Lunch in Paris (20 page)

W
henever people talk about my wedding, they remember two things: the band and the cheese.

In order to get people to dance in the middle of the afternoon, Gwendal decided we should blow the budget (was Bard Economics
rubbing off on him already?) on a big band. They had sky blue blazers and matching ties. There were eighteen of them. If people
wouldn’t get up and dance to this, they were just being grumpy.

As usual, I was more concerned with what we were going to eat. Having dispensed with the hors d’oeuvres and the cake, I turned
my attention to the meal we weren’t serving. I took an imaginary survey among my friends: what are the things you most long
for when you visit France? Two items kept coming up at the top of the list: great wine and great cheese. Easy enough.

But a year in France was long enough to make me wary of “easy.” As I suspected, there was one final obstacle: simply put,
our cheesemonger didn’t want to sell us smelly cheese.

I went to see Monsieur Gilot on Sunday morning at the small market just around the corner from our house. He is balding, with
a well-trimmed mustache and black-rimmed glasses. Central
casting would put him up for the role of the high school social studies teacher. Instead, he and his wife drive into Paris
every Sunday from Normandy to sell cheese, fresh eggs, and breasts from ducks they’ve raised themselves.

“
Les américains, ils n’aiment pas les fromages qui puent
.” But Americans don’t like smelly cheese, he insisted. Nothing too strong.

His implication was clear. There was something bland, flaccid, in the American character, unable (by dint of historical unripeness)
to muster the gastronomic courage to try a hunk of
roquefort artisanal
, so potent it made everything you dared to eat afterward taste like laundry detergent. He may as well have challenged me
to a duel.

To be fair, the French are rightfully proud and even a bit pedantic about their cheese. The
fromages
of France are as individual as the field of grass that fed the cow (or sheep, or goat) who gave the milk, not to mention
the fellow who mixed, molded, and aged it. Certain bacteria, like those that produce the blue in
roquefort,
are a well-guarded secret, protected with the same fierceness as a set of nuclear launch codes. In an interview with
Newsweek
in 1961, President Charles de Gaulle famously commented, “How can you govern a country with two hundred and forty-six kinds
of cheese?” What he meant was, “How can you govern a country with two hundred and forty-six kinds of
French
.” Cheese is an apt expression of the French character. There may be a hard, crusty, even a stinky, exterior. Up to you to
cut through to the dense, melting (sometimes piquant) heart.

But the arrogance and enthusiasm of youth have their own advantages. What Monsieur Gilot didn’t understand, though he’d been
happily selling me my cheese for over a year, was that in the short time this American had been in town, she had become a
bona fide cheese connoisseur. True, my palate had a long way to go. Like many Americans of my generation, I was raised on
Kraft
Singles and macaroni and cheese made with orange powder and a pat of butter. I never quite descended into the gooey inferno
of Velveeta, but I wasn’t far. I certainly didn’t encounter anything as sophisticated as Cracker Barrel cheddar or Brie before
college, and even then it was in the guise of tiny toothpicked chunks surrounded by seedless grapes and pale water crackers.

When I arrived in France, I started with names I recognized. There was something in his case labeled
Munster
. That must be the “monster cheese” of my childhood. It was softer and creamier than the vacuum-packed rectangle I remember
my mother slicing (I liked the ends, marked in paprika with a pattern of tiny squares). That evening after dinner, I unwrapped
the Munster from its protective waxed paper and lifted it onto a plate. Gwendal caught a whiff from across the room. When
I got up the next morning to take a shower, my hand smelled as though I’d slept holding a wet gym sock.

I soon graduated to Comté, a hard, fruity cheese that when aged has the sweetness and flake of Parmesan, and
tête de moines
(literally, “a monk’s head”), made from sheep’s milk. Bleu d’Auvergne, my favorite blue cheese, had nothing much in common
with the crumbs I’d seen at home on a California Cobb salad. It was so dense it resembled a hunk of butter, coursing with
violet veins.

For the wedding, Gwendal also wanted Salers, a cheese from Cantal with an almost peppery after-bite. It is made in huge
tomes
that, when you cut a slice, leave crags as in the side of a cliff. Monsieur Gilot kindly suggested a milder
entre-deux
(literally, “in between”), but Gwendal held his ground.

As a last choice, we took a
tomme de chèvre frais,
a round of fresh mild goat cheese the color of newly fallen snow. It is always prudent to follow a little of your
vendeur
’s advice, if only to be polite.

O
UR NEW COUCH
arrived for the wedding four hours before my mother. We moved into our apartment at the end of May and, this being France,
the couch we ordered was (without explanation, refund, or regret) six weeks late. I had just finished stuffing the plastic
wrap into a garbage bag when I heard the taxi pull up in front of the building.

The neighborhood put on its best face for my family’s arrival. It was laundry day at the building across the street; there
were undershirts and housecoats and a velour blanket printed with a giant tiger hanging out the window. The streets around
the canal, for all that the area was up and coming, still had as many socks on the windowsills as geraniums. That morning,
directly across the street
chez
our neighbors on the second floor, there were neither undershirts nor geraniums: just a skinny guy, stark raving naked, smoking
a cigarette. I opened the door as Gwendal leapt in front of the window. Arms stretched wide to block as much of the view as
possible, he put on his sunniest grin. “Welcome! How was your flight?”

My mother came in with Paul, kissed us hello, and handed me a long rectangular box. “I carried this all the way over on my
lap,” she said. “It’s from your father.”

A wedding present. From my dead father.
This oughta be good
.

The box was as big as a trombone case, and filled with several layers of Bubble Wrap. I picked my way through the intricate
packing job to reveal the top of a shiny ceramic head.
Oh God.

“You
bought
Lladró?” I said, my heart sinking like the hull of the
Titanic
.

“No, I
brought
Lladró.”

And sure enough, when I looked closely at the glazed porcelain statue of the seated milkmaid and her elongated shepherd playing
his lute, I recognized it. It had been on the mantelpiece in our living room for my entire life, right next to the portrait
of the old man that I thought was a lion until I got glasses in the first grade.

“Your father and I bought this on our first trip to Europe. I thought you’d like to have it.”

I knew I was being hurtful, but I just couldn’t think of anything nice to say. I couldn’t think of an object that reminded
me
less
of my father. Our friend Diego grew up in Peru. His mother, for her wedding, had received not just Lladró, but
fake
Lladró, from a number of elderly and easily insulted relatives. In 1974, there was an earthquake in Lima. Isabelle quickly
took Diego outside, then ran back into the house, up to the first floor, and knocked the statues, one by one,
clink, clink, clink,
off the mantelpiece.

Where is an earthquake when you need one?

The thought must have registered on my face, because my mother clammed up and looked as though she was about to cry. Paul
said they were tired from the flight and would see us later. Perfect. My mother had been here for ten minutes and already
I’d put my foot in it. A record. A personal best.

O
N THURSDAY AFTERNOON
, I left Gwendal with Paul and Gary, Auntie Lynn’s husband, to install the kitchen cabinets. There are not a lot of comedy
acts I’d pay good money to see; one of them is a PhD in engineering sitting on the living room floor forty-eight hours before
his wedding trying to put together a set of Ikea cabinets.

Since we were having thirty people over for brunch on Sunday morning, this was not a chore that could wait. My mother (who
was, for whatever reason, still speaking to me) decided this would be a good time to go out and buy a coffeepot. We left Gwendal
balancing a four-foot cabinet on his head while Paul and Gary stood across the room with their arms crossed, muttering.

“A little to the left, no, up, up up, now down,”

Gwendal, like Atlas holding up the globe, stood perfectly still, muscles tensed, hammer poised.

“I wouldn’t do it like that,” murmured Paul under his breath. “Would you?”

“No,” said Gary, with the slightest shake of the head, “not like that.”

They have a name for this in French.
Inspecteur des travaux finis
—inspector of finished works. It’s the guy who walks behind you and tells you what you did wrong. Gwendal, too gracious to
tell his future father-in-law and uncle to go jump in a lake, just moved a little to the left and started banging away. I’m
surprised he didn’t come to the ceremony with a nail in his thumb.

I’
M NOT SURE
what everyone was expecting.

If someone had asked me, ten years ago, to picture my wedding in France, my first thought would have been a château in Burgundy
(just a few turrets, nothing over the top) with a horse-drawn carriage to take us to the twelfth-century parish church (Grandma,
it’s a very small crucifix). A tiny stained-glass window would cast a kaleidoscope of colors on my white satin gown. A tiara
(it’s very precise in my head, the tiara) would hold my veil. If the wedding were in Paris, why not the Grande Galerie of
the Louvre? It has a lovely view of the Seine, and we could take some pictures later riding the elevator in the Eiffel Tower.

Our wedding took place in the town hall of the 10th arrondissement, not far from the Gare du Nord. In France, because of the
strict separation of church and state, only a government official can perform a wedding. Religious ceremonies happen afterward
or often, not at all. We were just thankful there was no rugby game that weekend. When there is, the singing and bagpipes
wake up the natives. The Brits swarm the brasseries around the station, drunk at eight a.m., right off the Eurostar.

Our town hall is grand in its own way, a hulking nineteenth-century building with lots of towers and spires, Neuschwanstein
meets Notre-Dame. The neighborhood is better known for the passage Brady, a street of cheap Indian restaurants, and the rue
du Château d’Eau, an entire street lined with African hairdressers. This Saturday morning, like any other, the sidewalks teemed
with people. The smell of cocoa butter and peanut oil flowed out of the shops, as women spent the day getting their hair braided
for a night on the town. There are three huge guys who stand all day at the exit of the metro at Château d’Eau, harassing
the girls on their way out. All of my English friends in big hats passed that way.