Au Paris Read online

  I felt abused, underestimated, unappreciated, and invisible. Oh, there would be a lot of head-shaking about this when Maria Celeste came in for her next shift. Oui! C’est pas bon!!

  At least now the mystery was solved as to how the boyfriend got in for a sleepover. I wanted to call someone to solder shut that window—every window, as a matter of fact. All of a sudden I felt like the dad in Girls Just Want to Have Fun who cuts down the tree outside Sarah Jessica Parker’s bedroom window so she can’t sneak out. Oh, I would be sawing right now if a tree had been the problem.

  “Diane, I want you to shut and lock those living room windows now,” I ordered. “And guys, you can leave through the door and not think about ever climbing in here again.” They didn’t laugh at, nor question my authority. They just left the house without saying another word. After the last one stepped outside, I shut the door and locked it. Then I turned to Diane, feeling very guilty for my outburst. I never knew my boundaries with her, what expectations Estelle had, how Estelle would have wanted me to handle it. I felt wrong to ignore it and wrong to control it. But guilt or not, I still wasn’t finished.

  “Diane, do you have any idea how much that sofa cost—or the curtains that could have ripped when they climbed through the windows?” She looked back at me blankly, and said nothing. I couldn’t blame her. I was drained and quite frankly sick of hearing my own voice. “Neither do I,” I answered for both of us. “But we both know what your dad would do if he had any idea what has just happened in his living room.” She just shrugged. We both sighed. There was no benefit to further discussion.

  “Okay—just go to your room, please,” I said, softening my voice a bit. And for the first time since I’d been in charge of her, Diane did what she was told.

  Somehow the ratatouille didn’t sound so good anymore. I left the vegetables strewn across the counter in the kitchen and retreated from the mess I’d made, hobbling, like a soldier wounded in battle, down the basement steps to the nanny room. I found Constantin curled up in my bed, thumb in mouth, glued to the French version of Lilo et Stitch. Léonie had discovered how to use my laptop and was frantically typing as she corresponded with her cyber social circle. I knew Estelle wouldn’t approve, but non-educational television and Internet over-usage were the least of my worries, so I made room for myself on the bed with Constantin. I asked Léonie to wake me when the movie was over, and as I settled into bed, my eyes filled with tears. I lay there silently and let them fall.

  Estelle must have sensed my frustration with the world because the next morning she informed me that the kids and I would be going to her parents’ house in Beaune for a petits vacances, where in addition to Léonie and Constantin, I would care for Estelle’s sister’s three children. Estelle worried this would be too much for me, but I was relieved. I needed a vacation from Paris. Too many things had gone wrong and I was starting to feel like I didn’t belong. I was ill equipped to raise a teenager and tired of comparing myself to the perfect women of Paris. As sad as it was, nothing had played as I had imagined when I dreamed of Paris from my tiny cube at the Chronicle. The city, the language, the children—everything went against my expectations. But it was more than that, it was me. I didn’t belong in Paris. I was exhausted. My pre–grad school last hurrah had turned from a dream vacation into a reason I needed another vacation. Quel nightmare.

  Diane was leaving for Spain early the next morning and according to Estelle, I was supposed to take her shopping for some last-minute necessities. The exchanges between Diane and me thus far had been less than pleasant and I did not expect this outing to go any more smoothly. To avoid deluding myself once again, I put it out of my mind that this trip would be anything close to the girlish play date I’d envisioned when I first came to Paris. But on the other hand, Diane was leaving the country, and I was leaving for the country. This was my last chance to forge a friendship between us, and I wanted to do my best to mend the rift, wish her farewell, and wash the whole experience from my mind. Then I would start over with a new focus—the French country.

  As Estelle stood in the kitchen, providing directions to the train station and rattling off the last-minute items Diane needed for her trip, a single question ran through my head: Have any “talks” taken place yet?

  I didn’t bring up the episode from the day before, nor did I inquire about the talk. I was not a member of the Vladesco family, and I certainly couldn’t tell Estelle how to raise her own daughter. Besides, Estelle was obviously distracted—Diane’s trip to Spain was a big deal. Estelle hurried about, checking items off of the to-do list. Diane simply hung around the house, counting the hours until her departure. And Alex planned a dinner. He called it a special farewell dinner, and for it, both he and Estelle planned early arrivals home that night. With these events mounting, it was easy for me to hide the complaints I knew I should have expressed.

  So this morning I took my morning espresso from Estelle and sipped it while she talked. It was in all our best interests for me to stay quiet. No one here wanted the special farewell dinner spoiled. Still, I worried about what would happen next. The rhum, the overnight guests, the sneaking around—if all of these things were happening when Diane was fourteen, what would happen when she was fifteen? Or sixteen? And if her mother never talked to her about her behavior, how much worse would it get? And what would become of her after I passed out of her life? I tried to push these thoughts out of my head as I nodded and smiled my way through Estelle’s light-hearted morning chatter. Once I wished her a lovely day, I sat in the kitchen, getting skinny and high off espresso, waiting for Diane to wake up.

  Léonie and Constantin were spending the day with Mounie et Mip to play golf. I pictured Léonie perfecting her swing, sort of the way I pictured Jordan Baker in the Great Gatsby. Léonie could definitely grow up to be a Jordan—slightly feminist, cool but elegant, sporty but beautiful. But instead of clear, gray eyes, Léonie’s eyes were dark and deep; instead of blond hair, Léonie’s was dark and curly; and instead of a tanned, healthy glow, Léonie possessed flawless, porcelain skin. She was studied and serious, and I knew she would push her limits on the golf course to a raised standard of perfection, whether or not it was her first time.

  Then I pictured Constantin standing next to her, with golf club in hand. I was very grateful I would not have to take responsibility for the destruction of whatever he swung at.

  Then my thoughts turned back to Diane. Ever since she had traded my girl-bonding daydreams for boys and a rum buzz, I wanted her approval and mutual acceptance even more than I normally would. The shopping trip was a good start, but I was nervous about it. I wondered whether she was dreading it, what she thought of me, and mostly what on earth we would talk about. After all, we exchanged most of our conversation in the form of sighs and dirty looks. Still, I was determined to make things right between us.

  Diane finally rolled downstairs at almost noon, ready to go though not overly zealous about it. I did my best to contain my own excitement, like the nerdy girl in school who had to pretend it was no big deal to get invited to the cool girls’ Friday night sleepover. I gave her what I hoped was a friendly smile and checked the house purse, which held only 50 euros. Definitely not enough. I went to my room and dug into my own stash, knowing Estelle would refund me later.

  I’m embarrassed to admit it, but the entire time I was in Paris, I had no idea what I was getting paid. I’ve never been much of a numbers person, and with the confusion of living in a new house and getting paid in foreign money, plus the fact that all of my daily nannying duties were funded by the house purse, I couldn’t even begin to guess how much I’d made up until that point. All I knew was that each week, the stack of bills in the envelope got thicker and thicker, and I hadn’t even had the chance to spend it yet. I may not have been a numbers person, but I was a shopping person. I had no doubt I’d find a use for the cash long before I returned to my home sweet home across the pond.

  I grabbed 100 more euros, just in case Diane’s nec
essities turned into Diane’s frivolous wants. I was not afraid to admit that I would try to buy her affection, if that’s what it took. It wasn’t until we were halfway to the métro that I realized I’d left my debit card at home and hadn’t grabbed any extra cash for myself. As we walked along, Diane was cool and I was cautious, nervous and unsure of the train route Diane insisted we take. I felt like a complete mom, a no-fun mom at that, and that was an image I had never wanted to exude.

  Diane’s train route led us to a different train station than the métro I was accustomed to taking. I had no choice but to follow nervously behind her, trusting she had ridden this train before, probably one too many times. She walked to the ticket counter several strides in front of me, as if I were the child and she were the adult. And as I suspected, she knew exactly where to go, exactly what to do, exactly what tickets to buy, and exactly how much those tickets cost. It was only when she turned to me for money to pay for the tickets that I remembered who was in charge, and I handed her the cash, slightly dampened by my palm. We found seats on the RER train. I sat in a seat by the window and she sat in the seat that faced me, but she stared out the window almost immediately after sitting down.

  Despite her recent acts of defiance, Diane looked quite sweet sitting across from me on the train—almost like a little girl. I wondered if she knew how pretty she was. She probably did. But good, she should know. I tried to think of something to say to her. If I was trying to strike up conversation with any other fourteen-year-old girl, most likely I would have asked, “Soooo . . . do you have a boyfriend?” This question, however, was entirely off-limits. I knew more about the answer than I cared to, and I wasn’t emotionally strong enough to hear any more details about it. Not that she would have told me, anyway. Even though I had only been in her life for two weeks and most of our relationship had been rocky, I was determined to relate to her in some way. I was in her life and she was in mine in this given moment and I wanted that to matter—to both of us. I just had to figure out a way to make it happen.

  We rode in silence and I wondered how many nannies had been in and out of her life, forcing her to say hello and good-bye to a new face every year. How many summers had she spent under the care of a stranger? How many mornings had she walked herself to school because the nanny had to walk her younger sister and brother to a different school? As I watched her look sullenly at her own reflection, suddenly I didn’t feel so intimidated anymore. For all of her adult talk and adult actions, she was still a little girl; she’d just been forced to grow up very fast. She coped with it the only way she knew how, and quite frankly coped better than I surely would have in the same situation. And then I smiled.

  She noticed, and turned away from the window to face me. She shrugged and her delicate shoulders sunk inward. I smiled straight at her, looking her in the eyes with as much affection as I could deliver. It was my attempt at holding out an olive branch. She stared back, and for a moment, I thought she wouldn’t reciprocate. Then her face broke into a smile, and she let out a short puff of breath, somewhere between a sigh of relief and a laugh. I realized that maybe all this time she had wanted my approval as much as I’d wanted hers. The ice was broken. My shoulders relaxed and the tightness I’d felt in my chest disappeared.

  “Are you nervous about going to Spain?” I asked.

  “Uhhh, no,” she said. I laughed. Of course she wasn’t.

  “Have you been before?” I asked.

  “Uhhh, yeah,” she said.

  I nodded, not knowing how to drive the conversation further, but determined to get past the uncomfortable pauses.

  “But have you been to—what city are you going to?” I asked.

  “It’s by the sea, that’s all I know,” she said. “So I need a new swimsuit.”

  Estelle had listed the swimsuit as one of the necessities we needed to buy Diane. I couldn’t imagine she didn’t already have several, with all the weekly scuba lessons and coastal family vacations. But okay, we’d buy a swimsuit.

  We talked on, plodding through the awkward barrier that had divided us for the past several weeks. Diane told me about all of the countries she’d been to, and as she talked of family vacations and summer camps, her expression warmed. She grinned as she talked and kept her hands free to gesture, saying “so” and “yeah” and “okay” at the start of each sentence. I was struck by how much she was like each of her parents. I had never realized how much she was like her father, expressive, eager, even using the word “bon” as Alex did to commence her every thought. But when she talked I heard Estelle in her voice. It had that deep, muffled tone possessed by those parisiens who spoke the beautiful kind of French. All French women—particularly the ones who are mysterious, beautiful, and effortessly cool—spoke the beautiful French with a beautiful voice. Diane talked on, the corners of her mouth curled upward in the same coy smile of her mother—of a French woman.

  As the métro pulled into rue de Passy, Diane assured me it was the absolute best place to shop in Paris, and chattered excitedly about all of the stores, from Gap to Guerlain. We paid tribute to Kookai, H&M, and a few couture boutiques. Diane purchased a tiny yellow string bikini trimmed in sequins that had about as much material as something I would wear around my wrist. Très necessaire, non? She also selected a couple of paper-thin camisoles that should not have been worn as shirts. I was sure though, that she would, and dared not think about what activities could follow.

  In between shops, we stopped at a petite patisserie, where I bought a pastry resembling an American lemon square. We shared it as we walked on to Zara. I am convinced that Zara was made for me. I love to shop, but I’ve always been easily overwhelmed by the sheer number of choices. But since Zara organizes all inventory—from clothes to shoes—by color, I just pick a color (usually black) and go for it. Walking into the store, I was hit by a wave of homesickness, and it was only enhanced by the mostly American soundtrack playing on the sound system. When “Hungry Eyes” came on, I squealed “Dirty Dancing!” to Diane, but she responded only with a blank look. She’d never heard of nor seen the movie. A tragedy! I made a mental note to myself that should we have time after she returned from Spain, we would watch that movie together at least once.

  There’s nothing like good music to make me shop like a madwoman, and even my lack of cash flow couldn’t stop me from grabbing up every black stiletto, black dress, and black flare-leg pant Zara had to offer. I hummed along to the music, imagining Patrick Swayze and Baby rehearsing for that famous mambo number. The Ally McBeal inside me was tempted to start a mambo number of my own on top of the center table display when I realized that once again, my coolness level needed a check.

  By the time we’d finished our shopping, we were late for dinner. I felt satisfied as Diane and I raced home together. We had accomplished our primary mission but I couldn’t help but feel that a much bigger mission had also been accomplished. We were friends. I was even glad we were running late just so she knew I wasn’t really the type of person who always had to follow the rules. I hated that I’d come off that way to her, and to myself.

  When we returned home, Alex was conducting a grand orchestra of gourmet in the kitchen, and the mood in the house was a happy one. We ate a five-course meal, ending with a farewell toast to Diane. She drank a full glass of champagne, laughing and cooing with her mother all the while. Before I retreated to my basement room for the night, I left a little good-bye note on Diane’s pillow. It was the final gesture in my efforts to cancel out whatever negativity carried over from our rocky start. I stood in her room for just a few moments, looking at the girlish notes and pictures decorating every square inch of the wall. My heart went out to her. I breathed in deeply, hoping to freeze time and perhaps preserve whatever of her young years remained. Minutes later, once down in my nanny room, she instant-messaged me from her bedroom on the third floor under the screen name DiDi14. She couldn’t wait to watch Dirty Dancing when she got home from Spain, her message said. I beamed. I would have it waiti
ng here for her. I wrote her back to tell her and went to sleep relieved and heart-warmed that we had found friendship .

  My time in Paris was nearly complete. I had served my purpose and was closer to being a nanny in good standing. The French country waited, and that thought alone assured me I belonged in no other place.

  Chapitre Huit

  French country. In America, it’s the inspiration for Lenox china patterns—clean, white, classic. It’s a motif of home décor—toile in the dining room, roosters in the kitchen. It’s linen. It’s quilted. Fabrics of yellows, reds, and oranges draped over solid oak tables or spread over a featherbed of down, tucked into white-washed iron bedposts. It’s a pleasant retreat, visiting a home decked in French country is; made perfect by the lingering fragrance of lavender-scented linen spray. I should know—I own a bottle for my sheets and towels.

  Back in America, when I’d browsed through Williams-Sonoma, looking lustfully at the full line of Emile Henry ovenware, it never really occurred to me that French country design was inspired by an actual place, namely Provence. Safe under the shelter of retail America, I divided my love of French country equally between the au gratin pans and the soup terrines, careful to avoid the blinding glare of the overhead fluorescent lights that bounced off the dishes’ glossy ceramic glaze. I visited there often and browsed till my heart was content luxuriating in the store’s air-conditioning, which always remained at a cool and constant sixty-five degrees.

  But in France, French country isn’t just the design for a line of cookware. It is a place en plein-air where one hunts—sans air-conditioning—for wild boar, mushrooms, and modern plumbing. And when considering the latter, it’s a fact that the smell lingering amidst the great outdoors is anything but lavender.

  When Estelle first mentioned I would take the kids to their grandparents’ house in Burgundy, I found myself instantly enamored with the glamorous thought of ten days in the French country. What I didn’t realize at the time, of course, is that whether Burgundian or Provençal, there is no bottled spray that could prepare me for the realities of being a city girl thrown to the foxes and hounds of country living. So I approached the journey the best way I knew how: I planned my outfit for the first day.