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Renee Rosch Lewis is a retired attorney and judge who spends considerable time traveling and renting property in Provence. She and her husband summer in the Adirondack Mountains in New York State and winter in Naples, Florida.

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The P. Word

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Contents

CHAPTER ONE The Provence Thing.................................................1CHAPTER TWO The Preparations Begin.............................................7CHAPTER THREE Fine-tuning the Plans to Edith Piaf..............................15CHAPTER FOUR Happy Anniversary.................................................19CHAPTER FIVE And So It Goes....................................................23CHAPTER SIX The Adventure Begins...............................................27CHAPTER SEVEN We're Off........................................................31CHAPTER EIGHT On French Soil...................................................35CHAPTER NINE Meeting La Logeuse................................................43CHAPTER TEN The First Night in Provence........................................47CHAPTER ELEVEN Orientation.....................................................51CHAPTER TWELVE So This Is the Fresh Market.....................................57CHAPTER THIRTEEN Ordinary Life.................................................63CHAPTER FOURTEEN Hitting the Roads.............................................67CHAPTER FIFTEEN The Sightseeing Begins.........................................75CHAPTER SIXTEEN To the Roman Ruins.............................................81CHAPTER SEVENTEEN Some Expert Advice...........................................89CHAPTER EIGHTEEN St. Remy and Les Baux.........................................91CHAPTER NINETEEN Two Inventories...............................................101CHAPTER TWENTY On the Road Again...............................................107CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE A Day of Rest, Almost.......................................115CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO On the Trail of Peter Mayle.................................119CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE Just Regular Living.......................................125CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR Dinner with Cecile, Laurence, and Yuri.....................131CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE The Wind Down and the Wind Up..............................139CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX Back in the Fast Lane.......................................143

Chapter One

Maybe it was dinner at Woody's, maybe it was our impending anniversary, or maybe it was Margaret's ultimatum that weakened my resolve. But the fact is that I finally gave in, with the proviso that I would take the backseat and leave all the planning and details to her.

Although Woody and I lived only three miles from one another and had been friends since high school, we saw each other sparingly-at large cocktail parties, at the drugstore on Sundays to pick up the New York Times, and once or twice a year at each other's home for dinner. As men go, I guess you could say he was my best friend. And for the most part, our wives got along too.

This particular evening, as soon as the car door slammed and we were still waving good-bye after enjoying a chili dinner at Woody's, Margaret sighed, and I knew what was coming. To head her off, I decided to become defensive before we were out of the driveway.

"It's a guy thing," I explained to Margaret. "He talks about fishing in Montana, and I talk about renting a house in Provence."

"But you two have been talking about taking these trips for twenty years," she protested in an exasperated voice. "How can you stand it? Every time we get together, it's always part of the conversation. If you don't find it boring, I do."

Since her early retirement three months prior, she was testier than usual. Maybe she had more time to be. Were we spending too much time together? I'd always heard that this retirement togetherness thing had its down side. Perhaps I was starting to experience it.

Over the years, we had learned that it was best to let things go and not follow up on outbursts, unless the topic was really important. So, the next morning, I was relieved to find that Provence had apparently been forgotten; I would have a reprieve until Woody and I were together again and Margaret was there to hear, as she called it, "the same old pipe dream."

As a result of Margaret's "new life" since retirement, the pile of books she'd been accumulating for years had slowly diminished in size. She was a reader. After her outburst about my Provence pipe dream, neither one of us mentioned the P word until several days later, when the topic resurfaced after Margaret pulled A Year in Provence, by Peter Mayle, from her pile of books.

I kept my distance and didn't acknowledge what she was reading. Nor did I ask how she liked the book. I had learned, or so I thought, how to make a hot topic a dead topic. Once in a while, though, I would hear her chuckle or actually laugh, loudly enough to make me wonder how a travel book could be so funny.

It's an odd thing, but Woody had never asked me why I wanted to go to Provence or why I had an interest in the area, just as I had never asked him, "Why Montana?" So I was surprised when Margaret, one morning over breakfast, asked, "Why do you want to go to Provence?"

The topic had been part of my conversational repertoire for so long that I couldn't remember what I said when people asked me that question. Actually, I don't think anyone had ever asked me that question. When talking to a new acquaintance, I would always just wait for a conversation lull before casually saying, "I'd like to go to Provence," or sometimes, "I'm thinking of spending some time in Provence. Have you been there?" It was a handy social crutch, certainly far more adventurous than saying, "Wow, is it hot today," or, "When will it stop raining?"

It was, I found over time, a surprisingly good way to spark up a conversation. Most people would take right off telling me about how, on their trip to France, they didn't get to Provence, but wanted to go on their next trip. Frequently someone would leap into an enthusiastic monologue about his trip there, and I could just sip my scotch, pop another hors d'oeuvre, and nod now and then-totally off the conversational hook while undoubtedly being perceived as an exciting conversationalist. This script served me well, without fail, for several years.

With Woody, however, because he wished he could fly-fish in Montana, my Provence script was more than a conversational tool. It was "a guy thing," as I told Margaret. I would mention great food, good wine, sizing up the French women, and we'd just shoot the breeze the way we would when we were talking about sports or new restaurants.

But now Margaret was asking me to justify my love for an area I had never visited, read very little about, and could barely find on a map. Rather than answer her, I pulled out my never-fail conversational script and said, "Now that you've read Peter Mayle's book, you can see why I think we'd like Provence. What do you think about taking a trip there?"

I complimented myself on how coolly I threw in the "we" part and realized that maybe she was just really peeved about this Provence thing-as even I had begun calling it-because I had never put her into my script or mentioned to her that I'd like us to go together. Even conversational ploys have to be tweaked once in a while. I wondered if Woody ever put Elaine into the Montana script.

Surprisingly, it worked. Margaret took off on the subject with great enthusiasm. It was like being at a...