Paris in Love (14 page)

We have migrated from the charming but crowded American church to Saint-Eugène–Sainte-Cécile right on rue du Conservatoire. It turns out that they have a Mass in French as well as the one in Latin (not that it matters to me in terms of comprehension). The priest has nine male acolytes of different ages; incense and little chiming bells are waved around as if they were magic potions guaranteed to increase piety.

We discovered yesterday that our beloved covered market, not to mention the local fishmonger and butcher, is closed on Monday, which left our cupboard bare. For lunch I had a hunk of an excellent Camembert, with a boiled potato sprinkled with coarse sea salt, followed by a leftover apricot tart. Life is good.

Florent, Alessandro’s conversation partner, is going to Italy for a visit, so today they practiced romantic phrases. Florent is going to try to move past cheerful commentary. In Italian, you say
“Ti amo”
(“I love you”) only to a lover. To everyone else—children, parents, friends—you say
“Ti voglio bene,”
which roughly means “I wish you well.” It’s very romantic to save
I love you
only for affairs of the heart.

When it rains on rue du Conservatoire, rainwater pours into subterranean conduits that run underneath the sidewalk. The water rushing through those pipes turns drain holes to tiny fountains, squirting rain a few inches into the air. It’s as if huge
clams were signaling that they were digging deeper, under the streets of the 9th arrondissement.

Yesterday we bought little cans of dog food for “our” homeless man, or rather for his puppy, which is growing very fast and developing the awkward paws that promise he will be a large dog. Anna delivered the first can on her way to school. The puppy knows us now, and leaps from his box with a squeaky bark as soon as we get close. He’s a licker, a face licker (of course Anna gets down on his level), but very sweet all the same.

BHV is a huge Paris department store, five floors of everything from lamps to kids’ undies and bright pink whisks. I just spent hours there, ending up in the art materials department, where I bought a book of delicate papers from around the world: paper that has designs sewn on it in gold thread, Japanese tissue paper, papers with wild swirls and elegant fleurs-de-lis. Rather than sending a Christmas card depicting the children smiling under duress, I am determined that we will make our own cards this year.

Anna came home with a big grin and told me that Domitilla had a “time of stress” at the blackboard in math class, as the teacher not only shouted, but pounded his fist on the desk. The truth is that I am failing to instill compassion in this child. I talked to her for five minutes about patience, kindness, and generosity, and then she laughed like a hyena and ran away.

I lived in Paris once before, during a junior year abroad. Back then, I was working as a model, which meant that I reflexively averted my eyes from all sorts of culinary temptations. Instead, I salivated over lingerie stores displaying delicate pleated bras and extravagant silk panties. Now I zip past those stores, only to linger at chocolate shops displaying edible chess sets, or a model of Hogwarts in dark chocolate. It’s nice that life is long enough to give you desires of many kinds.

This afternoon the doorbell rang, and Alessandro spied our local pharmacist standing down below, in the street. Anna has chronic kidney disease and must take four medications a day, so my instant panic was that there’d been some sort of mix-up. But no. He cheerily said hello, then noted that there was a tiny change in one of her prescriptions, and he wanted to check that we knew (we did). He had hopped across the street just to make sure.

Alessandro feels that he’s not speaking enough French, because his conversation partner, Florent, spends most of his free time in Italy wooing the elusive waitress. So today he started another such exchange, this one with a woman named Viviane. She is a professor of American culture, which means that I would essentially be a walking research project for her—particularly as she is writing an article on Americans’ use of social networks such as Facebook, and I spend an inordinate amount of time fashioning my updates.