Hidden in Paris Read Online Free Page B

alien culture. She had to figure it all out on her own, learn her
baguette
from her
ficelle
, her
Roquefort
from her
Reblochon
. She had to learn to live without her family. How she missed her family. Without friends. How she missed her friends. And how hard it was to make new ones when you suddenly found your ability to communicate reduced to that of a trained chimpanzee. She had to learn to take care of a husband who worked all the time. Then, so fast, she had to figure out how to raise one, two, and then three children. Heck, she had to learn to take care of herself. She had to learn to make beds, wash laundry, shop, cook, take sick babies to the doctor, and drive through Paris with a stick shift, the whole thing
en Français
!
    Her parents had been wrong. Everyone had been. Their ten-year marriage proved it. Yes, Johnny had been immature, independent, but in a way that made every day an adventure. And he wasn’t unreliable at all. She trusted him.
    It had taken her ten years to feel halfway settled in her new life. And then Johnny died. His death was terribly sudden. Gruesome. Shocking to all. None of it felt real or possible. Her pain had been abject, the despair of the children intolerable, but also—and this within days of his sudden disappearance from her life—it became clear that she’d never had a normal maturation from young woman to adult. Since arriving in France, she had relied almost entirely on Johnny for everything that took place outside the house. It was in Johnny’s nature to take charge, and she had found it easier to let him. She had let him sweep her off her feet, transplant her to Paris, keep her barefoot and pregnant. She was good at being a mother, possibly a mother to the exclusion of everything else. Johnny did the rest. He and his brother Steve had thrown themselves into their business and worked relentlessly at growing it. He traveled a lot in and outside France, and handled every aspect of their personal finances—something she would come to bitterly regret after his death. He bought and drove fast cars, dressed more French than the French, became an expert in wine, and because he needed to entertain large groups of people for business, he spent entire evenings in the best restaurants around Paris.
    She never much liked the concept of entertaining to improve business, but one day she got the idea that she should entertain those people at home. At least by inviting people over, she and the children got to see Johnny. Via forced practice and also because she found it fun, she soon became an accomplished cook.
    By the time Johnny died she had done little in France besides making babies, nursing, pushing strollers, and cooking. When he suddenly disappeared, she was lost again. Once again she had to figure out
everything
else. Some things never got figured out. The question of how to keep the business going, for example, never got solved. The business was shut down and with it all hope for an income. Another aspect of her life she had not been able to figure out yet was how to recover from more subtle losses: her carefree nature, innocence, playfulness, and the luxury of trust.
    She was tough now, tough as in strong, and tough as in hard. She was a tough-as-nail mother, and tough-as-nail
femme au foyer,
or what Americans call a homemaker. She couldn’t argue the making part. She was making that home all right, if it killed her. Two and a half years later she was no longer the soft mother, the round-hipped and milky-breasted creature protected and taken care of by a man. She had become a she-bull that everyone (beside her children—hopefully not her children—and the indefatigable Lucas) feared and avoided. She had become the Sarah Connor of remodeling projects, as rough as the skin on her hands, as heavy as the bags of plaster she hauled up the stairs, and as hard as the planks she fed into the circular saw. She was busy building herself and the children a house out of something stronger