“That sounds just lovely.” I sighed and put away the theater pamphlets actors had been stuffing in my hand ever since we got off the train. A fiddle-playing hillbilly marionette bowed farewell to me from across the way. “How lucky for me you didn’t think to get tickets.”

Three hours later, in a stifling car driven by a mad Frenchman, we jerked, sped, braked, and swerved through that dry heat from Avignon, past still purple but graying lavender fields, clear green vineyards, olive trees, and truffle-producing oak fields. The mad Frenchman was Sébastien’s stepfather, Jean-Charles, a man with dark, graying hair and a noticeable nose. Halfway to Chamaret, at the shocking realization that there might not be any good wine for dinner, we swerved into a vineyard to pick up a couple of bottles, naturally with a little dégustation first.

The grandparents’ house was tucked below Chamaret, a sun-gold stone village just up the hill. Rosemary grew in profusion at the gates, and lavender fields stretched out before it. As I still flinch from the memory, I will draw a veil of silence over my traditional Southern attempts to help in the kitchen and the anguished discomfort these produced. Sébastien’s mother, Claudine, kept laughing tensely, and her own mother-in-law, stout-chested Violette, openly growled at the way I cut strawberries. Thin and taut and very young, only fifteen years older than I, with a modish crop of tinted red hair, Claudine seemed exactly what I had expected of a Parisian mother, including the fact that she weighed less than I did and had better muscle tone. When I complimented Claudine on her tone and asked where she worked out, she laughed, pleased. “It’s true I did a little gymnastics when I was in high school. Thirty years ago.” It took a strong love of chocolate not to turn anorexic in this country.

We sat down to the table and its big bowl of salad, rich tomatoes fresh from the garden mounding up over its brim. The scent of them, that tangy, sun-filled scent of real tomatoes picked ripe, was making me salivate; but I knew another ten minutes would go by before I tasted them. The French meal is an art in savoring.

“Why don’t you toss the salad, Laura?” Claudine smiled.

To excuse myself from accusations of gullibility, I can only say that as an American I didn’t at the time automatically check every dish for ways it could be used against me as a weapon. I tried my best, but a couple of those luscious tomatoes spilled over the sides of the bowl and onto the bright yellow Provençal tablecloth. I fished them quickly onto my plate, but nobody looked unhappy about it. In fact, Claudine was grinning at her son. “Pas bon à marier, I guess!”