by Sandra Byrd
Patricia, to her credit, said nothing. Céline was too busy stuffing her mouth to correct her father. I looked down and promised myself I’d practice more and feel okay that I was, as of now, imperfect.
Patricia took Céline into the office so she could work on her homework until Philippe was ready to take her home. Philippe went into the bread-baking room and got the crew ready for the final push of the day, after which, I was sure, he’d join Céline in the office and answer his phone messages. I got back to dipping coffee beans.
About an hour later Simone slid by me. She smiled nervously in my direction, not making eye contact, and went to the cool room, where Patricia had returned to the cake.
A few minutes later I heard a roar of laughter. It was Patricia! Simone glided by and glanced at me again, looking very relieved. She gave me a genuine smile. I didn’t know what had happened, but I was glad to see her relaxed toward me again. I had enough stress and few friends here.
After placing the beans into a lidded bin, I cleaned up the area and prepped the butter for the next day’s baking. I measured carefully. Extremely carefully.
What went wrong today? I allowed myself to think about it for the first time all day. I was so exact. Could I have used the wrong butter? But I didn’t see any American butter in the cooler, and even if I had, it would have been drier, not greasier, as American butter has a lower fat content.
My failure was especially painful because cakes were my specialty. I liked baking them best and prided myself on their success.
I took the garbage to the commercial waste bin in the back, and as I did, I noticed a chalkboard on top of the bin contents. It looked like the ones I’d seen in every café and even here in the bakery. Two hooks at the top held a black plate that listed the day. There was a plaque for each day, dimanche for Sunday, lundi for Monday, and so on. I pulled it out and set it aside. It looked used, but in very good condition.
I went back into the bakery and saw there was a new chalkboard up front with today’s specials written across it. The one by the waste bin must have been an old one. I’d ask Patricia if I could keep it.
I glanced at the clock. It was nearly time for me to take the train back to the village. Tomorrow I’d be in Rambouillet for school, and then I’d work at the village bakery for the rest of the week.
I untied my apron and went back to the cool room. Patricia was grinning.
“I’m leaving soon,” I said.
“Bon,” she agreed. “Working at the bakery in the village this week, then here all next week, right? We have special orders next week and can use the extra help. The village bakery is a bit slower”.
I’d noticed. I preferred working here anyway.
“I found a chalkboard in the garbage bin. May I keep it?”
She shrugged. “Sure. Maybe you can use it to write down French words”.
I cocked my head, not understanding. “Have I made a mistake?”
She grinned again. “Do you know what faux amis are?” she asked.
“Oh, yes”. I’d learned about them in French class long ago and tried to keep up with an ever-growing list. “They’re false friends. Words that sound similar in French and English but have a very different meaning”.
“Bon,” Patricia said. “I think there is one false friend that you are not aware of”. She handed me a piece of paper.
Preservative–ingredient that delays or retards spoilage
Préservatif–a condom, used to protect from disease or pregnancy
My face went cold. “Oh no! I told Simone we used préseratifs in our pastries at home. No wonder she was horrified!” And no wonder I had heard that burst of laughter from Patricia.
“Oui,” Patricia said. “I explained faux amis to her, and she was very relieved to hear your baking practices were not as barbaric as she feared”.
“Should I talk to her about it?” I asked.
“Non, she’s very old-fashioned. I think to bring it up again would be embarrassing. But, Lexi,” she said to me, “thank you. I have not had a laugh since I got back from Provence last month”.
If we’d been friends, I’d have asked her what was wrong. But we weren’t really friends, and I knew better, now, than to get too close too soon. However, I had never seen that vulnerable of a look on her face. She ducked away and went back to work.
“I will see you next week, Lexi,” she said softly, a kind but definite dismissal.
On my way out, I passed the office and looked at Céline bent over her book. Philippe sat with one hand on her head and one on the phone, speaking vigorously and with emotion, like most Frenchmen.
I hoped he hadn’t found out about my faux amis mistake.
On the way to the train, I thought about the mistakes of the day and about false friends. Something bugged me. It wasn’t the mistake, it was the phrase.
It suddenly struck me there might be other kinds of false friends I hadn’t recognized.
Four
Bread deals with living things, with giving life, with growth, with the seed, the grain that nurtures. It’s not coincidence that we say bread is the staff of life.
Lionel Poilâne
The next day at school, thankfully, was uneventful. We spent a lot of time measuring things and took a written test on baking science. I had plenty of my own pencils, and I aced it. So did everyone else in my foursome, and we congratulated one another on being so fine. It was a good start to the week. I meant to ask Désireé if she wanted to visit the Musée d’Orsay over the weekend, but a flier on the bulletin board caught my eye, and I stopped to read it. While I did, she slipped away for the weekend.
Learn English
Want to practice your English speaking skills? Its proven that those who have excellent bilingual skills have more business opportunities. Perhaps your hotel/restaurant/bakery will have an international clientele. Perhaps you’ll travel overseas to work.
Please call the Anglican Church of Versailles and ask when the next English practice group meets.
I jotted down the church’s phone number. Anne sidled up behind me. “Need to practice your English skills?” she teased.
I laughed. “No. But I’ve been meaning to go to church, and, well, it might be nice to be in a church that speaks English. Kind of homey”.
Anne unwrapped her apron and headed toward our lockers. “Not me,” she said. “I’d like to practice my English but not on Sunday. I sleep on Sunday”.
An hour later I’d taken the train back to the village and presented myself to Maman.
“How goes the schooling?” she asked as she bustled about in the back.
“Bon,” I said, wondering when the family would get a “report card” on me, and what it would say.
Maman pointed to a stack of dishes. “After you’re finished with these, you can make some goûters for the front. The kids will be out of school at three, and we need some chouquettes. I hear you can make them. Easy on the eggs. Measure exactly—the same weight of eggs as water”.
“I will”.
“And then,” Maman said, “you can mix up the dough for the biscuits. I have left the recipe in the back. Bring a chouqette to me and to Odette before setting them out”.
I sighed. Great. Odious would pass judgment.
I made both batches, the chouquettes and the sable biscuits, or cookies, and let them cool. First I brought a plate to Maman. She bit into a chouquette. “Nice,” she said. Probably her highest praise. “Céline says you make good chouquettes, and it takes a light hand. She should know a good one. In spite of her supposed dislike of pastries, she’s been eating good baking her whole life”.
Maman bit into the sable cookie. “All right. Next time take them out sooner and let them finish baking for the last minute or two on the pan. It’ll be fine here in the village, but in Rambouillet too many would go dry too soon, and we’d have to throw them out”.
Maman turned back to her work, muttering that if she had her own grandchildren, she’d make the goûters herself.
I brought the samples to Odette.
She bit into the chouquette, leaving a waxy orange print on one side. “Mmm. It figures you’d make a perfect chouquette”.
Wow! I tried not to faint.
She finished it off and tasted the sables. “Too dry. You have to do better than that”.
I couldn’t help myself. “Maman said they were okay, just take them out a bit sooner next time”.
“Of course,” Odette said. “You’re free labor. She’s not going to be hard on you. But when you start costing the bakery money, they’d better be perfect”.
I set the plate down. “What do you mean, free? I have my stipend, and they’re making a big investment in me at school”.
Odette laughed. “That’s no investment. In France, each employer has to set aside one percent of his payroll for training for his employees. It must be spent each year. It doesn’t matter if it is spent on me, you, or anyone else. For a new employee, they’d have to pay the training and a salary. You are cheaper. It means nothing”.
The door jingled open, and Odette turned to the customer. I quietly put the sables and the chouquettes in the section for afterschool snacks.
It means nothing. It did not mean I would have a job here when I was done, because Maman wanted Dominique back home. I may not even pass my course, which would mean I wouldn’t have a job anywhere in France. I’d be letting Luc down, of course, but it turns out I’m a rather cheap experiment, since my labor cost them almost nothing.
My job in Seattle, of course, had been filled.
I got up early on Sunday and put on a summer dress, but took a sweater with me. It was already cool in the mornings even though it wasn’t yet October. I picked up my newly purchased French Bible and grinned at the incongruity of bringing a French Bible to an English church.
After the short trip to Versailles, which lay in the same district as the village and Rambouillet, I followed the map I’d drawn at home and soon pushed open the large wooden doors to the churchyard.
I looked at my watch. I hadn’t wanted to be late, and so I was early. I walked slowly, past the climbing rose vines still in bloom, though their leaves were beginning to turn wine colored with the melancholy of autumn. When I walked in the church door, I saw a long table with pamphlets and an order of service. A lovely woman extended her hand in greeting. By the name on her tag I could see that she was the vicar’s wife.
“Good morning,” she said, and for a moment my brain was stunned. It quickly shifted from French into English. How could I have been so surprised by my mother tongue?
“Are you new here?” she asked.
“Yes, I am,” I said. “I’m here studying and working. From the United States”.
“We’re so glad to have you”. She pushed a piece of blonde hair behind her ear and continued in her lovely British lilt. “Please make yourself at home, and be sure to sign the visitor’s card so we can contact you”.
I nodded, took my paperwork, and walked into the church. It was small and would hold perhaps one hundred people. When I’d called to inquire about service times, they told me English-speaking worshippers of all nationalities and denominations came together here. There were not many English-speaking churches in the area.
Part of me felt foolish for coming all this way to attend an English church. Most of me was just glad to drink in my own language for a while and concentrate on God instead of verb tense or noun gender.
I walked nearly to the front of the sanctuary and sat down. The worship band practiced on the front platform. I was thrilled that I recognized the songs, and my heart soared as I sang them, silently, inside.
An elderly British woman doddered in and sat near me, her son behind her. He loudly honked his nose into a handkerchief every few minutes. They left plenty of “personal space” between me and them.
Several families with kids came in and sat around the church, but not in my row. I looked straight ahead and read the various papers in the pocket of the pew ahead of me so as not to appear as uncomfortable as I felt.
A moment later a lovely woman in a lime green suit that perfectly set off her nut brown skin sat next to me. Not by me. Next to me.
“May I sit here?” she asked in prettily accented English. “My name is Buki”.
“Oh, yes, please,” I said, thankful not to feel like a pariah anymore.
The worship began. To my right, the British woman stood quiet, propping herself on her cane. She made no outward motions but her eyes were closed. To my left, Buki rocked out, lifting her hands, and shouting, “Thank you, Jesus!” I grinned. Her faith and enthusiasm was viral.
After the worship came a sermon on John 1. Quite decent, as the British would say.
When the service was over, the congregation mingled, and the vicar—or pastor, I wasn’t sure of his title—came to meet me. He appeared genuine and earnest.
“Hello,” he said. “My wife says you’re new here”.
I nodded. “Yes, I’m here to study baking”.
He smiled. “What a place to study—the best. And how wonderful that we’ve just started John. It’s a book full of food images. Food for the body and food for the soul”.
He invited me to come back each week and moved on. I had just turned around to pick up my things and leave when I got the shock of my life.
Philippe!
He looked just as shocked to see me as I was to see him. I could barely concentrate as he moved in my direction. I heard someone call out.
“Lexi!” Céline raced toward me.
Philippe came up behind her. He cleaned up nice in khakis and a fashionable, collarless button-up shirt. His wavy hair was slicked back.
“What are you doing here?” I asked in English, not having turned my brain back to French.
“You mean, what’s a baker like me doing in a place like this?”
“You know English pickup lines!” I exclaimed.
“Were you offering it as a pickup?” He grinned.
I blushed. I hated that I blushed so easily. He kept talking to allow me, graciously, to avoid answering.
“My wife was from London,” he explained. “I met her while on holiday one year, and I became a, uh, Protestant while living there”. He grew uncomfortable.
“You mean a Christian?” I said, breaking the discomfort. I knew from my studies it was taboo in France to discuss your religious faith with someone at work. We weren’t at work, but we worked together.
“Yes,” he said. “I became a Christian in England. We eventually moved back here, of course, so I could work for my father. But when Céline was born, Andrea wanted her to be equally comfortable with English, so we came to church here, the only English-speaking church in the area. And have come ever since. They were a great support to me a few years ago when Andrea passed away”.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
He nodded. “Thanks”.
“Come on”. Céline tugged at Philippe’s hand. “Let’s get our coffee”.
“Coffee?” I asked.
“More like milk and sugar with a splash of brown for her,” Philippe said. We walked upstairs to the coffee room.
After standing in line to get our coffee, we sat at a long table. Céline drifted away to talk with a friend, but another woman came and sat very near to Philippe.
“Who is your friend?” she asked, looking at me rather pointedly.
“Oh, Lexi, this is Gabby. Gabby, Lexi”.
“Lexi. That’s an unusual name”. Gabby sipped her coffee.
Would I never hear the end of that? “It’s a nickname for Alexandra,” I said. Never in my life had my name been questioned so often.
I waited for Philippe to explain that we worked together, and that I was here at the sponsorship of his company. But he said nothing. In fact, he seemed to take pleasure in withholding any further information from Gabby. Perhaps she lived up to her name. I suppressed a smile.
“I’d best get going,” I said. “I’ve got quite a bit to do this a
fternoon”.
Philippe nodded, looked like he wanted to say something else, and then decided not to. I gathered up my purse and returned the coffee cup to the small service window. Philippe was already talking with another man, but he waved at me as I left.
“See you at work,” he said loudly, unnecessarily so, perhaps.
“Yes, see you then,” I agreed.
Gabby pretended to be intensely involved in her current conversation, but I saw her look at Philippe, then me, appraisingly, out of the corner of her eye.
I felt a small twinge of self-satisfaction. It was so rare I held any trump card at all in this country!
“How was school this morning?” Patricia asked as I walked into the bakery after class.
“Fine,” I said, not wanting to complain. Even if I was cheap labor, I appreciated getting to go to school. “We’re still not doing any real baking, just testing, science, prep, history. Next week we start baking in truth, with breads, then macarons, petits fours, and small pastries”.
“I know,” Patricia said authoritatively. “After class you’ll come here or to the village and make the same things you’re learning in class, all week. I have some simple pound cakes for you to make today. Let’s go”.
She walked me toward the kitchen where she’d set out a plastic-covered recipe. I recognized it immediately. It was the same recipe I’d failed the week before in class.
“Please make six of these,” she said. “Call me as soon as you’re finished”.
I hadn’t eaten lunch yet, but that didn’t matter. I got to work on the cakes right away.
I weighed the ingredients out exactly and beat them just enough to mix everything but not enough to whip too much air into the batter. I didn’t want holey cakes.
The baking team in the next room was made of young and old, and one of the younger men turned on a radio station that played French pop. It picked up my mood.
I noticed the light was off in Philippe’s office and the door was shut.