She parks the car and we get out, her holding my hand like the retard I’ve become.
“Où?” I say.
“À la banque.”
“Bon. C’est joli.”
We enter Crédit Agricole, a bank I’ve never heard of or been in. It looks to me like a fly-by-night operation, a Marx Brothers routine, a con: no security guard, no Plexiglas windows, no long lines, four tellers, all young, handsome, smiling, shaking their customers’ hands. A bank for farmers, right! Me and the chickies and pigs. I figure it’ll be gone in the morning. How could I know it’s about to become the second-largest bank in Europe?
Madame, still holding my hand, pulls me up the stairs. In my other hand, clenched, is the scribbled note from the notaire. Madame P says something to the secretary and we sit and wait on a couch. In a few minutes a short, casually dressed, no suit, no tie, no jacket, slightly balding, eyeglassed man in his late fifties comes out of an office, gives Madame P the double-cheek kiss and shakes my hand, and we follow him into his office, the office with Président written on the door. At forty-seven years old, I’ve never in my life met or spoken with a bank president. Once, when I bounced a check, I spoke with a supervisor. And now here we are, Monsieur le Président, Madame P, and I, sitting, she and I facing him, in his simple, comfortable, proper office—which feels to me like the principal’s office in high school—doing what?
“Hello,” says Monsieur le Président.
Madame turns to me, smiles, and says, “Il parle bien anglais.”
Shit! Now I’m really in trouble. Sure enough, that’s the last English word I hear, unless of course you count monnaie. Madame P begins speaking, looks at me, and shrugs, once again astonished, I think, at how someone so helpless could still be alive. Monsieur le Président is saying, “Oui, oui, bien sûr,” and looking at me. I’m clutching the paper the notaire gave me as if it is a get-out-of-jail card or a prescription for ampicillin.
Monsieur le Président begins writing, filling out forms. When he finishes he gives the papers to Madame P, who gives them to me to sign. Why not? I’ve already agreed to buy a house I can’t afford. I sign. As soon as I do, he says something else I don’t understand. I look at Madame. She says something that sounds similar to what he just said. I look at Monsieur le Président. Madame stands and pats my wallet, which is in the torn rear pocket of my jeans. I take it out and hand it to her, thinking she wants a driver’s license or Social Security card, some piece of real identity. She removes two $100 traveler’s checks, puts them on the desk, and hands me a pen, indicating I should sign them. What’s this? Some secret French fee? A version of French points that no one bothered to tell me about? A kickback? A payoff? What? I don’t know, I’ll probably never know, but I sign, kissing those two hundred dollars good-bye.
Madame gives the two checks to Monsieur le Président, who begins filling out more forms. Five minutes later he finishes and hands me a booklet with “Crédit Agricole” on the cover. I open it and see I now have a checkbook and a checking account in France with two hundred dollars’ worth of francs in it. That’s it. I stand up, thinking we’re finished. I sit down, seeing we’re not. Monsieur le Président wants to discuss the house, the mortgage, a loan, monnaie. He met me fifteen minutes ago. He knows nothing about me—am I a nut, a loony, employed, employable, do I have income, savings, prospects, anything?—and he’s offering me a loan to pay for the house. I can’t believe it. I can only attribute it to Madame P, who seems to have the powers of Aladdin. I didn’t know then that getting a loan in France is easy. It’s getting the bank account that’s hard, but nothing compared to getting a telephone. I thank him and turn him down, not wanting to pay the daily fluctuating exchange rate for the next fifteen or twenty years, possibly doubling the cost of the house. Besides, I want to get the loan in the U.S., where two out of five of the tellers in my local bank speak English.
Two days later I leave France with a French checkbook I don’t know how to use, a written agreement that I can’t read to buy a house, committed to spending $85,000 that I don’t have. It doesn’t bode well for international relations.
As soon as I get back to the U.S., I do three things. I call my mom to verify it was she who agreed to loan me $10,000 and not the wrong number or my sister playing a practical joke. I ask my friend Peggy to do a real translation of the compromis to determine the number of ways I’ve been cheated. And I visit the Alliance Française to inquire about French lessons.
When I determine it really was my mom and everything in the compromis is exactly as it was explained to me, I set about the task of getting money. Real money. Serious money. Dollars. As a socialist member of the downwardly mobile, propertyless middle class, this is something I’ve never done. Basically, I’m a pay-cash-or-borrow-from-Mom-have-no-debt kind of guy, so I think it’s going to be easy, certainly as easy as it appeared to be in France. Ha.
Ha, ha, ha.
In France, you need a note from everyone you know to open a bank account, but once opened, getting money is a snap. In the U.S, it’s the reverse. Anyone with five dollars in his pocket can open a bank account, but trying to parlay that into something else is a joke—on you!
I go to every bank in the Bay Area, including Crédit Lyonnais and Bank of the West, which at the time is French owned. Every one of them is willing to loan me up to one million dollars for a business in Europe, but not a nickel for a house.
“Why not?” I ask the twenty-something behind the desk. “What’s the difference between a business and a home?”
“A business has inventory, sales, income. It’s a better investment.”
“A home has property, a building, two buildings, and I’m going to rent it for income. Isn’t that a business—a B-and-B?”
Her answer was the same as everyone’s, a smile, a shake of the head, and a “No.”
That leaves me with two options: Monsieur le Président and a fluctuating, changing, diminishing dollar every day for the next twenty years, or Mom.
“Mom, hi, how are you?”
“Fine, dear, fine, and you?”
I intend to make small talk and work my way into the conversation. “I can’t get a loan, Ma. No bank will lend me money for a house overseas.”
“How much?”
“Seventy-five thousand.”
“When?”
“By January.” It’s now October.
“Okay. Dad and I helped your brother and sister, so why not you?”
I’ve been teaching since I was twenty-four, have no debts, live within my means, and I need money from my mom to buy a house—and I’m no different from anyone I know, except my house is in France and everyone else’s is in Oakland, San Francisco, Chicago, or New York. All of us, in our forties and fifties, still depending on our parents, a generation of downward mobility and lowered expectations. I cannot afford to buy anything in the Bay Area in the early 1990s, where the average price of a house is already over $300,000, but I can in France. And in a certain way it feels like a circle closing, roots, a coming home. After my father died, my mother, brother, sister, and I looked through old photos from Dad’s family album, at his mother’s and father’s uncles and nephews, dark-eyed men no one can identify anymore, decked out in the formal World War I military uniform of France. My family.
From the moment Mom agrees to give me the money, I’m racked with doubt. What the hell am I doing? This is crazy, nuts, a lunatic idea. I hardly know these people—I don’t know these people!—and as Kathryn had been so fond of saying, “If they knew what you were saying, if they understood you, believe you me, they wouldn’t like you.” I believed her. After all, it was certainly true of her. The more she heard me, the less she liked me. Why should France and French people be different? The farther I get from France, Brittany, the summer, and the people, the less and less it makes sense, and the more I want out.
The good news is I have that clause: If the dollar drops below 5.7 francs, I can get out. Every day, first thing, like some sort of tycoon, I
go to the business section of the San Francisco Chronicle, a section I’d always used to line the garbage pail, to see how much the dollar has fallen. In two months, it drops from 6 to 5.5. Every day I look at the number, turn on my calculator, and determine how much I’ve lost. Meanwhile, I’m waiting for the money from Mom. I can’t buy francs without her dollars, and she doesn’t want to sell her stocks until she gets her price. So while she’s making money, I’m losing it, big time. It’s capitalism at its best.
When the dollar falls to 5.3 francs, the cost of the house increases $7,000, and for the first time, really, I think about abandoning it. What stops me is my dad. My entire childhood and teenage years he lamented the beautiful piece of property in the mountains he didn’t buy because the owner wouldn’t lower his price $3,000. With each telling, the $3,000 became worth less and less and his loss seemed greater and greater. “I should have bought it,” he repeatedly said. He said it in a way that meant it would have changed his life if he had. Maybe, maybe not, I don’t know, but I do know I don’t want to be saying that for the rest of my life over a measly $7,000, which over twenty years amounts to $350 a year. Besides, I can always sell.
Finally, in January, with the dollar hovering around 5.4, Mom sends me a cashier’s check for $75,000. I’ve never seen anything like it. The only number I’ve ever written that had three zeros had the decimal point to the left of two of them. I immediately put it in the bank and begin thinking about transferring it, getting it from the U.S. to France.
With the $10,000 down payment I used Bank of the West because it was French owned and I was feeling very Franco-philic: anything French was good. It was also easier to transfer the money, but the one thing it wasn’t was cheap. The fees were high and the exchange rate was low. It was not a good deal for me. It was the price of safety and convenience, I thought. But for $75,000—and with the dollar at 5.3—I need the best rates possible. I ask friends, check the phone book, call around the Bay Area, and finally find a place with an 800 number that offers me an incredible rate.
I’m thrilled and immediately suspect. Who are these guys? It’s 1992, before the Internet, and research is not so easy. Still, I do what I can. I call every day, morning, noon, night, weird hours and weekends, using different names and asking the same questions, trying to catch them in a slip-up. Someone always answers the phone—money never sleeps—and always has the right answer, or at least the same answer. I latch on to a guy named Gary, or a guy who calls himself Gary, or tells me his name is Gary, and it feels as if I’m dealing with someone, even though I know I’m not. I feel like the unknown third Hunt brother, and I’m hoping the same thing doesn’t happen to me. The entire exchange is done over the phone and through the mail. I don’t have a cell phone, ATM card, or debit card. I still go into the bank, talk to the tellers, hand them a check, and wait for my cash and paper receipt—and I wire a $75,000 cashier’s check to a guy named Gary whom I never met, at a bank in Utah, where, Gary swears, they will wire 400,000 francs to my Crédit Agricole account in France. All I can think of is The Sting. I cannot believe I’m giving $75,000 to someone I never met and wiring it to a place I’ve never been on the assurance of a stranger named Gary. The moment I wire the money, I’m certain I’ll never see it again.
In February I fly back to France for the closing—with my mom. I feel like a jerk, a middle-aged man traveling with his mother. But as soon as we land, I’m relieved. Mom speaks French. Understands French. Can read French. All of which means we find our luggage, the car rental desk, and our way out of Paris.
It’s cold and wet and there’s snow on the ground—it’s beautiful. We spend two nights in Rouen, where Joan of Arc was burned, two nights in Honfleur, where Erik Satie died, and a night in Saint-Malo, which was destroyed by Allied bombing and rebuilt after the war.
It’s raining when we leave Saint-Malo and still raining, a light drizzle, when we enter Finistère. The clouds are woolly, not solid or dense as they were in Rouen and Honfleur. There’s no snow. The land is hilly, rolling, lush, dark green, accentuated by black slate walls, tree windbreaks, and hedgerows. “It’s like Ireland,” Mom says repeatedly. “It’s magical.”
“Almost there,” I say, and I swear, as we exit the N165, a rainbow breaks out and the pot of gold is in Plobien.
I drive past the house to show it to Mom and my stomach sinks. It’s dark, bleak, shuttered, and closed, looking lonely and unused, uninhabited and uninhabitable, leaving me scared and embarrassed. I brought her all the way here and borrowed all that money for this. Mom says nothing. I want to apologize. I’m so sorry about everything, from wanting the house and borrowing the money to asking the owners to leave me what they could, certain I’ve bought an old dilapidated house filled with junk.
We drive to Chez Sally, which I’ve rented so we’d have a place to stay before the closing, whenever that is. It’s clean because Kathryn and I were the last ones there. I open the door and Mom frowns. The house is clean, but it’s been shut for five months, so it’s cold, damp, dank, and it smells. I know what Mom’s thinking, because I’m thinking it too. Thankfully, she says nothing.
We silently unpack and try to settle in, but it quickly becomes apparent that the baseboard electric heat is worthless and the house is freezing and will never, no matter what, short of a major conflagration, be warm or dry. We bundle up in the long johns, sweaters, boots, heavy New York winter coats, scarves, gloves, and hats we brought and start to straighten things up for our next month. I attempt a fire, but the fireplace is too small and doesn’t draw. The whole time we’re doing this I’m wondering about my house, the heat, warmth, fireplaces, dampness, smell, no inspections, tests, engineers, experts, and I’m fearing the worst. In my heart of hearts, I know I’ve been duped.
We eat a can of soup for dinner and go to bed early, Mom to the second-floor bedroom, me back to the third, both of us freezing and exhausted, at least one of us very depressed.
The next morning I’m the first person at the bank. The door opens at exactly nine o’clock. I walk up to the front teller, a boy who looks sixteen, and say, “Bonjour, Monsieur,” and shake his hand like I’m a regular. Then I hand him the piece of paper with the name of the teller Monsieur le Président gave me five months ago and point to the name, then to the floor, and say, “Ici?” Here?
The kid doesn’t even blanch. He walks to the back of the bank and returns with a girl who looks fifteen. I don’t have a prayer, I know it.
“Yes, hello, Mr. Greenside, may I help you?” She holds out her hand to shake.
I’m astonished. She speaks perfect English with an English accent. I shake her hand, hoping she never gets older, marries, has kids, or moves away. Then I hand her my checkbook and ask about my account. “Did the money I wired arrive?”
She taps the computer keyboard, taps some more, then some more, and says, “When did you send it?”
“Several weeks ago.”
“It’s not here.”
“No?” I’m dumbfounded, incredulous.
“No.”
“Where could it be? It was a lot of money. I need it to buy a house.”
She taps some more. “It’s not here.” She doesn’t seem worried or concerned, like the bank screwed up and it happens all the time or she’s humoring me. Either way I’m lost. Fifteen minutes ago I felt like J. P. Morgan. Now I feel like Ralph Cramden. I thank her and race to Chez Sally to call Gary.
“Hi,” Mom says. She’s in the living room, bundled like an Eskimo, hovering over the electric heater, sipping her morning tea. “What’s wrong?” I wave her away, not having the nerve to tell her. I find Gary’s card and the Foreign Exchange invoice, which somehow I knew I would need, and dial Gary’s personal number. A woman’s voice recording answers telling me he’s “not at his desk.” It’s eight hours later in France, making it 2:00 a.m. in Utah—if that’s where he is—no wonder he’s not at his desk. I leave the number of Chez Sally and a message for him to call me. I hang up certain I’ll never see my money a
gain.
I begin calling Gary at noon while Mom is at Madame P’s eating a warm lunch. At 1:15—5:15 a.m. Utah time—someone not Gary answers the phone. “Is Gary there?”
“He’s not at his desk.”
I explain that I’m calling from France, trying to buy a house, and have no money. “The money was supposed to be wired weeks ago and isn’t here.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll check. Give me your number and we’ll call you back.”
They don’t, and I try not to panic.
The next day I’m the first person at the bank. I walk in and the sixteen-year-old-looking boy at the front desk says, “Bonjour Monsieur,” shakes my hand, walks away, and returns with the fifteen-year-old-looking girl, who says, “Hello,” shakes my hand, and tells me in flawless English my money hasn’t arrived. I return to Chez Sally and begin seriously calling Gary. Each time I call, the same person answers, “Foreign Exchange,” which in a way is consoling, but when I ask for Gary, “He’s not at his desk.” By the second day, the person goes out of his way to assure me Gary is there, in the office, and exists. The more he assures me, the more I’m not. Mom has discussed this with Monsieur and Madame P, who are not concerned. Mom wants to hire a lawyer.
On the fourth day, Gary calls. He’s found the money. By mistake, they wired it to Corsica. Gary sounds pleased with himself, but the only things I know about Corsica aren’t good. Napoleon was Corsican. Corsicans are like Sicilians, and neither is known for being friendly, generous, or returning money to strangers. I figure I’ll never see the money again, or if I do, it will be attached to a bloody hand. Gary says, “We’ll have it for you in a day or two,” and hangs up.
I go straight to the bank to tell the girl. I want to put her at ease and let her know I’m not a loony, because the last few times I’ve seen her I’ve been distressed. As I finish telling her the story, the notaire walks in. He sees me, shakes my hand, and speaks. I look at the girl, who says, “He wants to sign the papers tomorrow.” Great. I get to use one of the two phrases I’ve been practicing. “Je n’ai pas d’argent.” I don’t have any money. The notaire laughs. Either I said it wrong—said something else—or he thinks this is some sort of American Jerry Lewis custom, those funny people, always joking.
I'll Never Be French (no matter what I do) Page 10
