It's Just Lunch

I could feel it all morning: I was off. I didn’t have the patience for the slightly affected tones in which E. speaks French, or to stand around contemplating food in the crowded market at Apt.

What is wrong with me? I kept thinking. It’s a lovely sunny Saturday in Provence, you’re with a good friend, and this is one of the first weekend you haven’t worked in months and months.

Then I realized: I was anxious because I didn’t know exactly when we were going to eat (E and G were having friends for lunch, but since E and I were buying the food for lunch and it was about noon and we were nowhere near home, let alone a stove…) I didn’t have any snacks on me, and though we were in a food market, what if I became too hungry to choose properly? And then there were all the other anxieties: How is this freelancing thing going to work? What if I never meet anyone? What if I spend my life rarely properly enjoying anything because I’m too worried about the food? And this huge, looming decision to be made by Aug. 1: Should I keep my flat in NYC for another year? (Lease is up Sept. 30, but landlord says I must decide by Aug. 1.) I won’t deny that the pull of this side of the Atlantic is strong when I am here, but at the same time, the thought of moving seems unbearable. The binge-eating counselor I saw in London (my old one; I made an appointment with him while I was there) says he thinks I need to put down roots somewhere, which I agree with – I can’t bounce back and forth. I need routine. And though he has only once ever made an actual pronouncement (about his hatred of BN2), he busted this out: It is my gut feeling you should move back to London. (And no, he is not that badly in need of clients!)

But back to yesterday.

We got back about 1 pm and the guests hadn’t even arrived yet. Deep breath. I popped out for my diet Coke; still no guests. Then I realized I ought to clean up the room I’m staying in, since guests will need to walk through it to get to the bathroom. When they finally arrived, about 2 pm, I asked E. when we’d be eating -- whether we’d be sitting around the garden with aperitifs for a while. We would be, so I had a second peach (I’d had one earlier, at the market). After the success of French Women Don’t Get Fat it’s impossible not to want to watch how French people eat, so I watched our French guests (G’s friend J and her new-ish boyfriend) attack the saucisson and olives, but I didn’t partake.

J, for the record, is lovely, though not scarily chic. She was wearing a white shoulder-baring dress with a bra with clear bra straps, a look I cannot stand. Somehow it made her likeable, though. Well, until I complimented her on her dress, commented I couldn’t wear a dropped waist, and she responded: “Oh, you could. You have a tummy like me and this hides everything.”

It is embarrassing to admit that sitting in a sun-splashed garden in Provence eating lamb and sausages grilled on an open fire with string beans and heirloom tomatoes I could find life remotely tough, but I did. Though I speak other languages, French is not one of them. I can understand some of it if I concentrate hard, but if I dip out for even a second it takes me a while to pick up the thread again. And so instead of being in the moment, I often was in my own head, worrying about everything above – and of course, whether I might be eating too much and whether I’ll ever get any of this weight off and exactly how large I am.

I felt grateful for sunglasses so no one could tell exactly how engaged I was or wasn’t.

When the cheese course came out all I wanted to do was binge. I just wanted to let go of everything, from considering just how hungry I am to where I’m going to live. Plus I felt slightly full already, and I have yet to isolate what it is in me that wants to binge the minute I feel full. (I know, WTF?) I had some cheese and bread – probably more than I needed – and then we stack up the plates as we clear the table. I eyed the leftovers: the lamb fat and the bits of cheese. Disgusting as it is, I would eat that; that’s exactly how a binge would start.

We scrape it all onto a plate and J’s boyfriend volunteers to take it in to the kitchen. I feel disappointed, but also relieved, like someone out there is looking out for me. Then suddenly I’m alone in the kitchen with all of it thinking: I could have some. I could. But hastily I scrape it into the trash and go back to the garden.

There is ice cream – a delicious cinnamon and coffee that tastes like spice cake – and chocolate sorbet and fresh apricots and candied fruit, the last of which is specialty of the region. I have some of all of it, thinking all the while about a wise friend’s diktat that when we want to binge, we should think: What is it I’m afraid of? I also thought about something I read a while ago: Eat for how you want to feel right now. And I wondered why, why, why fullness for me is binge-triggering, and yet again, why I can’t just be in the moment.

We went for a little walk around town after lunch; a very slow walk, because that’s how things go with a two-year-old. I was teased for managing to find shoes to buy (espadrilles – J bought some, though I did not). And then we headed to E. and G.’s bit of the village garden.

“Oooh, there’s some ripe tomatoes,” G. said. “What can I use to carry them?”

And so this is how I put my Burberry Prorsum cardigan in service of something worthwhile, turning it into a sack. Given that I am already being teased for being the only woman to turn up to a medieval village in Cereste with two pairs of Christian Louboutins (hey, I came from London), this seemed impossibly hilarious.

G. snapped a picture. I snapped back into the moment.