Paris Letters (18 page)

But then I changed the pattern. Instead of being forced to sit in an office with a pile of folders, I realized I was not, in fact, required to stay at my desk. There was no boss expecting me to be there, no project managers chomping at my heel, no accountant tracking my billable hours, and no supervisor deciding whether to approve a Vacation Request form.

So in the middle of addressing an envelope, I put down my pen, slipped into my ballet flats, and went for a long, slow stroll down rue Monge. I crisscrossed my way toward the Seine, changing sides of the street wherever there was a flower shop to admire. I literally stopped to smell the roses. I slipped quietly into Saint-Nicolas-du-Chardonnet church to admire the soft glow of the chandeliers and sit among the ladies who still wore veils to cover their heads. Together we prayed in serene silence.

Amply amped up on spiritual mojo, I left the church and continued down rue des Bernardins to cross the bridge at Quai de l’Archevêché and take a gander at the locks shining in the sun. Lovers from around the world add their locks to the bridge to solidify their love. I read a few of their names and sent them a silent blessing. I hoped Karen and Rob were doing well, and Patricia and Allan too. I continued to my favorite bridge, Pont Saint-Louis, where from one spot I could see the sexy buttresses of the back end of Notre Dame, the statue-encrusted Hôtel de Ville, the boats puttering beneath the bridge, and most importantly, the violin player.

By the look of the gathering crowd, he had a gaggle of gawking groupies waiting for him to finish his set so they could have a little tête-à-tête with hopes for a little one-on-one. I could see why. His hair was tied back in a ponytail with a few wisps swaying in the breeze. He looked more like a skateboarder than a violinist, which was part of the appeal. When I dropped a few coins in his violin case, he locked eyes with me and shot me a sly grin.

He was good.

So was his music. He was an artist at play. I had spied him here before, playing to no one, swaying to the sound of his own music. When he sped up the tempo, he hopped and jived to his own beat, making his own fun. And I guess that’s what happened to me with the Paris Letters. Though I enjoyed sharing the letters with people, I created them for myself first. I wanted to see how the letters would turn out as much, or maybe more, than the people who would receive them. I always had an idea of how to start and of what to say, but as I spent more time with each letter, I was really just being witness to what happened when the colors mixed. And I was never sure what words would come out of me until I picked up the pen and started to write.

We—the violin player and me—were not so dissimilar. Artists amusing themselves first for the sake of it.

Artists.

It had only occurred to me in that moment that I was indeed an artist. In Paris! The wish I had in January 2010 had come true. It was a circuitous route, so circuitous in fact that I didn’t even catch what was going on until this moment on the bridge. I had to first become an escape artist, then travel to discover the work of Percy Kelly and settle into a life that was conducive to creating art. And along the way, I found the lovely Christophe.

I was an artist!

When my beautiful violinist had finished, the salivating sisters chatted with him as he packed away his violin. Bidding them adieu with a tip of his hat, he headed toward the accordion player who had started playing on the other end of the bridge. He stopped and listened for a minute. He tossed a few coins in the hat and disappeared in the crowd.

I skipped toward home. I had orders to fill.

Dear Áine,

Notre Dame turns 850 this year. She’s looking fantastique for her age. How French of her. Paris has grown out from this Gothic masterpiece of gurgling gargoyles and flying buttresses. And the English King, Henry VI, was crowned King of France here (Mon Dieu!), and later Napoleon was crowned Emperor here. Now, Notre Dame peers out to the green waters of the Seine, standing tall for the constant stream of tourists snapping photos from the riverboats. To celebrate her birthday, she’s getting a new set of bells. The originals were melted down to make cannonballs during the French Revolution. The replacements were temporary and always out of tune. I had the chance to see the new bells up close before they were hoisted to the towers. First, they were paraded through Paris on flatbed trucks, then displayed inside on the cathedral floor. Each bell is named after a different saint and tuned to the only original bell, called Emmanuel, which was the bell Quasimodo liked best and would swing from with delight. Despite all this bell hoopla, they are silent in the days leading up to Easter. Apparently, all the church bells of France grow wings and fly to Rome to get a special Easter blessing from the Pope. On Easter Sunday, they return and drop chocolates all over France. So while children in other countries have their eyes on the ground, hoping to catch a glimpse of the Easter Bunny, French children look to the skies for falling chocolate. I, however, head straight to les chocolateries.

Janice

25

Yellow Flip-Flop Summer

The following summer in Paris felt like the longest I’d had since my yellow flip-flop summer, which was the summer I was too young to work on my uncle’s farm but old enough to stay home and look after my younger sister Carla. I wore yellow flip-flops nearly every day and had tan marks on the top of my feet well into the next February to prove it. Free time was as plentiful as the humidity and mosquitoes. We had full days to ourselves except for an hour in the late morning when Grandma came over to tend the garden we shared in our backyard.

Grandma wasn’t one for a lot of chitchat when I was a kid. English was her second language. She and my grandfather had immigrated to Canada from Belgium after the war with their three children. Once they settled in, they had three more children, including my mom. I thought about my grandma a lot during those long, easy summer days of writing letters in Paris. Letter-writing was the only way for her to communicate with her family. There were no phones for her first years in Canada. She lived for word from her sisters and mother. In fact, she arranged with the postmaster that if a letter from Belgium had arrived, he would honk twice at the mailbox upon delivery. She would run out right away. If there was no honk, it was just bills and she could collect them later.

If I had a typical photo of my grandma, it would be of her in the garden. She’d be wearing a long sundress, bent over with her rear end high in the air, pulling out weeds between the onions. That was my grandma.

She never fully grasped English but she was clear. She had commands for after eating lunch: “Go wash your hands. Don’t touch the walls.” And commands for in the car: “No feets on the seats.” And my favorite command: “Have it to me,” when she would want me to give her something. She never quite mastered when to use the verbs “to have” and “to give.” I never corrected her because it made it easier to imitate her later.

Though we didn’t rattle on together, Grandma and I had a common language in the garden. My childhood homestead was largely self-sustaining, a side effect from those who grew up during the war. We would heat our home with wood my dad cut himself. We made our own maple syrup, canned fruit from our orchard, and made a wide variety of culinary concoctions out of what we grew in our garden.

Most summer mornings, Grandma would barrel up the driveway to toil in the garden. I’d be sitting on the step petting kittens and ask her, “Flip-flops or running shoes?” Flip-flops were fine to wear in the garden for most jobs except for hoeing weeds, which required running shoes.

She’d nod hello and say, “Flip-flops. Grab a basket. Beans today.” And we’d head out to the garden to pick beans. Sometimes the row of green beans was eternal. You’d be surprised just how many beans you can get from one plant.

I’d whine, “Grandma, why did we plant so many beans?”

She’d reply, “You’ll be happy you did in November. Happier still in February. Keep picking.”

When I picked carrots, I’d ask, “Grandma, why are some carrots short and some long? Especially when we planted them all at the same time?”

She’d reply, “Some days are short and some long but they are all the same time. That’s just how it is.”

Sometimes zucchini would grow huge, literally overnight. “Wow, Grandma. Look at this.” I’d hold up a two-foot-long zucchini. “It’s ginormous!”

She’d reply, “Don’t get too excited. Bigger zucchinis aren’t as good as the smaller ones.” I didn’t understand this until much later in life.

Grandma would explain that some crops were ready to harvest early for a reason, like radishes, which were always ready first even if you pretty much ignored them. “Radishes come up first so you have strength for the growing season. As the season goes by, you get stronger and stronger so you can carry the heavy pumpkins, which are the last to harvest.”

“Grandma! You’re just joking.”

“See if I’m right. See if the radishes come up first and the pumpkins come up last. Then you tell me why that is. God doesn’t make mistakes.”

Once we had weeded what needed weeding and picked what needed picking, we went to the kitchen to prepare it for winter. I would cut this and that and have it to her. She would blanch this and that. I’d carry the jars of tasty vittles down to the cellar. And she was right about those beans. I was always glad to have them in November and especially glad in February.

One year, right before I left for university, Grandma departed this life. But not until after pumpkin harvest.

I can’t even believe this life I had. It seemed like so much work back then. But now, it all seems charming. Now when I dream of my future, it includes a garden. Perhaps someday, I will be the one in a sundress, bent over with my rear end in the air, pulling out the weeds between the onions.

“Grandma, why is this row of beans so crooked?”

“So I can fit more plants in it. Keep picking.”

By the end of summer in Paris, the markets were flooded with fruits and vegetables. Each Sunday, I walked to the market at Place Monge with Melanie, who by now had become one of my closest friends in Paris. We hardly spoke, knowing what was coming: natas for breakfast. Upon arrival at the market, we beelined for our favorite stall and ordered two of these famous vanilla-custard-filled tartlets from Portugal to eat en place. With our eyes closed, standing one step out of line, we were transported far away to a culinary paradise where clouds were made of puff pastry.

When we opened our eyes, we scanned the market. We always started at the vegetable guy who smiled wide on approach, I suspect because when I first met him, I started talking with him in the informal Tu form rather than the more appropriate Vous form reserved for supervisors, strangers, and vegetable salesmen. He smiled and winked. Since I talked with Christophe in the Tu form, I was constantly making politeness mistakes with others. But in this case, the mistake was in my favor as the vegetable guy usually handed me a few berries to taste while I picked out les légumes for the week.

When I first met Melanie, I didn’t realize the prize I was getting. Upon further observation, I saw that she was a shiny bauble. She had big curls that bounced as she walked, catching the glance of salivating men everywhere. Her skin had a creamy glow, as if it was lit from within like a delicate parchment lampshade. She was exactly my height, so when we kissed bonjour on each cheek, we had, at times, slammed cheekbones.

The olive guy nearly fell over when we arrived at his booth. He clutched his chest in mock heartache. He then scooped Melanie’s black olives before she could even ask for them, preferring instead to use their precious little time together to ask her out yet again. She laughed and politely declined encore. He clutched his chest encore. On occasion, when I went to the market without her, he berated me with questions about where she might be spending her time when so very clearly she should be at the market buying olives and allowing him the pleasure of beholding her glowing visage.

Over at another cheese booth was a young redheaded student who practiced his English with me while I practiced my French with him. I tried to ask questions in French. He politely corrected me and answered me in English, after which I politely corrected him. For months, I enamored my taste buds with chèvre, the tangy rounds of goat cheese. They ranged from stinky to very stinky. As my French improved, I could ask him more questions about more cheeses. Eventually, we started talking about the harder cheeses and especially the delicious cream-colored bricks of comté. One day I hope to make it further in my language skills to ask about the mysteries of the Roqueforts, marbled with various shades of blue.

Our last stop at the market was the flower guy, who wrapped our baton bouquets in waxy brown paper. We hauled our load back to la rue where we stopped at the Tourn’Bride café for a coffee. Sitting at the side of the bar so we could store our treasures along the wall, I ordered a crème, “Mais pas beaucoup de crème,” marveling when it arrived in my preferred shade of camel.

Next stop was the boulangerie, where we stood in a line thirty people long. Everyone seemed content to wait and watch, and I understood why. The bustling market street came alive on Sundays. A horn band played on the corner. Children danced as parents looked on, leaning on carts and soaking up sunshine. The beggars slouched more dramatically in an attempt to relieve people of their small change, couples walked arm in arm, with one of them holding a basket of vegetables. A basket! A tour group partook in a tasting at the fromagerie, and I cocked my ear to eavesdrop. At another café sat two well-coifed men in designer jeans and shiny shoes, accessorized with a matching set of droopy-lipped bulldogs who lapped up crumbs under the table. Church bells rang. Pigeons scattered.

Once at the front of the line, I ordered my baguette and an escargot, a donut shaped like a snail and speckled with raisins. I delivered it to Christophe who had a line of his own at his rotisserie. I thanked him for the flowers, but I said it loudly for the old ladies to hear, “Merci pour les fleurs, mon amour!” He always left me money on the market mornings to go pick out flowers for myself. He always leaned down from his perch and kissed me. The old ladies always swooned, clutching their hearts. “Avec plaisir, my darling,” he would say. He winked and turned to the next customer in line.