Jean-Luc picked up my OXO garlic press. “Do you really need this?”
I took it from his hand and hugged it to my chest. “I do. I really do.”
What I couldn’t fit into my suitcases was stored in the guest room closet—two plastic containers filled with more cookbooks, old drawings from my days at Syracuse University, and childhood keepsakes like my first nubby, brown teddy bear that now had one eye (he’d been well loved), which I’d saved just in case I had a child of my own—which was still a possibility.
I’d always thought I would be a young, cool mom, like my mother. When I was a kid, she took me everywhere with her. When I was an adult, we were closer than close. But with my ex’s constant excuses, a baby hadn’t been in the cards for me in the past. The world was in shambles. Kids were expensive; we couldn’t afford them. We needed to spend more time together. We wouldn’t have a life anymore, wouldn’t be able to travel, go out. What if the child had birth defects? Things weren’t stable enough. Then, according to him, we were too old. But the fact of the matter was that if I had really wanted to have children with Chris, we would have had them.
I held the teddy bear and couldn’t help but remember the words Jean-Luc had said when were on our “rekindle the romance” tour in August of 2009. We were standing outside Château d’Ussé—reputed to be both the inspiration behind Charles Perrault’s Sleeping Beauty—La Belle au Bois Dormant—and Walt Disney’s iconic castle. A true fairy-tale setting, it was located on the edge of the Chinon Forest, on the banks of the Indre River, overlooking terraced gardens. Another couple walked by, holding the hands of their daughter, who must have been about three years old. They swung her up into the air and her toes pointed toward the blue sky. Jean-Luc’s eyes had locked onto mine and he’d said, “Samantha, I want to give you everything. Everything I have. I don’t have much, but what I have is yours. I want you to know joy. You’re so special and so unique. I want to give you something you’ve never had. I want to give you the gift of a child.”
Never before had I heard such words come out of an actual human mouth. That was the exact moment I knew our lives would be intertwined. That was the exact moment I knew I was in love with him—and not a giddy schoolgirl love that would fade over time. Real love. In my heart, I’d always wanted a child. And now I was with a man I wanted to have a baby with.
On August 6, it was time to head to France. My mother choked back her tears as we loaded up the rental car. “Maybe, one day, you guys can move to California,” she said, her face hopeful. “Maybe Jean-Luc could work for JPL.” Managed for NASA by the California Institute of Technology, Jet Propulsion Laboratory was located in Pasadena.
Jean-Luc was a seasoned scientist and the head of his department, in charge of a team of twenty-four engineers and technicians. At the age of sixty-five, his French retirement plan would come into play, and he would receive around 65 percent of his salary for the rest of his life. Plus, the cost of living in southern California, especially the housing market, was much higher than it was in southwestern France. I knew a move to the States would never happen, but I didn’t want to set my mother off into a thunderstorm of tears and sobs.
“Maybe,” I said. “You never know.”
“Are you sure you don’t want your china?” asked my mom.
“What would I say if I was hosting a dinner party and people asked me where I got it? Oh, this set was a wedding gift from my first marriage? Plus, you use them every day.”
“They’re just plates. And they’re pretty. If you decide you want them, I’ll send them to you.”
“Thanks,” I said. “But they have plates in France.”
Jean-Luc nudged me in ribs. “They also have garlic presses.”
Max and Elvire hugged my parents and kissed them on both cheeks, said their thank-yous, and jumped into the back seat of the rental car. I bit down on my bottom lip, glancing at my parents’ house. This was it. No looking back.
“I’m going to cry,” said my mom.
If she started up, I’d be in tears, too.
Uncertainty tugged on one arm, hopefulness on the other. This was my second chance at life and at love, and I didn’t want to screw it up, but the fear of failure hadn’t truly left my system. I needed to be deprogrammed and quick, knowing, deep down, that there was only one person who could reset my outlook: me. I let out the breath that, once again, I’d been holding in.
“Please don’t cry, Mom,” I said, my chin quivering. “Dad, for Mom’s sake, you have to plan a visit to France…soon.”
“Sweetie,” said my dad, rubbing my shoulders. “You can count on that.”
Jean-Luc slammed the trunk closed, and my dad said, “Take care of my girl.”
“I will, Tony. She used to be a boomerang, bouncing back and forth from France to California. This time I’ve caught her.”
“I’m holding you to that,” said my dad, and he and Jean-Luc laughed.
My mom grabbed my hands, gripping them tightly as if she were holding on to them for dear life. “Call me when you land,” she said.
“I will,” I said.
Seconds later, Jean-Luc careened down the canyon road to the Pacific Coast Highway. I sat in the passenger seat, looking out the window as we passed the beaches and the Santa Monica pier, my heart racing with excitement and fear.
My nerves kicked into overdrive at the airport as a hiccup immediately arose in our plans. Jean-Luc had booked my ticket with his frequent flyer miles, and Air France upgraded my seat to economy plus. They’d overbooked the flight and were not able to seat me with Jean-Luc and the kids. On the plane, when I turned to see my family sitting together, the flight attendant closed the curtains. I sat alone, feeling disconnected and like an outsider.
After two extended trips to France while building my relationship with Jean-Luc, one lasting a month over Christmas and the other two months in the spring, I’d had a tiny glimpse of what my life would be like with Jean-Luc and the kids, and I shouldn’t have been so nervous about relocating to France. But I was. I considered myself a city girl, but I wasn’t moving to Paris. Jean-Luc and the kids lived in Cugnaux, a small town of thirteen thousand people thirteen kilometers south of Toulouse in the Midi-Pyrénées region of southwestern France. Acting as the constant cheerleader in my life, Jean-Luc had assured me that everything would be fine; we had each other and the kids. Yet I wondered: would that be enough? Although I’d spent quality time with Max and Elvire, I’d only been a visitor before—a fly-by tourist. Being their stepmother day in and day out—that would be different.
Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.
I thought back to the time I’d had with Max and Elvire in Chicago before the wedding. Jean-Luc had arranged to speak at an aerospace conference. While he rubbed shoulders with his cronies from the industry, I could show the kids the city in which I grew up.
For two days, I took them all over Chicago. We rented bikes and cruised down the lakefront, swam at the beach to cool off. We visited Millennium Park and played in the fountain, which featured “live” images of Chicagoans, the water pouring out of mouths in a well-timed electronic display. At the Museum of Science and Industry, they made their own mini-tornadoes, and at the Field Museum, they met Sue the dinosaur. We rode the Ferris wheel at Navy Pier and went on an architectural boat tour. We even went up to the top of the Sears Tower, where Max got over one of his fears.
I was standing on the famed glass floor, the city’s streets more than one hundred floors below. Elvire stood beside me. Max stood back and shook his head. “Je peux pas. J’ai le vertige.”
I can’t. I have vertigo.
Elvire rolled her eyes. “T’es nul.”
“Elvire, he’s not a loser,” I said, placing my hands on Max’s thin shoulders, squeezing them lightly. “Tu peux.”
You can.
Max closed his eyes, took one step forward, then another. When he opened his eyes, he was standing next to me on the glass floor. He looked down and quickly jumped back onto more solid
ground. His smile stretched as wide as from the Sears Tower to Oak Street Beach. “Je l’ai fait.”
I gave him a quick hug and said, “Yes, you did it.”
But now, I’d be with Max and Elvire on a daily basis in France, not in a city I knew like the back of my hand. Surely, Max and Elvire wouldn’t be polite little angels all of the time. When were they going to hit me with the “you’re not my mom” sucker punch? Then again, I came from a blended family, and I had never said those hurtful words to my dad.
My biological father, Chuck, had abandoned my mother and me shortly after I was born. Didn’t even leave a note. I was six months old, jaundiced and colicky. My mother was twenty-one years young, fearful of her future. Still, life went on for my mother and me—and it was a much better life. When I was six, she married the man I proudly call my dad, Tony. I wore my hair in Shirley Temple ringlets to their wedding. Chuck wasn’t around to veto the judge’s ruling, and Tony formally adopted me when I was eleven. He was the only father I’d ever known.
Cancer took the life of the mother of Jean-Luc’s kids in 2006, one week before Max’s seventh birthday. Max and Elvire had known their mother, Frédérique, but I wondered if perhaps now they would want to complete the family circle, as I had when I was young. Maybe it wouldn’t be so hard for the kids to accept me into their daily lives, just as I’d done with Tony.
On the short plane ride from Paris to Toulouse, I sat in the aisle seat next to Max and Elvire—two tired kids with sleep in their eyes. Max dozed after takeoff, curling up against my shoulder. From across the aisle, Jean-Luc took my hand. “Ready to go home?”
“Ready as I’ll ever be,” I said.
I had love on my side. And, with love on my side, I could do anything.
At least, that’s what I told myself.
3
BIENVENUE EN FRANCE
Developed in the early ’60s, the town of Cugnaux supplied homes for the workers in the growing aeronautics industry, and today its thirteen thousand inhabitants mostly comprise retirees or young families with kids. Quaint and quiet, the town has parks, gardens, and an old manor that hosts musical festivals. And, as in any French town, the center boasts the local church, complete with bells that ring on the hour, a wonderful old clock, and a steeple reaching into the sky. (If you ever get lost in a European village, head for the church). On a brick paved road across the way stands our local mairie, or mayor’s office, where Jean-Luc and I first exchanged vows. To my left is the kids’ école maternelle, or primary school: Jean Jaurès. Almost every French town has a school or a street named after the French socialist leader, who was assassinated at the outbreak of World War I and is considered by most to be a hero. The people praise Jean Jaurès for his humanitarian efforts.
On the way home from the airport, we passed by one of the many pharmacies, its crossed sign blinking green, which meant that it was open, and made our way past Bar Eclipse, which I’d never visited even though it was right at the end of the block. Not exactly my scene—most of the patrons were older men forever drinking pastis, the forty-proof anise-flavored liqueur, and chain-smoking cigarettes. The taxi pulled up to a white town house with a green iron fence on a tree-lined street.
The sky was clear and blue. The birds chirped out happy melodies as if they were welcoming us. Across the way, a group of young boys around Elvire’s age played pétanque, France’s version of bocce ball, which was invented in Jean-Luc’s hometown of La Ciotat. They waved and said bonjour as we unloaded the bags out of the trunk before getting back to the game.
“Do you know them?” I asked Elvire.
She shrugged, but didn’t look over. “Non.”
Jean-Luc fumbled with his keys. From inside the house, Bella, the ridiculously expensive Bengal cat we’d purchased last Christmas, mewed. Loudly. Adopting Bella had been my idea, a heart-felt scheme to get to know the kids prior to meeting them for the first time. Jean-Luc wanted to include me in their lives, ease me in. A friend of mine had posted a picture of her Bengal kitten, and the moment I saw him, I ran my idea by Jean-Luc. He suggested that I discuss my plan with Elvire via email. It didn’t take much convincing, and the search for a spotted, cream-and-caramel-colored tiny leopard began. Elvire found a breeder in Bordeaux with female kittens, the sex she wanted, and we threw around names, me suggesting Bella, thanks to Elvire’s love of the movie Twilight. Although she’d come with an exorbitant price tag, and Jean-Luc had joked that cats were free (you could find one on the street), through Bella, Elvire and I had created an initial bond. Our neighbors, Sylvie and Patrick, had been kind enough to look after the cat for the past few weeks while Jean-Luc and the kids were in California. I hadn’t seen her panther-like spotted body and tiger-striped legs since May.
“Hurry up, Papa,” said Elvire, and Max nodded.
The kids threw their bags on the floor in the foyer, and Elvire scooped up Bella in her arms. “Titi,” she said. Titi or Titi-La-Titi was Bella’s nickname. She and Max cuddled with the cat until Elvire screamed, “Something bit me!” and dropped the cat to the floor.
Bella scratched at her neck, her leg pumping briskly. Fleas jumped off her body, what looked like hundreds of them. Maybe thousands.
“Sac à puces,” said Max. Fleabag.
“Oh no,” I said.
Elvire glared at me like it was my fault. I blamed her demeanor on being overtired. I was utterly exhausted, too. I glanced into the living room to find that fleas weren’t our only problem. Instead of using her cat tree, Bella had shredded a corner of the grass-cloth wallpaper.
“I’ll go to the pharmacy and the hardware store,” said Jean-Luc with a sigh.
“I’ll get to the market before it closes,” I said. “You’ve been gone for five weeks. I’m sure there’s no food.”
Unlike in the U.S., where employers are not required to offer paid vacations, Jean-Luc had over fifty paid vacation days, including national holidays and when his company mandatorily closed its doors the first two weeks of August and one week at Christmas. Still, Jean-Luc worked long hours. On a typical day, he arrived at his office before seven in the morning, leaving before rush hour, and returning home at seven at night. Vacations, scientists have said, foster more productivity and far less burnout. Having formerly worked in advertising with only two weeks’ vacation a year, I’d have to agree with that.
“Thankfully, all the bedroom doors upstairs are closed,” said Jean-Luc. “But, just in case, we’ll need to strip all the beds, washing everything in hot water. For now, put Bella outside.”
I opened up the kitchen doors and ushered Bella onto the deck.
Blessed with an abundance of trees and beautiful plants—cherry, magnolia, mulberry, mimosa, two lilac bushes, roses, peonies, and lavender—in the spring, our backyard was amazing and private and magical. One of my favorite rosebushes climbed up a beam supporting the small tiled roof that shaded our kitchen. But today, with the hot weather and nobody around to water, the grass was the color of pale straw, scorched by the sun. Add in the overgrown weeds, and this was no paradise.
Uranus, a fat, black cat, scratched himself in the neighbor’s yard. Just looking at him made me itch. Bella scurried up the wooden fence, leaping over it with grace, to join her flea-ridden best friend.
The idea of taking a shower to wash off a twenty-plus-hour travel day and potential army of fleas was tempting, but we needed food. I grabbed my straw basket. The kids were leaving for their maternal grandmother’s home in Provence the following day, so I didn’t have to buy much, putting off the big shop at Intermarché, our local grocery store, until Monday.
Usually, I loved going to the market—our Saturday routine when I had been just a visitor, and, surely, a weekly event now. But as I strolled through town, it was as if I were walking on another planet. Who were these people? What language were they speaking? Blah-blah-blah, wonka, wonka, wonka—that’s what I heard. Even the air shimmered with a heat haze, making the streets feel all the more bizarre. I passed by a group of lit
tle old ladies wearing ballerina flats and dresses, chatting on the corner. I’d never seen women with hair colors of shocking chili-pepper red and pale violet, the hue similar to the macarons displayed in one of the patisserie’s windows. Was this a mirage? Or was I just tired?
French women do tend to dress up when leaving the house—even just to grab a baguette. I stood on the corner of a pedestrian crosswalk, wearing yoga pants, a light cotton sweater, and Keds—comfortable travel clothes. Not one car stopped. In fact, the cars sped up as if threatening to run me down. Was my fashion sense so distasteful it was going to get me killed? Paranoia set in.
Finally, I made it across the street. The paved brick sidewalk narrowed, and I scurried along the side housing all the local businesses, my shoulder practically touching the walls, lest somebody shove me into traffic. I was fairly certain people stared at me because they knew I was a foreigner.
A young boy around four or five passed by with his mother. She wore jeans, black, strappy sandals, and a cute pink T-shirt with bows on the back, looking oh so effortlessly chic. I debated going home to change. The boy wore shorts and a New York baseball cap and a T-shirt from the Gap. American brands, especially Abercrombie, were extremely popular with French kids and teens. There, I thought, something mildly familiar—until the boy snatched his hand away from his mother’s.
“Putain,” she said, speaking to her son. “Tu m’as fait mal.” You hurt me.
Putain, literally translated, meant “whore,” and she’d said this word to her kid. And, oh, yes, he’d heard it, repeating it over and over again. “Putain, putain, putain,” he sang.
She laughed, but didn’t correct him. My jaw dropped, although I shouldn’t have been so shocked. After all, putain is probably the most widely used word in France. I’ve heard old ladies and men say it. And it’s widely popular with teens. I’ve even used it. Depending on the tone, putain can express all sorts of emotions—pain, joy, surprise, disbelief, and more. Apparently, this woman was in pain. But, a “gros mot,” putain held the same connotation as my mother’s least favorite word: the f-bomb. And, frankly, for me, using either of these words in front of impressionable kids was just plain wrong. There were politer words to express oneself in public to get your point across—like mince, which means “thin,” or, oh, purée. An elderly gentleman walked by with a scruffy dog. By this point, I wouldn’t have been surprised if either of them said putain.
How to Make a French Family Page 3