We paused to do some window shopping. The new spring and summer fashions were still out in some stores. Some were already advertising fall clothing. I commented about some skirts and blouses enthusiastically, but she just stared with a familiar look—familiar because I could remember how Chastity gazed at beautiful clothes, realizing that there would be nothing in her size and that even if there was anything made in her size, it wouldn’t look as good on her as it looked on the mannequin in the window. I wanted to talk to Denise about her weight problem, but I hesitated. We didn’t know each other that well yet. I was sure she was supersensitive about it, which was something that also puzzled me about Chastity. Why be supersensitive about something you could control or prevent?
Our conversation drifted to what it was like growing up in Paris as opposed to New York. Our school experiences didn’t sound all that different. We talked about music and books and the movies we had both seen. Once she got started, she ran on and on, barely pausing to take a breath. I was surprised at how little she had seen in Europe other than on school trips, even though the restaurant gave her vacation time. She blamed it on her mother, who hated traveling. The more we talked and the more she told me about herself, the more I could see her putting blame on her mother for almost everything, even, as it turned out, her weight.
“When I was little, she wouldn’t let me leave the table until I finished every morsel. My mother doesn’t believe in leftovers. She always says we can’t afford to waste food.”
“You’re old enough now to take control of your own destiny,” I ventured.
She didn’t answer for so long that I thought my comment would be pushed aside and forgotten because she resented it, but suddenly, she stopped. “I’ve always been too heavy,” she offered. “My mother blames it on my father’s genes.”
“Do you believe that?”
“No,” she admitted, and kept walking. “Let’s not talk about me,” she added firmly. “What happened to your parents? Why are you in Paris? Don’t you have relatives in America? I’d rather live in America.”
Where should I begin? I wondered. I paused and nodded at a bench overlooking the Seine. The sky was practically cloudless. There were only tiny wisps, what my mother called “God’s puffs of breath,” here and there against the soft blue. The water in the Seine glistened. Sitting quietly for a few moments, I felt I could talk more freely about myself now. However, it occurred to me as I was telling my story that I was telling it like an outsider looking in. Perhaps I was afraid that I wouldn’t be able to get through it, that I would break into uncontrolled sobbing. I didn’t go into any detail about Roxy, basically describing her as an independent businesswoman who had left home early. When she started to ask more questions about her, I looked at my watch and suggested we get to the café.
“Don’t worry. Vincent will wait for us if we’re late,” she said, but agreed we should move on.
“Do you have other relatives in Paris?”
“Distant cousins. My mother’s brother lives in Lyon, and her younger sister lives in Aix-en-Provence. I rarely see either of them or their children.”
“You’ve never heard from your father since he left?” I asked as we continued walking.
“No. But I don’t care. To me, he’s as dead as your father is to you,” she said, clenching her teeth.
“He wasn’t a good father before he left?”
“He wasn’t a father at all,” she replied. “He was . . . unnatural.”
I was silent, waiting to see if she would go into any of the grisly details, but she pressed her lips together like someone who was told to be quiet. A few moments later, however, she added, “I blame my mother for marrying him and having me with him. It’s really all her fault, and she knows it.”
“How does she explain that? Falling in love with a man who was self-centered and cruel?”
“She doesn’t. She won’t talk about him, and now neither will I. He’s dead to us. Look! There’s Vincent waiting outside the café,” she announced joyfully, waved, and sped up. I quickened my pace to keep up with her, laughing to myself. She was practically running to him. She could bowl him over at this speed, especially if she embraced him, I thought.
“Does he speak English, or will I have to depend on my French?”
“Of course he speaks English,” she replied. “He’s the brightest in our family. I told you. Vincent is perfect!”
Excusez-moi, I thought. I could see I had better like him or else.
Crossing the Seine
Vincent was tall, about six feet one, with a swimmer’s build, lean, with round shoulders. He had light brown hair that fell lazily over his forehead, nearly covering his dark green eyes. His firm, manly lips were in a tight smile as we drew closer. He had his hands on his hips and wore a dark blue pair of jeans with a light blue turtleneck sweater and a pair of coffee-white running shoes.
“Ça va, Denise?” he asked, and held his smile. He didn’t look at me. I thought he was a little arrogant in the way he purposely ignored my presence. Like her mother, perhaps, he was waiting for some sort of formal introduction.
“Bien,” Denise said. “Sommes-nous en retard?”
He held up his wrist to show us his watch.
“Mais oui. When are you not late?” he asked in English, and finally turned to me. “You are showing your new American friend your bad American habits?” he asked her in French.
“Maybe they are French habits,” I said, and he focused fixedly on me. “She’s never lived in America.”
His smile softened. “You speak French?”
“Enough to understand enough,” I said deliberately in English.
“I told you she spoke French, Vincent.”
“You said okay French, maybe a little better than most tourists,” he reminded her. She blushed. “I have reserved a table for us. It has the best view,” he said, mostly for my benefit. “Apres vous,” he added, and stepped back.
“Merci.”
I started for the café entrance.
“She hasn’t got her diploma yet,” I heard Denise tell him.
He rushed forward to open the door for us.
“You’re going to attend school here?” he asked.
“I will, oui. The American School of Paris.”
“Ah, yes, the place for the children of expatriates, n’est-ce pas?”
“I’m not the child of an expatriate, nor am I one. Maybe you don’t understand what that means,” I said sharply.
He held his smile.
The hostess, who obviously had flirted with him before and was doing so now, came forward to show us to the table he had reserved. He thanked her with a kiss on both cheeks. I looked at Denise and saw her disapproval.
“You know she sleeps with everyone,” she muttered.
“Not everyone. Not women,” he countered. “She’s not that open-minded. She’s from Estonia, not France,” he added, and laughed.
Denise looked down. I smiled and slipped into my chair. I was happy to see him sit beside Denise, because she was hoping he would.
“I’m going to America next summer,” he declared immediately. “New York.”
“You are?” Denise asked. “You never told me.”
“Even my parents don’t know yet,” he said, “but I am. Keep it a secret, s’il vous plaît.”
“I never tell anyone what you tell me, Vincent.”
“My loyal cousin,” he said. “The snails are magnificent here.”
I looked at the menu. The waitress brought over a bottle of rosé and three glasses.
“She’s not—”
“Secrets,” he reminded her, and she pressed hard on her lips as if they might betray her.
I watched the waitress pour our wine. She smiled at Vincent and walked away.
“Bien
venue à Paris,” Vincent said, raising his glass.
“Merci.”
We all clinked glasses.
“You’ve been here a while?”
“More than a month,” I said. “But Paris is a moveable feast. You don’t get to know it well for years.”
“A Moveable Feast. That’s Hemingway, right?”
“Yes. My uncle gave it to me to read a few weeks ago.”
“What?” Denise asked.
“A book Hemingway wrote about his days in Paris,” I explained. She squinted, still not sure what that meant. “Ernest Hemingway is a very famous American writer.”
“Oh.”
“This is a nice rosé,” I said, twirling it in my glass and taking another sip. “Not sweet and yet not too dry.”
“You’re familiar with wine?”
“Very much. My parents had wine at dinner almost every night. Almost always it was a French wine. My mother taught me the correct way to taste wine.”
“You didn’t tell me that,” Denise said.
“There’s lots to tell each other, Denise. We haven’t known each other that long,” I said, and she blushed again. What exaggerations had she told him?
He didn’t seem upset. There was a new light in Vincent’s eyes, in fact, more amusement, now accompanied by some new interest.
“Most Americans your age whom I have met didn’t strike me as being very sophisticated, especially about wine.”
“It’s not good to generalize about any nationality,” I said. “People are people.”
“What’s that mean?” Denise asked. “People are people?”
“Everyone is different,” I said.
“Vive la différence,” Vincent said, raised his glass, and sipped his wine. “Especially when it comes to women.”
“And men,” I said.
He and I laughed. Denise looked lost.
“Let’s eat,” he said. “My father will be combing the streets if I’m too late.”
I studied the menu, but while I read it, my eyes drifted toward him.
For someone forced to work day and night in a pastry shop, he had a dark complexion, and he didn’t look as tired and unhappy as Denise had made him out to be. He certainly didn’t look unsure or ashamed of himself. Roxy once told me that you could tell a great deal about a man by the way he sat.
“Confident men have good posture, and when they’re sitting across from you,” she had said, “they don’t avert their eyes. You can feel the strength and security. A man who is indifferent to his appearance will be indifferent to you eventually, if not sooner than you’d expect. No matter what,” she added.
I could sit and listen to her lessons about men, about love and romance, for hours, or as long a time as she wanted to devote to it. She told me that some of what she knew she had learned from her mentor, Mrs. Brittany, but most of it was from her own experiences. In the life she led, her instincts about the men she was with had to be sharp. It was self-preservation.
Vincent wore his arrogance well, I thought. I could see that he had a secure sense of himself. He sat and looked out at the other patrons confidently. I think his strength came from his intelligence. It wasn’t physical or cocky. There was nothing like the military demeanor I had grown to know so well in my father. There was instead an air of expectation. It was as if he assumed a role the way a royal might. All the young women working and eating here should pay him some attention. He was a good-looking, intelligent, and sophisticated Frenchman. Who in the world could compete? It should have turned me off, but instead, it captured my interest. I knew I was staring at him. He turned slowly, that smile softening even more.
“Have you decided?”
“Decided?”
“On what to eat?”
“Oh.” A bit flustered, I looked at the menu again and said I would have the caprese salad.
Denise started to order the lamb stew. She claimed she wanted to see if it matched Maurice’s, but Vincent reminded her that she had already had it every time she ate here.
“Oh, right. Then I’ll have the caprese salad, too,” she said. She started to reach for the bread and stopped, sipping her wine nervously instead.
“Can we have some olive oil for the bread?” I asked. “Healthier.”
Vincent nodded and signaled to the waitress. He gave her our orders. He decided to have the same salad, and he ordered some huile d’olive.
“For our American friend. She eats well,” he added, all in French. “Actually, very smart,” he told me.
He looked at Denise. I could see she was anticipating something devastating about her unhealthy eating, but he glanced at me instead and sipped some more wine.
“How is your work, Denise?” he asked her, keeping his eyes on me.
“How could it be? Nothing’s different. I get up, and I get dressed, and after I clean some of our apartment, I go to work. I see the same people, even the same customers, and then I come home and help Mama make dinner.”
“You make more money than most of us,” he told her. “Maybe you will support me, and I can be a starving young poet on the Left Bank, n’est-ce pas?”
“D’accord.” She burst into a smile. “We could have our own apartment,” she said, her excitement building. “I would cook and clean it. We’ll get one with a view. We could—” She stopped when Vincent’s teasing smile almost turned into a laugh. “I mean . . . if you need money, you just have to ask.”
“My rich cousin,” he said, nodding his head at her. “So tell me how you came to be in Paris,” he said. “Denise hasn’t told me all that much about you.”
“I didn’t know that much. I know more about her now,” she protested.
“I lost my parents and came to live with my uncle. He was always closer to me than any of my other relatives, despite the distance and long gaps of time between seeing each other.”
He nodded, losing his smile. “For someone who has suffered such tragedy, you seem . . . okay,” he said, struggling for the right words.
“You sink or swim,” I said.
“What?” Denise asked. “Of course you sink or swim.”
“No. She means you either give up or keep going. She keeps going. You’ve chosen a good friend, Denise,” he told her, still keeping his eyes on me. “A good friend is someone you want to be like in some ways, no?”
Denise looked at me with a little annoyance in her eyes. She shrugged. The waitress brought our salads and the olive oil.
“So tell me,” Vincent said, “what should I not miss when I go to New York? And don’t say the Empire State Building. We have the Eiffel Tower.”
I laughed. “I was going to say the Statue of Liberty. It came from France. You should be sure to check out what you gave the United States.”
“Touché,” he said, and we began to talk more about the two cities, what tourist traps to avoid, and where to get a real taste of the flavor of each city. Eventually, I realized Denise was almost a bystander. I tried to bring her into our conversation, but she had nothing much to say, even about Paris.
“Perhaps you and I will be able to visit some of the places in Paris that Vincent has mentioned,” I told her.
She shrugged. “I don’t know them that well.”
“So you’ll be like me, exploring.”
That seemed to please her.
Vincent checked his watch. “Normally, I would suggest some coffee,” he said, “but if I leave in five minutes, I can walk back to the shop before my father has a . . . how do you say . . . a fit?”
“What’s a fit?” Denise asked.
“A little bit of hysterics,” I explained. “D’accord. Denise and I have more walking to do, right, Denise?”
“Oui,” she said. “We can walk Vincent back to the shop,” she added quickly. “
It’s not that far.”
“Très bien,” he said, and signaled for the check. I offered to pay my share, but he wouldn’t hear of it. Afterward, we started out for his family pastry shop.
I could see he was more relaxed. It hadn’t occurred to me that he might have felt he had to prove himself to an American teenager, but I thought that was part of what had been happening. I felt a little flattered that I mattered that much to him, enough for him to want to impress me. As we walked, we talked more about literature. He was well versed in what had been known as the Beat Generation in America. Many of the writers and poets had lived in Paris. I knew almost nothing about it, but he saw that as an opportunity to talk about what was obviously one of his favorite topics. Every once in a while, I glanced at Denise. She seemed more and more unhappy, drifting behind us at times, distracted.
“Denise tells me you’re a poet,” I said.
“That’s yet to be proven. I just need editors of magazines to agree with Denise,” he said.
“What?” she asked.
We both laughed. She looked more upset now than earlier, because she was left out of so much, but when we reached the shop, she brightened.
“My mother will be surprised to see us. I didn’t tell her you were meeting us, Vincent,” she said.
“Oh, I gave it away already,” he told her. “I used Emmie as an excuse to get my father to give me more time for lunch. He complains about the American tourists who come into the shop, but he envies them. He’s always saying if he had an American business partner, he’d have a franchise by now.”
“I would think a franchise of a restaurant or a pastry shop would be abhorrent to the French owner. It would lose its authenticity.”
Vincent paused and looked at me, his smile now more of admiration than humor. “That’s true. How do you know that?”
“I told you. My mother was French,” I said, as if that would explain everything.
“You surprise me, Emmie. You’re older than you look, older than your age.”
“Not by choice,” I said.
And he lost his smile. He understood.