Paris in Love: A Memoir Read online

  A huge Ferris wheel, the kind with glassed-in, heated compartments, has been erected at one end of the Champs-Élysées. The children have taken several rides, so now only one thing really interests them: the VIP car, which has smoked glass to protect its Very Important People. Anna is convinced that, if she’s lucky, one day she’ll see Malia and Sasha Obama spinning above Paris.

  As winter tightens its grip, it feels as though we emerge into a slightly darker street every morning. Peering into lighted windows of hotels on our walk to the Métro, we see fewer breakfast guests every week.

  My French friend Sylvie and I went to a wonderful little museum today, the Musée Nissim de Camondo. Moïse de Camondo was a fantastically wealthy Jewish banker and a collector of art and eighteenth-century furniture. In 1911 he had a mansion built to house his collections, basing its design on that of the Petit Trianon at Versailles. He snapped up furniture when great estates were dissolved, even buying paneling from the apartment of the Count de Menou, and then lived there for years in the midst of truly royal splendor. I find his obsession fascinating and sad; he could certainly decorate his rooms with Queen Marie Antoinette’s vases and re-create the atmosphere of eighteenth-century nobility—but as a Jew and a banker, he could never have been part of it.

  Today I passed an open-faced workshop, in the front of which a man was shaping metal with a saw. Bright orange sparks spun from his saw, flying in a high arc to land on the jeans of the man behind him, on two chairs, and on another workbench. They seemed like bright snow, unthreatening, disappearing on contact.

  Today Domitilla got a “bravissima” in Italian grammar and Anna got only a “brava.” So Anna promptly burst into tears. The poor teacher, who likely had no idea of the various tensions in the room, gave a speech about how wonderful Anna is, which my ungrateful daughter declared to be boring and embarrassing.

  We bought a Christmas tree yesterday. In Paris they are sold with trunks whittled to points and jammed into stands made from logs. I approve, as this obviates the annual blasphemy provoked by complicated tree stands. But I also disapprove, because without water, how long will this tree keep its needles? Still, it has very kindly given the living room its elusive smell of the deep forest.

  Anna suffered through two years of unrequited love at ages eight and nine, and she’s rather proud to be fancy-free here in Paris. A boy from her class followed us through the turnstile at the Métro today and darted over to ruffle Anna’s hair before running away. “That boy has a crush on you,” I observed, stating the obvious. “Four of them do,” she said with total indifference.

  A few days ago, the pen pal Alessandro had when he was just a boy, between 1974 and 1984, sent him an email out of the blue. After much exclaiming, they Facebook “friended” each other, and Andrzej, who’s from Poland, got around to investigating the pictures on Alessandro’s Facebook page. He wrote back today to say that his wife is an Eloisa James reader! She’s a Polish banker, and presumably has been reading the Polish translations.

  Today Paris is bitterly cold—below freezing. I bundled up and walked to a department store to buy Christmas presents. As I approached the shining windows, I realized that a woman was seated on a doorstep with a simple sign, J’AI FAIM or “I’m hungry.” Clutched in her arms was a five- or six-year-old child, his head on his mother’s shoulder. Paris is by turns the most beautiful city in which I’ve lived—and the most heartbreaking.

  Anna’s elementary school gave their Christmas concert today, so Alessandro and I trudged through the snow to see it. Last night Anna revealed that she knew only the first line of every carol in Italian; after that she planned to switch to English. To all appearances, no one noticed. My favorite moment was when the entire school sang, in thick Italian accents, “Last Chreeestmas, I gave you my ’eart …”

  It’s snowing again and the roofs opposite my study window have turned white. The sky is precisely the same milky color, so where the black, notched roof ridge meets the sky, it looks like a black railway track stretching across some vast and snowy Russian landscape.

  Returning from Christmas shopping yesterday, Alessandro announced, “I bought myself some sweaters, you’ll like them, they’re not all the same.” Parisian men wear thick crimson pullovers and plum-colored boots. I opened the shopping bag to find that Alessandro had bought four sweaters. Three were black. One distinguished itself by being gray with black stripes.

  I am in a fit of domestic fervor directly linked to my mother-in-law’s imminent arrival; Marina could take down Bobby Flay without blinking an eye. My goal is to serve only homemade broths—not that she’ll be particularly impressed, since she wouldn’t imagine another option.

  I have discovered the French equivalent to a dollar store. I bought a plum-colored colander for seven euros, Christmas ornaments that look like miniature 1960s “mod” lamps for two euros each, and, for four euros, a fabulous lime green mold for making little cakes. My favorite purchase was Christmas tree lights, each enclosed in an ornate metal ball. Alessandro tells me they are classic, identical to lights from his childhood.

  IN CHURCH WITH SCROOGE

  Having no particular knowledge of the minutiae of the liturgical calendar, it was pleasant to discover one Sunday in December that there was a special celebration going on for les enfants; accordingly, more babies and small children than usual were in attendance. In the chair next to us sat a plump and very happy boy who was just learning to walk. He and Anna had such a good time handing a toy cellphone back and forth that he kept spitting out his pacifier and crowing with joy.

  The cheerful priest began his homily and then kept going, and going. The baby kept crowing, and crowing. The toy phone hit the stone floor a few times.

  Then, from a row at the front of the nave, there rose a gaunt and ancient man, dressed completely in black, including the overcoat that swung behind him. He turned around and walked, scowling, straight toward us. The entire congregation froze, watching as this Scrooge-like menace advanced. The priest’s eyes widened visibly. Monsieur le Scrooge turned along the side aisle, now obviously coming to confront the baby’s maman.

  Heads swiveled in unison to follow his progress. The child’s mother swept him up against her shoulder in a gesture that reminded me of the protective moves made by mothers in films when towns are invaded by Nazis, or aliens. “Madame!” we heard M. Scrooge say in a gravelly, outraged voice, but she was already fleeing to the back of the church, abandoning the toy cellphone on the floor.

  Mission accomplished, Scrooge turned back toward his seat. The priest and parishioners watched him scowl his way up the aisle. Once it was safe, Anna trotted after the mother, waving the toy phone. For a moment I thought our sweet, curly-haired priest would say something about this small drama; it was, after all, a Sunday for les enfants.

  But instead there was silence as he blessed the Host, and then from the other side of the nave, far behind us, came a defiant series of squawks. The baby and his maman were undefeated!

  When it came time to go forward for Holy Communion, Scrooge rose to his feet before the priest had finished speaking, securing himself a place at the very front of the line. Upon receiving Communion, rather than return to his seat, he planted himself next to the priest’s elbow and turned as if to adore the altar.

  “He’s going to accost her when she takes the Host!” Alessandro said, with obvious and impious delight. But no, it was not to be: the young mother took the Host without incident. M. Scrooge’s plan—whatever it was—was foiled by an elderly woman in a wheelchair who forced him to move to the side.

  The young priest, making the best of a bad situation, put his hand on the child’s round head, blessing him and, presumably, all his squawks and squeaks.

  Today Alessandro and Anna flew off to snowy Florence, where they’re turning around after a couple of days and driving back to Paris with elderly Italian family members and one obese Chihuahua in tow. I wish it would stop snowing as I’m afraid the car will crash while crossing the moun
tains. The memoirist Elizabeth Stone wrote that having children is like letting your heart walk around outside your body, and mine is going to be crossing the Alps.

  I bought some presents at Galeries Lafayette this afternoon, a soft heather-colored scarf and a lacy shirt for my college roommates. Dusk was gathering as I left the store. Just outside on the snowy street, a stand was brewing soup in cast-iron pots, so I bought a cup of lentil soup with Indian spices and walked home, the soup warm in my hands, exploding on my tongue.

  Yesterday Luca and I were roaming in the twilight when we passed a tiny bar with scarlet walls and a deep couch. A man inside leaned forward to smoke an ornate silver hookah. I delightedly informed Luca that it must be an opium den, rattling on about the Victorians and their more louche habits, before I remembered to add a little lecture on the perils of drugs. Unfortunately for my exotic tourist moment, Wikipedia suggests that the man was smoking tobacco in a “Hookah Lounge.”

  I have decided to use my beloved cocottes to create individual drunken-cherry cakes for Christmas dinner. Venturing out to buy the cherries, I survived the crowds by pretending I was a fish caught in the Gulf Stream. There is no point in fighting the current, no need to use fins; just gently bump the others in your school as you swim, and remind yourself that breathing is unnecessary because you’re a fish.

  In the interest of empirical research, I have been gathering family gossip about Great-Uncle Claude. It’s reported that he had a “tempestuous” relationship with Ivé, who finally left him for a German man. Because—and this is a direct quote from one of my uncles—“he was not up to her sexual energy.” I knew it! Apparently my great-aunt Genevieve, a terrifying woman who used to stamp about in a long cape, wrote her brother a letter telling him to “act like a man” and stop being pushed around by Ivé. To no avail, one assumes.

  Today I tried a traditional French delicacy called andouillette, which is a sausage made from a pig’s intestine (chitterlings). I’m determined to investigate all the food that I reflexively avoided as a younger person, but I shall continue to avoid this one. Once cut, the sausage fell into pieces whose original design was all too evident. In short, the texture was revolting. Culinary adventurousness can go only so far.

  Yesterday I realized that a rental apartment implies a naked Christmas table. So I ventured into a chic store and bought black glass votive cylinders with a black-on-black velvet fleur-de-lis pattern. Once home I realized that they were designed by someone with plans for enjoying an exciting evening of illegal substances, not singing “Silent Night.” I have shopping remorse, which is presumably not as bad as tattoo remorse, but still stinging.

  After being delayed by snow, Anna, Alessandro, and Italian family members arrived last night at 10:30. Anna tore through the house, wild with excitement when she saw the tree and presents. “Don’t look!” I shouted. She had told me on the phone from Italy that she now liked Barbies. I was surprised because she had never shown interest before, but after surveying forty dolls, I picked one and some extra shoes, since I have always admired Barbie’s shoe collection.

  On his first night in Paris, it looked as though Milo was planning to sleep on Luca’s bed (he used to be Luca’s dog). But to Luca’s dismay, at the last minute Milo waddled off to sleep on his red velvet cushion, on the floor next to Marina’s bed.

  The following note—reproduced here without correction—was hand-delivered by Anna in the morning before breakfast: “Dear Mama, I don’t like barbies. That’s why before you tould me to, I looked at and shook a present from you and dad. And I’m REEALLY SORRY! PLEASE FOGIVE ME!”

  Today Marina announced that she wants to buy Milo a raincoat as a Christmas present. So the family—sans Milo—trooped out to a shop in the Marais that sells accoutrements for small dogs. Anna snatched up a tiny, blossom pink confection trimmed with rhinestones (I might add that Milo is aggressively male, and fond of attacking dogs four times his size). Flouting the girlie stereotype, Alessandro inquired if the coat came in a larger size. The shopkeeper asked about Milo’s breed, in order to choose the appropriate coat size. “No, no, he’s not Chihuahua-size,” Alessandro told him. “He’s more like bulldog-size.” The shopkeeper looked most disapproving, and pointed toward three or four coats in the corner: the plus-size department. From these meager pickings, we chose a transparent raincoat with jaunty purple trim.

  It’s December 23 and I feel glum. I don’t want the Christmas season to end, because it’s the only time I can legitimately indulge one particular addiction: glitter. When else can you pull out fourteen bottles of shining sand, glitter shaped like stars, glitter glue? Only in December does the floor around the kitchen table sparkle in the sunlight and a child’s hair gleam—no, glitter—as if fairy dust were caught in the strands.

  On Christmas Day I cooked twice: first, a huge goose that had been blanched and air-dried for two days, stuffed, and presented in shallot Madeira sauce; then, in the late evening, a very simple risotto, the kind I can make blindfolded. The goose lost to the risotto, hands down, even though its crispy skin was perfectly set off by the Madeira sauce, which balanced the touch of wildness lent by the bird. One of the hardest things for me to remember is that just because a dish takes six hours in the kitchen it will not necessarily make guests as happy as a familiar recipe done well.

  I have decided to single out a few moments from this Christmas and try, mindfully, to preserve the memories. So here’s one: in a kitchen fragrant with the smell of roasting goose, Alessandro discovered me alone and grabbed the chance for a kiss and an enthusiastic grope.

  An important part of preserving memories is deliberately letting some go. Careful editing, if you will. I plan to forget the moment when my sister-in-law surveyed the Christmas table and said, “Did you forget that I don’t eat meat?” (This, after eating copious amounts of prosciutto at lunch.) Ditto when she picked up her plate and dumped her sweet potato puree on her mother’s plate, saying, “I usually like puree, but this one … no.”

  This morning we went to Mass at Notre-Dame Cathedral, which included two bishops, more incense than a hippie party, and glorious choral music. I confiscated Anna’s Skipper doll (you know, Barbie’s younger sister) at some point, and realized only after taking Communion that Skipper’s pink-and-blond head was sticking out of my bag and bobbing down the aisle with me.

  Even though Alessandro bought himself three black sweaters just before Christmas, my present—a black sweater—was quite successful. My husband employed precisely the same guidelines as I had when choosing his gift: he bought me a huge, gorgeously heavy Staub pot. He chose black.

  We are all rather horrified to find that the transparent raincoat, designed for a French bulldog, does not fit around Milo’s ample middle. It doesn’t have a prayer of fastening. Marina has been forced to concede that perhaps Milo should go back on his diet. We keep pointing out the svelte, lively dogs who trot by us on morning walks: it seems that neither French women nor their dogs get fat.

  We have discovered an enchanting bead and jewelry-making supply store, Tout à Loisirs, in the Marais. It’s designed as a series of alcoves; to the left, every alcove is distinguished by color. I fell in love with Venetian blue glass beads ornamented with twirly black lines. To the right, the alcoves represent different countries: for example, Indian beads of every shape and size, including shiny pendants of laughing Hindu deities. We bought tiny butterflies with translucent wings, flowers cut from superthin metal, and cameos with eighteenth-century heads.

  I am fraying under the pressure of cooking two meals a day for the extended family, so last night my own family joined me in the kitchen. I made risotto (now a nightly request from the Italian contingent); Anna chopped; Alessandro washed and—ta-da!—Luca looked up how to cook a pork chop on Google and then created succulent breaded pork chops. At dinner, we all lauded him and then talked of other things. Twenty minutes later he said, “Let’s talk more about my chops! Lavish me with praise!” Welcome to the world of thankless domestic la
bor, sweetie.

  Paris presents structural difficulties for the disabled, such as narrow sidewalks and cobblestones. Yet those unavoidable difficulties are ameliorated by kindness: when we pushed my sister-in-law’s wheelchair to the door of Notre-Dame, we were whisked past the line of people waiting to enter the cathedral and seated just below the altar. Coming into a department store cafeteria full of people trolling constricted aisles for seats, we were instantly ushered to an available table. Waiters in an outdoor café on the Champs-Élysées pulled apart and reconfigured elaborate rows of seats to accommodate her chair.

  The arched roof of Marché Saint-Quentin is made of glass, and yesterday evening we realized that its strings of blue and white Christmas lights reflect against the dark night sky, as if the heavens had revealed themselves to hold busy highways running with stars. Anna amended my description: the heavens hold fizzy, starry highways.