Paris in Love (60 page)

Alessandro and the children are back from Italy. We had sushi last night instead of frozen food, and I slept until 6:30 instead of 5:00. Anna has figured out what she wants to be when she grows up—a cake decorator. “I absolutely
looove
fondant,” she told me. Then she asked whether you have to go to college to decorate cakes. Absolutely. Haven’t you heard of that class? Fondant 101.

The idiotic workmen on the floor above us just loaded a heavy bag of cement into our tiny elevator, causing all the cables to snap. It plunged five floors to the ground and has to be completely rebuilt—a repair that is scheduled to take place in August.
After we leave
. We’re looking at three whole weeks of four flights of stairs going down, and four flights going up. Hauling groceries upstairs without an elevator is one thing; the idea of
moving out
without an elevator makes me want to run up a flight and turn into a profanity-spewing American she-devil—the kind
seen in foreign films and sometimes homegrown films, too.
The Devil Wears French Underwear
.

It’s intolerably hot in Paris. My study is a little room sandwiched between our bedroom and the living room. It has one set of big windows, looking directly into the sun. So I drew the curtains. Now the room is hot and dark, like a sauna version of the Bat Cave. I just stripped to my bra and undies, and I’m still too hot to write.

Home from Italian tennis camp, Luca is putting up a strenuous battle against going to the French equivalent. This is all to no avail, as it’s already been paid for, but he won’t stop arguing about it. I know he’s scared stiff, but I look at his cheekbones and remind myself that French women—no matter how young—are connoisseurs of male beauty. He’ll be fine.

Friends Kim, Paul, and Summer are visiting from New York. Summer is a bewitching eight-year-old with the peaked chin and wild laughter of a wood elf—basically, an Anna doppelgänger. Within hours, they were holding hands, wreathing their arms around each other while walking. At bedtime, Anna informed me that Summer is different from other girls. “How so?” I asked. “She doesn’t do what I say.” I suggested that Summer may be even more fun to play with because she has her own ideas. Anna is still thinking this over.

There are places in the world that do not live up to their billing; Giverny, the site of Monet’s blurry, lovely paintings, is not one of them. We are just back in Paris after being enchanted by water lilies with deep pink hearts, poppies with translucent pink petals, cascades of coral roses. This may be heresy, but I think that Monet’s gardens are more beautiful in reality than they are in paint.

Today Anna went to camp, so Kim and I dropped Summer off in a park with her dad while we went shopping. Returning later to collect them, we were met with a forked stick jutting from a mound of earth, pale green leaves flapping in the wind like tiny sails. “A funeral mound,” Summer announced. We looked respectfully at the grave, which turned out to house a deceased Tic Tac. RIP.

Last night our visiting friends took us to a two-star Michelin restaurant, Carré des Feuillants. We began with flutes of rose-colored champagne and white asparagus. I had flaky turbot dressed with a thin line of caviar. The black-on-white effect made me think of a chic wedding cake, but it tasted delicately of the sea, of butter and cream: the very cooking that made Julia Child fall in love with France.

Alessandro hauled Luca, protesting every inch of the way, to Gare de Lyon to catch a train to French tennis camp. In the campers’ designated waiting area, Alessandro overheard another father say something in Italian to his son, but Luca wouldn’t
allow him to make contact. “I think he’s embarrassed by me,” Alessandro told me morosely. You
think
?

We just visited a jewelry workshop, Commelin, which began making charms, by hand, in 1880. Even though it’s not a retail store, they welcome visitors. We watched an artisan creating exquisite enameled squares that will someday become a chessboard. I succumbed, and started charm bracelets for Anna and my two nieces with teeny gold Eiffel Towers.

Paris is so hot that the white plaster walls of the building opposite my study window shimmer, slightly out of focus, as if they belonged on an Aegean island overlooking the sea. We have no air-conditioning, and of course the elevator is still broken. Yesterday the construction workers who broke the elevator smashed one of the stained-glass windows in the stairwell. For the first time, I can think about leaving Paris without feeling a pang of sadness.