The White Bicycle Read online

  open the door, I do look at it—I can't help it. Then I sneeze.

  "A vos souhaits," says the man.

  "Merci," I say. "Parlez-vous anglais?"

  "A small bit," says the man. "I have package for Taylor Jane Simon. Is she in the house?"

  "That is me," I say.

  "Sign on the ending," says the man, holding out a clipboard on which is fastened a piece of paper. There are many different colors of ink on the paper, and some things that I think are called logos.

  "Where did this come from?" I ask.

  "J'ne sais pas," says the man. "Sign on the ending. Your name. On the line."

  "But what is inside?" I say.

  "Open and see," he answers. "Ouvrez." He gets back into the van and I try not to look at the vehicle, but I do look and then I sneeze again.

  I put the big envelope on the table. There could be good news inside, but there could be bad news. Or it could be a mistake and something not meant for me at all. Or someone mailing a poisonous substance—I've heard about people doing that. Part of me wants to open the envelope and part of me doesn't want to open it. I can hear the dogs barking together all down the lane.

  The envelope is covered with French writing. I don't know anyone in France. Who could have sent me this? I move the envelope from the table to the buffet and from the buffet to the coffee table, where I put a pile of art books on top of it. Then I go and wash my hands. This is not part of my ocd, it is just being smart because of the germs that could be inside that mail truck with all the fingerprints it has collected during all the time it has been in operation.

  The Mysterious Envelope

  It is the same day as before and I have been sitting in my room and thinking about the envelope. I still can't decide what to do. My eyes burn. I am tired today because I woke up last night and could not get back to sleep. I kept thinking of all the French words I had learned and then of all the English words I wished I knew in French, and then I repeated an hour of English-only vocabulary in a French accent. This got me very awake. I opened my bedroom window as well as the wooden shutters that we close at night and leaned out to breathe the smell that is lavender from the fields nearby. I could see the yard from the light that we leave on atop the garage, and bright bats flitted back and forth. I could see the tops of the Luberon mountains against the sky, and then stars. The Big Dipper was facing me, with its handle to the left, and sometimes it looked as if the bats were being tipped out of it.

  I knew that someone else in the house wasn't sleeping either, because somewhere in the house a radio was broadcasting the Nostalgique station that plays both French and English songs. We hear it driving in the car because it is Alan Phoenix's favorite; Martin Phoenix calls it Nostril Cheese, I don't know why. As I watched the bats, someone on the radio was singing, "I don't know how I could have dreamed a night like this," which I thought was very appropriate.

  Now I can hear the rooster screaming from somewhere down the lane and, every now and then, a cuckoo. I count the repetitions of the cuckoo's call, and it is seven. I count the repeated units in the next call. Seven. And in the call after that: seven. I wonder if the cuckoo has ocd.

  As long as I do not open the envelope, nothing has changed. Once I open the envelope, any number of things could change. Maybe it's better not to open it.

  Beginning With a Dream and Ending With a Letter

  After thinking about the envelope for a very long time this afternoon, I must have slept for a while. I dreamed I was in the woods carrying the white bicycle. The dream was almost exactly how it had happened in real life. In the dream I was following the red-and-white trail, marked with stripes of paint on the trees, and it led me into the forest on a path that went from gravel to dirt. There were tree roots and rocks that made the path difficult so I began to carry the white bicycle. The path descended through an old stream bed and then up and around huge tree roots that I struggled to navigate. Rocks were strewn along the way, and I kept stumbling, but going forward. This part of the dream was just like how it happened when I went into the woods for the first time with the white bicycle.

  In this dream, though, I kept hearing my mother calling me. This isn't what happened in real life but could very well have happened—because, wherever I go, my mother is always demanding that I do this, don't do that, do this, don't do that. In fact, my mother is a pest. In my dream, when she called me, I tried to escape from her by heading deeper and deeper into the woods.

  Heat from the sun fell through the thin leaves of the olive trees and my skin hurt. The cicadas were singing their electric song. Off to the left, I passed an older couple, one of them sitting on a fallen log in the shade, the other standing in a ray of light. Now my dream was back to how it really happened when I was in the woods that first time.

  "Bonjour," I said. The one standing nodded.

  "Bonjour."

  They seem to be waiting for someone, I thought, but I knew they weren't waiting for Godot like the people in Samuel Beckett's play. Sometimes, I feel like I am waiting like that and I don't know what I'm waiting for, and it's not a nice feeling. It's a panicky feeling. It's a feeling that makes me want to swear and clean things, just like I'm trying not to do.

  After I said hello to the people, I carried the white bicycle past them and kept going forward into the woods, and the path grew more and more difficult. Scaling a sharp ridge I fell and scraped my shin, and then finally I came to a stop.

  Go back. That was the best choice. I toiled through the white haze that clouded my vision and started back, sweat dripping down the back of my neck. This time the couple were both in the shade, one still on the log, the other stretched out on the ground. I took a deep breath and the haze cleared.

  "Bonjour," I said, my voice cracking. "Bonjour," I repeated.

  They did not answer in the dream, just as they had not answered me in real life. I felt them looking at me, judging me, just like most of the other kids judged me when I was little. I wished I could climb out of my skin and be somewhere else. The heat was terrible, and in the end I wasn't sure I was on the same path as before. Even the stream bed, once I came to it, looked different. But I emerged from the forest and put the white bicycle down on the gravel road, slipped onto the seat, and put my feet to the pedals. Soon the wind was at my back and I skimmed along home, lost, and then found. C'est la vie; such is life.

  Life is not a dream, but it can be the substance of dreams. And life can inspire dreams when you are awake as well as when you are asleep. In my sleep I dream of entering the forest with the white bicycle, but when I am awake I dream of other things. Self-understanding. Independence. I wonder how my dreams might be connected.

  I slept until my mother came home. The first thing I saw when I opened my eyes was my mother looking at me. She wanted to see if I was awake and now I am. My mother is a pest— and she needs to learn that when somebody is sleeping, she should leave that person alone. Just because she is awake doesn't mean everybody has to be awake. We can all have our own perspectives.

  It's strange how people can wake each other up by staring at them. I wonder about that sometimes. Eyes have a kind of power that I don't like. Looking at people's eyes makes me very uncomfortable, so I don't do it—except for sometimes when I remember that it is polite to make eye contact with a person when they are speaking. Mostly, I just look at people's eyebrows.

  In addition to checking whether I was awake, my mother wanted to tell me all about going to the grocery store to look for cornstarch and how nothing was labelled clearly in France. I had to follow her down to the kitchen where she showed me the package. It was called "farine de maïs," and it did not have the picture of a rooster on it like we do in Canada. The French way makes sense—why would you have a rooster on a box of cornstarch? She also wanted to show me a bottle of wine.

  "It's a sweet Bordeaux," she said, "and it only cost three euros! Imagine that!"

  "I don't have to imagine it," I said. "I can see it right here."

 
The next thing I saw, after I saw the package of cornstarch and the bottle of wine, was the place where I had hidden the envelope. When my mother went out to the car to bring in more groceries, I went into the living room and pulled the envelope out from under the pile of art books. Still feeling the energy of riding the white bicycle in my dream, I tore open the sides of the envelope and pulled out the contents: a single sheet of white paper with delicate illustrations of lavender along the top.

  Chère Mademoiselle Simon,

  Merci d'avoir sauvé ma mère. Adelaide est à la maison aujourd'hui, et elle va aussi bien que possible, étant donné son âge et les circonstances.

  Vous nous feriez plaisir en venant prendre l'apéritif ce vendredi, 15 ao ût, à 17h.

  Meilleures salutations,

  Francine Oberge

  I studied the letter for six minutes and then I got out my laptop to help translate the words I was not sure of. When I was finished, this was what it said:

  Dear Miss Simon,

  Thank you for saving my mother. Adelaide is home now and as well as can be expected, given her age and the circumstances.

  You would give us pleasure by coming to have aperitifs on Friday August 15 at 5 pm.

  Best greetings,

  Francine Oberge

  I remember now: Adelaide is the name of the old, old woman at Cassis. I am glad to know she did not die and that she is back from the hospital. I will tell my mother to put Friday, August 15, 5 pm, on the calendar but I will not tell her now when she is banging around the kitchen. My mother seems to be in one of those moods she gets when she has pms or menopause or both.

  I wonder what temperature it is in the Oberge house and whether they have figs. I also wonder what aperitifs are. Are they supper? I hope they are not pigeon eggs.

  Over the last few weeks, my mother has broken five wine glasses, and just now she broke a sixth. Perhaps she's the real Freaker, but I prefer to call people by their official names. My mother's full name is Penelope Simon and her initials are

  P.S. which may be why she always tries to have the last word in a conversation.

  Learning to Draw

  Sometimes I draw with the pencils Alan Phoenix has left with paper for Martin Phoenix and me to use. This afternoon I sat outside on a big rock, with one of the larger sheets of paper on an easel that was in one of the closets here, and I copied the scene in the painting that is on the wall of the villa. I wish I could stand where the artist stood, so I could do the drawing from real life instead of just copying someone else's work.

  When Alan Phoenix saw my drawing he looked at it for a long time, rubbing the hair on the back of his head until it stuck up in wispy bunches.

  "This is very good," he told me. "You should save it in your portfolio."

  "I do not have a portfolio," I said. "What is that?"

  "A collection of all your artwork. Start saving things, and I'll show some of them to Madame Colombe if you like."

  "Why would your artist friend want to see my drawings?" I asked.

  "She might have some advice for you," said Alan Phoenix. "For example, I suggest you keep working on these landscapes—and pay attention to the proportion of the things you are seeing. The buildings, for example. Are they really this size in comparison to each other? Learn to look."

  "I don't know where to look," I said.

  "Draw something around you," he advised. "And really look at it when you draw it. People need to learn to really look at things in order to draw them properly." I wonder if he really means that or if he means that people need to learn to see. I am looking and looking but it seems as if what I see is the variable in question.

  Saturday, August 9

  This afternoon it was too windy to draw outside and I sat looking through the window and thinking of the Painted Lady butterflies we hatched in Mr Lock's grade one classroom. What if they had been released here when they were too young for their wings to be strong? Would the wind have blown them all to pieces? I know that there are dangers here just as there were dangers for butterflies not ready to be free back home in Saskatoon. For example, I know that there are a lot of birds here, even though most of them are so secretive you hardly see them. Cuckoos. Sparrows. Magpies.

  Seagulls, near the water at Cassis, are not so mysterious. Seagulls would have eaten up the butterflies in broad daylight if the butterflies had been released at Cassis.

  When I think of butterflies I think of Adelaide, walking down to the sea in her butterfly nightgown. I was sitting on a bench in the shade of a big horse-chestnut tree in the middle of the town. I had been shopping and I was supposed to meet my mother and Alan Phoenix there at three o'clock. The street was busy and I kept seeing well-dressed women with shopping bags coming in and out of stores, and families with children clutching dripping ice creams, and men and women holding hands and kissing on the lips right there in the street. When two women met each other, they'd run up close and kiss each other on both cheeks. When two men met each other, they would do the same thing. I do not think this tradition is reserved for gay men; I think all men in France do this kissing.

  There was a fruit stand and melons and peaches and other things were laid out for people to see and touch. People were tossing things into the air, and swinging bags of food, and reaching around each other to find what they wanted. I wondered if there were blueberries there but I didn't want to get lost in the busyness of the place. Everywhere things were moving fast. It made me dizzy.

  And then the old woman appeared at the top of the street, walking down toward the sea. She was moving so slowly that I saw her right away amidst the fast pace of everyone else. I kept looking at her because it was easy on my eyes. One foot and then the other, shuffling forward—an old, old woman wearing a nightgown printed with butterflies. She wasn't carrying a purse and she wasn't wearing a hat. In this heat you are supposed to wear a hat. She was walking as if she wasn't used to it, as if she were a butterfly whose wings didn't work.

  I stood up and followed her. I wanted to go up and tell her to put on a hat, but she didn't have a purse and I did not want to buy her a hat even though she should be wearing one. At the bottom of the street she turned left, toward the beach, and I kept following in spite of the fact that I do not like the beach.

  The sand was gravelly and made crunching noises under my feet. People were lying on towels and sunbathing even though it causes cancer. They were lying so close together that it was difficult to walk between them, but the old woman found her way, and so did I. Some of the women didn't have any tops on and their private parts stuck out. I do not know if these were French women or tourists and I do not care. They would have looked better in tops no matter where they were from.

  When the old woman got to the edge of the water, she kept going. The ocean got deep right away and the old woman's head went under the water.

  I took the last few steps at a run and jumped in after her, even though I don't like water, especially water that has other people without tops in it and all kinds of fish and seaweed. I grabbed her around the middle and pulled her back to where she could stand up, my own feet slipping on the shifting sand. We stood there close to each other and I let go of her middle.

  "Comment vous appelez-vous?" I asked.

  "I don't speak French," she sputtered, water coming out of her mouth and falling down through the wrinkles. "Just English. I didn't know it would be so deep here. A hot day and people should be in water, but not over their heads."

  "No," I said. "And they should have hats on."

  She looked around. I don't know what she was looking at.

  "And bathing suits," I said. She did not answer. I stepped back, out of the water and onto the shore, and she stumbled after me, clutching at my arm.

  "What is your name?" I asked for the second time.

  "Adelaide."

  That is the part I forgot when I wanted to call the hospitals.

  "I'm Taylor Jane Simon and my family and I are staying at the Le Colombier villa, near
Lourmarin," I said. "Where do you live?"

  The woman kept turning and looking all around and then she put her hand up to her heart.

  "Hurts," she said, and grabbed onto me with her other hand.

  A man nearby stood up and came over to us.

  "Ça va bien?"

  "I think she might be sick," I said, standing very still. He pulled a cell phone from his pocket and called a number. Two other people came over to us, and between them they got the old woman to lie down on one of the towels.

  Soon an ambulance pulled into the street by the beach. The attendants brought a stretcher down to where we were and they lifted the woman onto it.

  "What is her name?" they asked, but I had already forgotten it.

  "What is your name?" they asked me. I wrote my name on a piece of paper, along with the name of where we are staying.

  I wonder why Adelaide lives in France if she can't speak French. I also wonder what next Friday's aperitifs are going to be. I have looked up that word in the dictionary and it means alcoholic drinks or appetizers. If Adelaide's daughter serves pigeon eggs, I do not want to eat them. I have seen the pigeons here eating their own droppings. This could be a sign of a mineral deficiency or maybe they just don't know any better.

  My Invitation to Adelaide's House

  "I'm not driving you to Cassis and that's final," my mother says. It is Saturday evening and I have just told her about the letter.

  "But I have been invited!" I say, and my voice is already in the red zone.

  "Never mind. You can give that woman a phone call to ask about her mother, but we are not going there."

  I feel a meltdown rising, along with my temperature.

  "Why not?"

  My mother answers but I can't tell what she is saying. The way her head is shaking makes me know she hasn't put an answer into the air after my question. I try to put the anger I'm feeling into the soles of my feet, but it's not working—the anger is too big to fit there.