Thoughts provoked by an old house in need of renovation, its garden, a marriage lived within its walls, and of a retired Thoroughbred race horse named Fibs and Flannel.
This is the cross to which I would like to lash myself for having neglected to treat the brand new oak French door in the end bedroom before the rains began and the damp weather settled in for good. See the dark spots. That is the dreaded moisissure noire, or black mold. The dripping stuff? That's shower cleaner.
I have so far used vinegar, a mix of 1 part detergent, 20 parts eau de Javel (bleach), and 30 parts warm water, a cleaning brush, an electric sander, shower cleaner and a toothbrush, and I still see spots.
I did our French door some two or three weeks ago only, and there wasn't a spot of black mold when I opened it to stain and seal. Nothing. So, I wasn't expecting anything when I opened this window the other day, paint brush and pot of sealer in hand. I must have looked something like Edvard Munch's The Scream when I saw all the black, settled into the corners, on the flat, horizontal surfaces, and even on the frame. On one door panel in particular. The other was nearly moisissure noire free, which made almost no sense. How could a difference of one door panel to the other matter that much in terms of exposition?
I gaped. My soul crumpled. I shut the door. More importantly, I said nothing to my husband. I couldn't bear the "Je te l'avais dit; il fallait que tu les fasses tout de suite."
I know, I know. Oh, do I know!
I let a few days go by, thinking I really ought to do something about it, but that didn't matter. It's like your bank account when you know you are seriously overdrawn but have to write a check to pay the plumber. All you need to do is make a transfer of funds, but why is it so hard?
I left the electric space heater on last night, the doors open and the metal (vented... ha!) shutters latched, to dry out the first efforts, and I woke up this morning in a panic. First, the electric bill. Second, I could just imagine the two panels of the oak French door, scorched to within a centimeter of their lives. I smelled bleach. My hands. How was it my husband hadn't noticed and commented on that, asking why I smelled like I spilled a bottle of eau de Javel on myself, when last he asked me (last weekend) if there wasn't any for la toilette to put in le cabinet and I said, "Non"? I waited until I heard him take the dogs out.
"Sam?" I waited. "Sam!"
"What?" came the aggravated reply from his room. By what right did I dare call out to my son?
"Could you please turn off the electric heater in the kids' room?"
Silence. I lay in bed in the early morning dark, listening for sounds of Audouin returning, or proof that Sam had opened the communicating door between the two bedrooms and turned off the source of expense and danger. Nothing.
"Sam?" Silence. "SAM?"
"What?" I did it again. I dared to disturb him.
"Did you turn off the heater?"
"YES."
I went and looked when they had both left. No burn marks, just black spots. I went and made coffee, and got the toothbrush.
And I scrub and hear, "You shouldn't have to be doing this, you shouldn't have to be doing this, you're to blame, you're to blame," which becomes an inchoate expression of refusal to accept what I have allowed, "Argh. Argh. Argh. Aaaaarrrrrggggghhhhh," as my hand begins to ache from the carpel tunnel, and I sink back onto my haunches in abject misery. Maybe I shouldn't get a piano, after all. ....
I don't know what has gotten into me. I am supposed to be finishing windows, and I am researching pianos. I need a new sofa, terribly desperately. I am buying a piano. Or, I think I am, anyway.
It started on Saturday, when I saw an email arrive from someone on my college alumnae book group. The subject line said, "Piano for sale". The message read, in part, "On the off-chance that you know someone who is looking to buy an upright, black lacquer piano (Holstein), mine is for sale. It is in excellent condition and has recently been tuned. Though I am sad to part with it, some of you may have noticed last time you were here that I have two pianos and I've decided it's time to recover some precious space in my apartment."
I emailed for the asking price. The reply came straight back: 800 euros.
My husband was standing only a few feet away. This was not the sort of impulse purchase one makes without consulting one's life partner, particularly one who doesn't really like piano music.
"Que penserais-tu si je voulais acheter un piano? Pas cher."
"Je n'aime ni les pianos ni la musique qu'ils font, mais si tu y tiens, c'est comme tu veux." That was nearly too easy. What have I been doing right recently?, I asked myself, making a mental note to think about it and do more of whatever I discovered. It might have to do with the riding lessons for his youngest daughter, and the warmer light in which this had cast me with her, and with him. It might also have to do with my advocating for his youngest son's social life. This has proven of benefit in the way that he sees me, and if the son sees me in a similarly more positive light, then guess what? The way to a father's heart is not, contrary to men in general, through his stomach, but his children, no matter what you might have thought of them yourself previously.
"How much did you pay to have it transported to your apartment?" I typed back. The reply came straight back again.
"Two strong guys with special straps for moving pianos got it up the stairs and a lady drove the truck. I paid 200 euros. They were quick, efficient and pleasant. I felt sorry for the guys (such back-breaking work)." We live a little farther than the few blocks that separated their apartment from the piano's first home near Montparnasse, but as she suggested, perhaps I can find someone out this way who can make it their last delivery of the day and get a bit of a break in the price, or pay more for the transportation than the piano's worth.
All of this got me thinking, though. I haven't played in years and years. Not, even, in decades and decades, and I am not that old. Not yet. I used to play every day, from when I was about 7 years old (I believe it was believed that you should be of an age to have learned to read books before endeavoring to read music and play the piano) until I was about 16 or 17. I stopped because I was paying for my own lessons from my babysitting and waitressing money, while saving for college, and I was also paying for dance classes with the local city ballet. I felt more confident on stage acting or dancing than I ever did playing the piano, even in front of a small audience of kindly disposed parents in my teacher's home, which scared me very much. Everyone said I played well. My teacher said I was ready to enter our state's piano competition, and she had an idea, which she thought was very wise, or possibly just shrewd: Mrs. Markarian had me start coming to my lesson right after a boy my age, Fabio.
Fabio was nothing like the model. His face was sober, saved by a crooked smile. He had what I knew was called olive skin, dark brows and straight, soft dark brown hair that fell over his brow and touched the tip of his long nose as he played. A real Italian. Not second or third generation. Maybe only here for a little while. He looked intelligent, and he also looked at me like he knew why I was there, sitting on the brocade beige and gold sofa in Mrs. Markarian's impeccable living room in their new home, on the drumlin from which I watched Santoro Bros. bulldoze the rounded top to build the new neighborhood of much fancier houses from the dining room window of our tiny open, single story ranch. Actually, the window was the dining room window merely by virtue of the fact that the table at which we ate our meals was behind it, right next to the front door and the floor to ceiling living room windows. I babysat for the children of our local symphony in their new home near my piano teacher's.
Each week, for a very few more weeks, I rang the bell and Mrs. Markarian showed me to her sofa. This is when Fabio smiled at me from the bench he was occupying, and I would soon take over, filled with diminished feelings of self-worth as a pianist, exactly the opposite of what I knew my teacher intended. Fabio would smile, bend his head to the keyboard, take a breath and then it would begin, for me. I listened to him move through Kachaturian's Toccata in E flat minor and Rachmanioff's Piano Concerto No. 2. He could bring levels of sound and emotion from the keyboard I was content to hear others produce, never once believing for a second I could do myself.
I realized in those weeks that I was a listener. That was enough. He could play Rachmaninoff with all the reaches and the passion like it flowed from his hands and arms and body. He would finish the movement and turn to smile at me. He is trying to encourage me to higher levels, to his level, too, and I cannot follow, I thought, sitting there paralyzed by what he had always just done. It stunned me, and I stopped playing. I didn't believe that I could do that, although my teacher did, and that's why she had me come right after him, so that I would know where I was going. Inside, I knew I didn't have the sense of musical theory that makes memorization unnecessary. You know the music. You don't commit it to memory. My young nephew in Versailles is this way; he knows the music, where it is in the piano and how to make it come forth.
When he was 3 or 4, he surprised his parents. They had put on a CD, and after it was finished, they heard the same music coming from the piano on the other side of the living room wall. It was their small son. He is gifted in drawing and painting, and in music. He also has an ego and a personality the size of Texas into which he will grow more comfortably as he gets older. I had to strive to learn what he knew and master it, like a stubborn dog, only I was the dog.
So, here I am, contemplating buying a friend's beginner level piano to see if I can really ask myself to learn again, since I can't even read music, not scarcely, anymore, and middle C is about all I can find on the keyboard. My sister-in-law, my young genius nephew's mother, thinks I should probably start out with a better piano, so that the sound will encourage me, and the touch will not hinder hands that have become like two garden forks on any keyboard that tempts me to reach out and touch its keys. I limit myself to pressing one down, perhaps, then, mimicking a trill, without applying any pressure. I wouldn't even be able to judge a piano's touch now that my hands have lost all their sensitivity to the keyboard, but it might be true that it would help me regain it.
I have begun to look for other sources, willing now to spend perhaps a little more money, or at least reassure myself that I couldn't possibly afford what I want and can settle for the Holstein, the manufacturer or which I cannot find online. I have found three others for sale. If I look at other pianos, perhaps I will take my nephew and ask him to try them for me.
Then, I will have to start my Czerny Exercises, from the beginning.
I hear these, and I hear Fabio, again. Especially the Kachaturian.
I want to be able to play that, while my animals nap and the wind rips through the trees and around the roof. ....
Ireland v. Georgia, February 11, 2009 World Cup Qualifying Match Croke Park, Ireland
Referee -- Jouni Hyytia
Perhaps the wearers of the green do protest a mite too much.
Pay particular attention to the replay at 1:21. You can see that the ball, rebounding off the chest of an Irish team player, appears to touch the Georgian player Ucha Lobjanidze's shoulder as he is actually possibly pulling back to avoid it. The offsides flag has already, in any case, been raised.
Le 11 février 2009, l'Irlande s'impose dans un match décisif lors des qualifications. Menée 1-0 à 20 minutes de la fin par les Georgiens, les Irlandais bénéficient alors d'un penalty pour le moins surprenant. Une erreur d'arbitrage, comme tant d'autres, et qui n'avait alors soulevé aucune vague d'indignation. Même Roy Keane, ancien capitaine de l'Eire, a rappelé que ce fait de jeu avait été "une des pires décisions qui ait jamais changé le cours d'un match. Je ne me souviens pas avoir entendu la Fédération irlandaise demander que le match soit rejoué."
Translation: February 11, 2009, Ireland won their qualifying match. Behind Georgia 1-0 with only 20 minutes left to ply, Ireland gets a hand from a penalty, at the very least quite surprising. It was a referee error like so many others that drew no wave of indignation. Even Roy Keane, the former Irish team captain, recalled this instance as having been "one of the worst decisions ever to have changed the course of a match. I don't recall having heard the Irish Federation demand that the match be replayed."
And here is what Ireland's present captain, Robbie Keane, had to say about the questionable penalty called against Georgia in ESPN's Soccernet post-game report:
Keane insisted he did not see the penalty decision, where Ucha Lobjanidze was penalised for handball when the ball appeared to hit his shoulder with the flag up for offside anyway.
''I didn't see that incident,'' he continued. ''I was facing the other way. If it wasn't then sometimes you need a bit of luck. We kept pushing on and I think we deserved it in the end.''
Hmmm.
Where are the calls to replay this game for a rotten call by the referee that disadvantaged Georgia and eventually sent the Republic of Ireland on to qualify in the World Cup competition? Where were the petitions and who heard any hollering? One could make a blog dedicated to referee errors, so I'm with the Le Monde reader, who put it this way:
lachez la grappe à Henry. Soyez utile, ecrivez à la FIFA pour qu'il change les méthodes d'arbitrage.
Translation: "leave Henry alone. Make yourself useful, write to FIFA to demand that they change the methods of refereeing."
If you care enough to demand that this last game be replayed, and if you know enough about soccer to understand why this can happen, write to FIFA and tell them its time to introduce video into the referees' decisions. I just did.
It's a lot easier to photograph fresh, uncooked food than cooked food. I learned that when I got my husband to hold the table lamp (equipped with an energy saving light bulb, which I could have sworn was one word; it should be) so I could snap a picture of the cèpes, lovingly prepared with parsley, crème fraiche, garlic, and a Burgundy white in the veal juice, before they were eaten. You know, for the before and after effect. And, yes, I have been reading Muriel Barbery's Une Gourmandise, Gourmet Rhapsody, in English publication.
"Attends! Ne les mange pas encore!" I got back up and hunted for my camera, while the veal cooled (and congealed, ever so slightly).
"Mais tu ne vas pas prendre une photo?" I nodded vigorously -- why, yes! I was, as though this was the most perfectly natural thing to do in the circumstances (he doesn't read my blog) -- and circled the living room until I found it and the memory card, sitting in the reader attached to my laptop.
"Tu peux prendre la lampe, s'il te plait?" He grabbed the table lamp from the shelf over the radiator behind the table, the shelf I have been meaning to turn into a beautifully crafted radiator cover and join to the lower one next to it, directly behind my husband, and stuck it practically into his veal.
"Un peu plus loin? Je ne veux pas photographier la lampe. Seulement le veau." He rotated his eyes in their sockets just so that they met mine, his head remaining fixed toward his plate, into which he was rather pressed to tuck since it was le mi-temps and France was behind 0-1. It was an unacceptable situation, and he had hollered at the les Bleus from the first minute of the match, "Mais! Ils sont complètement désorganisés! C'est du n'importe quoi!"
We had visions of 2002, when France failed to pass the first round of the World Cup games and Roger Lemerre was immediately and summarily sacked in favor of Jacques Santini. Some blamed it on over-confidence (one of the sponsors, Adidas, had even made a jersey with the second star, indicating their second presumed World Cup victory before they even began to play), while others attributed the French disaster to fatigue from too many exhibition matches and poor communications about their schedule to the players). He drew the lamp back nearly imperceptibly.
"Comme ça?" I declined to press the issue.
"Ca va aller." That'll do. I clicked and set the camera down. "Allez, on y va." Then Sam piped up.
"C'est quoi ça sur la viande?" he asked, dubious.
"C'est des cèpes."
"Mushrooms?" he turned to look directly at me, speaking to the traitor in English.
"Mais Sam, c'est ce que tu as senti quand tu es rentré et tu disais que ça sentait bon dans la maison," protested my husband.
There is no sense reasoning with Sam about mushrooms, any type of mushrooms, whether they smell heavenly or not. They are on his list of nonconsumables, which is my literal translation from the French non comestibles, or inedible foodstuffs. He began to remove them from his veal scallop. I began to remove them to my plate, and dinner proceeded, but there was something missing; there was no exclaiming about the heavenliness of this meal as there had been the evening before, when I prepared the less cherished wild mushrooms in olive oil and fleur de sel de Guérande and served them with what turned out to be much better than usual steak. What was wrong?
"Ca ne va pas?" I ventured.
"Si, si. Ca va très bien."
"Mais, tu ne trouve le dîner pas aussi bien que hier soir?"
"Ben," he hesitated a second to compose his reply. I waited. "Je dirais que, étrangement, les cèpes ne sont pas aussi bons que les champignons hier soir." I was crestfallen. How was it possible that these cèpes were not as good as the lesser mushrooms from the night before? I had to accept his verdict; there is no arguing with someone's taste, but, was he jaded from having wild mushrooms three nights in a row? Were his taste buds merely overwhelmed? Was it that the drastically better steak had actually overflowed to the experience of the mushrooms with which it was served? Or, had I merely made a terrible mistake preparing a heavenly meal on an evening when les bleus were playing like merde against a team nowhere near as good as they on paper?
Whatever it was, I was crestfallen. It being the 20th wedding anniversary of my sister and husband, a wedding for which I had left France and my future husband, unbeknownst to either of us at the time, only to return 13 years later to marry him and join my fate to that of les Bleus, I had hoped to make a celebratory dinner both to recognize their 20 year survival, our 20 year more miraculous survival, and the brilliant victory of les Bleus, which was not going to be the case. They had a victory alright, but no one was acclaiming it. It was, in fact, tarnished, as les Bleus qualified for South Africa in 2010 à l'italienne.
La France a tout intérêt à jouer "profil bas", poursuit l'Equipe. "Deux heures de jeu qui amènent à simplement souhaiter que notre équipe nationale soit, au Mondial, digne des +géants+ du football qu'elle a éliminés, à savoir la Roumanie et l'Irlande. Deux heures de jeu qui incitent les Bleus à la plus belle des modesties: ils ne forment pas une grande équipe. Forment-ils une équipe d'ailleurs ? Peu importe la réponse aujourd'hui. Espérons simplement qu'ils la trouvent d'ici au mois de juin prochain", stime encore le journal.
Former French national team defender and Bayern Munich player Bixente Lizarazu, seated in the post-game analysts' chairs next to Arsenal coach Arsen Wenger, the man many feel should be in Raymond Domenech's shoes at the head of the Equipe de France, put none too kind a spin on it right after the game, taillant, as my husband put it, une veste aux Bleus -- which translates quite directly to "a dressing down" -- saving his former teammates by telling the truth, as he best could -- saying, "They played a terrible game for, well, for 120 minutes, from the very beginning to the end. It wasn't the French tonight who were great, it was the Irish." The Equipe de France had played an astoundingly bad game of soccer against a motivated and capable opponent, "They won," said former defender Lizarazu, "but there was no glory. They should head to the locker room with their heads down."
In short, it was an embarrassment for the French national team and their captain, Thierry Henry. The French pride themselves above all for winning matches because of greater technical ability and maintaining a noble sense of fair play that the Italians, say, or the Portuguese in their estimation do not, and here, there was no denying it, the goal by Henry that saved France from the unacceptable ignominy of failing to qualify was the result of a foul, a handball at the goal, and not only did Henry touch the ball with his hand, as he strove to prevent it from leaving the field before he could get his foot on it to center it to William Gallas, who would head it into the poorly defended (for once) Irish goal, he seemed to touch it again, which made it so hard to say that it was accidental, the result, as he said, of a rebounding ball with two defenders between him and victory for his team.
But Rama Yade, the brilliant young French political figure in her present incarnation as Secretary of State for Sports, came to his defense, saying that only Henry himself knows if his gesture was deliberate or accidental, and spoke to the French sense of fair-play in sports:
"Thierry Henry lui-même a reconnu avoir touché le ballon. Il n'y a que lui qui sait si c'était volontaire. Tant qu'on ne sait pas si c'est volontaire ou non on ne peut pas parler de triche", a-t-elle estimé. "On ne peut pas jurer avec certitude qu'il a voulu délibérément tricher".
"Ce n'est pas le genre à pratiquer de l'anti jeu et à faire des gestes anti-sportifs. Je ne crois pas qu'un joueur de son envergure, avec son expérience, avec son palmares, le nombre de sélections qu'il a eues en équipe de France, avec l'amour qu'il a du jeu, qu'il soit un homme à faire de la pratique anti-sportive", a poursuivi la secrétaire d'Etat.
It was even more ironic because I had watched Gallas begin to surge from defense through the midfield, play after play in the extra time. "Il en a marre," I said to my husband. "Il va en mettre un but. Il en a tellement marre." I only didn't expect it to have to come from so inglorious a pass, from such a surprising source. Henry.
But, that is the nature of the game, until FIFA agrees that it's time to subject soccer, like every other sport played today, to video refereeing. Not one of the four referees saw the handball, and they will receive poor grades for this match. The Irish goalkeeper saw it, the players saw it, and Henry knew it, but if the referee doesn't blow his whistle, play goes on, and you don't argue with the referee. The goal was valid. Interviewed after the game, Thierry Henry said:
"Oui, y a main, mais je suis pas l'arbitre, a déclaré le capitaine des Bleus. +Toto+ (Squillaci) va à la lutte de la tête, je suis derrière deux Irlandais, la balle redondit et elle tape ma main".
"Bien sûr, je continue à jouer, a-t-il poursuivi. L'arbitre ne siffle pas main, mais je ne peux pas dire qu'il n'y a pas main".
And then game the question: "Should Henry have confessed to the referee? Should he have told him, 'I touched the ball with my hand'?" Stunned to silence for a brief moment by the question, a question that would be on the minds of many French, who hold the integrity of their players even higher than their technical and athletic ability on the field (yes), that had been raised as soon as it happened by the commentators, and which caused me to blurt out from the sink, where I was beginning the dishes, "Mais, l'arbitre n'a pas siflé. Le joue continue, autant que cela peut être terrible!", the question that begged to be asked so the answer could be given, Bixente Lizarazu drew breath and replied, "If the whistle is not blown, play goes on. Yes, there was a foul, but perhaps this time, the situation was in our favor rather than against us, as it often has been."
Like the end of the 2006 World Cup, like a long list of unwhistled fouls and penalties that left France the loser, but France will go to South Africa as Le Figaro says, "sans le mériter, les Tricolores iront en Afrique du Sud... pour espérer un parcours glorieux, les hommes de Domenech devront impérativement gagner en consistance, en sérenité et c'est loin d'être gagné, au regard de la pauvreté de leur prestation".
Do not let it be said that the French be dupe.
And, next time, I'll stick a store-bought pizza in the oven and save the cèpes for another evening. By the way, my husband knows I am head over heels for Bixente (Google images and swoon. Move over Orlando Bloom, here's a real man with real charm.). He approves.
It only confirms my good taste in choosing him.
....
Update: Thierry is said to have admitted to Ireland's number 5, Richard Dunne, while seated on the field after the game, that he cheated. The verdict is out in France, Thierry Henry, "le gentilhomme du foot", "handed" the qualification for the 2010 World Cup by cheating.
There is a panel discussion on national television, and to the credit of the French, the discussion is honest, open and leaves no alternative unexplored.
Bixente Lizarazu holds Thierry Henry to the standard of admitting the truth of his act because there is a sense of ethics and values that must be honored, or the sport becomes .
A political and soccer commentator argues, "we're painting Henry in too negative a light; we're making a bone into a mountain."
Another counts the number of handballs committed by the Irish, and not whistled by the referee.
On the one side, is what counts to qualify, or is it to hold yourself always to the highest standard? There are unwhistled faults in all games, but is it alright to say, "Tant pis, that's the nature of the game," or should the player at fault in such a situation say, "My honor is on the line. I have to acknowledge what I have done, even if so many others haven't before this"? For now, some take the strongest positions, others try to gather as close as possible to a next to impossible see and defend position between the two, arguing that the other side is wrong, while they are already there themselves.
"Mais, Henry ne peut pas aller voir l'arbitre pour lui avouer ce qu'il a fait, l'enjeu financier est trop important."
"Alors, tu es en train de dire que tout est bon dans le foot."
"Mais non."
"Mais si." You see?
The debate will go on, and Thierry will pass some sleepless nights, asking himself, "Ca vaut la participation à la Coupe du Monde?"
What will he finally answer? No one will ever forget, whether it wasn't as bad as Maradonna's hand or worse than Zizou's headbutt in Materazzi's chest. It will go the way of these sorry moments in sports and soccer.
With my wire basket, it did look more like I was going clamming than hunting for wild mushrooms in the thick carpet of fallen oak leaves under the trees of the Forêt de Rambouillet -- anything edible, preferably delicious, and especially cèpes -- Sunday morning, as our very French James and host noted. It was the annual mushroom hunt, proposed by my husband's former brother-in-law, also formerly the husband of his former sister-in-law, who was there this time. The last time we went, only two of their grown children were there among a company of friends and family. They hadn't seen one another in the very nearly 20 years since -- well, since so much troubled water flowed under a bridge of sighs, but everyone was very civil and pleasant. Remember, this is France.
We rose early and crossed the fields and small villages on the far side of Mantes, the A13 highway and the entire rest of les Yvelines to be there for the second departure at 9:30 am. The early birds had gotten a start at 7:30 am, and you could see why it was worthwhile once we had covered a bit of this corner of the forest, noting the quantity of rejected mushrooms and "chapeaux" strewn about, chapeauless stems sticking up through the detritus of the forest floor. Clearly, we weren't the first to scour the terrain for treasure. From beyond the clumps of dried fern and oaks, I heard voices.
"Tu peux être sûr que les tables au marché à Versailles étaient lourdes de cèpes ce matin," I heard one slightly discouraged individual say, finding fewer cèpes in the forest than the shoppers in nearby Versailles surely were that morning.
Still, Audouin nearly filled his smaller basket with wild mushrooms, although my more optimistically sized one was a good deal less filled, for our host to help us sort. One never wants to be uncertain about what to keep to cook and what to avoid at all costs with mushrooms. Coming across my first group of some dinner plate-sized red-orange ones, brighter than any fiery orange leaf fallen nearby, I called out to one of the well-informed.
"Et ceux-ci? Ils sont bons ou non?"
"Bon," replied my companion, "d'abord tu va bien planer si tu manges ces champignons, et puis ça sera la mort." Hallucinations in a relaxed state followed by death.
"Merci!" I called back across the trees to him, leaving the bright orange topped mushrooms studded with what looked like coarse sea salt a wide birth. One of the more city women (with an excellent sense of humor) appeared at my side.
"Ah! Mais qu'ils sont beaux ces champignons! Quelle si jolie couleur!"
"Oui, mais on ne doit pas les toucher," I passed on the intelligence, "Ils font planer, et puis ils tuent."
"Mais qu'ils sont jolis!" She wouldn't hear that they weren't still just the prettiest mushrooms and wanted my agreement. I smiled almost as brightly as they shown in the fall sunlight among the fallen birch and oak leaves and nodded enthusiastically. She seemed satisfied. I turned my attention to her red jacket, something like a cross between a fashionable quilted ski jacket and a windbreaker, now tied around her waist. It had saved me from wandering too far off from the group, spread across the forêt.
"Oui!," her chuckle resounded in the little thicket where we stood, "J'aime porter les couleurs qui se voient pour ne pas être perdue dans les bois!" I looked at my own sensible L.L. Bean shell in basic black and considered my predicament should I lose sight of her. I made a mental note to get a brightly colored jacket for next year.
"Au moins j'ai ça," I agreed, touching the shocking pink Indian print scarf tied around my neck and tucked into my jacket, where it was safe from brambles and the wire of my basket.
Despite my sober colors, like those of my husband, I managed neither to get lost, nor to lose him or the rest of the group, and sometime later, the very last of us trudged up the hill toward the place where we had parked our cars. James glanced at my basket and said, "Ton panier m'inquiète beaucoup." As he'd already been through it a couple times, I figured I didn't likely have very much that could cause that much suffering, or death, but he set to sorting through it, tossing edible but not tasty mushrooms aside, rattling off their names, along with those that were returned to my basket as worthy of the frying pan.
There were pieds de mouton, which his former wife (my husband's former sister-in-law) said I must prepare them with a dollop of crème fraiche, smiling to show me how happy these mushrooms prepared this way make her, "Un délice!" I prepared them for lunch with fleur de sel de Guérand and olive oil and served them alongside the pork roast with prunes yesterday, completely forgetting about the crème fraiche until it was too late. I had some, but nowhere near good enough to serve with wild mushrooms, fresh from the forest.
There were some others, tinged light blue, that have the smell of anise.
Others that didn't bear much description.
From the underside of some, James used his knife to cut away the spongey part and tossed the bits around the sawed tree trunk we were using as a large table.
"Mais tu devrais les jeter dans la fôret!" said his former wife. James shrugged mildly.
"Oui, tu as raison, comme ça on aura plus de champignons." Apparently, this part of the mushroom carries the spores, for which we were so careful not to commit the unpardonable sin of using plastic bags to carry our harvest. The plastic prevents the mushrooms from releasing their spores as we walk through the forest, depriving everyone of many more of what nature provides so freely and we were carrying away. Bringing up my husband's wife's second husband, an unfortunate choice of subject for his friendly anecdote (it was not a nice story), which we all overlooked, he said, "Tu sais, il a mis ça près des arbres dans leur jardin, et ils ont eu plein de champignons."
I didn't look at my husband, but my eyes having to go somewhere other than remaining stupidly fixed on the mushrooms, I glanced at my husband's old-friend's sister-in-law. We smiled. It's lovely to have lots of mushrooms in your garden.
"Comme de la mousse," she added, with a smile. I actually try to get rid of moss in my garden, not having a particularly natural one, but I smiled, too, like moss was as delightful as wild mushrooms springing up around your trees.
And then, there were the cèpes, of which we were fortunate enough to have finished with several. These, she made sure to instruct me to prepare on their own, like the pieds de mouton. The rest, that I could cook up all together. And, now, if you will excuse me, I need to go get some parsley to go in the omelette with them. ....
I was standing by the burning pile, watching the leaves I had finished raking by night, using the force and sliding in the piles of dog doo my Jedi skills aren't developed enough to detect without light, go up in thick smoke, when the huge lower gate slid open on its tracks. I hadn't heard the scooter. It's much quieter with the new exhaust pipe.
"Mom?"
"Hi, Sam!" I was glad to hear his voice. I had dreamed terrible, terrible things this morning, things about him, and then about me.
In my dream, I walked into his room that was not his real room and saw the top part of his window that was not his real window down, but he was nowhere. I looked down out his window, and he was lying on the concrete below. Concrete that doesn't exist under his real window. He was wearing blue. Sky blue. It was much farther than the distance to the ground below his real window. Then, I was next to him. He was alive, and I was asking why, why had he done that? I cradled his head to me, knowing I shouldn't touch him, but I had to. He was crying. The dream went on. I don't remember it all. He did things he wouldn't do in life, risk taking behaviors that aren't like him, but everything a parent fears. His oldest half-brother told me that he smokes. I had to believe him. "How do you know?" I asked.
"I saw him. He smoked a cigarette with me." It wasn't the smoking that upset me; it was that he felt he had to tell me an untruth.
But he was here, and that was a dream. I had read the story of Juda Agyemang, the 13-year-old who jumped from his 21st story balcony in Tracey Towers after being sent home from his Catholic school for not paying attention and failing to finish an assignment. For not being "himself". His mother saw him as he hurtled to the ground when she went to look for him.
"She was inconsolable," said the article . Of course she was. We all are for her. I dream of her and Juda becomes my son.
"Are you supposed to be burning things now?" He meant at this time of the year. I know my son.
"Yes, it's alright."
"Isn't it only in the spring?"
"No, Sam. It's before and after certain dates. It's okay now, but the village would appreciate your civic sense. How was your day?" He emerged from the darkness between where we park the scooter and the bikes into the light of the bonfire. Guy Fawkes, a little late.
"Depressing. I thought of my scenario, though." He decided to do the film option on the baccalaureate exams when he learned that photography is not an option for the Académie de Versailles, or the school district for Les Yvelines, our département. This did not please him. He had also selected art history, thinking that I could get him up to speed. I was very flattered but dubious. It was a lot. He has since dropped art history.
I breathe freer again.
"I had two hours for lunch, and I was feeling depressed about everything: life, school, France. Then, the idea came to me. It's an American who comes to visit Paris with a list of all the things he wants to do, visit the Eiffel Tower, ride a boat on the Seine, see his idealized Paris, but what happens is that he experiences Paris as it is; he is pushed around by the racailles ("punks" in French, a term loving used by the French president -- and everyone who is not themselves a racaille -- to describe the youth of the ghetto), witnesses two youth who run away from the café table next to him rather than pay their bill and gets yelled at in French by the waiter for not doing anything. He meets reality. He could pull out a list at the end of everything he wants to do in Rome, as though it will be different. I want you to feel his sense of how everything disappoints, even from his childhood."
"Sam, you have become French." I asked if he were keeping notes of these ideas and his criticism and development of them.
"Yeah, on my iPhone, in "notes". It's where I write my ideas for my book and my photographs. My friend says I remind her of her father."
"How so?" I figured she didn't mean that he bosses her around all the time and makes her come home too early from parties and get off her iPhone to go work.
"He passed his bac and did law, the worst years of his life, before he wrote a book, of which they made a film that was really successful. It's on Canal+ sometimes. And, then he finished by going into advertising. He also contributed to the screenplay for, and here he mentioned a film I knew, but which escapes me. I want to say it's the one where the French woman brings her NYC boyfriend back to Paris with her to live, and he just doesn't get Paris, but I think he actually mentioned that kind of person for the main person of his 10 minute short. "I'm starving," he said, heading up the stairs, "and it's time to go see everything I don't know about philosophy."
He has a big test tomorrow, an essay exam, only he says that he hasn't a clue how you argue what you don't know.
I looked back into my fire. He is also becoming an artist, I thought. The artist he is.
I can't get the part where he mocks Bachmann's lei here in France, but there are lots of things about living here that more than make up for this disappointment, including not having Michele Bachmann in office. ....
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