Saturday, August 9

This afternoon it was too windy to draw outside and I sat looking through the window and thinking of the Painted Lady butterflies we hatched in Mr Lock's grade one classroom. What if they had been released here when they were too young for their wings to be strong? Would the wind have blown them all to pieces? I know that there are dangers here just as there were dangers for butterflies not ready to be free back home in Saskatoon. For example, I know that there are a lot of birds here, even though most of them are so secretive you hardly see them. Cuckoos. Sparrows. Magpies.

Seagulls, near the water at Cassis, are not so mysterious. Seagulls would have eaten up the butterflies in broad daylight if the butterflies had been released at Cassis.

When I think of butterflies I think of Adelaide, walking down to the sea in her butterfly nightgown. I was sitting on a bench in the shade of a big horse-chestnut tree in the middle of the town. I had been shopping and I was supposed to meet my mother and Alan Phoenix there at three o'clock. The street was busy and I kept seeing well-dressed women with shopping bags coming in and out of stores, and families with children clutching dripping ice creams, and men and women holding hands and kissing on the lips right there in the street. When two women met each other, they'd run up close and kiss each other on both cheeks. When two men met each other, they would do the same thing. I do not think this tradition is reserved for gay men; I think all men in France do this kissing.

There was a fruit stand and melons and peaches and other things were laid out for people to see and touch. People were tossing things into the air, and swinging bags of food, and reaching around each other to find what they wanted. I wondered if there were blueberries there but I didn't want to get lost in the busyness of the place. Everywhere things were moving fast. It made me dizzy.

And then the old woman appeared at the top of the street, walking down toward the sea. She was moving so slowly that I saw her right away amidst the fast pace of everyone else. I kept looking at her because it was easy on my eyes. One foot and then the other, shuffling forward—an old, old woman wearing a nightgown printed with butterflies. She wasn't carrying a purse and she wasn't wearing a hat. In this heat you are supposed to wear a hat. She was walking as if she wasn't used to it, as if she were a butterfly whose wings didn't work.

I stood up and followed her. I wanted to go up and tell her to put on a hat, but she didn't have a purse and I did not want to buy her a hat even though she should be wearing one. At the bottom of the street she turned left, toward the beach, and I kept following in spite of the fact that I do not like the beach.

The sand was gravelly and made crunching noises under my feet. People were lying on towels and sunbathing even though it causes cancer. They were lying so close together that it was difficult to walk between them, but the old woman found her way, and so did I. Some of the women didn't have any tops on and their private parts stuck out. I do not know if these were French women or tourists and I do not care. They would have looked better in tops no matter where they were from.

When the old woman got to the edge of the water, she kept going. The ocean got deep right away and the old woman's head went under the water.

I took the last few steps at a run and jumped in after her, even though I don't like water, especially water that has other people without tops in it and all kinds of fish and seaweed. I grabbed her around the middle and pulled her back to where she could stand up, my own feet slipping on the shifting sand. We stood there close to each other and I let go of her middle.

"Comment vous appelez-vous?" I asked.

"I don't speak French," she sputtered, water coming out of her mouth and falling down through the wrinkles. "Just English. I didn't know it would be so deep here. A hot day and people should be in water, but not over their heads."

"No," I said. "And they should have hats on."

She looked around. I don't know what she was looking at.

"And bathing suits," I said. She did not answer. I stepped back, out of the water and onto the shore, and she stumbled after me, clutching at my arm.

"What is your name?" I asked for the second time.

"Adelaide."

That is the part I forgot when I wanted to call the hospitals.

"I'm Taylor Jane Simon and my family and I are staying at the Le Colombier villa, near Lourmarin," I said. "Where do you live?"

The woman kept turning and looking all around and then she put her hand up to her heart.

"Hurts," she said, and grabbed onto me with her other hand.

A man nearby stood up and came over to us.

"Ça va bien?"

"I think she might be sick," I said, standing very still. He pulled a cell phone from his pocket and called a number. Two other people came over to us, and between them they got the old woman to lie down on one of the towels.

Soon an ambulance pulled into the street by the beach. The attendants brought a stretcher down to where we were and they lifted the woman onto it.

"What is her name?" they asked, but I had already forgotten it.

"What is your name?" they asked me. I wrote my name on a piece of paper, along with the name of where we are staying.

I wonder why Adelaide lives in France if she can't speak French. I also wonder what next Friday's aperitifs are going to be. I have looked up that word in the dictionary and it means alcoholic drinks or appetizers. If Adelaide's daughter serves pigeon eggs, I do not want to eat them. I have seen the pigeons here eating their own droppings. This could be a sign of a mineral deficiency or maybe they just don't know any better.