Back in my garret room, I reflected on the events of the past twenty-four hours. Everything that had just happened between Jean-Michel and me was significant, because I'd just turned twenty. I was on the verge of everything. No man could have entered my life at a more impressionable moment.
It was clear he enjoyed teaching me, but he wasn't didactic about it. With everything yet to learn, I was an empty vessel waiting to be filled with French learning and culture. He provided every bit of education I'd come to France for that lectures at the Sorbonne did not. There were ways to combine certain foods with certain drinks; oysters went with Pinot Noir, paté with a good Burgundy. Every cheese had its complementary wine pairing; white wine, my favorite, was the wine of choice for alcoholics as far as Jean-Michel was concerned. There were ways to tie a scarf or to shine one's shoes with spit if on the street, if far from a water source. The French were exigeant, strict or exacting, about just about everything. Something Americans mostly were not.
It was fun to discover the French way of doing things with Jean-Michel. While he showed me how to comport myself both privately and publicly, I was continuing down my checklist of what I wished to accomplish during my year abroad.
Have an affair with a Frenchman. Check.
Get into a good college. Working on it. I'd sent my applications in on time in early January to the four colleges I'd applied to. Sometime after April fifteenth, I'd hear back. Hopefully the glamour factor of living in Paris combined with a good academic record from high school would propel me into a four-year liberal arts college where young people with broad liberal arts focuses who were also interested in having sex were a dime a dozen. I would finally find my milieu.
About whether I was meant to be a musician or a writer, I was working on it.
My exploration into a new identity as a writer consisted of reading as many books by female authors as I could get my hands on. To this end, I spent afternoons at Centre George Pompidou, also known as Beaubourg, one of Paris's largest libraries. A sizeable English-language collection located on one of its upper-level floors was available for borrowing. I devoured novels by Françoise Sagan, Simone de Beauvoir, Madame de Staël, Doris Lessing, Margaret Atwood, and Jane Austen. Then, I turned my attention to novels written by men about interesting women: Nana by Emile Zola and Tolstoy's Anna Karenina in particular.
The story of Anna Karenina puzzled me only slightly less than it had the first time I'd read it at age fourteen. I hadn't understood Anna's passion for Count Vronsky then and I still didn't six years later. Why would any sane woman throw herself under a train because of a failed love affair? My New England sense of restraint recoiled at the thought of such excessive behavior. Didn't she have a child to live for, after all? Or at least a bridge club at which she was counted on to make up a foursome?
Something inside me had not yet woken up. My instincts told me Anna's passion was connected to Jean-Michel's facial contortions and loud moans right before finishing off lovemaking with me. Instead of understanding he was at the climax, I thought of him as being at the end of what we were doing together. I knew there was something huge I didn't yet understand, so I chalked up Anna's passion to something I was in no position to judge and made a note to re-read Tolstoy's novel in another half decade.
Jean-Michel and I usually met once a week. I would pick him up at the entrance to his workplace on Friday afternoons, and we would spend most of the weekend together. It was enough for me. Given that I had no telephone, it was perfect. I wasn't ready for the intensity of nightly phone conversations, especially in French, and frankly, with someone whose horizons I had sensed were more limited than my own.
Jean-Michel was a master of his own domain, a precise and well-defined life he'd carved out for himself in Paris after running away from home at age nineteen. I too had more or less run away at the same age, but I had plenty to run back to. Apparently, he didn't. He never spoke of his family, nor visited. He'd never traveled outside France and had no plans to do so.
My life-to-be was an open book. Soon, I'd hear from the colleges I'd applied to and vast new opportunities would open up for me over the next four years. There was no chance of something like that happening to Jean-Michel. He was thirty-two and had already arrived at his destination. He was not only a Frenchman, but now a Parisian. That was saying something. Once a Parisian, where else would you go? The struggle to carve out a life, not to mention a home, for oneself in Paris was comparable to what it took to be a true New Yorker. Once achieved, it wasn't lightly thrown away.
My time together with Jean-Michel had nowhere to go but Paris, and Paris was only going to be part of my life for a few more months. It was a perfectly contained relationship with a clear-cut escape plan. Nothing could have pleased me more.
As grim, gray February slid into somewhat less grim March, Jean-Michel escorted me about Paris, introducing me to neighborhoods and monuments as if they were his own. We visited Montmartre, where we climbed the more than one hundred steps to the Basilica of Sacré-Coeur. The enormous white Romano-Byzantine church stood above a park where dubious transactions occurred after dark, he told me. As he began to explain what some of these might be, a man ran out of the woods holding his arm, which appeared to be dripping with blood. Sacre-bleu!
Jean-Michel had made his point better than if we had been watching a movie. I held his arm more tightly as we strolled around the sacred grounds of Sacré-Coeur then descended to the less sacred terrain of Pigalle, the red light district directly below the famous Basilica.
Many sparkling sites of beauty in Paris stood in counterpoint to dubious neighborhoods around them of equal interest for far different reasons. Sacré Coeur presided over the prostitute-strewn alleyways of Pigalle below. Bois de Boulogne looked delightful by day, mysterious at dusk, and ominous by night. One afternoon, we'd lingered there too long and were hurrying back to the metro stop as night fell. Suddenly large, garishly dressed, and made up women began to appear along the grand boulevard leading through one section of the park. There was no denying the excitement of viewing the trans-sexual prostitutes who'd begun to come out to exhibit their wares to the male drivers who slowly drove past every night. It was a sight to behold, something I'd never have had a chance to do without Jean-Michel by my side, safely guiding me through the dubious sections of both his city and my mind.
Time spent back at Jean-Michel's flat consisted largely of cooking and lovemaking. There were no books in his home. But his conversation was rich in content as well as opinion. He weighed in on just about everything we discussed. If I brought up a topic he knew nothing about, he would indicate to me within seconds this was not a subject worth bothering about. Case closed.
His tastes were one hundred percent provincial, but the province that guided them was the Île-de-France with Paris at its center. This was an area of interest not just to me, but the entire world. I was captivated by just about every bit of information he shared with me.
There was one exception to Jean-Michel's close-mindedness – his taste in women. He liked Americans. He also liked voluptuous ones, but not with enormous breasts. He was more focused on women's hips or les hanches. I knew because he kept mentioning mine when we made love. I'd always thought of les hanches as the sections of jodhpurs pants that stuck out unattractively, but Jean-Michel let me know again and again my hanches were A-OK by him. His feelings of warmth toward my hips were confirmed by his frequent presents of a favorite pastry he'd bring back to his place for me to try after dinner. One of his favorites was called le petit cochon, little pig, made of marzipan, which I didn't especially like. I'd take a bite to be polite then hide the rest under a napkin. Feeling reassured by his admiration of my body's generous proportions, I didn't mind when he began to tell me about some of his former girlfriends.
April was one of them. She was from Berkeley, California, and had spent time in Paris several years earlier. I wasn't jealous, either because I was not in love or because he'd shown me her picture and she was undeniably plump, a good twenty pounds heftier than me. Perhaps I was too young to be jealous.
When I commented rather crassly that April seemed a bit chubby, Jean-Michel corrected me.
"Non. Pas du tout. Elle est une femme bien dans sa peau. No, not at all. She is a woman who is comfortable in her skin."
I had heard the French expression several times already, never fully understanding it. Now was my chance. At the hands of my Pygmalion, I asked what he meant.
"A woman who is comfortable in her skin is never too fat or too thin. She is perfect," he explained. "It's because she is comfortable with herself that men find her attractive. She is like a magnet."
"Come on," I protested. "Even if she's fat? I mean, doesn't a man notice that? That she doesn't have a perfect body?" What Jean-Michel was telling me seemed too good to be true, especially for an American male audience.
"Men don't fall in love with a woman who is perfect. They fall in love with a woman who is specific. A woman who is comfortable with herself can be herself specifically. She is free to explore who she is, because she is not comparing herself to other women all the time, trying to be someone she's not."
Suspiciously, I eyed him. He had to be kidding. But the food for thought he'd given me stuck in my craw like half-swallowed chewing gum.
* * *
One week later, strolling in the Tuileries gardens on a late March day, Jean-Michel alerted me to a woman who had just passed.
"C'est une jolie laide. It's a pretty-ugly one."
Huh?
I turned to catch the back of the woman's henna'd reddish purple hair and bony legs. He motioned to continue walking around the pond until we passed her again.
This time, I pretended to look at some children playing behind the smallish woman as we approached. Her sharp, vixenish face had a pleased-with-herself expression on it. Its most prominent feature was a long nose with a definite bump. Her bony legs were nothing to write home about. No textbook from any country would have categorized her as a beauty.
"She is beautiful, no?" Jean-Michel murmured to me, once out of earshot.
"Um, she's got something going on, for sure," I replied truthfully, a little envious. What woman, with any sense of how crooked and short her legs were would dress them up in designer tights and stiletto boots? Yet, she'd looked undeniably hot. Apparently Jean-Michel thought so too.
Instead of giving in to my preconceptions, I opened my mind to his. I had so much to learn from him, and besides, I was working on becoming comfortable in my own skin these days, wasn't I? I could at least fake it till I make it, I told myself.
"A jolie laide is a woman who is beautiful even though she is not. She has something that is considered ugly, but on her, it's not. It's part of her charm," he explained.
I was all ears. We circled the pond again, hoping the woman would do the same. She did. As she approached, I pretended to spot something on the ground while I studied the suede, stiletto-heeled black boots she wore over gray and black striped tights covering slim short, legs with knobby knees. The content wasn't amazing, but the presentation certainly was. Brava, I silently complimented her as we walked by.
What the heck could a pretty-ugly woman have that a just plain pretty woman didn't have over her? Apparently, plenty. I searched my mind to think of a jolie laide I might have known somewhere in my past. I'd never contemplated the concept before, but as soon as Jean-Michel explained it to me, I understood. Something niggled at me, reminding me there'd been a woman like that in my own short past.
In a minute, I had it. Voilà.
Joelle. She had been a waitress I'd worked with back in Hartford, Connecticut, the summer before music college at a French restaurant called La Crêpe. It was a chain of restaurants that served crêpes in the style of Brittany, the region next to the Atlantic Coast of France, west of Paris, where Celts had settled in the fifth and sixth centuries – probably because the food was better than back in the British Isles. The waitresses wore cute blue dirndl skirts with suspenders, white lace blouses, and enormous white Breton head-dresses. They'd looked sexy in a sweet sort of way. I'd applied for the job, because I knew in an outfit like that I'd meet guys.
Joelle had been short, bony, and chic with a bump in her nose, just like the woman we'd passed in the park. The other waitresses were in awe of her. Her boyfriend picked her up every day after work. During her shift, she flirted with any male customer she found interesting, regardless of whether they were in female company or not. She had been in total command of herself. Not surprisingly, she was French.
I'd soaked up every move she made, marveling to myself that she was not even mildly attractive, but her perception of herself announced to the world she was a knockout. The men appeared to buy it. To me, it didn't matter if she was beautiful or not. She was powerful.
Joelle had been a jolie laide.
"I know what you mean," I whispered back. "Like maybe a bump in a certain woman's nose isn't just a bump on her? It's a beauty feature?"
"Précisément," Jean-Michel agreed. "It's precisely the feature about her that a man falls in love with."
Whoa. Another reference point clicked in my brain. The year before – avoiding piano practice – I'd picked up a novel by a Japanese author in the literature section of the music college library. It had been a contemporary story about a husband and wife who lived in Osaka in the post-World War II years. At the time of the story, the early sixties, images of the West had invaded Japan. Many Japanese women emulated Western styles, wearing short skirts and high heels. Yet the wife in this story chose to wear kimonos instead of Western dress.
The husband knew why. She was self-conscious about her thick, short calves, a section of the legs that tends to be shorter on Asians than other races. What the wife didn't know is her husband secretly found her most hated point charming. He loved her short, well-developed calves but most of all, he loved her more for her self-consciousness regarding that part of her body.
In the Japanese story, the husband is charmed by his wife's modesty over her perceived flaw. A French modification of this uxoriousness would be that the husband is charmed by his wife's utter chutzpah in playing up her weak points as assets. If the hair tended to frizz, why not display it in a mass of wild curls haloing the face? If the legs were short and crooked, why not dress them up in designer tights and high-heeled ankle boots? It was a way to say to the world, "Here I am, and if you don't like this particular part of me, je m'en fou. I could care less. Let me just flap it in your face."
It was almost the outlook of a teenage boy. I laughed inside, thinking how freeing it might be for an adult woman to exercise her inner teenage boy on a regular basis.
Frenchwomen were encouraged to be in command of themselves, comfortable in their skins, bien dans ses peau. I wanted to be like that too. But how could I, with my twenty pounds of puppy fat, frizzy hair, and less than knockout chest-size? The jolie laide's physical attributes were even less appealing than mine. Yet apparently, she didn't think so. And because she thought she was smoking hot so did everyone she came in contact with. I burned with jealousy.
Straightening my posture next to Jean-Michel, I stuck out my apple breasts and tossed a thick lock of frizzy blonde hair over my shoulder. Then, I bunched it up with both hands to make it stick out even more on either side of my head. I would no longer be taken for an inconsequential American girl with no sense of herself. Those days were over.
We exited the park and began to walk along the enormous traffic circle of the Place de la Concorde. At the next street crossing, a woman waiting next to me gave me a surreptitious once-over. Out of the corner of my eye, I searched for her expression.
It was scornful, dismissive.
Deflating like a balloon, I scolded myself for seeking approval from a complete stranger. If I'd been the jolie laide, I wouldn't have given a fig what the woman thought of me.
The light changed, but I didn't. I had a lot of work ahead of me.
* * *
Spring began to break through the long, gray gloom of winter, just as so many new insights were breaking through the hard shell of my low self-image. Cracks were appearing everywhere. Jean-Michel's lectures, attention, and obvious predilections forced me to question my preconceived notions again and again. I was an Easter chick about to hatch.
It was glorious to have my ideas of what was beautiful, what was not, what combinations went together, which ones did not, all blown away in the soft, fragrant air of a Paris spring. By the time I left France, I'd be transformed into a Picasso-like rearrangement of myself, only far more put together.
Jean-Michel and I had gone to view the Picasso collection at the Jeu de Paume (literally "game of palms," a seventeenth century court-game that was a precursor to tennis) museum in the TuileriesGardens. I'd wondered at the artist's depictions of some of his girlfriends, especially Marie-Thérèse Walter and Dora Maar. Parts of their bodies were rearranged in surrealistic ways, with sometimes peaceful and sometimes disturbing results. Had this been what having an affair with the short, fiery painter had done to them? Marie-Thérèse Walter looked more or less serene in most of his paintings, but Dora Maar's images were anguished and angry. I took them in as I thought about what Jean-Michel's effect on me would ultimately be.
"What kind of man was Picasso? Was he nice to his wife?" I asked.
"Wife? Which wife? He had wives, girlfriends, lovers all at the same time. You should read his biography by Françoise Gilot," Jean-Michel advised as we strolled from room to room.
"Who's she?"
"The only woman who left him. For another man," he responded.
"Really?" I liked her immediately. "Where's her painting? Which one is she?"
"He didn't paint her; only a few sketches. He was too angry."
"Because she left him?"
"For a younger man." Jean-Michel looked at me wryly.
"Did she leave him first or had he been fooling around while they were together?"
After several minutes of explaining what fooling around meant, Jean-Michel laughed.
"Of course, he was fooling around. He was Picasso. Women loved him. He loved them. It was natural, Minouche."
"But not for Françoise." I liked it when he called me Minouche, meaning pussy cat or darling, but I didn't like the fact that Picasso had fooled around on Françoise.
My French boyfriend gave the classic Gallic shrug. The concept of fooling around while in a relationship was not foreign to the French male sensibility. However, it tended to irritate French females, just like any others. I was eager to know what kind of revenge Françoise had extracted on Picasso for straying.
I put Gilot's biography of the short, ugly, bald painter at the top of my list for my next visit to the library at Beaubourg.
Jean-Michel didn't seem the type to stray. He was too fond of order, too fastidious in his appearance – I'd noted how carefully he brushed and polished his shoes before setting off the day after a night I'd stayed over.
Sneakers were not a part of his wardrobe. When I asked if he had any, he sniffed and explained les baskets, French for sneakers, are for le sport only. They are not meant to be worn in public on the street.
I was in awe, thinking of how completely my grandmother would have agreed with him.
Within weeks, my theory of Jean-Michel's faithfulness was put to test. April had written to say she was coming for a visit mid-way through her namesake month. I would have a chance to meet her.
Jean-Michel hadn't mentioned where she was staying so I asked. He reassured me that she would stay with the family she had worked for two years earlier when she lived in Paris. By then, I'd read Françoise Gilot's Life with Picasso, and I wondered if April's visit would spell the beginning of the end for Jean-Michel and me.
Picasso had been a master of bringing a new woman onto the scene as a way of letting the present woman know her days were numbered. This had driven most of his women crazy except for two. There was Françoise Gilot, who stayed calm then did the same thing to him. And then there was the remarkable Marie-Thérèse Walter, who had proven an exception to the rest of his relationships, remaining serene and unruffled through just about everything Picasso did or did not do to her, including never marrying her. She seemed one mellow female to me, beyond comprehension. I was a novice in the world of jealous passion, clueless as to what kind of rage a woman might feel to be sexually betrayed. I knew all the books and women's magazines said it was something not to be tolerated, so I knew I'd walk if it turned out April was about to re-enter Jean-Michel's life.
My relative calm over April's arrival was based on a few factors, some to do with Jean-Michel, most to do with myself. Firstly, being pre-orgasmic, I had no idea what all the fuss was about sex. Relations were pleasantly sensual between us, but the oxytocin that might have bound me to him like crazy glue hadn't yet been produced in my brain. I was still riding the clueless train, which wasn't taking me to any particular destination other than on a pleasant journey I knew would end soon.
By the time April left, I'd know which colleges I'd gotten into. I'd accept admission to one – my grandparents would be either delighted or not – and my summer plans would evolve quickly from that point on. I'd probably go back to the States around the same time the Griffiths did in mid-June. My escape plan from Jean-Michel was in place should the occasion warrant it.
Despite my overall sangfroid in the face of April's visit, my nerves began to fray the day before her flight was due. Would I know if Jean-Michel had slept with her after her arrival and before I was introduced? Would I meet her in his apartment or on the street? If in his apartment, would the place smell skanky with obvious clues of sexual activity all over the place: an unmade bed, bits of lingerie in the bathroom, and knowing smiles on their faces? Is this what Jean-Michel wanted to happen? If it was, I was prepared. I would take the Françoise Gilot approach, not the Marie-Thérèse Walter one.
Above all, I wanted to look good for the meeting with April. In her photo, I'd seen she was pretty, but undoubtedly plump. I was pretty too, but not so plump. I was also younger. At age twenty, this was a decided disadvantage in meeting a rival female. I looked through my wardrobe for something to wear that would provide psychological armor. Deciding on a periwinkle knit top and peg-legged black jeans, I kicked my clogs scornfully into a corner. It was time to wear something on my feet that Frenchwomen wore. That meant pointy, spiky heels, the kind I could barely walk in. I didn't have any.
I went shoe shopping the next day, all the while wondering if Jean-Michel had gone to the airport to greet April and if she'd end up staying with him that night.
It didn't occur to me to lay down ground rules for this visit from his ex. I preferred to stay on the sidelines, watch the play unfold, then take action if it unfolded in a way I couldn't accept. I knew the term ménage a trois hadn't originated in France for nothing; something about the idea made me feel very all-American, a rare occurrence. If something rekindled between Jean-Michel and April, I was out of there.
After visiting five shoe stores and being made embarrassingly aware that I took one of the largest shoe sizes available in France, I found some ankle boots similar to the ones the jolie laide had worn in TuileriesGardens the month before. I could barely walk in them, as 1978 was the tail end of the first wave of feminism to hit the United States so stiletto heels were politically incorrect back home. But it felt nice to suddenly be two inches taller. Granted, clogs made me look taller too, but when Frenchwomen glanced at them with disdain, I immediately shrank back down to size.
I practiced walking home in my new boots. Their sleekness caused me to tap assuredly right past my regular pastry shop at the corner of the Griffiths' building. I decided to have a coffee instead with the five francs I had allotted for my usual dose of creamy Bretons or melt-in-your mouth millefeuilles, literally, 'a thousand leaves' of the most paper-thin pastry, topped with a white dusting of powdered sugar. In a minute, I was installed at a table on the terrace of the corner café, enjoying the soft breeze of the April afternoon.
Someone small and blonde hurried by.
"Elizabeth," I shouted out. What good luck to bump into my Polish-English au pair friend in my hour of need.
She turned at the sound of my voice, putting a hand up to her mouth as if she didn't want to be recognized. Why was she acting funny?
"Elizabeth. Over here." I waved, pulling out the seat next to me.
Something about her eyes was opaque. I could tell she was hiding something. When she took her hand away from her face, I knew what it was immediately. Telltale signs of white powdered crumbs framed the sides of her mouth. I guessed she'd stopped at the same pastry shop I was addicted to and had her own fix for the day. We were peas in a pod, one of the reasons I liked her so much.
"Ava, hallo! I've got to get home," she called out. "Mrs. Brown is going out tonight, and I need to fix dinner." She'd slowed down, but was still walking past me.
I knew Elizabeth too well. She struggled with her weight, as I did mine, and I had caught her at the wrong moment in her cycle of feast or fast. She was an avid dieter, which I was not, and although she looked as petite as any Frenchwoman, I knew from our conversations on dieting she thought of herself as the size of a wild boar. I was far closer to wild boar size, and it wasn't the right size to be in Paris, where women were mostly svelte or at least small-framed. Come to think of it, it hadn't been the right size to be State-side either, where images of Barbie-clones ruled advertising and zaftig teenage girls with occasional breakouts weren't featured in print media at all, except as losers in coming-of-age movies.
"Come on, have a coffee. My treat." I caught up with her, putting my hand on her shoulder, hoping she'd receive my unspoken thoughts of understanding and sympathy for her secret struggles with the crazy cycle of dieting and feasting she was caught up in. What did I care?
"Listen, I really need your help on something." I lowered my voice to a whisper, hoping to coax her out of her embarrassment from being caught eating something on her absolute no-no list and move on to her second favorite topic: men and relationships. "Jean-Michel's ex is coming today, and I'm going to meet her tomorrow. I don't know how to handle it. You've got to help me."
Her eyes rounded. I had her.
"What? You're letting him introduce you to his ex? Why are you doing that?"
"Because – because – I don't know why, that's why I need your advice. Come sit down. You look like you need a coffee." I grabbed her shopping bag and led her back to my table.
"When did he tell you his ex was coming to visit?" Elizabeth's eyes became bluer as they rounded in indignation. She was a study in primary colors – yellow hair, cornflower blue eyes, and doll-like red lips – her coloring similar to Marie Thérèse Walter, Picasso's most serene mistress. I visualized what Elizabeth might have done to the likes of Picasso the first time he stepped out on her. Unlike the cow-like Marie Thérèse, she'd have unleashed hell's furies on him then walked away after stomping over his testicles in shoes similar to my new stiletto boots. Elizabeth was no pushover. She was a five foot tall Polish spitfire, armed with rapier-sharp British wit.
"About three weeks ago. He showed me her picture," I said.
The waiter came over, and Elizabeth ordered un café crème, grande tasse, a large coffee with milk. I was relieved to see she would make time to advise me. My only female friend in Paris, I loved her dearly, not in spite of her imperfections, but because of them: her penchant for gossip, her obsession with her weight, her scathing, but hilarious put-downs of French mannerisms and characteristics. She was a quick-witted, sharp-edged comrade. She'd help me sort out what to do about April or at least how to dump Jean-Michel in grand style if it turned out he was playing some sort of game with me. Then, she'd be there to help me pick up the pieces.
"And? What did she look like?" she asked.
"Pretty. And fat." I stated succinctly.
"Fat? She's fat? How could she be pretty if she's fat?"
I'd now given Elizabeth the perfect combination of interests to chew on, weight and romance. It was fun to see her light up. The man at the next table seemed to think so, too. I watched him out of the corner of my eye as he took in Elizabeth's hair, eyes and lips, all set against the palest, whitest Polish female skin imaginable. In a minute, he'd be at our table, offering to buy the next round.
"She's got a pretty face. And long, straight brown hair," I told her. It was the kind
of hair I'd always wanted but would never have.
"But she's fat? How fat? Like a cow? Or a little pig?" Elizabeth had an exhaustive range of descriptions for fat people. One of her favorite activities was ripping apart people we saw on the streets who weren't perfect physical specimens. She had the innocent looks of a Polish angel but her wicked sense of humor was one hundred percent British. No one could sum up, then smack down total strangers as well as Elizabeth. Her specialty was noting people with moles, something we saw a lot of in Paris. Hair on inappropriate areas of the body or differently colored on different sections was another topic of derision. She loved pointing out bleached blondes with long black hair on their unshaven legs, a common sight on Parisian female bus drivers.
On days off, we rode the Bus Périphérique, the bus route that circles Paris for hours at a time, using our Carte Orange, Paris's monthly bus and metro pass, until we decided on a place to hop off, where we'd have coffee at an outdoor café. There we'd continue our snide observations of total strangers, some of whom were undoubtedly engaging in similar comments about us.
"Umm, she looked sort of like a pretty cow," I tried to explain.
"How can a cow be pretty? Why was he dating a fat girl, anyway?" She looked at me suspiciously as if to say my boyfriend had very bad taste.
"I don't think he sees her as fat. When I told him she looked sort of plump, he got really upset."
"Really? Why? She was, wasn't she?"
"He said, "à chacun son goût."
"What's that mean?"
"To each his own taste."
"Huh." Elizabeth looked thoughtful. Our coffees arrived and she took a sip.
"That's what I thought too," I seconded her.
We sat in silence watching big, puffy April clouds drift across the pale blue sky. Each one was fat as a cow. And beautiful.
À chacun son goût, was something now working its way under my skin. I hoped for Elizabeth's sake, it would work its way under hers, too. Perhaps we had both been sent to Paris by unknown forces to learn something about tolerance not only for others, but for ourselves.
"Wow, where did you get the wicked boots?" Elizabeth asked after a minute.
"I just bought them," I told her. "In Saint Germain. Two hundred francs." Her next question would be how much they cost, so I thought I'd save time.
"They're sexy. You bought them to wear to meet the girl, didn't you?"
"Yes."
"Can you walk in them?"
"Barely." I shook my head. "That's why I'm practicing wearing them now."
"All these bloody French women wear heels like that. If they can do it, you can," Elizabeth encouraged me.
I loved the way she said 'bloody.' It came out like 'blue – dee,' perhaps because she was from Birmingham, a city she told me was far north of London, in the middle of England. I hoped I would be able to incorporate the adjective into my speaking vocabulary by the time I left Paris. It would be so wonderful to show up for my freshman year of college with the hint of a Continental accent.
"I'll try. I hope I don't trip, walking over to shake her hand."
"Why do you have to shake her hand?"
"She's not an ax murderer, you know. She's probably a nice girl who happens to be the ex-girlfriend of my boyfriend." I crumpled the napkin in my hand. Why was I getting worked up?
"What are you going to do if he sleeps with her while she's here?" Elizabeth asked, getting right to the point.
"Ah, there's the rub."
"Well?" Her eyes slit into raisins.
"I'll be upset. Probably have a fight with him then dump him," I said.
"Really?"
"What else should I do?" I shrugged. The Gallic shrug was something I wanted to nail before leaving France. It would be so effective back home, and no one would know if I wasn't doing it perfectly.
"You should let him know before she arrives that you're not putting up with any hanky-panky," Elizabeth advised. "When does she get here?"
I looked at my watch. "This afternoon."
"Blue-dee hell! What if she spends the night at his place?"
"He told me she was staying with the family she worked for when she was here."
"Sure, she is. When are you meeting her and where?"
"Tomorrow afternoon. At his place. I think we're supposed to go to dinner together."
"You'd better check out the smell."
I could feel my face crumple up just thinking about it.
"You know what I'm talking about," she said, staring at me. "That's what I mean, girl. You told me his place is smaller than mine. That means you'll all practically be sitting on his bed together." Elizabeth began spelling out details of the imagined scenario in her inimitable way, each image a dagger to my heart.
Except it wasn't my heart being affected, it was my pride.
"Maybe I'll suggest we take a walk," I said weakly.
"You'll need one to clear the air, that's for sure." She wrinkled her nose in disgust.
I made a face at her, imagining again how the air might smell in Jean-Michel's tiny, attic room. I wasn't yet sure of my moral stance toward the situation, but I could count on my nose to lead my decision-making. If it smelled dubious, I was out of there.
Jean-Michel might be fastidious about his shoes, but my nose was as exacting as noses get. It had led me away from the wrong type of man several times before in my life. If Jean-Michel turned out to be one of them, I didn't need anything more than my olfactory senses to turn me off. Being a New Englander and raised as an only child, I knew nothing about fighting and making up. If I fought with a friend, I didn't know how to get back on track – even more so with a boyfriend. I'd had no experience with reconciliations. It would be over if my Frenchman cheated on me. My nose would let me know.
* * *
The next afternoon at quarter past four, I rang the buzzer to Jean-Michel's flat. The swish of white glass curtains in the ground floor apartment told me the concierge had noted my arrival. I wonder what she thought of Jean-Michel's female American visitors. How many had she seen over the years? Just thinking about it made my blood boil.
In a minute, the catch on the door released, and I was inside. Each step of the five flights up to his flat lead me closer to possible defeat and humiliation. What if my rival had lost weight? Was I about to meet a gorgeous California knockout? Swallowing the bile in my mouth, I told myself I would be very French about the situation. I would exude haughtiness and froideur and act superior, even if I was about to meet the woman who would recapture Jean-Michel's heart. Then again, who was I kidding? I hadn't been especially interested in capturing it myself when I'd had him all to myself.
Jean-Michel appeared at the door to his flat. He smiled. When I reached him, he kissed me warmly, once on each cheek. Then, he motioned me in.
April sat on his bed. As I entered, she stood. Taller than me. Pretty. Not at all slim, but not as plump as she'd been in the photo he'd shown me.
I immediately understood why Jean-Michel had been attracted to her. She looked fresh, wholesome, unspoiled, and nonjudgmental, entirely unlike most Parisian women. In all honesty, it was a compliment to me that Jean-Michel liked April's type, because I was like that too, aside from occasional snide conversations with Elizabeth.
"Hi, I'm April," she said, her voice soft as the spring weather outside.
"Hi, I'm Ava," I said, modulating my voice to match hers. I could out-April her if I tried. But did I need to? Jean-Michel watched closely as we eyeballed each other. I needed to be comfortable in my skin at this moment, and that was all. He'd taught me well. "How was your trip?" I followed up.
"Long." She smiled. "I'll be fine by tomorrow." She turned and sat down again on the bed.
"How many hours was it?" For some strange reason, I didn't feel threatened to see her on Jean-Michel's bed. Why she didn't choose a chair to sit in, I don't know. But it didn't bother me. I decided to take one of the two chairs myself. Jean-Michel took the other.
"Let's see. About four to New York. Then, I had a two-hour stopover. Then, seven to Paris." She gave me a gentle, rueful smile.
Nothing at all about this woman was threatening. Plus, she was plumper than me.
"Ugh. You must be tired," I sympathized.
"I am. A little."
"I heard you worked for a family here?"
"Yes. And you're doing the same, right?"
I nodded as Jean-Michel poured three glasses of wine, handing us each one.
"Yes. I'm going to school at the Sorbonne. The language and culture course," I said.
"That's the one I took," she laughed.
Her laughter was like bells tinkling. She was the most ethereal, nonthreatening tall, plump person I'd ever met. No way was I going to be able to accurately describe her to Elizabeth. The way her words floated when she spoke, she seemed closer in size to Audrey Hepburn than Queen Latifah.
After a few more minutes of conversation – during which Jean-Michel looked bored – I discovered April was now studying for a degree in occupational therapy at U Cal Berkeley. That was my mother's alma mater. As usual, once the conversation moved off Parisian turf and out of Jean-Michel's league, he wanted nothing to do with it. It wasn't entirely about the fact we were speaking in English. It was about the fact that Jean-Michel was a thoroughly provincial person. April and I were not.
After another five minutes I was sitting on the bed next to her, leaving Jean-Michel out of the conversation altogether. He went out into the hall, probably to empty the trash.
When he got back, we decided to take a walk. Out on the sidewalk downstairs, I noticed the graceful way April moved. She looked comfortable in her skin. I knew where she had gotten that from. She'd taken the Comfortable in One's Skin 101 class, taught by Professor Jean-Michel Reneau. I wanted to graduate from that class, too.
Jean-Michel walked ahead and smoked, while April and I discovered how very much we had in common. She too had waffled before college, taking a year off after high school to lose herself in Paris, far from home. I wondered what her parents were like but didn't know her well enough to ask. Had they been a motivating factor in propelling her to Paris, as my grandmother had been? Her pronouncements on a woman's place in society had lit a fire under me to get myself into the best college that would have me so I could pursue being anything other than a teacher or secretary. But April was from BerkeleyCalifornia. Perhaps her parents wanted her to become a social activist or go into the family marijuana-growing business. Had she been escaping some direction they'd pointed her in when she'd chosen to go east instead of hang out in the far west?
I didn't want to ask her how she'd met Jean-Michel, because I could already guess. There was no point in sullying the memory of my own first meeting with my French boyfriend by discovering he'd used the exact same technique to pick up yet another American girl two years earlier.
"Shall we go for dinner now?" he asked. He'd circled back without either of us noticing.
April's face tightened. "I can't actually. I need to get back to the Greniers."
Her response surprised me.
"I thought you were joining us for dinner tonight." Jean-Michel looked perturbed. He didn't like things to go differently from planned. "I want to take you to the place we used to go, with the profiteroles for dessert you like. Come with us, Minouche," he cajoled her.
My stomach dropped. That was the term of endearment he used with me. Now, I realized it had been all over town.
"I can't. I promised the Greniers I'd be back for their son's birthday party tonight. I'm sorry. Can we get together another time before I leave?"
So April had not been planning to spend her one-week stay in Paris largely with Jean-Michel. From the way his face closed in upon hearing her words, this was obviously news to him.
"As you wish." He grunted, striding ahead again. In a minute, he had lit another cigarette.
April switched into English with me. Her voice was low, conspiratorial. "It's not really that I'm busy. It's just that I'm on a diet, and I'm still jet lagged. I don't feel like eating a big dinner, and he'll try to stuff me with profiteroles like he used to do. No matter how many times I told him I didn't want to eat sweets, he was always buying them for me." She shook her head, not without affection.
So, she was on a diet. She wasn't as comfortable in her skin as Jean-Michel had made her out to be. A light bulb went on in my head. Jean-Michel had enjoyed controlling her. But now she was driving her own bus. April knew how to act French, but she was all American on the inside. Dieting. Just like me.
I wanted to be just like her. There was no way Jean-Michel was going to sabotage my efforts to lose weight before going home just because he liked plump women. Suddenly, I saw what all the comfortable-in-your-own-skin lectures had been about. He hadn't wanted me to change.
But I wanted to change myself. From that moment on, I was allied with April in mutual resistance to Jean-Michel's efforts to keep us both passive and plump.
A moment later, we reached the Boulevard Montparnasse. Jean-Michel again entreated April to join us.
"It's your favorite restaurant, April. Come on, the profiteroles are waiting for you," he tried again. No line could have been lamer. Her eyes hardened as soon as he mentioned the cream-filled pastry puffs drizzled with warm chocolate. What a moron. Didn't he know it had taken her years to move on from giving in to the urge for profiteroles to firmly passing them up? She hadn't spent time working on herself just to turn back into the unformed girl she'd once been with her controlling French boyfriend.
"No thanks, I can't. The Greniers are expecting me." The firmness in her voice was unmistakable, albeit delivered in a breathy Jackie Onassis way.
It was clear some sort of power struggle was going on and the usual outcome hadn't occurred. The sulky face he presented in profile confirmed it. Inside, I laughed. Who would have thought meeting April would provide me with a window into Jean-Michel?
We watched the back of April's form disappear into the metro station, then went on to the restaurant ourselves. I decided to play a game. Should Jean-Michel suggest the profiteroles for dessert, I'd refuse. Not surprisingly, he did.
"Have the profiteroles. They're superb." He motioned the waiter over.
"No, I don't think I will. I'll have an espresso if you want to order some."
"Minouche, you should try them. You'll die from pleasure. This is a special treat I'm offering you. What's wrong with you?" His tone changed from commanding to scolding.
Neither tone worked for me after meeting April and seeing how she'd resisted Jean-Michel. I dug in my feet. Besides, I wasn't just any old minouche.
"No thanks. I'm full from dinner. I'll try them some other time."
"I won't take you here again if you don't order them," he said petulantly. "That's the reason I suggested this place. Come one, Ava, try them. You know you like chocolate."
Yes, I did like chocolate. I liked it too much. In fact, it was a big problem for me. But at that moment, what I liked even more was resisting Jean-Michel. Something inside, more real than the puffy, plump, pastry-eating person I was on the outside, was stumbling to its feet to take a stand.
"I don't feel like profiteroles right now," I told him. And je m'en fous to never coming here again, I silently fumed. Turning to the waiter, I ordered an espresso. Approval gleamed in the server's eyes, before he flicked them from mine.
Jean-Michel looked as exceedingly displeased as I felt secretly pleased. For the first time, I had divined the meaning of the popular French phrase je m'en fous and made it my own. It literally meant, I could care less. Some would give it a more salty meaning, as in, I could give a shit, but it was all the same. The French delighted in using this phrase endlessly. Now, I knew why. It was satisfying. In the right situation, it rolled off the tongue, originating straight from somewhere deep in the vitals.
There was also its variation, je m'en fiche, which had a slightly nicer ring, something like, I could give a rat's ass. However, I'd noticed the French preferred je m'en fous, the nastier version. I'd wager every French citizen from age seven up used the term at least three times a day, often accompanied by a dramatic upper thrust of the forearm and hand in a dismissive gesture. Before I departed France, I vowed to have that gesture down, too. I visualized myself, a non-demonstrative New England girl, breaking up with a future American boyfriend who'd displeased me. While recounting the scene to girlfriends later, over Cosmopolitans, I'd thrust my arm in the air with the je m'en fous gesture to show I could care less about whatever he had offered to make me stay. They'd be wildly impressed.
Coffee was served, and predictably, the mood was gloomy.
"How long is April staying?" I asked. Anything to break up the silence.
"Who knows?" Grumpy Gaul responded.
"I thought she said a week."
"So if you know, why'd you ask?" he snapped.
"I really liked her." I ignored his tone.
"So did I," he said, not looking like he liked anyone or anything at the moment. He glared at me, then raised his finger in my face. "But she's changed. She was a nice girl. Comfortable in her skin. Now she's different."
Even more comfortable in her skin perhaps? Less willing to be led around like a docile cow? I nodded. What was there to say? I applauded the new April, my approval in direct counterpoint to Jean-Michel's disgust. Her arrival had shown me that Jean-Michel and I would be moving in different directions soon. Perhaps starting that very evening.
"Ready?" He stood up, tossing some bills on the table.
I got up, more than ready to get out of there and away from him as soon as possible. I didn't want to be the person on whom he took out his dissatisfaction with April that night. Or stubborn girlfriends in general. Ones who wouldn't follow his party line. After that night, I had Jean-Michel's number. And I wasn't sure I'd be calling it too many more times.