Paris in Love (44 page)

My least favorite moment in the academic conference for which I traveled to Venice: an enormously skilled actor performing a scene as a mountebank, or Renaissance con man. He waved his tiny bottle of “Dew of Venus” at my orange hair and said, “For ladies who are going gray,
this
will give you back your auburn tresses.” I laughed but thought bitter thoughts about the Italian hairdresser who’d promised to restore my blond hair to its normal red.

On our return to Florence, Marina announced with triumph that while we were in Venice, she’d found a good veterinarian, not like that scoffing fellow who jested at Milo’s waistline. This new vet reportedly said that it wasn’t Marina’s fault that Milo has become a twenty-seven-pound Chihuahua—it was
our
fault because we’d had him fixed. “Neutered dogs are all obese,” Marina informed me. In vain did we protest that America is a nation of normal-weight, healthy dogs missing some dangling bits. We fly back to Paris tomorrow, which is probably a good thing in terms of family harmony.

Anna came home and said, “Domitilla and I are best friends now!” This was indeed interesting news. “How did that happen?” I asked. “Domitilla was kicked out of class again, so I raised my hand and asked if I could go to the bathroom. Then I went into the hall and gave her my tiny pink hamster, and now”—Anna
said confidently—“she loves me.” I’m afraid that bad lessons are being taught by the transactional basis of this new rapport, but I couldn’t figure out how to express that intuition without seeming negative.

As I make my way through Claude’s memoir about Paris, it is dawning on me that I probably wouldn’t have liked him much. He thought that a “spontaneous sense of humor” was rare in a woman. Even worse, he declares that feminine charm is nothing more than bait: there are “steel springs beneath.” Dr. Freud would have had a lot to say about those “steel springs
beneath
.”

M
en have a special relationship with their penises. They name them, they compare them, they spend quality time readjusting their trousers. I haven’t seen many women turning their breasts into secret best friends, even those who wryly refer to them as “the girls.”

For most of my life, I have considered my breasts to be fully satisfactory: they fed my infant children and were remarkably useful in bed. That measured approach was reflected by my lingerie drawer. By my twenties, it held a motley assortment, unadorned cotton mixing with silky bits of lace, designed for nights in which someone might want to tear off my lingerie with his teeth. Those bras were the Mapplethorpe photos of my bra collection: labeled “explicit” and reserved for special shows guaranteed to inspire a heated reaction.

Over time, marriage, and—regrettably—cancer, my wisps of lace and satin disappeared through attrition, gradually replaced by sports bras, nursing bras, and the frightening “mastectomy” bra, which has all sorts of inserts. After my breast reconstruction, I became obsessed by organic cotton bras, as if excising
synthetics from my wardrobe—as my cancer had been excised—would make me a healthy person, organic from the outside in. My favorites were two identical cotton bras that started out red but, after a few go-rounds in the laundry, faded to bricky pink. They sagged, but my beautifully reconstructed breast did not, so poor construction seemed unimportant.

Then, as they say, came Paris. In the history of my life, this year in Paris might as well be termed the Year of the Brassiere. At some point I walked into the lingerie department at Galeries Lafayette and shamelessly eavesdropped on a conversation between a saleswoman and a client, a very elegant, restrained woman
d’un certain âge
, perhaps sixty-five or seventy. Madame liked the design of a delightful handful of cream silk embroidered with black roses, but if it were not possible to buy panties that matched, then obviously the bra was not for her. It occurred to me that it was entirely possible that a lusty, equally elegant Parisian male, also of a certain age (or younger!), waited for her at home, but more important,
his opinion would make no difference to her
.

She was dressing for herself. And her standards were high. I turned back to the rows of bras and tried to look at them through French eyes: as delicious, delightful accoutrements that would make my breasts look like confectionary pieces—for my own appreciation and pleasure. I swept up a handful and took them into the changing room. Some minutes later, I regarded myself adorned in soft tulle and silk. The straps were twisted together with tiny gold threads, making me feel like a Roman senator’s wife. I bought that one, and another of pleated fuchsia silk, and a third in navy, scalloped along the edges.

It scarcely needs to be said that Alessandro celebrated this development; for my birthday he gave me an exquisite bra in
cherry red lace. Dangling from a tiny bow was an engraved locket with just enough room, he pointed out, for a photo of him. I could keep my husband next to my heart. (Or between my breasts, however you want to think of it—this may be a gendered consideration.)

In time I accumulated quite a collection of bras, and the panties to match, of course. And I had also accumulated an extra ten pounds. Ordinarily, that dismaying fact would have made me eschew the mirror. But my Parisian lingerie drew my eyes away from imperfections, and directly to curves enhanced by lace and discreetly ingenious padding. American women may spend their time hating their waists and their hips, but it’s my guess that French women spend the same time admiring their breasts—and their hips—no matter their size.

Somewhere in the midst of this feverish period of lingerie acquisition, Anna announced that she was the proper age for a bra. I clearly remember asking my mother for a “training” bra. She snorted, and asked me just how I was going to keep those wild animals in check without training. That unappreciated pun gave way to a speech asserting that breasts and bras were “used by men to keep women in the kitchen”—in retrospect, an explanation that neatly dodged the whole issue of lust. Liberation from the kitchen (and a bra) led to my being the only girl in the sixth grade to find herself naked from the waist up during a scoliosis test—and lo, these many years later, I still feel a surge of resentment at the memory. Consequently, I greeted Anna’s request with jubilation: she was becoming a woman and we would have fun, fun,
fun
buying her first bra. She eyed me. “It’s not as if I said I was going to have a baby,” she pointed out.

Ignoring this deflating remark, we sailed out in search of a training bra. Le Bon Marché proved to have an entire wall of
such bras (with matching panties,
naturellement
). Anna focused instantly on a concoction that was scalloped and lacy and altogether French. She snatched it off the hook and clutched it to her nascent bosom, like a crazed shopper at a closeout sale.

It could be that French mothers refer to these tiny scraps of lace as “training” bras. But if so, the training is quite different than what my mother envisioned. As I see it, a French girl is trained to love her figure, and to take personal pride in her clothing, even if that clothing is never intended to be seen by anyone other than the owner (and her
maman
). Put another way,
these
artworks are not designated for gallery shows sure to be outlawed in certain communities: they are not for wild oats, but for private glamour.

At home, Anna tried on her bra and panties and then—as customary whenever new clothing came her way—headed to the living room to model before her father and brother. I grabbed her arm just in time. “Lingerie is private,” I told her. “You’re a woman now, remember?”

She frowned for a moment, registering that fact, and then she turned back to the mirror.

Alessandro came home triumphant from the market, with the very first peaches of the season. Mine was small with a moody flavor somewhere between sweet and sour—yet every bite celebrated peachiness, a flavor that speaks to one’s mouth of summer days so hot that a haze hangs in the air, of iced tea, thick grass, and white eyelet-lace frocks.