Paris in Love (38 page)

My great-uncle Claude had a servant named Eugénie who brought him hot water for shaving while he lazed in bed. He also describes her standing around holding a boutonniere while he adjusted his tie. I try to imagine a maid doing the same for Alessandro, and fail. He would hate the intrusion. I could probably tolerate it, myself.

We have young guests coming in a few days, so Anna and I went to a wonderful Japanese grocery store called Kioko to buy her favorite drink, beloved of all children: pale blue soda with a marble in the cap. To open it, you shove the marble into the neck of the bottle, where it makes a huge fizz and by a miracle of engineering gets stuck, unable to go up or down, no matter how much a child shakes the bottle. Which she invariably does.

Alessandro and I just took an interesting walk up toward Montmartre, the red-light district, home to the Moulin Rouge, the cabaret where dancers with impassive faces stand in a line to kick high over the heads of tourists. Passing a sixty-year-old couple arm in arm, I couldn’t help but think about how much more tiresome I find it to dress up than I did in my twenties. But how much harder would it be if you were a sixty-year-old transvestite?
Carefully powdering a bony nose … foundation after shaving … the pure ennui of the whole project.

Last night we went to the oldest oyster restaurant in Paris: Brasserie Wepler, established in 1892. It was packed with customers in family groups and on dates; an exquisite young lady who looked as if she’d stepped from a Pre-Raphaelite painting arrived with her poet-look-alike date. They were seated next to an elderly gentleman who dined alone, after shaking hands with all the waiters. Eating those oysters was like diving under the waves, tasting the ocean’s wild coolness, its salt, the faintly alien sense of deep water.… The food that followed was, alas, decidedly poor. But perhaps, just for those oysters, it was worth the trip.

My college roommate Marion has arrived for a visit with her husband, Lou, and their children. At lunch in a snug little bistro, her two kids and Anna practiced their Harry Potter Quidditch signals. We paid no attention to them until a sudden swell of noise demanded it, and we looked up to see that a cops-and-robbers game had taken over. Appalled, Marion yelped, “No gun play—not in a
French
restaurant!” As if little French boys didn’t swagger about using their baguettes as pretend weapons.

Anna’s grades in French have been miserably low (around 2 out of 10, on an average test). But that week in French camp made all the difference. She came out of school dancing with joy. Her teacher apparently took a look at her test and shrieked, “Oh, my goodness! What happened to you!” Anna got a 9 out of 10, better
than anyone in her group. She sang all the way home, and we had steak and ice cream to celebrate.

On rue du Faubourg-Montmartre I suddenly became transfixed in front of a vintage clothing store with the charming name of Asphodèle, which is French for “daffodil.” Hanging in the window was a pearly buttercream bag embossed all over with the YSL logo. I could see Jackie Kennedy’s gloved hand picking it up, or Catherine Deneuve placing it next to her chair while lunching at the Hôtel de Crillon.

Luca returned from his skiing trip with a big grin. The only glitch was when he crashed his snowboard into a skier, after which he simultaneously apologized in French (to the skier), defended himself in English (to a critical bystander), and grumbled in Italian to his waiting friends. And just to boost his coolness … he hung out with
sophomores
.

Last night Alessandro and I sent our visiting friends out for a romantic dinner alone while we had takeout with all the kids and put them to bed. A bit later six-year-old Sadie woke up, sobbing for her mother. So we talked about how beautiful her mommy looked in her spiffy black dress, all shiny and excited about being in Paris. I sang lullabies, and held her sweaty, sticky-with-tears face against my shoulder, and thought about the fact that in a blink of an eye, Sadie will be singing to her own children.

As I walked down boulevard des Invalides, I could see the homeless man’s little bushes dotted with red—and yet I knew his berries had fallen off. I got closer to find that he has hung the bushes with small, bright red Christmas balls. He gestured toward his little trees and laughed: happy to find beauty discarded, or perhaps given to him.