by Amy Thomas
But there were some silver linings to being at the office so much. I was finally bonding with my Louis Vuitton team, and even meeting other people. On one of the brilliant July Saturdays we were stuck at the office, I met Jo, an Australian art director who had been with Ogilvy for a couple years. I had taken a break to go up to the rooftop and cheer on the international Tour de France cyclists making their final laps up and down the Champs-Élysées (another good thing about having to work that day, I guess: having a prime view of this prestigious event). Jo was doing the same, but she was making a day of it, there on Ogilvy’s terrace with an expat gang and cache of picnic goodies.
I had been peripherally aware of Jo’s cool, street-smart style around the office but had never had the occasion to chat with her. That day, sensing a kindred spirit, she introduced herself and insisted I have a spot of her rosé—a friendly and generous gesture that was not lost on me. Before I retreated inside to work, we agreed to meet for lunch when my schedule settled down. After slaving away all summer, we—Jo and I—did have lunch, and we—Ogilvy—were awarded the site relaunch. Our days of summer drudgery paid off.
Before work got too busy again, I wanted to tap into la rentrée’s electric energy and make all kinds of declarations for growth and betterment—the kind of optimistic gestures that Oprah would have inspired back home with her January issue of O Magazine. With revving scooters buzzing in the city again like swarms of angry bees, and chic mamans bustling about in their flouncy skirts, escorting their adorable kids who had better wardrobes than me, I was determined. It was time to set some goals. At the top of my list: study more French, take on additional freelance writing assignments, and make new friends.
It was time to see how deeply my roots might grow in my new home.
I fancied myself une vraie Parisienne, coming back from New York and embracing this social norm. But practically as I was drafting my to-do list, I lost my motivation. Suddenly nothing moved or inspired me. And instead of boning up on possessive pronouns and breaking into all the American publications like I had vowed to do, I found myself avoiding my French workbook like la grippe and procrastinating on the very few writing assignments I did have.
Even my passion for the Vélib’s waned. With the whole city’s return from the beach, the boulevards were suddenly choked with Peugeots and Renaults and their thick diesel fumes. Besides, the sun was setting earlier and earlier and it was usually dusk now when I left work. The streets felt precarious, and I didn’t have the heart or nerves for bicycling. I found myself in a cloud of paralysis and dourness. I felt tired, achy, stressed, and short-tempered—not exactly the magnificent rentrée I had envisioned.
One thing that kept me going were my evenings and weekends, when I wandered the city. I grew starry-eyed, ogling the floor-length gowns and impossibly high talons hauts through the windows of rue Saint-Honoré’s chichi boutiques, and was blissfully happy hand-picking my peaches and leeks from the markets on rues Cler and d’Aligre. It thrilled me to count the different angels, lords, and gargoyles that decorated the apartment façades and the way some people grew veritable jungles on their four-foot-wide balconies. I adored exploring the different neighborhoods, with all the cute little cul de sacs and ancient boulangeries, and I’d inevitably get lost, which would make the discovery of a random eclectic boutique or lonesome park all the more magical. Being part of Paris’s daily beats and rhythms was why I was there.
But actually, as my ever-increasing assignments and deadlines at Ogilvy reminded me, the reason I was in Paris was to…work. Even easing back into regular life after cranking on the pitch all summer, I was pulling longer, more intense hours than I had in New York. When I had arrived in the springtime, I was shocked to discover that most people were at the office until well past 7:00 p.m. every night. But now, 8:00 p.m. was becoming my habitual departure time. The thirty-five-hour French workweek I had arrived believing would be mine was nothing but a myth. And to add insult to injury, I knew the days could have been shorter if only we didn’t have these absurd meetings in which my colleagues flexed their excellent verbalization skills, pontificating and deliberating forever and ever without ever really concluding anything. The French loved to hear themselves talk. (Or, as Steve Martin said, in better humor than me, “Boy, those French. They have a different word for everything.”) Plus, it had been two months since Fred and Isa had left and they still hadn’t been replaced. We were understaffed, and I was juggling a workload meant for three. In New York, my creative directors would have called in a small army of freelancers. In Paris, my inquiries about replacements and requests for help were met with utter silence.
I had grinned and borne the intense pace every perfectly sunny weekend in August. But as the days got darker with autumn, so did my mood. I was being given new, increasingly demanding tasks—drafting strategy decks, creating social media plans, writing client presentations—and never knew if it was because a writer’s role was different in Paris than in New York, if agency life was different in Paris than in New York, or if it was just because I was getting screwed. In any case, I was on my own. I didn’t have a boss to ask these questions, and I could hardly say no to the work. I had to suck it up.
Finally, when one of the responsibilities that was fobbed off on me was entering one of our websites into an award show, I had to put my foot down. This task required me to write a script for a case study. But the agency had a dedicated public relations woman for handling things just like that. The account team was four people strong, and there was exactly one copywriter—me, who had tons of her own work to do, thank you very much. Award show entries were something I did at my very first job in San Francisco as a creative assistant. Had they really transferred me, an associate creative director, thirty-six hundred miles to write case studies? And had I really traded in my easy-breezy life in New York to work like a dog in Paris?
The case study was killing me. Whenever I presented a script to the team, someone would weigh in with a new opinion, and I would get sent in a whole new direction. It was a classic case of trying to hit a moving bull’s-eye because no one had bothered to figure out the strategy or direction. Meanwhile, my real projects were piling up. New programs and products still had to be promoted. There was website maintenance, plus the relaunch project was gearing up. I was also spending more time recruiting and interviewing copywriter candidates to join the team. I was desperate for reinforcements.
There was no chain of command and no urgency, just a mind-numbing desire to keep talking without ever doing, all of which was slowly driving me mad, and—if it meant having the process and guidance I had once enjoyed in the American workplace—it was even making me want to leave the fabulous Beaux-Arts bureau on the Champs-Élysées and go back to the crummy corporate offices in the hellhole known as Times Square. I was definitely ready to pack it up when I found myself in a windowless conference room at six o’clock on a Friday night, absolutely fatigued and frustrated, with my account team staring at me blankly as only the French can do.
“I don’t get it,” I said, looking down at my marked-up script. “I don’t get it, I don’t get it,” I numbly repeated myself. Even though our team communicated in English, I had been finding myself so flustered and exhausted lately that I might as well have been trying to speak Swahili. They were now steering me down yet another new path, which would require another half day of work. “But why am I doing this?” I asked, aware that I sounded horribly whiny. But, God, it felt great to introduce my inner six-year-old to the team and whine for the first time in six months!
“You’re the writer,” Cedric calmly pointed out—like, duh. Every time I voiced a doubt or raised a question, he had the most brilliant way of plainly explaining that, no really, A could be put on the back burner and B didn’t matter, and that C was doing D, and all I really needed to do was focus on E because, really, F and everything else was totally manageable for one person and there was really no reason for me to freak out. At all. Silly American. Silly girl.
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br /> But this whole situation was just ridiculous. It seemed like more than just a cultural difference. This was bullshit. This was so! not! my! job!
I looked desperately around the small, soulless room. It was four account people versus one writer. Nobody wanted responsibility for the project, but I had no one on my side. No one to back me up. I had been trying so hard to keep it together and assimilate. Trying to ace every assignment. Trying to figure out the printers and scanners, agency policies and processes, my colleagues and clients. I was still trying to master a French keyboard. So as I looked at my team looking at me as if I were the crazy one that night, I did the only thing possible: I lost it.
I remember when an ex-boyfriend in New York called me a “control freak”; I roared with laughter. Moi? A control freak? It struck me as the funniest thing in the world. For about three seconds, until I realized he was right. I do sort of like things my way. I had this same tragic aha moment when Melissa used the P-word on me.
“How did it make you feel?” she asked the next day, sipping her Negroni at the teeny café table where we were seated. “Not being perfect?”
With every conversation, Mel and I realized we were virtually the same exact person, born five years apart. She was also from New York and had moved to Paris at the age of thirty-six. She had once worked in the ad industry and understood its inanity. While I was currently suffering through writer’s block with my freelance articles, she was doing the same with a novel. She was single and of a certain age and was quite happy and comfortable with it. We both loved Fleetwood Mac and The Jesus and Mary Chain, peonies and vintage YSL, interior design and shabby-chic aesthetics. We were both sensitive and sentimental, and yet strong and independent. Together, we didn’t care how ridiculous we looked dancing and miming “YMCA” in a crowded bar full of strangers. Sometimes our systems were so in tune, we discovered we both suffered from homesickness, ennui, cramps, or diarrhea at the very same time, despite having not seen each other for days. Luckily for me, she was the one with a few more years of experience and could transmit her lessons to me—even if I didn’t always want to hear it.
“I’m sorry?” I sputtered. “You think I’m trying to be a perfectionist or something? I’m just trying to do my job!”
“Listen, bunny, I have been there. I know what you’re going through, and trust me when I say to you that you simply cannot do it all: the work, plus the freelance, the socializing, the blogging…” For by that point, my blogging about the ecstasy and agony of expat life in Paris had become a mild addiction with a public following. It often kept me up well past my bedtime. “You will have to let go of something.” Her hand was gently rubbing my shoulder as she forced me to make eye contact. “You can’t keep biting off more than you can chew. There are worse things than not being perfect.”
“What are you even talking about? I’m not trying…I’m not trying to be…perfect!” With the words finally out, I could feel tears prickling my eyes. She had struck a chord. I wanted to be liked and respected by my colleagues. I wanted to prove myself invaluable to the Louis Vuitton team. I wanted to do great work, not only because that’s what they brought me there to do, but also because I felt I had to prove myself as an American, as a woman, as…Amy. Little Miss Parfait. I wanted to do it all. And Melissa could see right through me.
Later that day, after Melissa had gotten me through my second breakdown in as many days and sent me off with the big American hug I needed, I stood outside the new haute pâtisserie Hugo et Victor, genuflecting at one of my holy altars of perfection. It all started to come together. The meticulously measured layers of mousse and ganache atop praline puff pastry of Jean-Paul Hévin’s choco-passion cake. The sublimely symmetrical circles of individual choux pastries filled with beautiful, billowy praliné crème that was La Pâtisserie des Rêves’s Paris-Brest. The flawless fondant finishes of Arnaud Delmontel’s kaleidoscopic cakes. All of those pretty Parisian pastries made life seem so lovely and wonderful and…perfect. And it hit me like a banana cream pie in the face: I can’t stand for things to be messy.
I think it’s a divorced child syndrome: if the apartment is clean and tidy, then everything will be all right. If my closet and checkbook are organized, I am in total control of my life. If the party spread is arranged just so, then everyone is guaranteed to have a great time. All of my new life’s uncertainty and hardship, of struggling with a foreign language and different culture, of never knowing the right thing to do or the proper thing to say, all of this…this…messiness—it was throwing me for a loop.
But if I truly was a control freak like my ex-boyfriend claimed, then shouldn’t I be able to, well, control things? Didn’t I have the power to make the changes I needed? I could do something about these feelings of frustration and inadequacy and steer myself to a better place. Starting now.
Standing before the sparkling cake-filled window of Hugo et Victor, I conjured all of my willpower and turned away from its prim, proper, pretty, pastel creations in defiance. Not today, my lovelies. It was time for something messy.
By its very nature, the crumble is a hot, heaping mess: an oozing fruit base, a haphazardly scattered topping, and a texture that deliciously swings from tender to crunchy. The fruit lends tartness, the streusel topping adds sweetness—one without the other is like peanut butter without Fluff, cake without frosting, an Oreo denuded of its white cream center. And if you dare try making the crumble a perfect haut dessert rather than the warm pile of comfort food that it is, you’re likely to fall flat on your face—sort of like I had done a few months back, tumbling down the stairs in my Robert Clergeries.
With such a pedigree, it’s no wonder the crumble is a traditional British dessert. The Brits are a no-nonsense bunch. They created the crumble during World War II when pie crust ingredients were being rationed. Forgoing the base and just warming up stewed fruit that was sprinkled with a mixture of margarine, flour, and sugar on top kept everyone as sated as possible during tough times.
I had succumbed to the charms of blueberry cobbler at Make My Cake, the bustling bakery in Harlem that’s been serving Southern specialties like hot cross buns and red velvet cake, made from protected family recipes, since 1995.
“A crumble? What’s that? You mean the cobbler?” the guy behind the counter giggled at me when I first ordered the dessert by the wrong name. Over time, in different parts of the country, Americans have adopted different versions of le crumble. There’s the crisp, which is essentially the same sweet-tart formula as the British crumble. Brown betties, which feature buttered crumb bits that are baked between the layers of fruit—the fruit most commonly being apples. And cobblers, traditionally Southern deep-dish desserts with a pie crust on bottom and either a thick biscuit or pie crust on top. Make My Cake had giant pans of wickedly sweet, syrupy pie filling covered in lattice shortbread crusts. Once the guy knew what I wanted, he slopped it into a plastic to-go container, no thought to its presentation. But it didn’t matter; it didn’t affect the taste. It was the kind of dessert that was so bad, it was good. It coated my belly. Filled me up. And felt like a sloppy-sweet embrace. Now that I was in Paris, I needed a hit of that love.
One day on my previous summer’s Tour du Chocolat, as I was coasting along rue de l’Université, I had nearly flown over my Vélib’s handlebars after slamming on the brakes. On this quiet stretch of the seventh arrondissement, a notoriously Anglophone area, I had been distracted—very distracted—by a double-decker table filled with magnificent cakes and tarts I saw in a small tea salon’s window. An older gentleman must have witnessed my clumsy act of admiration from inside for, as I was pulling out my notebook to jot down the salon’s name, straddling the heavy and awkward bicycle, he appeared from nowhere and gallantly handed me a business card: Les Deux Abeilles, The Two Bees. I thanked him before speeding off on my chocolaty way, vowing to return.
Two years later, I conjured the name of the tearoom. I dragged my ass back on a Vélib’. And I peddled across town, happy to see tha
t Les Deux Abeilles was as sweet as my memory made it out to be. It had a fusty charm, with floral wallpaper and antique furniture, and vases of flowers and potted plants lent color and freshness. The two dining rooms were flooded with sunshine from an overhead skylight and French doors that opened onto the sidewalk. It felt as comfortable and safe as if Anne and Valeria Arella, the mother-daughter team who ran it, had invited me into their own country home. Just as decadent too. I immediately saw that, in addition to the display of tarts, crumbles, scones, and cakes in the window that had caused my near wipeout way back when, there was a whole other table laden with irresistible sweets.
I had finished my omelette nature with its perfectly dressed greens and had been eyeing both tables, mulling over my choices throughout the entire lunch. “Would you mind explaining what the desserts are?” I asked the very pretty and polished Valeria. She wore white jeans, a camel-colored cashmere v-neck and her hair in an elegant ponytail, and I supposed it was only by running such a popular spot six days a week that she remained so thin.
“Bien sûr,” she responded. Despite the lunchtime bustle, she personally guided me to the front of the dining room, bringing me face to face with tens of thousands of calories.
“This is a pear-praline clafoutis,” she began, pointing to the pudding-like dessert that looked like a sweet, crustless quiche flipped on its top. “This is a peach tarte, and this is a plum tarte,” she continued identifying the desserts, one by one.
“Do you make them all here?” I asked.
“Yes, we are like acrobats in the kitchen, it’s so small. C’est pas confortable,” Valeria shared with a shrug and small smile. She told me they had been making the same recipes since she and her mother, the “two bees,” opened the tearoom in 1985. Then she got back to the business at hand. “This here’s our lemon meringue tarte, this is a chocolate fondant cake, this chocolate fondant has praline, and this one is chocolate brownie.” She then guided me over to the other table, where my greedy eyes grew even larger as she continued the parade of possibilities. Scones, tarte tatin, cheesecake, and, finally, she finished with what I had been yearning for: “And the crumble today is rhubarb-apple.” She turned to me. “I’ll give you a minute to decide,” she smiled, walking off to the kitchen.