Au Paris

by Rachel Spencer

  Léonie walked alongside me, not saying a word. Unlike her brother, she didn’t request any special after-school snacks or demand any after-school activities. She merely sighed quietly under the weight of her own book bag. I patted her on the head again and tugged at her book bag, a wordless offer to relieve her of her load. She loosened her arms from the straps and smiled gratefully as her brother skipped ahead.

  The minute we stepped into the house, Constantin urged me in the direction of the goûter closet. Every day after school, the children were allowed to choose from a closet-full of delicious European cookies and sweets. They were allowed only one sugary selection per day, and choosing a snack was not a task they took lightly. I appreciated their position. If there’s anything worth second guessing, it’s choosing dessert. Constantin scrambled into the kitchen, scooted a chair up to the counter’s edge, climbed onto the chair, swung open the goûter closet door, then turned to me with a wide smile, as though expecting praise for his achievement. At the sight of the goûter assortiment, Léonie abandoned her adult manners and pensive demeanor, shouting out her request with glee and reminding me that she was just a child, after all.

  I glanced at the clock on the wall—just a little after 5 p.m. I expected Diane would appear through the peacock blue doors at any moment though I had no idea how we two would interact. Would she demand her goûter as well, or did she abide by a different set of rules? The phone rang, almost as if triggered by my thoughts. I answered it, nervous about conducting a phone conversation in French. But it was Diane.

  “Uh, yeah . . . Hi, Rachel, I’m having dinner at a friend’s and I won’t be home until later. I already checked with my mom, so it’s okay,” she said. Without waiting for an answer, she hung up.

  I hung up the phone with an uneasiness in the pit of my stomach. She hadn’t asked me if she could have dinner elsewhere—she told me. And, unlike her brother, I knew enough to know it wasn’t an innocent French to English translation.

  Despite Constantin’s wish to go to le parc, I selfishly insisted that we stay home that first night so I could establish some semblance of an evening schedule: goûter, homework, baths, dinner, clean up, and finally—bedtime. At this suggestion, Constantin clenched his jaw and crossed his arms tightly across his puffed out chest. I managed to assuage him with the frozen pizza, but I was quickly learning my limits.

  My schedule for the evening played out as planned, with a few minor mishaps here and there. While Léonie was polite and obedient, Constantin was proving to be quite a handful. By the time I tucked him into bed at 9 p.m., I was still soaking wet from an earlier struggle with him in the bathtub. But as I pretended to let him dominate the bedtime story hour by allowing him to choose the story and command me how to read it—“You do the voices”—my worries about his obstinacy quickly faded. I read to him, attempting to coax the little monsieur, who began by sitting upright, arms folded sternly across his chest, into lying down with his head on the pillow. At first it seemed an impossible task, but as the pages turned, he scooted little by little under the covers, and by the end of the story, he was a little darling, curled up with his thumb in his mouth. I knew from Estelle’s instructions that she had been trying to break him from this habit, but to me, it was reassuring. He’d gone from dictator to infant in a matter of minutes, and all the hassle of the day, all my ignorance and inadequacy, faded away as he shut his little eyes and went to sleep.

  Chapitre Quatre

  I’d learned in my high school French class that European business was conducted well into the late hours of the evening, mainly because of a midday hiatus, or siesta, in which lunch plays a vital role. Because I’d fallen into bed exhausted after my first full day as a nanny, the hour at which Estelle and Alex ended their day remained a mystery.

  When I found remnants of a dinner for two the next morning, I assumed that hour had been a late one. In the kitchen, roasting pans, vinegar and oil, salt and pepper, and a variety of Alex’s preferred moutardes were strewn on the stovetop counter. It was still early—not a stir throughout the rest of the Vladesco house—when I slipped through the sliding glass door to collect two dirty plates, two emptied wine glasses, and two soiled white cotton napkins, an elegant leftover display from their evening interlude. I observed the two empty wine glasses stained on the inside rim by a plum-colored film. It was the residue of their table wine. Theirs was that Burgundy beauty raised in the heart of France’s Côte d’Or. Alex and Estelle stored at least one hundred bottles of it downstairs in their cellar, all labeled with the name Chanson Père et Fils, Estelle’s family wine.

  I stood in the garden, which was still gray with the morning haze, mesmerized by the life history of Estelle, who espoused les Vladesco to the anciens riches. Raised in Beaune, where the heart of Burgundy wine beats a furtive rhythm throughout the historic town ramparts that date to the fifteenth century, Estelle was born to privilege. She grew up the middle of three children in the house of Chanson Père et Fils, a label depuis 1750. Nine generations later, Estelle’s father owned and operated this gem so treasured by Beaune. The chateau in which they lived was marked a historical monument on the city’s map of tourism. The company and all its manicured surroundings belonged to the family, namely Estelle’s father, until the late 1990s, when it was tragically sold to some wine and champagne mass-producing conglomerate. I’ve felt a personal devastation knowing the family sold Chanson. Of course it was none of my business, but it broke my heart to know the history, legacy, and tradition had ended.

  Estelle left home to go to business school in Paris, where she met Alex. Soon after, they moved to London to pursue careers in finance and banking. But despite her travels and education, I believed the deep red of Burgundy still flowed through her. She exuded an ageless class, bred and fostered like the grapes that grow out of Burgundy soil. No man or measure could extract such a heritage from a person.

  Hers was a story like Hermès leather, the way it was first intended for real equestrian accoutrements, before commercialism deflated the stature of an elite class. Aged to perfection, smoothed and polished from years of wear and refinement, it was a history of unmatched quality. I longed to know the original story, and all the characters as they were in their original setting. But as an observer of her modern life, I saw that where she had settled was intriguing and beautiful enough. I walked inside from her garden to her kitchen that resembled a featured layout in Architectural Digest. I rinsed the dirty dishes clean, careful not to clang crystal and porcelain against the silver steel base of the sink.

  The nanny book sat on the counter where I placed the glasses upside down to dry. The tasks, compounded with yesterday’s unfinished ones, had multiplied.

  Buy pique-nique for journees olympiques—kids may choose one fruit and one biscuit.

  Constantin has judo.

  Léonie must practice piano—30 minutes a day.

  Diane to the dentiste a 17h30.

  Prepare quiche for dinner, yoghurt or fruit dessert.

  Nothing was said about missing l’opticien, nor about the groceries I had not retrieved, but I assumed the note to prepare the quiche was a subtle hint that frozen pizza dinners were not encouraged in the Vladesco household. I made a mental note to spend adequate time testing the workings of the Celsius gas oven later that day. But first, I wanted to make a peace offering by having un rétro ready and waiting at the breakfast table, as it should have been on that first day. I still wasn’t certain of the exact definition of un rétro, but had figured out by contextual breakfast association that it was some sort of a bread product. From the aroma that wafted through the open windows, breads—and perhaps les rétros—were baking in abundance all across the city. I left the house in search.

  I walked the sleepy streets where I discovered a new Paris, one that woke in a cloud of earthy flour. The shuffling feet and whirring car tires and short, blunt horn honks of the day before were gone for the moment, replaced by the doughy aroma of whole grains and rising yeast. I followed the
smell and the steady trickle of locals who filed along in the same direction.

  I arrived at a bakery with Le Rétrodor written on a sign outside. The sign touted several premier awards. Apparently la meilleure baguette was a hot commodity and was only sold at a select few boulangeries. C’est célébré.

  “Une baguette, deux croissants! Trois pains au chocolat!” Inside the boulangerie, I discovered a makeshift assembly line of sorts. A serious, ruddy-cheeked woman called out customers’ orders to a skinny, nervous-looking girl whose duty was to wrap each pastry and loaf in thin sheets of tissue, then hand the finished product to respective customers. Still a third girl handled the exchange of coins and centimes. Every time the ruddy-cheeked woman turned to holler the next order, her ample hips bumped the coin-counter girl from left to right, causing her to drop her change and scramble to pick it up.

  “Un pain aux raisins, deux baguettes!” Ruddy Cheeks yelled, throwing her head back for maximum volume. As the line of customers inched forward, I cowered. I was terrified that my French would fail me yet again, ensuring the wrath of Ruddy Cheeks. I rehearsed “Un rétro, s’il-vous-plaît” silently again and again, trying to insert just the right inflection—a nasally punch for the “un”; two valiant hockings of air in the back of the throat for the “rétro.” Only the French considered it an entertaining sport to shove two consecutive guttural “r” sounds into a five-letter word.

  I listened to each order, practicing the shape of vowel sounds. Customers uttered consonants and vowels and mouthfuls of sounds from the nose and throat, all stuffed together in one syllable. I mouthed their sounds until it was my turn with Ruddy Cheeks.

  “Un rétro, s’il-vous-plaît,” I said.

  “Un rétro!” Ruddy Cheeks yelled. I wiped the spit from her amplified “r” sounds from where she sprayed my face. With a jerk of her head and a swish of her hips, she gestured me to move aside, which I did, quickly, to let the ruddy-cheeked woman spit in the next customer’s face. Following the assembly line, I waited for my tissue-wrapped rétro and handed one euro and fifty centimes to the coin-counter just in time for Ruddy Cheeks to knock the coins on the floor. A perfect rhythm. Surprisingly, the coin-counter did not seem bothered to spend half her career tossed by the boisterous baker, though for her own sake, I wished she would pick a quiet spot in the corner where managing monetary transactions didn’t involve injury.

  I left moments later with a loaf of bread that bore a strong resemblance to une baguette. By this time the line to Ruddy Cheeks, mostly of housewives on their first of three daily baguette runs, curved out the door of the bakery and spilled onto the sidewalk.

  I walked toward home, famous baguette lodged under one arm the way true French folk carry their bread. The morning sun rose and the flour clouds dispersed, adding a caked layer of sediment to the day-old cigarette butts along the sidewalk’s edge. I walked—satisfied, enlivened. It was in this asymmetry, in the blend of cigarette butts and artisan flour, that I first saw into the mystery and history and jazz of the City of Light. Filth and fortune juxtaposed as one. In the bubble of a community I called home, there was no artful engineering. The streets ran straight, one methodically right after the other. The sidewalks stayed swept.

  But here, a hundred architectural melodies played at once. There was no congruence, no repetition, no two buildings alike. Yes, it was jazz, the way this city came together. Somehow in the dissonance of art and style and overlapped eras of time, a new song was made. Anything went and everything went, but it was all music. Really good, thoughtful music. And where the sidewalk met the edge of the two iron-barred windows at 37, Boulevard Pereire, I found myself back at home, darting to avoid the street cleaner who stood hosing the cracks of pavement that bordered my basement room windows.

  Inside the house that had been still when I left, the espresso machine cranked and churned. Estelle was awake, and busy in the kitchen. I entered, eager to extend to her the carb-packed peace offering.

  “Le rétro!” I announced.

  She took it. Then she set it aside on the counter. Had I gotten it wrong? I didn’t want to ask. So I smiled and accepted the demitasse of inky black espresso she handed me.

  “I’ll take the kids to school from now on,” Estelle said. “I think it’s easier that way?” Estelle looked at me over the rim of her demitasse, eyebrows raised, lips curled at the corners, pursed around the edges of her cup.

  “Okay,” I said.

  Clearly she’d used an inquisitive tone for the sake of being polite. It wasn’t a question. Had I fallen short on my duties already, or was it truly easier that way? Estelle continued, relaying the day’s instructions. She informed me of Diane’s whereabouts (she’d already left for school). She gave me directions to the market (there was one nearby open every day of the week—I could have purchased the courgettes and aubergines after all), and directions to the cheese shop nearby (Alex might ask me to buy cheese occasionally). I smiled and nodded steadily, the only form of communication en français I’d mastered thus far.

  I tried to keep up with her stream of directions, shops, and instructions. But the more she talked, the more overwhelmed I became. Anyone who’s ever traveled internationally understands the term “language barrier.” And despite high school and some college French and my best efforts, I remained trapped behind that barrier whenever English was not the primary spoken language. As a result, I was afraid to speak at all. This explains why, even though Estelle spoke fluent English to me, I often remained too timid to speak back with confidence, in any language.

  Malheuresement for moi, either in French or English, I was seized with such fear and nervousness that I completely lost the ability to form cohesive sentences. To make matters worse, whenever I remembered I was an English speaker, I spoke very slowly, quietly, and with an accent so bizarre even I couldn’t figure out to what country I belonged. I called this twist of tongues Franglais. As a result, I wound up sounding like English was my second language. Or my third. Or fourth.

  Rather than humiliate myself or cause unnecessary confusion among my new family members, I managed most of my conversations by employing a wide variety of nods and smiles. And occasionally, I threw in a oui or a bon for friendly measure. After briefing me on the day’s agenda, Estelle closed the nanny book and gathered her purse and keys. She left the kitchen and walked toward the front door where I saw Léonie and Constantin waiting, dressed in their school clothes with backpacks strapped on.

  “Enjoy Paris,” Estelle said. She turned back to me and smiled. Before I could say “à bientot,” the three were out the door. À bientot, I thought. And I was alone in the house again.

  I stared at the untouched rétrodor on the counter. Rétrodor—what a strange name for a dietary staple. It sounded more like a new species of dinosaur than something edible. That, or it was named after some pulverizing bulldozer with which I was not acquainted. It stared back at me, mocked me from its position on the countertop. I thought about devouring it in its entirety. I guessed I should, before it embraced its own identity and charged at me across the room on chain-wrapped power wheels. But I resisted, lest a loaf of bread get the best of me first thing in the morning.

  I sat at the kitchen table with yet another cup of espresso to reevaluate the nanny tasks of the day. I decided what seemed vital enough to accomplish before noon (nothing) and what I could do in thirty minutes just before picking the kids up from school (everything else). Across the room, the Celsius gas oven mocked me even more boldly than the rétrodor. While I didn’t foresee the oven sprouting pterodactyl-like wings, and I knew it didn’t run on diesel fuel (though Alex would be bloodthirsty for such an oven if it existed), it was far more dangerous than its carb-packed counterpart. A rétrodor, I could eat, enjoy, and replace for just 1.50 euros. But if I conducted my own French Cooking for Dummies class and broke the oven in the process, I would have to face the cost of the oven (astronomical) and more severely, the wrath of Alex (immeasurable).

  Just as I was reachi
ng for the rétrodor, the front door opened. “Ra-chele?” a woman called my name en français.

  I rounded the doorway of the kitchen and came face to face with a sturdy-figured woman. She was dressed tastefully but plainly and wore large round-rimmed glasses. Her reddish-brown hair, cut short and flat, framed her face. She peered at me expectantly, as if trying to place me, until she broke into a warm smile.

  “Maria Celeste!” I exclaimed. “Bonjour!” We greeted each other in truest French fashion, kissing first one cheek, then the other.

  Maria Celeste was a frisky darling dear of a housekeeper, who came daily to launder, scrub, mop, iron, dust, and organize every article belonging to les Vladesco. I’d met her a couple of years before when I visited Sarah during her nanny tour of duty. Maria Celeste remembered me mostly because she loved Sarah and, as later dialogue proved, rated every nanny since against her—including moi.

  There was really no reason the house, the laundry, the linens, the floors, and everything in between needed so much daily attention; the house was, for the most part, very clean. But Maria Celeste had a fantastic way of creating catastrophes out of minor incidents, which typically tripled her workload. She was originally from Portugal, and spoke rapid French with what I once called a Spanish accent, though I learned quickly that such an incorrect geographical reference was among the highest insults. But Portuguese or Spanish, I hardly understood a word of it.

  We walked into the kitchen and Maria Celeste took stock of her main chore for the day—the pots and pans Alex had left on the stove from the previous night’s dinner. But instead of gathering the dirty pots and pans and getting to work, Maria Celeste reached straight for the rétrodor, cut a third of it off, and militantly sliced the rest into one-inch-thick rounds. As she mumbled something about Alex and his piggish habits under her breath, she fetched a breadbasket from the cabinet and placed in it the freshly cut rounds. She munched the remaining third of the loaf as she inspected a crusty pan, grumbling.