Page 27 of Vianne

It’s Sunday today, and Louis has gone to visit the grave of Edmond Rostand.

On any usual Sunday I might have gone to see Guy and Mahmed; but this time I went the other way, and walked up the many flights of steps to the summit of the Butte, where the Good Mother looks over the bay with clear and golden compassion.

Both Margot’s cookery book and the baby book have references to the Bonne Mère, though these are often interspersed with references to Isis, or Venus, or Ceres, or Ixcocolatl.

Mothers are holy everywhere. Mothers have the power.

I left my mother’s Tarot cards in the place where I found the toy rabbit.

The rabbit was gone, and the church was alive with colour, and motes, and sudden shadows, and whisperings.

The light here is always magical; dappled with reflections.

It looks like a summer carnival, tumbling with confetti.

I think to myself that perhaps someone will find her cards and use them.

Someone lost – a child maybe – someone who has lost their way.

There is a box of candles at the foot of the Virgin’s statue.

They are marked at one franc each, with a small wooden box on the wall for the coins.

I light one for my mother; one for Margot; one for myself.

As I place them on the stand, I notice a section of the wall given over to gratitudes.

Silver charms and written notes pinned to the stone in their hundreds; every one an answered prayer; every one a story.

I find myself looking more closely at some of the little offerings.

Some of the papers are faded with time; others are still legible.

Thank you for saving my father; my child .

Thank you for saving my husband. Thank you for easing my mother’s pain: she is with the angels now.

Mother, ease my broken heart: for I too have lost a son.

That last one resonates, somehow. The note is unsigned, like the others, and yet the handwriting could be Margot’s.

I too have lost a son . I try to imagine losing Anouk.

Already, the loss is unthinkable. Like Margot, for whom Edmond was fully formed in her mind from the start, my little Anouk has become more real than anything in the real world.

I know what she looks like; I know when she smiles.

I have seen her at six years old; I see her now at twelve; at nineteen.

To lose her now would be to lose every future version of the person my daughter will become.

And yet, she is a stranger. To the world, to herself, to me.

How strange, that my little stranger should occupy such a large part of me, when she is still so very small.

I understand how Margot felt. Why she delayed seeking treatment.

How she wanted to give her child the best chance of survival, even at the cost of her life.

And I know that in her place, I would have done the exact same thing.

I remember my mother in her last days. She was so frightened of losing me.

She talked about it all the time, forgetting that I was an adult now, remembering me as a baby.

A child can be lost so easily. They’re so young, so trusting.

Easy, to take a child from a pram, or a car, while her mother has turned away.

Easy to take her memories, to make her believe she was yours from the start.

I had to remind her: ‘I’m not a child. I won’t leave you, ever again.’

Of course, she was strange in those final weeks.

She spoke a lot of nonsense. The Man in Black was always close, and even in her delirium, the pain overwhelmed the opiates she was taking.

I spent what time with her I could, but I was working to feed us both and to pay for the motel room we shared in the cheapest part of Brooklyn.

Every morning she would say: Promise you’ll come back, Vianne , clinging to my sleeve like a child, her body like an armful of birds.

Promise you won’t run away, Vianne , even though it was thirteen years since I’d run away, even though I barely remembered why I’d run in the first place.

Something to do with Molfetta, perhaps. Something to do with that rabbit.

The rabbit and the Man in Black; that perpetual mystery.

The unsolved equation which has dogged every part of my journey.

I turn to go. My prayer is done. I feel somehow lighter, free in my heart.

My mother will always be with me, but she no longer determines my path.

I do not need to read her cards to know where I am heading.

The wind has grown stronger since I was here.

The walk down the Butte feels like flying.

I think about that little prayer pinned to the wall on the Virgin’s shrine.

Mother, ease my broken heart. And I know what I will cook tonight; what I will serve tomorrow.

Clafoutis pour mon petit Edmond : a dish for the broken-hearted.