Paris in Love (59 page)

With the family in Italy, no one interrupts me; there are no squabbles; there isn’t any laundry. My academic book grows every day, and my Lose-Parisian-Pounds diet is on track. The problem is, I just can’t sleep. My body knows all this silence and empty space is wrong. The light around the curtains this morning was colorless, like the froth on a wave, as if even that signaled the absence of what matters most.

Today I succumbed to rampant curiosity about Claude’s life, and actually telephoned my uncle Malcolm back in Minnesota. (Malcolm was one of Claude’s nephews.) It turns out that Claude mostly wrote literary fiction, but he tried genre fiction as well; Malcolm recalled, for example, a novella about a paranormal device that turned parts of Duluth into a tropical paradise. Claude’s father was convinced that his son had remarkable literary talent and set up a trust that allowed him to enjoy an intellectual life in Italian villas. (The comparison with my mother is painful, but I’m consoling myself with the fact that if Mom had had the cash, she would certainly have underwritten my literary attempts, whether she considered them deserving or not.) Claude died on a trip to Minnesota,
when he went fishing with the author Sinclair Lewis and caught a staph infection. Claude, Uncle Malcolm concluded, “was effete in the sense of outdoor stuff like fishing.” I’ve always hated fishing. I may parallel Claude in many ways, but this last is one I intend to avoid.

This evening I stopped at Number 37 rue des Martyrs, the uninspiringly named Bar le Select. I sat down outside and drank a glass of excellent wine. In the States, I would feel odd drinking alone at a bar, but here it feels absolutely natural. I happily watched poodles and Parisians parade past. I am alone in the most enchanting city in the world, and at this moment, it’s as if the locals strut by just for my pleasure.

Tennis camp finished yesterday, and the kids are in Florence with Marina for a few days before returning to Paris. “I lost the tournament, Mama,” Anna reported last night. Then she perked up: “But I hit my teacher with a ball right in the forehead!”

Today I reached a landmark: I am back to my weight before I encountered the vast and luscious temptations of Paris. And that’s a good thing, because I happened past the atelier of Joséphine Vannier, the chocolate artisan who made my wonderful Cinderella shoe. She also creates boxes made entirely from dark chocolate and decorated in edible paint. They are about the size of small jewelry boxes; I bought one in amethyst, with meticulously painted gold curlicues on top.

Alessandro is now back in Florence after two weeks in the mountains with Milo, who was given no prosciutto treats for the duration, a cruel hardship indeed. Marina counted up and weighed the 80 diet food pellets that Alessandro had been giving him each day and announced that Milo had been starved, because the vet had prescribed 120. Everyone calmed down after Milo was hoisted on the scale and discovered to have lost … nothing.
Niente
. A sumo wrestler would be proud to have such a metabolism.

I’m going to a big writers’ conference in Florida in a few weeks, and I’m anticipating being cold, because I know the hotel will be air-conditioned to arctic levels. To be prepared, I’ve bought a charcoal gray coat made of crinkly material that you can roll up and shove in a handbag without ruining it. It’s Japanese, frightfully sophisticated—and 100 percent polyester. When I was growing up,
polyester
was practically a four-letter word.

Since I’m alone, I’m not bothering to cook, and luckily the frozen food store, Picard, sells heavenly heat-and-eat meals. But today I bought a fresh entrée in Monoprix because the esteemed chef Joël Robuchon “made” it. Out of the box, it turned out to be a little casserole in an adorable china baking ramekin.

We are a No-Electronic-Games-System household. Anna called up from Italy, very excited. “Mama, I had a vision!” I inquired about this miraculous event. “I was staring into space, and suddenly I just saw myself playing the new Harry Potter game. The
portable one.” Her vision will never become reality, but I do love how she claimed paranormal backup.

I went to the Musée Jacquemart-André by myself today. On my earlier visits, I was accompanied by friends and the audiotape; this time, though, I was responsible for no one’s happiness but my own, and wandered in silence through all the rooms. I am very fond of a marble statue of a little girl rather improbably caressing a dove. Although she’s stark naked, her hair is elaborately braided and fixed with a bow. I love her plump tummy and stubby toes.