by Rozsa Gaston
“About three weeks ago. He showed me her picture,” I said.
The waiter came over, and Elizabeth ordered un café crème, grande tasse, a large coffee with milk. I was relieved to see she would make time to advise me. My only female friend in Paris, I loved her dearly, not in spite of her imperfections, but because of them: her penchant for gossip, her obsession with her weight, her scathing, but hilarious put-downs of French mannerisms and characteristics. She was a quick-witted, sharp-edged comrade. She’d help me sort out what to do about April or at least how to dump Jean-Michel in grand style if it turned out he was playing some sort of game with me. Then, she’d be there to help me pick up the pieces.
“And? What did she look like?” she asked.
“Pretty. And fat.” I stated succinctly.
“Fat? She’s fat? How could she be pretty if she’s fat?”
I’d now given Elizabeth the perfect combination of interests to chew on, weight and romance. It was fun to see her light up. The man at the next table seemed to think so, too. I watched him out of the corner of my eye as he took in Elizabeth’s hair, eyes and lips, all set against the palest, whitest Polish female skin imaginable. In a minute, he’d be at our table, offering to buy the next round.
“She’s got a pretty face. And long, straight brown hair,” I told her. It was the kind of hair I’d always wanted but would never have.
“But she’s fat? How fat? Like a cow? Or a little pig?” Elizabeth had an exhaustive range of descriptions for fat people. One of her favorite activities was ripping apart people we saw on the streets who weren’t perfect physical specimens. She had the innocent looks of a Polish angel but her wicked sense of humor was one hundred percent British. No one could sum up, then smack down total strangers as well as Elizabeth. Her specialty was noting people with moles, something we saw a lot of in Paris. Hair on inappropriate areas of the body or differently colored on different sections was another topic of derision. She loved pointing out bleached blondes with long black hair on their unshaven legs, a common sight on Parisian female bus drivers.
On days off, we rode the Bus Périphérique, the bus route that circles Paris for hours at a time, using our Carte Orange, Paris’s monthly bus and metro pass, until we decided on a place to hop off, where we’d have coffee at an outdoor café. There we’d continue our snide observations of total strangers, some of whom were undoubtedly engaging in similar comments about us.
“Umm, she looked sort of like a pretty cow,” I tried to explain.
“How can a cow be pretty? Why was he dating a fat girl, anyway?” She looked at me suspiciously as if to say my boyfriend had very bad taste.
“I don’t think he sees her as fat. When I told him she looked sort of plump, he got really upset.”
“Really? Why? She was, wasn’t she?”
“He said, “à chacun son goût.”
“What’s that mean?”
“To each his own taste.”
“Huh.” Elizabeth looked thoughtful. Our coffees arrived and she took a sip.
“That’s what I thought too,” I seconded her.
We sat in silence watching big, puffy April clouds drift across the pale blue sky. Each one was fat as a cow. And beautiful.
À chacun son goût, was something now working its way under my skin. I hoped for Elizabeth’s sake, it would work its way under hers, too. Perhaps we had both been sent to Paris by unknown forces to learn something about tolerance not only for others, but for ourselves.
“Whoa, where did you get those boots, girl?” Elizabeth asked after a minute.
“I just bought them,” I told her. “In Saint Germain. Two hundred francs.” Her next question would be how much they cost, so I thought I’d save time.
“They’re sexy. You bought them to wear to meet the girl, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Can you walk in them?”
“Barely.” I shook my head. “That’s why I’m practicing wearing them now.”
“All these bloody French women wear heels like that. If they can do it, you can,” Elizabeth encouraged me.
I loved the way she said ‘bloody.’ It came out like ‘blue – dee,’ perhaps because she was from Birmingham, a city she told me was far north of London, in the middle of England. I hoped I would be able to incorporate the adjective into my speaking vocabulary by the time I left Paris. It would be so wonderful to show up for my freshman year of college with the hint of a foreign accent.
“I’ll try. I hope I don’t trip, walking over to shake her hand.”
“Why do you have to shake her hand?”
“She’s not an ax murderer, you know. She’s probably a nice girl who happens to be the ex-girlfriend of my boyfriend.” I crumpled the napkin in my hand. Why was I getting worked up?
“What are you going to do if he sleeps with her while she’s here?” Elizabeth asked, getting right to the point.
“Ah, there’s the rub.”
“Well?” Her eyes slit into raisins.
“I’ll be upset. Probably have a fight with him then dump him,” I said.
“Really?”
“What else should I do?” I shrugged. The Gallic shrug was something I wanted to nail before leaving France. It would be so effective back home, and no one would know if I wasn’t doing it perfectly.
“You should let him know before she arrives that you’re not putting up with any hanky-panky,” Elizabeth advised. “When does she get here?”
I looked at my watch. “This afternoon.”
“Blue-dee hell! What if she spends the night at his place?”
“He told me she was staying with the family she worked for when she was here.”
“Sure, she is. When are you meeting her and where?”
“Tomorrow afternoon. At his place. I think we’re supposed to go to dinner together.”
“You’d better check out the smell.”
I could feel my face crumple up just thinking about it.
“You know what I’m talking about,” she said, staring at me. “That’s what I mean, girl. You told me his place is smaller than mine. That means you’ll all practically be sitting on his bed together.” Elizabeth began spelling out details of the imagined scenario in her inimitable way, each image a dagger to my heart.
Except it wasn’t my heart being affected, it was my pride.
“Maybe I’ll suggest we take a walk,” I said weakly.
“You’ll need one to clear the air, that’s for sure.” She wrinkled her nose in disgust.
I made a face at her, imagining again how the air might smell in Jean-Michel’s tiny, attic room. I wasn’t yet sure of my moral stance toward the situation, but I could count on my nose to lead my decision-making. If it smelled dubious, I was out of there.
Jean-Michel might be fastidious about his shoes, but my nose was as exacting as noses get. It had led me away from the wrong type of man several times before in my life. If Jean-Michel turned out to be one of them, I didn’t need anything more than my olfactory senses to turn me off. Being a New Englander and raised as an only child, I knew nothing about fighting and making up. If I fought with a friend, I didn’t know how to get back on track – even more so with a boyfriend. I’d had no experience with reconciliations. It would be over if my Frenchman cheated on me. My nose would let me know.
The next afternoon at quarter past four, I rang the buzzer to Jean-Michel’s flat. The swish of white glass curtains in the ground floor apartment told me the concierge had noted my arrival. I wonder what she thought of Jean-Michel’s female American visitors. How many had she seen over the years? Just thinking about it made my blood boil.
In a minute, the catch on the door released, and I was inside. Each step of the five flights up to his flat lead me closer to possible defeat and humiliation. What if my rival had lost weight? Was I about to meet a gorgeous California knockout? Swallowing the bile in my mouth, I told myself I would be very French about the situation. I would exude haughtiness and froideu
r and act superior, even if I was about to meet the woman who would recapture Jean-Michel’s heart. Then again, who was I kidding? I hadn’t been especially interested in capturing it myself when I’d had him all to myself.
Jean-Michel appeared at the door to his flat. He smiled. When I reached him, he kissed me warmly, once on each cheek. Then, he motioned me in.
April sat on his bed. As I entered, she stood. Taller than me. Pretty. Not at all slim, but not as plump as she’d been in the photo he’d shown me.
I immediately understood why Jean-Michel had been attracted to her. She looked fresh, wholesome, unspoiled, and nonjudgmental, entirely unlike most Parisian women. In all honesty, it was a compliment to me that Jean-Michel liked April’s type, because I was like that too, aside from occasional snide conversations with Elizabeth.
“Hi, I’m April,” she said, her voice soft as the spring weather outside.
“Hi, I’m Ava,” I said, modulating my voice to match hers. I could out-April her if I tried. But did I need to? Jean-Michel watched closely as we eyeballed each other. I needed to be comfortable in my skin at this moment, and that was all. He’d taught me well. “How was your trip?” I followed up.
“Long.” She smiled. “I’ll be fine by tomorrow.” She turned and sat down again on the bed.
“How many hours was it?” For some strange reason, I didn’t feel threatened to see her on Jean-Michel’s bed. Why she didn’t choose a chair to sit in, I don’t know. But it didn’t bother me. I decided to take one of the two chairs myself. Jean-Michel took the other.
“Let’s see. About four to New York. Then, I had a two-hour stopover. Then, seven to Paris.” She gave me a gentle, rueful smile.
Nothing at all about this woman was threatening. Plus, she was plumper than me.
“Ugh. You must be tired,” I sympathized.
“I am. A little.”
“I heard you worked for a family here?”
“Yes. And you’re doing the same, right?”
I nodded as Jean-Michel poured three glasses of wine, handing us each one.
“Yes. I’m going to school at the Sorbonne. The language and culture course,” I said.
“That’s the one I took,” she laughed.
Her laughter was like bells tinkling. She was the most ethereal, nonthreatening tall, plump person I’d ever met. No way was I going to be able to accurately describe her to Elizabeth. The way her words floated when she spoke, she seemed closer in size to Audrey Hepburn than Queen Latifah.
After a few more minutes of conversation – during which Jean-Michel looked bored – I discovered April was now studying for a degree in occupational therapy at U Cal Berkeley. That was my mother’s alma mater. As usual, once the conversation moved off Parisian turf and out of Jean-Michel’s league, he wanted nothing to do with it. It wasn’t entirely about the fact we were speaking in English. It was about the fact that Jean-Michel was a thoroughly provincial person. April and I were not.
After another five minutes I was sitting on the bed next to her, leaving Jean-Michel out of the conversation altogether. He went out into the hall, probably to empty the trash.
When he got back, we decided to take a walk. Out on the sidewalk downstairs, I noticed the graceful way April moved. She looked comfortable in her skin. I knew where she had gotten that from. She’d taken the Comfortable in One’s Skin 101 class, taught by Professor Jean-Michel Reneau. I wanted to graduate from that class, too.
Jean-Michel walked ahead and smoked, while April and I discovered how very much we had in common. She too had waffled before college, taking a year off after high school to lose herself in Paris, far from home. I wondered what her parents were like but didn’t know her well enough to ask. Had they been a motivating factor in propelling her to Paris, as my grandmother had been? Her pronouncements on a woman’s place in society had lit a fire under me to get myself into the best college that would have me so I could pursue being anything other than a teacher or secretary. But April was from Berkeley California. Perhaps her parents wanted her to become a social activist or go into the family marijuana-growing business. Had she been escaping some direction they’d pointed her in when she’d chosen to go east instead of hang out in the far west?
I didn’t want to ask her how she’d met Jean-Michel, because I could already guess. There was no point in sullying the memory of my own first meeting with my French boyfriend by discovering he’d used the exact same technique to pick up yet another American girl two years earlier.
“Shall we go for dinner now?” he asked. He’d circled back without either of us noticing.
April’s face tightened. “I can’t actually. I need to get back to the Greniers.”
Her response surprised me.
“I thought you were joining us for dinner tonight.” Jean-Michel looked perturbed. He didn’t like things to go differently from planned. “I want to take you to the place we used to go, with the profiteroles for dessert you like. Come with us, Minouche,” he cajoled her.
My stomach dropped. That was the term of endearment he used with me. Now, I realized it had been all over town.
“I can’t. I promised the Greniers I’d be back for their son’s birthday party tonight. I’m sorry. Can we get together another time before I leave?”
So April had not been planning to spend her one-week stay in Paris largely with Jean-Michel. From the way his face closed in upon hearing her words, this was obviously news to him.
“As you wish.” He grunted, striding ahead again. In a minute, he had lit another cigarette.
April switched into English with me. Her voice was low, conspiratorial. “It’s not really that I’m busy. It’s just that I’m on a diet, and I’m still jet lagged. I don’t feel like eating a big dinner, and he’ll try to stuff me with profiteroles like he used to do. No matter how many times I told him I didn’t want to eat sweets, he was always buying them for me.” She shook her head, not without affection.
So, she was on a diet. She wasn’t as comfortable in her skin as Jean-Michel had made her out to be. A light bulb went on in my head. Jean-Michel had enjoyed controlling her. But now she was driving her own bus. April knew how to act French, but she was all American on the inside. Dieting. Just like me.
I wanted to be just like her. There was no way Jean-Michel was going to sabotage my efforts to lose weight before going home just because he liked plump women. Suddenly, I saw what all the comfortable-in-your-own-skin lectures had been about. He hadn’t wanted me to change.
But I wanted to change myself. From that moment on, I was allied with April in mutual resistance to Jean-Michel’s efforts to keep us both passive and plump.
A moment later, we reached the Boulevard Montparnasse. Jean-Michel again entreated April to join us.
“It’s your favorite restaurant, April. Come on, the profiteroles are waiting for you,” he tried again. No line could have been lamer. Her eyes hardened as soon as he mentioned the cream-filled pastry puffs drizzled with warm chocolate. What a moron. Didn’t he know it had taken her years to move on from giving in to the urge for profiteroles to firmly passing them up? She hadn’t spent time working on herself just to turn back into the unformed girl she’d once been with her controlling French boyfriend.
“No thanks, I can’t. The Greniers are expecting me.” The firmness in her voice was unmistakable, albeit delivered in a breathy Jackie Onassis way.
It was clear some sort of power struggle was going on and the usual outcome hadn’t occurred. The sulky face he presented in profile confirmed it. Inside, I laughed. Who would have thought meeting April would provide me with a window into Jean-Michel?
We watched the back of April’s form disappear into the metro station, then went on to the restaurant ourselves. I decided to play a game. Should Jean-Michel suggest the profiteroles for dessert, I’d refuse. Not surprisingly, he did.
“Have the profiteroles. They’re superb.” He motioned the waiter over.
“No, I don’t think I will. I�
�ll have an espresso if you want to order some.”
“Minouche, you should try them. You’ll die from pleasure. This is a special treat I’m offering you. What’s wrong with you?” His tone changed from commanding to scolding.
Neither tone worked for me after meeting April and seeing how she’d resisted Jean-Michel. I dug in my feet. Besides, I wasn’t just any old minouche.
“No thanks. I’m full from dinner. I’ll try them some other time.”
“I won’t take you here again if you don’t order them,” he said petulantly. “That’s the reason I suggested this place. Come one, Ava, try them. You know you like chocolate.”
Yes, I did like chocolate. I liked it too much. In fact, it was a big problem for me. But at that moment, what I liked even more was resisting Jean-Michel. Something inside, more real than the puffy, plump, pastry-eating person I was on the outside, was stumbling to its feet to take a stand.
“I don’t feel like profiteroles right now,” I told him. And je m’en fous to never coming here again, I silently fumed. Turning to the waiter, I ordered an espresso. Approval gleamed in the server’s eyes, before he flicked them from mine.
Jean-Michel looked as exceedingly displeased as I felt secretly pleased. For the first time, I had divined the meaning of the popular French phrase je m’en fous and made it my own. It literally meant, I could care less. Some would give it a more salty meaning, as in, I could give a shit, but it was all the same. The French delighted in using this phrase endlessly. Now, I knew why. It was satisfying. In the right situation, it rolled off the tongue, originating straight from somewhere deep in the vitals.
There was also its variation, je m’en fiche, which had a slightly nicer ring, something like, I could give a rat’s ass. However, I’d noticed the French preferred je m’en fous, the nastier version. I’d wager every French citizen from age seven up used the term at least three times a day, often accompanied by a dramatic upward thrust of the forearm and hand in a dismissive gesture. Before I departed France, I vowed to have that gesture down, too. I visualized myself, a non-demonstrative New England girl, breaking up with a future American boyfriend who’d displeased me. While recounting the scene to girlfriends later, over Cosmopolitans, I’d thrust my arm in the air with the je m’en fous gesture to show I could care less about whatever he had offered to make me stay. They’d be wildly impressed.