden following Antoine around as he sank
down to a crouch and crept along, low to the ground, snake-like, trying
to snag a rabbit. Or,
I stayed in the kitchen with Yvonne. Yvonne spoke no English, and I had
just a few words of French, yet we understood one another perfectly. She
always gave me some task to perform. This made me feel useful and
important. "Tiens,
Téssa," Yvonne would say as she handed me a head of lettuce and a
colander. "Laves-ça, s'il te plaît."
She led me to the sink and turned on the water, and I quickly
figured out what to do. Later,
after the main course, when Yvonne served the salad, and my parents told
her how tasty it was, Yvonne would smile and say that it was "la
petite Téssa" who had prepared it. The
most interesting thing about lunch at Garche was the knowledge that most
of what we ate was directly related to what grew in the garden. The
tomatoes were redder and more succulent than in town, the lettuce and
beans were greener and crisper, the seasonings came from freshly grown
herbs picked the very day the food was to be eaten. I had lived the
whole of my short life in
New
York City,
and had it not been for the garden at Garche, I might have gone on for
years assuming that all nourishment originated in a supermarket. And
then there was the issue of the leg of lamb, which I found highly
romantic. It seemed, according to Madame Lullier, who told my mother,
who later told me, that Yvonne had been keeping company with Germain,
the town butcher, for many years. For this reason, the Lulliers always
had the best cuts of meat. And when it came to spring lamb, Germain
always reserved the youngest and most tender for his chère Yvonne. Germain
wanted to marry Yvonne. He courted her doggedly, Madame Lullier said. He
accompanied her to church every Sunday as Yvonne was a very devout
Catholic. On Wednesday
afternoons, Germain even closed his butcher shop so that he could take
Yvonne to see a film, or out for tea, or on some other excursion,
because on Wednesday afternoons, Yvonne was off. And yet, for some
reason, Madame Lullier said, Yvonne kept postponing the wedding plans. She seemed content to live in her small, sunny attic room in the
house at Garche and remain in service. I
would have liked to ask Yvonne about her friend, Germain. I wanted to
know if she loved him, if she would marry him some day, if she wanted
children and a house of her own. But I didn't have the words to ask, and
also, I was loath to interrupt the gentle rhythm of those hours I spent
watching Yvonne's beautiful hands whip a sauce, stir a soup or strain
the fresh raspberries I'd picked earlier from the bushes that grew
behind the garden. "Téssa,
chérie, veux-tu m'aider?" Yvonne asked, holding a fat bunch of
grapes in one hand and pointing to the scale on a little service table
in the corner of the kitchen. I
hopped off my stool and pulled out the scale for Yvonne. What a wonder
it was, that scale! Resting
on a heavy, wooden base, were two smartly shined copper plates. Each plate was attached to the crossbar at the top of the scale
by three thin metal chains. The scale looked to me like a giant letter T
with a small round swing hanging from each of its outstretched arms.
I had seen a drawing once in a library book of a blindfolded
woman in a long white gown. She had been holding a similar scale in her
hands. The caption under the
picture had read "Justice." I
must have looked awe-struck, because Yvonne had to call my name several
times to get my attention. I understood that she wanted me to pull out
the scale and take the grapes from her hand and set them down on one of
the copper plates. Yvonne
took the top off a long, narrow wooden box and showed me the contents.
Nestled in velvet casings of various sizes were a series of brass
weights that looked like solid metal coins. Stamped on each weight was a
number. 100 grams, 200
grams, 500 grams, one kilogram. The largest weight was a two-kilogram
weight. The bronze spheres felt very solid and important in my hands. Yvonne
instructed me to weigh the grapes. I started piling up the smallest 50
and 100 gram weights, but they didn't make any impression on the scale.
I could sense Yvonne's amusement. I added weight after weight
until finally, the scale seemed to shudder, then creak as it started to
tip. I added more weight. The
two copper plates finally hung at the same height, one plate filled with
grapes, the other with brass. There
was something so satisfying about that scale! And Yvonne indulged me,
allowing me to weigh first the lettuce (200 grams), then the bread (500
grams), then some cheeses, some sausage, some slices of cake. I even
tried to weigh Antoine, but I couldn't keep him still. He hissed at me
and scurried away. "Tessa,
Tessa, where are you?" my father's voice sounded from the corridor
outside the kitchen. I was helping Yvonne stack the coffee cups and
saucers and put them back on the kitchen shelf.
"It's
time to catch the train back to "Already?"
I asked. I hadn't nearly finished the work at hand. Yvonne
wiped her long, white fingers on her apron and followed me out to the
corridor. She shook hands
with my mother, then with my father who deftly slipped a folded 50 franc
bill into her hand that just as deftly disappeared into her apron
pocket. The
au revoirs were uttered, and hands were shaken. I was expected to kiss
Madame Lullier, once on each cheek in the French fashion. My heart
stopped beating at the thought of an encounter with Monsieur Lullier's
left cheek, but as I approached him to say good-bye, he stopped me at
arm's length and held out his hand for me to shake.
"You're
a fine young lady, Tessa," Monsieur said to me in English.
"Come again soon." "But
why did you give Yvonne money, Daddy?" I demanded, outraged, the
very moment we were out of earshot. "It's
the custom, darling," my father answered, amused by my fury.
"But
Yvonne really likes me," I insisted. "You didn't have to pay
her to be nice to me." "Of
course not, darling. But
this is "But
... but,
Daddy, you don't understand. I helped! You didn't need to give her
money! I washed the lettuce, I picked the raspberries, I weighed the
grapes and ... and ..." I
was told that I would understand better when I got older and with that,
the subject was closed. Every summer for the next five years, my parents and I visited the Lulliers at their house in Garche. Each time I returned, my French had improved until finally, Yvonne and I were able to converse a little, and I became an increasingly capable helper. It was no longer of any concern to me whether or not Yvonne received a tip or how big that tip might be. I loved Yvonne's kitchen. I loved her long, graceful hands with their shell-like nails. I loved the way she made me feel, competent and capable of successfully completing any task she might give me. One
evening, shortly after my twelfth birthday, my father came into my room.
He was crying. He told me Monsieur Lullier, his mentor, had died, quite
unexpectedly, from a virulent infection caused by an old war wound.
Of course, I instantly conjured up the ominous left cheek.
That
summer I was packed off to camp, and my parents went without me to visit
the widowed Madame Lullier. Yvonne
was still with her, my mother reported, because with her husband's
passing, Madame Lullier had turned quite frail and sickly, and Yvonne
couldn't bring herself to abandon her charge. Yvonne had moved from the
attic down to the second floor into a small room adjoining Madame's to
be closer to the old woman and better able to nurse her. Germain,
the butcher, had turned fifty-six that year, and had finally tired of
courting his indecisive Yvonne. He married Anne-Marie Gauthier, the
baker's daughter, and they were awaiting the birth of their first child.
Three
years later, after a long and troubling illness, Madame Lullier passed
away. My parents told me that when the notary read the will, people in
the town were surprised to learn that the house at Garche and all its
contents, as well as the parcel of land on which the house stood, had
been left to Yvonne, free and clear of taxes or legal entanglements of
any kind. I
can still see the bright, fragrant kitchen at Garche with Yvonne,
standing in front of the beautiful old scale, or picking tomatoes in the
garden with Antoine at her heels, or stirring pots in front of the stove
with her wire whisks and wooden spoons. It
was then I decided that perhaps justice isn't always blind. The house at
Garche and its Yvonne belonged together. It seemed only right that they
remain that way. And I couldn’t imagine a finer way to tip the maid.
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Author's Biography Dratt’s
fiction, essays and memoir have been published in over forty literary
journals, anthologies and magazines.
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Essay
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