At Home in France (15 page)

Once the idea took hold, I was possessed by it. I climbed out of the car, jotted down the license number, and set off at a somewhat lumbering run through the rain. At the SOS, I bounded over the rail, pushed the but
ton, and waited for the
allô
. I gave my name and announced that I had the license number. But before I had a chance to relay it, the sharp, splintered voice commanded,
“Retournez à la voiture!”
The message was delivered in such a militaristic and alarming manner that I was rendered speechless. This had been a mistake. I sloshed to the guardrail, leaned my stomach against it, and swung my right leg over. As I gymnastically followed with the other leg, my running shoe caught in the lip of the rail. I spun in the air and landed on my side in a twisted heap, my shoe still hooked in the rail. I lay in the gushing, mucky river of rain. For an instant, for one hopeless instant, I considered just lying there and letting go, letting the rain and the mud and my exhaustion overtake me. I can’t think when I’d ever felt so defeated, so abandoned, in my life. I worked my foot loose and slowly, very slowly, rose to a standing position, testing, testing. My wrenched knee protested. Nothing was torn or broken, but I was reduced to a hobble. It was going to take me forever to get back to the car. A refrain of my father’s jingled in my head—one of his little slogans for life that had an unpleasant edge to it: when the going gets tough, the tough get going.

At long last I reached the car, drenched and chilled to the bone. Could the tow truck have come and gone? I could hardly bear the thought. Stiff-legged, I eased into the car. I needed to examine my knee and was frightened of what I might find. There was a pair of slacks in my bag. My wet jeans were stiff and heavy, but I managed to wiggle out of them. The knee was angry-looking and swollen; I cupped it tenderly in my palms. The other knee, to my surprise, was bloody and bruised. I pulled on the dry slacks and wrapped my arma around myself. I
glanced at my watch. Twelve-twenty.
Une bonne heure
had turned into three. I drew into myself. It was important to keep the reins. I was walking a fine line in my mind and had to stay the course. I sat, with my head back, and thought, really, of nothing at all. I’d gone past worrying anymore, past thought, past caring. Something would happen.

And so it did. In the rearview mirror I saw the miraculous, joyous sight of a tow truck! Could it be? Could it be
my
tow truck? I bounded from the car and hailed it. Sure enough, it pulled up smartly in front of the car, as if, indeed, this was its destination. A short, stocky, uniformed young man jumped from the cab and tipped his cap. I could have smothered him with hugs and kisses. I no longer cared that it had taken him half a day. The important thing was that it was over, all over. Without a word, he slid into the car and attempted to start the motor. Not a peep. He slid out, made a slitting-the-throat gesture, and said simply, in the universal language, “Kaput.”

The tow truck was already loaded with one automobile mounted on the rear platform. The driver jumped into the cab to release a spare platform behind. With amazing agility and speed, he hooked up my car and reeled it onto the platform. He instructed me to climb up front into the cab of the tow truck.

The door handle was as high as my upstretched arm. I yanked on the enormous thing and managed to open the door, which was at the level of my head. I mounted the high step with my good leg and stood poised like a flamingo. Inside, crammed into the single passenger seat, was what I took to be a Japanese family: a woman with a young girl in her lap near the driver’s seat and beside her her husband. Where was I meant to sit?

“Hello,” I said. The Japanese gentleman nodded, a sort of curtsy. His wife looked stonily ahead. With all the aplomb I could manage—as if I were merely assuming my proper seat at the opera—I hoisted myself into his lap. I am tall and slender. He was short and squat. Not a match. I anchored myself with my arms on the dashboard. I had to bend my head slightly so as not to glance off the roof. My knee was throbbing; there was very little space for my long legs. I wriggled a bit on his lap, like a roosting hen, to ensure a better perch. It was extremely uncomfortable for everyone, but not a word of complaint. We were off.

No one spoke. Where were we going? I wondered with only mild curiosity. I didn’t care, not one iota, where I was being taken. I was back in the world of the living. We rumbled along for nearly a half hour, when I began to see road signs for Paris. That lifted my spirits tremendously. That close! Could it be that the tow truck was going into Paris? I didn’t ask. I just waited to see. Shortly thereafter we turned off the autoroute and onto a secondary road. The tow truck pulled up to a stop at the side. The driver craned his neck to inform me that another truck would be arriving to pick up my car. Where would I be taken? I finally stirred myself to ask.

“Avis,”
the driver said. Aaa-vee.

That was positive news. I extracted myself—aching neck, aching back, aching knee—from the Japanese gentleman’s lap. “Good-bye,” I said politely, as if we’d been fellow guests at a party.

Within minutes the second truck arrived, a smaller, single-car pickup. My car was released from the large tow truck and remounted on the second, smaller one. I climbed into the front seat of the truck.

“Où allez-vous?”
the young driver inquired eagerly
with a bright smile, as if this was simply an unexpected stop on my pleasure trip. He was boyish and thin, as if he’d grown too tall too quickly for his body. His ears stood out prominently from his head. They were the strangest ears—flat as a pancake, with no curl at the edges. Though he was slight, this gave his head a somewhat elephantine appearance, which was disturbing and endearing at the same time.

“Paris,” I said.

“Anglaise?”
he asked. The usual.

“Non, Américaine,”
I replied, and awaited, and received, the usual ripple of surprise.

He very much wanted to come to America, he informed me. Oh, New York, it must be very exciting to live in New York. This was a familiar conversation, but now I was charmed, giddy, to be reattached to normal life.

At the Avis agency, a small building that seemed to be located on the industrial outskirts of Paris—factories and warehouses surrounded it—the car was unloaded from the pickup. I took out my belongings, congratulating myself for being a light packer, thanked my driver, and approached the desk.

I explained the problem with the car to a surprisingly jolly gentleman—surprisingly jolly, that is, for someone at an Avis complaint desk. He pulled out some official forms; this clearly was not the first such incident of its kind. He explained that, first, I would have to pay (by credit card, of course) the expenditures for the towing, but that I would be reimbursed by Avis. Second, I had the option of taking another rental car if I needed it, or—he pointed across the way—simply taking the
métro
into Paris.

The
métro
! It was right here! I was elated to be relieved
of the car. Suddenly, after the excruciating march of time since dawn, things were moving forward at an amazing clip. I signed all the papers.

Was there anywhere I could get lunch? I asked. It was nearly one o’clock. He pointed down the road.

I limped along, bobbing with my bag on the good-leg side. I entered the restaurant, a large room with Formica-topped tables and wooden chairs. It was hot and smoky, crowded and noisy. The customers were all men, obviously workers from the surrounding factories nearing the end of their lunch hour. I’d never been in such a nitty-gritty place in France and, since I was largely ignored, was relishing every minute of it. I found an unoccupied corner table and ordered a beer, never mind coffee. I wanted whatever was filling: an omelette, a
cheese
omelette, french fries. The waitress promptly brought a basket filled with a loaf of bread and butter, and I reached for it greedily.

Ravenous hunger, a state that I’d passed through a number of times since dawn, is a primitive sensation, one that I had rarely felt, I now realized. I’d never say “I’m starving!” so offhandedly again. I ate the entire loaf of bread, slathering it with butter. I was grateful for the buzz of activity around me, conscious of my foreignness and relieved to be ignored. I was riveted on food. I asked for another beer when the waitress brought the omelette and fries. They might have been the best I’d ever had. The omelette—a huge, plump mound—was cooked perfectly, the cheese mellow. The fries were crisp and greaseless. I couldn’t have done better in Paris. I ate until I was satiated and finished my second beer, feeling pleasantly light-headed.

The
métro
stop was the last on the line. I still had no
precise idea where I was. I studied the subway map and saw that I would come into Paris at Les Invalides; the familiarity of the name was immensely comforting. The ride took nearly forty-five minutes. It wasn’t until I reached a familiar stop that I felt, finally, anchored in the world.

I checked into one of my favorite hotels in Paris, Hotel des Marronniers, where I often stay. The desk clerk greeted me warmly. It was four-ten. I went to my room, dropped my bags, and collapsed on the bed—for only a minute of thanksgiving. I drew a hot bath in the tub and closed the door to capture the heat and steam. I eased into the water and propped my bad leg on the ledge. I encased my knee with a hot wet towel; it probably needed ice, but the heat felt good. I replenished the hot water, feeling the steam fill my lungs. Finally, I wrapped myself in a bath towel and curled up in bed. I turned on the television to find a tennis match in progress; it didn’t matter to me who was playing. This was perfect, requiring no thought. It was a beautiful spring day in Paris, just out my window. Normally I would have been sorry to be missing it. Instead, I felt … grateful. Grateful for having survived.

If I had been with a friend, I considered, it would have been an entirely different experience. Human disasters, on a small or grand scale, are always alleviated by the presence of others. But I had had no one to provide a buffer for me in the situation. That had made all the difference. That was the essence of the trauma. With a friend, it would have been more bearable. It might even have provided a laugh.

One thing was sure, however: I’d had enough of rented cars.

F
or years, I sought a sense of belonging in this corner of France. A feeling of anonymity—a frustrating reminder of how our sense of self depends on others—sometimes nagged at me. When I would arrive at the Bézamats, Kati and Françoise would dart to the porch and then scurry inside.
“C’est l’Américaine!”
they would shout to Mama and Papa. Bobbie would race up the steps of the porch and stand at the door yapping, his tail quivering in the air like an exclamation point punctuating their shrilling. I would wince. I didn’t want to be the representative of a country. I wanted to feel individual, myself, in their eyes.

I considered that this estrangement had to do with the brevity of my visits, and that my neighbors—not only the Bézamats, but the Servais and the Salgues and the Hirondes, to an extent—subconsciously didn’t seek more than a casual relationship since I had not made a deeper, more continuous investment in their world. On the other hand,
there seemed to be a difference between us: Americans, more open and personal; the French, more formal and restrained. I am always curious about their lives: their opinions, their relationships, their day-to-day habits. Yet they show little curiosity about mine. I am circumscribed by their world, the world we share.

I have a recurrent fantasy of inviting all the neighbors to dinner. (I’ve never figured out precisely how they relate to each other, although I suspect it’s not so different from the neighbors on my Brooklyn block.) In my imagining, they all gather on the patio—for an all-American barbecue. I have to explain to them what that means: hot dogs and hamburgers on toasted buns, with mustard or ketchup, or both; potato chips (no, not french fries); coleslaw with hot bacon dressing; corn on the cob—not the fodder for cattle that it’s taken for in France, but sweet and dripping with melted butter; apple pie—no, not
tarte tatin
, but a mile-high pie with cheddar-cheese crust. Beer. I envision a sort of down-home
Babette’s Feast
. I watch their faces. They are initially skeptical. They deign to take a bite. They stubbornly refuse comment. They eat some more. They ask for more beer. The gathering starts to feel more like a party. They ask for seconds. Score! Of course, the fantasy always comes to an abrupt halt. Where would I get the hot dogs? The corn?

So, when the Bézamats invited me to Sunday dinner—I’d known them then for seven years—I was ecstatic. My first invitation to dine
en famille!
While we’d always been on friendly and chatty terms, it had never involved socializing. At last the bridge was being crossed. We had never used each others’ names in our conversations. Somehow “Madame” and “Monsieur” seemed too formal. Yet using first names seemed too familiar—I
wouldn’t have dared. So we skirted the issue entirely, leaving a sort of awkward hole in our conversations. It suggested to me that we hadn’t quite figured out where we stood with each other: myself, the American
journaliste
(a profession the French revere); the Bézamats, country folk who took care of my house. Friendly, but not really friends. But what? This was a step forward.