Bon Appetit (9 page)

I
recognized the car when it pulled into Maman’s circular drive. I’d been watching out the window and suddenly felt anxious when I saw Philippe get out and open the gate before driving in. Why I was nervous to visit a museum with two new friends who I’d already seen in church today, I didn’t know.

Before I stepped back from the window, I looked up at the big house. It was barely perceptible, but I saw it. A lace curtain was drawn slightly aside to view the driveway, then dropped back into place.

Both Céline and Philippe came up to the door to greet me. “Can we come in?” Céline asked. Her father shushed her.

“Sure,” I said.

“I want to see if it’s any different from when Dominique was here. Dominique is my cousin, you know”.

“I know,” I said. I let them in, glad that I’d tidied up a little.

Céline ran into the living room and plopped herself down on one of the chairs. Philippe pointed at the chalkboard hanging on my kitchen wall. “I recognize that,” he said.

“Yes, it’s from your bakery”.

“My father’s bakery,” he corrected. I nodded, picking up the barb in his tone.

“Yes, your father’s bakery,” I agreed. “It was in the garbage in the back, and I pulled it out and asked Patricia if I could keep it”.

He smiled and read what I’d chalked in.

“No baguette?” Philippe asked.

“Non,”
I answered, not explaining. Friend or no, some things a girl kept to herself.

“Jean 3?”

“Since the pastor’s teaching through the book of John at church, I’m reading along”.

“Ah,” Philippe said. “Menu for the body
and
the soul”.

I nodded.

“Bon,”
Céline said, apparently satisfied I hadn’t changed too much. “Let’s go”. She looked at the board. “Chouquettes?”

“I’m practicing at home. Next week I leave them behind to make macarons and petits fours,” I said.

“Mmm,” Céline said as we left the house. Philippe opened the back door of his car for her, then opened the passenger door for me before walking around to his own side.

Before he could get in the car, Céline said, “Odette calls you a chouquette”.

“Oh,” I said. “That’s nice”. She must really think I made them well.

“No, it’s not,” Céline insisted.

“Why not?”

“If you call someone a chouquette, it’s because they think you have nothing up here”. Céline tapped her head.

Still Odious.

Philippe carefully pulled out of the driveway and drove in a restrained manner all the way to Paris. I was amazed. Luc had told me all Frenchmen drove like crazy people.

The three of us chatted along the way, uncomfortably at first,
circling like birds around topics but never landing, then becoming more relaxed. After forty-five minutes, we pulled into a parking lot near a bridge over the Seine River.

Philippe opened my door and Céline’s. We walked up the stone stairs from the water’s edge to the busy street above and stopped across from the entrance. As soon as we reached the top, I gazed at the Musée d’Orsay. Various families and street artists were scattered about the grounds like confetti, some sitting, some standing, several eating a quick meal from a cart.

I love impressionist art. I like the idea that the borders are blurry, and that everything in life isn’t as crisp and clear as we think it should be. This, to me, was the most important place I wanted to visit in Paris.

“Coming?” Philippe asked, ready to cross the street.

I grinned.
“Mais oui!”

As it was early autumn, the lines weren’t too long, but as it was Sunday, there was a small crowd. We stood in the queue, chatting while we waited to get in.

“Have you ever been here?” I asked Céline.

“But of course!” she said. “I think it’s boring”.

Philippe looked at her. “You won’t when you’re older”.

“I’m glad you came,” I told her, and she smiled, happy to be wanted. She reached for my hand and put her small one inside of it. We talked about art and artists. Once inside we wandered the long marble halls full of artwork. I looked up at the glass ceiling, light tumbling through the panes of glass like water, splashing on the tiles and the artwork below. Bleached white sculptures, flat and unglazed,
commanded the floor—a woman on horseback, hair trailing behind her like the horse’s tail; a bronze, headless man, muscles flexing. I felt his energy.

We headed toward the first floor. Intense art students squatted and sat on the floor, hair in their eyes, lead in their hands, deep in thought as they sketched page after page, imitating the masters.

“Do you want to see my favorites?” asked Philippe.

“Of course!”

We walked up another floor till we reached the pointillists.

“When you step away from the paintings, you see nothing but blend, like any other impressionist,” Philippe said. “But when you get closer, you can see there are actually no brush strokes at all. Only tiny dots. They blur in the eye from a distance”.

“So very beautiful,” I said.

We walked only two floors, aware of Céline’s little legs and flagging interest. But at every turn, one of us was able to point out something marvelous for the others to see.

“I’m sorry you didn’t see it all,” Philippe said as we left the rare air of the museum and exited into the late blue afternoon light.

“I’ll come back another time”.

“Yes, you’ll live here a long time. You’ll be able to see this and more,” he said.

A long time
. I looked at the Parisians reposing on the sides of the Seine, and it brought to mind my favorite painting of the day,
A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of LaGrande Jatte
by Seurat.

“What are they doing?” Céline pointed to men and women lining the banks of the Seine with paintings by their side.

“Selling their original work,” Philippe told her. “Watercolors, mostly”.

Both Céline and I looked longingly at the paintings as we walked by on our way back to the car park. I nearly pinched myself. I could hardly believe I was here, strolling along the Seine, looking at artists hawking their wares. In Paris.

We drove back from Paris in the early evening, via the Champs-Elysées, and talked comfortably all the way home. When we got back to the village, Céline and Philippe walked me to my door.

“Thank you for a lovely day,” I said. “It was much more enjoyable to have someone to share my thoughts and feelings with”.

“It was our pleasure,” Philippe said.

“It was our pleasure,” Céline copied, appearing very grown-up and very small at the same time. I laughed and ruffled her hair as she stood between us.

They walked back to the car, and I waved as they drove away. Before I closed my door, I saw the lace in Maman’s sitting room window jiggle. I walked back into my house, looked at the chalkboard, and set out my Bible so I wouldn’t forget to read Jean chapter three sometime soon.

First, I called Tanya. She didn’t pick up, so I left a message.

“I went to the Musée d’Orsay today,” I said. “It was great. I think I may have found one kid in all the world that I like”. I mentioned nothing about Céline’s dad, but I knew Tanya would ask.

Then I e-mailed Dan back and hesitatingly told him I’d like to see him in November and that he should send more details when he got them. I signed it,
Yours, Lexi
.

The next week at school, bread week, was
fantastique
! We rolled up our sleeves and kneaded dough until our hands ached.

I was stationed next to Désirée and across the huge work table from Anne and Juju. Anne’s breads, in particular, were lovely.

“Your breads are so nice,” I said once when we were alone, cleaning up our station. “The dough is always pinchably plump. And why are your raisins so moist?”

“Haven’t you seen me soak them?” she asked. “I put them in a cup of warm orange juice instead of water for about twenty minutes before I add them. It softens them and plumps them, and the orange flavor makes the bread even tastier”.

“No,” I said. “I hadn’t seen you do it”.

She put her last mixing bowl into the sink and pulled down the industrial overhead faucet to rinse it out. “Désirée saw. She did it to her loaves yesterday”. I heard an edge in her voice.

We went back to our table and began rolling loaves for baguettes. I’d helped Luc with bread in Seattle, but here it was Philippe and his guys in Rambouillet or Kamil’s crew in the village who did the breads. I didn’t expect to specialize in breads, but I knew I had to be better than proficient in order to get and keep a job. So I rolled dough, watched the others, and learned from their strengths and mistakes.

One day last week Juju’s loaves came out nearly flat. I thought she was going to cry.

“Did the yeast bubble before you added it?” Désirée had asked, trying to help.

“I think so,” Juju said.

Désirée shook her head. “Maybe not. If it didn’t bubble after three or four minutes, maybe your batch was bad”.

I’d said nothing, but that didn’t make sense. We all drew yeast from the same tins. If I’d had a death wish, I’d have asked Monsieur Desfreres, but I knew a report would be going out to my
patron
that week, and I didn’t want to draw negative attention to myself.

We placed our baguettes in the oven. Today, both mine and Juju’s came out perfectly plump and tanned. We ate lunch with the cooking school—they were providing
soupe
and salade, and we were providing the bread. All of the school instructors and administrators would take note.

We removed our chef’s
toques blanche
and took our bread to the dining room, then sat at tables for eight. It was fun for the baking students to mingle with the cooking school students.

“The bread smells delicious!” one of the cooking students said. “Nicely done!”

We bakers smiled. I looked at the table. “Is there butter?” I asked.

The rest of them looked at me quizzically.

“You baked it,” a cooking student pointed out. “You know there is no butter in bread”.

“Of course!” I commented, remembering the French didn’t put butter on their bread. I wanted butter on my fresh bread. And a Coke.

But the soupe and salade—to-die-for. The French definitely won there.

After school, I asked Anne if she wanted to have coffee. We walked to a café and sat down.

“No work today?” she asked.

“No,” I said. “I have to work on Sunday this week, so I have the afternoon off”. I ordered café crème and she ordered an Orangina. No ice.

“Did you go to your Anglican church last Sunday?” Anne asked, tilting her face to the autumn sun. The people at the table next to us were engaged in a heavy argument complete with finger wagging, shrugging, and unprovable accusations. I smiled. They must like each other. It was the French way.

“I did go,” I answered, moving forward like a woman walking on freshly frozen ice. “I liked it. And I saw someone I knew there”.

“Non!”
Anne said. “Another American?”

I smiled and took a sip of my café crème. “A Frenchman”.

“At an English church?” she asked incredulously.

I nodded. “He’s the baker at the Rambouillet bakery,” I said. “Philippe Delacroix”.

“Ah,” she said. “One of the owners. What was he doing there?”

I explained about his late wife being English and her desire for their daughter to learn the language. I sipped my coffee slowly. In France, there are no coffee refills, so if you want to stay and chat at a café, you have to draw the drink out.

“I wish I spoke better English,” Anne said. “It would make it easier to get a job. I could go to other places in the EU and work. As it is, if I don’t find a job after school, I will have to go back to Normandy and live with my parents again, and be cooped up. My father
and mother both smoke. If I stay in that household, I will lose the sense of smell I need to be a good baker”.

I sensed there was more than that going on, since most of the French bakers I knew smoked, but I said nothing more about it. “You could come to the English class with me at church,” I said.

“Non. “
She shook her head. “Church is not for me”.

“But that’s not true,” I said. “I’m reading the book of Jean right now, and it’s all about bakers”.

She scoffed. “It can’t be!”

“Yes, it is,” I said. “I was just reading it last night. Jesus said,
‘C’est moi qui suis le pain qui donne la vie. Celui qui vient à moi n’aura plus jamais faim, celui qui croit en moi n’aura plus jamais soif.’ ”

I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty
.

“Bah,” Anne said. “That’s not for bakers”.

I grinned, and she grinned back.

“How about we practice English at the café one day a week,” she said, “when you’re not working. And I’ll help you with French. So you can avoid the
faux amis”.

I’d told her I’d made a few
faux amis
mistakes, but hadn’t told her exactly which ones.