Paris in Love (52 page)

The Château de Chenonceaux was the site of great jockeying between Catherine de’ Medici, queen to Henri II, and Henri’s mistress, Diane de Poitiers, to whom he gave the castle. When Henri died, Catherine took it back. Diane had had a portrait of herself painted in which she was depicted as the goddess Diana, so Catherine did the same—and the two portraits now hang together in one of the salons. Diane makes the more delectable Diana.

Beatrice adroitly holds her place as the Queen Bee of the fourth grade by arbitrarily dismissing some girls and then welcoming others (though never Anna). Today she summarily jettisoned a classmate named Maria from the cool group, for reasons known
only to Her Majesty. “Maria cried all day,” Anna told me. “I felt bad for her, but she thinks I’m weird, so I couldn’t help.”

My friend Anne and I explored the tiny Musée Bourdelle today. Antoine Bourdelle (1861–1929) was a sculptor; the museum was his house and atelier. In the garden, I fell in love with
Le Fruit
, a statue of Eve with a luscious little smirk and a sinuous twist to her hips. In her right hand, three apples. In her left, behind her back, another apple. Woven into her hair … apples! And then upstairs we found an exquisite
Bacchante
, one of Bacchus’s female groupies—a wilder version of Eve, with the same sexy twist to her hips, but ivy in her hair instead of apples.

Luca says that the fact that Alessandro and I launched into a battle during his sixteenth-birthday celebration has undoubtedly scarred him forever and he will never go on vacation with us again. In the meantime, he would like his computer back so that he can communicate with other teens whose parents are raving nuts. We are united in our decision that he will have to survive without the tender support of his peers until he passes ninth grade.

Today I made great headway in Claude’s book, as Alessandro kept me waiting in a café and I had it with me. Claude held forth on the “unconscious grace of movement, the gentleness of manner, the instinctive courtesy” that characterizes the upper classes. He says that aristocracy lingers “like a perfume above bare existence.” I’m afraid my response was rather hostile.
You were born
in Duluth, Minnesota, Claude. Just who do you think you are kidding?

Last night Alessandro and I walked home as the sky turned periwinkle blue, on the cusp of twilight. At the end of rue du Conservatoire is La Pause, a tiny bar where music students hang out at the end of the day. Two men sat outside playing guitars; one of them started whistling, and the clear, twinkling music followed us down the street, filling the air all the way up to that darkening sky.

I’ve become obsessed with tracking down a song I heard in a store, a French version of Bob Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind.” It turns out there are many covers; the one I was chasing was Richard Anthony’s 1964
“Écoute dans le vent.”
(Despite his Anglo name, he’s an Egyptian-born Frenchman.) In the video I found online, he stands in a black sweater, his hands nonchalantly pushed into his pockets, and sings while behind him musicians in narrow-lapelled suits and ties strum their guitars. In 1963 and ’64, Dylan belted out that song as a protest against the American idea of manhood and its celebration of violence and war; he was singing at time when our military involvement in Vietnam was escalating rapidly. Much as I love Anthony’s version, he turned a protest song into supper-club music … it makes you wonder if he even understood the lyrics.

Today we actually bid on a painting at Hôtel Drouot, though we didn’t win. It was a gorgeous little seventeenth-century Madonna.
Following the directions of more experienced friends, we had determined an upper price. But someone else, behind us, wanted our Madonna. He bid; Alessandro bid. Up and up it went, until we reached our limit. Alessandro looked at me and hesitated. The auctioneer helpfully jumped in: “Madame says yes!” We laughed and went higher, until Alessandro gave me another nervous look, and I shook my head. “Monsieur,” the auctioneer said as we stood up to leave, “we have more paintings that Madame will say yes to!” But we avoided the siren call of winning for the sake of it and went to lunch instead.

Today I went to Le Phare de la Baleine, which translates into the Whale’s Lighthouse, a store where locals buy those fabulous striped T-shirts—the authentic version, not the ones for tourists. They also have adorable children’s clothing, and thick beach towels, cherry-colored and sprinkled with little white whales. I bought a fabulous pale blue straw hat, shaped with four square points and a bow. Now I’m home, I think the bow is rather twee, though perhaps on a French madame it looks retro and ironic.

When I arrived at college, straight from a Minnesota farm, I was terrified by the kids in cashmere and linen who had spent their holidays skiing in the Alps. The memory of those boys—“euros,” we called them, long before that word defined a continent’s currency—remained repressed until yesterday, when I took Luca shopping. He picked out three things in five minutes: dark red jeans, a crinkly pink T-shirt, and a torso-hugging, finely knit sweater. He now looks precisely like the boys who petrified and intimidated me … because he
is
one. I have given birth to the enemy.