Paris in Love (28 page)

Finally, finally,
finally
, I saw on Alessandro’s face the expression that should have been there all along: pure horror. “Did they give that to you because you write romance?” he whispered. I had no idea. In fact, I can’t even remember what came next. Maybe the whole room went home with Norwegian handbags; maybe the reunion committee had stayed up all night staple-gunning their grandfathers’ undershorts to bits of wood. Back in the day, I had known instinctively that I was never going to fit in—and I’d blamed my mother and those dining-room-curtain frocks. But in light of my Norwegian handbag, I am inclined to forgive her.

She wanted us to be ladies, to leave Madison, and to raise our children in a place where no one had heard of a Norwegian handbag. These days, I own a magenta scarf and high-heeled black boots. I live on the other side of the ocean from Minnesota. I survived the year of wearing the dining room curtain, and lived to tell the tale.

The women below my study window had stopped pecking at each other and had gone their separate ways. And the snow was still falling, in that directed, intense way that snow falls in Minnesota and, apparently, in Paris as well.

Too much chocolate and crusty bread.… I have determined that I should walk up the stairs to our apartment on the fourth floor once a day. With only one apartment per floor, this sort of invasion is new to the little dog who lives below us. He starts growling when my foot touches the first stair; he’s barking by the second level; he’s a lunatic by the third. As I open my door, I’m panting heavily, and I imagine that he is too, exhausted by the demented Paul Revere act that no one hears but the two of us.

Snow on the dark gray tiles opposite my study window looks like white fur clinging to the roof, as if the house were growing a protective coat against the freezing air. But I am learning Paris now: by afternoon a chilly sun will emerge. The snow-fur will molt, and water will rush into drains under the street.

Putting away groceries as I snapped out domestic commands, I dislodged the ice tray, and ice cubes skittered all over the floor. Alessandro bent to pick them up, but a glitch in the space-time continuum intervened and he was thrown back to age nine. I found myself trying to fight off an impudent boy sticking ice down my neck.

This morning I walked down rue de Cléry, where little storefronts hold nothing but rolls of fabric, built into log-cabin-type
castles. As I walked on, the stores grew more stylish, and the fabric changed from bright polyesters to creamy linens and exquisite silks. No longer piled up like logs, these rolls stand on their ends, a drape of upholstery fabric pulled to the side to display fiery red flowers, next to a roll of dusky heather tweed fit for a Scottish lord striding the moors.

On the shabbier end of rue de Cléry: a lace shop with thousands of samples spilling from cabinets lining its narrow walls. Close to the door are laces in persimmon and saffron, embedded with tiny mirrors. Stuffed alongside are spools of black lace sewn with teardrop pearls, copper ruffles, and (presumably) fake ermine trim, garish but gay.

A full renovation has begun in the apartment above us. In the kitchen we have what’s called in the trade a “coolie lampshade,” shaped like a very broad cone. We’ve just discovered water flowing steadily down the cord and the shade, organizing itself into drops around the edge of the shade, then falling in straight lines like tinsel. Alessandro ran upstairs and returned with the head workman. He walked into the kitchen, took stock of the situation, and said, “Don’t use that light—it might not work.”

Can there be a crueler fate than the need to diet in Paris? I’m not saying that I regret all that crème fraîche, because I don’t. But unless I buy a whole new wardrobe, I must exercise restraint. I gather French women drink a lot of leek soup (not the creamy
kind) when they have to reduce. I simply write down everything I eat. In short: I thin by shame, rather than by leek broth.

The sky is a cloudless bright blue, and yet somehow little snowflakes are drifting down outside my window. They float sideways, looking fluffy and indecisive, as if they belong in another part of the world and are falling here by accident.

Anna revealed, five minutes before bedtime, that last week her music teacher had yelled at her until she promised to practice her recorder. “But I forgot,” she said, shrugging. “Now he’s going to yell at me again.” “Where’s the recorder?” I demanded. “You can practice right now!”
“Mammma,”
she said with a roll of her eyes, “it’s in my boot, at school, where it always is. If I brought it home, I might lose it.” Such impeccable logic.