by Rozsa Gaston
On my way home, I had a moment of weakness while passing the pastry shop on the corner. I circled the block, slowing down when I arrived again in front of the luscious window display. It was too much for me. Two days of fromage maigre and nothing more wasn’t enough. I needed some sugar and fat in my body. Ignoring warning bells going off right and left in my brain, I entered the shop.
“Bon soir, Mademoiselle,” the clerk greeted me like an old familiar customer. A bad sign. “Vous desirez?”
What did I desire? So much that I couldn’t even begin to say. To begin with, something fluffy, delicious, and satisfying to fill my empty stomach. Then, an orgasm or two or three, whatever they were. Finally, to fit into size 38 jeans before I left Paris in one month’s time. Were all of these aspirations mutually exclusive? Would I be able to fulfill any of them?
Sighing, I pointed at the tray of Bretons, practically beaming at me in their neat, cream-topped pastry shells.
“One Breton, please,” I said, wanting to say three. Fake it till you make it fought with the pastry shop closes in fifteen minutes. This is your last chance to load up on whatever delicacies you’re breaking your diet with today. While warring thoughts battled, I pretended to the clerk I only wanted one Breton.
“Only one today?” she asked, clearly wondering why I wasn’t ordering the multiples I usually did. She was on to me.
I steamed, aware she thought I was an out-of-control, fat American pig. I’d show her. Right then and there, I decided I was not.
Two months ago, I’d been the girl who bought a minimum of three pastries every time I’d entered the shop. Now, I was someone new, a mature, twenty-year old woman with a yen for something sweet. I was here to order one pastry only, to satisfy that reasonable desire. That was all.
“Yes. Only one,” I responded firmly. Fake it till you make it beat out the pastry shop is closing in fifteen minutes. It was an enormous victory. One I’d won post-break up with a boyfriend who’d striven to keep me plump. A double triumph.
It took all the willpower I possessed to wait patiently while she wrapped up the lone Breton in white paper, tying it neatly with string, then handing it to me. Equally succulent confections were beckoning to me from all directions. Take me home now. It’s your last chance. Buy me now, you can eat me tomorrow. Don’t you want to have something on hand in case you get hungry later, after eating that one measly Breton?
It was enough to make a rock sweat. Turning smartly, I exited the shop. Behind me, the clerk sang out, “Au revoir, Mademoiselle,” in what sounded like tones of new respect.
Next, I picked up a few cartons of strawberry fromage maigre as well as a one and a half liter bottle of water. The urge to drink water all day long, as Frenchwomen purportedly did, had not yet taken me over, even after eight months in Paris. According to French fashion magazines, French women swore by drinking at least two liters of water daily to maintain their svelte forms. I would give it a try.
Back in my room, I sat down at my desk, unwrapping the creamy Breton as if it were a prize objet d’art. In my mind, it was.
Before lighting into it, I took three long swigs of mineral water. The idea was to fill my stomach so my appetite was quelled before I began to eat.
The long swigs of water had no effect on my hunger whatsoever. Unfortunately, my appetite was regulated not by how full my stomach was but how raging my desire for sweets was. This had to stop.
I sat there and contemplated the Breton: sniffing, salivating, and practically lactating at the sight of it. How could I convince myself this one lowly Breton was enough to satisfy my bottomless yen for sugar and fat?
“Fake it till you make it,” I repeated three times, aware that no amount of stating my credo aloud could turn my desire for three Bretons in one sitting into a desire for only one.
Then I ate it. Delicious.
I swigged some more water.
I pretended I was satisfied.
I wasn’t.
Sighing, I lay down on my bed.
Only one thing could get my mind off food.
I closed my eyes and began to think about the couple in the underpass. As I remembered them, my hands wandered over my body. I saw the woman’s hand uncurl, then drop to her side as the man kissed her neck. Then, I imagined my own hand was his. He put it on her mound, circling and pausing, circling and pausing, just like the instructions in the Talahari Book of Massage. Each time he paused, the woman’s breathing slowed down and grew louder. Which did she enjoy most, the strokes or the pauses?
Out of nowhere, my music college training came back to me, the words of my composition professor in my ears: Ava, remember above all the space between notes is as important as the notes themselves. Too many notes together in a composition just clutter it up. The audience needs space and time to absorb the melody. Don’t overclutter your pieces. Create a melody, then leave some space for the listener to absorb it. Notes all strung together without any pause between them don’t have any meaning. They only make sense in short clusters, punctuated by pauses.
Whoa. Had he been talking about making music or making love?
Intent on my circles, I wandered in the deep, pausing every few moments to find myself on a sort of plateau, moving higher and higher toward an unknown destination. I was as excited mentally as I was physically. At the third plateau, a noise in the hallway startled me.
I froze. Someone was out there – a rare occurrence.
The footsteps grew louder then stopped. Two smart raps sounded at the door.
Panicked, I sat still as a statue.
Two more knocks.
“Ava? Are you there?”
Jean-Michel’s voice sounded strange, stating my name. He didn’t often say it aloud, preferring to call me minouche or cherie.
He knocked again.
My heart pounded so hard I thought I would have a heart attack. Nothing inside signaled to me to do the normal thing – respond, then get up and unlock the door. I just didn’t want to.
“Ava. You there?” He knocked louder, the door moving slightly with each contact. I was sure my heart was as loud as the noise his fist made on my door. But I’d already waited too long. It would be embarrassing now to open the door to him. I had nothing to tell him, other than I wanted him to go away. The knobby muscularity of him filled me with fear. He’d never shown himself to be violent, but he could be a bully. If it ever came to that, he seemed at least a thousand times stronger than me.
Silently, I willed him to go away.
My strategy seemed to have worked. After a long moment, I unfolded my leg from under me and pinched it. It had fallen asleep. About to put my feet down on the floor, a further knock paralyzed me with fear.
Bang. Bang. Now, he was pounding.
“Ava, I know you’re in there.”
A pause. Jean-Michel’s breathing outside the door was audible. Or perhaps it was my own.
“Open the door. I know you’re there.”
The knob jiggled as I held my breath. The door held.
He could drop dead. How dare he pull that “I know you’re in there” crap? How could he possibly know that? There was no way to see through the keyhole, because I’d already stuffed it in anticipation of a visit from him. I wasn’t born yesterday.
Yet somehow, he knew I was home. Did it necessarily follow that I was obligated to respond and open the door?
Over my dead body, I would. This wasn’t a board game we were playing. Perhaps I would engage with Jean-Michel at some later date, just to clear the air and formalize our break up. But not now. Not tonight. Our fight had been too recent. My only defense against him was to remain mute.
Finally, the pounding stopped. This time, I was taking no chances. The draft that had blown in under the door in winter months told me there was a gap there. If he lay down, he’d be able to see my floor and whatever was on it, nothing more.
I vowed not to touch my feet to the floor until at least twenty minutes of total silence passed. Within five, somethin
g crumpled and white slid under the door toward me. A note. I’d read it as soon as its author left.
After an interminable period, during which time I forgot I was still hungry, Jean-Michel appeared to have left. Just to be sure, I lay back on my bed and read two more chapters of my favorite Françoise Sagan novel, Bonjour Tristesse. She was the mistress of cool.
Finally, I lowered my stocking feet to the floor and crept to the door, where I squatted, retrieving the note. Moving back to my bed, I tossed it on the night table. Whatever its contents, I needed a break for a few more minutes from the shock of Jean-Michel’s unwelcome visit. The whole breaking up thing had moved me into new territory. With my only previous lover, it had been so easy. I’d told him I needed time to prepare for my move from Paris, and he hadn’t told me his ex-girlfriend was still calling. We’d understood each other perfectly.
What happened if the person you broke up with didn’t agree to break up with you? It was so inconvenient being in a partnership. You weren’t boss of your own actions anymore. Someone else was in the picture, interpreting them all wrong. Sighing, I picked up the note, praying its contents would confirm it was the end for both of us.
Ava, I dropped by to talk to you. I’m sorry I offered you the little pig. I won’t do it again. Let’s meet this Friday after work as usual. I kiss you. – Jean-Michel.
Ugh. He was trying to reconcile. Gloss things over as if nothing happened. Now, it was up to me to respond. At least we were engaging pen to pen, rather than face to face. It was much more my style. Face to face, I wouldn’t be able to think. Instead, I’d react to the vein throbbing in his neck. It wasn’t fair. I couldn’t maintain my position in the face of histrionics. I’d back down just to keep the peace. Or run off. But what if this time, when he followed, he grabbed me? Then, I’d smell his Denim aftershave all over again, mixed with his sweat, and I’d melt into his arms. That wasn’t my aim at all.
My plan was to enjoy my few final weeks in Paris, practice being comfortable in my own skin and faking it till I was making it. That didn’t include faking interest in reconciling with my fussy French boyfriend. There were too many other more interesting points to fake. Like my sense of sangfroid, my hauteur, my je ne sais quoi, none of which I really possessed, all of which I wanted to. There was a whole world of mannerisms I needed to practice and adopt as my own before leaving Paris so that I could return home appearing clearly improved to my friends and family after nine months abroad.
Two days later, I walked over to Jean-Michel’s place and pushed my own note under his door. It was short, to the point.
Jean-Michel – I need to find myself. You taught me so much, but now I need time alone to truly learn how to be comfortable in my own skin. I miss you but it is time to say goodbye. Thank you for all the moments we shared. You are the only Frenchman in my heart. – Ava.
PART II
BEING
CHAPTER SIX
Paris Four Years Later
Four years later, my Yale graduation took place. I’d done it. Not knowing whether I’d passed my Calculus of Two Differentials class until one week before graduation had been a nail-biter, but at least I’d taken it pass/fail so as not to screw up my grade point average.
No matter. I’d screwed up my GPA regardless. As my two suitemates shared their summa cum laude status with me, I was unable to offer back even the mention of a cum laude to crown my B.A. in history, subspecialty European intellectual history. This was largely tied to my receiving a B minus on my senior essay, the crowning achievement of a Yale undergraduate’s four years. My topic had been Martin Luther. Never having nailed exactly what point I was trying to make about one of my favorite church reformers, I’d enjoyed researching the fact that he’d been an avid beer drinker and had married a former nun who’d become his housekeeper. They’d had six children together. I’d been delighted to report that Luther was one all-around man, but my senior essay advisor, a leading religious history scholar, had not deemed this an essential point of original scholarship.
My plans, post-graduation, were as up in the air as my mortarboard hat at the close of the graduation ceremony. Everything looked rosy. That summer, my mother was taking my sixteen-year old half sister and me on a tour of Europe. My revisionist version of my childhood was starting to look like it had worked. Mom was actually in the audience somewhere making nice with my father. My grandmother sat as far away from my parents as possible, looking for fellow respectable white Anglo-Saxon Protestants to exchange civilities with – having none to share with family members, with most of whom she was not on speaking terms. Instead, she trained her Southern-style warmth and charm on my girlfriend’s younger Downs’ Syndrome brother, whose family was sitting next to her. My grandmother was a saint to people less fortunate than she, so long as they weren’t related to her.
It rained like hell. Campus security handed out black utility-sized trash bags for families of graduates to cover their fine spring outfits. The entire ceremony was outdoors. A tent covered our heads to shield us from the drenching downpour, but nothing protected us from the unbearable humidity of the late spring day. In photos taken that day female graduates were memorialized forever with hairdos turned to frizz. My long, blonde hair looked like puffy yellow cumulus clouds haloing my head. After four years of end-of-semester all-nighters and academic stress combined with social maneuvering on the order of membership in the late nineteenth century Hapsburg Court, I was no longer plump. Stress had burned off the puppy fat.
In just a few weeks, I’d be in Paris, where I’d meet my mother and half sister. From there we’d roam around Europe for three weeks.
My mother had just inherited a substantial sum from her uncle, who died childless. He was my grandfather’s brother, the accommodating family member who hosted secret visits between my grandfather and his daughter, while she continued to be in the doghouse with her own mother.
One of my mother’s finer points was her recklessness. For the first time in perhaps her entire adult life, she wasn’t hovering above poverty level. She may not have been able to contribute a penny toward my Yale education, but she was now in a position to give me a traditional graduation present, a tour of Europe with herself and my half sister as companions.
It was a dream come true. We would have time to get to know each other in comfortable circumstances. No one would be worrying about money. Even my grandmother approved of the plan, probably because it was a traditional graduation gift she herself offered my mother when she’d graduated from U Cal Berkeley twenty-four years earlier.
I couldn’t believe my good fortune. Many of my colleagues were entering law, medical, or business school in the fall, or working for their father’s or father’s friends Wall Street firms. But I was determined to live life for a few years before getting swallowed alive by academia again or the corporate world. My rebel streak was alive and kicking – perhaps an inheritance from my mother. It had lain dormant the past four years, buried under a steady stream of exams, papers, deadlines, and structure. Yale College was nothing if not structured. I had played the game well enough to earn my degree and now I wanted to kick up my heels.
Three weeks later, I was back in Paris, alone. I had to fly before the start of the summer travel season in order to use my father’s employee pass. He had gotten a job at Pan Am airlines years earlier, and when we finally got back in touch when I turned eighteen, he let me know that I could fly free on Pan Am twice a year as his family member. My mother and half sister would arrive around the first of July. I’d contacted the Griffiths around graduation time to alert them to my plans and ask if my old room was by chance available in mid-June. It was. By the time I arrived, they would be in Renwick, but would leave the key to the top-floor maid’s chambers with the concierge. I wouldn’t be lonely, I’d be alone. In a city I more or less knew my way around and wholeheartedly adored, this wasn’t a bad way to begin my post-college life.
It was strangely thrilling to be back in my old room with time and privacy to
assess what had changed in the four years I’d been gone. Jean-Michel and I hadn’t kept in touch, but I still had his number. I thought about calling him, but then I thought better of that plan. It was entirely possible he was no longer at that number or now was a family man with a child or two. Why not let sleeping dogs lie?
I went out to explore my old neighborhood. Entering the pastry shop, I was relieved that no one behind the counter recognized me. I perused the wares, bought a demi-baguette, and left. No longer a slave to sugar and fat, I could window shop, salivate madly then say no. If Yale taught me anything, I now knew “fake it till you make it” really worked. And if you’re still faking it after you make it, does the world really need to know?
Mais non – of course not.
Next on my list was a visit to my old haunting ground, Shakespeare and Company in the Latin Quarter. The English-language bookstore was located behind the student quarter of Saint Michel, next to the Seine. It was run by a stylishly eccentric older man named George, who either liked you or didn’t, just the way my grandmother did. He’d known James Joyce, T.S. Eliot, William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway and others who’d spent time at Shakespeare and Company either throwing book launches or sleeping on one of the couches upstairs from the bookstore during down periods of their writing careers. I myself had passed a night in George’s informal pension – when I’d spent one spring break from Yale on a ten-day Eurail Youthpass tour of Europe and neglected to find out if the Griffith’s were home before my arrival in Paris with no place to stay. They were off on a ski trip to Austria, the substitute concierge informed me – someone I didn’t recognize at all.
Instead of wasting my limited francs on a hotel room, I’d wandered over to Shakespeare and Company and chatted up George while petting his cat. He took note of the heavy backpack I’d parked just inside the shop entrance and ended our conversation with the suggestion I take it upstairs and stay the night if I had nowhere else to go. I did, gladly.