Paris in Love (36 page)

This morning I dropped Anna off at school, then walked across the Seine on a lavishly gilded bridge. The wind was fiercely chilly, but the sky bright blue, and the way the sun shone on the river and danced over all that gold leaf opened a door straight from winter to a slice of spring.

Our
guardienne
just came up to deliver the mail. I’m correcting proofs of my latest manuscript, so Alessandro brought Anna to school this morning, and I never bothered to get out of my PJs. Her eyes flickered from my uncombed hair down to my flannel-clad, flowery legs and then back up to my face.
“Bonjour!”
she said cheerily, and I knew that my sartorial choices will have been discussed with every single resident of 15 rue du Conservatoire by this time tomorrow.

Today Luca and Alessandro were out walking and saw a delicate chocolate shoe in the window of Joséphine Vannier,
“Chocolat
Artisanal.”
They bought it to celebrate my finishing the proofs of
A Kiss at Midnight
, my version of
Cinderella
. Every detail, from the heel to the toe, is astounding—and it is filled with gorgeous little chocolates.

Alessandro has turned himself into a long-distance runner here and regularly goes for forty-minute runs. Last night he was poking at his muscled chest and saying, “Do you think I’m getting scrawny?” At that very same moment I realized my favorite green pants don’t fit in the thighs or butt anymore.

Today I went to Luca’s high school to give a lecture on Shakespeare and
Macbeth
. Leaving embittering details aside (though I won’t forget them till death), let me just say that grades nine through twelve were gathered together in the gym; that some of them had had only a semester of English—though they all had electronic devices; that only one grade had read any Shakespeare at all; and that the head of the school introduced me, concluding with a plea that they behave. After which she handed me the microphone and said
“Buona fortuna.”
Good luck!

Anna has leapt into a new role: romantic adviser to the eleven-year-old set. Her ex-enemy, now-friend Domitilla apparently has a crush on a young Star Wars fan. “She wanted to wear her hair in braids over her ears, like Princess Leia,” Anna said, shrugging. “But I think he has a crush on Nicole, so he wouldn’t even
notice. Boys don’t.” In my opinion, nothing good could possibly come of Princess Leia hair.

The perfect comfort food recipe for eleven-year-old girls with sore throats: boil potatoes, peel them under cold water, mash them with a fork and mix in loads of crème fraîche, then season with a little salt and watch for huge smiles. This from a child who would shriek with disgust at the idea of cream entering her mouth.

Luca just left for a weeklong skiing trip with his classmates. I gave him a last-minute lecture—no drugs, no drinking, no sex, and no black diamond slopes—while Anna listened with some fascination. “Why are you telling him all that?” she demanded at the end. “He can’t do those things! He’s a PG-13, not an R.”

An interesting development in Florent’s life! During today’s conversation session, he apparently didn’t even mention the cruel-hearted Italian waitress, but talked the entire hour about a woman he has known for a year and a half, just as a friend. She teaches French language and literature in the same middle school as Florent. He always thought she was interesting but, obsessed by his waitress, had never really considered the possibility. Now he has.

We found a furniture store in the Marais that features curlicues: lampshades with elaborate cutouts; a cabinet with wrought-iron
overlay; a sofa whose arms spiral around and around, like a snail’s shell. I fell in love with an asymmetrical red velvet chair whose one arm forms a voluptuous curl, while the other flares into a sharp corner. Even so, I find it hard to imagine the person who would want to live with this furniture: she would have to live a life ruled by
le chic
.

M
y mother’s trajectory was from riches to rags. She always said that she never learned to cook because she grew up in a household with a cook and several maids. Because these facts about my mother came as I was growing up in a dilapidated farmhouse in rural Minnesota, I was fascinated by the idea that she used to live like a princess.

I badgered her to tell me details; my favorite story was about the time when she hid in the martini cart as it was being wheeled into the living room, tumbled out, and threw up at my grandfather’s feet. The highlight of the story for her was the moment my grandfather genially declared that his only daughter was free to vomit wherever she pleased. That detail never interested me—my siblings and I had taken for granted our right to vomit throughout the house. What I wanted to hear about was the martini cart: its rows of funnel-shaped glasses, the gently clinking bottles, the rustle of a starched apron as a maid tenderly served my grandparents their first cocktail of the evening.

There was no getting around the fact that the family fortunes had fallen since those gilded days. Rather than marrying a scion
of the banking universe, my mother had inexplicably married a farmer’s son; what’s more, her groom was a poet, and poetry is a lot harder to sell than corn. Back when my parents were first married, their house didn’t even have running water.