Page 168 - And the Mountains Echoed (novel)

the pine forest. They eat porcella, and a wonderful sea bass dish called lubina,

and an eggplant and zucchini stew called tumbet. Thierry refuses to eat any of it,
and at every restaurant Pari has to ask the chef to make him a plate of spaghetti
with plain tomato sauce, no meat, no cheese. At Isabelle’s request—she has
recently discovered opera—one night they attend a production of Giacomo
Puccini’s Tosca. To survive the ordeal, Collette and Pari surreptitiously pass
each other a silver flask of cheap vodka. By the middle of act two, they are
sloshed, and can’t help giggling like schoolgirls at the histrionics of the actor
playing Scarpia.
One day, Pari, Collette, Isabelle, and Thierry pack a lunch and go to the
beach; Didier, Alain, and Eric had left in the morning for a hike along Sóller
Bay. On the way to the beach, they visit a shop to buy Isabelle a bathing suit that
has caught her eye. As they walk into the shop, Pari catches a glimpse of her
reflection in the plate glass. Normally, especially of late, when she steps in front
of a mirror an automatic mental process kicks into gear that prepares her to greet

her older self. It buffers her, dulls the shock. But in the shopwindow, she has
caught herself off guard, vulnerable to reality undistorted by self-delusion. She
sees a middle-aged woman in a drab floppy blouse and a beach skirt that doesn’t
conceal quite enough of the saggy folds of skin over her kneecaps. The sun picks
out the gray in her hair. And despite the eyeliner, and the lipstick that defines her
lips, she has a face now that a passerby’s gaze will engage and then bounce
from, as it would a street sign or a mailbox number. The moment is brief, barely
enough for a flutter of the pulse but long enough for her illusory self to catch up
with the reality of the woman gazing back from the shopwindow. It is a little
devastating. This is what aging is, she thinks as she follows Isabelle into the
store, these random unkind moments that catch you when you least expect them.

Later, when they return from the beach to the rental house, they find that the
men have already returned.
“Papa’s getting old,” Alain says.
From behind the bar, Eric, who is mixing a carafe of sangria, rolls his eyes
and shrugs genially.
“I thought I’d have to carry you, Papa.”

“Give me one year. We’ll come back next year, and I’ll race you around the
island, mon pote.”
They never do come back to Majorca. A week after they return to Paris, Eric
has a heart attack. It happens while he is at work, speaking to a lighting
stagehand. He survives it, but he will suffer two more over the course of the next
three years, the last of which will prove fatal. And so at the age of forty-eight