Paris in Love (25 page)

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 labor, 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.

I cooked duck breasts for dinner, first marinating them in red wine and garlic, and then pan-searing them with a pear and Grand Marnier sauce. Afterward Luca, who pours ketchup on everything from French fries to escargots, waved his unopened ketchup bottle in the air and announced: “Do you know what
this means, Mom?” Yes, I do. It means that somewhere, in some remote part of the world, a pig just levitated gracefully and flew around his pen, that’s what.

A row of elegantly narrow dormer windows sprouts from the building opposite my study. Sometimes a gaunt woman with beautiful cheekbones and sleek black hair pushes open her window and leans out, smoking and flicking the ashes onto the slate. Today she wears a red dress and looks as if she belongs in an eighteenth-century novel, the kind in which heroines come to a bad end.

It was New Year’s Eve last night, so the family drank champagne and ate oysters on the half shell. Alessandro’s mother tolerated the champagne, although she said the Italian version, prosecco, is better for one’s digestion. The oysters had been harvested that morning, and still had the faintest tang of the sea, like the memory of a briny swim in childhood. At midnight the Eiffel Tower burst into a shower of sparks, and 2010 slipped in the door.

At one end of our street is an excellent kosher restaurant, Les Ailes. The first time we ate lunch there, in the fall, we were fascinated by a middle-aged couple, who we quickly decided were lovers married to other people. They leaned close, eating with an air of heat and excitement. Over time, and subsequent lunches, we have concluded that Les Ailes is a playground for adulterous frolics; we can always find a couple in the room who qualify. But yesterday, escaping from our houseful of relatives, I realized that
Alessandro and I probably looked like adulterous lovers, giddy with freedom and delighted by food we hadn’t cooked.

In France the Boy and Girl Scouts are organized by parish. This morning both troops sat just in front of us in church, wearing little berets with blue crosses and long shorts, although the winter air has a snap to it. Our neighborhood is very multicultural, but these scouts looked like a French advertisement from the 1940s: Caucasian, neatly kempt and behaved, wearing their red scarves and berets with unconscious but distinct flair. The retro vibe of these homogeneous scouts is not entirely attractive.

After careful inspection, Marina decided this morning that Milo has gained weight since arriving in Paris. This caused a crisis, exacerbated when Anna confessed that Milo had just snatched and eaten a chocolate cellphone. Contrary to everything we had heard about chocolate’s toxicity to dogs, Milo remains hale and hearty, not to mention hungry. He has indeed gained a Parisian pound and will be allowed no more holiday prosciutto.