Lunch in Paris (24 page)

Watching my in-laws construct a bagel sandwich was like watching children play with their first set of Tinkertoys, trying
to decide which piece to put where. Yanig followed Paul’s lead, spreading a thick layer of cream cheese and draping the salmon
in wavelike folds so it didn’t hang too far off the edge. Nicole tried my mother’s low-carb method, a piece of salmon and
a slice of tomato, rolled in a large lettuce leaf.

M
Y MOTHER WAS
determined to reproduce some of the elegance of our Paris wedding back home in New Jersey. She sought out a cheese shop in
Ridgewood and took me to a tasting. Because of USDA regulations, raw milk cheeses aged less than sixty days are contraband
in the United States, so most of what we sampled was a pale imitation of what I’d been eating in France. She had a local “French”
bakery take a stab at our
pièce montée.
Instead of a proud pyramid of caramelized cream puffs, we ended up with the leaning tower of Hackensack.

It was like getting dressed for the encore performance of a play: same dress, different audience. Neither Gwendal nor my in-laws
had ever been to a Jewish wedding. Religion in France is a very private matter, rarely shared with those outside the family
or community. As I explained the symbols I’d grown up with and took for granted, I found myself coming up with surprisingly
poetic and heartfelt answers for someone who had avoided organized religion as a rule. “The chuppah,” I said to Nicole the
night before,
“is the tent that the bride and groom stand under during the ceremony. It represents the Temple, God’s house, but also the
new home Gwendal and I will build together.”

We were using four plain wooden poles, just like they must have done in the desert, topped with a lace tablecloth (a modern
addition) and my father’s
tallis
. I thought he should be there, even in this small way. The rabbi had chosen a text from the book of Ruth:
Whither thou goest, I will go. Your land shall be my land. Your people shall be my people.

I’
M PRETTY SURE
that Nicole was expecting to step off the plane from Paris directly into a Martin Scorsese film. For the French, particularly
for Nicole and Gwendal, America is supposed to look like the movies. The first time I brought Gwendal to New York, we walked
down the snow-filled streets of Greenwich Village in the middle of the night, the windowsills and even the lampposts heavy
with freshly fallen snow. He looked back at the path of his footsteps in the yellow light and swung himself around a tree
with boyish glee. I knew he was waiting for Frank Sinatra to emerge from one of the bars, cigar lit and hat pulled low against
the wind.

It had been a while since I’d done the tourist thing in New York. There are certain tastes and smells that I associate with
the city, that feel right for the towering scale of the buildings and the shine of flattened quarters on the asphalt. If it
had been December, I would have taken them on the same pilgrimage my father and I did each Christmas to Bendel’s and Rockefeller
Center, buying each of them a hot pretzel to warm their frozen fingers. But it was still bright, beautiful, crunchy-leafed
autumn, just the right weather for standing outside Joe’s Pizza on the corner of Sixth Avenue and Bleecker Street with a pepperoni
slice.

You certainly wouldn’t call it “cuisine,” but along with a piece of carrot cake with cream cheese frosting, it’s what I’d
been craving since I got off the plane. We stood in line behind two students and watched as they sprinkled oregano and flakes
of hot pepper onto their mottled red and white triangles. All this hand-held food was something of a novelty, and eating lunch
standing up off an oily paper plate was as exotic to my new French family as a Turkish bath. To this day, I keep a photo on
my desk of the eight of us, twisted in various attitudes, like a Delacroix painting of the imaginary East.

We went to the top of the Empire State Building on a rainy Tuesday, just before closing. This is a New York ritual I’d already
endured with Gwendal, who is fanatical about views. (I should have known: if you’re willing to stand in the three-hour line
the day after Christmas, it’s love.) I stood near my parents, feeling like I was on a school trip. When we got up to the ticket
window, Paul turned to Gwendal. “She’s all yours.” I had been traded. I was now on somebody else’s tab. I felt supremely stupid,
almost thirty years old, and still nobody assumed I would be paying my own way.

There were awkward moments like this, when the twenty-first-century woman in my head was forced to confront the consequences
of my deliberately cultivated, poorly paid nineteenth-century interests. It was like I had Charlotte Brontë sitting on one
shoulder and Gloria Steinem on the other. Gloria leaned over and whispered into my ear:
Where’s your fucking parasol?

W
E DECIDED NOT
to go to the Statue of Liberty, but to admire the view from the Ellis Island museum instead. I had a special reason for wanting
to take them there: my paternal grandmother’s Russian birth certificate was on display. These vaulted halls had
been the funnel for millions of immigrants, including my grandparents, who boarded ships from elsewhere to become part of
the American dream.

The American dream had become a hot topic of conversation between Gwendal and me over the past few months. He had taken my
not so subtle nudge, and decided to expand his professional horizons. He had started looking for a new job. While he was in
town, he was doing his first U.S.-style networking.

I had now been living outside the United States for a good portion of my adult life—I could no longer tell you what was on
television, or who was playing in the World Series. What I clung to was the
idea
of my country: a can-do optimism and eye for the next big thing, a land full of good-natured opportunists willing to take
a chance on the talent in front of them.

“You need a project,” I said. “It doesn’t matter if that’s exactly what you end up doing, as long as it helps you meet the
right people.” In fact his background had his future project already built in. The next generation of movies would be shown,
not on reels of thirty-five-millimeter film, but off of computer files. It was already starting in the United States; what
would it take to bring this innovation to Europe? And who better than a cinema nut with a PhD in computer science to do it?

“But I don’t have anything to tell them.”

“Oh, yes you do.”

Gwendal was about to learn the governing principle of the American dream: fake it till you make it.

Auntie Lynn set him up with a friend who was a consultant to the entertainment industry. Paul gave him an American cell phone,
and of course she called him back while he was walking up Madison Avenue on his way to the Frick. He put a finger in one ear,
trying to block out the traffic noise. We had worked on his “elevator speech”—how to present your idea in the time it takes
to get
from the lobby to the third floor. This was harder for him than you might imagine. In France, you spend your entire life learning
how to bury the lead—the point comes somewhere in the middle of the fourth paragraph, and money can’t possibly be discussed
until after a five-course meal. But Gwendal is a fast learner, so he took a deep breath and gave her the two-minute pitch.
It was like watching a really good pantomime. First his brow went all wrinkly, like he was trying to solve a geometry proof,
then his eyes went wide, like a man facing the guillotine over how many jelly beans are in the jar at the county fair, and
finally there was an urgent nodding of the head and a bewildered smile.

All she said was this, three little things he had never heard in France:

That sounds really interesting.

How much are you looking for?

Please send me your business plan.

Then she hung up. It was a five-minute conversation. But I could see it. “Ms. Madison Avenue,” as we came to call her, had
fired the engines of the possible—and the wheels started turning in Gwendal’s head.

The late afternoon sun was glinting off the skyscrapers of Wall Street as we exited the Ellis Island pavilion and headed toward
the dock for the ride home. Then, my sense of direction being what it is, we got on the wrong boat. We were halfway to Battery
Park before I noticed. The captain generously agreed to take us back to the Jersey side—all by ourselves. As we sat on the
prow of our own private ferry, chugging toward the Statue of Liberty at full speed, I knew I’d outdone Martin Scorsese
and
Ms. Madison Avenue, delivering my own perfect slice of the American dream.