Au Paris

by Rachel Spencer

  Everything was perfect, served either on their charming Limoges or tiny silver platters. We stayed for almost three hours, which was fine with the kids, who kept occupied by scribbling in their sketchbooks. Sure, they didn’t have the Mona Lisa in front of them, but there were plenty of lessons to be learned in the culture of Ladurée. Sarah and I relished every one.

  I had used most of my good graces with Sarah and the kids by the time we reached rue Faubourg-Saint Honoré. But I didn’t mind if we shortened the trip. I was tired too and I didn’t want the elegance of our day of dining cheapened by retail greed. Chanel, Dior, Yves Saint Laurent, Hermès lay one right after another. We walked slowly, passing shops and peering in windows until we all agreed it was time to go home.

  The next day the good nanny decided Le Louvre was not an experience she wanted to miss with the kids. She also insisted on taking the kids to see Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I wanted nothing to do with either activity. Why would I see a movie in Paris when I could see Paris?

  I still hadn’t been to Notre Dame, the one tourism spot I honestly cared to see. It was, after all, our last real day in Paris and to be there in any form but nostalgic seemed wrong, and I wanted to wallow in it. Sarah was careful not to carry her emotions on her sleeve but I didn’t know life any other way. She said I was selfish for not wanting to spend as much time with the kids as possible. I said I’d regret it if I didn’t do this. So we set off separately, our last day before Antibes, our last day before the kids went to camp, our last day in Paris besides the one day between Antibes and our flight back home. My eyes welled with tears as I walked along the streets. I felt guilty to have abandoned my role as au pair and even my role as sister. I was selfish. But I was also on a journey—one that required me to walk alone. It seemed appropriate that I was alone for the last time in Paris.

  Notre Dame was my favorite icon of Paris. To me, churches far outweighed the beauty of fountains or statues or other monuments. I looked at the ancient church from a distance as I walked the length of the Seine. I imagined the hundreds of bricklayers and glassblowers and blacksmiths who worked so hard to build it. I thought of the years that passed as it was being built, and the rubble and piles of debris that lay in place of the steeples and vast stone walls that is now Notre Dame. Just like I used to think growing up around Houston highways, the townspeople must have thought, “There’s always construction here!” (Unfortunately on Houston’s end, no gothic cathedral ever sprang up in place of the orange cones and bulldozers.)

  I followed the two front towers of Notre Dame until I could see where Île de la Cité juts out into La Seine. As if Notre Dame was not captivating enough, she stood on this island, set apart from every other place in Paris. There was a large plaza out front and a beautiful garden behind. Not wanting to fight the crowds near the church’s entrance, I made my way along the outer perimeter, in search of a removed café with a perfect view and a perfect cup of café crème. But the Friday crowds were too thick, and the surrounding cafés too expensive and disappointingly full of plastic souvenirs and cheap paraphernalia. Disappointed, I walked my last leg around the cathedral, and stumbled onto a surprise entertainment.

  Ahead of me on the congested sidewalk I heard music. There were crowds of people cluttered together, craning their necks to get a better view. It was jazz, but with a bluegrass twang to it. To me, it was a tribute to Texas—a tribute to going home. I broke through the throngs of people to see a few men with tattered, worn clothes and tattered, worn instruments. They had a sax, a string bass, a guitar, maybe a couple of other instruments. I listened as they sang an old, familiar tune in English, my dad’s favorite hymn, “Just a Closer Walk with Thee.” I grew up Southern Baptist and one of the best things I gained from that denomination (though it is often scorned, and though I often scorned it) was a love of singing old hymns. My dad played the clarinet when he was a little boy and if I remember correctly, he once showed me the sheet music to this hymn he had often played. Maybe I imagined that—maybe we had just opened our home version of the Baptist Hymnal, but I was sure, regardless, he loved this hymn. The harmony was not quite blending, and it seemed like their “country” accents were self-imposed, but there in Paris with Notre Dame to my back, I knew they were singing me home.

  I walked away. Their voices lingered down the street, past the cheap souvenir shops, past the overcrowded, overpriced cafes. They sounded now more like fingernails on a chalkboard than harmony, but I smiled. I saw myself at 6 years old, in the pew of Beaver Baptist Church in Pennsylvania. I sang my heart out then and there, with no knowledge of a place called Paris. I saw myself at 15, in the pew of Kingwood First Baptist. I sang my heart out then as well, vowing that one day I’d leave that narrow-minded bubble of suburbia. I walked off Île de la Cité onto the Pont de l’Archevêché and back to the rest of Paris. I sang softly the sweet words to that beloved hymn. “I’ll be satisfied as long . . . as I walk, let me walk close to Thee.”

  I saw myself at that moment, 23 years old. I remembered fondly all my years at home, and all my days of the summers past. And I realized then and there, I was at home.

  Diane came home around 6 o’clock that night. Sarah and I met her outside the house. Diane walked up the sidewalk, tanned and more beautiful than ever. She looked slightly different, the way everyone looks different after vacation. Newer, somehow, with a different style, different clothes, happier eyes, and an air of relief upon making it back home. But Sarah knew Diane as the eleven-year-old girl that Léonie was to me, and I could tell that even though Diane had grown, Sarah still saw her that way. I was glad—it eased my mind. Seeing Diane like that with Sarah, I felt like all that had gone wrong between us was washed away. Sarah had experienced what I’d always suspected. Diane was just a little girl.

  Sarah ran to meet her and Diane stretched out her arms and cooed noises of “ooh” and “ahh.” I stood stunned at how open, cordial, warm, and effortless their embrace and greeting were. I hadn’t hugged Diane since our first greeting six weeks before. In what I hoped was a warm gesture, I put my arm around her and patted her back a little to join in the reunion. Diane patted back. This was fine. We could be fine after all. And Sarah was here to make sure everything ended well. We walked inside, we three, arm in arm. Diane radiated the warm, fresh sun of summertime and new adventures. Sarah boasted all the while that Diane was the most beautiful girl in the world—and the coolest. “Are you sure you’re just fourteen?” she said.

  We ate dinner together as a family—Alex, Estelle, Diane, Léonie, Constantin, together with Sarah and me. The meal was short, effortless, less fuss and production than usual. It was Friday night. We were all tired with early, busy mornings dawning soon.

  Chapitre Douze

  When I arrived in Paris, I spent the first three weeks questioning whether I really belonged in a city. Growing up, I never considered Houston like a typical city because it was so spread out. Granted, in population it was the United States’ fourth largest city after New York, L.A., and Chicago, but there was no walking, no stacks of townhouses piled together, no taxi-ing to and from shops and restaurants like in so many cities. I once lived less than a quarter of a mile from the Galleria, but could get there only by a fifteen-minute car ride dodging highways and mass concrete construction. Aside from a few visits to Chicago, Paris was my first attempt to try out true city life.

  But after three weeks, I couldn’t get past how dirty, loud and crowded it was. Just before leaving Paris for Beaune I wrote in my journal, “The city is nice, but I think I’m more of a country girl.” Yes, I once thought that true. Beaune, as I was calling “country” then, seemed the perfect fit for me. It was big enough to hold a fantastic Saturday market, but small enough to have streets paved with brick that were only intended for walking. There was a feeling of home there for which I was looking and longing. But after a few days of actually being there, and a few more days in the real country, I realized that I’d never felt more out of place. Going home to Paris was
heaven—I loved it more than ever before. I accepted it for what it was. I craved that city feel. Yet even as fabulous a place as it was, I wasn’t convinced I’d found my bit of France there either.

  When I was in college, even in high school, I dreamed of studying abroad en Provence. But like Paris, Beaune, the Burgundy countryside, and the real French country, I worried upon leaving Paris for Antibes that I had romanticized Provence like I had everywhere else. It could have easily been one more situation in which I forced myself to belong just because I believed I should love France. I should speak French and I should love Paris, or at least some part of France. Right?

  But by the time we reached Antibes, I had my doubts I’d ever find my bit of France. Sarah and I walked out of the train station and I panicked. There was no instant infatuation, or love at first sight. I saw some pretty flowers in a nearby garden, but that was it. So I held my breath as we walked to our rented apartment, waiting for the feeling of this is it! to overtake me. I would not lose hope. We dropped off our luggage and followed the street signs to the vielle ville, and I scanned the view. Past the dingy 1970s flats and run-down supermarkets, the sky made a debut from the buildings that clouded it before, and I saw a horizon of azure blue spreading out in the distance before us. And when I realized the street on which we walked ended because the Mediterranean Sea was on the other side, I gasped. I grabbed Sarah’s arm and I squealed. This truly was the place—at last—that would forever be “my bit of France.”

  After less than one day in Antibes, I loved it, plain and simple. It was one of the many perfect towns in the Côte d’Azur departement of the gorgeous region of Provence. We stood before the great sea so bold and beautiful, so serene yet daring—a brilliant blue mass of water. The air was warm and moist with salt, and we stood on the orange earth, composed of gravel and stone and packed clay dirt, and breathed it in. We followed the white, brick stone wall that bordered the sea to the cluster of orange and white stone that was called the “old town.” The air smelled rich with soothing salts and ancient sun-baked brick. I looked down at the rocks and wondered for how many centuries they had bathed in the deep blue waters. The smells changed from sun and salt and stone to herbs and olive and tomato, and I knew the market was near.

  Sarah, who of course had done her homework and refreshed her memory of the town’s highlights, told me that Antibes was famous for the market that, from June to August, was open every morning from 6 a.m. to 1 p.m. We neared the covered plaza cluttered with stalls of fruits, vegetables, meats, cheeses, herbs, artisan’s crafts, even clothes. It was a marketplace like no other. Sarah and I vowed to eat as cheaply and freshly as possible while in Antibes so we could blow our money in Paris that last day before flying home. So we set a daily budget of a maximum 5 euros each, which, upon smelling one of the famous Provencal pizzas baking in the cafes that lined the streets, I promptly decided we would start the next day. At the moment, I had to splurge.

  Diving right into the spirit of the Mediterranean, I ordered a pizza Napolitaine. I was aware that the pizza, native to Napoli, Italy, consisted of tomato, basil, cheese, and anchovy, and I even expanded the flavor of the Mediterranean by adding olives. In any other circumstance, I hated anchovies and I rarely ate olives. Sarah, ever the careful one, warned me about the anchovies. I know, I said. But it was my first day in Antibes—my new favorite place on Earth—and both anchovies and olives sounded like a fantastic idea. I wanted the real thing. But the anchovies were not the same as the clean, boneless, white filet anchovies Alex had offered me as an appetizer one night back in Paris. They looked like the stuff Garfield the Cat ate in that cartoon, and they smelled like the stuff we fed our cats at my mom’s house. They were long, limp, and hairy. But I had ordered them, and since I was still out of my mind in love with Antibes and everything about the Mediterranean, I cut a huge bite and stuffed it in my mouth.

  The pizza tasted as bad as it smelled. And the olives I paid extra for were whole with huge, hard seeds that nearly broke my teeth. Sarah had stopped eating at this point. She sat back in her chair with arms crossed, watching me chew. She was laughing so hard at my facial expression that she was nearly crying. I knew she was waiting for me to admit I was wrong, but the taste was so bad that I couldn’t speak or I would have gladly surrendered. Despite her laughter at my expense, Sarah was sweet and sympathetic. She offered me half of her quatre fromage, but I had lost my appetite. Quelle surprise. It took days before the taste left my mouth and even longer before it left my memory.

  The positive thing about eating an anchovy pizza with whole olives within the first hour of arriving in Antibes was that I knew things would only get better from there. Provence, Antibes, and the sea had a week to prove it to me and I knew they all would, hairy anchovies aside. We retreated early to our apartment that night, tired from a day of travel. We watched Sabrina in bed on my laptop and cooed that now we had both made over our lives by living in Paris. We dreamed about future visits and fantasized about sporting our fabulous Mediterranean tans back at home.

  I woke up earlier than usual the next morning. Something about the Mediterranean sun on the rise hastened me to seize every moment of daylight. I tiptoed out of our tiny rented studio to take a morning walk through town in search of a bakery.

  There were no signs for rétrodors outside the shops in Antibes. Most of the shops weren’t open, actually. August. Everyone left their jobs for the month of vacances, perhaps. When I found an open shop with a morning assortment, I shrugged, missing Ruddy Cheeks and knowing just by the looks of things that these pastries couldn’t begin to compete with hers. I bought several regardless of that, and regardless of the fact that I was again breaking our 5 euros-a-day budget. But I felt the need to spoil Sarah with a wide selection.

  She was awake when I returned home. The tea kettle whistled in the kitchen. She found in our partially stocked cabinets two essentials: instant coffee and salt. I put aside my espresso snob attitude for the morning, knowing I’d rather pour brown grounds into boiling water than go without morning coffee.

  We took our pastry breakfast on the patio balcony of our second-floor apartment, which offered not a view of the Mediterranean, but a view of concrete and other flat, 1970s-style buildings. Still, I didn’t care. It was our balcony and I loved it. We sipped our instant coffee and took bites from the assortment of pastries and welcomed the morning slowly and peacefully. Even as I ate breakfast, I was planning my next meal.

  To me, food is culture. Hairy anchovies and unpitted olives aside, I loved the flavors associated with the Mediterranean. We walked the sea wall to the market that bustled more in the mid-morning than it had upon our late noon arrival the day before. Our eyes widened at the rows of fresh produce, flowers, meats, cheeses, and spices. It smelled like morning—a Provencal morning with loads of goods fresh from the farmers’ trucks. Locals and tourists strolled from counter to counter dressed in T-shirts and beach cover-ups. They barely covered their tanned feet with sandals. Many of them had tattoos. They were rough but friendly, slouchy but cool. Behind the stalls, the sellers and farmers possessed a glow to their skin, kissed by the orange and yellow Mediterranean sun.

  I developed an apricot obsession during my time in France. It was my saving grace and I smuggled them into my room on the worst days, and ate them alone. They were just so tiny and cute to start, but also the most deliciously tart and juicy fruit I’d ever popped in my mouth. My goal at the market was to find the cheapest and the best abricots for sale and buy a bundle. It was imperative I began strict adherance to our budget. We searched the stalls for the cheapest ones and found some at 2.50 euros per kilo.

  “Bonjour, mademoiselles!” a skinny, leather-skinned Provencal man at the produce stand said. “Un goûter, non?” he said.

  “Merci, monsieur,” we said in unison.

  “Un photo?” he said.

  “Oh good!” Sarah said to me. “Someone to take our picture!” She handed him the camera, saying thank you.

  “Non,
non,” the friendly Provencal man said. “Moi, moi.” He handed the camera back. Sarah and I looked at each other and laughed while the Provencal man struck a pose over his golden orange display of abricots. We snapped the shot, still laughing. He clapped and said, “Bravo!” with a French accent. From his abricots display, Sarah and I bought une livre, or half a kilo, for 1.25.

  “Attendez, attendez,” the skinny Provencal man said. We turned, smiling, as he handed us each a freshly cut slice of cantaloupe. I let the sticky warm juices run down my chin while I laughed in sheer delight.

  Taste-testing our way from one stall to the next, we bought two plump, red tomatoes. At the other end, the lettuce was cheap and robust in variety, so we bought some mesclun and roquette for less than one euro total. We were certain we couldn’t eat sun-fed juicy tomatoes without basil. So Sarah asked the lettuce lady if she sold any basil by the leaf or branch, aside from the potted plant variety at her stand. (It was priced at a daring 2.50 euros and that would have eaten one-fourth of our total daily budget.) The lady showed us the thick, tied bundles she sold but that, too, was too much for two people and two tomatoes. She got the hint—we were only interested in a handful of leaves pour les tomates.

  “Un petit peu?” she asked.

  “Oui, trop petit,” I replied. She took a few stems from her tied bundle and handed them to me.

  “Combien?” I asked, expecting her to say maybe 50 centimes.

  “Non, non,” she said. She shook her head back and forth—no cost, no. She smiled at us.