Extraordinary Theory of Objects: A Memoir of an Outsider in Paris by LaCava Stephanie

Author:LaCava, Stephanie [LaCava, Stephanie]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2012-12-04T05:00:00+00:00

I didn’t need to go any closer to the mansion. There was no longer someone looking at me through the window, and the swans had gone elsewhere. I knew the architecture by heart. So many times I’d lain awake alone in bed and imagined one of the Marchesa Casati’s absurd theme parties playing out on the sprawling lawn covered in carpet and black candles. She used to have illuminated signs set up all the way from the bridge over the Seine to the Palais Rose to guide her guests. This was the same path she would take in her blue Rolls-Royce when she grew bored of Le Vésinet, which was often, and decided to go on treasure hunts for amusement. Her friend, photographer and diarist Cecil Beaton, recounted a story of the marchesa deciding she wanted to find an object in a certain shade of orange to relieve her boredom. My father would have liked this game but would have been unable to see it as evidence of the isolation of living in Le Vésinet. The marchesa is now long gone, relegated to bizarre, lost stories, much like my childhood.

As I walked away from the palace, I noticed there were four mushrooms clustered together at the edge of the road. I knew better than to try to pick one. I remembered how after our visit to the museum of natural history, my father never forced our agreement that I throw away the mushroom. It had stayed in my collection until we moved back to the States. Its shriveled little body was then lost somewhere along the way. My other objects and collections still existed, though they’d started to morph to represent real, critical, connected themes rather than random things. People were no longer classified like the deities of Greek mythology, or the tidy trays of insects at Deyrolle. I’d kept all the objects because they were evidence of the beauty in the unusual, not as empty souvenirs of France. I thought about meeting Will and laughing at all his jokes, thinking they were original material until someone said they were from Seinfeld. I’d missed that moment in American television culture, just as I’d missed growing in the States in favor of deceased women and lucky charms.

* * *

I was worried that I wouldn’t know how to get back to our old house. I’d taken the walk so many times, though at night and so long ago.

“Excuse me, is this the way to rue Ampère?” I asked a man walking by.

He shook his head and pointed in the other direction. I didn’t listen and walked past a green painted gate and a roundabout before taking two lefts and then a right. There it was: rue Ampère and a few meters down, our house. There was someone standing in the window of the upstairs bathroom. I stood there in the middle of the street and started to cry.

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