Sarah isn’t sure what Sacré Coeur looks like, she hasn’t been to Montmartre yet, but she can’t imagine Paris without the Eiffel Tower. Paris is the Eiffel Tower.
But then, up until 1889, Paris was Paris without any Eiffel Tower.
The view makes the apartment worth the eight-storey climb, Laura says. It used to be several chambres de bonne, but walls were taken down to link them. Now it’s a string of small but lovely rooms that she’s furnished sparingly with refurbished flea-market finds.
The building was designed by an art nouveau architect, Hector Guimard. Guimard designed all the finishings, every aspect of the building, the fireplace with its swooping lines, even the doorknobs. The doorknob a wobbly white oval that fit snugly into Sarah’s palm. Guimard is famous for designing the green entrances to the Métro. He’s back in fashion now, Laura says, but when the Métro station entrances first were built, people hated them. They called his designs le style nouille, noodle architecture, to make fun of all the droopy green flourishes.
So, the Eiffel Tower, Sacré Coeur, the Métro stations – nobody liked them at first. Everything that was new offended. And now Parisians can’t do without them: icons, emblems of the city. This city that Sarah is living in for now, an accumulation of pushes and pulls, change and resistance to change.
Guimard also designed a synagogue in the Marais, Laura says, the arcs of its narrow façade meant to represent an open book for the People of the Book. It’s on rue Pavée, right near their apartment. But in 1941, on the evening of Yom Kippur, it was among a bunch of synagogues dynamited by French anti-Semitic collaborators. French collaborators, not the Nazis. Guimard and his wife, who was an American Jew, had moved to New York before the war because of the anti-Semitism in France. So at least they weren’t in Paris in any danger when the synagogue was dynamited. After the war, the building was restored. Sarah and Michael can still go see it, if they want to.
Mort aux juifs.
Michael and Sarah haven’t said anything to Laura about the graffiti, which hasn’t been removed. They know she’d worry about the stay being spoiled for them, though she’s been candid enough about the racist slights she’s experienced here herself. Not as bad as home, though, she says. It’s worse at home.
“Is it an act, do you think?” Michael asks. “All the formality here, the politesse?”
“Well, it works for me. Let’s face it: I’d rather have insincere courtesy than honest rudeness. And these French women,” Laura says. “They are perfection. They knot the sleeves of their sweaters at their necks just so. They make their chignons just messy enough to be sexy. Not to mention the moue. The moue! I’ve been working all out on mine for three full years now and I don’t come anywhere close to these French women.
“I got the chance to observe a real pro in action at lunch the other day.” Laura sets down her fork, a wicked grin on her face. “She was sitting at a table across from mine, and I was positioned so I could watch the whole performance. She was wearing this blouse that was impossibly white, with a collar that was impeccably crisp. It starts with her giving this totally serious, unsmiling summons to the waiter, her eyebrows arched just a bit. There’s already a hint of disappointment in that eyebrow. I mean, more than disappointment, maybe even sorrow – She’s about to discuss the menu and clearly there’s so much opportunity for the waiter to let her down. Standards might not be met. Which would be a calamity.
“But there’s also in this very same arch of the eyebrow the opportunity for the opposite to occur. There’s the faintest chance that a smile might play at the edges of her mouth.” Laura shakes her head in mock world-weariness at this point. “Because if the world plays its cards just right, if the food, the service, the conversation, are exactly as they should be, the waiter, and the world, might be rewarded with a smile. The smile has to be held back at first, so that if, in the end, it is in fact offered, it will mean something. The intimacy of a smile shall be granted if and only if all expectations and standards are met.”
These little back-and-forths, so intricate they seem choreographed.
Now Laura is practising an extreme version of the moue on Michael, who’s completely cracking up. Rose could master the moue, if she wanted to, which she wouldn’t. But Gail, Sarah can’t begin to imagine Gail making that flirty little French face.
She’s sent Gail a couple of postcards, got one very funny one in return but she still feels unsettled. Michael keeps telling her just to call, act as if nothing was wrong. Give Gail an opening to apologize. Fat chance. Maybe Sarah should apologize to Gail, though she doesn’t know what she’d be apologizing about – punching herself in the face? She still hasn’t mentioned that little slapstick anecdote to Michael.
Gail no doubt would have a full and complete analysis of the position of petit-bourgeois women in French society. If Gail were here, the talk would probably be more battle than banter. But if Rose were here, sitting at this table, admiring the view, she would find a way to say her piece without running around in circles or letting herself get shoved into some corner. At least the old Rose would. Sarah has had a postcard from her. One postcard. She thinks she’s doing a bit better.
“So how does feminism fit in, then?” Sarah can’t help asking.
“Feminism?” Laura takes a big bite out of her salad, puts down her fork. Chews with satisfaction. Then she shakes her head. “It’s really sad – it’s really sad – but if you ask the average French woman whether she’d rather be pretty or smart, the answer will always be pretty.
“C’mon, you’re on dish duty, Mr. Scott,” Laura says. “Grab some plates. We’ll wait a bit before we dig into the tarte Tatin. Meanwhile, Sarah, why don’t you make that call now?”
For days now Sarah has been wanting to know how Rose is, to hear Pat’s voice. Wanting to tell her mother about the bees in the Luxembourg Gardens, the Cézanne at the Jeu de Paume. She weaves past the narrow kitchen to the little parlour, seats herself on one of the re-upholstered chairs beside the phone, which is on a refinished side table. She has to dial twice before she gets through, maybe she did something wrong, didn’t wait for the signal after the country code – she’s used to the operator at the Hôtel de Ville – but then the call connects. The phone rings and rings until she’s about ready to give up, but then the line clicks and she hears her mother’s hello?
“Mom? It’s me, Sarah.”
“Are you in Paris?” Pat’s voice sounds fuzzy.
“Yes.” Where else would she be? “I was just calling to hear how Rose is doing.”
“She, she seems not too bad.” Pat sounds like she’s waffling about what to say.
“Are you okay?”
“Me? Well, I haven’t been sleeping all that well. It’s early here.”
Damn. Sarah got the time difference wrong: Winnipeg is an hour earlier than Toronto so it’s six in the morning, not seven, and even though Pat is an early riser, Sarah’s either woken her or she’s just barely up. “I’m sorry, Mom.”
“Oh it’s all right. I would have gotten up soon anyways.”
Anyways. That’s where Sarah gets it from. Michael mentioned it the other day: you don’t say anyways, you say anyway. It’s like irregardless, her dad always used to tweak her about that one and trained her out of it, but she never even thought about anyways. These slips make her feel less than.
“Sarah? You there?”
“Sorry, Mom. I just wanted to call to check in with you. We’re over at our friend Laura’s, and she’s got a phone, so I thought I’d try catching you.”
“I’m glad you did.”
“You sound worried, though.”
“Me? I guess so…” Again that hesitation.
“What’s wrong?”
“Rose has had a few bad days. When I dropped by Wednesday with some Hutterite chickens for her freezer, she seemed withdrawn. I spoke to David yesterday and he’s been worried. They’re taking her back to the doctor to see if she needs her medication adjusted. David said they might try a
different antidepressant.”
“Do you think she’s taking her medication?”
“David says she is. I mean, she would. Now. After all that. We have to expect setbacks, if that’s what it is. It takes time.”
“How about you? Are you okay?”
“Me? I don’t know. It’s just… I don’t know. I just can’t seem to get my balance back.”
Pat, the eternally unflappable, always in charge. Their mom. Someone who worries about them. Someone they never have to worry about.
“Sarah, you know, the funniest thing happened yesterday. I was walking up to get the bus at McGregor, the car’s in the garage for a check-up, and this older lady was walking towards me. She was well-dressed, tidy. Maybe in her early seventies. She smiled at me, and then as we passed each other, she said, ‘You must be picking up your children from school.’ It was four o’clock. But me picking up my children? ‘My children are all grown,’ I told her. And that was that. I have a feeling she wasn’t quite in her right mind. I certainly don’t look like someone young enough to have kids in elementary school. But, it kind of threw me off and I thought, they are grown. But how, how are they grown? I really don’t know, couldn’t say.”
“Mom, don’t worry.”
“Don’t worry?” Pat’s voice rises. Sarah can hear her take a breath. “How can you tell me not to worry? Rose tried to kill herself!”
“Mom –”
“How can I not worry?”
Laura and Michael are still chatting out on the patio. Sarah holds the phone tight against her ear. “Are you crying, Mom? You sound like you’re crying.”
“I don’t get it. I don’t get it. Why did she do it? Why would she? What’s wrong with her? And what’s wrong with me?”
“There’s nothing wrong with you, Mom –”
“– and what’s wrong with you? What are you doing there in Paris? Why can’t you settle into your own life? And what’s wrong with Gail? Why is she so awful?”
Sarah doesn’t know why she’s in Paris, why Rose tried to kill herself, why Gail is so awful. She doesn’t know anything. “Mom –” She can hear Pat take another deep breath, sigh. “Shall I call you back? Do you want to talk later, when you’re more awake?”
“No. No, it’s okay. Don’t hang up.” Another sigh. “I’m sorry, Sarah. I don’t know what’s gotten into me. I’m half-asleep still. I had a bad night.”
“You can call me back in a bit. I can give you the number.”
“No. No. Just give me a sec to take a sip of my coffee, clear my head.” Sarah can hear her swallowing. The line is crackly and Pat’s voice comes through staccato. “I don’t want you to be upset. I don’t want to spoil your trip.”
“Should I come back? I can change my ticket.”
“Of course not. There’s no reason for you to come back. It’ll be okay. I just have these moments when I doubt everything.”
“I know. I get it.”
“Oh, here’s your dad up now. He wants to say hello.” The line’s clearer now.
Abe’s rumbly voice comes on, how’s the weather, how’s Michael, have they been to the top of the Eiffel Tower, did they see the fireworks on Bastille Day, is she thinking about what she’ll do when she gets back? The barrage of parental concern is a relief, it’s what she’s used to from her parents.
“I’ll write you, Dad. It’s been great here. We’re at a friend’s house and we can see the Eiffel Tower from her patio. It’s amazing.”
“Well, that’s terrific. Don’t you worry about anything here.”
“I won’t. It’s so good to hear your voice.”
“You too, Sweetheart. Take care, won’t you?”
“I will. Give Rose and David my love, Gail too, if you speak to her.”
“Will do. Bye-bye.”
Sarah stays on the line after he hangs up, the dial-tone buzzing in her hand.
~
FRENCH LESSONS
give it a try, laura said. She has a friend, Marie-Claire – the woman who still disapproves of the Eiffel Tower – who gives French lessons. Sarah might like to add a bit more polish to her accent and Marie-Claire is a real parisienne. She gives tourists lessons all the time, she’s very well educated. And Laura admitted she had an ulterior motive: Marie-Claire was having a bit of a hard time, and could use some extra income, things were a bit tight for her. Michael immediately jumped in, another damsel in distress, sure, why not, he’d be happy to cover the modest fee. Sarah was pretty sure this was another element in Laura’s campaign to improve her, but she didn’t really mind. It’d be great to come home speaking better French. So she dutifully walked out to the payphone on rue Saint-Antoine and called the number. Marie-Claire answered in correct English, then switched to a slow, clear French Sarah had no trouble following, even on the phone. They’d meet Wednesday at Marie-Claire’s apartment.
Sarah is resisting the Métro these days. She tells herself that she just wants more exercise, it has nothing to do with the mort aux juifs graffiti by her stop – which is there, and stays there, and never goes away, however much Michael mutters against it. And she does need more exercise today, because she has to shake off the bad dream she had about Rose last night, something stupidly obvious, the two of them near a cliff and Rose not careful enough, Rose dancing at the edge. That willowy body in an Isadora Duncan costume of some sort, gauzy white, paying too much attention to music that only Rose could hear, paying no attention to the cliff. Corny and obvious and terrifying. The worst part about it was that Sarah was furious with Rose, she’d shouted at her, I’ve been trying my whole life to live and you want to die.
She’s still rattled by the call to Winnipeg though she has to believe that things will get better, that some day Rose will be herself again, her sunny, serene self. But she needs to walk. She takes the route to Marie-Claire’s that goes along the Seine, where the water seems to calm her thoughts, then crosses at Pont Royal to follow rue du Bac almost to Boulevard Saint-Germain. She likes the feeling that she’s walking Paris into her bones. It’s hot, probably hot in Winnipeg too, though in their phone call back at Laura’s apartment, they didn’t talk about the weather. There’s not much in the way of shade on this route, but there is a bit of a breeze off the river.
She gets to Marie-Claire’s apartment building early, so she distracts herself by window-shopping the pâtisseries and pharmacies. Why are there so many pharmacies in Paris? It probably takes a lot of beauty products to keep all these French women soignée. She can hear Laura wisecracking about the cost of Parisian beauty. Laura’s looks always seem effortless, but there has to be some work involved in all that sophisticated understatement. Rose is so beautiful but she doesn’t ever seem to have to go to any fuss about it. She doesn’t even seem to wear make-up, maybe a little lipstick when she goes out someplace special.
And now Marie-Claire is here, on the sidewalk, apologizing in French for being late (we will speak only in French, all right?) though she isn’t late at all. She is indeed soignée, very kempt, if that’s a word. A bit older than Sarah, very blonde too, just slightly heavy, and looking somewhat schoolmarmish in a tweedy skirt that touches her knees and a single strand of pearls under the collar of her pale green blouse. They walk across the courtyard, the clip clop of Marie-Claire’s heels echoing. “We wear these shoes so the men will know that we’re coming, to attract their attention, no?”
Sarah doesn’t own a pair of heels.
It takes a moment for Marie-Claire to open the door, the lock is clearly tricky. It’s quite dim inside, but she doesn’t switch on any lights and the windows are heavily curtained. Despite the gloom, Sarah can see that the apartment goes on and on. It must be ten, fifteen times the size of their little place on François Miron. They have to step around heaps of papers stacked almost waist high on the scuffed parquet floors. Similar heaps are scattered over the dusty antique desks, at least three ornate desks in the one room they cross. She’s never seen an apartment this size in Paris, never imagined such an apartm
ent could exist here.
“I must apologize for the condition of the apartment. It’s one of my father’s properties, and he sometimes works here still, so I am not to disturb anything.” Marie-Claire shrugs, that classic Gallic shrug. How to explain inexplicable French parents, especially to a somewhat rough-around-the-edges Canadian?
One of her father’s properties? How is it that Marie-Claire is so short on funds, then, if she’s living in one of her father’s properties? Sarah can’t imagine Marie-Claire ever having a minimum-wage job shovelling compost or digging weeds. Maybe ‘short on funds’ means something else in Paris – being able to afford only one bottle of champagne a week, real champagne of course, not that ersatz Spanish stuff… Is this apartment Marie-Claire’s terroir? Has she soaked the dust and faded respectability and gilded exhaustion into her bones?
They sit at a slightly brighter corner of one of the rooms, on sofas across from each other, and Marie-Claire offers a chocolate from a box that is open on the elaborate coffee table. Sarah can’t help but feel that the chocolates themselves must be dusty, and she can’t bring herself to accept one, though she’s hungry as always. The lesson begins with Sarah’s imperfect r’s, and then continues on to polishing her vowels, which aren’t quite what they’re supposed to be, though they’re not bad at all, not at all. Sarah does want her vowels polished, she wants to be better at what she knows she’s already pretty good at, but still something in her is reminded of her worst days at Hebrew school, the shame of being wrong, shrinking because she’s gotten something wrong which must be corrected, something wrong by which God Himself will be offended.
Rue des Rosiers Page 18
