The Paris Key

by Juliet Blackwell

  What had Pasquale been advising Angela to tell her husband?

  Chapter Seventeen

  Angela, 1983

  “What happened to the other painting?” Angela asks two days later, when she returns to the place de l’Opéra, in front of the palais. The picture of the scaffolded Statue of Liberty is gone, replaced now by a half-finished rendition of Chagall’s Birthday. “Did the rain wash it away?”

  Xabier is crouched over the painting, his big hands covered in multicolored chalk dust. He is wearing his blue sweater, also dusty. His cheeks are shaded with several days’ growth of dark beard.

  He does not seem surprised to see her. As though he knew she would be back. His astonishing gray-blue eyes meet hers and do not turn away. His glance lingers too long; it is too intense. The question dies on her lips long before there is a response, and when it comes, it is from Xabi’s friend Thibeaux, who laughs.

  “It was not popular with the crowd. N’est-ce pas, Xabi? It required more work and skill than any painting he has done, and yet . . . it gathered the least money.”

  “I guess the American tourists did not understand my point,” says Xabi.

  “Or perhaps they did, and that was the problem,” she quips. Angela feels exhilarated, pleased by her own audacity.

  She had been surprised at herself ever since she dressed this morning, taking extra care with her hair, brushing it and letting it hang in soft, shining sheets around her face. She also applied a little makeup, but not too much. She’d been taking note of why Frenchwomen seemed so chic, and one reason was this: their makeup was subdued, subtle, in stark contrast to the American-style big hair and multicolored eyelids.

  She had allowed Pasquale to take her shopping on rue du Commerce, a quiet street not far from the Eiffel Tower crowded with boutiques, to buy some new clothes. The things she wore on the farm were loose and natural; they might as well have been burlap sacks. Pasquale had been far too polite to say anything, but it is clear that Angela’s Berkeley-inspired hippie style is not prized in Paris. The French do not wear baggy clothes; they are neat, tidy, tucked in, well pressed.

  So this morning she put on a new summer dress of white cotton. Strappy red sandals with a small heel. A matching leather purse. A striped straw hat.

  “You are looking très parisienne,” said Pasquale when Angela emerged from the bedroom. “Très chic!”

  Angela had refused the baguette, butter, and jam Pasquale offered. She was too nervous to eat. She was going to go by and check on the progress of the painting.

  That, in itself, makes her pause, ask herself what she is doing.

  Her wedding ring encircles her finger, a plain gold band of reproach. She wasn’t going to do anything, but still. How would she feel if Jim had dressed nicely, in his single Brooks Brothers shirt he kept for weddings and other special occasions, dabbing a bit of cologne (or all-natural vanilla extract) behind his ears, and then walked oh so casually by a beautiful street artist that he couldn’t stop thinking about?

  Part of the reason she wants to go, Angela tells herself, is for the much-needed dose of reality. Xabi has come to her in her dreams for the past two nights; those light, flashing eyes promising a treasure trove of secrets. The way he communicates so much through his stillness. The scent of him: tobacco and some sort of unfamiliar spice. The sound of his voice, which he uses so rarely: deep and resonant, making her think of curling up under a tree and listening to him read aloud poetry by Pablo Neruda, or perhaps Shakespearean sonnets.

  That last reminds her of being in Paris with Jim on their honeymoon. They sat in the little park behind Notre-Dame as he read passages from Jean-Paul Sartre’s Being and Nothingness to her. Angela had wanted to climb to the top of the cathedral to see the gargoyles, but Jim had declared it too touristy, as though reading Sartre in the park wasn’t par for the tourist course.

  Angela didn’t really understand philosophy, and mostly didn’t care. But she pretended she did, for his sake. Jim had been so excited to stumble upon the Café de Philosophes, but when they got a table there were no intense philosophical debates, no students or masters discussing the finer points of existentialism. Only tourists like them, and a few French locals having lunch. They wound up ordering the plat du jour as always, while Jim tried to laugh off his disappointment.

  At the time Angela had been embarrassed for him and wished he’d drop the whole thing. But now she wants some of that back: Jim as the boy who yearned to unlock the truth of existence, the meaning of life. The one who sought understanding, some sort of significance beyond growing food. The farm was more than just a way to make a living, of course; it was a lifestyle, a way of bringing his politics back to the very core: to the plates on the table. To sustenance. What could be more essential?

  But when had their ideals turned so inward, so small? Food was politics—Angela knew that. And she was very lucky; everyone said so. And yet.

  And yet . . . she had put on her new dress, brushed her hair, dabbed some of Pasquale’s perfume behind her ears.

  And she had come to see what Xabi was painting.

  “Do you like Chagall?” he asks her, finally looking up from the shading on the woman’s black dress as she flew through the air, kissing her man. A physical manifestation of love and freedom, romance and magic.

  “Very much,” Angela says.

  “He painted the ceiling in the opera house, you know. And . . . I think perhaps he is more pleasing to Americans. His paintings are very . . . romantic.”

  She smiles. Nods. Breathes. Does not look away.

  “Yes. Yes, they are.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  When Genevieve was a young teenager, being in France had been about strangeness: the odd tones and impossible consonants of the language that swirled about her, the unfamiliar shows on TV, the unusual foods covered in delicate sauces, the peculiar expectation that children could (and should) take care of themselves, running through the streets in search of baguettes.

  Now it was a never-ending river of nostalgia, overlaid with a torrent of anxiety-producing logistical details: whether to leave the pilot light on, should she get a cell phone (and how?), where to buy groceries, does she need a special certification to be a locksmith in France over and above the license to work as a foreign national, and if so, how should she proceed?

  There were basic things to fret over, as well: With a rude jolt that morning, she was reminded she had left the U.S. without tampons. Would she have to ask for them by name, and if so, how did you say tampon (or was there a polite way of referring to such things, like “feminine sanitary supplies”?) in French? Did they sell such things in grocery stores like in the U.S., or in the ubiquitous pharmacies marked by the neon green crosses? Parisian pharmacies were places not only to fill prescriptions but also to find a wide array of homeopathic remedies, tonics, and alternative cures. The workers wore white lab coats and offered copious health advice on everything from hangnails to digestive problems to hormone replacement.

  But Genevieve did recall this, at least: to bring her shopping bag with her. There were several hanging from a hook near the refrigerator: sturdy leather straps on tightly woven flexible baskets. There were a few smaller canvas options, but she chose one of the baskets because they were prettier, and it made her feel very French to walk down the street with a basket over one arm, as though she were playing a role in a movie. But here they carried their bags without self-consciousness, and always had: Few stores provided bags, whether paper or plastic, and those that did charged for them. What had become an environmental issue in California was here simply a matter of tradition.

  First things first: the boulangerie.

  In France, when the bread is sold out, the store shuts down. At the really good bakeries, this often occurred shortly after the lunch hour. Pity the Parisian hostess or host who didn’t manage to get to his or her favorite boulangerie on time.

&nb
sp; Genevieve walked two—or was it three?—blocks down rue de Rivoli, then took a right on rue de Sévigné. But it didn’t look right. The streets seemed tantalizingly familiar, yet also foreign. When she arrived at a distinctive triangular corner for the second time, she realized she had been walking in circles and had to laugh at herself.

  She was like a child at Disneyland, easily distracted, looking up so much that she risked losing her footing.

  Genevieve had always had a good sense of direction, and she had gotten cocky after making it to Pasquale’s nursing home and back without any problem yesterday. For fear of looking like a tourist, she had been resisting consulting the paper map she had found in the apartment and shoved into her basket at the last minute. Finally she took it out, pinpointed her location, and realized she had missed the boulangerie by only one block.

  La Maréchalerie means “blacksmith shop” in French, and the building was decorated with horseshoes and the head of a horse emerging from a shield. Genevieve had been confused by these as a teenager: What did horses have to do with bread? She remembered rushing back to the house and looking up the name in her travel dictionary but was still just as confused until Catharine told her it was merely an old building made into a boulangerie.

  “They don’t take things down here, or change things,” said Catharine, clearly disdainful of her cousin’s interest. “They just leave the name, and the horse decorations, and make their bread.”

  There was a line out the door, mostly women and children, all with baskets hanging off their arms. Genevieve took her place behind a chubby middle-aged woman, and they traded quiet bonjours. The delectable smell of freshly baked bread wafted over them.

  The old front-door lock, Genevieve noticed as she waited, was in the shape of a horseshoe.

  There is a danger in not knowing exactly what you want at a Parisian boulangerie. Behind the counter was a glorious selection of bread in various shapes and sizes, from golden to dark brown; slender baguettes and fat, round, mushroom-shaped loaves and assorted muffins and croissants. Genevieve practiced what she would say as she progressed up the slow-moving line.

  The young woman behind the counter was small and pale, with the fine bones so typical of the French—high nose, prominent cheekbones, elegant and refined. She had soft-looking brown hair that was long and swept up in a ponytail, and striking gray eyes. She moved with a natural grace, frequently rising on her tiptoes to reach bread for customers. She could have been a dancer, Genevieve thought, imagining her pirouetting around the back of the bakery, rolling out dough for croissants, twirling over to the ovens. . . .

  Genevieve had reached the front of the line. The shopkeeper’s bonjour was grudging, nonspecific. Said with a sigh.

  At the last moment, out of cowardice, Genevieve asked for two baguettes instead of one because “two”—deux—was easier to say than “one”—un or une, depending on the gender of the word. And Genevieve couldn’t remember whether baguettes were male or female. Because of their shape, one might assume male, but the word ended in ette, which sounded female. What was it with gendered nouns, anyway?

  So in the end she asked for two baguettes, two croissants.

  The shopkeeper grabbed the baguettes and flung them down onto a large square of paper, on the diagonal, rolling them up with the speed and surety of one who had worked in a boulangerie for many years.

  She passed them to Genevieve and used tongs to put the croissants in a small paper bag. Genevieve handed over a bill and the woman made change without looking at her, turning to say bonjour to the next in line without so much as a Je vous souhaite une bonne journée, I wish you a good day.

  Despite the less-than-warm interaction, Genevieve smiled as she left the shop.

  She had survived her first shopping expedition and now had delicious bread in her basket, the baguettes sticking out as in any travel advertisement for France. Next she should find the cheese shop and the greengrocer and the butcher. . . .

  She got to the corner and paused. Genevieve didn’t remember these places like she did the boulangerie—her tante Pasquale deemed that shopping too important to be entrusted to children. Genevieve should have thought to ask Catharine, or the neighbors, for their recommendations of the best local vendors.

  On the large boulevard, she spied a big neon sign that read: CASINO.

  This was not a place to gamble; it was a chain of grocery stores. Supermarkets, Genevieve knew, were very American (not in a good way) and she really should support the small, traditional, family-owned shops. No doubt the quality was much higher. Still . . .

  In a supermarket she wouldn’t have to interact with the shopkeeper and ask for what she wanted. She wouldn’t have to practice her French, using up her precious mental energy. It was a cop-out, probably (surely), but she was newly arrived in Paris, after all. She could cut herself some slack.

  Genevieve slipped into the Casino through the automatic doors.

  The store was much smaller than a typical American grocery, but set up on the same principle: aisles stocked with canned goods, a refrigerated section with eggs, cheese, packaged meats. But instead of Oscar Mayer cold cuts like bologna and pastrami, there were several types of prosciutto and jamón serrano, salamis made of rabbit and wild boar. Hanging beside these were various pâtés, including foie gras.

  Foie gras had been deemed illegal in California because of cruelty to animals; Genevieve was vague about the details, but since foie gras wasn’t a subject that came up frequently in her life, she had been happy to support her more socially conscious friends in their moral outrage. But her brother, Nick, found it infuriating; he used to import the delicacy and made a fortune selling it to local foodie restaurants.

  Genevieve chose a packet in honor of her brother.

  Nothing fancy, just your everyday foie gras.

  She perused diminutive, prettily labeled jars of cornichons and capers and olives, then lost all track of time in the spice aisle, studying whole vanilla beans in skinny plastic vials and herbes de Provence in jumbo plastic gallon containers. There were cute little boxes with interesting spice concoctions she had never heard of and had no idea how to use. She added a few to her basket, just because she liked the packages and pictured setting them on the too-empty counter in the apartment. If nothing else they would make great presents for people back home.

  Back home.

  Was California home? Was she going back? Would she be bringing spices and scarves as souvenirs for friends, talking about her time in France in the past tense, referring to it as a small chapter in her life? As her mother used to do.

  Genevieve had read somewhere that most Americans died within five miles of where they were born. Which only went to prove that even if a place really sucked, it retained a certain gravitational pull, like a planet forcing moons and satellites to remain within its orbit. But even Genevieve, who had wanted so much to escape, had to admit that the familiarity of home held some comfort; knowing what to expect, how to proceed. How not to look foolish. It had been only a few days, just a tiny drop in the proverbial bucket of life, but . . . how long would it take an expat in Paris, for example, to truly feel at home? Would she ever? How long had it taken for Ernest Hemingway or Gertrude Stein? It had taken a world war to drive Stein from her Parisian apartment.

  As Genevieve approached the checkout counter, she realized she had been adding items to her basket with no thought as to how to pay for them. Was she carrying enough cash to cover the groceries?

  “Bonjour,” she said to the bored-looking woman sitting on a high stool behind the register. Genevieve knew this, at the very least: Bonjour was the opening gambit to all discussion, and its omission was considered rude to the point of disdain.

  “Bonjour, madame,” replied the cashier in a bored tone as she whisked the items, one by one, across the scanner. When she was done she announced the total.

  In halting French, Genev
ieve asked whether she could use a credit card.

  “Bien sûr.” Of course. The woman held out a metal-and-plastic contraption about the size of a thick paperback novel, with a cord that fed into the register.

  Genevieve swiped her card. The woman read something on the register, frowned. Looked at Genevieve and shook her head.

  There were now two people in line behind Genevieve, a man and a woman. Dressed in business garb, they had only a few items apiece, probably on their lunch breaks, trying to grab something quickly. Genevieve smiled at them apologetically; they appeared as world-weary as the cashier, and not at all interested in her contrition.

  Try not to be so American, Genevieve told herself. Americans were considered goofy and overbearing, she knew. They smiled too much, were too eager to please even while mucking everything up. Puppylike, but without the cuteness.

  She ran her card through the electronic thingy a second time, but it still didn’t work. The woman at the register did not crack a smile. She asked Genevieve something in rapid French. Genevieve froze like a deer in the headlights.

  The well-dressed woman behind her in line stepped forward and said, in English, “Your card, she needs a chip.”

  “A chip?”

  “Yes. The American cards, sometimes they don’t have the chip.”

  Genevieve fished around for her cash but the cashier pulled out a second machine, an old-fashioned one that took a physical imprint of the credit card, and then had her sign the slip.

  The cashier handed her the paper receipt and said, “Bonne journée, madame.”

  Genevieve was dismissed.

  Clearly she needed to get a card with a chip, she thought as she loaded her groceries into her basket. Which would mean a French bank account.

  Genevieve had been allowing herself not to think too hard about the actual logistics of moving. She had come to France on the standard tourist visa, but it would allow her to remain for only three months. If she actually wanted to take over her uncle’s shop, she knew it would require a long process of wrangling with the infamous French bureaucracy, as her neighbors had already tried to point out to her. Maybe Catharine could help. And if Genevieve really wanted to make a go of it, it might be worth hiring a lawyer to help navigate the system.