The Yarn Whisperer by Clara Parkes

Author:Clara Parkes
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Abrams
Published: 2013-07-24T04:00:00+00:00

LA BELLE FRANCE

WHEN I WAS fifteen, I boarded a chartered jet at JFK along with several dozen other doe-eyed teenagers. We were part of the Nacel foreign exchange program and bound for Lyon, France. I knew nothing about where I’d be spending the next six weeks. As I waited for my pale blue Samsonite suitcase to emerge on the luggage carousel, I heard a funny-sounding announcement over the PA system. “Cla-haa pah-kiss?” it said. “Cla-haa pahkiss?” Which turned out to be my name, in French.

My bag was the last one out, and they were paging me. I sprinted to catch up with the group as they boarded a tall, skinny bus. We drove through the country and into a town with narrow streets and little cars. We dragged our suitcases through a busy square, pausing to laugh smugly at the glossy food pictures in front of a pizza restaurant.

“Look at that!” we snorted. “You call that a pizza?”

“Not like in Baltimore,” said one kid. “We’ve got the best pizza.”

“No way, man,” interrupted another, “I’m from Chicago. You can’t get better pizza than ours.” We all gasped at the last picture: Someone had cracked an egg on the pizza. A whole egg. Gross.

We finally reached a train station and said our good-byes as the group split into smaller clusters. Five of us were put on a train with a kind but rather tired-looking woman. As the train began to move, she focused her clipboard on me. “Cla-haa,” she began. “Ear ees zee ann-formacion abouuut zee fai-milie whair you wheel be stayeeeng.” It turns out I was headed to Nîmes, where Jacques, his wife, Marianne, and their daughter, Sophie, were waiting for me. My life in France was about to begin.

I soon learned that Jacques and Marianne were in fact not married at all. They’d fibbed to the agency so they could get an exchange student. My host sister, Sophie, was Jacques’s only daughter from a previous marriage. She adored her papa, worshiped The Cure and James Dean (“zee cure” and “jomms deeeen”), and detested Marianne.

Jacques was a stereotypical Frenchman. He was short, had slightly hunched shoulders, was always puffing on a Gauloises cigarette, and maintained a contemptuous sneer for all that displeased him. He was estranged from his father, a famous actor I would see years later on the stage in Paris. He studied ancient mythology and was an abstract artist. He openly wept during a tribute to the late Jacques Brel, which he made me watch with him on the TV.

Marianne belonged to that generation of women whose personality was formed primarily by those around her. She was warm and friendly, recently divorced, and had two grown children of her own. She had dyed brown hair, a propensity for large, shapeless dresses, and an overdeveloped maternal instinct that made her speak to me like I was an eight-year-old—fitting, since my French language skills were at about that level.

Sophie was petulant, competitive, occasionally hyper, and inclined to baby talk when in the company of her father.

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