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Back Blame It on Paris
Chapters (45)
  1. Cover
  2. Blame Iton Paris
  3. Copyright Notice
  4. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
  5. Book One
  6. One
  7. Two
  8. Three
  9. Four
  10. Five
  11. Six
  12. Seven
  13. Eight
  14. Nine
  15. Ten
  16. Eleven
  17. Twelve
  18. Thirteen
  19. Fourteen
  20. Fifteen
  21. Sixteen
  22. Seventeen
  23. Eighteen
  24. Nineteen
  25. Twenty
  26. Twenty-one
  27. Book Two
  28. Twenty-two
  29. Twenty-three
  30. Twenty-four
  31. Twenty-five
  32. Twenty-six
  33. Twenty-seven
  34. Twenty-eight
  35. Twenty-nine
  36. Thirty
  37. Thirty-one
  38. Thirty-two
  39. Thirty-three
  40. Thirty-four
  41. Thirty-five
  42. Thirty-six
  43. Thirty-seven
  44. Thirty-eight
  45. Thirty-nine

A new blow hit Sébastien’s family: his grandmother Pierrette had breast cancer. From her hospital bed, she wrote long and careful love letters to her husband, which her children carried to his hospital bed. Her family flocked around her, her children Claudine, Titi, and Martine traumatized by this sudden onslaught of mortality in their parents, who were only in their sixties. But the doctors said it was operable, relieving everyone’s worries. I thought how this discreet, sweet woman with her obsession for washing dishes was going through probably the most terrifying medical problem of her life but that it was all in the shadow of her husband’s mortality. René was going to be released soon. Nobody even pretended this was because he was cured. There was just no point in him wasting what was left of his life in a hospital.

On my work front, meanwhile, things got worse and worse, even as Paris warmed into an enticing summer. My employer promised to correct the “error” in my June check but didn’t. When I pointed this failure out to them, they admitted they had never intended to correct it; I would just have to accept what I could get because, as a foreigner in Paris, I had no other choice. By July, we were in serious dispute. Despite everything else going on, Sébastien’s family tried to offer me the good side of their lives to counterbalance. For Claudine, this meant cherries, which might be why I was getting along so well with my future belle famille. I think most of the best things in life are food, too. I think also that in some ways it was easier for Claudine to help her son and his fiancée to happiness rather than dwell on her parents and approaching unhappiness.

For the last two weeks of July, every telephone exchange with them concerned René, Pierrette, and the ripeness of the Burlat cherries in Claudine and Jean-Charles’s backyard. They lived in the suburbs of Paris, although not one of the bad “projects” suburbs, and had a house and garden. Just before the end of the month, Claudine called Sébastien. “Ça y est. We’re saving them for Laura, but you’ve got to get out here this weekend. We’re supposed to get rain Monday, and that will make the cherries split.”