Paris in Love (46 page)

Today we ran into Anna’s friend Nicole’s mother, who had her gorgeous two-month-old baby with her. Anna and I hung over the pram while the baby grinned, wide-eyed and toothless, and told us emphatically (in baby language) all about her life. I couldn’t help thinking about baby Barbara, in
Mary Poppins
, who promises the sparrow that she will never forget the language of sparrows and trees. And when she forgets, he cries.

This afternoon we wandered around the Clignancourt flea market admiring (but not buying) vintage Chanel, until our six-year-old
visitor, Phoebe, saw a battered purple straw hat. After some fierce bargaining, she pranced happily away. And we all suddenly realized that in her chic boater, Phoebe now looked like a French kid, slumming among Americans.

Anna had a tough time at school today with Beatrice’s gang of mean girls, who took possession of the mats during gymnastics class and demanded a password (which, of course, they wouldn’t share). On the way home we talked about friends and how complicated they are, and then on the Métro Anna grinned and said, “I have a friend,” holding up the fifth Harry Potter book. I remember those days very well. I had friends too: Anne of Green Gables, Dorothy Gale and Toto, Nancy Drew.

Today we all went to the marionette theater in the Jardin du Luxembourg. The first four rows are reserved for children, so that their favorite puppet, Guignol, can ask their advice. In this particular production, duffle-headed Guignol was the servant to a bewigged aristocrat. “What’s the matter,
les enfants
? What’s happening?” he would ask. They all shrieked back, warning him of the crocodile sticking its head out of his soup pot. We were seated beside a family with a small, bespectacled girl, who called out advice to Guignol in a piping voice—until a fuzzy spider descended over Guignol’s bed and she began screaming instructions. At intermission, she turned to our guests from California and quite politely asked what they thought of the play. They explained (through Alessandro) that they didn’t speak French. She thought about that for a moment and then asked: “Why not?”

A French friend steered us to a wonderful food fact: the grocery stores carry fresh gazpacho, right next to the milk. If you’re going to be in Paris and fancy a picnic, buy a baguette, cheese, and a carton of gazpacho. You can drink it straight from plastic cups, and even in such unrefined containers, it will give your picnic a gourmet flair.

Today we took our guests back to the Jardin du Luxembourg, planning to rent a toy sailboat for Phoebe and perhaps one for Anna. But they turned out to be enticing, and we ended up with four: a pirate ship with the skull and crossbones for Luca, a sail flaunting a pink fish for Anna, a Mary Poppins boat for Phoebe. And the fourth? Phoebe’s dad, who’s forty-eight, reverted to his eight-year-old self and ran around the pond with a long wooden stick, poking his boat to make it go faster. The garden was packed with all the sorts of people you’d expect to find in a city park on a sunny day, yet no one sat on the grass. No one stripped naked, or played loud music, or tried to entice others to lose their money. We went to lunch in the park’s café, drank white wine in the sunshine, and talked about how the French often appear to be the happiest people on earth, though I have no idea whether they actually are.

Luca returned from school with a funny grin … sex ed day, French-style! He’d been sent home with an informative cartoon booklet. Anna was fascinated by a page entitled “It’s All Normal,” which showed a string of girls in an array of shapes and sizes.
“Those look like your breasts, Mama. Perhaps I’ll have those. But that girl there, she has Grandma’s breasts—see how much bigger they are? Maybe I’ll have those!” It was window shopping for the prepubescent.

When one is stuck with orange hair, thanks to a bad hairdresser, the only way to surmount the crisis is with aggressive style. I have resorted to a rather severe Victor/Victoria look. Yesterday I bought a pair of elegant, narrow eyeglasses, and then impulsively got a pair of Fendi sunglasses as well. I apparently look like a local; on the walk home I was asked for directions three times. None of which I could answer, alas.

Last night Alessandro and I ambled toward Montmartre, finding ourselves in a street specializing in two things: guitar shops and strip clubs. As the guitar shops seemed to be frequented by fervent, young would-be musicians, financial considerations suggest that the clientele of the two rarely overlap. One of the strip clubs, called Venus, was followed quickly by another called Eve. We peeked through the glass door of yet a third all-but-empty club and saw a woman waiting by the bar for customers. She wore a platinum wig so straight and smooth that it looked like an old-fashioned, tinted photograph of Niagara Falls.