Paris Cravings: A Paris & Pastry Novel (13 page)

Two Months Earlier

After church Sunday morning, Mom and I took the train into Jersey to visit Dad’s grave. He was buried near his parents—grandparents I didn’t remember,
since they died when I was a toddler.

I flipped through a magazine while Mom stared out the window. Without turning her head, she murmured, “If my next check is big enough we need to go down to Florida to visit
your granddad
sometime after your trip to Paris.”

“Are you serious? Florida humidity is worse than New York during the summer. That’s why I went down during Spring Break.”

She gave me a half smile. “That’s debatable.”

“You think
Grandpa Jim
would come here to visit? We could go to the Cape.”

Since Florida has more miles of coastline than any other state, you’d think my grandfather would have a good chance of living near the beach, but he picked Orlando—retirement communities. It’s a good location for taking your grandchildren to Disneyworld. Guess he forgot that I’m not eight years old any longer.

Mom absentmindedly applied fresh lipstick. I couldn’t tell if she was staring at the landscape or just looking at her reflection through the glass. I knew one thing. She always put lipstick on for Dad.

The closer my Paris trip got, the more nervous she got. “What if something happens to you? I’ll be in grief therapy the rest of my life.”

“
Mom!
” I said. “Nothing’s going to happen. You’re making me crazy.”

It was probably morose to be happy about going to a cemetery, but I wanted to get there as soon as possible.

“I thought your father and I would grow old together. Die together.”

“You’d have to put in a special order to God.”

“I’ve heard of elderly people dying days or weeks apart from each other. I always thought it was so sweet. Maybe I’ll use it in my next book.” She took out a pen and her notebook and started jotting down a few notes.

I figured she told me stuff like this because I was an only child. She tends to be the kind of person who lets everything out. She should have had six kids to keep her busy.

We bought a bouquet of daisies and chrysanthemums when we got off the train, then took a taxi to Mount Pleasant Memorial Park. Dad liked bright and happy flowers. When a person gets sick you’d think there would be plenty of warning, and lots of time to say goodbye. Dad was supposed to be around to check out my boyfriends, get on my case about grades, drop me off at college, walk me down the aisle, a million things. One good-bye, ten good-bye’s—I don’t think it’s ever enough.

I liked to wander around the cemetery. We’d been here so much the past four years I had lots of names memorized. There were the Millers. Stan and Mary. A married couple who died young in the 1950s. Must have been an accident of some kind to have the same death date. I always paused at the six-year-old little girl named Lilya Marie Cavendish from the 1920s. I didn’t know how she died. The headstones never say. I wish it were a requirement. Don’t ask me why.

I helped Mom arrange the flowers at Dad’s headstone, then walked down the slope to fill the green tube holder with water from the spigot.

The sun was getting warm, but there was still shade. Mom stretched out on the grass and I flopped down next to her. We held hands and told stories. The only rule was that it had to be happy or funny.

Today she was in a quiet mood. “You okay, Mom?”

“Yeah,” she answered, lips barely moving. “Just daydreaming.”

Already she seemed better. Calmer. As if my father’s presence radiating out from the grave made her at peace—in some weird psychic way.

“Remember the first time I had Sera spend the night in
fourth grade? Dad was telling us jokes at the table and Sera laughed so hard she sprayed milk out her nose.”

Mom laughed and squeezed my hand. “He loved that stupid knock-knock joke.”

“Knock-knock,” I said, obliging her.

“Who’s there?”

“Cantaloupe.”

“Cantaloupe who?”

“Cantaloupe tonight, Dad’s got the car.”

Mom groaned as if she hadn’t heard it a thousand times.

“Don’t go getting any ideas, Chloe girl.”

“Like what?”

“Running off with Mathew Perotti. I don’t care how cute his drawl is or how sexy he sings.”

“Man, you found us out! I better tell him the gig is off. We’ll have to pick another week.”

She reached over and tickled me. “Don’t make me tie you to the bedpost. You know I get to do that now,
with your dad not here. I think I’m overdue for an interview with this Mathew boy.”

“Mother!”

Mom’s voice sounded sleepy in the sunshine. “Just take your time and pick the right guy, Chloe. It’ll make the biggest difference in your whole life.”

I spend the evening bonding with Jean-Paul’s mother over a rolling pin. It’s cute. The rolling pin, I mean, which doesn’t have any handles, like the ones at home do, just a circular piece of wood, small enough to fit into my palm. I want to get one as soon as possible.

After a couple of hours I can roll the soft pie dough for fluted tarts with one arm tied behind my back.

“
Trés bien
,” Madame Dupré praises me.

I glow at her words, feeling a strange sort of happiness and contentment I haven’t felt in a long time. All my guilt over running away from Robert and Gerald Polk melts into the dough and pie crust. The weeks of worry and suspicions over Mathew disappear like sugar in egg whites. Nothing like a little pastry-making to take away the Mireille-I-didn’t-know-about blues.

Except I get a flash of Jean-Paul’s dark chocolate eyes in my head and realize that he never did tell me what he wanted to talk about as we were going to the Embassy. We had to rush back, and there was no chance for a personal chat on the crowded Metro. Definitely not a setting for a heart-to-heart—if that was even his intention. He may have merely wanted to pick my brain about the New York Yankees. Or American slang.

But he had seemed bothered by something. Or maybe bewildered was a better word. Now I wondered if I’d ever know what he wanted to talk about. But how could a girl he barely met this morning have helped with some personal problem? I must have been imagining the serious look in his eyes. The overdose of pastries and chocolate were creating a sugar-high hallucination.

Next, Madame Dupré shows me how to fill the éclairs with chocolate. I’ve been really curious about that, actually. There’s no slice or gaping hole in the pastry shells. How does the soft chocolate get inside? It seems to me that if a pastry chef inserted the chocolate before baking, the éclair would burn and it could completely destroy the taste.

Turns out my instincts are right.

Madame Dupré takes me through the process of mixing and melting the chocolate chunks using a double boiler, which are two pots stacked on top of each other so the chocolate doesn’t melt too fast and burn on the bottom. I get strict French instructions not to leave my post at the stove while the chocolate chunks are melting. Scorched chocolate is no good—
non!

I stir until I’m sure my arm is going to drop off. If I pause for even half a second, Madame Dupré immediately comes to my side and physically starts moving my arm again. She smiles at me. I smile back. We do a lot of smiling because we can’t cook and look up words in the dictionary at the same time.

Madam Dupré has me taste the melted chocolate so I’ll get just the right flavor. Her secret ingredient is a dash of vanilla. I discover there really is a difference between chocolate with vanilla and melted chocolate without vanilla! Who would have thought?

Once the melted chocolate has cooled and the éclair dough shaped and baked to a perfect golden brown, Madame Dupré shows me how to get the chocolate inside. Imagine a hollow metal pipe the size of a pencil tip. Attach the metal tip to a pastry bag filled with melted chocolate, and insert into the top of the éclair. Squeeze, then cover the tiny hole with chocolate frosting.
Voila!
It’s like the éclair has been filled by magic. I love that.

I’m eager to show Jean-Paul the pastries and tarts and éclairs I created while he was off with Mireille, eating cheese and baguettes while lying on the grass, cuddled together on a blanket listening to music.

I long to be around him, to just hang out and talk, and yet it really is impossible.

I have Mathew. Jean-Paul has Mireille. Nothing is going to happen between us, and after tomorrow I won’t ever see him again.

Madame Dupré washes the dishes and I dry, fidgeting inside the whole time. I keep wondering if I’m really looking at Jean-Paul as a friend—or do I want to get to know him because I’m crazily attracted to him? It’s a question I’m afraid to answer.

On the other hand, there’s nothing left to convince me that making brownies or a layer cake has the same quality or finesse as delicate, exquisite pastries.

Madame Dupré wraps up the freshly made pastries in a box for me, then kisses me on both cheeks. “
Merci, ma
chérie
,” she says.

“Merci a vous
,” I say, kissing her in return. She smells like buttery yeast and sweet raspberries, and I have this sudden urge to wrap my arms around her and cry just a little bit.

At that very moment, Jean-Paul walks through the swinging kitchen doors and I tense up, wary about surviving Mireille’s cool stares, but he’s miraculously alone. No gorgeous girlfriend hanging on his arm, or nuzzling his neck. I wonder where the girlfriend is, but I don’t ask. He looks distracted and a little solemn. His mother says something and he bends over the two trays of just-finished pastries.

Jena-Paul lifts his head, looking at me with a puzzled expression. “You made these?”

I nod, reminding myself to breathe. “Yep, I worked a spell on those éclairs. Bet you can’t tell how the chocolate gets inside,
Monsieur Dupré
.” I wiggle my eyebrows. “Secret family recipe.”

He leans closer. “Perhaps I could bribe this family secret out of you, Miss Dillard.”

“Nothin’ doin,’ French Boy. Besides, if I told you, I’d have to kill you.”

He laughs again, and his stiff shoulders begin to relax. “Here,” he says, thrusting a brown bag at me.

“What’s this?”

“Clothes. I think there are jeans and a shirt.”

“Where did you get them?”

He shrugs, showing off white, perfect teeth. “It was Mireille’s idea. She twisted my arm and convinced me it was for a good cause.”

“You’re truly evil, Jean-Paul Dupré,” I tell him, laughing. “But what if they don’t fit?”

“Both you girls are about the same height.” He looks away when he says this and I realize that I’m not sure who he’s talking about or whose clothes these really belong to.

“Mireille’s skinnier than me.”

He shakes his head and shoves a lemon tart into his mouth, chewing as he watches me. There’s a different look on his face now and I can’t figure out what it means. “No, she’s not. Now get upstairs and put on the clean clothes.”

I give a salute. “Yes, sir! May I ask what for, sir?”

He downs some milk and wipes his mouth, the light in his eyes returning. “If you don’t I’ll be embarrassed to be seen with you tomorrow—as much as I like your stiff, messy skirt.”

My stomach leaps. Does this mean he’s taking me somewhere? “In that case, I don’t have much choice, do I?”

Jean-Paul sets the empty milk bottle next to the sink and gives me one of his quick, teasing winks. “
Allez
, Chloe! Go try them on and make sure they fit. The day is getting late, and maybe those tour guys you ran from will soon find you here. Unless you want to hide upstairs all day tomorrow until your flight—”