by Sarah Hina
But don’t we all know Paris? Skimming away the shell of that rich brûlée, hasn’t something more substantial lodged itself within our imaginations, like the germ of an idea waiting to take root? I’d wager that if you were to ask two people—one from blue New York, another from red Arkansas—where they’d most like to arrive in Europe, the answer would be Paris. And they might not have the foggiest idea why; the word will stumble to their lips like a forgotten reflex, emboldening a dreamy smile and a nagging nostalgia. For older folks, the melancholia of Bogart’s “We’ll always have Paris” might be enough, while for kids my age, it’s the iconic bohemian chase. The lament and the promise. Paris is the nutty center. Our journey. Picasso, who was not really Picasso until he arrived, may have been a Spaniard by birth, and Hemingway American, but they were Parisians by choice. Runaways welcomed.
Not that I’m comparing myself.
I have neither great art nor the scars from a war burdening me. I’m just trying to outrun a broken heart, which is nothing to sneeze at, for a broken heart breaks a person. Paris is my promise of rehabilitation. I vaguely hope, as the engines roar and I dig in my heels, that it will become my lament. There is an infinite number of paths, confluences of latitudes and longitudes, that might take me there. But this one is marked for me.
I place my palm on the cool Plexiglas of the window, leaving behind a sweaty imprint. I have passed the authority of my life into other hands. I hope these Icarus wings won’t melt.
“Are you going to Paris, then?”
It’s my jittery seatmate, who has been white-knuckling the armrests almost as tenaciously as I. He offers a guilty smile. He must be emerging from the fog of his own fear, ready to apologize for it by striking up a conversation that I know I will hate but can’t seem to avoid.
Should I be rude? I could really use the rest.
“Yep.”
Well, no use starting a trip feeling guilty.
He nods and snaps his gum, happy to have this in common with me, along with the other two hundred eighty people. “Me too, as well, I mean.”
“Yes, well,” I offer, pointedly looking down at Rick Steves’ smiling face on the back cover of my book, bought at the airport. He beams, trusting me to conquer Paris’s tourist attractions while ingratiating myself with the locals and ubiquitous “culture.” I have my concerns.
“I’m Cliff, by the way.” He sticks out his hand.
“Daisy,” I say and try not to redden. You’d think twenty-three years of a name would get you used to it. But I’m not quite there.
“Daisy” was my dad’s idea. He teaches American literature at a liberal arts college in Ohio and was emboldened enough by his love for Henry James to anoint me the spiritual descendant of this gauche, mindless flirt ridiculed by European society and, in her outcast status, stricken by “Roman fever”—malaria to us—dying without redemption at a tender and nubile age. My younger brother, lucky in his maleness, got by with “Henry,” which, while old-fashioned, has an urbane charm. If only my dad had beenmore taken with Emily Dickinson, queer old bat that she was, I wouldn’t detect that glint in a stranger’s eye whenever I’m introduced, as he tries to reconcile my dark, humorless looks with a name that conjures artless grace and a sunny disposition. As a child, I nearly got away with it. Now it’s a juicy offering for those who get off on irony. And don’t ask why my mom didn’t put up more of a fight. It’s still a sore point.
To be fair, Cliff doesn’t seem overly amused. In fact, I’m not sure he even heard what I said.
“I’m going to meet my girlfriend. She’s studying abroad and has no idea I’m coming. It should be a big surprise,” he continues, cheerfully ignoring my very faint interest. “I’m going to take her up the Eiffel Tower and ask her to marry me.” Busting to tell someone, especially an admiring female, of this ingenuous plan, he now looks at me for approbation.
“How romantic!” I assent.
“I’m glad you think so. The idea came to me all at once, while I was watching National Lampoon’s European Vacation. You know, when the Griswolds go to the Eiffel Tower?”
“Sure, sure.”
Smile, Daisy. Smile.
“Well, that scene, and the one where they’re sitting at their hotel and they see those newlyweds making out like, well, newlyweds, got me thinking. I kind of put the two together. After all, Paris is the city for romance, right?”
“Yes, that’s what they say … and sing.”
He looks at me sharply, and I show him my teeth. He nods, mollified.
“So where are you from?” he asks, after requesting a ginger ale from the flight attendant. I don’t drink, but order a vodka tonic. Since this is Air France, no one asks for my ID. Even though I’m twenty-three, I feel like I’ve gotten away with something.
I take a sip, wincing a little. “Cleveland.”
“Ah, American,” he pronounces, somewhat cuttingly. My curiosity is piqued by this sudden boon of superiority from a man inspired toward romance on the confused logic torn from a National Lampoon movie (a profoundly American piece of cinematic magic, by the way). I’m grateful for a distraction, so I start to dig.
“You’re not American?” I ask, smiling sweetly.
“No, no.” He coughs, looking forward. “Canadian. I live twenty minutes outside Toronto.” His goatee sticks out like an Egyptian pharaoh’s as his posture improves.
I know a little something about Canadians. I went on a two-week Contiki trip through Italy and Greece three summers ago (I recall little about the Medicis and their passion for the arts, or whether the Parthenon’s columns were Doric or Ionic, but that Aussies are the friendliest and most dedicated drinking mates on this planet is a comfortable stereotype I will take to the grave), and there was a tight clique of my northern neighbors on that trip. If they hadn’t repeatedly emphasized they were not American, we would never have noticed … well, except for the iconic maple leaf adorning their backpacks, jackets, and probably their underwear, if anyone had cared to look. I’ve never seen a group of people so terrified of mistaken identity or so proud of their murky heritage. Nor had I ever been bullied to listen to the Barenaked Ladies so repeatedly.
I examine my drink, while the Canuck sips from his. The silence is oppressive. Somehow I want this inconsequential person, this peacock, to inquire about me, to find me worth the mild strain of his attention. When he won’t, I force myself on him.
“I’m actually going to Paris to get over a broken heart,” I say, reddening. It sounds like I’m bragging.
“Oh?”
“Yes, my boyfriend, my high school sweetheart too”—I take a sip of my drink—“dumped me yesterday, so I’m going to lose myself in Paris. Or find myself. Whichever.” I gulp some more liquid courage. “Quit grad school for the semester and everything. Totally freaking crazy, eh?”
Eh?!
“Could be.”
I bob my head and grin like a salesman. He thinks Americans are impulsive, shoot-from-the-hip types. I’m doing him a great favor by satisfying his preconceptions.
Clearing his throat, he asks more graciously, “What are you studying?”
“Neuroscience.” I start lecturing him on my ear cells, to illuminate my intelligence (not all Americans are ignorant, apathetic asses, though I cannot, for the life of me, remember the name of Canada’s prime minister, or is it president?), but notice his attention wandering. “I know, it’s not AIDS.” I laugh.
His face hardens. Too bad for the string of cheese or nicotine gum suspended from the tip of his goatee because he’d like to wear contempt well. “That’s not something to joke about.”
Cliff has AIDS. Or his girlfriend does. Or someone close, like Uncle Mountie, or maybe a hockey buddy.
“I-I’m sorry.”
He nods curtly and turns toward his book. My eyes flash to the cover: The Da Vinci Code. Of course. What else could it be, on the way to Paris? I see him darting through the Louvre, sniffing for Mary Magdalene’s remains, ignoring the great art in favo
r of a good conspiracy. He wants to close the book on our conversation, but something’s caught, like a hook in his lip. Finally, he turns and says, “I can’t bear for an American to say anything about AIDS. Not with the way your government is forcing it upon the people of Africa and Southeast Asia.”
This is surprising. “Do you mean how we haven’t backed up our promise of more money?” I ask, perfectly willing to admit some stinginess.
“No, I mean how you’re purposefully injecting people with the AIDS virus to kill off poor people.”
Okay, so he’s a nut, certifiable. I shouldn’t take the bait. I really shouldn’t.
“Are you implying that the United States government is bent on a plan of wiping out poverty, and our tiny commitment to international aid, by murdering millions of people around the globe?”
“No.”
Relieved, I laugh.
“I’m not implying. It’s a fact.”
I cough out my drink, not sure whether to laugh, cry, or hastily change seats.
“It’s not just about your aid obligations. It’s all about the supposed War on Terror. Poverty breeds terrorism. So if you kill the poor people, you kill future terrorists.” Nostrils flaring, he backs into his seat.
The lady across the aisle raises her head at the word terrorists and stares.
“And there are so many anti-American terrorists coming out of sub-Saharan Africa these days?” I snort.
Wait … are there? Before he can answer, I roll on, my voice climbing with our elevation. “And anyway, the terrorists on September 11 weren’t poor for the most part. In fact, many were highly educated. So I don’t think your plan, without entering into the nightmare logistics of it, would even work.” I shake my head. “Not to mention the level of evil intent it would require.”
He looks at me pityingly, like I’m some naïve stump. “And your government is so concerned about workable solutions to actual problems and doing good? Tell that to the children of Baghdad you’ve bombed in your search for weapons of mass destruction. The prisoners at Abu Ghraib tortured by your army.”
Okay. I do not appreciate being lumped in with Lynndie England or George Bush. It’s funny how as soon as you’re out of America, you become the Face of America. Especially in October of 2004, with the world snapping its jaws for a little American red meat. I am responsible for Everything … and Nothing. Whereas, in Cleveland, my complicity was dulled by the sincerity with which I shook my head over the stinking, faraway mess of it.
I can no longer abide Mr. You-Are-Your-Country’s-Actions. I don’t hold him accountable for … well, geez, anything Canada might do that could actually be bothersome to an American. Even if I thought their pair skaters were a little annoying last Olympics, I didn’t object to their belated gold medal. I even sang the first bars of “O Canada” during the second ceremony and hummed the rest. It’s a lovely little song.
I stand, sandwiched between two rows of seats and a low ceiling. “Excuse me.”
He reels in his legs, and I find freedom in the aisle. There are no empty seats, but I will hide in the bathroom for a while.
“Hey!” he calls after me.
I flip my black ponytail over my shoulder and glance back, careful to maintain my scornful smile.
“Don’t take it so personally,” he says, shrugging. “My girlfriend is American, too.”
I spin back around, advancing toward the front of the plane. As the turbulence jolts us and I pinball across strangers’ knotty shoulders, purled together by destination, I hear him say, “I try not to hold it against her.”
Chapter
3
nothing makes you feel so completely American as faking French to that first native speaker. The way those round vowels flatten on my Ohio tongue shrivels me before this customs agent, who regards me with a mix of native hostility and bureaucratic boredom. I quickly abandon the hope of securing his, or anyone’s, real respect in this country, whose mean, clenched rs serve as a verbal green card I have no hope of securing. The French language is like a headmistress at a Catholic boarding school for atheists: fearsome, controlling, a real bitch. She won’t get you to accept that there is a God exactly, but she’ll damn well make you believe in divine judgment.
Why, por qué, did I take Spanish in high school?
“Excusez-moi. Parlez-vous anglais?” I smile hopefully at the young guy whose badge reads, Marcel Duchamp. I blink. His photo smiles, but the real Marcel doesn’t bother with trifles.
“Yes.”
“Is there a problem?”
He ignores me.
Eventually, Marcel motions me to the side. My bag is to be searched. I endure the small humiliation of having a male handle my tampons, my ratty underwear, my A cup bras. People filing by glance at us, curious to witness someone’s privacy pillaged. Marcel lingers over this stuff, like it’s some kind of feminine contraband. I feel like an anthropological subject without the benefit of being dead.
Finally, Marcel pulls up sharply. His eyes target mine, and the satisfaction boned within recalls a dog worrying his chewy hide. There is something in his hand. For a minute, I panic. Did I smuggle some pot from Toronto? A handgun from Cleveland? I squint, prepared for tears, resigning myself to Javert in a French interrogation room, when I finally recognize what Marcel is examining with the vigilance of a bloodhound on the trail.
It’s my box—ample enough, to be sure—of Celestial Seasonings’ organic, chamomile tea.
Really, Daisy.
It turns out, Marcel humorlessly explains (after filling out the very necessary paperwork) that there is a weight limit on imported tea. Mine is ten grams over, and they can’t have that. Tea has proven a potent brew of revolutionary fervor in my country, yet I find myself surrendering easily enough. I’m more concerned with being tagged an Ugly American than with justice right now. The older American couple next to me, however, valiantly waves the flag as they go down with the ship.
The man, jiggering with his hearing aid, asks, “What’s that, now?” to Marcel’s glowering coworker. I briefly wonder who the “good cop” is.
The man’s wife, hair curled into a brass claw, shouts, “HE NEEDS TO SEE YOUR PILLS, BUZZ. THE PILLS!”
“On whose authority? We licked the Gestapo once, young man, and I’m not afraid to do it again.”
His grip on the walker does much to sell his point.
Marcel’s lips curl with derision, and he waves me away. Sadly, I am tarred through association. I sigh, wondering if anyone will drink the tea, or for how long it will sit on some dusty shelf, next to a bottle of Jack Daniel’s and a withering begonia.
Suddenly, Paris seems like the least impulsive place in the world.
I collect my miserable suitcase with as much dignity as I can muster and follow the signs to the RER. It is a torturous path, and I get lost, twice. I don’t mind so much, content to melt into the slush of bodies. I’ve always liked shuffling through airports. They’re all the same, which is reassuring. I appreciate the bustling, frantic anonymity of travelers corralled into an artificial pen, until they disperse, like atoms of a liquid dissolving into air. I am going here; you are going there. We shall never meet again.
Jesus, a McDonald’s.
There it is, sandwiched between a parfumerie and a luxury luggage store. I’m not sure whether it’s my exhaustion, crippled emotions, or the lingering effects of being treated like a criminal, but I almost collapse with gratitude. Familiarity may breed contempt in saner surroundings, but here, in the great unknown, it feels good. Never mind that, in Cleveland, I begrudgingly ate McDonald’s only at Irene’s insistence. I enter the restaurant and demand an Egg McMuffin, feeling like I can speak English, or more precisely American, without a trace of self-consciousness under the yawning sanctuary of the golden arches. The meat muffin, complete with fatty white globules, is greasy, disgusting, and totally delicious.
And I’m lovin’ it.
Irene, devotee of Quarter Pounders with cheese, connoisseur of an American
specialty described, in our house, as ketchupfied meat loaves, is my closest friend at work, where I’m an adult service aide to the developmentally disabled. Before anyone pats me on the back, let me acknowledge that it is more of a gesture than anything; grad school costs $13,000 a year, and I make $9.25 an hour, twelve hours a week. My parents foot some of my bills, and I have the requisite loans that will haunt me for twenty years. But I had to do something, and there was this ad over the summer that filled me with noble thoughts for about five minutes. Long enough to employ me at a home with my new clients, Bill, Irene, and Lucy—all of whom I had just left behind without a backward glance. My Canadian friend’s arguments aside, I am actually the personification of America’s international aid policy: a spew of lofty rhetoric with a predisposition to exaggerate its compassion and, when push comes to shove, to skip out on its responsibilities.
It should be hard to forget about my clients, especially Irene. Every Saturday and Sunday, she comes up to me, that wretched pair of grandma glasses perched on the end of her nose, before taking my hand and tentatively asking, “Friend, Daisy?” It is the only question anyone has ever asked that makes me feel both hopeful and lousy. There’s too much naked vulnerability there; I don’t know where to park it. Usually, I just say, “Yes, friend, Irene,” and direct her toward her “memorabilia,” which is what we call the box full of other people’s, mostly kids’, crap she has picked up on her walks. She can tell me what she ate for dinner on each day that she acquired a new “artifact.”
A rainbow pencil, personalized “Brittany”: ham salad sandwich, pickle and coleslaw on the side.
A jolly snowman mitten: pork chop, green beans, au gratin potatoes.
A cheap watch stopped at 2:23 (“Day or night, Daisy?” “I don’t know, Irene.”): meat loaf, baked potato, more green beans.