We'll Always Have Paris (6 page)

Katie squealed with delight, “We have a view of Notre Dame!”

I, on the other hand, just smelled hot garbage. “Don’t touch a thing!” I warned Katie.

“Isn’t this the best, Mommy?”

After fifteen minutes, I decided it was time to return to our hotel room.

I tried to wake Katie, but after a full day, she was down for the count. “Katie, wake up,” I said in full volume. “Katie, honey, you need to get up.”

Who was this alien I had produced? Like her father, she could easily drift off to sleep and slumber through the night. Didn’t they count worries? Didn’t they imagine their fondest dreams coming true? Weren’t they afraid that if they lost control, something terrible might happen?

***

For as long as I can remember, it’s taken me at least an hour to fall asleep, although I never realized this was unusual until my first year at sleep-away summer camp. As I lay in my bed at six years old, I heard my cabin mates’ breathing change as they fell asleep. By the second week, I could identify the sound of each friend drifting off. There went Vickie. Off went Kim. Debbie and I were always last, but she would still drop off a good half hour before I even felt drowsy. None of these girls seemed to be creatively visualizing their goals. My mother insisted on this practice long before the first book by Shakti Gawain showed up in our apartment. In the early seventies, she hung glass beaded curtains and displayed framed pictures of Indian gurus. My mother said that if, right before falling asleep, I could see a clear image of my heart’s desire, it would manifest by spiritual magic. This was a comforting thought for my mother, but for me it was the beginning of lifelong sleep problems.

It was more than creative visualization that kept me up nights, though. I saw newspaper headlines that made me painfully aware of the myriad of possible disasters that could happen. There was no more vulnerable place to be than unconscious in a bed. I never feared that bad people would confront me when I was selling teacups alone on the sidewalk, but asleep I was easy prey.

Even the Angel of Death knew sleep was a good time for a hit. My Catholic grandmother, Aggie, made me say prayers before sleep. To me, the rote lines were no more meaningful than a game of Pat-a-Cake, but I stopped in my tracks the first time I really heard the line “If I die before I wake.” I looked at my grandmother, who was kneeling at the other end of her bed we were about to share. An enormous crucifix hung from the otherwise stark wall behind her. “I could
die
before I wake?” I asked her.

“If that’s God’s plan.”

“I don’t like that plan,” I protested. “I’m six, why would God plan for me to die?” Grandma Aggie shushed me and kept up her rapid murmur of prayer. “I think I want to be Jewish like Daddy’s side of the family. I’ve never heard of their God letting a kid die.”

My grandmother opened a single eye. “I had you baptized when you were a baby, you’re Catholic, there’s no undoing it. Your parents don’t know about it and we’re going to keep it that way. But just so you know, you’re Catholic so you’d better say your prayers.”

“I don’t want to be Catholic!” I protested. “I don’t like Catholic God. He has plans where children die.” I looked at the crucifix behind her and remembered my grandmother explaining that Jesus was the son of God. And there
he
was, hanging from a cross with nails in his hands and feet. Catholic God meant business.

“Mommy said I could choose my religion, and I’m going to be Jewish. Their God seems nicer.”

“Next time you’re at your Aunt Bernice’s Passover Seder, pay attention to the part where God sends an angel to kill all the Egyptian babies. God has his reasons for killing children, but he doesn’t do it very often. Besides, you’re baptized, Jennifer, so there’s nothing you can do about it.” She smiled gently and began, “Our Father, who art in heaven.” After a few minutes of prayer, Grandma Aggie crawled into bed and drifted to sleep effortlessly.

I watched my grandmother in bed that night, wondering how she could just surrender to slumber, especially knowing about God’s sneaky plans for killing us in our sleep. I wondered the same thing about the girls at camp.

Often I’d drift into a state of semi-conscious light sleep where I wasn’t quite sure if I was awake or dreaming. Sometimes in the morning at Camp St. Regis, I’d share stories with my cabin mates. “I had the weirdest dream last night,” I began. “Our counselors had boys visit in the middle of the night and they were giggling and smoking and—” I was quickly interrupted by our head counselor, Mary, who told me that my dream was not polite breakfast conversation.

I was also struggling to fall asleep one night in summer camp when I heard my father’s voice burst through the door. “Is she okay? Is Jennifer in the hospital?” he asked, panicked. This was an impossible scenario, though, because my father had been in London since April.

“Hospital? Why would Jennie be in the hospital?” Mary asked.

Then my eyes popped open.
Oh no. He didn’t fly back from England because of my letter, did he?

About ten days earlier, I had been dealt the biggest blow in all of my six years. The camp was putting on a production of
The
Wizard
of
Oz
and there was no doubt in my mind that I would be cast as the Wicked Witch of the West. No one could cackle like me. I got daily requests from other campers—and even counselors—to cackle like a witch. As a bonus, I curled my hands menacingly, promising that I’d get that Dorothy and her mangy little dog. Stella Adler herself would have said I was fully committed to the role. Everyone assumed I would play the witch, no one more than I, who secretly knew I held superpowers like Samantha on
Bewitched
.

When the cast list was posted, I was stunned. I was to play the Mayor of Munchkinland? How could this be? The director explained that fourteen-year-old Dorothy was five feet five inches tall. How would the audience believe that she was frightened by four-foot me?

Was this guy out of his mind? Dorothy and the witch didn’t do hand-to-hand combat. The witch had magical powers and cast spells. She rode a flying broom while Dorothy had to skip down a yellow brick road. The witch had monkeys to do her bidding. She could be two feet tall and scary as shit. Just look at trolls. Or leprechauns. I explained this to the director, but he remained unmoved. He said it was an honor to be the Mayor of Munchkinland because it meant the other Munchkins had elected me. I stormed out and launched the greatest political campaign of my life. Within hours, I had allies who were willing to negotiate on my behalf. Even the cast Wicked Witch signed my petition. Since it was letter-writing day, I decided to tell my father about what had just happened and how I was starting a hunger strike until this situation was remedied. No justice, no peas.

I dropped my letter in the green wooden mailbox outside the mess hall and proceeded in for dinner where macaroni and cheese was being served. My hunger strike was over.

The next day, the director said he’d given the matter more thought and written a new part called the Little Witch. I was to play the Wicked Witch of the West’s younger cousin who was visiting Oz from down south. “Can you do a southern accent?” he asked.

“Why goodness gracious, yes,” I said, delighted. “Do I get to cackle?”

“Yes,” he replied.

The next week, all was forgiven. I was even helping paint sets, trying to prove to the director that I was a team player.

I still had smatterings of yellow brick road on my fingers the night I heard my father’s voice in Cabin One. “Why would Jennie be in the hospital?” the counselor asked. I closed my eyes tight, wishing I were asleep like the rest of my friends.
Holy
crap, he flew back from England over this
. Thankfully my father sounded relieved when he heard the story. I came out to the counselor’s room in my Holly Hobby nightgown and stared at my dad, whom I hadn’t seen in four months. Beside him were two grocery bags filled with my favorites, things my mother would never buy, like Cap’n Crunch, Hershey Bars, and Tang.

“That was a hell of a hunger strike, Gandhi,” he said with a laugh.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“It was time for me to come home, I guess,” he said.

***

Early the following morning, Quasimodo rang the bells of Notre Dame, jarring Katie and me from our beds—or in Katie’s case, her door. Her face was covered with dirt. Next to me were three fresh rodent turds. We couldn’t get out fast enough.

We raced through the narrow, cobblestone streets of the Latin Quarter. Restaurant staff swept broken white plates and poured buckets of water on the streets to rinse away the sins of the past evening’s festivities. “Can we get some chocolate bread?” Katie asked as we passed a bakery with a yellow awning.

“Yes, yes, of course,” I said, stopping. This wasn’t a Bruce Willis action flick where we had to escape from the filthy bookstore. We just had to close the door behind us and wipe the soot off Katie’s cheek. I ordered a cup of coffee and stopped for a moment to see a truly amazing sight: a tourist area absolutely barren. This only happens before seven in the morning. Remembering Bruno’s advice about enjoying life, we lingered and absorbed the scene across the street. Though I could not understand the words, a younger waiter was clearly sharing his exploits with the restaurant owner, who seemed proud of his protégé Lothario. Exhausted, they finally sat at a table outside and lit cigarettes.

When Katie and I arrived at our hotel at seven-thirty, our hotel concierge couldn’t help tease. “
Bonjour, madame et mademoiselle
,” he lilted, giving us the raised-eyebrow once-over. It was then I caught my first glance of myself in the hotel lobby mirror. I looked like an ad for the morning-after pill.

“I realize how this seems,” I said sheepishly.

He grinned and told me I owed him no explanations. I half expected him to wink and tell me that what happens in Paris stays in Paris.

***

On our final day in Paris, I promised Katie that we would go to the top of the Eiffel Tower no matter how long the line was. If it was raining, so be it. Nothing was going to stop us.

“We’re climbing to the top, right?” Katie asked, craning her neck to see the tip.

“Of course. First we take an elevator up and then we climb the last few flights to get to the very top.”

Katie shook her head with disapproval. “No, we need to climb all the way.”

“From the ground?” I gasped.

Noting my reluctance, Katie assured me, “It’s like a French StairMaster. You can do it.”

“How many flights is that thing?” I asked, now as disgusted with the landmark as any self-respecting Parisian.

Katie shrugged, then pointed to it. “It’s
that
many flights.”

Great. Sometimes Katie appears to be the Dalai Lama in pigtails and it doesn’t always work out so well for me.

I kept up with Katie’s bouncy pace to the first platform. I was breathless and sweaty when we arrived at step 347, but I was there, if not enjoying life, then at least surviving. I suggested we stop and look at the panoramic view of Paris, as the details would start to fade as we reached the top. We looked at the rows of white buildings ornately adorned with arches, vaults, domes, and rococo. The city was an architectural pastry shop. Rows of sugary white apartment buildings lined the streets adorned with what looked like marzipan gargoyles. Rooftops were frosted with copper; red blossoms spilled from window boxes like sprinkles.

We looked down to see a soccer match being played in the field beside the Seine River. An expanse of lawn and neat green rows of hedges opened to a circular path then continued into a tree-lined corridor to the military academy, a wedding cake of a building.

As we climbed to the next platform, hundreds of other tourists passed, trotting in couples and packs. Every nation on earth was represented on the stairwell of the Eiffel Tower. In our climb of a thousand stairs, we crossed paths with a tall German family with wheat-colored hair and Birkenstock sandals. The parents seemed to be scolding their three boys to stop running so fast. An orderly row of Asian women ascended. A Middle Eastern couple called their children’s names as they zoomed past us, the youngest boy in surfing shorts. It was like the Security Council on casual Friday.

When we reached the top, my heart was racing from the workout. Katie ran to the edge and pressed her face through the guardrail like a dog on a car ride. She was lost in the moment with her eyes half-closed.

I remembered looking out from the top of the Twin Towers with my best friend Rachel and longed for the days when I had no checklists and when building security was loose. Bruno’s advice snapped me back to reality. Here I was in Paris with my eight-year-old daughter, and it was wonderful. Someday I would be nostalgic about this, so I’d better have the good sense to enjoy the present.

“Come look,” Katie urged.

I joined her at the rail and looked down at the neoclassic Arc de Triomphe and the rambling Champs-Élysées. In the distance, we saw the white-domed Sacré-Coeur perched on a hill. It was like a queen waving at us from afar, aloof yet so beautiful you could not help but fall in love.

Katie smiled widely as the Paris breeze blew her hair back.

“Are you cold?” I asked. “Do you need your jacket?”

She didn’t answer, simply grinning widely and shaking her head. “Wow,” she said.

“I know, isn’t it stunning?”

“I get it now, Mommy.”

I knit my brows, seeking explanation.

“I get it,” Katie said. “I get Paris.”

Before Katie and I left for Europe, a neighborhood parent told me that when traveling from Paris to London, we simply
must
go first class on the train that connects both cities. I’ve always hated the class system, not only because it is elitist, but also because I’ve never been quite sure where I fit. My mother had upper-deck aspirations while my father was firmly rooted in steerage.

When I was in first grade, my mother brought home a new boyfriend and announced we were all going to dinner together. She’d been on dates but until then had never included me, so I knew she was serious about this new man.

Back then, my mother was working as a secretary at the
New
York
Times
and sported a distinctly Mary Tyler Moore look. Her hair was silky brown with auburn highlights and flipped just above her shoulder. But unlike Mary with her one blue beret, my mother began a collection of elegant hats that belied our economic reality. Her new boyfriend seemed like something out of a movie, not because he was particularly handsome, but I’d never seen a man wearing a suit and tie when it wasn’t a special occasion. The men in our family wore ties for weddings, christenings, and Passover Seders, but never for Thursday dinner at an Italian restaurant. Joseph was a sweet guy who was clearly smitten with my mother. That I came with the package was neither an asset nor a deterrent to him.

Later that week, at the end of our Sunday visit, my father told me he was craving spaghetti, so I excitedly shared that I had discovered a great new place. “Mommy’s new boyfriend took us there. It’s delicious!” I reported. I told him about the variety of shapes of pasta and seven different sausages the restaurant offered. I recalled the mind-blowing sauces that were a blend of several different cheeses. Our waiter proudly rattled off their names, but all I could retain at that age was the word “cheese.”

“Carol’s got a boyfriend?” my father asked. “Nice guy?”

Deciding to accentuate the groovy, I omitted the part about Joseph wearing a tie and told my father that my mother’s new boyfriend had a car with a peace sign on it. “Doesn’t sound like the kind of guy Princess Ragu would want, but good for her if she’s happy.”

When my father and I walked into the restaurant I’d been to a few nights earlier, we were engulfed in red-and-gold wallpaper. The back wall was covered entirely with gold-flecked mirror tiles, and a large fountain fashioned after
The
Birth
of
Venus
marked the center of the dining room.

The host was pleasant enough, but there was none of the fanfare I had received a few nights earlier. There were no effusive handshakes and deferential greetings for my father. Another man welcomed us with stoic tolerance and showed us to a table. My father tentatively sank into a plush velvet chair as a busboy rushed to fill our glasses with icy water and placed a basket of warm bread on the table. My father must have jolted when he opened the menu, because I heard the wood sole of his clog hit the metal leg of the table.

“Don’t touch a thing,” he said.

“Why?” I laughed, reaching for the warm cloth napkin draped over the bread.

He reached across the table and grabbed my hand. “I’m not kidding, don’t put your hands on anything. Not the bread, not the water, nothing.”

“How come?”

“Listen to me, we need to get out of here,” he whispered like my partner in crime. “I know a better place for spaghetti. I want to take you there instead.”

“But we’re already here.”

“When I count to three, we’re going to get up and leave, okay?” My father’s eyes darted around the restaurant. “Okay, three.”

As we drove across the Brooklyn Bridge, my father lit a cigarette and inquired about Joseph. “Where exactly is the peace sign on his car?”

“On the hood,” I told him. “It’s shiny silver and sticks up right on the front, like he’s saying ‘peace, everybody.’”

“He’s not saying
peace
, Jennifer, he’s saying
Mercedes
Benz
.”

“Why would he say
Mercedes
Benz
?”

My father didn’t answer. A half hour later, we were eating spaghetti in a restaurant in a neighborhood that later served as the setting for
Saturday
Night
Fever
. Girls walked down the wide boulevard wearing satin roller-skating jackets and full palettes of eye shadow. The restaurant my father chose had a cutesy name, like Tony’s Macaroni. Though it was packed, a waitress noticed my father immediately and greeted him with a hearty “Ay!” She teetered over in patent leather heels and stamped his cheek with lipstick. Tables with red-and-white gingham cloth and wine bottle vases covered the sloped floor. When the kitchen doors swung open, we could hear cooks angrily shouting in Italian at each other.

“Listen, Jennifer, I can’t take you to high-class places like your mother’s new boyfriend,” my father explained as he tucked a white napkin into the collar of his T-shirt. “See this?” My father pointed to the right column of the menu. “These are called prices. If you eat at a restaurant with your mother and Richie Rich and the main dishes cost more than three dollars, don’t take me there. Those places aren’t for guys like me.”

Since then, I’ve always turned up my nose at class designations, especially in travel where they blatantly, unapologetically separate customers into first class, business, and peasant. When boarding airplanes, I’d purposefully avoid eye contact as I walked past the passengers already comfortably seated in the front. Sometimes I would put on a haughty air, as if I pitied them in their wide seats with wine and magazines while I got to keep it real in coach. No one ever noticed my preemptive snub, but it gave me some satisfaction knowing that if these strangers deigned to glance my way, they wouldn’t see a look of envy.

When my friend in San Diego suggested buying first-class tickets on the train, I told her Katie and I would be fine in coach.

“Are you crazy?” she asked. “It’s summer; you might not even get to sit down in second class. First class is air-conditioned. You’ll get a guaranteed seat and a lovely meal. For God’s sake, it’s not much more.” Noting my hesitation, she added, “Do you really want Katie sitting on the floor in a ninety-degree compartment? It’s like twenty bucks more, for God’s sake. Live a little.”

We couldn’t afford a five-star hotel, but I could swing a few extra euros for a better train seat, so I took my friend’s advice and upgraded. The thought of what just one deodorant-free man could do to a train compartment pushed me over the edge. Plus, it wasn’t as though my father ever held poverty as some great virtue; he was just broke. Whenever the finer things in life were offered to him, he gladly accepted—and stuffed a little extra in his pockets for later.

Still, standing on the first-class platform to board the train, I felt sheepish and apologetic, as Katie and I stood separate from the rest. Before I could wring my hands over this, Katie shrieked. She had spotted a man dressed as a wizard selling the latest Harry Potter book in English, which had been released just ten hours earlier. “I thought I would have to wait until London to buy it,” Katie said, walking toward the wizard as if pulled by magnetic force. She reached into her pocket and began unfolding her slim stash of bills for the wizard.

“Didn’t you preorder the book?” I asked.

“Yeah,” Katie replied, wondering why I was still talking and delaying her transaction.

“We’ll be home in a few weeks. Can’t you read it then?”

She looked incredulous. “I can hardly wait till we get on this train. I’m using my own money.”

“It just seems wasteful to buy it twice.”

The conductor announced that first-class passengers could now board the train.

“This is the single most important book on the planet,” she said earnestly. A line of like-minded people was forming behind us. The wizard looked at me and smiled as if to say,
Just
buy
the
kid
the
book
. He was right. If I were going to embrace and enjoy life, I could make small splurges like a book and a train upgrade. “If it’s that special, I’d like to buy it for you.”
I’ll inscribe it so you can read it when I’m dead.

We were alone in first class until a striking woman and her baby boarded. She had light brown skin and the body of a ballet dancer. After she seated her cherubic baby, she placed an elegant suitcase in the overhead compartment. It was a small, hard-shelled case that women could use only when they wore size zero. I couldn’t fit my lunch in that thing.

Who
gets
to
look
like
that?
I wondered.
Is
she
a
model?

“Hello,” she said brightly, smoothing her full-length sundress.

You’re so pretty
, I did not say aloud. “Hi.”

There was something very familiar about this woman. I had definitely seen her before.
Is
that…? Is that the woman from the new movie
Crash?

“Will this be your first time in London?” she asked. I nodded to confirm, a bit intimidated by this perfect creature. Gorgeous women always made me a little nervous, a bit judged, as though they were secretly wondering why I couldn’t have pulled myself together better. I slid my bag of colorful jellybeans out of her sight.

“London is wonderful,” she said. “I spent years there.” She took out a stack of white papers and set them on her lap.

That
is
definitely
the
woman
from
Crash
, and that is a script on her lap.

“Are you the actress from
Crash
?” My curiosity was stronger than my self-consciousness.

“Yes, that was me in the burning car,” she said with a smidge of an
aw
shucks
eye roll.

Oh. My. God! Act cool, no one likes a groupie.

“The movie, um, film was amazing. My husband and I saw it before we left and it was just so powerful.”
Okay, stop.
“So gripping. I just loved it.”
Enough. Stop gushing.
“Really amazing.”

“Thank you. It hasn’t been released here yet.” She smiled. “Is this your daughter?”

Holy
crap, she’s continuing the conversation!
I nudged Katie. “Yes. Katie, this is, um…”

“Thandie,” she said. “Is that the new Harry Potter?”

Katie nodded emphatically. “You know what’s funny? They use the letter
S
a lot instead of
Z
, like
realise
and
organise
.”

“It takes a bit of getting used to, doesn’t it?” Thandie asked.

“What are you reading?” Katie asked. “Want some jellybeans?” She yanked the bag from my hiding spot and extended her arm, offering a rainbow of sweets.

“No, thank you.” Looking to her lap, Thandie answered Katie’s other question. “It’s a script,” she said. “A Will Smith project.”

I smiled and said something insipid, like “How lovely.”
Lovely? Who exactly was I trying to be? And if it was a Will Smith action flick, could it really be considered lovely?
“How cool,” I added.

To save myself further embarrassment, I grabbed a book from my bag and started reading. Minutes later, Thandie looked up from her script and asked if we’d like some tips on what to do in London. She told us about her favorite shops, lunch spots, and theater. Every time Thandie tended to her baby, I mouthed to Katie:
huge
movie
star
. Katie smiled and nodded as if to say she was pleased for me.

“Oh my God!” Katie said, bursting into laughter.

“What, Katie?” Thandie asked.

“Ron Weasley just
ejaculated
!”

“They’re having sex at Hogwarts?” I asked.

Thandie smiled as Katie figured it out. “I’m pretty sure it means ‘exclaimed’; that makes more sense.”

“You should take her to see
Mary
Poppins
,” Thandie offered. I wondered if she suggested this to purify Katie’s database, or if the thought randomly popped to mind. “It’s absolutely charming,” she said.

Mercifully the filter between my brain and mouth stopped me from telling Thandie that we like charming things.

“
Mary
Poppins
is showing here?” Katie chimed in.

Thandie explained that the production was playing at a West End theater and urged us to make a point of seeing it. “We will,” I promised my daughter.

I looked out the window and watched France disappear as we entered the tunnel beneath the English Channel. The darkness would soon be replaced by the English landscape.

Less than an hour later, daylight slapped through the windows of the train as we emerged from the tunnel into England. It was like a high-speed birth on rails.

***

Katie and I stayed in Kent, a forty-minute train ride from London. One of Katie’s soccer friends had an aunt who lived in England, and she offered to let us stay at her home for our ten-day visit. Aunt Molly’s seven-year-old granddaughter Megan came with the deal.