Lunch in Paris by Elizabeth Bard

Author:Elizabeth Bard [BARD, ELIZABETH]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: BIO026000
ISBN: 9780316072007
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Published: 2010-01-31T16:00:00+00:00

WE ARRIVED BY the early ferry, docked in the small port, watched by vacationers sipping their coffee and reading the paper. From the port you could see the seventeenth-century fortress dominating the hillside. I was not the only American on the island. The fort was hosting a classical music festival, organized by a U.S. tenor who had visited the island twenty years before and fell in love. It was easy to see why. The port was lined with narrow stone houses, their shutters brightly painted in reds, blues, and greens. We were staying with family friends, who have a graceful house on the town square. Marie-Chantal was standing outside to welcome us. She was tiny, birdlike, with a pinched nose, short dark hair, and wrists like the pterodactyl skeletons you see in museums. She, like Nicole, hasn’t gained an ounce since she was twenty-five.

From the moment I walked in the door, it was clear that she thought there was a giantess in her house. I’m conscious that I’m a larger person than your average French woman, but despite the glossy magazines and the after-school specials, I grew up with a pretty great body image. Maybe it was being raised in a house with all women (even the cat). I’ve never been overweight, nor am I obsessed with being model thin or Madonna toned. Afra used to call me her Botticelli, because it’s hard to tell if I have any bones. But looking at myself through Marie-Chantal’s eyes, those postcollege pounds suddenly felt like a fat suit.

We unpacked our bags and went for a walk in the village. Nicole was on the lookout for a famous Parisian psychoanalyst who vacations here every year. She had just read his latest book and thought, maybe, maybe, she would have the guts to approach him if we saw him in a café. We ate lunch by the water, big bowls of mussels swimming in white wine. Nicole sipped a glass of Sancerre, and I noticed, not for the first time, that she didn’t finish her French fries. She got a good way down, but you couldn’t see the bottom of the bowl. I made a mental note. She ordered an espresso and drank it slowly, admiring the view.

After lunch we packed up to go to the beach. I had something to prove. My mother-in-law could be a very respectable member of a Vermont polar bear club. The house in Saint-Malo is a ten-minute walk to the sea, and she swims from April to October. Nothing hard-core, just a quick dip. The water is freezing, and the air outside isn’t all that hot either. The water in Belle-Ile, Gwendal promised, was slightly colder. But I was going in, whether I liked it or not. I was not going to be the sissy American.

I’m completely in tune with the French attitude toward exercise: in my view, sweating is reserved for sex. I’ve never met a French person with what an American would consider a “workout routine.”

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