Lunch in Paris (18 page)

W
e didn’t want to wait a year to get married. I had been in visa limbo long enough. I wanted the right to work and to open
a bank account and to travel through the European Union with one of those flimsy plastic identity cards instead of my U.S.
passport. Health insurance would be nice. July Fourth weekend was four months away—ambitious, but not impossible.

Anyone who has ever planned a wedding will tell you that suddenly
everyone
has an opinion. What was peculiar about planning the wedding in Paris was that everyone’s opinion—from the bandleader to
the restaurant owner—was more important than mine. The fact that there was money involved only made matters worse. As far
as the chef was concerned, he was not paid to follow my instructions, he was paid to do what he did best, and who was I to
tell him how. The restaurant hostess refused to clear a dance floor among the tables; I was making a party in
her
space, and she knew best how to use it. I understand that living in another culture is partly about learning to put aside
the perfect in favor of the possible. But is her wedding really the time to ask a girl to learn this lesson?

The choosing of the hors d’oeuvres alone was like the Indy 500. We went round and round in circles, interrupted only when
we crashed into a wall. But I didn’t
want
white toasts with the crusts cut off spread with a millimeter-thin layer of salmon purée and topped with a slice of black
olive. “What about chicken liver purée?” the chef said. I finally went out and bought a book, with lots of pictures. I pointed
to the polenta triangles topped with roasted peppers and said, “What about this?,” crossed my fingers, and left.

There was also the small matter of securing the date—an equally circular process, only slower. Getting married in France requires
a stack of paper the size of a dictionary, double spaced. Apparently, I needed a proof of residence in order to apply for
a marriage license, but I had no legal right to be residing in France until I was married.

Hence the gas bill.

We had already decided against a formal sit-down meal. Nobody really enjoys their chicken/fish option, and I wanted to retire
to bed with a cold compress at the very thought of a bilingual seating chart. It would be a small reception, only eighty people.
Gwendal has very little family, and only my closest friends and relatives would be making the trip.

If we weren’t serving dinner, it seemed logical to me to have the wedding in the afternoon. I may as well have suggested that
Gwendal’s grandmother spend the day skinny dipping in the Seine. French weddings are all-night, get-down-and-boogie affairs—none
of this “rent the room till one a.m. and then the waiters start pushing you out with a broom.” The last French wedding we
went to began with champagne at three in the afternoon and ended with the traditional French onion soup and bad French disco
music (also traditional) at four in the morning.

“If it’s in the afternoon, no one will dance,” said Gwendal, looking as if I had just killed his hamster. “And if people don’t
dance it’s not a real wedding.”

I had a birth certificate to translate. The music would have to be next week’s problem.

O
NE OF THE
great gifts of an intercultural relationship is that when you fight, you never quite know if you are mad at the person, or
at their culture: Is he really too bum-ass lazy to call back the band at eight p.m. on a Monday evening (are they in the middle
of dinner?), or is he just being
French?
Is she bombarding me with lists and timetables and questions about the color of the wax used to seal the invitations because
she is a manic control freak (or General MacArthur’s granddaughter), or is she just being
American?

It’s like the UN: things escalate, but then everybody calms down for a minute while they look over the transcript for a mistranslation.

We were fine until we got to the cake.

America may have landed a man on the moon, but the French have the coolest wedding cakes on earth. It’s not really a cake.
It’s called a
croquembouche—
a “crunch in the mouth”—or, more regally, a
pièce montée.
It’s like you climb the ladder to your new life on a four-foot pyramid of individual vanilla cream puffs, held together with
glossy praline—caramelized sugar that shatters in your mouth like glass and sticks in your teeth like toffee. It’s glorious
and magnificent, and I guess also the cultural equivalent of dry fruitcake and chalk-white icing with a plastic bride and
groom on top.

“But it’s
cheesy,
” moaned Gwendal. I had recently authorized him to use this expression.

“I don’t care,” I said, giving up on UN-style diplomacy in favor of a unilateral strike. “I
want
one.”

W
HILE I WAS
working out the international cake treaty, Gwendal was busy shooting a short film with friends. That is, when he wasn’t writing,
directing, and rehearsing for a full-scale musical comedy with his tap-dance school. Part of me admired his enthusiasm, part
of me thought it was childish. Since he had finished his PhD, Gwendal had settled into one of France’s most cushy situations,
a glamorous public service job. Working for a movie archive was sexy but socially conscious, with none of the dirty implications
of actually turning a profit.

Like most French people, I don’t think Gwendal ever expected fulfillment or recognition for his work. When he finally asked
for a raise for hiring and managing the team of five people that executed his digitization project, the director told him
he had taken on the extra responsibility
pour plaisir
—for fun.

When he was bored or frustrated (which was more and more often), instead of looking for a new job, he simply funneled his
energy into other things. I just couldn’t keep my big American mouth shut. “If you put all the time and effort you spend on
your hobbies into your job, you’d have the cinema career you’ve always wanted.”

“You are right,” he said calmly. “At least in the United States. But here, working harder, faster, and better just makes people
hate you.”

“I have to go,” he said, kissing me good-bye. Coming from an American man, this would have been a blow-off, a clear signal
not to mention it again. But Gwendal didn’t function that way. Our cultures were starting to leak into each other’s brains.
I knew he was filing it away for further consideration.

I
WENT BACK
to New York at the beginning of May for my wedding shower. I tried in vain to explain the concept to Gwendal.

“When you get married, people give you things.”

“You mean we get our wedding presents in advance?”

“No, these are other presents.”

“Oh.” Then he added, still not quite with me, “But why is it called a shower?”

“I don’t know, maybe because the gifts rain down on you like a shower.”

As I watched CNN in line for immigration at JFK, I was reminded that 2003 was not a good year for an American to be marrying
a Frenchman. President Chirac may have donned his NYPD cap after September 11, but since then, France, along with much of
the population of Europe, had been critical of the invasion of Iraq. In 2003, “French fries” became “freedom fries.” I was
sleeping with the enemy.

Since I was not yet official in France, I’d kept my American health insurance. My gynecologist had a particularly strong opinion
on the subject. “A Frenchman,” he said, when I told him I was getting married. “They’ve got their heads up the pipe.” It was
an echo of what I’d been hearing on the street and reading in the newspapers:
Sure, they like to talk. If it wasn’t for us, they’d all be speaking German right now.
An awkward conversation to be having, particularly in sight of a speculum.

My other appointment that week was with my editor from the
New York Times.

I know. I was excited too.

My first article for the paper of record had been a stroke of luck; they needed someone to interview a French artist who was
having an exhibition at the Guggenheim. I was ecstatic. I thought I was a made woman—a real journalist. I patted myself on
the back and checked one more thing off my life’s to-do list.

I allowed myself to enjoy this bloated feeling of accomplishment for a full ten minutes. Then, in classic Elizabeth fashion,
I
began to belittle it. I started worrying about the next thing. How long would it take me to get an article into the
Times Magazine?
When would they put me on staff in Paris? This was a pattern I’d repeated so often, I hardly noticed it. No sooner was something
done than it meant nothing at all.

I quickly realized that getting my second story in the paper might actually be harder than it was to land my first. Though
most people imagined that I was living in the art capital of the known universe, Paris is a city of great
dead
artists. The live ones are in New York or London or Cologne or Shanghai. What was worse, with the tension between the two
governments, nobody in the United States wanted to hear about what was happening in France. Europe in general was kind of
persona non grata
.

Even so, it felt so good to be a professional again, to have a
meeting
. As I waited outside the Times Building with my cardboard cup of coffee, scalding hot and milky sweet, I absorbed the energy
coming up off the pavement, the people rushing past. I wished I could plug in, recharge my batteries, take some of this whirl
of activity and promise back to my little desk in Paris.

T
HE WEDDING SHOWER
was supposed to be a surprise. Fortunately I did enough acting in high school to swoon and start and even cry a little when
Sarah opened the door. Sarah is my oldest friend, more like a sister, really. I’ve known her since before my second birthday.
We finger-painted together with chocolate pudding. We learned to roller-skate in my backyard. When we went to day camp together,
she was my partner in the licorice-eating contest, each of us on one end of a long red yarn of candy, trying to chew our way
to the middle. I haven’t always been the most constant friend. I forget birthdays, leave too many months between calls. And
yet we always seem to find each other again.
Wherever I go in the world, she is there, on the other end of that piece of licorice.