Life From Scratch

by Sasha Martin

It wasn’t long before I was spending afternoons pouring bottles into myself at the local park with the Doc Martens. We’d lie in the grass, make daisy crowns, and watch the clouds spin. We interpreted our world through the lyrics of The Doors, The Cure, and Tom Petty. We called it science class.

  For “quatres-heures,” French snack time, we stumbled back to Monique’s house where she served up tartines au chocolat, her brilliant invention. To make the sweet towers, she toasted thick slices of brioche bread until the golden crumb swirled like henna art. Then she used a fat, paddle-shaped knife to slather them with Nutella.

  In those days, the chocolate hazelnut spread was not sold stateside so I goaded her to use more, and then more still, until half the jar was gone and each slice looked like frosted cake. Triple stacked, the heat made the Nutella slump into the crevices and drip over the crisp edges.

  Sometimes we ate the oozing morsels standing in Monique’s kitchen, before the toaster had a chance to cool off. Other times we’d carry the tartines to a park bench surrounded by white wildflowers. No matter where we were, we had to lick the hazelnut chocolate spread from the corners of our lips and fingers.

  By the end of eighth grade, I’d forged notes for twelve doctor appointments, eight eye doctor appointments, and seven dentist appointments. On weekends I smeared black lipstick across my lips and disappeared into the few thudding, sexy, vapid nightclubs that let minors in. I pressed myself close to the wrong sort of boys, mistaking their lust for love.

  Eventually the noise around me was so loud that I actually felt something again. I grew addicted to this whisper of emotion as I moved and danced and lived. The poet Shane Koyczan once said, “Addiction isn’t so much about pain as it is sanity.” Truer words have never been spoken.

  This time in my life will always be best represented by the night I sat on the steps of the Parc du Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye. Its angular pathways overlook the twinkling city and the even more dazzling Eiffel Tower. The metal structure stretched more than a thousand feet into the sky, lit from head to toe like a Christmas tree.

  Though we’d long since lost track of the time, I knew it was after midnight. I was drunk, holding a bottle of tequila, leaning on Monique to stay upright. The stone beneath us was cold. The bitter snap of winter radiated through my corduroys until my teeth chattered.

  “What now, Sasha? It’s getting late,” she said. She always spoke English when drunk—the only time she did.

  “Watch this,” I said, smiling mischievously. I looked up at the Eiffel Tower, raised my right hand, and snapped. Before I could blink, the lights extinguished; first the top row of the tower, then the middle, and finally the bottom. Monique drew her breath in sharply.

  “Did you see that?” I stared into the darkness. “I … I did that!” I pointed my trembling hand toward the spot where the Eiffel Tower should have been, tears filling my eyes while the most pure form of laughter rang out from beneath the liquid armor of intoxication. Deep down I knew that lights on the Eiffel Tower were automated, but in that moment I needed to believe I’d turned them off.

  The drinking, the skipping school—all of it—was about regaining some sort of control. That night, I felt that there might be just enough magic in the world to help me through constant upheaval and loss. What I didn’t realize was that the more I drank, the less in control I was.

  I did my best to hide my new interest from Patricia and Pierre—not because I was ashamed, but because like any true addict, I wanted to protect my habit. But my transgressions caught up with me.

  “Have you been skipping school?” Pierre asked one afternoon after I stumbled home from a full day of drinking beer at the park.

  “No.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Of course,” I said, “Aren’t you supposed to be at work?”

  He looked at me steadily, and then sighed.

  “What’s this?” He pulled a small white note out of an envelope and placed it on the kitchen table: “Sasha has a doctor’s appointment. Please excuse her from class today.” It was signed, “Pierre Dumont.”

  “Well, just the once—” I began.

  “And this?” he interrupted, tossing down another slip of paper. “And this?” He tossed down note after note, until 27 were amassed in front of me.

  I stared at the pile, unable to speak. A few slid onto the floor, fluttering like leaves in autumn.

  “You’re not going to do this again, Sasha,” he said firmly, “You’re too smart to waste your life like this.”

  I recoiled as though I’d been slapped.

  “Like my brother?” I screamed. I stormed up to my room, taking two stairs at a time, and slammed the door behind me.

  A few minutes later, Pierre sat on the edge of my bed and stared at the floor. “Sasha, we just want the best for you. Patricia and I talked this over. Clearly you have too much time on your hands. We’re going to take you to the library every Sunday, and we’ll stay there as long as it takes to get your grades in order. And there’ll be no more bike riding to school.”

  The next school day Patricia and I had a standoff in the backyard when I tried to sneak my bike out of the shed. She grabbed my wrist. “There’s going to be no bike until we can trust you’ll actually go to school,” she said firmly. And she didn’t back down. We stood like that a good 20 minutes, until finally I wrenched my arm away and stormed off cussing.

  “Save that language for your friends,” Patricia called after me.

  “I don’t talk like that to friends.”

  We both flushed. Not only was she not my “Mama,” but now I’d shot down the most basic of connections. Still, she picked up her car keys and followed me. “Come on, let’s go. I’ll drive you.”

  But I slammed my bedroom door in her face. I wasn’t even sure why I was so angry. After all, I’d brought this on myself. I knew better than to skip school. But in the moment, it felt like that bike was all I had.

  On Sunday, Patricia, Pierre, and I took the RER train into the heart of Paris to the American Library. Like a caged animal, I paced the stacks for hours, sniffing through art, poetry, and recipe books before I reluctantly settled down and began my homework. Library days usually lasted no less than five hours. Slowly, my grades improved.

  By ninth grade, just when it seemed the Dumonts were getting a handle on me, a card from Mom came in the mail—her first communication since Michael’s funeral two years earlier. I tore open the envelope in front of Patricia and Pierre, hands trembling in anticipation. As the gold-trimmed card slid out from the ivory linen, I saw a glossy photo of Michael, laid out in his casket, hands clasped across his chest.

  Patricia and Pierre sucked in their breath in unison. Patricia said, “Oh, I’m so sorry, Sashita.”

  I ran out of the house, tearing as fast as I could through the farmland at the end of our suburban street. My lungs burned, my legs shook, but I didn’t stop. Soon, I stumbled on some tall cave-like openings cut into the surrounding hills—an old quarry by the looks of it—its wooden gates carelessly left ajar.

  I crept past a “No Trespassing” sign. Inside, a maze of limestone tunnels snaked for miles, supported by an occasional rough-hewn pillar. Here and there mushrooms grew on the silt floors, clearly cultivated by local farmers. But for the most part, the great, echoing halls were empty—abandoned. The only light came through grate-covered manholes in the rock above.

  I found a corner deep within the tunnels. Taking the card from the envelope, I shut my eyes so that I wouldn’t have to see Michael’s face again. In the dim light I poured over what Mom had written inside. Though I don’t recall her exact words, I know she included a poem I wrote shortly after he died. Now my words felt overly sentimental and trite.

  I threw the card among the rubble.

  For months afterward, I returned to that dusty space. Sometimes I thought about tasting the mushrooms strewn along my path, but I never did. I told friends I kept going back to find lost treasure, but in truth I was looking for the card
. As much as it sickened me, I wanted to find Michael, as well as Mom’s lost words. But all I ever found was my growing collection of empty wine bottles.

  Patricia and Pierre never knew about my secret place. Though we never discussed Mom’s card, they implicitly understood the impact it had on me. In response, they renewed their efforts, catapulting me into as many new places and experiences as possible. By tenth grade, I’d raced with my English class around an ancient Olympic stadium in Greece, snowplowed down the Swiss Alps with the Dumonts, and drunk high tea in England with my history class. In two hours in any direction, I could start anew with different spices, different languages, and different cultures. Summers were split between Connor, Tim, and Grace’s and prestigious art camps that Patricia and Pierre sent me to, costing more than a year of state college. All along the way, Patricia continued to send care packages and little notes.

  The Dumonts must have figured that by providing so many distractions, I wouldn’t have time to feel sorry for myself (or at the very least there’d be no time to drink). In some ways they were right. But even when my fingers were stained with charcoal and paint, art camp frustrated me—I never could quite capture my dreams. And though I always returned from those trips in high spirits, every idyllic vacation with my siblings’ thriving young families (Connor and Grace had both been married by now with multiple children) made the joys of Paris paler, somehow.

  At the end of tenth grade, Patricia invited Grace to visit me in Paris. Though I’d spent every summer since Michael had died with her and my brothers, this was the first time she’d come to see me at the Dumonts’, let alone in Europe. I was 16; she was 28. When Grace exited the crowded gate with a quick, sure bounce, I was beside myself with excitement. Finally, I’d be able to share my life with her.

  When Grace smiled, I was surprised to recognize a sliver of my own face in hers. We’d both had long hair when we were younger, but mine was now cropped short and shaggy; hers was styled with the more practical bob and bangs of motherhood. I could hardly believe her daughter Daisy was almost three. I asked Grace if she got the same greeting card from Mom, with the photo of Michael in the casket. She nodded slowly, and then hugged me.

  “I don’t know what she was thinking,” she sighed, “I don’t pretend to understand anything she does.”

  “Is she OK? Have you talked to her?”

  She frowned. “No one has. Not since the funeral. But enough about that—let’s enjoy this time before it passes us by.”

  For weeks we stayed up late talking into the night. We giggled about boys. We did each other’s hair and nails. We went shopping in Paris’s Galeries Lafayette. During the day we hiked to the top of Montmartre and ate a picnic lunch overlooking the vast city. As Paris wrapped itself around Grace, I was reminded of my first weeks there, before Toni had left and I’d ensnared myself in bad choices.

  This could have been me, I thought. And then, this could be me.

  Toward the end of Grace’s visit, after an afternoon of shopping in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, we collapsed into a small bistro for lunch.

  “What’s good here?” she asked, scanning the bilingual menu.

  “It’s France. Everything is good.”

  She laughed. “How about this?” she asked, and pointed to the croque monsieur.

  I told her any toasted sandwich layered with ham and a smothering of Gruyère cheese, broiled until browned and bubbling, was bound to be a winner. With a little prodding, Grace placed our order in French, blushing when the cute waiter replied in English. (French waiters often speak to patrons in English whenever they detect an American accent.)

  As I crunched into half of the buttery, salty, smoky sandwich, I realized—not without a bit of alarm—that no one at school or in a shop or restaurant had spoken to me in English for at least a year. In fact, now that I thought about it, I realized that I was even dreaming in French. Despite my best efforts to remain uninvested in this new life, I’d somehow adapted. I was as close to a native as I could get. Could this be home? I wondered.

  Sharing Paris with Grace lifted the haze. I saw that though I’d been living there for three years, the alcohol and partying had kept me from the soul of this place.

  After Grace went home, it became clear that I had three choices for my future: I could sit in my room and weep for a little boy’s life that could never be resurrected; I could drink under the trees until my heart was intoxicated enough to think it was full; or I could move into this world, fully and without hesitation.

  For my first few years in Paris, I’d trudged indelicately through the former two options. But I now saw that it was time to see the magnificent grandeur of the place through the simple enjoyment of a croque monsieur—of belonging.

  12-Minute Croque Monsieur

  The croques monsieurs found in Parisian bistros are gloriously indulgent, dripping with toasted cheese and ham, under a layer of bubbling béchamel. There are many variations on what is essentially a fancy grilled cheese, some made on a panini press, others in the oven. The most popular rendition is made with Gruyère, a sharp cheese known for its fantastic melting qualities.

  Though many choose to replicate the croque monsieur at home with homemade béchamel sauce, Monique taught me the simplest method of all, which relies on crème fraîche—a fermented dairy product similar to sour cream—for richness. As the sandwich bakes, the tangy spread melts into the bread, softening the center—a striking contrast to the blackened outer edges. Crème fraîche can be found in the dairy case.

  For bread, Monique prefers pain de mie—good quality sandwich bread, often square in shape, though I find the recipe excellent on most anything the bakery has to offer. Though Monique doesn’t pre-toast her bread, some might prefer the added crunch this gives the center of the sandwich.

  2 slices good quality sandwich bread

  2 tablespoons crème fraîche

  3 or 4 thin slices Gruyère cheese

  1 slice ham cold cuts

  Preheat the oven to 425°F.

  Toast the bread, if desired. This can be done in the oven during the last few minutes of preheating.

  To assemble the sandwich: Spread a slice of bread with a tablespoon of crème fraîche. Add a slice of cheese, a slice of ham, and a second slice of cheese. Add the second slice of bread and spread the top with another tablespoon of crème fraîche. Finish with a final slice of cheese.

  Bake for 6 minutes, then transfer under the broiler until the top of the sandwich is bubbling and lightly browned.

  Enough for 1 sandwich

  CHAPTER 10

  Salt of the Land

  SHORTLY AFTER GRACE LEFT, Patricia and Pierre announced that we’d be moving to Luxembourg, a pencil tip of a country several hours north of Paris. Pierre had secured a contract at a small manufacturing firm there. As their financial director, he’d be monitoring the money on a special construction project for a Fortune 500 company in parts of eastern Europe. There’d be a lot of travel. He spoke enthusiastically about the project and told Patricia and me how much we’d love pastoral Luxembourg. Patricia didn’t say much.

  At 16, I received the news with equal parts trepidation and excitement. My fears of starting over again—of building yet another home—were mostly quelled by the prospect of a clean slate, of unhinging the walls I’d so determinedly constructed in Paris. Over the four years since Michael’s death, I’d formed an identity there as the wild one, the wounded one, the loose cannon. The exertion had exhausted me.

  By nature I am not an extrovert; that had been Michael’s role. As much as I’d like to think I reinvented myself in Paris, I was still struggling, mixed up in a fast crowd. I often wondered if Pierre and Patricia realized this, and decided that the only way for me to move forward was to cut me off, once and for all, from the Doc Martens—to give me a fresh point of view, literally.

  Three months later, we moved to a three-story cobbled farmhouse in a small town on the outskirts of Luxembourg City. Across the street, three goats bleated and two
cows bellowed behind a weathered stone wall. My long, skinny bedroom had been converted from the days when attics were reserved for mice and hay.

  I slid my bed under an angled skylight, where I could watch Orion’s Belt glimmer in the blackness. I wondered if Mom saw the same stars from her bedroom window. Somehow the world felt smaller when I believed that she basked in their brightness, too. Where Paris had consumed me, Luxembourg cradled me; its undulating hills and valleys, thick forests, rolling pastures, and trim town squares were humble and quiet after the gritty grandeur of Paris.

  Patricia must have felt it, too. Almost immediately her cooking shifted to the salt of the land: lamb stews, green bean soup, plum tarts, easy roasts. Her new kitchen was smaller than the ones she’d previously had, filled with the narrow darkness typical of a home constructed in the 1800s.

  To ensure that I got my grades in order, the Dumonts enrolled me in an American school and had me repeat tenth grade. The school had once been a convent. Vines trailed along the crumbling stone and plaster walls. The windows were long and pointed, like enormous pope hats. A statue of Saint Mary still graced the tiny courtyard.

  My entire class was made up of just 18 students, most of whom had known one another their whole lives. Unlike the rough-edged Doc Martens, these kids wore polo shirts, khakis, and Mary Janes. Not only did the girls not wear black lipstick, they didn’t wear makeup at all (unless sheer lip gloss counts). Social events included basketball games. And from what I could tell, being a good student was cool. Only a few juniors and seniors operated on the fringes, sneaking off campus to smoke for ten minutes during lunch, or staying out until midnight on the weekends.

  I gravitated toward these relatively tame rebels out of habit. But every time I ran across the street and hid behind a stone wall for a hurried smoke, every time I threw back a beer after class, I tasted disappointment. I couldn’t believe how easily I’d settled back into my bad habits.