13, Rue Therese - Elena Mauli Shapiro [36]
“That’s all right. What was your husband doing during the war?”
“He was a fighter pilot.”
Louise is dizzied by this announcement—that tidy and exceedingly polite fellow, a fighter pilot. Some roaring ace of the sky, dashing and daring and half-crazy—what an idea! Perhaps that is why he has such an attractive confidence in the carriage of his body: he is afraid of nothing.
“You have a handsome boy,” Louise remarks.
“Thank you,” Pauline answers, then calls to her son, “Antoine, come here! Come meet our new neighbor!”
“In a minute. I have to finish.”
“He is silly.” Pauline smiles at Louise. “He’s obsessed with blasting passages through the Swiss Alps for trains. Tunnels and trains, that’s his thing lately.”
“That’s adorable.”
Antoine must have heard his mother, for he shouts out a correction from his worksite. “I’m not in the mountains today!”
“Then what are you digging?”
“A tunnel under the English Channel.”
“What an undertaking! That’ll be the day,” Louise remarks.
“Indeed. Man must assert his dominion over nature!” the boy announces, deepening his voice and raising his arms. Both women laugh.
“He gets this language from his father.” Pauline smiles at Louise again. “He’s prone to that sort of bombast in his lectures. He’s rather appealing when he does that, in a boyish way, just like his son here. Say, would you like to meet for dinner on Saturday? You and your husband could show me and Xavier a good restaurant in the neighborhood. I think I shall like an evening among adults. That is, if you are not already engaged on such short notice.”
“Oh no, that would be lovely. We are not engaged this Saturday, and we could take you to Le Poquelin, just around the corner from our building. It’s very good.”
“Wonderful!” Pauline’s face glows with genuine delight that her spontaneous invitation was immediately accepted. “Come down to our place at eight, and you can walk us there.”
“Henri and I will look forward to it.”
At this moment, Antoine’s tunnel silently and softly caves in on itself, and his child voice rings out, “Damn!”
“Language, Antoine!” his mother chides. “Now come over here and meet our neighbor.”
The boy gets up and comes over, slapping the sand off his hands onto his trousers. “A pleasure to meet you, Madam,” he says, and gives a curt bow. He is already attempting to emulate his father’s formal self-possession. Louise is amused. “A pleasure to meet you as well, young sir,” she replies.
The boy turns to his mother. “Can I have a cookie?” he asks, dropping his stiff demeanor.
“If you are as polite to me as you just were to Mrs. Brunet, you may have a cookie.”
“May I have a cookie, please?”
“All right.”
Pauline takes a small cookie from the bag on her lap and holds it out to her son. The boy leans forward and delicately grasps the sweet between his lips like an animal being fed a treat, and flicks it into his mouth with his tongue. The mother lightly touches the child’s soft red cheek with the side of her index finger. “What do we say?” she asks, in a tender tone meant to mimic chiding.
“Thank you.”
Louise is struck by the intimacy of the moment between mother and son. She might as well not be there at all. Indeed, it takes Pauline a few seconds to realize that Louise is sitting right next to her, and to offer her a cookie.
She accepts one and takes her leave. As she walks away, she eats the cookie. It is crunchy and buttery, with just a hint of lemon. It is so flaky that she can break it against her palate by pushing it up with her tongue. It crumbles immediately, so golden and so yielding.
TODAY IS GARANCE’S SIXTEENTH birthday and Louise is as excited as the girl herself when she hands over her gift in a plain white envelope, the two of them sitting on the piano bench together after the lesson. The present is two tickets for a production of Bizet’s Carmen at the Opéra Garnier the very next night. Garance thanks Louise effusively and hugs her. She even plants a firm kiss on her teacher’s cheek, and Louise laughs. “You can take whomever