First Pages Friday:The Provence Cure for the Brokenhearted
First Pages Fridays offers a taste of an author's book—from ones long on the shelves to those newly launched, because while you can't judge a book by the cover, you can tell plenty from the first pages.
Today's first pages come from The Provence Cure for the Brokenhearted by Bridget Asher, who introduces her piece here thusly (and I love this):
"This novel is dedicated to the reader. For this singular moment, it's just the two of us." That's how the dedication to THE PROVENCE CURE FOR THE BROKENHEARTED reads.
Let me confess this: I love the reader.
In fact, let me address the reader directly here.
Dear reader! I think of you so much more often than you think of me! This is a lopsided romance and probably borderline unhealthy. I imagine you reading my novels on subway cars, in kitchens, on beaches, in bed. I imagine the light over your shoulder. I imagine your cats. I imagine that sometimes you dog-ear a page you love. I imagine you tell your friends about me over drinks. And sometimes I imagine you shut the book, disappointed in me.
Should I – as an artiste – consider you so deeply? Shouldn't I be above the concerns of how my books are received? Shouldn't I focus completely on my singular creative vision? Should I allow myself to imagine that you, reader, sometimes imagine me – writing away in some nook-ish office, typing feverishly, pacing, gazing out windows onto stretches of vineyards? (My office doesn't look out on vineyards, but you don't know that.)
Maybe I shouldn't.
But I do.
In fact, let me warn you. Beware of me. I want too much. I want to linger in your mind. I want to burrow into your heart. I get jealous when you're laughing aloud reading someone else. "Who's that?" I ask. "What's so funny?" I pout. I suffer. I want you back.
(Dear Critic, I also think of you more often than you think of me, but it's a different kind of thinking …)
So, (Randy speaking here,) let's also add a few words from the critics:
Fans of UNDER THE TUSCAN SUN will adore this impossibly romantic read."
– People magazine
"Readers who enjoy widow lit like Lolly Winston'sGood Grief and Jane Green's The Beach House or travel-induced transformation books like Frances Mayes's Under the Tuscan Sun and Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat, Pray, Love will find common themes … and become quickly invested in the lives of the deftly drawn characters."
– Library Journal
The Provence Cure for the Brokenhearted
A Novel by Bridget Asher
Here is one way to say it: Grief is a love story told backwards.
Or maybe that's not it at all. Maybe I should be more scientific. Love and the loss of that love exist in equal measure. Hasn't an equation like this been invented by a romantic physicist somewhere?
Or maybe I should put it this way. Imagine a snow globe. Imagine a tiny snow-struck house inside of it. Imagine there's a woman inside of that tiny house sitting on the edge of her bed, shaking a snow globe, and within that snow globe, there is a tiny snow-struck house with a woman inside of it, and this one is standing in the kitchen, shaking another snow globe and within that snow globe …
Every good love story has another love hiding within it.
***
Ever since Henry's death, I kept losing things.
I lost keys, sunglasses, checkbooks. I lost a spatula and found it in the freezer, along with a bag of grated cheese.
I lost a note to Abbot's third-grade teacher explaining how I'd lost his homework.
I lost the caps to toothpaste and jelly jars. I put these things away, open-mouthed, lidless, airing. I lost hairbrushes and shoes – not just one of a pair, but both.
I left jackets behind in restaurants, my pocketbook under my seat at the movies, my keys on the checkout counter of the drugstore. Afterward, I sat in my car for a moment, disoriented, trying to place exactly what was wrong and then trudged back into the store where the check-out girl jingled them for me above her head.
I got calls from people who were kind enough to return things. And when things were gone – just gone – I retraced my steps and then got lost myself. Why am I here at this mini mart? Why am I back at the deli counter?
I lost track of friends. They had babies, defended dissertations, had art showings and dinner parties and backyard barbeques …
Most of all, I lost track of large swathes of time. Kids at Abbot's bus stop and in the neighborhood and in his class and on his baseball team kept inching taller all around me. Abbot kept growing, too. That was the hardest to take.
I also lost track of small pieces of time – late mornings, evenings. Sometimes I would look up and it was suddenly dark outside as if someone had flipped a switch.
So it shouldn't have come as a surprise to me that Abbott and I were running late for my sister's pre-wedding bridesmaid bonding. We had spent the morning playing Apples to Apples, interrupted by phone calls from the Cake Shop – which Henry and I had opened together shortly before Abbot was born and I was still in charge of in my distracted way. Abbot and I ate freezer pops, the kind that come in vivid colors packaged in plastic tubes that you have to snip with scissors and that sometimes make you cough. Even this detail is pained. Abbot and I had been reduced to eating frozen juice in plastic. I'd grown up making delicate pastries, thinking of food as a kind of art, but Henry was the one who convinced me that food is love. We'd met during culinary school and he'd always cooked our meals. I was now kitchen-avoidant. The fact of the matter was that life charged on without me. This realization caught me off guard even almost two years later, although by this point it had become a habit – a simple unavoidable fact: the world charged on and I did not.
When I realized that the day had gotten away from us and it was now after noon, I shouted, "What time is it?"
And he said, "Auntie Elysius is going to be so mad!"
We then started darting around our little three-bedroom bungalow madly. I found one of my heels in the closet and, after running through the house quickly, found the other in Abbot's bedroom in a big tub of Legos. Abbot was yanking on his rented tux – more wrestling than dressing. He struggled with the tiny cuff buttons and was searching for the clip-on tie and cummerbund – he'd chosen red because it was the color that Henry had worn at our wedding. I wasn't sure that was healthy, but didn't want to draw attention to it.
I threw on some make-up and slipped the bridesmaid's dress over my head. I have to say that the dress wasn't your typical bridesmaid's horror show — my sister had exquisite taste and this was the most expensive dress I'd ever worn, including my own wedding dress. In my rush, I couldn't get the last two inches of the zipper and abandoned the effort…
Julianna Baggott is the author of seventeen books, most recently THE PROVENCE CURE FOR THE BROKENHEARTED under her pen name Bridget Asher, as well as THE PRETEND WIFE and MY HUSBAND'S SWEETHEARTS. She's the bestselling author of GIRL TALK and, as N.E. Bode, THE ANYBODIES TRILOGY for younger readers. Her essays have appeared widely in such publications as The New York Times Modern Love column, Washington Post, NPR.org, and Real Simple. You can visit her blog athttp://bridgetasher.blogspot.com/ and her website at www.juliannabaggott.com.
