Hidden in Paris

by Corine Gantz

  “The kids aren’t different, the mother is. I’m far scarier than you are. Let’s go,” Annie said, taking Lola’s elbow. “I’m taking you to the market.”

  The invitation surprised Lola. Every morning she watched Annie march out of the house with the determination of a huntress, a straw basket on each arm, but every time she had offered to come along, Annie forcefully declined and Lola did not dare insist. Besides, she suspected Annie preferred to be alone. “I wouldn’t want to slow down your errands.”

  “What errands?” Annie said. “This, my dear, is called faire les courses. That’s an entirely different animal. Prepare yourself for an adventure of the senses.” Annie began pushing the stroller and Lola followed thinking of Lia, who by now must be sitting alone, terrified, in the middle of a strange classroom. Had Annie not insisted, had Lola not been weak, Lia would not be suffering right now.

  Most of the trendy boutiques on rue de Passy were closed still and wouldn’t open until eleven in the morning or so. Only cafés and boulangeries bustled with activity, with men and women stepping in and out hurriedly. The smell of rain, freshly baked bread, and exhaust fumes permeated the air. Lola once again marveled at the sophistication of the people they passed—stylish mothers, men in impeccable suits. She, herself, had adopted a uniform of sweatpants and snow jacket and had stopped wearing make-up. There was something absolutely delicious about having no one to impress, no eggs to walk on, no risk of coming face to face with a neighbor who would know precisely how many pounds she had already put on in her short time eating Annie’s cooking. Interestingly, despite her lack of trying to look glamorous, men were looking at her more intently than they would ever dare to do in the United States. Desire, lust, envy, admiration, invitation, flirtation could be communicated with the eyes in Paris. It was as direct as it was not always discreet, but it was quite exciting.

  The excitement she perceived was not only about eye contact, it was about a richer texture, a greater dimension to relationships and even to life. The most striking symptom of this richer life she witnessed taking place in cafés and restaurants were the conversations, or rather the fact that there were conversations at all. No coffee was consumed hurriedly out of Styrofoam cups; no donut was eaten on the run. This was not a drive through society. The conversations happened between small groups of men and women who seemed engrossed in each other, high on life. This could be what was at the core of Paris’s romanticism. It was the notion, the illusion perhaps, that you could suddenly meet someone and it would be the beginning of something extraordinary. Something intoxicating and adventurous. As they walked, and the farther they got from the school, the less bad she felt about Lia. Physical distance had a way of making things less real.

  She followed Annie who was still pushing the stroller. They crossed rue de Passy and made the turn onto rue de l’Annonciation. In the blink of an eye, the atmosphere of the street changed. Lola had walked through rue de l’Annonciation just the day before. She recognized the stores, patisseries, and cafes, but now it had blossomed into a street-long outdoor market, wild and busy and so very un-citylike. The smell of car exhaust was quickly replaced with the scent of flowers, fruit, raw fish, roasted chicken, and overripe cheese. There were piles of fruit and vegetable on the stands. Merchant voices clamored for attention. There were mothers and young children, old ladies dressed like peasants from another era next to women in heels and Chanel tailleurs. Many were holding straw bags that matched Annie’s. Sitting at the terrace of cafés, men of all ages smoked, drank cafés serrés, talked and watched.

  Annie stopped at a vegetable stand. She pointed to Lola, “Do you like betteraves? Nooo! What are you doing?”

  Lola had an apple in her hand. “You don’t like Granny Smiths?”

  “You’re not supposed to help yourself, goodness gracious!”

  Lola quickly put the apple down. Annie made a chin movement toward the wide shouldered man with a paunch and a thick black moustache who was weighing potatoes on an old-fashioned scale. “You’re in his territoire.”

  “His territory?”

  “Just wait and hope that he serves you. And don’t think your shenanigans with the apple went unnoticed. His moustache works like an antenna. You’ve lost points already. If you behave, he’ll serve you. If he likes you, he’ll be generous, give you his best stuff, and often some extras.”

  “With that attitude, you’re sure you want to give him your business?”

  “Ha! He’s a pussycat compared to the others. Around here, if you step out of line, you’ll go hungry.”

  “What else am I not supposed to do?”

  Annie shrugged. “Just don’t piss anyone off.”

  When their turn came Annie took her time at the stand, asking the propriétaire for his recommendations. For someone so difficult, the man was in no hurry. He and Annie exchanged thoughts about the weather, and about the Président as he picked vegetables and fruit from piles purposefully. Lola found it amusing, this air of importance people were taking. Everyone here was a connaisseur. At the fish stand, Annie selected the fish they were having for dinner as though it was a child she was looking to adopt. Surrounded by the opaque eyes of hundreds of fish spread on beds of crushed ice, Lola tried to look at the mounds of shrimp before her with different eyes. She was trying to see the place with French eyes. Obviously there must have been differences. French women pointed without hesitation towards this mound of antennaed creatures or that one. There were shells of various colors, size and texture but what did they taste like? Wasn’t a clam a clam? Some shrimp were pink, some were gray, they varied in size and price, but why?

  She followed Annie obediently from one stand to another. At the Boucherie they stood between guinea fouls hanging upside down on hooks—head, legs, and feathers still attached—and a display of hoofs and tongues artfully arranged around a vividly pink pig’s head. She wished Lia was there to see this strange and gruesome sight, and she felt a pang of sadness at the thought of Lia, and then a bit of fear. One should not be afraid of one’s own nine-year-old. Annie was not afraid of her children.

  When their turn came, the butcher gave Annie a lot of attention as he ground beef for the children’s lunch of simple biftek haché et coquillettes, then wrapped it in pink paper. They spoke about agneau but Lola wasn’t sure if they meant the live animal or a cut of meat. Annie and the butcher laughed a lot and ignored the growing line. Soon everyone in line, who should have gotten mad, instead began to take part in the lively discussion about, again, le Président, who had apparently gotten into some sort of mischief, an indiscretion involving sa maîtresse. His lover.

  Once they left, Lola pointed out, “The butcher has the hots for you.”

  Annie blushed. “You’re imagining it.”

  “I can’t believe you do this shopping thing every day. It doesn’t seem time efficient.”

  “That’s the fabulous thing about France. Cooking and eating are perfectly worthwhile goals for a day.”

  Annie’s totes were full. On the way back home, Lola was surprised to see her pass a half dozen bakeries on her way to purchase the daily baguette. Lola pointed to a beautiful bakery. “What’s wrong with this one?”

  “It’s all in the details, you see. It gets pretty nutty, choosing the right lettuce, the right bread, and the right cheese. Vivre pour manger takes precision, you see. It takes skill.”

  The baguette they bought was still warm and Lola ate half of it walking to the house not thinking about Lia once. Lia would have to be fine. She wasn’t made out of sugar. She was not the first kid going to a new school. Kids adapted. See how she had adapted to the house in a short week? See how she had stopped mentioning her father?

  Before they arrived home, they stopped at a small drugstore that looked like an apothecary shop. As soon as he saw Annie, the owner, a tiny man without a hair on his scalp, ran to the back of the store. He returned with a small package wrapped in brown paper.

  “You found it!” Annie exclaimed.

&
nbsp; “C’est de la bonne!” he said.

  At home, Annie showed her how to prepare a marinade for the fish they would have for dinner, how to arrange fresh herbs into individual bouquets that she hung to dry on little hooks on the wall and would later serve as bouquets garnis, and she learned what bouquets garnis were. Once the food was put away, Annie unwrapped the brown package to reveal a jar of old-fashioned wax. She offered it to Lola to smell like it was precious perfume. She then, using a cloth, began rubbing the kitchen table explaining the motion, how much pressure to apply. And it suddenly all made perfect sense. The universe where Lola had spent the last ten years of her life and this one were alternate realities, no less. In this universe, what used to be a chore became an art form, what used to be the work of maids became daily pleasures, what used to be a waste of time became essential. This universe resembled her and the old one didn’t!

  “I want to learn how to do that,” Lola told Annie.

  “Wax the table?”

  Lola made a wide gesture. “I want to learn to do all of this.”

  They had a routine now. Evenings after homework, the children were allowed to turn on the TV. Annie and Lola tiptoed into the family room to watch the children in the act of gazing adoringly at a forty-two-inch flat screen TV that Lucas had selected and installed for them. Maxence and Laurent were curled up on one sofa with a beatific expression on their faces, and Paul, bearing the same expression, was lying on the rug. On the other couch were Lia and Simon, she peaceful, he snuggled beside her, sucking avidly on his thumb. No sign of the latest tantrum she had entertained them with just an hour before. As Annie predicted, Lia adapted to school rapidly. The bulk of Lia’s obnoxious behavior was reserved for the times when her mother was around to suffer from it, as though she must be punished for some unknown crime. Lia would seem fine until Lola appeared, at which point she would melt into angry tears issued of a perfectly fabricated drama that everyone but Lola could see right through. This baffled Annie. Lola was so patient—so much more patient than she was—so sweet, so utterly beyond reproach. She reasoned that maybe this was what daughters did. Her boys were the opposite. They did ask for things, of course, but never made demands. They knew to get into line the minute she raised her voice. They made her laugh when she looked sad, and tiptoed around her bad moods. Were the boys easy because she was a great mother? Was it because there was a solidarity born of their common loss? Or was it, as she had told Lola before, that she was scary. And if she was indeed scary, was that necessarily a good thing? “I love this machine,” Annie told Lola pointing to the TV. “It’s the great unifier. Why wasn’t I told about this invention earlier?” She turned on her heels and walked to the kitchen to make dinner hoping that Lola would stay behind. The last thing she wanted to deal with was what Lola called a cooking lesson and what she called misery. Lola had no instinct, no natural inclination when it came to cooking. But already, Lola was following her. “Why don’t you sit on the couch and relax with the kids. I’ll make dinner.” She told Lola.

  The answer was no, unfortunately. In the kitchen, Annie began to work on her endives au jambon, washing the endives, arranging slices of ham, grating gruyère and preparing the béchamel sauce. Lola was in charge of the vinaigrette, a simple enough task she had instructed her on several times. Lola scratched her head before the salt and pepper grinders and the jars of vinegar, olive oil, and mustard asking: “Which one goes in first, again?”

  “When do you plan on calling Mark?” she asked, that question often resulting in Lola running away and giving her some freedom.

  “I, well, not, I didn’t, I mean, not yet. So it’s vinegar first?”

  There was also the more bothersome question: Why was Lola pretending to be in the United States. Why this charade? Annie was wondering how to phrase her question when Lia barged into the kitchen.

  “I’m not watching stupid French cartoons. Maxence is choosing all the channels. Mom! Tell him!” Lola turned to her daughter with a blank expression. “Mom! Wake up!” Lola fumbled with a response and looked at Annie apologetically. Lia was already raising her voice. “Mom! Do something. Maxence is being an asshole!”

  Annie gave Lia a piercing look. “Well, pardon your French, young lady.”

  Lia stood, defiant. “Well, he is!”

  Annie turned to Lola, who averted her eyes, which Annie took as an invitation to set down the rule. “Deal with it, Lia.”

  Lia’s faced turned pale with fury. Annie watched Lia’s anger gather energy, her gaze darting around the kitchen like she was looking for something to break, and a second later she was charging toward Lola, pushing her hard with both hands. “I hate you!” she screamed.

  “Lia, get out of this kitchen this instant,” Annie said. Lia looked defiantly from her mother to Annie, waiting for Lola to come to her rescue. Annie smiled inwardly. If Lola could not take a stand with her daughter, she was not about to take one with her. Lia murdered her with her eyes, stormed out of the kitchen and slammed the door.

  “What was that?” Lola said with a little laugh. If someone had disciplined her children, Annie would have seen red, but Lola sounded apologetic. “All this change will be good ultimately.”

  Did Lola mean leaving Mark, moving to France, or having boundaries set by a stranger? It was as good as any entry into her preferred subject. “Does Lia ask about her father? What do you tell her? What did the judge say about visitations?”

  “I’m definitely going to call him.”

  “The Judge or Mark?”

  “Hm...both.” Lola presented her bowl. “How much mustard?”

  She felt an urge to torment her. “Eyeball it.”

  Lola examined the contents of the bowl, added a minuscule amount of mustard, and pushed the bowl in front of Annie. “Like this much?” Annie made a gesture to add more, and Lola added a tiny amount. “More?” Lola asked. “More? Still more?”

  If Lola could be annoyingly persistent, so could she. “I’m just wondering, I’m just worried that your husband--”

  “The one I’m worried about is Althea,” Lola interrupted according to her own tactic of diversion. “She’s so quiet.”

  “I know. Isn’t it fantastic?” she answered, but Lola gave her a reproachful look. “At least she’s eating with us. For a few days, she was eating in her room. Lucas might be a bit much for Althea at mealtimes. You know how he is, the sexual innuendoes, the jokes, the flirting.”

  Lola beamed at the mere thought of Lucas. “He’s a riot. And cute. And so devoted to you!”

  “Lucas is a great friend,” Annie said, suspiciously.

  “A friend who practically lives with you and can’t keep his eyes off you,” Lola chuckled.

  “Seems to me that his eyes are going more in the general direction of your breasts.”

  “I know...my breasts...” Lola sighed.

  They were interrupted by Maxence who barged into the kitchen just as Lia had and said: “Lia keeps switching channels and putting my favorite show on mute!”

  Apparently Lia had taken the situation into her own hands. “You guys figure it out or I’ll pull the plug.”

  “It’s not fair!”

  Annie grabbed a box of dry pasta from the table, and aimed it at Maxence like a remote control. “You’re on mute too now. Go!” Maxence left the room grumbling. She turned to Lola: “I don’t think it’s Lucas that Althea’s trying to avoid. I think it’s my food.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Yesterday she said she’d eat with us as long as she could eat her own food. She said mine doesn’t agree with her. Weird, but fine with me. Better than having her bring a heaping plate of Linguini a la Carbonara to her room and shoving it down the toilet behind my back like she did the other day.”

  “She did?” Lola seemed shocked.

  “The pancetta bits refused to be flushed. I guess their high fat content brought them back to the surface of the john’s water, an interesting piece of trivia. I told Althea that I noticed her tossing
food down the toilet, that I wasn’t a complete numskull.”

  Lola thought for a moment. “Tossed it before or after eating it?”

  Annie froze. She had the vision of Althea putting fingers down her throat. “Wow. I am a numbskull! That’s terrible! We have to talk to her.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t say a word about it,” Lola said as she slowly stirred the contents of her bowl, pausing every so often to observe the result. “Food issues are control issues.”

  “So we should let her have full control over starving herself?”

  “Those things get better on their own. I had one of those phases. Models all do.”

  Annie now had the vision of Lola bent over the toilet bowl. “Let’s talk to her.”

  Lola’s voiced slowed, and she turned her face away. “Bringing unpleasant things up will only make the atmosphere uncomfortable.”

  Was Lola giving her a subliminal message about her own unpleasant things she’d rather not bring up? “Goodness, the last thing we want is an uncomfortable atmosphere, so I’ll shut up.”

  “It’s a difficult subject for her I’m sure.”

  “And if I start really opening my mouth about what’s on my mind, it won’t be pretty,” Annie said.

  Chapter 13

  The force of the first blow vibrated his entire body. She was full of shit is what she was.

  Larry’s voice said, “Take it easy. Take it slow.”

  Mark ignored Larry and hit the heavy bag with a right, then a left. Larry held the bag with his hairy paws. The guy had hair all over his back. A fucking disgrace. Mark alternated, quick right, quick left. A maid and a nanny while he busted his ass making a living. His face, his arms, and his body were slick with sweat as he punched. He felt the impact in his stomach, felt it in his jaw. Beads of sweat gathered down his neck. The gloves were shiny and red. The place stank like a fucking barn. Hit. Hit. Sweat squirted out of his body like a dog shaking after his bath. And that expression on her face? A professional victim. Hit. Hit.