Paris in Love (55 page)

I was crossing my favorite bridge, Pont Alexandre III, this morning, and paused to say hello to the statue of the laughing mer-boy. Two tourists passed me, both holding small video recorders in front of their faces. They turned the cameras this way and that, desperate to record everything, as if documentation was somehow meaningful in itself. I want to
experience
where I am and what I’m seeing, not view it only through the eye of a camera, for canned viewing later.

Florent came to dinner again and told me that Pauline is extremely beautiful, very intelligent, and fascinating to talk to. She’s twenty-six, which doesn’t sound too young to me for a long-term relationship. Florent certainly looks much younger than forty-one; I originally assumed he was around thirty. He has such a delightful, shy French charm. I wish he would immigrate
to the United States and marry one of my friends. We could serve lemon tarts at the wedding.

On our evening walks, Alessandro and I generally wander down my favorite shopping street, rue des Martyrs, passing Autour du Saumon—a shop that sells nothing but salmon. Yesterday we went in and had a serious conversation about six or seven types of smoked salmon before selecting one. We gobbled it up (delicious!), but I have never met a smoked salmon I didn’t like, so perhaps all that deliberative, oh-so-French decision making was wasted on us.

The end of the school year is here, and I gather that Florent’s middle school colleagues will have a long meeting and then, as per local custom, a much longer dinner, before they all disperse for the holidays. Alessandro doled out more Italian romantic advice, emphasizing direct physical action. Florent and his beloved have done nothing but talk for hours every time they meet; Alessandro thinks it’s time to move to kissing. “Love is not made of words,” he told me. A very male point of view.

It is Anna’s last day of school, and I will walk home, down rue des Invalides, over Pont Alexandre III, say goodbye to the laughing mer-boy and Mr. Churchill, at least for now, walk through the lovely park by Concorde … Sweet “last times” pile up in my mind: the last time I hugged my mother, the last time I dried Luca off after a bath (now he towers over me), the last time I
read aloud
Goodnight Moon
 … I am still reading aloud to Anna, because I can’t bear to think of the last book.

The final school assembly, held before all parents, was a harrowing occasion. Paralyzed by nerves, Anna got stuck halfway through reading her story aloud and burst into tears. Domitilla jumped up to give her a long hug and then, as if tears were catching, burst into inconsolable tears herself because Anna was leaving Paris. How things have changed since last fall, when Domitilla was Enemy Number One!

Last night a little half block near us held a street party, with a band specializing in American hits from the seventies and eighties. We kept our bedroom windows open, the better to enjoy the free concert. One song that will forever remain in my memory is their rendition, with strong French accents, of “Play that funky music, white boy. Wew—hewwww!” We were hysterical with laughter. At some point, Luca burst into the room howling: “Listen! They’re trying the White Stripes now!”

Viviane invited us over for dinner last night. The meal began with her rendition of an appetizer she’d recently eaten at a three-star Michelin restaurant (to die for) and ended with a cake that she bought from “the best patisserie in Paris”—Dalloyau on boulevard Beaumarchais. The inside was in various layers: a tart raspberry mousse, topped with a delicate lemon layer, surrounded by pistachio sponge cake with a gorgeous stenciled pattern in raspberry sugar. The top was glossy with a pale lemon
sheen and held a delicate arrangement of berries. The next day we marched to that patisserie, bought the same cake, and took it home to devour.

The one thing that has cast a pall on my happiness here has been my hair; it’s truly been the Year of Bad Hair. First I was given bright gold highlights, then a young lady troweled on platinum blond dye. The disapproving hairdresser who followed that disaster managed to create one of her own, turning me a garish orange with vegetable dye. Now that dye has faded, except near the scalp, where I am still carroty. Desperate searching online has revealed an English-speaking salon, StylePixie. Their website announces, “For hair emergencies please call the salon.” I called the salon.

Musée Carnavalet is the museum of the history of the city of Paris, and that means everything plus the kitchen sink is thrown into its nearly one hundred rooms. They are mostly historically authentic rooms, removed from their original sites and reinstalled here: Louis XVI’s
salon bleu
, Marie Antoinette’s drawing room, Marcel Proust’s bedroom. Given the choice, I have to admit, I’d choose gawking at famous people’s bedrooms over great art every time (the sign of a superficial mind, obviously).