Page 285 - And the Mountains Echoed (novel)

Baba smiled on, the way he did when Hector came by the week before to see

him, the way he did when I showed him my application to the College of Arts
and Humanities at San Francisco State.
Your niece, Isabelle, and her husband, Albert, have a vacation home in
Provence, near a town called Les Baux. I looked it up online, Baba. It’s an
amazing-looking town. It’s built on these limestone peaks up in the Alpilles
Mountains. You can visit the ruins of an old medieval castle up there and look
out on the plains and the orchards. I’ll take lots of pictures and show you when I
get back.
Nearby, an old woman in a bathrobe complacently slid around the pieces of a
jigsaw puzzle. At the next table, another woman with fluffy white hair was
trying to arrange forks and spoons and butter knives in a silverware drawer. On

the big-screen TV over in the corner, Ricky and Lucy were arguing, their wrists
locked together by a pair of handcuffs.
Baba said, Aaaah!
Alain, that’s your nephew, and his wife, Ana, are coming over from Spain
with all five of their kids. I don’t know all their names, but I’m sure I’ll learn
them. And then—and this is the part that makes Pari really happy—your other
nephew—her youngest, Thierry—is coming too. She hasn’t seen him in years.
They haven’t spoken. But he’s taking his R & R from his job in Africa and he’s

flying over. So it’s going to be a big family reunion.
I kissed his cheek again later when I rose to leave. I lingered with my face
against his, remembering how he used to pick me up from kindergarten and
drive us to Denny’s to pick up Mother from work. We would sit at a booth,
waiting for Mother to sign out, and I would eat the scoop of ice cream the
manager always gave me and I would show Baba the drawings I had made that
day. How patiently he gazed at each of them, glowering in careful study,
nodding.
Baba smiled his smile.

Ah. I almost forgot.
I stooped down and performed our customary farewell ritual, running my
fingertips from his cheeks up to his creased forehead and his temples, over his
gray, thinning hair and the scabs of his roughened scalp to behind the ears,
plucking along the way all the bad dreams from his head. I opened the invisible
sack for him, dropped the nightmares into it, and pulled the drawstrings tight.

There.
Baba made a guttural sound.
Happy dreams, Baba. I’ll see you in two weeks. It occurred to me that we had