Marthe was a tall, rangy woman with pink cheeks and a mane of hair caught up under a knotted scarf. She kept a pocketful of seed for the half-dozen parakeets in cages along a kitchen shelf. When she caught sight of me, she clucked her tongue and declared that I needed feeding, as I was as skinny as a ghost. Luc looked halfway embarrassed as he translated that last bit.
“She said the British don’t know how to eat properly,” Luc translated, looking down to my wrists, thin beneath my pearl-buttoned sleeves. I stuck my hands behind my back. “All boiled meats and overcooked vegetables. You need salt and herbs and rich cheese. She hasn’t been to market, but if she had the president’s kitchen at this moment, she’d make you something warm and sticking. An aligot or a garbure with wine.”
“Really, just some toast.” I was almost desperate for something plain. “Porridge?”
Marthe clucked her tongue again, but Luc waved away her protests. He looked me straight in the eye and said, “Mademoiselle, do you trust me?”
It was a funny question from a boy I’d only just met. “I suppose so. You’re not planning to poison me, are you?”
“Well, I did say France was dangerous.” The steam in the kitchen made his hair curl against the tops of his ears. “But you are safe in Marthe’s kitchen.” He patted a tall stool. “You are safe with me.”
Though the kitchen was full of unfamiliar smells, I was reassured to see loaves of rising bread dough, peeled white onions, potatoes. On the stove, Marthe’s pan popped. I inhaled butter and onions and warmth. “I believe you.” I smoothed my green dress and sat.
Luc grinned, quick and sudden. He swept a striped towel off Marthe’s shoulder, leaving a kiss on her reddened cheek in exchange. “When I’m not sketching pictures of Parisian tourists, I’m a waiter.” He draped the towel over one arm and held a finger above his lip as a mustache. “Mademoiselle,” he said, with an exaggerated whine, “I am at your service. What will you be dining on today?”
I almost smiled. Almost. “You’ve said no to toast, but what about bread? I had some on my tray last night.”
He snapped his fingers. “But it is not just bread.” He brought a loaf, long and thin, and broke off a piece from the end. “Ficelle.”
The crust was warm and crackled between my teeth. It was marvelous.
“Do you like it?” he asked. “Here, try it with a bit of lavender honey.”
“We have lavender growing in the garden at Fairbridge.” The honey dripped from the bread onto my palm. It tasted like flowers and summertime.
Luc brought me a checked napkin, thin and soft from many washings. As I wiped my mouth, he lined the edge of the table with small jars and spoons. From her place by the stove, Marthe nodded approvingly.
“You really are an excellent waiter,” I said as I accepted a spoonful of translucent gold.
“Pear jelly,” he said. “Didn’t you believe me when I said I was one?”
The jelly was sweet and smooth. I ran my tongue over my teeth. “Why would anyone go to Paris to be a waiter?”
“And an erstwhile artist, remember.” He passed another spoonful, this one sun-yellow slivers suspended in preserve.
“Marmalade?” I guessed.
“Preserved ginger. Bite and then hold it on your tongue for a moment.”
It made my mouth tingle. “This is nothing like gingerbread.”
“The Romans ate ginger for digestion; the Greeks, for love.”
I swallowed. “You know more than serving.”
“In my free time, I’m a university student.” He took a squat glass from a shelf and filled it with water.
I’d never seen a university, not in person. Mother used to keep a photograph hidden in the drawer of her dressing table, of her with a young and exuberant Madame Crépet, posed with sketchbooks in hand in front of a serious-looking building. Inked across the border was, Eena and Mudge, pens at the ready! “Are you studying art, like our mothers did?”
“Oh, even better.” He spooned out something thick and as brown as winter leaves. “The ancient world. Philosophy. Rhetoric.”
I tasted the jam with the tip of my tongue. “Apples?”
“Medlars. They’re best picked after the first frost.”
“So what will that make you in the end? Aside from Aristotle?”
“A teacher. The École Normale Supérieure, it puts out the best teachers in Europe.”
“Teaching?” I put the spoon in my mouth. “That’s so…”
“Bourgeois?” He raised his eyebrows. “I know.” He disappeared into the larder.
“It’s not what I expected from the son of artists.”
“Maman, she rebelled against her parents by running off to Picardy with a painter twice her age. I rebel by becoming respectable.”
“I don’t know if you could ever be respectable in that red sash.”
He returned to the table with cloth-wrapped bundles and covered plates, a knife between his teeth like a corsair. “Once a bohemian, always a bohemian, I suppose.”
“Did you grow up wanting to be a teacher?”
“Of course not. I wanted to be an expert swordsman, naturally. And an ornithologist. And, for one solid summer, a brilliant English detective, like Sherlock Holmes. Mostly, though, I wanted to be a tennis star.” He offered a paper-thin slice of ham on the tip of the knife.
It nearly melted on my tongue. “So sweet!”
“Bayonne ham. It’s cured in sea salt and air-dried on the ocean shore.”
