Charlotte in Paris (4 page)

JUST LIKE A DREAM

W
elcome aboard Air France Flight 1046, nonstop service to Charles de Gaulle International Airport. This is your captain, Sébastien Naiseux, speaking. We hope to be in the air in about twenty minutes. We are so fortunate this evening; the weather report is clear all across the Atlantic. We can expect an early nine a.m. arrival in the famous City of Light. So sit back, relax, and enjoy the flight.
Bienvenue à bord
Flight 1046…”

As I listened to the message repeated in French, I gripped the cushioned armrest of my seat in the middle row. I almost had to pinch myself. I just couldn’t believe that I, Charlotte Ramsey, was actually flying all alone to see my best Paris friend, Sophie, and to hunt for Orangina.

All around me, passengers were settling down, pulling books and newspapers out of their carry-ons and half watching the flight attendants demonstrate safety
procedures. My heart raced as I clipped my seatbelt into its metal catch. Paris, my wonderful Paris. I could smell its sweet
parfum
already!

I couldn’t wait for the plane to take off. To keep myself busy, I reached into the messenger bag sandwiched between my feet to dig out my new journal and pen. But when I tried to shove the bag under the seat it got stuck. I braced my foot against the plane floor and tugged as hard as I could.
Ugh.
…Suddenly, the bag popped forward, sending me back against my seat. My glasses slid down my nose and the contents of my bag rolled under the seat.
Oh no, not AGAIN!
I thought, closing my eyes. Hopefully no one had seen the World’s Biggest Klutz have yet another one of her classic moments.

“
Bonjour, ma chérie!
You must be Charlotte.” I looked up to see a very pretty woman in a cream-colored suit smiling down at me. She had a major twinkle in her eye. I admired how sophisticated she looked and was embarrassed that she had witnessed my backpack spaz-attack just now. “I am Madame Giroux,” she told me.

“Oh, of course!” I exclaimed. I struggled to stand up in the tiny seat to properly shake her hand. I reached out and said, “Nice to meet you, Madame.” But Madame Giroux didn’t shake my hand. Instead she kissed me on one cheek, then the other, then the first cheek again, then the other cheek. I couldn’t believe I had forgotten the traditional French greeting—
la bise
, the quadruple kiss!

Madame Giroux gracefully took the seat to my right,
placing her white leather purse at her feet and then picking it up again to remove a tube of deep, red lipstick. No bags burst open. No glasses slid.
Incredible!
I thought.
Just how DO French women manage to be so graceful in any situation
? Madame Giroux wasn’t even the least bit flustered that she was so late getting to her seat.

“Pardon me, ladies, but I believe this is my seat…23E?” said a voice in a dignified British accent. I watched as the man cheerfully stuffed his luggage into the overhead compartment and sat down in the aisle seat to my left.

He was an older gentleman with thick, snow-white hair, a trim white mustache, and very kind eyes. He wore a brown tweed jacket and a crisp white shirt, which made him look like some sort of proper professor type.

Maybe he’s a famous archeologist flying to Paris, then on to Egypt to study a secret hieroglyphic message someone just found on a tomb of some ancient Egyptian king or queen
. Oops! There I go again. When I’m traveling, I tend to get carried away imagining all kinds of exotic things. My dad says that being imaginative is a very good quality for an aspiring writer to have.

“Harold? Harold Peckham?” gasped Madame Giroux. “I cannot believe my eyes!”

“Good heavens! Amelie! You look magnificent!” Madame stood up and they quadruple-kissed each other hello. It was so very French of them.

“Charlotte,” Madame Giroux said, turning to me as she sat down again, “this is a dear old friend of mine, the
formidable
Harold Peckham. He owns the most authentic English pub in Paris! It is one of my restaurants favorites!” I smiled. Madame Giroux had mixed up her sentence with English and French. I chuckled, figuring I would be doing a lot of that in the next week.

Mr. Peckham laughed modestly. It was a soft laugh, rich and kind.

“Hello,” I murmured. I was still wrestling to get all my scattered things back into my bag and in the correct position for takeoff.

“Might I assist you, miss?” Mr. Peckham asked politely in a very proper British accent.

I pushed my glasses back into place and smiled gratefully. “Thanks. I guess I stuffed it too full this time. Would you mind putting it in the overhead bin for me?”

“Why, of course not,” he said, carefully stowing my bag above.

“Harold G. Peckham, Esquire, at your service,” he declared and bowed deeply, bumping his head on an armrest as he straightened up.

Now it was my turn to laugh. Either my klutziness was contagious, or Mr. Peckham was clumsy too. “I’m Charlotte Ramsey. It’s very nice to meet you, Mr. Peckham.”

Mr. Peckham and I both sat back down, and I opened up my new journal and uncapped my pen. This was going to be a wonderful trip, I just knew it! I closed my eyes and listened to the noises surrounding me. Ms. Rodriguez, the advisor to
The Sentinel
, always said, “
Details
. You must capture your readers with lots and lots of
details
.”
Since I intended to become a writer (and hopefully a good one) someday, I tried to practice observing the sights and sounds of my surroundings. It could be a lot of fun once you got into it.

For example, as the plane prepared for takeoff, I could hear bins slamming shut, a baby crying, flight attendants checking to make sure that everyone’s seatbelt was buckled, a little boy asking if we were in Paris yet, a woman telling the person next to her that she was afraid to fly, and a man talking on a cell phone to his broker…something about, “Harry, I demand that you get me out of that ridiculous stock now. I can’t believe I let you talk me into buying shares in a company that sells Christmas trees to Russia.” Suddenly, an announcement came over the loudspeaker asking that everyone return to their seats and turn off cell phones and other electronic devices. We were almost ready to depart from the gate.

As the plane began inching slowly toward the runway, I stared out the window to see if I could catch a glimpse of Dad. These past couple of days had been such a blur. This was my first chance to slow down and write about everything that led up to my
voyage incroyable
to my old home.

I sighed as I put my journal down. It was hard to believe everything that had happened in the past few days. It seemed like I had left Dad at the gate a week ago instead of forty-five minutes ago.

I heard something rattling and turned around to see one of the flight attendants pushing a cart. The phrase “What would you like to drink?” was repeated over and over again as he briskly shook juices, filled little plastic cups with ice, and handed over soda cans and miniature wine bottles.

“I’ll have a glass of tomato juice, please, and what would you like, young lady?” Mr. Peckham asked me.

“Orange juice, please.”

The flight attendant handed over our drinks with tiny bags of pretzels. Madame Giroux requested a bottle of sparkling water.

“Is this your first trip to Paris?” Mr. Peckham asked as he poured his juice into a plastic cup.

As we sipped our drinks, the whole story about my father’s job, our houseboat on the Seine, Sophie, and Orangina poured out. Mr. Peckham listened intently, asking questions about the confusing parts and laughing at the right times.

“How long have you lived in Paris?” I asked Mr. Peckham. As the flight attendants made their way down the aisles with the dinner carts, “Chicken or beef?” “Chicken or beef?” “Chicken or beef?” was starting to sound like a really bad, never-ending jingle.

“Oh my, since I was just a young lad,” Mr. Peckham
explained. “I was born and raised in a tiny hamlet on the northeast coast of England. Staithes is just north of Whitby near the York Moors. Its only claim to fame is that it was Captain Cook’s—you know, the famous explorer—boyhood town. I first visited Paris when I was about your age with my parents. When I was seventeen I moved there and it has been my home ever since.” He sliced his beef into near-perfect strips with his plastic knife.

“Do you miss England?” I asked, digging into my mashed potatoes and carrots. I was starving, so everything tasted okay, even though the airplane food was far from gourmet.

“Oh, not too much, my dear. Staithes, I understand, hasn’t changed a bit since I first left. I visited a few times while my mum was still alive, but I haven’t been back in over a decade. For the past forty years, I have been the proprietor of the Churchill Pub. It’s the most authentic English pub in Paris and London, too, if I
do
say so myself. I would wager that I have made more friends in that pub than I ever would have if I stayed in Staithes. Lovely people like Madame Giroux, here. She stops by for dinner at least once each week.”

“
Mais oui!
But of course I do!” Madame Giroux said. “You have the best fish and chips in all of Paris.”

“Thank you, my dear. Anyway, I’m happy leading the life of an expatriate,” Mr. Peckham declared. “Paris has a certain
je ne sais quoi
—a special quality that is hard to describe. It’s a city that can make the old feel young again and make the young wise beyond their years.” I
knew he was talking about me. I was really flattered that Mr. Peckham thought I seemed wise.

Madame Giroux pulled a novel from her bag. “I don’t like to fly, and reading relaxes me,” she confided. “If you need anything, Charlotte, just ask me, okay?” I was too excited to relax. Luckily Mr. Peckham liked to chat.

He pointed to my arm. “I am very intrigued by your bracelets. What a wonderful collection you have!”

“Oh, thanks!” I looked down at the assortment of colors that decorated my wrist. I was relieved that Madame Giroux seemed absorbed in her book. My bracelets were really meaningful to me, but they weren’t exactly sophisticated or
chic
, and certainly nothing that a fashionable woman from Paris would ever wear.

“I have a feeling each bracelet has its own story,” Mr. Peckham said, his eyes crinkling as he smiled. “Did you collect them yourself, or were they gifts?”

“Sophie—my friend that I’m going to visit in Paris—helped me make the hemp one. The neon orange one is something I picked up at the
marché aux puces
.”

“One might find anything imaginable at the flea market, am I right?”

I nodded. “The green malachite is from a market in Tanzania. And my favorite is from Australia. It’s made of sea glass.”

“Australia! You don’t say,” Mr. Peckham exclaimed.

“We lived in Port Douglas when Dad was working on a book about the Great Barrier Reef. I love sea glass. I used to walk along the shore to find bits of glass that were
shaped and polished by years of traveling the ocean.”

“Travel certainly does expand one’s perspective,” Mr. Peckham commented.

“Yes. I guess it’s kind of silly to wear so many bracelets that don’t match, but they remind me of all the places that I’ve been to.”

“I don’t think it’s silly at all,” Mr. Peckham said as he reached inside his jacket pocket. He pulled out a set of keys, detached the key chain, and placed it on the tray in front of me. I picked it up to examine it more closely. It was a perfect four-leaf clover preserved forever in a bubble of plastic.

“I’ve been presented with far more elegant key chains, but this one has a place in my heart and in my pocket. It was my mum’s. She gave it to me when I was just a lad, and just seeing it every day gives me comfort and grand memories of her.”

I smiled as I thought of my mom’s denim jacket and the copy of
Charlotte’s Web
that she used to read to me. I kept them near me as treasured memories of my own mom. It seemed that Mr. Peckham and I had quite a bit in common after all.

“Are you an art fan as well?” Mr. Peckham asked me, pointing to the Picasso coloring book as he put his keys back on the key chain.

I hoped Mr. Peckham didn’t think the coloring book was childish. “My friend Isabel is a huge art fan, and an artist, too. She loves Picasso. She gave me this book to teach me a little more about his artwork.”

“Charming fellow, Picasso. You know, I actually met the chap once.”

“Picasso? You mean THE Pablo Picasso?” Isabel would just die when I told her that I had met someone who had met Picasso!

“Oh, yes. It was many, many years ago, of course. Decades ago in fact. When I was just a young whippersnapper. He came into the pub a few times. Remarkable man. Stupendous talent. I even saw him make a few sketches. Nothing fancy…just charcoal sketches on the back of his bar bills. But in those few lines he was able to capture the very essence of his subject.” He paused and stared off into space as if reliving the moment.