Suzanne’s self-control. In the same situation, Margeeve would have said plenty. I wondered when Roxy was going to tell Margeeve and Chester about her marital crisis. I ventured no opinion about what she should do, not wanting to drive her the wrong way, whatever way that was, and not believing it to be my business, nor myself equipped to know about marriage, or love, for that matter.
The financial implications did occur to me. I wasn’t sure how Roxy was fixed. Would having a new baby require Charles-Henri to give her more money, or, with another mouth to feed, would she be harder up? In our family we can talk about money, since Chester is not in the business of chasing after it. He has all the purity of the academic and none of the temptations of academic scientists, so money is a neutral topic for us, like social policy or what’s for lunch. But Roxy had adopted something of the French reticence. Any mention of money seems to shock them; it is almost as bad, and maybe worse, than asking someone’s age.
She still had not told me the real problem, whatever it was, between them. Was it sex, was it some odd cultural misfit—her Americanness, her cooking—did he philander or gamble? I did not know, but once, coming down in the night for something from the refrigerator, I could hear Roxy quarreling in French and crying on the telephone, and who else could it have been but Charles-Henri?
8
All we know about foreign cultures—and those closest to us are in a way the most inaccessible—is their surface glitter and misleading details.
—Régis Debray, Charles de Gaulle
D AYS WORE ON , busy for me, slow for Roxy, I guess. Her pregnancy wasn’t showing yet, though she was more than four months along. For me, even walking on the street was a kind of social adventure. Conversations with bus drivers and old women. Me explaining that I don’t speak French; cheerful laughter, pointing, sign language. Beautiful, famous touristic sights like Notre Dame and the Arc de Triomphe. Great dogs. I met a lot of dogs, walking Scamp. But frankly there is a huge dogshit problem in Paris. In all, I tried to see what made Roxy so crazy about the place, and only partly succeeded. I could see that it was pretty, with lots of movie theaters and good food. But I hated the traffic, the way you had to look where you were stepping, the way they all smoked their brains out, and the way it rained even in summer, which seemed totally strange to me.
I don’t know if I was much help to Roxy at first. It’s not so easy to be newly arrived in a country whose language you don’t know and whose customs you either mistrust or fear. For instance, I feared the famous Parisian rudeness, though this never materialized. And it took time getting myself settled inRoxy’s really uncomfortable, hot, low-ceilinged maid’s room in the attic. In my heart, my situation was a bit too much like a maid’s. Every day I helped Roxy get Gennie ready for her day-care center, and after they’d gone I did the breakfast dishes, afternoons I picked her up from this day-care center (called a crèche ), and was very conscientious about helping. Truly, I didn’t mind—but I sort of did.
Roxy in turn had been conscientious about introducing me to her friends and neighbors in and around the place, trying to make me feel at home, and making me register in a French class, held three afternoons a week at the town hall of the fifth Arrondissement. She was exerting herself to be nice to me in a way I had hardly expected, and that I appreciated, for I found more daunting than I expected the rapid French phrases, the forms I had to fill out, written in a bureaucratese inscrutable in any language. I even dreaded walking into the class where I would ostensibly learn to understand, in time. I had never thought of myself as shy, but when I had to say bonjour something sealed up my throat, as if people would catch on that I was only pretending to speak French.
I know I am dumb about
The financial implications did occur to me. I wasn’t sure how Roxy was fixed. Would having a new baby require Charles-Henri to give her more money, or, with another mouth to feed, would she be harder up? In our family we can talk about money, since Chester is not in the business of chasing after it. He has all the purity of the academic and none of the temptations of academic scientists, so money is a neutral topic for us, like social policy or what’s for lunch. But Roxy had adopted something of the French reticence. Any mention of money seems to shock them; it is almost as bad, and maybe worse, than asking someone’s age.
She still had not told me the real problem, whatever it was, between them. Was it sex, was it some odd cultural misfit—her Americanness, her cooking—did he philander or gamble? I did not know, but once, coming down in the night for something from the refrigerator, I could hear Roxy quarreling in French and crying on the telephone, and who else could it have been but Charles-Henri?
8
All we know about foreign cultures—and those closest to us are in a way the most inaccessible—is their surface glitter and misleading details.
—Régis Debray, Charles de Gaulle
D AYS WORE ON , busy for me, slow for Roxy, I guess. Her pregnancy wasn’t showing yet, though she was more than four months along. For me, even walking on the street was a kind of social adventure. Conversations with bus drivers and old women. Me explaining that I don’t speak French; cheerful laughter, pointing, sign language. Beautiful, famous touristic sights like Notre Dame and the Arc de Triomphe. Great dogs. I met a lot of dogs, walking Scamp. But frankly there is a huge dogshit problem in Paris. In all, I tried to see what made Roxy so crazy about the place, and only partly succeeded. I could see that it was pretty, with lots of movie theaters and good food. But I hated the traffic, the way you had to look where you were stepping, the way they all smoked their brains out, and the way it rained even in summer, which seemed totally strange to me.
I don’t know if I was much help to Roxy at first. It’s not so easy to be newly arrived in a country whose language you don’t know and whose customs you either mistrust or fear. For instance, I feared the famous Parisian rudeness, though this never materialized. And it took time getting myself settled inRoxy’s really uncomfortable, hot, low-ceilinged maid’s room in the attic. In my heart, my situation was a bit too much like a maid’s. Every day I helped Roxy get Gennie ready for her day-care center, and after they’d gone I did the breakfast dishes, afternoons I picked her up from this day-care center (called a crèche ), and was very conscientious about helping. Truly, I didn’t mind—but I sort of did.
Roxy in turn had been conscientious about introducing me to her friends and neighbors in and around the place, trying to make me feel at home, and making me register in a French class, held three afternoons a week at the town hall of the fifth Arrondissement. She was exerting herself to be nice to me in a way I had hardly expected, and that I appreciated, for I found more daunting than I expected the rapid French phrases, the forms I had to fill out, written in a bureaucratese inscrutable in any language. I even dreaded walking into the class where I would ostensibly learn to understand, in time. I had never thought of myself as shy, but when I had to say bonjour something sealed up my throat, as if people would catch on that I was only pretending to speak French.
I know I am dumb about
Similar Books
