Invitation to Provence(34)
“There you are, Shao Lan,” said the man from the travel agency, smiling. “All ready to go?”
Shao Lan just gripped her flowers tighter until a nurse in a crisp white uniform removed them from her cramped fingers. “I’ll put those in a vase for your grandmother to see when she wakes,” she said. “And now you must say good-bye. It’s time you were off to catch that flight to Paris, you lucky girl.”
Lucky, Shao Lan thought, and she bent over to kiss her grandmother good-bye. I wish it were the nurse who was lucky. I don’t want to go to France. I don’t want to be with those strangers who call themselves my family. I don’t want to leave grandmother.
But, “Good-bye, Grandmother,” she whispered obediently, letting her hand be taken by the man from the travel agency.
She sat silently next to him on the drive to the airport, staring terrified at the great planes swooping overhead. She had never seen a plane before except as a dot in the sky. The man parked the car, then took her bag and her hand and walked her into the departure area. At the check-in desk he hung a laminated plastic card on a black cord around her neck with her name and destination written on it in big black letters.
“There,” he said jovially, trying to cheer her up, “now everybody will know you’re Shao Lan and that you’re going to Paris.”
They walked to the departure lounge and he looked uncertainly at her frozen face. She had not said one word, not looked at him in all this time. “Wait here,” he said, hurrying into the gift shop.
He came out a few minutes later carrying a bag. “This is for you, Shao Lan,” he said, “enjoy your vacation.” Then he handed her over to a woman in a blue uniform, and, his responsibility over, with a sigh of relief he turned and hurried away.
Shao Lan was left on a seat near the departure gate by the uniformed attendant who was now in charge of her and told not to move until she came back. Although she wanted very much to go to the bathroom, Shao Lan held her breath and her bladder and looked around her. People hurried past but nobody looked at her. Feeling very alone, she opened the bag from the travel agent. A rare smile curved the corners of her mouth as she took out the soft white woolly lamb. It was the kind of toy you bought for babies, but Shao Lan had never been “a baby,” and she had never had toys.
She held the lamb to her face, feeling its softness, smelling its newness, touching the blue ribbon around its neck, smiling into its vacant blue eyes. “I’ll call you Baby and I’ll never leave you,” she whispered. She planted a kiss on the woolly lamb’s pink nose and hoped the woman would come back soon because she really had to go.
25
JAKE WAS AT HIS cabin in the mountains. He’d been trying for some time to get Dirty Harry into the horse box, but the horse wasn’t having it. He reared and kicked out at Criminal, who was acting like a sheepdog, slinking behind the horse, nipping at his heels, trying to herd him into the box.
Jake sat on the fence, loose and relaxed, a blade of sweet grass between his teeth, watching the pair of them. It was an old game they played, Dirty Harry being the uppity stallion and Criminal the trusty shepherd. They enjoyed it and in the end the horse would allow himself to be subdued and, hooves clattering, he’d edge meekly into the box. Then, knowing the game was over, Criminal would leap into the cab of the old green pickup, to which Jake had already attached the horse box. He’d wait for Jake to lock the horse in and get into the driver’s seat, then he’d woof importantly, as though saying, “Okay let’s go then,” and they’d drive off.
Of course both animals knew where they were going, back to the stables near town. And of course they didn’t want to go there and they didn’t want to leave Jake, but they had learned to take the good with the bad.
Criminal’s mission finally accomplished, Jake slid off the fence, checked the horse, locked its box and got in the driver’s seat. The dog leaned his head out of the window, ears flapping in the breeze, scanning the woods for wildlife as they descended the winding route to town.
“This is going to be some party, Criminal,” Jake spoke out loud, sharing his thoughts the way he always did with his dog. It was one of the perils of living alone, you talked to your animals, but the bonus was they didn’t give you any lip.
“Yes, sir,” he said, glancing out of the corner of his eye at the dog, who eyed him back. “Quite a scene, huh? Rafaella will be back on form again, beautiful and charming and winning all hearts, including mine all over again. Franny Marten will be the odd girl out, my flower child lost amid the splendors of her ancestral home.” He sighed. “Trouble is, boy, I really care about her. Silly, I know, after only one night and all those years alone, but hey, that’s where I’m at. And will she ever speak to me again? I’ll have a hard time explaining myself, but y’know I couldn’t tell her I was just checking her out before letting her loose on Rafaella.
“Then there’s her friend, Clare Marks—well, now, she’s the mystery player in the pack. And Juliette—well, Juliette will be Juliette, loud, raucous, generous, and funny.
“Then of course there’s Haigh, who’ll put us all in our place with a few short, sharp words. Plus the handsome Aussie winemaker—I wonder if Rafaella’s hoping to set her grandniece up with him, keep the winery business in the family. If so, I’ll have to put a stop to that!