Paris Adieu #featured #Wattys2017

Chapter 2 - Au Pair in Paris

I signed up for a course on French language and civilization at the Sorbonne. My weekly budget roughly averaged out to twenty francs a day, about four dollars. At the start of each month, I'd purchase a carte orange, the monthly bus and metro pass that afforded me my main source of pleasure, exploring different neighborhoods in Paris and, above all, people-watching.

My French language class was given three times a week on an ancient, crooked side street, Rue Cloître Notre Dame, off to one side of the famous Notre Dame cathedral. The lectures on civilization took place at the Sorbonne itself on Rue des Écoles in an enormous auditorium filled with wooden seats and pull-up desks with graffiti etched into them dating back to the nineteenth century.

Thanks to the desktops and bathroom stalls at the Sorbonne, I figured out some key expressions that didn't figure into my French language lesson books. Bordel, for example, didn't mean bordello, but more closely resembled mess or fuck-up. Fous le camp was another popular one, loosely meaning, go fuck yourself. I didn't yet know what my plan was for the rest of my life, but at least I was picking up an education. And who could argue with "studying at the Sorbonne" on a college application form instead of "cashiering at a self-service gas station"?

Blonde, slightly chubby au pairs such as myself were a dime a dozen. We were walking targets for the single North and West African males who roamed the streets. Their opening lines were all the same, "Vous avez l'heure, Mademoiselle? Do you have the time, Miss?"

Come to think of it, that was the line Jean-Michel used, too. But his blue eyes, pale skin, Jean-Paul Belmondo boxer's nose and wavy light brown hair relaxed my guard. The chances were good that he was a Frenchman. For once, I did have the time, and I gave it to him.

The first moment Mrs. Griffith laid eyes on Jean-Michel was when he picked me up at the servants' entrance to the kitchen of my employers' flat. The look she gave him could have frozen over hell. As I watched her jaw clench, I understood for the first time the expression "recoiled in horror." He was thirty-two at the time, four years younger than her. It was clear that she knew what he was there for far better than I did, and she emphatically did not approve.

These being pre-e-mail days, I wondered if a telegram might be sent to my grandparents warning them I was up to no good with a much older Frenchman.

Frankly, they had nothing to worry about. I was not under the illusion that just because I knew next to nothing about sex, birth control, or pregnancy, I couldn't get knocked up. I wasn't a doctor's granddaughter for nothing. I had taken the precaution of putting myself on the pill not only before arriving in Paris, but one month before my first sexual encounter the summer before.

I was also prepared to turn away from Mrs. Griffith as she tossed a couple of eye-glance daggers at Jean-Michel then shut the door smartly in a manner that told me exactly what she thought. It was one of those moments when I knew I was no longer a child trying to please the adult authority figure in my vicinity. I was on my own, moving into unknown territory, and ready to go. This was no easy feat for a former Girl Scout who had heretofore sought approval from important adults in her life. Teachers, my favorite uncle, my high school guidance counselor – I'd tried hard to impress them all as a child.

As Mrs. Griffith shut the door harshly in our faces, I turned to Jean-Michel and gave him a poker face to let him know I knew what she was thinking, but I was thinking differently. So allons-y. Let's go.

It was a cold late January day on Boulevard Saint Michel, or Boul' Mich as it is commonly known, when Jean-Michel and I first met. I was bundled up in a shapeless L.L. Bean winter parka over overalls, my feet shod in dead giveaway "I'm-not-a-Frenchwoman" clogs. My morning lecture at the Sorbonne on French culture was over and I was hurrying home. I'd absorbed absolutely nothing from the lecture, given entirely in French – a language I could only vaguely understand if spoken ten times slower than any French person spoke it. Instead, I was thinking about which pastry to choose when I got to my favorite patisserie around the corner from the Griffith's flat. Zeroing in on making contact with a creamy hazelnut Breton, named for Brittany, a region in France to the west of Paris on the Atlantic coast, instead, I bumped into a Normandien. That's a man from Normandy, an area between Brittany and Paris.