The Paris Adventures of Judith & Amy

The Paris Adventures of Judith and Amy: A Prelude

Dear Friends,

I know that friends thing is a bit (or maybe really, really) presumptuous because most of you don’t know me. That is why I am writing this prelude. I mean, if you don’t know me and my partner Amy, how can I expect you to care about what I have written in what I have called the Paris Adventures. That might sound pretentious or presumptuous, too, that Adventures thing. I hadn’t intended to call my missives adventures. I mean, it’s not as though I intended to publish anything at all. I simply had in mind an e-journal sent to family and friends to share the highlights of six months in Paris. How was I to know that Amy and I would be bedeviled by murder and mayhem throughout virtually all of our stay and I would feel compelled to share our experiences as a cautionary tale to other innocents abroad. I mean, after all, we were just an English professor (me) and a rocket scientist, my partner Amy, spending a half a year in Paris while Amy labored in the French national labs (I assure you, giving away no American secrets) while I took a semester’s leave (without pay, mind you) to . . .what? Well, I wasn’t really sure, but I was confident I would find something interesting to do aside from entertaining the myriad American and other guests who promised to visit us and keep me from foreign entanglements. Alas, while the guests did indeed arrive, so did the foreign entanglements.

It all started innocently enough really. We were returning to Paris where Amy had done a post doc twenty years or so earlier. The job choices at that earlier date, when Amy and I were more or less newly Ph.D’ed and partnered (we had been together perhaps only three years) had been careers for Amy in large companies in Delaware or in southern Michigan, or a year in Paris with no guarantee of later employment anywhere. I, a slightly less newly minted Ph.D., was willing to follow Amy because, although there had been only three tenure track jobs in my field in the entire United Sates the year I was degreed—that’s in the entire country, mind you—we both thought I was more flexibly employable as I had garnered, in my far and near past, considerable administrative and teaching experience. Ego-wise, it was a good thing I had gone to graduate school for metaphysical rather than vocational reasons or the limits on the job market and the seeming impossibility of tenure track employment in literature might have otherwise devastated me.

Amy and I chose Paris, which might seem like kind of a well, duh, decision, but the conflict between security and adventure caused us to ponder seriously. We only really committed to adventure when the representative of the Delaware employer, when queried about the possibility of the job possibilities a year in the future replied, Paris or here! Guffaw. Take Paris and call me in a year. Even with that and with my readiness to get away, Amy had to convince me that it would be a fine thing to do, that I would not plunge off into an abyss of financial insecurity as I could take a year’s leave from my job and thus have it, depressing as it might be, when we got back while she looked again for a job. Besides, she told me in her inimitable mathematical fashion, that one year was really only, most likely, one-seventy-fifth of my life (now, she would probably say, one-eightieth as life expectancies have increased) and that for one seventy-fifth of my life I could take a chance and live in Paris. Such arguments were necessary because, while Amy makes a decision and sticks to it, I am deeply involved in second guessing myself, which sometimes manifests itself as buyer’s remorse. I mean, my God, I even doubted myself after we bought a Toyota. A Toyota! The most reliable, probably most common car on the road! Can you imagine! I mean, I spent weeks afterward checking our prices in the newspaper and secretly counting the number of Camrys versus Accords on the road to assure myself that, determined by the majority of buyers, I had been right (not that in general I think the majority is generally right but obsessive behavior is not known for its rationality.) This kind of second guessing of myself, I admit, drives Amy crazy. I mean, she doesn’t even shop, for god’s sake. If she see something she likes, even something like a refrigerator, and it seems a reasonable price, she will buy it without checking out other models or other prices. It’s not as though she grew up with a lot of money or anything. It is just this weird kind of confidence she has, I think. I don’t know.

Twenty or so years later, Amy and I found (find?) ourselves confronting Paris again needing to prove to ourselves that in our modern maturity, with the added umbrage of age, we had (have?) not gotten so wedded to career, security, and stability that we could (can?) not sacrifice certain seniority and some salary for a six month jaunt in the city of light. (Sorry about those parenthetical pauses. Verb tenses often confuse me, which is quite a problem for those of us who teach writing and literature as I do and find myself not sure whether Hamlet acts or acted, or rather didn’t act, as the case may be; that is, whether the poor fellow remonstrates in the past tense or in the present tense. One is instructed to write that Shakespeare writes even as we know that Shakespeare actually wrote a good long time ago, but that is, as style guides say, the literary present, as the writing exists in the present time as we are reading it. On the other hand, we are instructed to instruct our students to write that their while their mothers may still indeed be very nice and generous, if they are writing about their moms’ magnanimity in the past, their present giving spirit is not relevant so it (the spirit) must be limned as past, which is disturbing, as the students tell me, because these mothers are still generous and still alive. This is not, you might sigh in exasperation, rocket science—just put in the past what is past and in the present what is present (which, if you are a believer at all in just about any creed or science, you know does not work as we are, as the world around us, a sum of our pasts), a kind of put down of the connunudra of grammar and expression that a true rocket scientist, such as Amy, would never indulge in as she holds all paradoxes in great respect, and was besides an English as a second language teacher herself before she devoted herself to the quantum rigors and relativity of physical chemistry (or more impressively, I think, the physics of chemistry or the chemistry of physics, physics being the alpha and omega of the sciences). She is as well as a card carrying humanist, not because of her interest in the ACLU, which is abiding, but because she has an undergraduate degree in history. This liberal (sic) arts background is also, perhaps why Amy is able to pithily present her work (or at least its purpose) in lay language that even folks like me can appreciate, as, she, for instance, elucidated the reason for her work on developing a really, really long life power source by explaining that there are no Walgreen’s in space at which to purchase batteries to run the universe exploring cameras, sensors, computers etc. that her cronies send into space. (Not that we particularly favor Walgreen’s. There is also a distinct dearth of Targets, Sav-Ons, Rite Aids, CVS’s K-Marts, and even Costcos in space.) Ultimately, not ones to sacrifice our waning self-image as somewhat free spirits, we decided to return to Paris for Amy to work for six months for Dominique, the same woman who had employed her lo, those many years ago. But all that will be explained. Just remember, this all started as a journal to friends and family, so please forgive any untoward familiarity or lapses.

On with the story.

The Paris Adventures of Judith and Amy — Installment One

June 23

Hello everyone. Greetings from Paris, France. Amy and I arrived just about a week ago in the city of light safe and sound. As most of you know, I am on a one semester unpaid leave from my English professor position at a well known California community college to keep Amy company as she toils for six months in the French national labs on solar energy research (not top secret—you can tell your friends), on leave from her usual rocket science position at a renowned national space research laboratory.

Most of you missed our last minute drama/trauma, as we were too immersed in it, and perhaps a bit embarrassed, too, at our own naiveté, to deliver details. Let me say, though, that at points, it all seemed so daunting that we thought perhaps the universe was telling us we should cancel our Paris plans. (That Amy the scientist occasionally dips into the well of the nonrational and speaks of a spirited universe might stun those of you who have mistakenly constructed Amy, and other scientists of the chemical and physical realms, as iconically rational. In fact, Amy and many of her colleagues would argue that genius—this is not to say that Amy is a genius, or not not to say that, but to comment on scientific discovery—depends more on intuitiveness than rationality anyway.) The problem is, of course, that it is always difficult to tell exactly what the universe is saying. Ah, had we but listened to the cosmos, rather than yielding to our mundane desires for foreign experience, perhaps we would not have found ourselves in the quandary in which we now find ourselves (see below).

This is what happened. We had reserved our round trip tickets, as good frequent flyers do, especially given the varying availability of such accommodations, many months in advance, and, again, as careful travelers, two weeks before departure, we called the airline to check on our seat assignments. Then, and only then, were we informed that we must have visas as our tickets showed we were staying for more than our allotted non-visaed three months. As you can imagine, this distressing, seemingly newly minted information led us to a frenzy of attempts for clarification from the airline, all of which were met with contradictory statements of fact and policy and advice from our airline (I will not mention its name as we fear retaliation—you know how airlines can get when screening passengers these days.) Finally, resourceful, sophisticated, and well-traveled, as you know we are, (in all of our travels, we only missed one plane through our own error, on an earlier trip to Paris, in fact, when we simply misread the return date on our tickets as a day later than we thought. That could happen to anyone, right?), we decided to consult the French consulate, a representative of which informed us that the French officials in Paris, in the French laissez-faire way (though they didn’t claim laissez-faireness—that is my undeconstructed stereotype, which, by the way, I use in full awareness of the dangers of stereotypes as well as my own reservations about the authenticity of this particular characterization), would not question our entry into their country upon arrival. This informant warned, though, that American airlines, somewhat adrift in the post 9-11 world in which rules and structure presented a promise of order and predictability, might question us before departure. The airlines are, we were told, more likely than the French to adhere to the letter of the law, which states, more or less, that if an individual reaches French soil inappropriately by means of an airline, the airline must pay a fine and is responsible for the removal of the miscreant from France, rather than the spirit of the law, which dictates that American passport carrying, white appearing, middle class or upper and middle aged or older appearing, female appearing individuals are allowed more or less free entry into France (although, the consulate did not say all that, just that it was unlikely we would get stopped by the French, but we might have trouble with an economically and catastrophically fearful airline.) And, oh, by the way, the law also states that a quickie trip to another European country would not suffice as an end of one three month stay and the beginning of another. No, now we would have to go to a non-European Union country for at least two months before we could return to France. What was this world coming to? What were we to do?

While we were grappling with how to handle this challenge to our ingenuity and honor, five days before our planned departure, Amy received a call from her French boss-to-be early one morning from Paris, informing Amy that she, the boss, was so very sorry, profusely sorry, but Amy would indeed need a visa, which she had told Amy months earlier she would not need when Amy had inquired, or she, Amy, could not get paid. Amy fumed in response, but silently, as is her usual wont when fuming. All the necessary materials were in the mail and due to arrive any minute at our house, Amy was informed, which is, of course, a death knell for on-time arrival just as you can’t miss it curses landmark or locale recognition. As these papers didn’t arrive as promised and expected, Amy and I spent frenzied hours tracking them down, finally retrieving them at the airport delivery depot, this time at the truly last minute as the weekend of our departure was a mere sunset and sunrise away and the visa distributing consulate would be closing at noon that Friday. The flat tire on her car and traffic jam that closed the 10 freeway, along with the previously mentioned international mail imbroglio that seemed to be conspiring to keep Amy from the consulate caused Amy, as she sat immobile on the aforementioned freeway, to call me to ask if perhaps this trip was not meant to be and should she give up now (see above). I told Amy not to be foolish and suggested she try surface streets. She did and arrived on time to procure her visa with no problem at all, which makes sense since, after all, Amy was perfectly legal.

This, though, left me as a problem. I, merely an English professor on a semester’s leave, had no real business in France. (Had we, by the way, been a Mr. and Mrs. instead of a Ms. and Ms., I would have benefited by that union and been included in her visa, an illustration of one of the purported thousand or so legal advantages married heterosexuals have over gay unmarriageable-in-some-states couples). So I took the expedient of purchasing a fully refundable round trip ticket to Geneva, Switzerland (which, as Switzerland is not a member of the European Union, qualified it as foreign enough—thank god for those neutral Swiss) dated a day less than the legal three months from my arrival and covering the required two months out of the union (perhaps a good idea for marital unions, actually—a two month break every three months or so) before my return to Paris, when I would be legal until my original round trip Los Angeles-Paris ticket validated that I had no plans for permanent residence in Paris. I could turn in the ticket for a full refund (thus the fully refundable.) if I did not take the trip to Switzerland. Clever, no? (I am telling you all this with the understanding that you will not spread the secrets of illegal entry or reveal my machinations to any authorities. You are my friends, after all.)

Fortunately, arriving at the airport (LAX as it is known in the local parlance) in great trepidation (at least me, not Amy, as she was assured we were well-armed), we whisked, or were whisked, through the departure process at LAX, to a degree at least, I am quite sure, due to our above partially mentioned appearance as bourgeois middle aged white women with business class tickets. These tickets were earned, I must aver lest you get the wrong idea about our financial status, with frequent flyer miles accrued through Amy’s far flung work-related travel. (Who’d have thought that one could become a chemist and see the world. According to the songs my mother sang to me, you had to join the navy to do that. Imagine, though, how many miles we could have collected had Amy become the astronaut she had aspired to be rather than the earth-bound rocket scientist she became. That’s a joke. Ha ha.). We were actually taking quite a financial blow as my leave was unpaid and Amy’s monthly French salary equal to her usual weekly (proving, by the way, salutarily, that not all in our asset obsessed society are motivated solely by money).

Even with the relief of flawless leaving and the luxury of wide seats, cloth napkin service, and continuously proffered cocktails (not that we imbibed much—we are not frequent imbibers), we arrived in Paris quite exhausted. (As Amy put it, business or other classes, everyone is basically trapped in a long tube for many hours. Not that I am complaining, mind you. I’m just saying.) We dragged our newly purchased for this trip red luggage (so as not to be confused with the apparent black bag preference of travel professionals) to the taxi line and headed for the studio apartment we had secured for ten days until our more permanent apartment was ready for occupancy. The apartment was on Rue de la Roquette (how appropriate for Amy, eh), right off of the now very trendy though not all that elegant looking Place de la Bastille. It belongs to Nicole (not her real name—you will understand why in a few minutes or so, depending on how fast you read), a friend of a colleague of mine at the college, Priscilla (no, not a friend of Dorothy, or as the younger set says, a friend of Ellen. Besides, her name has also been changed for her protection.) The second floor (first floor European) studio is called, appropriately, The Non-Palace, by Nicole. The charm it has is old world, in the sense that it is in an old building, but not, as the French say, one of grand standing. Need I say more? Maybe not, but I, as is my wont, will. The space, really one large room, is actually quite comfortable, clean enough, and quiet with sufficient room for two people to lounge (with two couches), eat (with a dining table, and a refrigerator, sink and small cook surface), sleep (one of the couches is pull-out), and keep six fairly large and bulked up suitcases (two checked and one carry on each). Its one window, a genuine French model with genuine appearing lace curtains, opens to a labyrinthine paved courtyard with smaller courtyards off of it that give access to a variety of entrances to a variety of apartments but no street, thus the quiet in the midst of a very busy neighborhood. (Amy and I have tried to decide if we would recommend the place to others. It has all the charms and conveniences described above, but no telephone—which is something of but not a gigantic bother, no television—which is really not a big deal, and really no decent bed for two people to sleep or whatever together—which may or may not be a big deal, so you will have to judge. Contact Priscilla or us for further information.)

Nicole, a French professor in the United States when she is not in her native France, was present to greet us. She, too, is quite charming, a woman of a certain age, as they say here, who graciously acceded to our request that she speak French so that we could practice, and, surprisingly to all, especially me, we did pretty well. My only real confusion came when Nicole came back from a phone call (she has the adjoining apartment) that had interrupted our conversation and explained, obviously upset, that the call was about her cousin (in French, cousine, as the cousin is feminine, or rather more suited to our knowledge of her, female, as the ending e designating the feminine noun makes no comment on gender behavior) from Lyon who had been descending into Alzheimer’s (I know you might be thinking, who cares about this woman’s cousin, but it is relevant) and I understood Nicole to say that her kitchen (cuisine) had been descending into Alzheimer’s, but that got straightened out fairly soon. (I also misunderstood her disquisition on Montaigne as being about the mountains (montagne) but that is another story.) Well, you know how it can be sometimes when someone has something on her or his mind and she or he is upset and everything comes pouring out. So it was with Nicole. Thus Amy and I were subjected to the distressing tale of Nicole’s cousin and her cousin’s ne’er do well brother. This brother, Pierre, was very unpopular in the family since he had not only not worked for the French Resistance (which it seems virtually every other French person, as well as their relatives, still alive from WWII, did—at least that is how it seemed our first visit to France twenty years or so ago—according to their tellings) but actually overtly worked for the Germans on various enterprises, including trying to ferret out French resistors. Apparently, this Pierre became very wealthy during the war, either from the Germans directly or through business deals and other opportunities that came his way through his association with the Germans, but he was not known to be generous. In fact, according to Nicole, rumor had it that he had a fortune in Swiss banks and that, even with his only sister now desperately in need of care, and no other family, he has refused to help. (It was an odd French family, Nicole admitted, with neither the brother nor sister marrying or having children—perhaps, she posited, it had been the trauma of the war when fiancés and fiancées and best friends and parents and siblings were disappearing or dying so frequently and disconcertingly, that they never got over. I can think of another reason, but I won’t go into that here.) That Pierre had substantial money, aside from the reputed Swiss money, was pretty clear, according to Nicole, since he owned an apartment on the Ile (that would be the Ile St. Louis, at the very center of Paris) and a house in Mallorca, Spain, as well as a large manor type house in Lyon. He was retired, naturally, Nicole commented, at his age, but he still had interests in the manufacturing plants he used to run in the Lyon area (mostly manufacturing matches, Nicole said, and you know how much the French smoke so you can imagine how profitable this must be). Finally, after about forty-five minutes, Nicole, perhaps noticing that our eyes were glazing a bit even when she switched to English in what we took to be an attempt to wake us up, thanked us profusely for listening, shook hands, very happy to have met us, and went off to her apartment, promising either communication in person or by note slid under the door if necessary.

Amy and I, admittedly weary but nonetheless exhilarated by our apparently not altogether oxidized French language skills and that