Men have a special relationship with their penises. They name them, they compare them, they spend quality time readjusting their trousers. I haven’t seen many women turning their breasts into secret best friends, even those who wryly refer to them as “the girls.”
For most of my life, I have considered my breasts to be fully satisfactory: they fed my infant children and were remarkably useful in bed. That measured approach was reflected by my lingerie drawer. By my twenties, it held a motley assortment, unadorned cotton mixing with silky bits of lace, designed for nights in which someone might want to tear off my lingerie with his teeth. Those bras were the Mapplethorpe photos of my bra collection: labeled “explicit” and reserved for special shows guaranteed to inspire a heated reaction.
Over time, marriage, and—regrettably—cancer, my wisps of lace and satin disappeared through attrition, gradually replaced by sports bras, nursing bras, and the frightening “mastectomy” bra, which has all sorts of inserts. After my breast reconstruction, I became obsessed by organic cotton bras, as if excising synthetics from my wardrobe—as my cancer had been excised—would make me a healthy person, organic from the outside in. My favorites were two identical cotton bras that started out red but, after a few go-rounds in the laundry, faded to bricky pink. They sagged, but my beautifully reconstructed breast did not, so poor construction seemed unimportant.
Then, as they say, came Paris. In the history of my life, this year in Paris might as well be termed the Year of the Brassiere. At some point I walked into the lingerie department at Galeries Lafayette and shamelessly eavesdropped on a conversation between a saleswoman and a client, a very elegant, restrained woman d’un certain âge, perhaps sixty-five or seventy. Madame liked the design of a delightful handful of cream silk embroidered with black roses, but if it were not possible to buy panties that matched, then obviously the bra was not for her. It occurred to me that it was entirely possible that a lusty, equally elegant Parisian male, also of a certain age (or younger!), waited for her at home, but more important, his opinion would make no difference to her.
She was dressing for herself. And her standards were high. I turned back to the rows of bras and tried to look at them through French eyes: as delicious, delightful accoutrements that would make my breasts look like confectionary pieces—for my own appreciation and pleasure. I swept up a handful and took them into the changing room. Some minutes later, I regarded myself adorned in soft tulle and silk. The straps were twisted together with tiny gold threads, making me feel like a Roman senator’s wife. I bought that one, and another of pleated fuchsia silk, and a third in navy, scalloped along the edges.
It scarcely needs to be said that Alessandro celebrated this development; for my birthday he gave me an exquisite bra in cherry red lace. Dangling from a tiny bow was an engraved locket with just enough room, he pointed out, for a photo of him. I could keep my husband next to my heart. (Or between my breasts, however you want to think of it—this may be a gendered consideration.)
In time I accumulated quite a collection of bras, and the panties to match, of course. And I had also accumulated an extra ten pounds. Ordinarily, that dismaying fact would have made me eschew the mirror. But my Parisian lingerie drew my eyes away from imperfections, and directly to curves enhanced by lace and discreetly ingenious padding. American women may spend their time hating their waists and their hips, but it’s my guess that French women spend the same time admiring their breasts—and their hips—no matter their size.
Somewhere in the midst of this feverish period of lingerie acquisition, Anna announced that she was the proper age for a bra. I clearly remember asking my mother for a “training” bra. She snorted, and asked me just how I was going to keep those wild animals in check without training. That unappreciated pun gave way to a speech asserting that breasts and bras were “used by men to keep women in the kitchen”—in retrospect, an explanation that neatly dodged the whole issue of lust. Liberation from the kitchen (and a bra) led to my being the only girl in the sixth grade to find herself naked from the waist up during a scoliosis test—and lo, these many years later, I still feel a surge of resentment at the memory. Consequently, I greeted Anna’s request with jubilation: she was becoming a woman and we would have fun, fun, fun buying her first bra. She eyed me. “It’s not as if I said I was going to have a baby,” she pointed out.
Ignoring this deflating remark, we sailed out in search of a training bra. Le Bon Marché proved to have an entire wall of such bras (with matching panties, naturellement). Anna focused instantly on a concoction that was scalloped and lacy and altogether French. She snatched it off the hook and clutched it to her nascent bosom, like a crazed shopper at a closeout sale.
It could be that French mothers refer to these tiny scraps of lace as “training” bras. But if so, the training is quite different than what my mother envisioned. As I see it, a French girl is trained to love her figure, and to take personal pride in her clothing, even if that clothing is never intended to be seen by anyone other than the owner (and her maman). Put another way, these artworks are not designated for gallery shows sure to be outlawed in certain communities: they are not for wild oats, but for private glamour.
At home, Anna tried on her bra and panties and then—as customary whenever new clothing came her way—headed to the living room to model before her father and brother. I grabbed her arm just in time. “Lingerie is private,” I told her. “You’re a woman now, remember?”
She frowned for a moment, registering that fact, and then she turned back to the mirror.
Alessandro came home triumphant from the market, with the very first peaches of the season. Mine was small with a moody flavor somewhere between sweet and sour—yet every bite celebrated peachiness, a flavor that speaks to one’s mouth of summer days so hot that a haze hangs in the air, of iced tea, thick grass, and white eyelet-lace frocks.
I have a lot to do. Revisions for an academic article are due back at the end of this month. I have a column due to the Barnes & Noble Review website addressing five novels. I’ve promised my editor the first hundred pages of my “Beauty and the Beast” romance, and told my university that I would finish my academic book by June. So I spent the day working on a novella for which I have no contract, no publisher, and no deadline. Alessandro rolled his eyes.
The Petit Palais is offering an Yves Saint Laurent retrospective, so my cousin Laura and I waited in line to see it. I had no idea that YSL popularized the pantsuit, having decided that women ought to stand shoulder to shoulder with men in the boardroom. Or that said pantsuit (perkily pinstriped and worn with a tie) created such a furor. Apparently a socialite, barred entry to a restaurant in New York City because she was in pants, stripped off the trousers and sauntered in wearing only the jacket.
I am particularly fascinated by the Yves Saint Laurent collections in which he appropriated motifs from art. He created a dress using Mondrian’s boxy color squares, and a Van Gogh “irises” jacket that must have required weeks and weeks of embroidering beads, sequins, and tiny ribbons to re-create the painting. Laura and I agreed that it was exquisite, though we weren’t sure on what occasion one would wear it. “It’s my birthday, and I’m wearing a Van Gogh”?
My favorite part of the Yves Saint Laurent exhibition was a towering wall displaying each and every tuxedo he designed in his long career. He was twenty-two when he presented his first collection, in 1958, and it was interesting to see the fifties evolve to the hipster sixties, shoulder pads swell for the eighties, slinky silk appearing in the nineties. Even better: the wall sign informing us that the tuxedos were meant to be “worn with bear skin.” I always thought fur beat naked flesh.
Alessandro reported today that Florent is much more in love with his colleague Pauline than he ever was with the Italian waitress. “After all, they can talk to each other,” he said. “That’s important, don’t you think?” It’s generally agreed that communication is an essential part of a relationship, yes.
A string of pet shops occupies a couple of blocks along the Seine. Oddly enough, we have visited every shop on two occasions, and haven’t seen a single poodle. As in Italy, chipmunks are popular pets. They look (to me) quite dismal, but perhaps Brazilians seeing parrots in cages rather than flashing through trees feel the same.
Yesterday Anna burst into tears at bedtime, saying she had no friends, no one laughed at her jokes, and that she was failing school (her report card indicates otherwise). I pulled out a Gryffindor key chain I had been saving for just such an emergency, and she cheered up while telling me why she was definitely a Gryffindor and not a Slytherin.
In the apartment above us, workers are prying up the original 1760s floorboards only to replace the same boards in such a way that they won’t squeak. It was a bad day for us when each board shrieked from its place. But in quieter moments, I hear workmen singing, sometimes Portuguese love songs and sometimes the Muslim call to prayer.
Paris is in bloom! Early this morning I walked down boulevard des Invalides. Flowering trees from the Invalides park were hanging over railings, first one with ruby red buds, and then another with fluffy pale pink blossoms, touched with white, as if sprinkled with icing sugar.
This morning as we entered church, a worthy Frenchman with a huge gray mustache looked meaningfully at Luca’s uncombed and wildly curly hair. Once inside, I realized that no other parent had managed to corral anyone over eight, and I couldn’t help thinking that the mustachioed gentleman should come over one Sunday early and try to pry a fifteen-year-old out of bed. I have given up elegance in exchange for attendance.
We have friends visiting from Los Angeles, two artists and their six-year-old daughter, Phoebe. Proud that we could boast near-California-like sunshine on Sunday, we wandered about the markets, and Phoebe bought a bag of French guinea pig food to bring home to her classroom pet, Roxie. Showing true Parisian flair, it’s colored like the rainbow. We had a great time at the bird market on Île-de-la-Cité talking to wildly intelligent parrots, until disaster: a box of baby bunnies, tiny bundles of soft fur with sweet floppy ears and pink noses. Phoebe and Anna were both overwhelmed by desire. I explained that, without passports, these bunnies couldn’t become U.S. citizens. Showing an early aptitude for a life of crime, Anna pointed out she could hide one in her pocket. “Or my pants,” she added.
Today we ran into Anna’s friend Nicole’s mother, who had her gorgeous two-month-old baby with her. Anna and I hung over the pram while the baby grinned, wide-eyed and toothless, and told us emphatically (in baby language) all about her life. I couldn’t help thinking about baby Barbara, in Mary Poppins, who promises the sparrow that she will never forget the language of sparrows and trees. And when she forgets, he cries.
This afternoon we wandered around the Clignancourt flea market admiring (but not buying) vintage Chanel, until our six-year-old visitor, Phoebe, saw a battered purple straw hat. After some fierce bargaining, she pranced happily away. And we all suddenly realized that in her chic boater, Phoebe now looked like a French kid, slumming among Americans.
Anna had a tough time at school today with Beatrice’s gang of mean girls, who took possession of the mats during gymnastics class and demanded a password (which, of course, they wouldn’t share). On the way home we talked about friends and how complicated they are, and then on the Métro Anna grinned and said, “I have a friend,” holding up the fifth Harry Potter book. I remember those days very well. I had friends too: Anne of Green Gables, Dorothy Gale and Toto, Nancy Drew.
Today we all went to the marionette theater in the Jardin du Luxembourg. The first four rows are reserved for children, so that their favorite puppet, Guignol, can ask their advice. In this particular production, duffle-headed Guignol was the servant to a bewigged aristocrat. “What’s the matter, les enfants? What’s happening?” he would ask. They all shrieked back, warning him of the crocodile sticking its head out of his soup pot. We were seated beside a family with a small, bespectacled girl, who called out advice to Guignol in a piping voice—until a fuzzy spider descended over Guignol’s bed and she began screaming instructions. At intermission, she turned to our guests from California and quite politely asked what they thought of the play. They explained (through Alessandro) that they didn’t speak French. She thought about that for a moment and then asked: “Why not?”
A French friend steered us to a wonderful food fact: the grocery stores carry fresh gazpacho, right next to the milk. If you’re going to be in Paris and fancy a picnic, buy a baguette, cheese, and a carton of gazpacho. You can drink it straight from plastic cups, and even in such unrefined containers, it will give your picnic a gourmet flair.
Today we took our guests back to the Jardin du Luxembourg, planning to rent a toy sailboat for Phoebe and perhaps one for Anna. But they turned out to be enticing, and we ended up with four: a pirate ship with the skull and crossbones for Luca, a sail flaunting a pink fish for Anna, a Mary Poppins boat for Phoebe. And the fourth? Phoebe’s dad, who’s forty-eight, reverted to his eight-year-old self and ran around the pond with a long wooden stick, poking his boat to make it go faster. The garden was packed with all the sorts of people you’d expect to find in a city park on a sunny day, yet no one sat on the grass. No one stripped naked, or played loud music, or tried to entice others to lose their money. We went to lunch in the park’s café, drank white wine in the sunshine, and talked about how the French often appear to be the happiest people on earth, though I have no idea whether they actually are.
Luca returned from school with a funny grin … sex ed day, French-style! He’d been sent home with an informative cartoon booklet. Anna was fascinated by a page entitled “It’s All Normal,” which showed a string of girls in an array of shapes and sizes. “Those look like your breasts, Mama. Perhaps I’ll have those. But that girl there, she has Grandma’s breasts—see how much bigger they are? Maybe I’ll have those!” It was window shopping for the prepubescent.
When one is stuck with orange hair, thanks to a bad hairdresser, the only way to surmount the crisis is with aggressive style. I have resorted to a rather severe Victor/Victoria look. Yesterday I bought a pair of elegant, narrow eyeglasses, and then impulsively got a pair of Fendi sunglasses as well. I apparently look like a local; on the walk home I was asked for directions three times. None of which I could answer, alas.
Last night Alessandro and I ambled toward Montmartre, finding ourselves in a street specializing in two things: guitar shops and strip clubs. As the guitar shops seemed to be frequented by fervent, young would-be musicians, financial considerations suggest that the clientele of the two rarely overlap. One of the strip clubs, called Venus, was followed quickly by another called Eve. We peeked through the glass door of yet a third all-but-empty club and saw a woman waiting by the bar for customers. She wore a platinum wig so straight and smooth that it looked like an old-fashioned, tinted photograph of Niagara Falls.
I am very fond of the larger-than-life sculpture of Winston Churchill found on the avenue bearing his name and inscribed with WE SHALL NEVER SURRENDER on its plinth. The sculptor, Jean Cardot, deliberately didn’t smooth his clay (now translated into bronze), leaving it rough and choppy. It’s as if Cardot took Churchill’s voice, that obstinate, gruff intelligence of his, and created a body from it. I like to walk by and give the prime minister an imaginary salute.
I’ve arrived in Bochum, Germany, to give a talk about Renaissance London at the German Shakespeare Society conference. Alessandro will join me in a few days. The train from Paris to Cologne took me through farmland where clusters of delicate white windmills stood like storks, chattering together on a hilltop.
Before I got on the train, Alessandro assured me that everyone—but everyone—in Germany speaks English. This may be true in Berlin or Hamburg, but it is definitely not true in Bochum, a not-large city in North Rhine–Westphalia. In the first restaurant I wandered into with my friend Steven, another American professor, there was a panic when neither of us knew any German, nor did the staff in front speak English. At length the cook emerged from the kitchen in his apron and translated the menu for us. The next day, the same thing happened in a different restaurant: only the cook spoke English. Perhaps cooks are particularly adept at languages, or perhaps they are more nomadic than the average Bochum resident.
On Saturday I had a free morning, so I wandered around Bochum. The city was having a cultural festival, with stands lining the main streets. I was fascinated to see three stout and highly respectable German ladies of a certain age at a beer stand, gripping large steins. Mind you, it was only ten o’clock. My German colleagues later told me that the ladies were enjoying Frühschoppen, or an “early glass”—reserved for special occasions.
My hotel backs onto a park with a lovely lake. Yesterday I saw a cormorant at the very top of a tree, poised against the sky with his wings spread. I watched him for at least five minutes as he stayed there, motionless, drying his wings after a swoop into the water. He held his head high, as if he were meditating on something far more serious than the fish population of a lake in Bochum, Germany.
Alessandro arrived last night, and crossing the park near our hotel on the way to dinner, we walked straight into a bunny party. There must have been at least twenty of them fooling around, far too busy having fun to pay attention to us. I could not help thinking about the utter joy at the end of The Velveteen Rabbit, when the toy rabbit is made real because the Boy loved him so much, and he finds himself in the woods, in the moonlight, playing with real rabbits.
Our hotel here in Bochum has a little stand in the lobby called Struppi’s Buffet, with food and drink for visiting dogs. Other things I love about this hotel: the bathroom lights turn on only if you put your room card in a slot. Electricity is saved, and I haven’t misplaced my card once. What’s more, in the shower you choose, via computer, the precise degree of warm water you’d like: no edging the knobs infinitesimally to the right or left, trying to achieve a tolerable temperature.
I have been hearing fascinating stories about the reunification of East and West Germany from the point of view of German Shakespeareans. Before the fall of the Berlin Wall, in 1989, there were two Shakespeare societies in the two Germanys, with two presidents, two boards of directors, two essay collections, and two conferences. We academics care ferociously about our hierarchies—yet when the Wall fell, the two separate fiefdoms had to become one. These days, the reunited Shakespeareans have a cautiously sanguine air, like a couple who remarried after years of estrangement.
While I was listening to studious, thoughtful papers addressing Shakespeare’s work, Alessandro tried out a swimming pool recommended by the hotel. On arrival he discovered that it was, in fact, a “textile-free” spa, a rather prudish description for a place designed for frolicking without clothing. The spa contained a dazzling number of saunas, over fifteen, each offering a different experience—the “Himalayan sauna,” for example, followed by the “TV sauna.” To my mind, the sheer number of saunas suggested erotic activity, but Alessandro strayed into the “Sahara” and found it already occupied by a respectable (if naked) middle-aged couple, who were merely sitting about and sweating together. The swimming pool was kidney-shaped and clearly meant for lounging rather than laps. He wandered about intrepidly, clutching his towel, but said later that it would have been more fun if I’d been there. Apparently everyone else was in pairs. In case you’re wondering, I refused to make a visit.
On the train back to Paris, we found ourselves behind an American couple fighting viciously because, it emerged, he had made fun of her gait. (I would like to add in my defense that it was impossible not to eavesdrop, given the energetic way they conducted this conversation.) She was plump and miserable, and I felt for her, although her reliance on the F-word as noun, verb, and adjective was grating. They had been married three years, it seemed. Finally, she hissed, “You are not so important in my life,” and left. And then I truly felt sorry for her, since she felt that way about the man she’d married. Alessandro is that important in my life. (Though, for the record, he wouldn’t dream of making fun of the way I walk. He has a strong survival instinct.)
After yesterday’s sad train experience, I’ve been thinking about marriage. There’s no getting around the fact the institution leads to the best and the worst of times. The other day Alessandro looked at me and said, “Are you going out like that?” I briefly contemplated homicide. But then last night he squeezed me and said, “Don’t lose weight. I like it when you’re curvy.” I was so glad I hadn’t slain him.
Alessandro and I have discovered a wonderful shop: Heratchian Frères in rue Lamartine, which specializes in produits alimentaires exotiques et d’Orient. As in some epicure pirate’s cave, there are shelves of mysterious cans; huge sacks of tiny orange lentils, barley, and cornmeal; knee-high containers of brined olives; and five kinds of feta. One section was all Turkish delight: rose-flavored, pistachio-flavored, double pistachio-flavored. A shelf glimmering in the corner proved to be crowded with jars containing seven different shapes of silver dragées, edible decorations that really do look like pirate booty.
We decided to pull Anna out of school for a few days because the “centers for leisure” are open, and she seems to learn more French in a day of playing in one of them than in three months of French class. We entered the room to a scene of chaos, kids dashing in every direction. Anna held my hand tightly, and then a teacher strolled out, playing his guitar. They all ran to him, Pied Piper–style. “Anna!” he called with a grin, and her hand slipped from mine and she was off.
I took friends to the Musée Jacquemart-André today. This was my second visit, but before now I never noticed a gorgeous little porcelain Rape of Ganymede tucked in a deep alcove at the top of the grand staircase. Ganymede was the boy stolen by Zeus to become his cupbearer. As the most beautiful boy on earth, he’s often depicted with lush sensuality; here, he’s a slender, wistful youth, on the verge of leaving home.
Another discovery: the extraordinary Paolo Uccello, Saint George and the Dragon, in the Florentine Gallery. In the fifteenth-century panel, a princess—whom Saint George is in the process of rescuing—stands just behind the dragon, which has a perfectly corkscrewed tail. She is wearing a red velvet gown with pearls sewn in flower patterns, and orange slippers, but her finery is diminished by her pale, docile face and her attitude of prayer. She’s making no attempt to run, and I couldn’t help thinking that she’s put a lot of faith in Saint George’s untested reptile-slaying abilities. Luckily, Saint George is, in fact, adroitly skewering the dragon.
Across the street from our apartment is a little hotel, Hôtel Peyris Opéra, which Anna calls the Harry Potter hotel because of its initials. Paris is gloriously warm and springlike, and today the hotel’s restaurant put three little café tables out in front, with white tablecloths, rose-colored wineglasses, and pink flowers. I have to stay at my computer, but the only thing I want to do is put on a dress and some heels, go downstairs, and drink wine in the sunshine.