We just took Luca’s computer away for a month, after a very painful, blunt discussion with his Latin teacher (following painful, blunt discussions with his French and history teachers). They all said he was remarkably polite, which I’m proud about. But also remarkably indolent. Signed, Cruelest Parents in Paris.
We are now ensconced in the heart of a deeply conservative Catholic church—all “smells and bells,” my mother would have described it. My favorite moment of the Mass is the final hymn, which is often a hymn to Mary, called “Couronnée d’Étoiles,” or “Crowned with Stars.” I love its wild purple prose. Every Sunday we less-than-tunefully carol that Mary “drapes” the sun, outshines the moon, and salutes the dawn.
Coming out of school, Anna told me that her gymnastics teacher has been asking “for a long time” that she bring a sweat suit, but “I kept forgetting.” So we elbowed our way into a crowded department store, and she picked out a pink sweat suit with sequins spelling FREE LOVE. “What’s that mean?” she asked. I had no idea what to say, so I offered, “Love for lots of people, puppies and kittens, too.” She nodded wisely.
My mother placed white sugar right next to crack cocaine in the catalog of the most dangerous substances known to man. To this day, my idea of heaven is a handful of small marshmallows: pure, undiluted, bad-for-you sugar in a form that could never be mistaken as healthy. I have found a supplier here in Paris, which is akin to a junkie discovering a private poppy field.
This morning as I watched Anna select pink undies, pink socks, and a pink shirt to go with her pink sweat suit, I grew suspicious and pried out the reason for this flare-up of conspicuous femininity: apparently she had been confronted in the bathroom by two malicious young ladies who said she looked like a boy and should use their bathroom. Because most people say Anna looks exactly like me, I find this particularly insulting (and absurd). But I sent her off to school looking like a sporty princess, armored in pink against her sharp-tongued foes, and then spent the morning brooding over it. Why are girls so mean to each other?
Fridays are our date nights, which back in New Jersey meant movies, but here means food. Last night we wandered into one of the little covered passageways near us, the Passage des Panoramas. Inside, we found a bistro that could serve fifteen at most. The menu, on a chalkboard, offered a choice of precisely two entrées. I had smoky vegetable soup in a little tureen and then deep, delicious boeuf bourguignon, followed by warm chocolate cake. The cost was about fifteen euros. Joy!
“Our” homeless man is gone. Alessandro and Anna set off, our daily donation clutched in Anna’s hand, only to find that he had vanished, presumably to Bucharest. Alessandro is berating himself for not trying out his phrase about dog shelters in time. I told a weeping Anna that the man couldn’t bear to part from his puppy, so now that dog is learning Romanian. I hope this is the truth.
Today it hailed. The sky was actually the color of pearl, and when hail struck the roofs opposite my study, it bounced quite visibly. At the very top, the hail bounced from the ornate metal ridge that runs down the gable and formed little arches in the air, as if tiny fountains bloomed on the roofs.
This evening we ate at a sidewalk bistro. As twilight drew in, our waiter turned on a heat lamp. Across the street, a man played melancholy sax, leaning against the iron railings of the church. Winter is coming to Paris.
A PARISIAN WINTER
The American media warn us at every turn that Christmas is a time of overindulgence. Women’s magazines bulge with articles about how to avoid the buffet table, not to mention an extra ten pounds. But to be honest, that siren song of temptation has never bothered me much. English Department holiday parties tend to offer a dispiriting selection of cheap wine accompanied by three kinds of hummus. And I shed surplus calories by wrestling a five-foot tree into submission, grading my Shakespeare students’ final papers, and fighting the lines to mail late presents.
My immunity was strengthened by my postcancer mood. Our kitchen used to be stacked with cookbooks and crockery, until I decided that it should be an ascetic feng shui retreat in which I would cook meals full of antioxidants. In one pot, because I gave all the rest away.
And then came December in Paris. Overnight our neighborhood covered market, Marché Saint-Quentin, was transformed into the movie set for a Dickens musical, complete with garlands and strings of lights. Our favorite fromagerie put out boxes of tiny quail eggs and three hitherto unfamiliar kinds of chèvre, produced only for the Christmas season. I was staggered by a mound of fresh mushrooms, big and ruffled like hats for elderly churchgoing fairies. It was only when the marchand de fruits asked me if I was quite sure I wanted that many that I realized this particular fungus cost the same as our rent.
Paris is always a materialist’s playground, but December is in a class by itself. One day I wandered into the gourmet department of Galeries Lafayette to find that it had sprouted tables piled high with decorative flourishes for holiday baking: jars of edible gold leaf, silver stars, candied violets. The display was designed to tempt the unwary shopper not to gluttony per se—but rather to the pure beauty of food, to the ways it can be decorated and dusted and presented, turned into something that can take your breath away. I instantly succumbed to a wild desire for Staub mini-cocottes, enameled in a shiny burnt crimson. I bought eight of them, kissing the dream of an austere kitchen goodbye. Surely antioxidants taste better in cocottes.
But I didn’t stop with cocottes. I bought a hand mixer that resembled nothing so much as a rather dangerous vibrator, rose-tinted Himalayan salt, and lavender-infused mustard in a moody violet color. It seems that Parisian ladies eschew leek soup in December, and spend their time crafting elaborate meals from ingredients few Americans have heard of. In short, I fell prey to the French version of holiday indulgence.
I made it home with aching arms, no gifts, and—more crucially—no bread. I was confronted with a grumpy Alessandro, who squinted at the Himalayan salt and demanded to know how I could possibly have forgotten to buy a baguette. By the time I came back from the boulangerie, Anna was chasing her brother through the apartment with my vibrating mixer. I ignored them and baked a chicken slathered in violet mustard. Honesty compels me to admit that the chicken was not a success. The children regarded it with the kind of expression with which a Californian greets a furry toilet seat cover. French children probably greet purple chicken with squeals of delight rather than demands that their parents hit the street for KFC.
Still, I began going to bed thinking about food. The remnants of a leg of lamb smeared with anchovies and butter could turn to a smoky broth, which then became fennel soup with spicy sausage (a recipe borrowed from Gordon Ramsay). I made the soup in a big pot. Then I put a few crispy sausage rounds in each cocotte, poured in some soup, and dripped spirals of spicy oil over the top. This felt a little like cheating: was I supposed to use my cocottes only to serve food baked therein? I felt sure that the Parisian answer would be a resounding yes. But then I remembered that when my parents were newly married and very poor, my mother served a group of unwary poets a silky meat pâté—made from cat food. My crimes pale in comparison.
I moved dreamily from one meal to the next. I used the cocottes to bake little chocolate cakes for a dinner party, mixing the very best chocolate—Michel Cluizel’s—with splashes of Grand Marnier and a whole carton of eggs. Under the giddy influence of a Parisian December, I gave each cake a generous dab of crème fraîche and topped it with a translucent star made from pure spun sugar. The cakes looked gorgeous, but after my guests ate them up, their faces turned a bit green. Later I realized that the recipe promised a cake for ten, which I had poured into six pans.
Crème fraîche began entering the apartment in buckets, disappearing down the gullets of my family, my friends, and myself. In New Jersey, the children used to have pizza every Friday night and clamor to go to the Peppercorn diner for grilled American cheese on white bread. In Paris, they learned to smile at fennel soup and lick the spoon when they were f
inished.
Ascetism was relegated to the closet (unfortunately, so were my “thin” jeans). I finally discovered the allure of indulgence—along with a newfound appreciation for the luxury of time, born of being on sabbatical, free from committees, office hours, and classrooms full of students nervously waiting to be tested on Hamlet. I learned to think about food as being beautiful rather than just fattening or nourishing, as we Americans are too prone to doing. Throwing a cold pizza in the oven is easy; eating prepackaged sushi from the grocery store is even easier. Popcorn for supper so that one can work straight through the meal? Why not?
I am making only one New Year’s resolution this year. I’m ignoring the obvious: my overly tight clothing. Instead I will take my Parisian Christmas with me back to New York City in the fall. My cocottes will remind me that food is meant to be served to others, to be beautiful, to be original (even violet-colored), to be dreamed over. They will remind me that indulgence is not a virtue we should keep for the holiday season alone, and that saving time—when it comes to food—is more sinful than virtuous.
My Parisian December went a long way to mending a crack in my heart caused by the words “the biopsy was positive.” To eat as the French do is to celebrate life, even to indulge in it.
Galeries Lafayette has put up its Christmas lights! The huge building has been transformed to a glowing set of rose windows that hark back to eighteenth-century Russia, or Versailles: a time when the display of beauty, its gleam and luxury, was of paramount importance. Of course, Alessandro pointed out that these windows beckon not to worship but to shop.
My favorite Galeries Lafayette holiday window is set with an exquisite dinner party scene: crystal chandeliers, fabulous dishes, tiaras scattered between the plates, wine glasses draped in pearls—all of it being enjoyed by assorted marionette bears. One has a wineglass in each paw and a tiara tipped over one ear. He raises the glasses drunkenly, toasting all the children outside the window.
The streets are suddenly filled with men selling chestnuts, roasted over oil barrels. Alessandro and I bought some, wrapped in twists of newspaper. They split open from the heat, showing sweet yellow insides. We walked along slowly, nursing the warm packages in our hands, eating smoky, slightly charred nuts.
Due to my disinclination to chop off chicken heads, my butcher whacks them off for me, but he leaves the knees: black and red, hardscrabble knees for running hard. Parisian chickens are much more chickenlike than Mr. Perdue’s; furthermore, eggs come ornamented with tiny feathers. My children shriek: “Butt feathers!” Having grown up on a farm, I like remembering the sultry warmth of newly laid eggs.
Anna and I were in a department store, weighing the merits of a stuffed penguin over a stuffed possum, when we were accosted by Santa Claus. This skinny, insistent Santa just wouldn’t quit; he wanted a picture with Anna. Having been a micro-preemie, she’s quite petite. But in her head she’s a young lady of eleven, and young ladies do not sit on the laps of strange Santas. “You know what, Mama?” she said when he was finally banished. “That man was weird.” And, a moment later, “I bet French Santas drink too much wine.”
The rain comes down every day here; my umbrella is as crucial as my wallet. My favorite adaptation to the wet weather is babies in bright red backpacks that have four posts to hold little red canopies over their heads. They look like plump Indian rajas swaying along, atop paternal elephants.
Anna and I walked past yet another homeless man and his dog today. “He’s a wiener dog!” said Anna. One look and I said, “No, she’s a mama wiener dog.” A wild scream followed. “Mama! She has puppies! Tiny puppies!” Sure enough … nine—nine—tiny, tiny puppies were inside the box on a warm grate. Two days old, according to their owner. We gave him all our change.
We went with friends to the Champs-Élysées tonight for the first time since Christmas lights were put up. Trees all the way down the avenue are lit with tiny pale blue lights that slide downward, as if a lazy, bluish rain were falling.
Back in the States, we had a terrible time getting the kids up in time for church, often ending in most impious battles. Here we employ the mighty power of chocolate. I announce that if they rise immediately, we have time to go to a café for hot chocolate and croissants … then we walk through the chilly morning to a café and sit, fingers curled around big mugs of sweet chocolate, before we run to Saint-Eugène–Sainte-Cécile.
Our comfort food after a tough day at school is Japanese curry—specifically, Golden Curry made with five onions microwaved into pale, translucent, lettucelike pieces, as taught by my Japanese sister-in-law, Chiemi. The children gobble it the way a fat Frenchman gobbles foie gras: with concentration and delight.
At fifteen, Luca has left “Mama” behind and now calls me “Mom,” whereas Anna still howls “Mama!” across the whole apartment. It occurred to me yesterday that the day will come when no one will call me “Mama,” and I won’t realize it that day, or even the day after, just as I have no memory of Luca’s last “Mama.” There are so many Last Times in parenting—the last book read aloud, the last nursing session, the last bath.
We have guests visiting from Florence, so parts of the family trekked to the top of Notre-Dame, about 380 steps. I stayed at ground level, tucked into a café, watching rain splash on chilled tourists. The children descended again very excited: on the very top of the cathedral the first snowflakes of the season had drifted into their hands, although down below there was nothing but rain.
A few days ago, Anna’s Italian teacher burst into tears, which Anna credited to general class naughtiness. So today Domitilla showed up in a dress, according to Anna, and presented the teacher with a fancy notebook and three pencils “from the class” to make up for their misbehavior. Anna is very scornful of this effort.
Window shopping today at Nina Ricci: cream-colored silk pumps, with six-inch-high cork heels, from which pearls dangled. The shoes reminded me of a Christmas ornament I once made as a child, with stick pearls and a Styrofoam ball. A Kmart special for the very rich.
I have figured something out about living with a teenager: most conversations will not be successful, if that definition implies a meaningful exchange. If I snap, my fifteen-year-old son snarls back at me. If I’m in a good mood, I’ll coax a sentence out … though if I ask what’s happened at school, the answer is always: “Nothing.” Leonardo da Vinci High School, otherwise known as the Black Hole of Paris.
Florent told Alessandro today that he is worried that his love for the Italian waitress will never come to anything. For one thing, he is forty-one and she is much younger, a university student when she is not waitressing. They did have a lovely evening together on his last visit. He talked most of the time, but she seemed responsive. I do not have a good feeling about this, but Alessandro says that romance writers should be more optimistic.
Street vendors are selling Christmas trees that are flocked white—but also bright scarlet and vivid purple. The department stores are piled with ornaments separated by color: here all black ornaments, there all transparent glass, or Pepto-Bismol pink. No one seems to offer life-size Santas entrapped in huge plastic fish-bowls blowing with endless snow. Of course, there are no front yards, but I sense that’s not the reason …
Last night Anna and her friend Nicole were building a complicated house in the living room, involving the couch, my yoga mat, a little table, a ton of blankets, et cetera. From my study, I could hear Nicole warbling on in her lovely English accent, then suddenly, “Anna, do I talk too much?” And, with the uncompromising honesty of childhood, the response: “Yes.”
We went out for tea with Italian friends who professed themselves dazzled by the way Alessandro chatted with the waiter in French. He smiled modestly … until the orders arrived. My cheese plate (fromage from the Gay Château) came as ordered, as did all other orders, except my husband’s. He had requested a tisane du berger (a cup of tea), and a lasagne aux aubergines (eggplant lasagna) arrived instead. How the mighty have fallen!
r /> Alessandro is making friends with the young, very conservative priest of Saint-Eugène–Sainte-Cécile. It turns out that our jewelry box of a church is famous for being the first church built of metal in all Paris. I can’t see how this can be true: the walls are definitely made of stone. But one doesn’t squabble with a priest over architectural details, not when there are so many more interesting things, like causes for the recent rash of pedophilia, that one can argue about. Our priest is mortified, and doesn’t like to think about it.
Every night Anna and I lie in the dark for “talking time.” I learned this from my friend Carrie, who defined talking time as a penalty-free half hour during which a child can confide secrets, such as whether she’s being offered illegal substances. Anna talks of one thing: Domitilla. Today Domitilla was worse at math than Anna (inconceivable, frankly).… Domitilla’s mother is nicer than I am, because Domitilla gets candy bars and chips for lunch.… Yesterday Domitilla wore a pink dress (withering scorn). No drugs, just pink dresses. Yawn.
Our local covered market is a visual feast. Arrangements of feathers—presumably donated by previous occupants—nestle decoratively among the plucked pheasants. Grapes hang from gnarled stands of grape wood, and fresh radishes are arranged in a shallow vertical box, greenery up the middle, red bulbs flashing like jewels along the sides. Today I ignored the pretty produce and, overcome by curiosity, brought home a black radish, a wrinkled and rather bendy phallic horror. Investigating it on the Internet, I discover that flaccidity is no better in a radish than it is (ahem) in a man.