Au Paris Page 15

  It always took losing something for me to know what I’d missed; it always took leaving to know I wanted to go back. As we stood to disembark the train from the country, I knew I wanted to be back in Paris. My spirit rested. I felt a deep longing fulfilled that warmed me from the inside out. We were home. Home. I smiled widely and tapped my foot against the floor, anxious to smell the raw sewage, the rubbish, the dirty walls of graffiti outside. I was light-hearted, almost giddy, and leaked a tiny giggle audible to those closest to me.

  Léonie looked up at me like I was crazy. I tried to calm the thrill that rushed through me just so I didn’t burst in front of her. I gave her a warm smile and petted her head, thinking I had masked my excitement. “You seem glad to be home,” she said.

  “Oh, I am so glad,” I gushed, ready to sing the praises of 37, Boulevard Pereire with her. But as my eyes twinkled, Léonie frowned.

  “You didn’t like it at Mamie’s?” she asked.

  “Oh, of course I did!” I lied. “I loved it.” I petted her head again, hoping that I didn’t offend her. She was sticking up for her Mamie, and for her mom, of course.

  We exited the train with luggage in tow. Constantin bopped along in between Léonie and me. Léonie was silent and I feared she did not understand. I was just glad to be home. I had never been happier to go home. And now that we were in Paris again, I felt even closer to my real home, the place where I would settle. Arkansas sounded so peaceful compared to the city. It would be peaceful—easy, calm, quiet. I would miss the city, but oh, to be in a place I could call home. So we walked on, and I sucked in all of the dirty, city air I could, knowing my lungs wouldn’t stay polluted for long.

  When we arrived at the house, we found Alex in the kitchen conducting a grand orchestra of gourmet. Pavarotti’s greatest tenor arias blared through the speakers of a new Bang & Olufsen stereo on the shelf. I took the newly purchased high-end electronic device to mean that Estelle was out of town on business. Indeed she was. Alex greeted each of us with warm affection, inspired if not exuberant to see us. I was surprised how glad I was to see him too, like an old friend, a real homecoming, and Alex was creating a homecoming feast. The kids dropped their luggage in the TV room, and I dropped mine in the hall and the kitchen. Alex didn’t care about such things, and rather than unpack, I joined him to watch him cook.

  I loved his style of cooking. He tended to sprinkle hors d’oeuvre throughout the kitchen, prone to eat his way through his work. Thinly sliced prosciutto lay on waxed paper on the counter near the sink. A bottle of nectar sat on the breakfast table.

  “Did you buy a new juice, Alex?” I asked.

  “Uh, what?” Alex said. “Oh, the nectar. Yes. You want to try it? Try it.” He said the word nectar like it was French, not English. I loved that about Alex. Nectaire, he pronounced it, with a thrust in the guttural r sound. He was always giving a French accent to English words, and I wondered if he was partly to blame for my own misunderstood Franglais. Because of Alex, I wanted every word I spoke to sound French.

  He poured me a glass and I drank it. It wasn’t as light and clean as the pear one I’d tried a few weeks ago. This one was heavier and sweeter, a berry nectar. He watched my face as I drank.

  “You don’t like it?” Alex asked.

  “Oh,” I said. It wasn’t an answer, but he went on before I could finish.

  “Would you rather have champagne? Why don’t we have some champagne,” Alex said, again not waiting for my answer. “Léonie!” Alex yelled. “Viens, s’il-te-plaît!”

  Léonie entered the kitchen running, out of breath from bolting down the three flights of stairs. No doubt she’d been on the computer, of which she had been deprived the past ten days. Alex ordered her to fetch a bottle of champagne for us. I felt slightly guilty, knowing this was usually my chore. But then again, I felt slightly more grown-up now than I had a few weeks ago. Tonight, home alone with him and the kids, perhaps I felt slightly more his dinner date. I wasn’t the kid or even the nanny running to the cellar to fetch the wine. I wasn’t finishing last-minute chores or setting the table. I was lounging in the kitchen with Alex, enjoying his company. And if I wasn’t mistaken, he was enjoying mine. My defenses were down. I’d been away ten days and was terribly homesick. I was exhausted. I was glad to be home. Whatever I felt, I was glad to embrace it. Whatever I felt, it was good compared to the last ten days—to every day in the last few weeks, actually. Dinner date or not, I felt pampered and indulgent as I anticipated my first sip of champagne. When Léonie brought the bottle, we tore pieces of prosciutto and filled glasses with champagne, eating every last morsel and drinking every last drop. J’adore la champagne. There were other small bites of food strewn across the counter and I felt at ease to help myself to whatever pleased me. I usually knew that I would not like something whenever Alex introduced it with superlatives, but I felt bold that night. Normalement, if he said, “You have to try this—this is fantastique, ” I detested it. Alex was, after all, the quintessential Frenchman who liked his meat raw, his cheese completely spoiled, and his hors d’oeuvres from parts of animals I considered waste. Normalement, I was as American as they came, and no one could tell me it was American to eat meat that hadn’t been cooked or cheese that hadn’t been pasteurized or appetizers that weren’t fried. Perhaps tonight, though, I wasn’t so typique. I felt, en effet, une petite française, and the mystery associated with French women revealed a little of itself to me.

  I sampled the crème de la crème of precursors, which truly were fantastique, and only whetted my appetite for our dinner feast. I laughed with and laughed at Alex as I watched him slice and dice to La donna è mobile. Alex may have been a great chef, but he was not a tidy one. He cut with force, causing whole chunks of vegetable to fly into the air. Oils splattered as he poured and stirred together a mix of liquids for the meat marinade. With his combination of grand movements and the blare of the opera, he made the kitchen his stage like a conductor facing his symphony orchestra. I imagined him dressed in a formal tuxedo, coattails flying, arms waving furiously, whisking beads of sweat from his furrowed brow in rhythm with the music.

  “Voilà!” Alex said. He finished chopping and asked me to prepare the sauce. I kept myself from bursting into operatic serenades and, under the eye of the maestro, concocted a sauce, which Alex pronounced “sosse,” for our salad.

  At nine o’clock, dinner was ready. Under Alex’s direction, Constantin screamed up the staircase at the top of his lungs, “À table!” to his sister. Then, not as shy as I was to embrace operatic fervor, he marched into the kitchen humming bars of Recondita Armonia.

  We ate bavette, which Alex assured me was a beautiful cut of beef that the butcher specifically chose for him.

  “Bavette—I mean, it is only for special occasions, okay?” Alex said. “And just try it like this—au barbecue—you didn’t eat like this in Beaune.”

  Of course I smiled—and even cooed—as he boasted that the boucherie would go out of business if it weren’t for his faithful patronage. So of course the butcher always chose special cuts of meat for Alex. Of course the butcher would hack right through a gorgeous hunk of meat just to slice the perfect cuts for Alex. Of course. Bien sûr. But in my champagne-blitzed state, I wanted to believe him. I even supposed this really was a special occasion. With only four of us at the table, I felt more relaxed than I could remember feeling all ten days in Beaune. No formalities, no nervousness in my manners. And Alex was right, we did not eat like this in Beaune. There was nothing like this in Beaune.

  The kids ate quickly and departed for parts unknown in the house, but Alex and I lingered at the table, enjoying the muted sounds of Pavarotti pouring through the open sliding glass door from the kitchen into the garden air. I had an inkling Alex’s musical selection for the evening hinted at his anticipation of the family vacation to the Amalfi coast. Next to the bottle of nectar on the kitchen table, I noted a Fodor’s Guide to Naples, Capri, and the Amalfi Coast stacked on top of Italy for the Gourm
et Traveler. I knew he was getting antsy. I would be too if I were part of a culture that regularly withdrew for month-long vacations. Apparently all of Paris shuts down in August. Most of them packed up for Provence and the Riviera; Alex & Co., however, travel worldwide. Last year they took an African safari and the year before, they rented a yacht and sailed around the Grecian islands. I was impressed to learn that Alex was such a seasoned sailor, but when I told him so, he corrected me immediately.

  “We hired someone—are you crazy?” Alex said. “I wouldn’t drive that thing myself !”

  By the time Alex and I rose from our places at the patio table, the kids were fast asleep. He invited me to listen to music with him in the museum of a living room, where the sound system compared to that of a recording studio. (“The sound is amazing,” he said. “You’ve never heard anything like it.”) What amazed me about French men was how little they regarded invitations like the one Alex gave me. “Oh, come into my living room. Sit on the sofa with me. Listen to Mozart—or do you like Beethoven? Have you ever heard more beautiful sounds? Close your eyes—you’ll enjoy it better. I’ll drink my brandy and puff a two-hundred-dollar cigar. Just sit with me.” Alex thought nothing of this, because it meant nothing to him. On nights past, even Estelle watched Alex invite me, without so much as a blink of an eye. So without a second thought, I had joined him previously. But I hadn’t felt so much like his dinner date then. I had felt like the American nanny to whom he was kind to extend such a cultural, educational experience. But Estelle wasn’t watching, and I’d sipped too much champagne. That night, I was way too attracted to that crazy, dangerous Frenchman to do anything but fake a yawn and decline his invitation.

  In the middle of the night, I woke to use the toilet. I’d had one too many glasses of wine and champagne, and it was my third trip since I’d gone to bed. I had fallen asleep in my clothes but after the first trip to the bathroom, I stripped off my pants and belt, leaving on just my white button-down oxford. I stumbled toward the toilet that was just outside the nanny room in the basement hallway. My eyes were half shut when, as I rounded the corner, I bumped into Alex. We stood, face to face. I immediately dropped my head and cleared my throat.

  “Oh. Ooh. Sorry,” Alex said.

  Though my eyes weren’t open completely, I swear I saw him look me up and down. He stood there in front of me, looking at me, but I stared at the ground. This was not as easily avoidable as the living room music invitation had been.

  In the bathroom I saw that the hours of tossing and turning in bed had caused most of the buttons on my shirt to open. Worse, there was no denying the red satin underwear I wore underneath. I bit my lip and knew I should’ve been horrified, but truth be told, I took a second glance in the mirror. It wasn’t like I was staring at him, for crying out loud. I was just staring at myself in the mirror, replaying in my mind how he had stared at me.

  But that was as far as it could go, and even that was shameful. Adultery is a sin. I was an adulteress! What was I thinking?! But really, this was silly. Just like that hound never thought twice about inviting foreign young girls into his den, he had probably already fumbled upstairs and gone to bed without so much as a second thought. He’d seen more in his life. Good grief, he was married to a French woman. I remembered even Sarah told me Alex once saw her in her silk pajama boxers. I was certain red satin underwear was worse than silk pajama boxers, but c’est la vie. He was gone when I came out to go back to bed, just as I’d suspected. So I decided that in the morning, I would pretend the whole episode never happened.

  I didn’t see Alex the next morning, much to my relief.

  To cleanse my conscience, I spent the next day with the kids preparing for Sarah’s arrival. Sarah knew the city so much better than I, so I decided to wait on all the touristy activities until she arrived. I spent the day cooking, eating, and reading French recipes in Alex’s cookbooks. My obsession with the kitchen grew the longer I stayed in it. Mostly I was mesmerized by how Alex cooked with such minimal fuss. He used only the freshest ingredients, but he was in Paris—what other kind of ingredients did he have to choose from? American grocery stores were not so readily supplied. I savored the philosophy of French cuisine—namely summertime cuisine—absorbing all I could until the days came when courgettes and aubergines once again became foreign produce.

  I read recipes and converted grams and milliliters into cups while Constantin and Léonie made drawings and crafts to welcome Sarah. I had forgotten the multiple uses of dried pasta shells, buttons, and clothespins until I peeked at their art stations. I wrote menus for the dinner parties I wanted to host when I moved back to the States. I even planned ahead for a New Year’s Eve cocktail and hors d’oeuvre party. Alex owned hundreds of gourmet cookbooks. They inspired me to plan party after party with dozens of different themes and genres of food. Soon I had made seating charts and mock invitations for my “Harvest Welcome” dinner with friends. I missed my friends and I was anxious for Arkansas, as odd as it seemed coming from a girl who sat among the riches of Paris. But Arkansas was home and friends were there, along with my own kitchen and dinner party dishes. As I thought about returning there to settle and slow down, I grew tired and a little sad sitting in the Vladescos’ kitchen. I plotted the various pairings of warm goat cheese salad, onion soup, tomato tart, quiche Lorraine, garlic roast chicken, gratin dauphinois, and various galettes, until I grew bored enough that Arkansas seemed still a ways off. Savoring my last days, I shifted back to being an American tourist and planned an itinerary for Sarah’s visit.

  Sarah’s coming tomorrow! The more I said it to myself, the lighter I felt. We had three days together before Léonie and Constantin, with Diane, went to the U.K. for a summer camp. On that same day, Sarah and I were taking a trip to the south of France. When we returned, we would have just two nights and one day in Paris. And so I relinquished my efforts to blend with the chic Parisians and at last embraced the obnoxious American tourist within myself. It was a wonderful feeling, a deliciously devilish indulgence, and I grimaced in delight as I plotted cliché adventures for two sisters—two au pairs—two Americans in Paris.

  Wednesday

  12:00—Sarah arrives.

  12:15—Lunch together chez Vladesco:check nanny book for menu, plus make lemon tart (make today).

  3:00—Buy TGV tickets to the South of France.

  Run Estelle’s errands together.

  Eat dinner at home. (Sarah to bed early to sleep off jetlag.)

  Thursday

  Sleep late.

  Make pancakes.

  Take kids to Le Louvre, Laduree, Notre Dame.

  Shop on Faubourg Saint-Honore (Chanel and Hermes!!)

  Take kids to a movie (per Sarah’s request in e-mail to me).

  Friday

  Buy souvenirs for friends and family at home.

  4:00—Diane comes home from Spain.

  Rent, watch Dirty Dancing.

  Family dinner.

  Saturday—Kids leave for the UK; we leave for Antibes.

  Immediately, the most pressing issue jumped out at me. I needed to make a lemon tart for lunch tomorrow. After watching Alex several times, it turned out that the oven was not so scary; it didn’t even attack. I rummaged through the recipes I’d brought from home until I found the one for my mémé’s lemon meringue pie. Perhaps if I made it without meringue, it would resemble a tart.

  The recipe wasn’t the hard part—the ingredients were difficult. For all the fresh produce and gourmet sauces available in the Vladescos’ kitchen, the basic staples of sugar and flour were impossible to locate.

  I summoned the kids to the front door where they led me again to the monoprix. No rainstorms this time—there wasn’t a cloud in the sky.

  At the store, I was bewildered to find a baking aisle stocked full of myriad grains, even flavors of flour and sugar. And in all that abdundance, I found not one sack of flour that resembled the all-purpose, self-rising flour I needed to construct my tart. Nor could I find one sack of
sugar that resembled the grainy, crystallized form of Imperial brand granulated sugar. Every bag was specialty flour or sugar—a variety unlike any I’d ever seen, all for the purpose of baking patisseries and breads and fine chocolates, no doubt. I didn’t know how to make patisseries and croissants, though. I wanted to make a lemon tart from the same basic recipe as my mémé’s lemon meringue pie. But I couldn’t, not here. I couldn’t bake French food and I couldn’t bake mine. So I bought the sacks closest to American staples, took the kids, and went back home.

  Needless to say, substituting other ingredients for flour and sugar in a recipe mostly comprised of flour and sugar did not produce prize-winning results. I would have even settled for something that looked plain, but calling it plain was pure flattery. The tart was ugly. The filling was murky, gellish, and oddly bubbly, certainly not the dessert of choice I wanted to present to Sarah tomorrow in celebration of her arrival. So we ate it—Léonie, Constantin and I. The whole thing. I added berries and lemon zest curls to the top to cover up the rather interesting surface, but the kids didn’t seem to mind either way. Despite bad ingredients and bad appearance, it tasted amazing. It was pure zesty lemon perfection—sweet and tart at the same time. But after all the trouble I’d gone through baking the tart, it wasn’t the taste that amazed me most. After a summer of toil, after fear and rejection, at last I had conquered the oven.

  I went to sleep that night feeling so safe, so secure. Sarah would take care of everything from here on out—including me. I didn’t have to worry anymore, I didn’t have to wonder whether I had done the right thing. I didn’t have to stutter in a made-up Franglais language or hide from Alex after dinner. Everything felt easy. I drifted to sleep. It was the last time I slept alone in the nanny bedroom.