Paris in Love (11 page)

This apartment came with two small refrigerators, one for food, and one for beverages. The one for food just died. I can push a cauliflower onto the second shelf of the beverage fridge, but it makes the top shelf topple.

Alessandro’s conversation-exchange partner, Florent, said today that he doesn’t understand Italian women, as the object of his affection is so reserved that he has no idea whether he is moving too fast. If she were a French woman, he says, they would already have had a whole relationship, from first kiss to divorce. Apparently French women kiss first and talk later; Alessandro told Florent that’s the pattern of an Italian male. He doesn’t think Florent took the hint, though.

I feel taller every day. This morning I crammed onto a rush-hour train only to discover a very petite Frenchman with his head in my armpit. I had to reach over him to hold on to the bar, and we both stood stiff and embarrassed.

I need to work on developing a new, less irritable personality. Though I suspect that an empty nest would be at least a partial cure, today I resorted to substance abuse. I sallied forth to La Grande Epicerie on rue de Sèvres and bought three different kinds of chocolate: Zanzibar’s
oranges en robe
(twists of rind with delicious coating), Côte d’Or’s
citron gingembre
(a bar with ginger and lemon peel), and Michel Cluizel’s
noir aux écorces d’orange
(a dark bar with tiny chunks of orange).

Anna and I had a tasting test. The winner was Cluizel’s
chocolat noir
. It’s astounding: deep and rich, with a silky melt.

We have reached a new academic low: Anna brought home a warning note from her Italian teacher about her misbehavior. Rather than being repentant, she was excited by the fact that one of her other teachers had whacked an even naughtier child with a book. We are a nonspanking household, somewhat to Alessandro’s disgust (he thinks he turned out the better for his mother’s corporal discipline). The sheer novelty of seeing an adult lose her temper and respond in a physical manner fascinated Anna. After signing the note, as requested, I have to admit to a surge of acute sympathy for the teachers managing Anna, Domitilla, and what sounds like a berserking horde of ten-year-old boys.

I ran for all of ten minutes today, a new record. My flirtatious butcher was unloading boxes as I jogged past, and blinked at me, probably startled to see me in Lycra. He has long sideburns, the kind you never see in the United States. I wiggled my fingers at him as I trotted by, and then felt painfully self-conscious about my bottom.

In an art gallery: tiny, ornate reliquary boxes, the kind that house a saint’s finger bone. But these contain
objets trouvés
, the relics of saints we haven’t heard about—my favorite is “Saint Protecteur” (a condom in its jaunty wrapper).

Anna reported today that Domitilla’s gerbil died, an event that should instinctively raise a spark of sympathy rather than raucous laughter … but no. The gerbil fell off the balcony, and then a flowerpot fell on it, after which its eye bulged out (a gory detail of particular interest). Maybe Anna will be a biologist one day. Or a mortician.

My kitchen window looks down into the courtyard, giving me a view of the couple two stories below. The wife seems to spend her evenings canoodling with a small dog, though she and her husband may have a passionate life hidden from those who peer down into the courtyard, spying into their windows. One could not call her chic, exactly, but she is a French sixty, which means that her hair is always perfect and her eyebrows are plucked to perfection.

We had a very painful family dinner last night. Luca is pretty sure that he is doing well in his English language and literature class (not much to applaud about there), but is also quite certain that he’s failing all his other courses. He doesn’t understand math in Italian and believes that the math they’re doing doesn’t exist in the States (we contested this). He was pretty good at English-to-Latin translation at home, but Latin into a complicated Italian past tense is another story. The kids in his French class have French mothers, which explains why they are reading Voltaire although he is at the Captain Underpants stage. We decided to find tutors. In everything. Maybe even in parenting.