Lunch in Paris (22 page)

I
know the real reason why “French Women Don’t Get Fat.” It has a lot to do with stern looks from your mother-in-law—and the
annual return of
le bikini
.

I haven’t been in a bikini since Afra and I went to Jamaica for three days after she graduated from law school. In between
were two years in England, a bazillion vodka tonics, and ten pounds. Now I was facing my first August vacation with Gwendal’s
parents on the island of Belle-Ile, off the coast of Brittany. Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.

Since I arrived in France, I’ve looked around me with wonder. How do all these women, often with several young children in
tow, look as though they just graduated from high school? Is there a slender gene? As someone who left “slender” behind with
her last pink tutu, I was hoping that nurture, rather than nature, played a dominant role. Maybe now that I’m married to a
Frenchman, I will be initiated into the cult. There must be secrets, rituals, passed down from mother to daughter. Since I
don’t have a French mother, but I’d very much like to look like Nicole when I’m fifty-five, I set about observing her behavior
with an almost scientific interest.

Gwendal’s mother is a near perfect specimen of French woman-hood: five foot two, hair a becoming shade of graying blond, and
an even hundred pounds. She had Gwendal when she was twenty-two, and well into his teens people would ask him on the beach
if they could scam a date with his older sister. She doesn’t diet; she just doesn’t eat.

Like most French women, Nicole is descended from Joan of Arc types—waiflike blondes who can halt an army with a single withering
glance. I, on the other hand, come from hearty Russian peasant stock, and although I’ve always been relatively tall and slim,
you can tell my hips were designed to give birth squatting in a field, digging potatoes. In addition to my natural endowments,
Gwendal and I had just returned from a two-week honeymoon in Italy, which always does wonders for the figure.

W
E ARRIVED BY
the early ferry, docked in the small port, watched by vacationers sipping their coffee and reading the paper. From the port
you could see the seventeenth-century fortress dominating the hillside. I was not the only American on the island. The fort
was hosting a classical music festival, organized by a U.S. tenor who had visited the island twenty years before and fell
in love. It was easy to see why. The port was lined with narrow stone houses, their shutters brightly painted in reds, blues,
and greens. We were staying with family friends, who have a graceful house on the town square. Marie-Chantal was standing
outside to welcome us. She was tiny, birdlike, with a pinched nose, short dark hair, and wrists like the pterodactyl skeletons
you see in museums. She, like Nicole, hasn’t gained an ounce since she was twenty-five.

From the moment I walked in the door, it was clear that she thought there was a giantess in her house. I’m conscious that
I’m
a larger person than your average French woman, but despite the glossy magazines and the after-school specials, I grew up
with a pretty great body image. Maybe it was being raised in a house with all women (even the cat). I’ve never been overweight,
nor am I obsessed with being model thin or Madonna toned. Afra used to call me her Botticelli, because it’s hard to tell if
I have any bones. But looking at myself through Marie-Chantal’s eyes, those postcollege pounds suddenly felt like a fat suit.

We unpacked our bags and went for a walk in the village. Nicole was on the lookout for a famous Parisian psychoanalyst who
vacations here every year. She had just read his latest book and thought, maybe,
maybe,
she would have the guts to approach him if we saw him in a café. We ate lunch by the water, big bowls of mussels swimming
in white wine. Nicole sipped a glass of Sancerre, and I noticed, not for the first time, that she didn’t finish her French
fries. She got a good way down, but you couldn’t see the bottom of the bowl. I made a mental note. She ordered an espresso
and drank it slowly, admiring the view.

After lunch we packed up to go to the beach. I had something to prove. My mother-in-law could be a very respectable member
of a Vermont polar bear club. The house in Saint-Malo is a ten-minute walk to the sea, and she swims from April to October.
Nothing hard-core, just a quick dip. The water is freezing, and the air outside isn’t all that hot either. The water in Belle-Ile,
Gwendal promised, was slightly colder. But I was going in, whether I liked it or not. I was not going to be the sissy American.

I’m completely in tune with the French attitude toward exercise: in my view, sweating is reserved for sex. I’ve never met
a French person with what an American would consider a “workout routine.” I don’t know anyone here who belongs to a gym, except
Fernanda, but she’s Argentinean, and has that trickle-down Brazilian thing to deal with. Our French friends might take
a dance class or spend their holidays hiking in the Pyrénées, or bike to work or walk up four flights of stairs with their
groceries. But nothing specifically designed to get your heart rate up to 462 beats per minute.

When we arrived at the beach, I scanned the small groups of people dotting the sand. Something was odd. Then I realized, with
considerable shock, that almost every woman, from sixteen to sixty, was wearing a bikini. Obviously, they didn’t all look
as if they’d just stepped out of the
Sports Illustrated
swimsuit issue. That would be unfair. There were wrinkles, some cellulite, less than perky breasts, a few flappy arms where
muscle used to be. But in almost every case, you could see the body (with a few minor adjustments) that they must have had
at seventeen. There was a distinct lack of things jutting out at odd angles. Very few jelly rolls,
very
few thunder thighs. The immediate impression was one of comfort and ease. They weren’t perfect, but these people didn’t hate
their bodies. They had no reason to.

Looking around me on the beach that day, I began to formulate a theory. We’ve heard it all before: the French eat cheese and
drink wine and somehow live longer and look better than Americans. What if the X factor is the vacation itself? If every year,
every
year, you know you are going to spend at least two weeks in a bikini, maybe you pay attention. The five pounds of winter
flab disintegrates with a few weeks of well-chosen meals, and by August you can bear to look at yourself in the mirror again.
Think about how many five-pound winters there are between the average American and a two-week beach vacation.

I left my skirt and sunglasses in a pile. I wouldn’t say I was feeling svelte, but it was impossible to feel self-conscious
when there was a woman the age of my grandmother, not three feet away, wearing basically the same bathing suit. Gwendal seemed
to approve. As far as he was concerned, the more time I spent
in something that resembled a black bra and underwear, the better.

Nicole had a one-piece, but this was no L. L. Bean granny special with superstraps and a skirt. It was a high-cut black number,
with spaghetti straps and a plunging neckline. She took down her hair, which still falls halfway down her back. As she bent
to take off her sandals, I caught a brief glimpse of the woman Gwendal must have played with on the beach twenty-five summers
ago. She looked elegant, appropriate, beautiful.

We ran down to the water and plunged in, squealing. It was glacial.

The things we do for love.

A
S NICOLE CHANGED
back into her skirt and braided her hair, I noted the contents of her bag: book, scarf, tube of sunscreen, bottle of water.
I made another mental note. French women drink an extraordinary amount of H
₂
O. Nicole is never without a blue Vittel bottle. It’s not that she totes it around—the French rarely eat or drink on the run—but
wherever she stops, there’s a liter close at hand. There is bottled water on the table at every meal, and she takes a smaller
bottle (fortified with magnesium) up to bed with her every night. Even when she’s not drinking water, she’s drinking water:
she drinks a big pot of tea in the morning, and
infusions
—herbal teas—in the afternoon and evening. She’ll have the occasional beer, but I’ve never seen her within sight of a soda.

What was conspicuously absent from her bag were snacks. If an American family goes to the beach for the afternoon, chances
are there’s going to be a box of Fig Newtons in mom’s tote, or at least money for a drippy ice cream cone. Nicole
never
eats between meals. She drinks wine at lunch; she usually has dessert
or a square of dark chocolate with her coffee. Sometimes, when she sees patients till ten o’clock, she’ll come down and grab
a plain yogurt with a spoonful of jam. But she doesn’t graze in the kitchen, ripping off a hunk of baguette before dinner.
She doesn’t pick while she cooks, popping one green bean into her mouth for every one she puts in the pot.

The non-snacking thing must take practice, because by the time we got back from the beach I was starving. There was no way
I could ask to stop by the bakery on our way home; we were past the hour of
le goûter
—the French four o’clock tea—when it might have been acceptable to have a
crêpe
or a
financier
to tide us over until the evening
apéritif
. There was no question of my going into the kitchen to grab a glass of juice or a piece of fruit; it was clear that the area
was off limits except for strictly observed mealtimes, like banker’s hours.

Dinner did not disappoint. Marie-Chantal had been to the market that morning and had come back with shiny eggplants and a
basket of tomatoes for a ratatouille, and a large (but not enormous) sea bass.

Ratatouille holds a special place in my heart because it’s the first French dish I learned to make by myself. Funnily enough,
my introduction to French cooking was also my introduction to Frenchwomen; I was taught by Agnès, the first Frenchwoman I
ever met.

Agnès was an exchange student in Scotland the same year I was. She wore her hair pulled back into a bun, white blouses, and
navy blue cashmere sweaters with a silk scarf tied neatly around her neck. Since I had a single room and she had a double,
she once “sexiled” me, for a tall German guy who also wore a navy blue cashmere sweater. Even in the dorm, we threw dinner
parties together, taking the mismatched knives and forks down to the study room with the big table in the basement.

Agnès was from Toulouse, in the south of France, so she knew a thing or two about sun-soaked veggies. She taught me how to
sauté the onions until they turned translucent with a pale caramel around the edges. Then she added the slices of eggplant,
but no more oil—because eggplant soaks up every liquid within reach. We served it over pasta; we were students, after all.

Marie-Chantal brought out the fish. Or, rather, she brought out a solid white mountain with the fish hidden inside. She had
baked the bass in a crust of coarse sea salt, which she cracked open at the table with a knife and a hammer. It was spectacular
really, like serving baked Alaska for a main course. She deboned the fish at the table, and if I had to guess I would say
there was no more than two to three ounces per person. There were no leftovers, no seconds, just the memory of the
apéritif
and olives beforehand and anticipation of the cheese, salad, and dessert to follow.

I thought of my mother’s table, laden with seconds and thirds for everyone, all the dishes brought to the table at the same
time. In the States, I could easily eat triple the amount that was now on my plate without considering whether I was actually
hungry. I looked at Nicole, spooning ratatouille, as bright as a summer garden, onto her plate. I made another mental note.
If my calculations were correct, this was the main reason why, with no particular effort, I had not gained a single ounce
since I moved to Paris. A French portion is half of an American portion, and a French meal takes twice as long to eat. You
do the math.