Gadget Girl

by Suzanne Kamata

“Ahh, la muse!”

  How I hate that phrase. But I’ve been raised with manners, so I say, “Nice to meet you. I mean, ‘enchantée.’ ” And then I, too, exchange air kisses with Giselle.

  “May I help you wiz zat?” she asks, reaching for my pink suitcase.

  “Uh, okay. Thanks.”

  She grabs Mom’s bag, too, and although she looks wispy enough to blow away in a gentle breeze, and I’ve got books in my suitcase, she manages without a drop of perspiration.

  At the curb she flags down a cab and we all climb in. Soon we’re zooming off to the city.

  The first thing I notice about Paris is the range of colors. Though the old buildings tend toward drab grey, the skin tones on the street come in a wide variety. Whereas back in our little town in Michigan most of the girls seem to have wheat-field hair and white-as-snow skin, here there are tea-colored women and mocha men, Africans in dashikis, Arabs draped with cloth. From the cab I see Asians walking with Caucasians, black and white couples and their in-between children. I feel about as inconspicuous as I’ve ever been.

  “We’ve booked a hotel for you in the Marais,” Giselle says. “It’s near the gallery.”

  “Ah, bon,” Mom says. “I have an old friend there. Someone I know from the Sorbonne opened a café in the area. We’ll have to stop in and see him.”

  Okay, I’ve done my homework. I know that Marais is Art Central in Paris. We’ll be within minutes of the Louvre, the Pompidou Center, and the Place de la Bastille, where the French Revolution began. Plus, according to my guidebook, the area is home to all kinds of funky galleries and clothing boutiques. The taxi takes us past Notre Dame, and I catch a glimpse of gargoyles.

  “The hotel was designed by one of our most famous fashion designers,” Giselle says. “The reception was once the oldest bakery in Paris. It is said that Victor Hugo bought his bread there.”

  “Wow!” I can’t help myself. In our town, everything is so new. And there have never been any famous writers living there—nobody famous at all, unless you count Mom.

  “The rooms are all done in different motifs—zen, Baroque, Scandinavian, modern. I believe yours is the science fiction room.”

  Mom is not big on sci-fi, so I can imagine her disappointment, but I’m thinking it’ll be a great setting for a few panels of Gadget Girl.

  We finally pull up in front of the Hotel de Petit Moulin. The word Boulangerie is still painted on the facade.

  The driver deposits our luggage on the curb, where it is instantly whisked inside by a bellhop in livery. Giselle alights from the cab and ushers us into the lobby. I wait on the sofa, taking in the leopard-print pillows and crystal chandelier while Mom gets us checked in.

  We follow the polka-dot carpet past black-lacquered doors and down the green corridors to our room. One wall is painted with an image of space—all planets and winking stars. In the bathroom there is a heart-shaped mirror against black tiles and a claw-footed tub.

  Okay, so maybe this vacation won’t be such a bust after all.

  17

  After we get settled in, Mom takes out a map and her Blackberry and does a little research. “It looks like Etienne’s café is right around the corner from here,” she says. “Wanna go have a cup of hot chocolate?”

  Neither one of us slept much on the plane, but I don’t feel tired. I’m actually pretty wired. And I’m curious about this friend of hers, Etienne. Is he one of Mom’s old boyfriends?

  We go out onto the street and it smells like no place I’ve ever been. There’s tobacco mixed with perfume and sweat and bread. We sniff our way past la parfumerie, past la pâtisserie with its window full of delicate pastries, past the newsstand and le tabac. Finally, Mom stops. “This is it!” she says. We find ourselves at the entrance of a French café. It’s like a scene from the Madeline books, or a movie set. An impossibly thin woman dressed all in black except for the red scarf around her neck, is sitting at an outside table. A black poodle sits at her feet, its leash twined around her chair leg.

  Mom and I go inside and grab a table by the window. I’m surprised to see another dog inside—a silky blonde Labrador. A service dog? I check its owner, but he doesn’t seem to be blind or deaf or otherwise disabled. The guy is sitting there reading Le Monde, sipping at a tiny white cup.

  A waiter comes over. He winks at me over my mother’s head. He looks like he’s just a couple of years older than me. “Bonjour, les jolies dames.”

  Okay, I understand that. He’s saying that we’re pretty. He’s pretty cute himself. He’s got super short brown hair and sideburns that kind of curl around his face. And huge brown eyes with eyelashes like a giraffe.

  “French waiters are such big flirts,” Mom whispers to me across the table. She turns to him. “Bonjour. Is this place still owned by Etienne Brouilly?”

  He cocks his head as if he’s trying to process the English. After a moment, he nods. “Oui. C’est mon pere.” His father.

  Mom hands him her business card, and he disappears behind a door. Moments later, a short man wearing a white apron comes bursting into the room. His arms are open wide.

  “Laina!” he exclaims.

  Mom hugs him, and they kiss the air beside each other’s cheeks. They rattle off a few phrases in French while I sit there, a fake smile plastered to my face. The waiter stands behind.

  “Etienne, I’d like you to meet my daughter,” Mom says, gesturing at me.

  I hold out my hand, thinking he’ll shake it, but he kisses it instead. “Enchantée. Vous êtes très jolie.” He puts an arm around the waiter and says, “And may I present my son, Hervé. He’s already sixteen. Can you believe it?”

  Hervé shakes my mother’s hand, and then nods to me. I wonder if he can speak English.

  “Please sit, and enjoy,” Etienne says. “Hervé will bring you anything you need. And now, I must get back to the kitchen. We’ll catch up later, non? You will come to my house for dinner one night?”

  “That would be lovely,” Mom says, settling back in her chair.

  Dinner with Hervé, I think, and my face goes tomato red.

  Etienne whistles as he goes back into the kitchen. Hervé stands next to our table, awaiting our command.

  “Un cafe, s’il vous plait,” Mom says. They both turn to me.

  “Umm, cocoa, please.” Mom frowns, no doubt thinking of all the time she spent drilling me with flash cards, and Hervé isn’t moving, so I give it another shot. “Un chocolat chaud, s’il vous plait.”

  “Bien.” Hervé nods and slips away.

  Mom smiles. “A group of us used to hang out together in cafés like this one, talking about art and love and philosophy. Those were the days.”

  “Did you go out with Etienne?” I ask.

  “No,” Mom says. “He was involved with my roommate, but they wound up breaking up. He married someone else. So what do you want to do now?” she asks, pulling a guidebook out of her purse. “Where do you want to go?”

  I look toward the kitchen, to the swinging door through which Hervé disappeared. I think I’d like to stay right here and admire the staff. But I’m not about to say that to Mom. “The Eiffel Tower?” I suggest. “The Pompidou Center?” Now that we’re here, we might as well hit all the tourist traps.

  Mom flips the book open to a metro map and starts to study.

  Just then Hervé reappears with two white cups on a tray.

  “Here you are, Madam.” He sets one cup down in front of Mom, but with a little too much force. Coffee sloshes over the rim, onto the saucer, and onto the table.

  “Je suis desolée!” His face has gone red. He deposits my cup of hot chocolate with a bit more delicacy, then grabs a paper napkin from the dispenser on the table and quickly sops up the spilled coffee.

  I look down, trying to hide my smile. I know exactly how he feels.

  18

  We decide to do a little window shopping, saving the heavy-duty sightseeing for later. There’s a Jewish bakery down the street, a star of David on its awn
ing and a candelabra and a tray of freshly baked brioche on display in the window. There’s color everywhere—blue doorways, red and orange flowers spilling over the verandas of the apartments above the shops lining the street, the red banner indicating the Picasso Museum. We come across a guy drawing Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring in chalk on the sidewalk. Who knew you could do so much with chalk? I take a picture and then dig a couple euros out of my fanny pack and toss them into the tin can he’s set out. Further along, we pop into a shop that sells old photographs and the Ali Baba Book Store.

  When our stomachs start to growl, we duck into a bistro for an early dinner. It’s dark and wood-paneled. The tables are covered with red-checked cloths. I order fish with some kind of garlic sauce. Mom goes for the same.

  “This is great,” I say, when the food comes. “We’ll have to ask for the recipe. Maybe Raoul can make it for us when we get home.”

  At the mention of her boyfriend, Mom goes silent. Her face is flooded with what I can only call consternation.

  “What happened?” My fork freezes in the air. “Did you guys break up or something?”

  She looks down, avoiding my eyes. “No. He asked me to marry him.”

  My fork clatters to my plate. “You’re kidding! Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I didn’t think it was the right time.”

  “So did you say yes?”

  She shakes her head and gulps from her water glass. “I haven’t given him an answer yet. I wanted to talk to you first.”

  A multitude of emotions starts swirling inside of me. At first, there is joy. Raoul is kind and caring and a really good cook. I can’t imagine anyone I’d rather have for a dad—except for my real father, of course. And that’s where the confusion comes in. I’ve always believed that Mom has never married because she’s still holding out for my father, hoping they’ll eventually get back together. And if she and Raoul do get married, wouldn’t that put a damper on our plans to visit Japan someday? I could go by myself, I guess, but I was kind of hoping that Mom would show me around. Would Raoul want to meet my father, too? Right now the only thing I can think of to say is, “What about my dad?”

  She shakes her head sadly. “Aiko, I haven’t seen your father in over fourteen years.” She reaches across the table and takes my hands. “Your father married a Japanese woman a long time ago. They have a child—a boy a little younger than you.”

  Something nudges the back of my mind. My father is married? I have a half brother? Almost the same age as me? None of this makes sense. But then it does. Maybe my father was already married when he met my mother. Maybe that’s why he couldn’t marry her. That would mean that they were having an affair. I was probably conceived in one of those Japanese “love hotels,” in a room with a heart-shaped bed and mirrors on the walls. This is all a little bit too sordid for my taste. I’m starting to feel sick to my stomach. Or is it the idea of a brother that’s making me feel strange?

  A brother. A cherished eldest son. In traditional Japan, boys are the ones who inherit their parents’ wealth and property, who are needed to carry on the family name. Daughters used to be sold off as maids—or worse—by poor families. Girls, when they marry, join their husbands’ families. In the novels that I’ve read, the daughters-in-law are always the lowliest members of the household. What would my father care about a useless girl when he has an heir, a son? Why couldn’t I have been born a boy? But no. Things must have changed over the past decades, even in rural Japan. This is the age of computers and robots. Japan has sent a woman into space, for Pete’s sake.

  “What’s his name?” I ask. “My brother.”

  She hesitates, and I think that maybe she doesn’t know. But then she releases my hands and reaches for her purse. She shows me a photo of a boy, the photo that I’d found in her wallet the night when I ordered pizza.

  “This is your half brother. His name is Junpei.”

  I take the photo from her and study it anew. We have the same slightly squashed nose, the same arch in our eyebrows. I wonder what else about us is the same. Does he like manga? Can he speak English? Is he as serious as his unsmiling face in this photo makes him out to be? And I wonder—would he be happy to find out that he has a sister halfway around the world?

  19

  Half of me wants to hurry on to Lourdes, and half of me wants to hop on a plane bound for Japan where I can meet my father and my long-lost sibling Junpei. But before I do either of those things, I have to go to a party with Mom.

  We’ve been invited to dinner with the gallery owner. To get to his apartment, we have to take a taxi and then an elevator that looks like a cage. It makes a ratchety sound as we go up, and for a second I’d rather be dragging my lame body up four flights of stairs than risk my life in that ancient box. But then the thing stops and we’re still in one piece. The door opens. We get off.

  Mom pushes the light switch. Suddenly, a row of doors is brightly illuminated. The gallery owner lives at the end of the hall. I hobble along just behind Mom. We’re almost there when the light goes off.

  “It’s called a minuterie,” Mom says. “The lights only stay on for about a minute. It saves electricity.”

  “Hmm.” I grumble a little and wait for her to press the light switch again.

  Mom waits for me to catch up and then presses the bell. The door opens almost immediately and we are welcomed by Madame Le Clerc, a bony woman with long, straight black hair. She looks kind of Goth, if you ask me. She’s so pale, I doubt she ever goes outside. She kisses Mom on each cheek, then takes a long look at me. “Ah,” she says. “La Muse!” and she does the same kiss-kiss thing to me.

  I’m trying to be gracious here, so I nod a little—yeah, yeah, la muse, c’est moi—and then I lurch into the most beautiful apartment I’ve ever seen in my life.

  The ceilings are high enough for palm trees, and the walls are covered with pleated burgundy fabric. Of course, there are paintings all over. It’s all dark and elegant and there are about a million vases around. They look old and Chinese and are probably worth more than our house. I’m worried that I will suddenly lose control of my arm or legs and knock them to the floor. “Uh, I think I’d better sit down,” I say to no one in particular.

  Mom is brushing cheeks with the other people in the room. I make my way to a velvet sofa and sit down in the middle. It’ll take some work to get up again without an armrest to grab onto, but at least I’m out of range of the breakables. I try to make out what everyone is saying.

  The guy with brown sideburns down to his chin is some sort of artist. I admire him for a minute, till another guy, this one with platinum-dyed hair, puts his arm around Sideburn’s waist. Oh well.

  The woman with the chandelier earrings is the editor for some fashion magazine. Apparently she’s sending someone over to interview Mom in a couple of days.

  The bald man waving a cigarette around is Monsieur Le Clerc, the gallery owner.

  There’s nobody here my age, and no one is speaking English. But I’m okay as long as no one remembers me and starts raving about what a great inspiration I am.

  Everyone pretty much ignores me until it’s time to sit at the table. Mom is seated way at the other end. She flutters her fingers at me, and mouths “Are you okay?”

  I nod. She seems really happy.

  A woman dressed in a maid uniform brings out the first course. It looks like some sort of meatloaf. “Qu’est-ce que c’est?” I ask under my breath, practicing one of the few phrases I’ve learned.

  It’s been a while since anyone has noticed me, so I almost forget that I’m not invisible. I’m a little surprised when the artist guy on my left answers.

  “It’s pâté,” he says. “Made from goose liver.”

  “Oh, you speak English.”

  “Un petit peu.” His smile is like a laser beam. I feel myself blush.

  I’m trying to think of something clever to say, and then I get all nervous and my arm flails and knocks over his wine glass. The crystal tin
kles against my plate and a big red splotch blossoms on the white damask tablecloth. It’s probably an heirloom. Definitely dry clean only.

  I glance up at Mom and her mouth is an “o.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say, sinking down in my seat. Right about now, I could really use a miracle. Remembering Saint Bernadette, I try to beam my thoughts across the country to Pau or the grotto at Lourdes, or wherever she is. Please please please let me disappear from this place, or at least make my arm behave for the rest of this trip. Either one would be fine. I wait for a zap or a tingle. Even a frisson. But nothing happens. I summon up the only other French phrase I seem to remember: “Je suis désolée.” I’ll be needing to say this one a lot.

  Our hostess forces a smile and rings a little bell. The maid rushes in once again. The mess is cleaned up and we get on with our dinner. I am careful not to draw attention to myself for the rest of the meal.

  20

  Mom has some spare time the next afternoon so we decide to do a little sightseeing. Since she’s an artist, our first stop is no surprise—the Louvre.

  “This used to be a fortress,” she says, as we stand in line to buy tickets. “Back in the twelfth century. And then it was just a place for King Louis XIV to keep the royal art.”

  I look around and try to imagine this place back then, a few nobles in robes and curly wigs wandering at a leisurely pace among the statues. Now it’s mobbed with tourists with fanny packs and cameras, all here to see some of the most famous paintings and sculptures in the world. The first one I recognize is the Venus de Milo.

  “She kinda looks like your work,” I say.

  “Yeah, well, she originally had arms. They broke off.”

  Winged Victory of Samothrace is missing a head. That must be worse than not having arms, huh?

  Mom tells me how the sculptures were painted at one time. She’s my own personal tour guide. We brave the hordes and take a look at the Mona Lisa, which is surprisingly tiny for such a famous portrait, and then it’s on to the Musée d’Orsay, a former train station that is now home to lots of paintings by legendary impressionists.