All Over the Map - Laura Fraser [44]
When dessert came, a berry feuilleté, perfect little fresh spring berries in the lightest and flakiest of pastry, Larry uttered a French expression of delight. He said the meal made up for the time, years before, when we’d gone bicycling on Thanksgiving when everything was closed and all we could find for dinner was mango juice and pretzels. At that moment, the Chez Panisse meal was making up for so much more. The server snapped our photo as we finished our wine.
I would go back to my tears the next day, and it would be months before such a look of contentment would cross my face again. But at that moment, sharing a wonderful meal with a friend, the last pastry flake melting on my tongue like snow, I was happy. And every time I looked at that photo during the dark times that followed, I knew I would be happy again.
“I guess it’s silly to talk about a French meal in the States when we’re here eating the real thing,” I say. Charlotte smiles. She gestures to the waiter, brings out her camera, puts her arm around me, and asks him to take our photo.
WHEN THE CYCLING trip finishes, we take a train to Paris, finishing off chocolates we found in Saint-Rémy on the way, each infused with a hint of Provence—lavender, thyme, basil. When we arrive in Paris, Charlotte is prepared, having already researched the restaurants and found us a charming and inexpensive hotel. I’ve been to Paris only a couple times before, the last time for a few days with my mother, who wanted to travel in Europe with me to help take my mind off my divorce, on the way to Italy. Paris is the perfect place for cheering you up, almost by example; its sublime beauty lights up all that gray.
I call the Professor to let him know I’m in town; I’ve never spent any time with him on his home turf, so I’m excited and nervous to see him. I also don’t know how he is going to feel, hearing from me out of the blue. When he answers the phone, he is surprised and then delighted that I’m in Paris, and wants to see me right away.
Charlotte and I meet him in a perfect French café, and since I’m with my cousin, he is formal, kissing us both on both cheeks, but then hugging me tight. When we pull away, I notice that for the first time since I’ve known him he’s wearing a tie, an old-fashioned red plaid thing, instead of his usual scarf. I wonder if he dresses more conventionally at home in Paris than when he’s traveling, being his Mediterranean self, and then I notice something else about the tie.
“The Fraser tartan,” I say, and laugh; it’s the dress plaid from my family’s Scottish clan. The Professor is pleased that I’ve noticed, and I’m happy he thought of me in Scotland, even though we’re no longer lovers, and wanted to surprise me the next time he saw me. It’s funny that while in Scotland, he went looking for my ancestral home, made a point of it, though I’ve never stepped foot in that country.
“There are Frasers everywhere in Inverness,” he reports. “But none of them at all like you.” He smiles at me with his crooked French teeth and watery blue eyes. “They’re very serious, very hard people. I think you must have an Italian bastard somewhere in your past.” He gives me a little squeeze.
WE HAVE ONLY part of a day together; he has a girlfriend and responsibilities with his children. But for a few fine hours he shows me his Paris, a relaxed stroll through the Tuileries, then secret courtyards, and along the Seine. He takes me to lunch in a restaurant he’s frequented since his student days, a grand old place with huge antique mirrors that retains the marvelous atmosphere, amid its splendor, of being a dive. The Professor points out slots in the walls where the regulars used to keep their cloth napkins. “This