He said it the way one might warn a senior “You’re old now,” as if Paul’s condition were irreversible. To prove him wrong, Paul tried a complicated trick and dislocated his shoulder. Unable to sled, he now sits in the house eating cookies and growing fatter.
Every day feels the same, in part because every day looks the same. Again yesterday it was cold and cloudy, the sky the flat gray color of a nickel. We’d planned to go to Normandy, but it turns out the agency in Argentan has no more rental cars. Going without one means that Hugh will spend the entire week in a sour mood, threatening every fifteen minutes to sell the house and move back to New York. We’d both looked forward to getting away, but I’m definitely handling the disappointment better than he is. I just watched as he poured an entire bag of coffee into the stovetop espresso machine. Grounds spilled onto the counter, and when I asked what he was doing, he brushed them onto the floor, saying flatly, “Making coffee.”
January 23, 2002
Paris
Monday night was our co-op meeting, which was held in the coiffeur’s shop on the ground floor of our building. Hugh had attended one last spring, but this was my first. The apartment owners, seven of us all together, gathered up chairs and sat in a semicircle facing an architect and our efficient syndic, a thin woman in her early fifties whose job it is to manage things and who tended to interrupt whoever was speaking with “C’est normal, c’est normal.”
What wasn’t normal got her full attention for a period averaging between thirty and forty-five seconds. The main point of business was to vote on the roof repair. Two estimates had been given and the architect suggested we accept the higher bid, claiming the lower would wind up costing us more in the long run. Madame S. presented a case for fixing her retaining wall, saying it had been moistened and damaged by the leaking roof. “I’d said as much to my husband,” she said.
I’m not sure exactly how long her husband’s been dead, but Madame S. mentioned him at least a dozen times, most often in the context of some prediction. “I told him…,” “He told me…” In the middle of the meeting, she pulled out a test tube containing a tiny lump of calcium. She’d harvested it from her drain and waved it in the air, hoping to make a point.
“C’est normal, madame,” the syndic said. “C’est normal.”
Though everyone was civil, I sensed that our neighbors had long ago grown tired of Madame S. Smiles faded as soon as she opened her mouth. The syndic examined her notes. The architect doodled in the margins of his floor plan. At one point she complained that the third-floor tenants of number 98 boulevard Saint-Germain had held a party. “And the noise! The music!”
“C’est normal,” the syndic said.
Of all the partners, my favorites were the couple who own the tiny apartment on the half landing between the first and second floors. They’ve got a leak in the roof, but their biggest problem is their tenant, who hasn’t paid the rent in months. “Oh, him,” everyone said. “He’s crazy.” The husband was honey-colored and spoke with an accent I couldn’t identify. He was maybe in his late sixties, but his face was unlined and surprised-looking. “Well, we know he’s crazy,” he said. “I just wish we’d known it sooner.”
The meeting proceeded, and just as it was winding up, the syndic laid down her papers. “Who’s been building fires?” she asked. The informer, of course, had been Madame S., who conveniently reexamined her test tube of calcium. According to the syndic, fires are essentially illegal in Paris. People build them all the time, but apparently not her people. If it simply came down to asphyxiating Madame S., she’d be all for it, but legally any death would be the syndic’s responsibility. Our options are to “entube” the chimney, which would allow us to build charcoal fires, or tear down the building and reconstruct it from scratch. I left the meeting, my face burning. I’d chosen this apartment specifically because of the fireplaces and if we can’t use them, I’d just as soon move.
At the Odeon Métro stop I saw a baby lying alone in her basket next to an ashtray and a little sign reading AIDEZ MOI SVP. The mother was hanging out at the top of the stairs and would look down every few minutes, checking to see if she’d earned any money.
January 26, 2002
Florence, Italy
Me: What do you want as your main birthday gift?
Hugh: I want to attend Madame S.’s funeral.
January 28, 2002
Florence
Florence often smells like toast.
January 30, 2002
Paris
It took over twelve hours to get from our Florence hotel room to our apartment in Paris. Hugh and I awoke at four thirty a.m. and walked through our door, finally, at ten to five in the afternoon. The first problem was the fog. We’d boarded our plane at seven fifteen and spent an hour and a half parked on the runway, listening as the guy behind us crabbed at his wife. Actually, crabbed is too gentle a word. He screamed at her: “For God’s sake, will you just shut up!”
He was an American in his seventies, tall and bearded, who’d topped his greasy hair with a black beret. “I’m sick of hearing about it, so just shut up. Can you do that? Shut. Up.” Boarding the plane had put him in a foul mood, and his mood worsened when they sent out a bus and returned us to the airport.
Like most of our fellow passengers, the American couple had a connecting flight in Paris. At ten a.m. they still had a chance of making it, but by noon all hope was gone. While Hugh and I talked with a Canadian schoolteacher, the bearded man roamed the waiting room, loudly complaining to whoever would listen. His wife sat alone, huddled in her mink, and after a while I stopped feeling sorry for her. You don’t just suddenly become an award-winning asshole. It takes years of practice, years she’d doubtlessly spent mortified in other, larger waiting rooms with pay phones and magazine racks. They had us reboard at around one, and again her husband started yelling. He screamed when a man with glasses accidentally took the window seat, “You’d think he’d never been on a goddamn plane.” He screamed when his wife tried wedging her purse beneath the seat, and he screamed when a fat man arranged his coat in the overhead compartment. “Hey,” he said, “you want to back off?”
“Excuse me?”
“You’re invading our space, goddamn it.”
“I was just trying to—”
“Bullshit, you’re knocking against my wife. Back off.”
The fat man was also from the United States, clean-shaven with gold-rimmed glasses. “You, sir,” he said, “are being an ugly American.”
“Piss off,” the bearded man said.
“An ugly, ugly American.”
The fat man laid his self-help book on his seat and called for the flight attendant. “Excuse me, miss,” he said, “but you might want to keep an eye on this gentleman.”