“Do you want some tomatoes?” asked Claude.
I eyed Jean-Luc and mouthed, “We just picked up a ton at the market.”
Before Jean-Luc could answer, Claude said, “We have too many and I’m bringing some over.”
Thirty seconds later came the tap at the door. Hip for his age, Claude wore black track pants with a white stripe down the side, a white polo, and black sneakers. He held an enormous basket filled with tomatoes in every size and color imaginable—coeur de boeuf, cherry, and colorful heirlooms like Black Krims, Green Zebras, and Pineapples. Paulette stood next to Claude, wearing khaki pants, a light sweater, and a giant smile. She held three small jars and a plastic bag filled with something green and purple. More tomatoes? Jean-Luc ushered them into the house and we exchanged “la bise.”
“There’s plenty of salad,” said Jean-Luc. “Would you like to stay for lunch?”
“Oh no, but thank you,” said Paulette. “I’ve already made our meal. We’re waiting for Edith and Mark. They’ll be over in an hour.”
Edith was their daughter, and Mark was her husband. Both of them were legally deaf, but could read lips. Well, at least they could read Jean-Luc’s lips. When I’d met them in the spring, I think my French led to some confusion in that department. They just smiled and shrugged.
“Well, at least stay for a glass of wine,” said Jean-Luc.
“Maybe a little one,” said Claude.
Paulette handed me one of the jars. “This is a pâté. Claude made it. Do you like pâté ?”
I understood most everything so far. “I adore pâté.”
“Me? I like making confiture. This one is peach, and this one is fig. Figs are in season now, and we’ve brought you some of those, too.” She grinned while nodding, eyes wide, and handed me the remaining jars and, to my delight, the bag which was filled with glorious figs.
Jean-Luc uncorked the wine.
“Should I wash some figs and set out the pâté and a baguette?” I asked.
“Good idea,” said Jean-Luc.
In France, time was never rushed, and company was always enjoyed, no matter if it was an impromptu get-together. When guests came over, the French way was to serve an apéro—an appetizer served with a cocktail, champagne, or wine. I washed the figs and sliced them, their insides bursting with colors of bright orange-pink. A couple of sliced tomatoes later and I set the goodies on the table with the pâté and a loaf of bread. While I was at it, I filled two bowls, one with olives and one with radishes, and made a quick dipping sauce with squeezed lemon and fromage blanc. We had the drinks. We had the food. And we had the company.
Even though I’d taken an intensive monthlong French course the past spring, I was still having a difficult time with the language, especially when people like Claude and Paulette speed-talked with heavy southwestern-France accents. From what I could discern, they were talking about our wedding in California, the kids, and the hot summer weather.
Our conversation was a mélange of French (them and Jean-Luc), English (Jean-Luc and me), and broken French (me with everybody). Still, I was able to thank this kind couple for bestowing us with so many tomatoes. Paulette suggested that I make tomates farcies (stuffed tomatoes), a recipe she had given me a few months before, and which she’d had to write down because I couldn’t understand her simple spoken instructions.
Rather than letting minor linguistic issues get me down, I immersed myself in learning to cook French. Served and prepared with love, food, for now, became my way of communicating. I had so many tomatoes that, along with the tomates farcies, I was able to make tian Provençal (a layered vegetable dish with tomatoes, eggplants, zucchini, and onions), oeufs à la Provençal, and ratatouille, recipes passed on to me from Jean-Luc and his family.
To my delight, tomatoes didn’t need a translator.
5
WINGING IT
For the first couple of weeks, ma vie française with a touch of saffron and Spanish flavors was fantastic, filled with adventure and fun and discovering new foods. But when Jean-Luc went back to work, too busy to come home for lunches, and with the kids at their grandmother’s, no matter how hard I tried to fight them, feelings of isolation crept in, crushing all optimism.
I pulled up all the employment sites, looking for anything related to graphic design or advertising in the Toulouse area. There was nothing. I pulled up the Airbus site, hoping to find a job opening in marketing. Nothing. To thwart a nervous breakdown, I started to blog, my posts struggling to convince others, and myself, that I loved my new life in France.
In my teens, I had wanted to be an actress or a singer and, in my junior year of high school, I attended the Chicago Academy for the Performing and Visual Arts, choosing theatre as my major and taking voice lessons once a week. But after a move to Boston at the age of sixteen, my dreams had metamorphosed, and art had become a big part of my life. Instead of singing “One” on Broadway, I ended up at Syracuse University, majoring in advertising design, my father’s domain. Upon graduation, it didn’t take long to understand this dream simply wasn’t mine.
My first attempt to leave the advertising world came in 2002. I’d launched a handbag company, Samantha Kim, with a jewelry designer and very good friend, Susan Kim. After winning the Distinction in Design award at Marshall Field’s department store in Chicago (now Macy’s), we received an order of three hundred bags, which we had manufactured in China. Unfortunately, we didn’t meet our manufacturers’ minimum order and had to pay a premium for the bags as well as the shipping, plus meet the store’s requirements of having general corporate liability insurance. Needless to say, we didn’t make a dime. Still, I held on to the naïve hope this order would launch the company into Kate Spade fame.
A few weeks before the bags arrived from Hong Kong, I was checking the business email accounts for communications with the manufacturer and instead stumbled across a personal email. In it, Susan and a friend of hers had made a disparaging remark about my then-husband Chris, calling him a pretentious fop. They also questioned his involvement in our endeavor because he had never raised the money he’d promised. Chris forced me to choose where my loyalties lay: with Susan or with him. It got ugly. Very ugly. After a couple of rounds with an attorney, our friendship destroyed, Susan and I parted ways.
Three hundred bags were soon delivered to my apartment. There was a huge problem. The closure element, a hidden magnet, had slipped. I sewed every last magnet in by hand, through two layers of fake suede. My fingers were bloody and raw. I didn’t eat. I couldn’t sleep. The business for which I’d been so hopeful was going to fail—just like my marriage. So, it was back to advertising to pay the bills. Back to a marriage I no longer wanted to be in. Back to everything that didn’t make me happy. Yet, I still hung in there.
In 2007, two years before I apologized to Jean-Luc via email and the seven-post blog, I discovered writing. Writing allowed me to do everything I dreamed of—sing on the page, act out scenes, and design new worlds. I wrote two middle-grade novels, one about two kids who play a role in saving the earth’s creatures from extinction, the other about a sideshow attraction on a search for his identity. I even tried my hand at young adult fiction, penning a fantasy novel about a modern-day goddess.
In May of 2009, writing connected me to Jean-Luc. Later that summer, I also managed to rekindle my friendship with Susan, sending her a heartfelt apology via email. I also told her I’d left Chris. We Skyped later that day, and we cried and laughed and cried. Thanks to putting down words on a page, I really did have a second chance when it came to life and love.
Plus, writing didn’t cost me a dime, only time. And one thing I had now was time. Until my French improved by Superman leaps and bounds, I couldn’t just sit around the house having Words with Friends marathons with Nanny. Perhaps it was time for me to follow a new dream?
I had a new book concept in mind—a story based on my life, one that made me happy—the story of when I reconnected with Jean-Luc. I tapped at my keyboard all
day long, my hair in a ponytail. But writing was a solitary task. Apart from Bella, during the day I was alone, disconnected. And the cat kept dropping lizard tails at my feet.
At the end of August, when we picked up the kids at the airport, they were a bit quieter and more reserved than they had been before they left, most likely due the fact that Meme wasn’t Jean-Luc’s biggest fan. Jean-Luc had split up with Meme’s daughter, Frédérique, in 2002, and in the midst of a midlife crisis, he took up with a younger woman he’d met while traveling for work—a relationship that was short-lived. He shared custody of the kids and visited them on the weekends until cancer took Frédérique’s life in October 2006.
A few years later, in search of a balanced life, Jean-Luc had married a very, very young Russian physicist, Natasha, who, instead of love, showed only tolerance for his children. He’d thought the stability would change the strained relationship she’d had with the kids. It didn’t. Their marriage didn’t last long. And now he was married to me, a strange woman he’d met in Paris in 1989 and reconnected with on the Internet twenty years later—during his divorce from Natasha. It was up to me to prove to Meme and the kids that we were on our way to becoming a real family now.
When Max and Elvire walked into the house and saw the kitchen, now painted orange with two Italian paintings adorning once-bare walls and the big silver bowl filled with fruit on the breakfast bar, their smiles widened. Their eyes darted back and forth with glee when they saw the changes I’d made to the living room—the art on the walls and the bursts of color, thanks to the throw pillows, blankets, and plants. We headed upstairs, where pictures of the family adorned the bookcases. I retrieved an empty picture frame and handed it to Elvire. “C’est pour la photo de ta mère.”
I’d seen the photo of her mother, Frédérique, in her room. In it, Elvire sat on her lap, both of their hair covered in confetti. This was how I knew the kids had their mother’s beautiful feline eyes.
“Merci,” Elvire said. “Merci.”
I knew I’d never replace their mom, and I certainly didn’t want to compete with her memory, but I was now a part of their lives. And I was doing my best to fit in. We all had to get used to change. Especially me.
A few weeks later, I attended one of Max’s rugby matches with Jean-Luc. The other parents were nice enough and introduced themselves. A never-ending round of la bise was exchanged. Everybody kissed everybody. The kids. The parents. And I was unsure of what to do. One of the fathers was about to go in for la bise, but I stuck out my hand to shake his. Awkward.
“Are you integrating well? Do you like it here?” people asked, and I’d smile and nod.
One of the moms came up to me. A blond, wearing jeans, she looked hip and cool, and I’d hoped to possibly strike up a friendship. “I hear you’re American. I speak English.”
She said all of this in French, and we had a polite but stiff conversation, which ended with, “Are you integrating well? Do you like it here?”
Max’s rugby position was a winger. And I was the one winging it. “Uh, oui?”
As I stood awkwardly on the sidelines while Jean-Luc chatted with the dads, I wondered if it would ever be possible for me to make friends in Cugnaux. There was no welcome wagon, no invitations extended for a dinner. No acceptance. I was just there like a pest, an American fly buzzing around. I left at halftime and walked the three blocks home, loneliness creeping into my heart.
My mom called me every day, saying things like “You should find a job,” or “You should make friends,” or “You should teach English,” and, putting the pressure on high, “You should have a baby!”
“I want to do all that. I do,” I’d say with sigh. “But I think I need some more time to settle in.”
Mothers really know how to twist the knife. Seriously, how could I have a baby when I felt exactly like one? I was the rawest version of myself, stripped down, bare and vulnerable, and, besides Jean-Luc, there was no safety net. Nobody had warned me that starting over would be so hard. And there were no guidebooks for starting over—not like this.
The only things keeping me sane were cooking, planning meals, writing, and Jean-Luc’s love. I was happy in the kitchen and even happier when Jean-Luc came home from work. Plus, when I was cutting onions, I had an excuse for my watery eyes. I knew I needed to get the old, confident Sam back, but I didn’t know how to do it, not when I wasn’t comfortable in my own skin. I may have loved performing arts in high school, but I’d always thought that I was a horrible actress. Apparently not, because around Jean-Luc, I’d smile and laugh, playing the role of a lifetime: the good wife and stepmom. He had no idea how I was really feeling when I was alone.
Instead of sharing my feelings with Jean-Luc and my family and friends, as I should have been doing, I swallowed them down, trying to be the resilient woman everybody thought I was. But I’d packed a melon baller instead of a parachute and, instead of landing on my feet, I was splayed out on my back. I felt like a dog with severe separation anxiety, staring at the door and waiting for its owners to come home.
At least I could focus on food.
Eating in season is de rigueur for the French. You eat what’s fresh and available at the market. In the U.S., it’s not uncommon to find strawberries the size of baseballs year-round. In France, you’ll only find strawberries at the market from May to early October depending on the variety. All goods—meat, fishes, vegetables, and cheeses—are marked with the country of origin, sometimes even the town. Jean-Luc always insisted I buy from la France when I could. While certain produce is available year-round at our colorful markets or grocery stores, either imported from neighboring countries like Spain, or from distant lands, I wouldn’t find butternut squash in May or fava beans in September, unless they were packed up and frozen at Picard, a supermarket known for its packaged goods.
Mussels and oysters are best enjoyed in months with an r—September, October, November, December, January, February, March, and April. Once fall rolls around, wild mushrooms like cèpes (like porcini), girolles (chanterelles), and pleurotes (oyster), make mouths water with delight. Many French families take to foraging in the forests in the fall, bringing their bounty to the pharmacist to make sure their mushrooms aren’t poisonous.
Lucky me, it was September. And I loved mussels to the point of being obsessed. So I didn’t stop with moules à la marinière—not after I found the recipes for moules curry or moules au Roquefort or moules à la plancha, the latter of which were grilled on a platter with fresh garlic, parsley, shallots, and olive oil. The kids didn’t mind, mostly because they were served with their favorite food group: French fries. Tonight, I was getting creative, adding slices of fennel and ginger to moules à la marinière. One word: delicious.
Max wasn’t around the house as much as Elvire was. After school, he had rugby practice twice a week, and sometimes he went to a friend’s house to play. I didn’t understand why the girl was always home. When I was her age, I too, like Max, was always at a friend’s house if I didn’t have homework. After slicing up the ginger, I brought up Elvire’s laundry to her room and tapped on her door, hoping maybe she’d talk to me, tell me about her day.
“Quoi? ” she said, her tone harsh.
I set her clothes, which I’d neatly folded, on her dresser. “Merci would have been a politer response. The laundry doesn’t do itself. Put your clothes away.”
I stood in the doorway of her room. Clothes and school papers littered the floor. You couldn’t even see her desk. One of my scarves was balled up in the corner. Apparently, she’d borrowed it without asking. That didn’t bother me, but the fact it was on the floor did. I picked it up, brushing off the dust.
“How can you do homework in this hurricane?” I asked.
Elvire grumbled, then slammed her door, shutting me out. And I was hurt. More than hurt. All I wanted was a little acceptance. I brought up the subject of respecting our belongings over our meal of mussels. “Did you put your clothes away?” asked Jean-Luc, turning his at
tention to Elvire.
“Non,” she said.
“You do it right now,” he said.
“After she clears the table,” I said, hoping to establish one tiny ounce of authority.
“Mais, Papa,” she said, batting her eyelashes. “I have homework.”
“Maybe your homework would be finished if you didn’t watch streaming videos all afternoon,” I said, and Elvire’s eyes narrowed into a glare. I didn’t care if looks could kill. I was the one who was angry, and I had every right to be.
“Elvire,” said Jean-Luc, his voice stern. “Is this true?”
Max fought back his giggles. It wasn’t the first time I’d seen this kind of reaction from either of the kids. They seemed to get off when one or the other was in trouble. It was like a game to them. Jean-Luc was a good dad. Like most parents, he wanted his kids to be well behaved and get good grades. But I didn’t always agree with his parenting style. Like most French parents, he didn’t have a problem with threatening an occasional spanking, the dreaded fessée. On the other hand, he wasn’t a helicopter parent; he didn’t hover around making sure they did their homework or practiced the piano; he waited for their grades, and if they weren’t good, all hell broke loose. But kids are kids, no matter where they are from. Jean-Luc could scream and yell if he wanted to, but I could tell his words would go in one ear and right out the other.
“Now,” said Jean-Luc. “And hand over your cell phone and computer.”
Elvire huffed while she slammed plates into the dishwasher.
During the day, I’d busy myself gardening, occasionally seeing Claude and Paulette in their yard, and I’d try to chat with them as best I could, doing everything I could to remain positive. Yet, I couldn’t weed out my loneliness.
How to Make a French Family Page 5
