Lunch in Paris (28 page)

My mother has a game she plays with Gwendal. She arrives, with her two overstuffed suitcases (checked), two shopping bags
(carry-on), and two cardboard cartons (precisely packed and weighed by Paul not to exceed the excess baggage limit). They
make sure to arrive on a weekday morning, just after Gwendal leaves for the office. The challenge is this: If she can bring
it, unpack it, and hide it before he gets home from work, it stays. If he finds it again before she leaves for the States,
he has the right to send it back. Since Gwendal would never go digging in the back of the closet without a very good reason,
she’s winning, having tucked away the rolling pin, the punch bowl, and Grandma Helen’s mother-of-pearl-handled fish knives.

Even the dinner hour was a debate. My parents were used to eating at seven p.m., certainly no later than seven thirty—but
often Gwendal and I didn’t sit down till nine. They couldn’t possibly go to bed on a full stomach, so they were often up till
two or three in the morning, permanently jet-lagged by their stomachs. My mother resurrected her old schoolteacher’s habit
of eating an extra meal at four p.m., usually standing up in front of the refrigerator.

At least she was complimentary about my cooking. “Why do these green beans taste so good?”
Because we waited in line,
I wanted to say, but I stopped myself. “I tossed them with a little walnut oil and some
fleur de sel
. They have less water in them, so they stay crunchy even if you cook them a little longer.”

Then came the cheese and salad.

I watched my mother at the table, knife poised above the cheese platter, making calculations in her head. In France, dinner
is a ritual, and each food has its own particular little dance to
learn. Like the pâté pan, there is a correct way to approach the cheese. Round ones, like
chèvre
or Saint-Felicien, are cut from the center like tiny pieces of pie. A triangular wedge of Brie or
bleu
must be cut from the side, into ever thinning slivers, and a large rectangular slab of Comté or Cantal should be approached
from the inside edge, working toward the hardened
croûte,
until it is roughly the length of your knife blade, in which case it should be sliced from the side. The idea is never to
leave any diner with just the moldy crust. And of course, to avoid, if at all possible, taking the last piece.

The salad was a test, not so much of geometry, but of manual dexterity. My mother was already suspicious. The same
vendeur
who weighed out our five-hundred grams of
haricots verts
also wrapped up a large head of red leaf lettuce. “
Attention, il y a de la viande dedans,
” he said, winking at my mother.

“What did he say?”

He said, “Watch out, there’s meat in there.” As salad from the market comes out of the actual ground, and not prewashed out
of a plastic bag, there are often small flies and the occasional slug to be rinsed away before dinner. The lettuce leaves
can be as big as linen napkins, and for some reason you are not allowed to cut them. You have to fold instead. It’s like making
origami with a knife and fork, and it takes some practice. I watched my mother struggle with an unruly leaf, flicking a bit
of vinaigrette onto her sweater.

It was an odd role reversal. Suddenly I was the master of etiquette, the holder of the keys to a whole bunch of social cues
that my mother hadn’t fully mastered. I felt powerful, and surprised at how much I was enjoying her discomfort.

I was reminded of the first time I had ever really been in over my head at a dinner table. The food, of course, was French.
My cousin Steven, whom I thought walked on water, had just graduated from
Princeton, and Auntie Lynn threw a dinner in the private dining room of a Manhattan brownstone. The warm wood of the art nouveau
interior enveloped us in flowers and flourishes as we walked in. At fourteen, I was the only teen invited, and I was dressed
in a cream raw silk suit, heels, and makeup that made me to look twenty-four. As at a proper grown-up dinner party, the seating
was mixed and I was nowhere near my mother. I was sitting next to Tom Tuttle, Steven’s best friend, lanky with tiny glasses
and a mop of curly brown hair. I smiled shyly, hoping there was no lipstick on my teeth, as he pulled out my overstuffed chair.

The first course was escargots, and although I was a pro with the mussels, I’d never quite tackled snails. They arrived in
a porcelain dish fitted with circular indentations. Each iridescent shell had its own little hole, like a miniature golf course,
filled with a pungent green paste of parsley and garlic butter. I could hear a low sizzle coming from the plate.

I had certainly been taught my forks and knives, but the escargots had their own special thingamadoo, a pair of mental tongs
with curved pincers at the end, a lot like the eyelash curler my friend Carol tried on me before our last school dance. I
smoothed my napkin, stalling for time, but it was no use. I couldn’t catch my mother’s eye. Without turning my head, I snuck
a quick look at Tom’s hands and followed suit. I picked up my tongs, trapped a shell, and wiggled out the snail with my itty-bitty
fork.

Now what? I felt like I was standing in the middle of an etiquette intersection, ten years of rules and regulations whipping
by at warp speed. I decided to go with the cardinal rule “never put too much food in your mouth at once.” So I picked up my
knife and started sawing away. No love. The knife just bounced back and forth, making not a dent in the slippery surface of
the snail. I pressed harder. I was now in danger of doing a Julia Roberts in
Pretty Woman
and sending the thing flying across the room. Tom
stepped in just in the nick of time. He leaned over, placed his hand gently on my wrist, and whispered in my ear, “You don’t
have to do that.” Then he popped a whole escargot into his mouth. Tom Tuttle, my hero.

I
CLEARED THE
table and bent to take the dark chocolate ice cream out of the freezer for dessert. Paul has fallen madly in love with Carte
d’Or, the standard-issue French supermarket ice cream. He insists it tastes better than the stuff back home. I put up the
coffee, enough decaf for eight people, to fill my parents’ mugs.

Back in the living room, I set four of my imported 1950s metallic ice cream dishes on the table.

My mother looked out our naked window. “I still think you could use some curtains.”

I
’m a sitting in a bar, wearing my most flattering black trousers and a carefully knotted scarf. My palms are a little sweaty,
and I’m fussing with my hair. If only to get my mother off my back, I have a hot date—with a new friend. She’s a bit older
than I am, went to Brown, then to Germany on a fellowship from the Goethe Institute. She also has a French boyfriend, a freelance
job, and an imperfect grasp of irregular verbs. The boyfriend is an old colleague of Gwendal’s, so we have been set up. Courtney
calls this “friend dating,” the hopeful shopping around for kindred spirits of the same sex. If you think about it that way,
I’ve dated a lot more women than men.

Making friends in a new country is a constant negotiation between sympathy and convenience. Like any dating experience, there
will be those who say they’ll call and never do, those who invite you somewhere only to ignore you—and the worst, those with
whom you share a passionate moment of laughter who literally flee the country the next day.

Katherine suggested we meet at an Irish pub near the Louvre. Irish pubs are better at brand management than Starbucks. They
look and smell exactly the same all over the world: dark booths, sticky tables, and smoky carpet in hunting green. If Katherine
was a man, she wouldn’t have gained any points for site selection. I had brought along a French magazine (I’m trying to improve
my vocabulary on breakup tips and beauty quizzes), my feeble attempt to look busy while I was waiting. It was just getting
dark as she came through the door. The place instantly got a little less ugly. She is, it’s true, a perfect 10: five foot
eleven, with long brown hair, the shoulders of a rower, and the legs of a supermodel.