Chapter 2 January 1995 Lily Jacobsen—Job Applicant
Lily Jacobsen—job applicant
Six years ago, when my best friend and I landed in Paris, our first stop was the Eiffel Tower, where we savored our escape from wheat fields and church socials.
In daydreams, I’d pictured us alone, the vast esplanade ours.
But there were thousands of people, more on this city block than in our entire hometown.
I breathed in the buttery aroma of crepes from le snack-bar.
Even the air was different here—filled with energy, with the sound of taxis (taxis!) honking, siblings laughing as their cameras clicked, lovers murmuring to each other.
Milling under the latticed iron legs, some folks gaped at a pair of shiny-faced soldiers on patrol, each carrying a Kalashnikov; others bought trinkets (Eiffel Tower key chains or bottle openers) from street hawkers; but most were like Mary Louise and me—they peered up in absolute awe.
Mary Louise and I crossed over the invincible lawn of the Champ de Mars, where Parisians picnicked on park benches.
Near a trellis of jasmine, a group of girlfriends in bright bustiers clinked champagne glasses—maybe to celebrate Bastille Day, maybe just happy to have a day off work.
Looking closer, we noted their guillotine earrings, a playful, macabre commemoration of La Révolution.
Everything was astonishing to us—flowers, food, fashion.
We didn’t know which way to turn our heads.
Continuing along, we found ourselves in front of a pastry shop.
The window display was as intricate as any painting in a museum.
We only meant to pop in, but the cakes—small pieces of perfection—deserved our full attention.
The customer in front of us couldn’t make up his mind.
Who could blame him? The éclairs were long and slim; the Paris-Brest, named for the famed bicycle race, were shaped like wheels; and the réligieuses were plump, like the nuns who’d inspired them.
When it was our turn, I said, “Deux éclairs au chocolat, s’il vous pla?t.
” The words felt as good on my tongue as the chocolate.
Following the shadow of the Eiffel Tower, Mary Louise and I turned onto a side street and headed down the block, toward the banner that heralded the hallowed American Library in Paris. I touched the blue canvas, needing to feel concrete proof that we were actually here.
When I was a kid, listening to Odile’s stories, especially of her time working at the ALP, had made me want to live in France.
Mary Louise and I hatched a scheme to study at the Sorbonne.
With Odile’s help, we figured out the application process and the visa paperwork.
Though I was the one who wanted it the most, I wouldn’t have been brave enough without Mary Louise.
Now, her eyes met mine. “Ready?” she asked.
“Oui, oui, oui!” I gushed. Some people burst into song when they are happy; I burst into French. Fortunately, Mary Louise was used to my weird ways.
I tugged on the brass door handle. Beyond the deserted welcome table I spied tall racks of magazines, a scraggly palmetto that reached toward the window, kids playing with blocks in the children’s room.
Mary Louise followed me to 820, where we opened Odile’s favorite books, The Priory and a dog-eared copy of Persuasion, to scour the cards for her signature.
In the reading room, I ran my fingertips along a scarred table and wondered if the backward braille of indentations had been formed by her pen.
At the circulation desk, I searched for Odile in the eyes of the dapper librarian, but at the mention of her name, his expression remained blank.
I asked him about Odile’s long-lost friend, Margaret Saint James. They’d worked together at the ALP during the Occupation, but war and betrayal had separated them.
He raised a brow. “You expect to find employees from fifty years ago?”
Mary Louise opened her mouth, probably to say something conciliatory like Not expecting, just hoping, but I cut her off. “The Arc de Triomphe and Café de Flore are still here,” I shot back in the same snotty tone he’d used with me.
“Why are you always so rude?” Mary Louise chided when we were back on the boulevard.
“He started it.”
She grimaced. “As always, you ended it.”
On my own, I tracked down Margaret’s old atelier, which was located near the Montparnasse Cemetery.
The current owner told me she’d retired and gone to South Africa to be with her daughter.
I wrote to inform Odile and asked if she wanted me to keep digging.
It’s a blessing to know she’s with family, she penned in elegant cursive.
I don’t want to get my hopes up again. No more talk about the past. Let’s look to the future. Tell me about the Sorbonne.
The classes were challenging. Marie Louise and I tried to take notes, but the professors spoke more quickly than we could write.
Luckily, there was respite on weekends. In the leafy allées of the Tuileries, we shared picnics of baguettes and rotisserie chicken with other students—Yuka from Tokyo, Claudio from Seville, Mireille from Mulhouse.
Even though we met new friends from all over the world, I still found Mary Louise the most interesting, the one whose opinion mattered the most, the one I wanted to spend time with.
At the tip of ?le de la Cité, an island in the middle of the Seine, she balanced her easel on the cobblestones, sketching the willow tree whose slender branches licked at the river while I scribbled in my notebook, inspired by couples holding hands, by the accordionist playing “La Vie en Rose,” by the wistfulness of the clouds.
She and I got lost in the labyrinths of the Louvre—the museum map was little help in navigating nine miles of corridors.
Can you believe we’re here? Our eyes would meet, and we wouldn’t have to say a word.
We roamed narrow streets until our feet throbbed, then we jumped on random city buses to admire chic quartiers in stop-and-go traffic.
There was the blue bistro, its waiters in smart tuxedos; the mime breakdancing before the bronze statue of Ben Franklin; the melancholy shopgirl who stared out the window.
Sometimes, I thought Mary Louise resembled her.
When she thought I wasn’t looking, her mouth puckered the same way it did when she was about to cry.
I worried she didn’t want to be here, that I’d pressured her into following me to France.
At the end of our first semester, late one night, curled up on our futon with only the dregs left in the bottle of red, I worked up the courage to ask, “Do you regret coming?”
“What makes you think that?”
“I miss my family, too.” I leaned forward, hoping she’d confide in me. “I wouldn’t blame you if you want to go back.”
She rolled her eyes. “To what? Cruising Main Street? That place is a dead end.”
I frowned. “I wouldn’t go that far.” Now that we lived thousands of miles away, I missed our small town.
“It was different for you.” Her fingers twitched, which meant she was dying for a cigarette. “You were the smart one, I was the fuckup.”
“That’s not true.”
“In high school, you talked me out of doing dumb stuff.”
“Like what?” I demanded.
“That custom cutter whose eyes were as green as his John Deere combine.”
I snorted a laugh. “He was cute. But I said ‘what,’ not ‘who’!”
“Same dif. When Billy and I ditched class to make out under the bleachers, you talked sense into me. Without you, I might have been a teen mom, a dropout stuck cleaning motel rooms. You believed in me and made sure I graduated. You showed me the possibilities of the future. My possibilities. My future. No one in my family went to college. No one even had a passport. No one dreamed big for me like you did.”
“Tu es fantastique.” I didn’t say that her parents didn’t know her like I did.
Paris represented a fresh start for both of us—one where Mary Louise would find her path, and I would no longer be the tongue-tied teen who couldn’t talk to boys.
I even spoke up for Mary Louise, who struggled with French.
I would pen my debut novel, then return to my hometown a literary success.
I wanted so much for us—fame, happiness, great boyfriends.
Together, we’d accomplish what we could not alone, I told myself, without realizing that she’d responded to my question without answering it.
We were in France to be artistes, even if we often felt homesick and lost. I felt eclipsed by the city’s literary greats, so she talked up my chapters.
What started as a tale of a girl running away from a suffocating small town became the story of a young woman seeking love in the world’s most romantic city.
Between Jean-Luc, who stood me up; Pierre-Antoine, who put me down; and René-Charles, who used me to correct the wonky English of his dissertation, then dumped me when he was awarded his Ph.D.
, I wasn’t making much progress on finding that great romance.
Neither was Mary Louise. André dated her in the hope of getting a green card.
Mickael had a goal of sleeping with a woman from every country.
She was an unsuspecting character in chapter 43 of Around the World in 80 Lays.
Still, we didn’t give up—on our art or on finding boyfriends.
On Saturday nights at the Basement Brasserie, over bottles of inexpensive Bordeaux, we hung out with a handful of friends.
Whenever one spoke in French, my gaze flitted to Mary Louise, who nodded along.
I always ensured she was able to follow, sometimes whispering snippets of the conversation in English.
When she responded in pidgin French, I listened, always interested in her opinion.
A classmate had called our friendship “fusionnelle,” as if Mary Louise and I had been fused together, forged from small-town life.