Paris Letters (8 page)

Dear Áine,

I do a lot of walking in Paris. And on these walks, I come across plenty of statues. It’s as though the city is standing guard, looking out pensively at something important in the distance. Some of these statues are heroic generals, revolutionaries, or kings on horses. Others are serene like the collection of queens and duchesses at Jardin du Luxembourg. Anne Marie Louise d’Orléans, Duchess of Montpensier, was one of the greatest heiresses in history. She was a defiant young lady, refusing a string of proposals from European ruling families and wanting only to marry for love. When she was refused, she opted out of the scene and died unmarried and childless. Many admire her for her strength, but I like her because she is situated under a shady tree and looks out to a grand fountain where children sail toy boats.

We spend a lot of time together, the duchess and I. She scored an excellent spot in the park—a nice trifecta of shade, people-watching, and silence. The fountain drowns out the sounds of nearby traffic, pierced only with the occasional police siren, which I don’t mind because it reminds me of Jason Bourne movies. James Bond movies too.

The duchess doesn’t do as much exploring as I do around Paris, preferring to stay put as statues are wont to do. By the time I reach her, my dogs are barking, and I pull up a chair to rest my feet.

We all must find places to explore in this world, but also places to rest. Paris is good about this. It’s easy to walk for hours. Once you’ve lost your way or your spunk, you’ll likely find a bench to sit and take a breather.

The guy sitting near to me is reading Le Monde, the big French newspaper. There is a couple nearby reading a map. And dogs. A healthy population of prancing pups. There aren’t as many poodles as I thought there would be, which suits me just fine. Pugs are the dog du jour these days. Their snorting makes me crack a smile every time. Not the duchess though. She’s as serious as always, keeping guard over Paris, and perhaps me too, as I write this letter to you.

À bientôt!

Janice

As I rose from my chair near the duchess, I noticed some meringue clinging to the inside of the dessert box. I scooped it up with my finger and popped it in my mouth. I realized I hadn’t done this since I was a kid. In California, I didn’t eat dessert, or even bread. Carbs were the devil in Los Angeles. Meals were vegetable-based and came in cardboard boxes from Whole Foods. I didn’t cook; I assembled. If I was eating with someone, I assembled the boxed food on our plates. If I was alone, I skipped the plate. But here in Paris, the salad bars and bread ban—like the vegan thing—had been forgotten.

After my dessert in the park, I meandered back down rue Mouffetard. Before I turned right down my street, I slowed my gait near the butcher, who was stirring the potatoes that were roasting and collecting the drippings from the rotisserie of chickens above.

“Bonjour, monsieur.” I smiled. I added monsieur to my repertoire.

“Bonjour, mademoiselle.” He smiled.

I skipped to the door of my building. Is there anything more glorious than new crushes on boys? I opened the door with a code, walked into the foyer, and groped along the wall for the light switch. The foyer was lined with mailboxes, but of course there was no mail for me.

That was all done now.

11

Try Something New

There are times when I try the patience of my older sister. Three weeks into my time in Paris, there was a discernible undertone of exasperation in Julie’s voice. I had been giving her daily updates from Paris about this butcher I’d been eyeing. I told her he looked like Daniel Craig. I told her we stared at each other.

“But you haven’t told me if you have talked to him?”

Silence.

“You know how to speak French, Janice. You know grade-four French.” Sheepishly, I admit that I took many, many classes all the way through high school. I even took night classes when I moved to California because I thought it was cool to take night classes at THE Beverly Hills 90210 high school. And yet, the fear of speaking French to another person who speaks French had rendered me mute in Paris.

“Lesson one in grade-four French,” my sister began. “Bonjour. Je m’appelle Janice. Comment t’appelles-tu?” Hello, my name is Janice. What is your name?

“Sounds simple enough.”

“That’s how you start speaking French.” Exasperation spitting through the phone. “You. Start. Speaking. French.” My sister has always had a flair for common sense, which is probably why I generally do what she says.

One day a few years ago, I was visiting her in Canada. My niece came home one day after school and complained that she felt bossed around on the playground. Julie said, “Next time, you tell those kids that they are not the boss of you. Mommy is the boss of you.” My niece looked at me for further validation. I nodded. “Your mommy has been the boss of me my whole life. I don’t mind. She’s good at it.”

So the next morning, I did as I was told and walked up to the butcher.

“Bonjour, monsieur,” I said.

“Bonjour, mademoiselle,” he replied.

“Je m’appelle Janice. Comment t’appelles-tu?”

“Je m’appelle Christophe.” And he pointed at my necklace, which had hanging from it my Saint Christopher’s medal.

“Tu parles anglais?” I asked. Do you speak English?

“Non.”

Merde.

“Ça va?” How are you?

“Ça va.” I’m fine.

As I turned to leave, he touched my arm. I looked up at him.

“Demain?” he asked. Tomorrow?

“Demain.” I smiled.

Each day thereafter, I would walk up to him and say something in French that I had pieced together and rehearsed with help from Google Translate. I would see him in the morning and practice my future tense. “Today I am going to Musée Carnavalet. After, I am going to walk around Saint-Germain-des-Prés.” He would nod, smile, and tell me to have a nice day. At the end of a day filled with crêpes, photo-taking, and navigation, I would walk up to him and practice my passé composé. “Today I went to Musée Carnavalet. After, I walked around Saint-Germain-des-Prés.” And each day, he would nod and say, “À demain?” See you tomorrow? And I would say, “À demain.” See you tomorrow.

Then I’d walk home, stroking my Saint Christopher’s medal, and watch the video I took of the butcher with my phone one morning from the café like I was a crazy stalker lady.

He probably went home thinking I was slow. Cute, but slow.

During my fourth week in Paris, I met up with my Uncle Brad and Aunt Mary. They were in town for a week to celebrate her retirement. When I was twelve years old, I took the train into Toronto with my sister to visit our uncle and aunt. It was our first trip away from our home in Clear Creek, Ontario, a small village on the edge of Lake Erie. He walked us around the city with a map and taught us how to navigate our way. “Always remember your compass directions,” he said. “Internalize them. Know where the water is in reference to where you are going. That way, you’ll be able to find your way back. You’ll feel the freedom of exploring without fearing being lost.” He pointed at the map. “You’ll get lost, but you’ll have confidence that you can get back on track again.” This lesson came in handy in Paris as the three of us repeatedly got lost, but being lost in Paris was a joy. That’s how we found an old instrument repair shop run by a man with a handlebar moustache, the bookbinding studio that dealt in restoration of old texts, and a candy shop where we found the most heavenly candies of unusual flavor combinations. None of these places were on the well-beaten path.

On one of our final mornings together, we headed toward Sainte-Chapelle, the glass cathedral that was the private cathedral of King Louis IX of France (the one who became a saint later). As we sat under the rainbow rays pouring through the stained glass, Uncle Brad told me about his Baptist upbringing and how he never felt any connection to God in church, but when he saw art, he felt something. “Art is a spiritual practice,” he reflected. “If it weren’t for art, I’d have given up on God a long time ago. This cathedral though”—he looked up at the walls of stained glass—“is very convincing.”

We left the cathedral and walked through the Jardin des Tuileries to the Musée de l’Orangerie to see Monet’s Nymphéas (Water Lilies), which he painted in his garden in Giverny. This isn’t one painting. It is a collection of murals lining large empty oval rooms. Talking in this room was discouraged, and I understood why the moment I arrived. The air was thick with calm and peace. It was as if we left our words in the coat check. I sat next to my Aunt Mary. She leaned over and whispered, “Feel it?” I nodded. It was the moment I began to fall in love with silence.

After the museum, we strolled over to the Jardin des Tuileries for a picnic. With the warm April sun on us, we unraveled the contents of our bags and grabbed four of the hundreds of olive green chairs strewn about: three for sitting and one to use as the table. We made sandwiches of various charcuterie meats and cheeses. I peeled the top slice of salami from the stack. My aunt said, “I thought you were vegetarian.”

“Worse,” I replied. “Vegan.”

“With the cheese they have around here?” She cut off a small triangle of creamy chèvre and popped it in her mouth. “That’s sacrilege.”

I told my aunt and uncle about the butcher and how I felt like I was talking to him like a three-year-old, that speaking French was too hard, that he was too hard to get to know.

“Act like a fool, sound terrible, and make laughable grammatical errors,” said my uncle. He was a primary school teacher in Toronto. He taught English to many immigrant children. “Act like a child.”

So on the days that followed, I continued talking to my butcher friend, making grammatical errors and sounding foolish along the way. He replied in slow French, smiling and likely holding back laughter, but he was still a stranger, which made acting like a fool feel somewhat okay.

One evening, I was heading to an English-speaking Meetup group for expats. There are hundreds of these specialized groups all over Paris. A friend once said, “If you’re an expat lesbian tightrope walker in Paris, there is a Meetup group for you.”

Now I’m not one to go out on a limb and meet people. I’m introverted, and crowds exhaust me. But sometimes you have to be the grown-up of your life and tell your inner child, who is kicking and screaming, “Get your shoes on. This is not optional. We have a play date.”

So that’s what I did. I put on my shoes and started walking up the street to the Meetup group. Insolent and begrudging.

But who should be sitting in a bar up the street? Why, it was Christophe, wasn’t it? And didn’t he see me just as I was walking by? Why yes, he did. And didn’t he jump up from his bar stool and rush outside to ask me if I would be interested in having a drink? Why yes, he did.

But he did it in very few words. He pointed at the bar and said, “Bière?” Lucky for him, I’m Canadian and know the French word for beer. And lucky for me, when I saddled up to the bar with Christophe, all the bartenders were Canadian and bilingual. Oh God in Heaven, thank you for this moment.

Teaming up with the bartenders, we managed to piece together a Franglish conversation of sorts. They were determined to help their friend pick up this Canadian girl. And when no one was looking, I asked Christophe if I could take a photo of him and me. You know, the kind where you are cheek to cheek and one of you has your arms outstretched with the camera to get the photo. And that’s when he turned and kissed me!

Cue sexy smooching scene. On film even!

He immediately pulled back and apologized. “Désolé, désolé, désolé.” Sorry, sorry, sorry.

I immediately leaned in and said, “Non désolé, non désolé, non désolé.” No sorry, no sorry, no sorry. It wasn’t my most elegant speech, but he understood.

I never did make it to the Meetup group.

Instead I walked around Paris with Christophe for half the night, with stops here and there for late-night coffees and smooches. The cafés were crowded. The streets pulsed with the heat of spring sunlight earlier that day. When he dropped me off at my building, I pointed up to show him the windows of the apartment where I was staying. He kissed me good-bye and said something to me in French. I’m not sure what it was, but I hoped it was something nice. It certainly seemed like something nice by the way he said it.

The next day, I walked by the butcher shop, and he said something in French that I didn’t understand, but it had an inflection at the end of the sentence that led me to believe he asked me a question. Hoping he had just asked me out, I responded in French with my rehearsed, “My window tonight at 8:30?” He nodded. That night when I looked out my window at 8:30, he was standing there ready for our date. And he was standing there every night at 8:30 for the next two weeks, which were also what I thought would be the last two weeks of my time in the city.

Cue sexy love affair in Paris.

How long does one wait to have sex with a cute butcher in Paris? In my old life, I would have held out as per the rules in ladies magazines, and honestly, most of the men gave up right around the time I was buying undies for the big event. But the code of conduct is different for a traveler. Travelers live by this rule: collect as many experiences as you can without getting yourself killed or worse.

So how long does a traveler wait? Evidently not long. This was new for me. I used to watch Sex and the City and wonder if every girl was getting it on all time, because I wasn’t and neither were my friends. We weren’t nuns, for heaven’s sake, but we weren’t so…slutty either. And most of us were mystified by the amount of sex Carrie and her gaggle of girlfriends had with the boys of New York. But with Christophe, I must admit I deliberately didn’t wait, simply because I was running out of time. Would it end in heartbreak? Likely. Would I look back on it fondly? Definitely.

All the aches and pains in my calloused heart had been replaced by soft touches and smooches here and there. And there. And a few nights after our first date in the bar, he reached a part of me inside that had been silent too long. In ecstasy, she screamed out for more.

12

Mona Lisa Smile