Paris in Love (26 page)

In the window of Emanuel Ungaro, a mannequin stands with her back to us, gesturing toward an invisible companion. She wears reckless hot pink, a long swath of silk that leaves most of her back bare. Rather than overtly selling the gown, the display subtly reminds us that we stand in the dark with chilly noses and snowy feet, and somewhere … where
she
lives … the very air breathes luxury.

Anna in the bath, arguing over her bedtime. “Why,” she wants to know, “can Luca stay up until ten o’clock and I can’t?” “Because he’s fifteen,” say I, “and when he was eleven, he had to go to bed at eight o’clock, too.” “How do you know?” she demands. “Because I’m the mother of both of you!” “You might not be,” she points out. “You might be only a mother in disguise.”

Paris is so cold that I keep going into the kitchen and opening up the little furnace, as much to encourage the poor creature as to warm my hands. On the Métro this morning, I noticed that women are adapting by adding an extra scarf. One woman wore silk embroidered in small flowers next to her face, and a ruby cable-knit scarf, almost a shawl, wrapped around her shoulders.

Anna owns a hotly prized possession: a tiny pink eraser in the shape of a hamster, given to her by cousins in Michigan. “So you see,” Anna explained, “everyone loves it because Paris doesn’t have anything like
this
.” Oh, those deprived Parisians. Apparently of all the kids, Domitilla loves it most. “She said, ‘I love it, I love it, I adore it, please can I play with it?’ ” Anna reported.
“And?”
I prompted, hopefully. Anna gave me a scornful look.

Last night we had a dinner party and invited Alessandro’s conversation partner Florent, so I finally got to meet him. He is absolutely lovely—tall, lean, very handsome, and very, very French. He has brown hair and beautiful green eyes. What’s more, he teaches language and literature to middle school students and actually
likes
adolescents. I think he is perfect and
could match him with any number of single friends at home. But Alessandro says that his heart belongs to the Italian waitress.

Given my New Year’s resolution, which was to acquire a Parisian level of elegance pretty darn quick, I thought it behooved me to go shopping. Today is the start of biannual sales in shops throughout Paris. The French government allows only two sale events a year, regulating markdowns in department stores as well as in, for example, the fashionable (and expensive) shops on rue du Faubourg-Saint-Honoré. Have you seen the Filene’s Basement wedding-dress event on television? Add the security guards from Walmart’s “Black Friday” sales, keeping back the hordes so that innocent salespeople aren’t literally trampled to death. I aged five years in Galeries Lafayette, so I’m not sure my new black boots will get much use.

On the way to the Marché Saint-Quentin, we pass a small shop with crates of different oyster varieties arranged in the window. Three gnarled gentlemen stand behind a counter; they wear heavy gloves and crack open oysters. It takes surprising physical strength: they wrench the wrinkled, defensive shells open and flip them onto platters, joking among themselves the whole time.

We must return the chic little raincoat that cannot be fastened around Milo’s rotund middle, but meanwhile Anna has been playing with it. She has it bunched over her head and belted
under her chin. She says it’s a welding helmet and that she’s “Anna, Secret Agent Man.” I asked her what the Secret Agent Man was doing, and she said she was “seeking out the awesomeness”: that is to say, trying to break into Luca’s bedroom, strictly off-limits to younger sisters.

For Christmas, my stepmother sent Anna a gorgeous hat: hand-knitted in Minnesota, of nubbly purple wool trimmed with wooden beads. On top is a small tassel with a bead at the end. It’s an adorable creation that reminds me of hats worn by Norwegian elves in children’s picture books. I find it very moving, and a bit homesick-making, to look down in a crowded Métro station and see this scrap of Minnesota handiwork bobbing its way through Paris.

We took Milo with us to the fancy dog apparel store in order to guarantee a coat that fit. Alas, we had to take an aesthetic step down from purple trim: the sole coat that fits our obese dog is camouflage green, seemingly designed for a dog being kitted out for a paramilitary operation. Marina was greatly taken by bright pink dog booties. Milo doesn’t care for his new jacket, and I hate to think about his reaction to those boots.