Lunch in Paris (33 page)

Excuse me?

Fortunately, Ms. Union didn’t agree. There would be no verdict that day. The appeal was set for November. Meanwhile Gwendal
would go another four months without the papers for his benefits. The lawyer said we had no choice, we had to wait. That old
feeling of helplessness welled up again. I felt like I was pushing against the ocean. If one more person told me to wait,
to sit still and grit my teeth while my family’s rights and health and financial well-being were being trampled on, I was
going to go loony tunes. My head was ready to start spinning on my
neck like the little girl in
The Exorcist
. How could anyone live like this?—and in the meantime we had nothing to live on.

My rage I could express, but my fear I had to keep inside. I knew Gwendal was at a turning point. He could either see this
leap into the private sector as a disastrous aberration—or an opportunity.

I
WAS PRETTY
sure what the French answer would be:
See what happens when you go out on a limb—the lawyers, the trouble, the stress. You had a nice safe job. Why did you change?
It was up to me to represent the other side. I didn’t want Gwendal to think that taking a chance meant failure. Despite working
for a feckless criminal, Gwendal enjoyed the business and was clearly doing well. We were at a crossroads. I wanted to see
him try. I wanted to be the safety net he never had so he could spread his wings and give it a shot. I wanted France to be
wrong.

So I put on my brave face, the cultural equivalent of a very short cheerleader skirt, got out the pom-poms, and went to work.
He and two colleagues decided to start a consulting company. I wrote press releases and thank-you notes and copy for the English
website. I cooked and cleaned, gave tours, and generally swept my own ambitions and enormous fear of financial insecurity
under the table.
Yea, team.

It was a brilliant piece of bait and switch. Instead of figuring out what I wanted to do with the rest of
my
life, we would figure out what to do with his. Instead of worrying about my own lack of direction, I directed him. I threw
myself 150 percent into the business. We talked through every decision, every move. Everything he did right I cheered on,
every stumble I cheered anyway—shutting myself in the bathroom while he went to “the office” (his partner’s dining room table),
trying not to show my rage and insecurity that
he didn’t know
everything already
. In another tour de force of Bard Economics, Paul borrowed some money for us to live on, and I started paying at the supermarket
with my American Visa card.

I would love to say home was a solace—but it wasn’t. The Chinese Mafia was still firmly ensconced in the apartment upstairs,
with no end in sight. As soon as the lawyers got involved, the bunk beds and the brothel girls disappeared, leaving the “official”
renter, Mr. Dong, his wife, and their two young children. The room with the moldering mattresses on the floor was magically
transformed into a playroom full of Fisher-Price toys.

French real-estate law favors the tenant, and even if they have no lease and don’t pay a
centime
of rent, it is impossible to evict so much as a family of dormice between the first of November and the first of March. Meanwhile,
the kids were making such a racket we thought that maybe
we
would be the ones who had to move. We awoke one Sunday morning at around eight thirty, thinking someone had opened a bowling
alley on our bedroom ceiling. Gwendal finally pulled on some pants and knocked on the door upstairs. When Mr. Dong opened
the door, behind him was a
tableau vivant
worthy of Molière—the Dongs’ four-year-old daughter was riding her tricycle in a circle around the apartment, followed closely
by her little brother, who was dragging the vacuum cleaner. Mr. Dong shrugged as if to say, “Kids, what can you do?”

The sudden prominence of small children in the apartment had other unforeseen consequences. Social service got involved, and
they found lead paint in the apartment. There’s lead paint in many old buildings in Paris, and when the occupants—legal or
not—have young children, the owners are responsible for its removal. The owners started doing cartwheels. If the squatters
had to move out so they could fix the lead paint, why couldn’t they simply change the locks and refuse to let them back in?
Too simple. The city, it seems, gets a kickback from the painters, and
didn’t want to lose the job. So we ended up with a surreal solution to a surreal problem. The owners put the Chinese Mafia
squatters up in a hotel, did a 15,000-euro paint job, and moved them back in, just before the November deadline, when regardless
of the eviction notice they would be allowed to stay another winter. I was considering setting fire to the building with a
copy of the Napoleonic Code.

All the while, adorable bistros and photography galleries began to spring up along the canal, and prices in the neighborhood
continued to rise about 10,000 euros a month. One sticky Saturday morning, Gwendal and I were on our way out to the market
when we saw a gay couple with Rollerblades descend from the fourth floor. I looked at Gwendal with panic in my eyes.

“Gotta buy. Now.”

I
N LATE JULY
, Gwendal’s dad came to Paris for the last time. He was on a break between rounds of chemotherapy and seemed to be feeling
up to it. He wanted to go to La Coupole, an art deco brasserie on the boulevard du Montparnasse, for a very unseasonal meal
of
choucroute,
a Alsatian specialty that involves a mound of sauerkraut and as many kinds of pork as you can reasonably fit onto one plate.

La Coupole is an institution; Josephine Baker danced in the basement and Hemingway drank on the terrace (where didn’t he?).
Now it’s owned by a chain. The cavernous dining room makes for abominable acoustics, and the din of clattering forks and knives
quickly drowned out any meaningful attempt at conversation.

After lunch, we slowly walked the few blocks to the Luxembourg Gardens. We sat on a bench near the puppet theater, giving
Yanig time to catch his breath. It was only an hour before
he and Nicole needed to catch their train. We should have accompanied them to the station, but I felt how much Gwendal wanted
to stay out in the sunshine; he was suffocating from the panic and dread. As soon as we shut the door to the taxi we knew
it was the wrong decision. I looked at Gwendal and we began walking at a clip down the boulevard du Montparnasse. The platform
was crowded and there was nowhere to sit. We found Yanig leaning on a short barrier pole next to a vending machine. He looked
so weak I thought he might collapse. I had never seen Nicole look so utterly helpless. We ran up to them. We stood there,
huddled together, Gwendal supporting Yanig under one arm. Everyone was crying and apologizing at the same time.

B
Y AUGUST, I
was so exhausted I could barely stand up. France had beaten me into submission. I was crippled. Literally. I had herniated
a disk dragging a suitcase home from the airport, a suitcase full of shoes. Oh, the cruel irony of the gods.

Desperate times call for desperate measures. Saturday night I convinced Gwendal to stay in and try comfort food American style.
There’s nothing like physical pain and mental distress to send you running back into the arms of your childhood. I found myself
longing for a can of Pillsbury vanilla frosting and a spoon. I settled for Chinese food out of the container and a DVD of
Grease
.

Chinese food quickly turned into Thai-Laotian. Takeout here comes in aluminum containers with cardboard tops, so it doesn’t
quite match those white paper boxes with the red Chinese characters on the side; there is no satisfying scrape as you hunt
with your chopsticks for the last lo mein noodle at the bottom. We opened the sofa bed in the living room, and I changed into
my mother’s genuine 1973 blue velveteen lounge pajamas with the satin ties.

Gwendal was thrilled with the film, and even watched the bonus features. (Did you know that they had to
sew
Olivia Newton John into those black pants for the finale?) But he couldn’t get into the idea of eating out of a box. He just
looked awkward, perched on the edge of the bed, balancing a pad thai on his knee. He kept looking around with a forced smile,
eager to humor me, to participate in my little game, but clearly wishing for a plate, a table, and a napkin. For the French,
food is a meal, and a meal is meant to be consumed in a civilized manner—not walking, not standing, not driving, and not hunched
over a plastic container on the sofa.

We would have to agree to disagree. I felt better than I had in months. Greased out and sated, I threw my feet over the arm
of the couch, ready to doze off. It was almost perfect.

My kingdom for a Twizzler.