The Bird Market of Paris (25 page)

“There's your intruder,” he said. It was cool to find a hedgehog in the middle of the night. I hadn't realized they ran loose in France, like squirrels. I slunk back to bed. My first impression on these people had been solidified: I was a fragile, weepy, irrational, paranoid nut job.

 

Chapter 22

There's no way to describe Paris as a whole. Hemingway said Paris was “a moveable feast.” That's as right a description as any. What happened to me was this: I walked. I turned a corner. I saw the most beautiful object, street, or piece of art I'd ever seen. I took a deep, soul-scrubbing breath and resumed walking. I turned another corner. I saw the most extra-beautiful object, avenue, or sculpture I'd ever seen. Then another corner. Another pinnacle of most beautiful object, alleyway, or building. The corners of Paris didn't end.

Gilbertine put Corinne in charge of showing me how to find Paris. Corinne walked me through the twists and turns of her neighborhood to the bus stop. We hopped the bus to the RER train station and rode the train to the Charles de Gaulle–Étoile station and emerged from the tunnel directly across the street from the Arc de Triomphe. It was the most beautiful manmade object I'd ever seen: a giant red, white, and blue flag waving beneath its arch, tiny people walking around on top, cars whipping around the traffic circle, forming their own lanes. Poppy had stood here. I could feel him.

Block after block, Poppy's assertions were true. Maybe he even undersold the city's magnificence. The sidewalks on the grand boulevards—such as the Avenue des Champs-Élysées—
were
as wide as rivers, sidewalks like liquid waterways gleaming with a mineral intensity in the sun, flecks of silver, blue, and gold winking from the granite under my sandals. Corinne walked me through the Tuileries Garden in front of the Louvre. It was the most beautiful park I'd ever seen. The Parisians put museum-quality art outside for pigeons to perch on, like Rodin's sculpture,
The Kiss
, two naked lovers entwining forever in bronze patina, ignorant of us watching them and of the pigeons on their heads, the male lover's hand on her hip, the female lover's arm scalloped around his neck—they would never be lonely—or without birds.

Corrine and I took a table at Vendôme, an outdoor bar overlooking the Louvre and the gardens. I knew I should find a recovery meeting in Paris, but didn't know where they were, and like a garden-variety alcoholic in a relapse, I let that minor detail deter me.

“Should we order a drink?” I asked her.

“Alcohol?”

“Yes,” I said, nodding. “A drink.”

She paused. “It is not typical to have a drink in the daytime.”

This
was why I didn't want to nest with a family. I didn't like living under a microscope, all my shameful secrets on a slide for everyone to see.

“But maybe a glass of wine,” she suggested.

I had forgotten that the French don't consider wine “drinking.”

“We should share, no?” she asked.

I agreed, reluctantly, that sharing would be fine. We ordered cabernet, which came in a roomy glass that looked a quarter full. We took turns taking small sips.

“Do you have a boyfriend?” Corinne asked me. I didn't want to say that I hadn't had a real boyfriend in years, but since I had gone on a few dates with another newcomer from the meetings before I left, I told her about him, that he was a waiter and lived near Times Square.

She swept her long bangs from her eyes. “I have a boyfriend, too,” she said. “We went to bed one time, but my parents don't know.”

I finished the wine in a gulp. “Just the one time?”

“I wanted to wait until eighteen, but he wanted to do it. Don't tell my parents, OK?” She pulled a cigarette from her purse and lit it. I wasn't sure if she knew how lovely she was, so unlike most American teenagers, so possessed of herself. Most French teen girls looked like this—shiny hair, lean bodies, flawless skin, pouty mouths, and tiny waists underneath perfect bust lines and finished off with long legs and perky backsides. I was still overweight, and the alcohol didn't do any favors for my complexion.

“You shouldn't smoke,” I said. “It gives you wrinkles.”

“Eh,
oui
?” she said, wrinkling her brow. “I do not think so.” She took a long drag from the cigarette.

“Should we order another glass?” I needed more wine. Once a little alcohol entered my system, my body begged for more.

She pouted her bottom lip and looked at the ceiling. “It is early, no?”

Instead of ordering more wine, the teenager dragged me to her favorite department stores, which were having summer sales. She took me to the apartment where I'd spend August to see the renovations on the small one-bedroom—there would be new floors and fresh paint on the walls. I longed to be staying there. On the way back to the suburbs, Corinne kept silent as I tried to find the way to her house on my own through the winding streets. I couldn't, and she had to intervene.

This family was charming and pleasant, but I was still sullen. If they were on the phone, they apologized. If they had an errand outside the house, they apologized. If they ran out of orange juice, they apologized. Gilbertine left breakfast and lunch out for me every day, invited me to dine with them most nights, and even did my laundry, folding my undies and handing them to me in a wicker basket. I couldn't appreciate any of it. Poppy would have charmed Gilbertine's family as if they were a flock of birds.

The next day, it rained. I didn't want to walk around Paris in the dampness, so I stayed in my attic room and listened to drops patter on the windowsill and read T. S. Eliot poems, trying to memorize the words to “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” which I believed to be the most perfect poem written in the English language. I had a lock of Poppy's hair in a small plastic bag and used it as a bookmark.

The next day, Sunday, I'd find the bird market.

*   *   *

Gilbertine told me the bird market was near Notre Dame cathedral. I had a map, and the cathedral was on it, but the bird market wasn't. I walked down the Champs-Élysées, through the Tuileries Garden, and turned toward the Seine. I stopped a guy selling newspapers and asked him where the Marché aux Oiseaux was located. He pointed down the street and indicated I should turn right somewhere, but I walked away unsure of his directions. In all the times Poppy had told me about the bird market, I never asked him
exactly
where it was located.

Walking along the river, I found myself on the Quai de la Mégisserie, a street running parallel to the Seine, shops on one side, the river on the other—and Notre Dame in plain sight, with its twin towers and exposed rib cage of buttresses. Then—birdsong. Outside a store called Animalerie, a large cage held an enormous red chicken, along with several white doves and a duck. Next to it was a cage crammed with white doves, and another with budgies of all colors. I took my time watching the birds and cooing to them. I didn't want to rush.

Inside that first dark, crowded store, filled with cages of birds, pens of puppies, a pig, some ducks, and a cage filled with kittens, the guy behind the counter wore what looked to me like a butcher's apron, and I couldn't determine whether this was a pet store, the bird market, or a place where locals bought live birds and other animals for dinner.

The next store was the Oisellerie du Pont Neuf. The word
oisellerie
sounded close to
oiseaux
, which means
birds
in French.
Oisellerie du Pont Neuf
was a huge, clean, bright pet store filled with puppies, kittens, fish, chipmunks, turtles, and birds.

Was this the bird market? A collection of pet stores on one street in Paris? I walked down the street along the Seine, past several flower and plant stores, and discovered another pet store with birds in cages out front, similar to the first store, though larger, and this one housed plenty of reptiles, too.

Maybe years had changed the bird market since Poppy had been there. It wasn't anything like he'd described, but I guessed this was it. I returned to the first store, where the pigeons lived in crowded conditions and may have been used for food, and approached the man behind the counter, busy helping someone buy a French Bulldog puppy. The place was raucous with the voices of patrons, birds, and dogs. A rooster called from a back room, and the whole store smelled like a barn—hay and dung and the sweet, funky smell of birds.

“
Pardon
,” I said, waving my hand at him. After a few minutes he acknowledged me and asked me in French what I wanted.

“I'd like to buy a pigeon,” I said. “A bird.
Oiseau
.” I pointed to a cage filled with standard, everyday rock pigeons. The man didn't understand, so I gestured for him to follow me and I tapped on the cage and asked him how much for one pigeon. He told me they cost eighty-five francs, about twelve dollars at the time. I said I would take four. They were inexpensive enough. I'd reap four times the redemption.

“Why do you want them?” he said.

I doubted I could explain redemption in a way he'd understand. “I just want them,” I said.

He cocked his head and peered at me through the corner of one eye. “What you do with
les oiseaux
?”

“Just to have them,” I said, shifting from one foot to the other. I felt nervous. I didn't understand the reasons for his questions. I wanted birds. I was in a pet store. Do the math.

“No,” he said.

“What?”

“No, no, no.” He waved his hand in front of his face as if to clear away a bad smell.

“I'll take one, then.”

“No,” he said, pushing past me. He opened a half door and walked behind the counter.

I followed him. “Excuse me,
pardon
.” He waved me away again. I wanted to explain about Poppy, about my mission, about regret and redemption and grief and love and the National Endowment for the Arts, but my French wasn't good enough. Tears stung my eyes and I wiped them away before they breached the rims. I waved and caught his attention again.

“
Quoi
?” He stood with his arms folded across his chest.

I pointed to a few brown adolescent ducks near his feet. If I couldn't buy a pigeon, a duck would do. I could release it in the fountain at the Tuileries.

“Can those swim?”

He laughed hard. “You are going to tie a ribbon to her neck and float her in the Seine like a child's boat?” He rolled his eyes and turned his back on me.

Hot tears rolled down my face. I put on my sunglasses and walked out of the store. The bird market was not what I had expected.

*   *   *

My dad had told me that a single woman isn't allowed to sit at a bar alone in Paris because that means she's a prostitute. I found the closest café and ordered a ham sandwich and two glasses of wine, not caring if I seemed like a “working girl” drinking in the middle of the day.

I replayed the exchange in the pet store. Why wouldn't the man sell me a simple pigeon? What did he think I was going to do with it? Had I become the kind of person to whom someone would not sell animals? Was this my karma? I had killed my bird friends in the hurricane and no more bird friends would come into my life. I ordered more wine.

Five glasses down, on my way toward obliterated, I ordered
moules frites
, mussels and French fries, and a glass of Stella Artois beer. When the mussels came, I asked the waiter for a spoon; he sneered at me and threw a spoon at the table, which bounced and hit me in the chest. I was too drunk to react. I ate my food slowly, ashamed. A guy next to me was drinking something red. I pointed to it and asked the nasty waiter to bring me one.

He arrived with a pear-shaped glass of Kronenbourg 1664 beer and a small, shapely shot glass filled with a sticky red liquid, which after a sip I discovered was grenadine. I supposed I should pour the grenadine into the beer, so I did. The concoction tasted like fermented cough syrup.

I wobbled onto the sidewalk after paying the bill. What to do next? I could drown myself in the Seine. I could jump off the Eiffel Tower.
Walk in front of a bus
, a familiar, disembodied voice said.
Walk in front of a bus.

As I wandered, bumping into passersby who cursed me in French, I spotted a hair salon. A new hairdo always made me feel better.

No one in the salon spoke English. I flipped through a copy of
Vogue
and chose a pretty model with minky, dark brown hair, and showed the photo to the colorist, who applied dye, and after the requisite wait washed my head and wrapped it in a towel. A few strands of hair wisped from under the towel, and I pulled them out. Orange. An unnatural, unholy orange.

I snatched the towel off my head and turned the pages of
Vogue
again to the model with the brown hair. The colorist apologized and led me back to the sink, where the she reapplied darker dye. Now my hair was purple with red streaks, and the hair closest to the scalp was still orange. I looked like the third ring at Barnum & Bailey.

The receptionist, who spoke a little English, translated for the colorist and told me my hair would be brown after she blow-dried it. My locks took on a lilac sheen once dry, the orange brightened, and the red shimmered when I jiggered my head under the lights.

My bottom lip quivered.
Do not cry
, I told myself.

I wrapped my hands over my face and sobbed. I left the salon after they made me pay for the botched 'do, and walked straight to a clothing store and bought a hat.

I woozily found my bus and rode it to the station closest to the house, but when I stepped off the bus nothing looked familiar. I walked in a direction that looked correct, swaying down the street, stumbling on my own feet, arriving at a sign reading “Versailles.” I had been walking out of town toward the highway. The sun disappeared and the sky softened into a hazy gray. Songbirds trilled in the trees overhead, telling one another to roost for the night.