Paris, My Sweet (5 page)

All those years after the divorce, there was a Technicolor parade of sweets masquerading as my companions. How could I not cling to and love them? They never disappointed me. They had the magical power to console and cheer me up. They made life celebratory and fun. Especially a cream-filled Hostess CupCake.

Ripping open the cellophane package of those cupcakes was like unwrapping a little gift. It gave me a rapturous—albeit fleeting—diversion from my dull, empty life. With the lonesome shuffling between Mom and Dad, whom Chris and I visited every other weekend, I
deserved
those little treats, dammit! I focused first on the frosting, peeling the waxy layer off the cake in one sheaf, folding it in half, and savoring the gritty-smooth texture when I bit into it. Then came the sugary implosion of the cake's faux-cream center. I made each cupcake last for eight or nine delicious bites. Even though we always had sweets in the house, money was tight, and we were on a budget. If I were to devour the whole box of cupcakes, I would have nothing to look forward to the next day. Or the day after that. I knew to ration my Hostess CupCakes so I could always have a taste of comfort, even when money, attention, and hope were sparse.

To this day, a cupcake can make me feel like all is well in the world.

The longer I analyzed Cupcake & Co.'s menu, the more my taste buds perked up. Even better than feeling the cartwheels of anticipation in my belly, my spirits started lifting. Finally, I felt ready to make a decision: I chose the Scheherazade, an irresistible-sounding combination of pistachio cake with cream cheese frosting and a raspberry center, topped with a generous sprinkling of crushed pistachios and one perfect raspberry. I've always loved raspberries but since arriving in Paris had a newfound passion for pistachios, which were included in so many delectable desserts and pastries, either whole or ground with sugar into delicious marzipan.

Feeling conspicuous in the petite bakery, I thanked the lady and took my loot to the community park across the street. The square's center was filled with planted shrubs and trees, so I chose one of the three narrow paths slicing through and traversed to the other side, where I sat on a slotted bench beneath a cherry blossom tree in full bloom. There was barely anyone sharing the park with me—just a heavy-set African woman reading the newspaper and an older gentleman in a tie, hooked up to an oxygen machine, just sitting, enjoying the day. I eyed my Parisian specimen. The lining was sturdier than those back home; more of a paper cup with a thick lip than a wrapper. But otherwise, with its fastidiously swirled frosting and sprinkling of pistachio pieces, it looked like it could have been from one of New York's best bakeries.
Here
goes
nothing
, I thought.

I bit into my first Parisian cupcake. The cake was moist. The raspberry center was bright and jammy. The frosting was thick—not too much so—and savory more than sweet, the cream cheese adding just the right hint of sourness. I took a second bite and a third. It was an unforgivably delicious combination of flavors, textures, and surprises. Relief flooded me.

So there I was, alone again. But this time I was in Paris. I had come a long way from a lonely eight-year-old and a newbie New Yorker trying to find her way. I had so much to be grateful for and even more to look forward to. Nearly three decades after my love affair with cupcakes began, I sat deconstructing a small piece of cake, amazed that even now it could instill such peace, happiness, and a belief that everything was going to be okay.

You wouldn't know it from the hyperactive social life I'd left behind in New York, but I've always been a closet introvert. After my parents' divorce, I spent so much time alone. If Chris and I weren't parked on the couch, watching back-to-back episodes of
The
Brady
Bunch
or hours of Billy Idol, the Go-Go's, and Bananarama videos on the new cable channel called MTV, then I'd lock myself in my room and focus on my new passions: journaling and writing poetry. I became good at withdrawing inside my head.

After years of being on the go in New York, I was once again relishing peace and solitude in Paris; I was having a relationship with
me
. I could binge on
Top
Chef
for hours (and, all too frequently, did), cocoon myself in a warm café with a juicy novel, or take off on a Vélib' for a pastry-sampling mission any time I wanted. Having so much freedom was almost as seductive as the city itself.

That said, after a couple months as a foreigner, with no post-work happy hours, no groups of girls gathered for cocktails, no delicious
tête-à-têtes
, no titillating first dates, and not being able to just let loose in a gush of words—in
English
—I was practically ready to explode with my unexpressed thoughts, observations, joys, and frustrations. I was hungry for conversation and companionship. When friends and family started making plans to visit me, I practically wept with relief.

I knew the upcoming girls weekend I was planning with AJ and our three other best friends was going to be brilliant. From the time of bad perms and acid-wash jeans, AJ, Julie, Elisa, and Meredith were my soul sisters. We had all graduated from the same high school two decades earlier. We'd been through first dates and heartbreaks, driver's ed, and art history exams. When everyone scattered to different states for college, we sent each other off with teary good-byes and mixed tapes of Cat Stevens, Van Morrison, and the Indigo Girls. Many years and miles later, we were just as close—and just as cheesy.

Meredith, Julie, and Elisa were married with two kids. But, impressively, it didn't stop them from saddling their husbands with child care duties for a long weekend every year so we could all get together. We made a point of doing getaway weekends as often as we could, and my living in Paris was the perfect excuse for a spring fling.

But while I was researching good restaurants and bars for the girls weekend, my mom and stepfather became my maiden visitors to Paris. My brother Chris and his family lived just a couple hours north in London, where he worked for a British consulting firm. Now that I was in Paris, it was the perfect excuse for Mom and Bob—two typical, conservative all-Americans—to visit their grandkids in one world-class European capital before making their way to another. So early one Friday morning in late April, instead of Vélib'ing to work, I took the Métro four stops to Gare du Nord and awaited my first visitors.

Being rush hour, the station was abuzz with commuters, travelers, and—pigeons. People talk about the minefields of dog poop in Paris and warn you about the pickpockets on the Métro, but they never breathe a word about how insane the pigeons are. Every time I sat on a park bench or café terrace, the filthy creatures had no qualms about hopping around my feet and hovering dangerously close to my head. When I was Vélib'ing, they'd play chicken, daring me to run them over before ascending in a dirty flap of wings at the very last minute, making me wobble precariously on my two wheels. They even dive-bombed me. Parisian pigeons, I was finding, were the most reckless and infuriating in the world.

There were scores of them now, sending skeevy shivers down my back as I paced below the arrivals board. I wanted to clap and scatter them in the open-air train station, but the thought of all those dirty wings fluttering around my head kept my childish impulses in check. Instead, I mentally reviewed the itinerary for the four days ahead, keeping one eager eye on the big clock and one wary eye on the flying rats.

And then in the sea of smart-looking Europeans deboarding a Eurostar train, I saw them. Mom, a sliver of a thing, appeared even smaller bobbing along in her long cardigan, draped scarf, and oversized shoulder bag. Next to her, Bob, who could play Kris Kringle's brother with his jolly belly, silver-gray beard, and blue eyes, dwarfed her and most of the people around them. Ordinarily, I would have been embarrassed by their excessive waving, giggling, and other displays of Americanism, but as they rushed down the platform, my mom hopping up and down like a six-year-old, it just made me happy. I actually found myself swallowing a lump in my throat.

They had never even been overseas before. Their typical vacations, which were few and far between, usually entailed driving eight hours from their home in western New York to see me in Manhattan or other family in Connecticut. And being devotees of Fox News, I knew leaving U.S. soil (especially for France,
zut
alors!
) made them more than a little anxious. That they had flown thousands of miles into foreign territory, changed planes, dealt with security, and gone through customs was nothing short of epic. And not only had they done all that, but after visiting Chris in London, they had just “chunnelled” to Paris by themselves. I was so proud of them.

“Oh, honey,” my mom cried, galloping over to wrap me in a hug. Even though I had five inches and twenty pounds on her, there was no one whose arms made me feel more secure.

“Hi, Aim!” Bob, sporting a bright red Izod under his tracksuit jacket, joined the hug. Ah, home! Comfort! Love! At the Gare du Nord in Paris. It was fantastically surreal.

As relieved as I was that they had successfully navigated the international travels, that wasn't the end of my anxiety. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't nervous about exploring Paris with them. Back home, they drive half a mile to pick up a carton of milk, and having a lunch date is considered a major outing. Would they collapse after an hour of walking? Would they need to rest every five minutes? I saw they had their spiffy new sneakers on; were they also—horror of horrors—packing fanny packs?

It was more than the physical stuff, though. I felt as if I had a lot to prove on this trip. Having them here made me hyperaware of my attachment to Paris. I felt this weird ownership, as though I was personally responsible for everything from the dour weather to the magic of the Seine at sunset. A cocktail of pride and angst mixed inside of me: I felt giddy and protective. I yearned to share everything with these two virgin travelers but also felt the compulsion to claim it as my own. This beautiful place was a mystery to them, but it was my whole world now.

I wanted to show them, especially my mom, that I
belonged
in Paris. Despite her chin-up Yankee resignation that her only daughter had moved overseas at an age when she should have been bearing grandchildren, I knew it pained her. She would never say anything to make me feel guilty. In fact, Mom never uttered a word that wasn't supportive of me and my choices. She was my biggest cheerleader. Still, I knew she loved my brother's kids, my adorable niece and nephew, to pieces and wanted more grandchildren. She wanted me to have kids so I could have that whole pregnancy and parenthood experience and know what being a mother
felt
like. And I, in turn, needed her to understand how I felt in Paris. Why I kept coming back to this city. Why it was in my blood and bones. Paris never let me forget the beauty, magic, and wonder I experienced when I first went as a college student, sixteen years earlier. Now it was time to justify my love.

“Wow.” We were hauling ourselves up the six flights to my tree house. I didn't know if Mom's utterance was the full extent of her shock at my steep and winding staircase, or if she was just too winded to say anything else. Six flights was no joke, and I felt a little bad, dragging them up, up, up. But I also had a special, masochistic love for my daily climb; along with the Vélib's, I attributed it to keeping my butt relatively the same size since arriving, despite my regular pastry binges.

Meanwhile, Bob, lugging the suitcases, had to stop on every other landing to huff and puff and laugh at the inanity. This was certainly a lot more rigorous than using the garage door opener and parking within inches of their front door. By the time we all made it upstairs and threw down the luggage, none of us relished the idea of turning right around. But there was a city outside—an entire beautiful, romantic, wonderfully delicious city out there—waiting to be explored. So I quickly showed them the views of the Centre Pompidou and Sacré-Coeur, which prompted more “wows”; they gave Milo a little American love, which elicited some happy purring; and then we set out together to embrace Paris.

“Oh my god, it's gorgeous.” My mom was already reaching for her camera.

“Oh, geez, Mom, that's bona fide Paris skank.” We were strolling from rue Montorgueil toward the Seine, and she was taking a photo of Les Halles. Decades ago, it would have been worthy of a picture, for sure. It had once been the city's central market, where, beneath glass and iron structures, fishmongers, butchers, and farmers from the country convened to sell their goods. Now it was a loathsome hub of neon chain stores, where loud and aggressive teens descended en masse from
les
banlieues
, the suburbs, by way of the RER station buried below. “I know you want pictures, but save your memory space, trust me,” I told her. And then, ten minutes later, “See what I mean? That's your money shot.”

We had reached the Seine, and I pointed across the city to where the iron latticework of the Eiffel Tower shot up eighty-one stories over the Parisian rooftops. It was cheesy, but seeing that pointy silhouette never failed to make my heart flutter. I was happy to see it had the same effect on Mom and Bob.

After a flurry of photos, we continued our tour. We went to the
marché aux fleurs
on the Île de la Cité, the geographical center of the city, and ogled the lavender plants, bouquets of ranunculus, and petite olive trees in terra-cotta planters. We passed the green bookstalls along the Seine's banks and the rows of souvenir boutiques pawning identical magnets, aprons, T-shirts, and shot glasses. Outside Notre Dame, we craned our necks to see the famed gargoyles and admire the sculpted Gothic portals while the deeply moving bells clanged at noon. We strolled along rue Saint-Louis-en-l'Île on the Île Saint-Louis, peeping in the shop windows where everything from ash-dusted, pyramid-shaped goat cheese to folded silk scarves were displayed as expertly as curated art exhibitions. It was a thrill to lead them around the city, watching them rendered speechless by so much beauty. And after all the time I had been devoting to becoming a proper local, it was fun for me to play tourist.