Sliced bread in the toaster, the espresso maker simmering on the stove, butter softening on a plate. A vanilla yogurt for Anouk. She sat at the table without seeing the food. As usual, she was uninterested in eating at home. She rarely enjoyed cooking for others, and grocery shopping was a chore she avoided at all costs. But when we ate out at a restaurant, she was the first to order steak with foie gras, and never gave a thought to her weight or mine. She would devour what was placed in front of her with great appetite, often having dessert all to herself. I pushed the toasted bread in her direction and she picked at a piece, crumbling it between her fingers.
Father took great pleasure in his food. He smothered his piece of bread with butter, filling the air pockets and spreading it to the edges. He ate half a baguette quickly, taking big bites and chewing with his entire mouth. His parents had raised him on pasta, rice, and cheap cuts of meat. As a kid he ate day-old bread dipped in Nesquik, and I assumed this was why he preferred his bread stale and untoasted.
He was born in a small town in the north of France where the sky was grayer than a Paris winter. His parents had worked hard to offer their children a solid education in the nearest city. Later, he moved to Paris to study literature on a scholarship. He was the youngest in his graduating class to pass l’agrégation. He taught literature for years before transitioning to politics, with the blessing of his father-in-law.
I saw Father’s outsiderness in small ways. He had never become a true Parisian, even after decades of living here. I saw it in his clothes. He was conscious of labels, but he preferred classic cuts, and had worn the same brand of socks and underwear since his twenties. He wanted to be la crème de la crème, and yet he justified his place, rather than asserting it the way a native does. He dropped names and chose restaurants that had been open for years and had the seal of approval from critics, never the newest spots. He compensated by teasing Parisians while also mocking the town he was from, as if he belonged to neither place. I thought this apartment, with Anouk and me, was where he felt most comfortable and complete.
Madame Lapierre came from an upper-class, highly educated family. For her entire life she had lived in the sixteenth arrondissement, close to Passy, and I struggled to picture Father in those spaces. I imagined him sitting on the edge of a leather couch, or always staring out of a window, wanting to be elsewhere.
I was relieved he wasn’t from Paris. It made him different from the rest of us. He seemed more heroic coming from the middle of nowhere, though some critics claimed it made him narrow-minded and conservative. I didn’t understand what that meant concretely. I worried about what would happen to him if it all disappeared, if he lost the privilege of being la crème de la crème, if he was no longer invited to the important parties or able to afford lunch at Brasserie Lipp. I saw how his eyes lit up in marvel when we spoke about the Jardin du Luxembourg, how his optimism bordered on the naive. I’ve been fortunate in my career, he’d say, and I know it can all disappear in the blink of an eye, but if it does, I can return to a simpler life.
He had first visited Paris with his sister, his parents, and two aunts. They drove in a car so small he had to sit in the trunk with his knees pressed against the back window. His sister was hidden in the skirts of an aunt who prayed each time a truck pummeled down the road. She thought anyone driving in the opposite direction would surely crash into them. Paris was an enormous city compared to the town he was from, with its mere five thousand inhabitants.
Anouk couldn’t have come from a more different family. Raised in the affluent town of Le Vésinet, in the suburbs of Paris, she went to boarding school and spent her summers in Saint-Tropez, driving on a motorcycle with her friends, sometimes wearing nothing but shoes. When they retired, her parents moved to a beautiful house in Burgundy. We saw them once a year at most. Father had been very close to his parents.
On the surface, my parents seemed like opposites. She belonged, no matter the city or country she found herself in. Knowing how to properly put on makeup mattered more to her than learning how to drive. She didn’t care how others perceived her, nor did she try to please everyone around her. He was less secure, and when he felt threatened, he shut down, becoming silent, his mouth drawn into a thin line. Anouk encouraged him to a more liberal stance in his private and political life. Most of her friends were socialists; she usually voted center-left.
I knew they still made love. Sometimes they disappeared for an hour or two in her bedroom. Once I had knocked on her door, wanting to ask a question, and she had taken a while to open it. When she finally did, she was wrapped in a towel, her cheeks flushed and her hair tied up, damp strands pushed behind her ears, a face removed of makeup.
On weekends like this, when we ate breakfast together, it almost felt as though we lived together. We had woken up in the same apartment, walked down the stairs, and participated in this daily ritual.
Have you thought about your plans for next year? Father asked. In high school I’d chosen the prestigious scientifique track, mostly for him, not because I enjoyed the curriculum. I hated math.
I’m not sure. I was thinking of applying to Sciences Po.
Sciences politiques. He sounded pleased. Are you following in my footsteps?
She just likes to pretend she’s not my daughter, Anouk said, turning to him.
You say that only because I don’t want to be an artist.
It’s a very good school, Father said, and you don’t have to study politics. How about sociology or law? You’ll have to prepare your dossier and written exams in the winter.
She thinks you will finance it, Anouk said. Although there was a note of humor in her voice, I was upset by her comment.
I could get a scholarship.
Father finished his coffee and glanced around the kitchen with a look of satisfaction. Anouk rarely cooked with the expensive pots and pans he had purchased over the years. She still preferred to use a scratched-up pan from her student years.
And where would you live if you could choose anywhere in Paris? Father asked me.
The Right Bank.
I don’t like how cramped the streets are around there. Don’t you enjoy being close to the park?
I’d have more space if I lived in the eleventh or nineteenth.
Don’t you feel like you have enough space right here? Anouk interrupted.
It’s not bad, I said, knowing that Father helped pay for our rent.
When you were little, Margot, he said, you wanted to be an architect. You’d spend hours drawing houses.
I listened to him, remembering how for each house I imagined the three of us living in the space together.
You had an obsession with centers, he continued. You would draw us in different rooms of the house, depending on what our center was. It was the room that best reflected our personalities, not the geographic middle of the house, but the space that carried the soul of its inhabitant.