Paris in Love (45 page)

I have a lot to do. Revisions for an academic article are due back at the end of this month. I have a column due to the Barnes & Noble Review website addressing five novels. I’ve promised my editor the first hundred pages of my “Beauty and the Beast” romance, and told my university that I would finish my academic book by June. So I spent the day working on a novella for which I have no contract, no publisher, and no deadline. Alessandro rolled his eyes.

The Petit Palais is offering an Yves Saint Laurent retrospective, so my cousin Laura and I waited in line to see it. I had no idea that YSL popularized the pantsuit, having decided that women ought to stand shoulder to shoulder with men in the boardroom. Or that said pantsuit (perkily pinstriped and worn with a tie) created such a furor. Apparently a socialite, barred entry to a restaurant in New York City because she was in pants, stripped off the trousers and sauntered in wearing only the jacket.

I am particularly fascinated by the Yves Saint Laurent collections in which he appropriated motifs from art. He created a dress using Mondrian’s boxy color squares, and a Van Gogh “irises” jacket that must have required weeks and weeks of embroidering beads, sequins, and tiny ribbons to re-create the painting. Laura and I agreed that it was exquisite, though we weren’t sure on what occasion one would wear it. “It’s my birthday, and I’m wearing a Van Gogh”?

My favorite part of the Yves Saint Laurent exhibition was a towering wall displaying each and every tuxedo he designed in his long career. He was twenty-two when he presented his first collection, in 1958, and it was interesting to see the fifties evolve to the hipster sixties, shoulder pads swell for the eighties, slinky silk appearing in the nineties. Even better: the wall sign informing us that the tuxedos were meant to be “worn with bear skin.” I always thought fur beat naked flesh.

Alessandro reported today that Florent is much more in love with his colleague Pauline than he ever was with the Italian waitress. “After all, they can talk to each other,” he said. “That’s important, don’t you think?” It’s generally agreed that communication is an essential part of a relationship, yes.

A string of pet shops occupies a couple of blocks along the Seine. Oddly enough, we have visited every shop on two occasions, and haven’t seen a single poodle. As in Italy, chipmunks are popular pets. They look (to me) quite dismal, but perhaps Brazilians seeing
parrots in cages rather than flashing through trees feel the same.

Yesterday Anna burst into tears at bedtime, saying she had no friends, no one laughed at her jokes, and that she was failing school (her report card indicates otherwise). I pulled out a Gryffindor key chain I had been saving for just such an emergency, and she cheered up while telling me why she was definitely a Gryffindor and not a Slytherin.

In the apartment above us, workers are prying up the original 1760s floorboards only to replace the same boards in such a way that they won’t squeak. It was a bad day for us when each board shrieked from its place. But in quieter moments, I hear workmen singing, sometimes Portuguese love songs and sometimes the Muslim call to prayer.

Paris is in bloom! Early this morning I walked down boulevard des Invalides. Flowering trees from the Invalides park were hanging over railings, first one with ruby red buds, and then another with fluffy pale pink blossoms, touched with white, as if sprinkled with icing sugar.

This morning as we entered church, a worthy Frenchman with a huge gray mustache looked meaningfully at Luca’s uncombed and wildly curly hair. Once inside, I realized that no other parent had managed to corral anyone over eight, and I couldn’t help
thinking that the mustachioed gentleman should come over one Sunday early and try to pry a fifteen-year-old out of bed. I have given up elegance in exchange for attendance.

We have friends visiting from Los Angeles, two artists and their six-year-old daughter, Phoebe. Proud that we could boast near-California-like sunshine on Sunday, we wandered about the markets, and Phoebe bought a bag of French guinea pig food to bring home to her classroom pet, Roxie. Showing true Parisian flair, it’s colored like the rainbow. We had a great time at the bird market on Île-de-la-Cité talking to wildly intelligent parrots, until disaster: a box of baby bunnies, tiny bundles of soft fur with sweet floppy ears and pink noses. Phoebe and Anna were both overwhelmed by desire. I explained that, without passports, these bunnies couldn’t become U.S. citizens. Showing an early aptitude for a life of crime, Anna pointed out she could hide one in her pocket. “Or my pants,” she added.