Paris, My Sweet Read online

  Just as all the great chocolate chip cookie bakers in New York had experimented to come up with their perfect concoction, Kayser and his team of pastry chefs invested years in finessing the consummate cookie. Kayser traveled to the United States, searching for recipes he liked, and then adapting them for the French palette. The flour in France isn’t as strong as in the U.S., for example, so that had to be altered. They also fiddled with how long the dough should rest in the refrigerator, fussed with the temperature of the oven, trialed and erred about how long the cookies should bake for, and played with the cookies’ size.

  “In the U.S., they make big cookies,” he pointed out as if I weren’t intimately familiar with cookies that dwarfed my palm and could build my biceps as I brought them to my mouth, bite after euphoric bite. “And sometimes in the U.S., they don’t bake them enough.” Which is true. But while some people like a crisp and crunchy chocolate chip cookie, I like mine the way Levain makes them: hulking and doughy, and flirting with rawness in the middle.

  That’s the wonderful thing about the chocolate chip cookie: there are infinite possibilities. And after years of kitchen wizardry, Eric Kayser also had his winner for the fussy French palette: le cookie au chocolat, made with Valrhona chocolate and toasted pecans.

  I now watched the woman place my cookie au chocolat on a sheet of thin bakery paper, fold it, and then twist the corners shut by working her hands in a rolling circular motion. I felt momentarily soothed by that lovely little French custom—almost as much as knowing that I’d soon have an American cookie in hand.

  I carefully squirreled the cookie away in my bag and walked out into the narrow pedestrian streets, rue Montorgueil’s markets and cafés especially animated now that it was late on a Saturday afternoon. That pang of longing in my belly I used to experience in my early days at seeing such bustling good cheer gave a little kick, reminding me that I was thousands of miles from home.

  After climbing the six flights of stairs up to my Parisian tree house and saying hello to Milo, I stood before one of the arched windows looking out, wondering what to do. I used to love having no plans on a Saturday night. It used to be the biggest luxury, eschewing New York’s crazy nightlife scene for some solo time with Netflix and the couch. Now it just felt sad.

  Across the street, a woman in an apron was busy in her kitchen. From her open window, I could hear the sounds of running water, cupboard doors being slammed shut, and bowls and pans clanging against the countertops—inviting sounds of a happy home. Up above, the sky was gray. Across the horizon, the zinc roofs were gray. All around me, the limestone façades were gray. I had been telling myself a lot lately that these Parisian shades of gray weren’t depressing. But I wasn’t convinced. I was depressed.

  No time like the present, I taunted myself, reaching for the cookie inside my bag, even though it was supposed to be for later.

  I unraveled the paper, exposing my treat, and took a bigger bite out of it than necessary. The foreign but familiar flavors filled my mouth. I thought it strange how Eric Kayser’s cookie had looked like it was going to be quite crunchy but was actually soft and chewy. And the giant rectangular chunks of chocolate that erupted against the cookie’s surface had set me up for an über-rich experience but, in fact, it was tame. It wasn’t like any of the chocolate chip cookies back home. But that was the point, right? There was no sense clinging to my American comforts and beliefs while living in Paris. No matter how much I tried, I wasn’t going to replicate my friends back home or recreate my easy New York life.

  I had come to Paris for a new chapter, I reminded myself. For new experiences and friends. For new tastes and possibilities. For a whole new way of learning—about the world and myself. I just hadn’t expected that part of the “new me” would feel so forlorn that even a chocolate chip cookie would fail to make me smile.

  More Sweet Spots on the Map

  Like I said, New York is out of control when it comes to chocolate chip cookies. City Bakery, Levain, and Momofuku are my top three. (Maury, as much a hippie as a Francophile, opened several City Bakery offshoots called Birdbath, where all the fixtures are recycled and green, the ingredients are local and organic, and the cookies are still giant and delicious). Ruby et Violette is an Oprah-endorsed, closet-sized outpost in Hell’s Kitchen with over one hundred crazy flavors (only about twenty are served at any one time) like root beer float, peach cobbler, or French vanilla. And not only does Jacques Torres make a mean cup of cocoa, his chocolate chunk cookies are killer—especially when you ask for one from the warming griddle, making it warm and gooey as if it just came out of the oven. Oink, oink!

  There are just too many exquisitely perfect French delicacies to worry your American self about a chocolate chip cookie in Paris. But if you really, really need a fix, Fabrice Le Bourdat’s Blé Sucré in the 12e and Laura Todd at Les Halles have commendable versions, and you can special order large and cakey, chocolate studded, golden-brown chocolate chip cookies by the dozen from Lola’s.

  Every day you wake up with a choice: will today be a good day or a crummy day? Am I going to complain about the stubborn rain and cloying cold, the lack of sexy options hanging in my closet, and the extra five pounds that are stuck to my ass? That I have to get dressed and go to work despite the weather, my wardrobe, and big ass? Or am I going to be grateful? Am I going to focus on how lucky I am to have a job, that I have legs strong enough to carry me to work, and that I have a family who loves and supports me, expanding ass and all?

  I’m not saying you can’t be in a bad mood or have bad days. Lord knows, I have my share. I’m a Scorpio, after all. If you don’t believe in astrology, all you have to do is ask one of my friends if “moody” and “mercurial” are apt descriptions of my personality or ask one of my cousins—bless their hearts—which one of us our grandmother called “sourpuss” (hint: it wasn’t any of them). But bad moods are exhausting. And if I learned anything in that long, dark winter in Paris it’s that sometimes if you change your attitude, life follows your lead.

  One of my greater feats in Paris was finding an English-speaking GP who doubled as a gynecologist. Faking my way through transactions at the dry-cleaner or post office was one thing. But smiling with faux understanding, feet in cold metal stirrups, paper gown opened to reveal my whole front side, was just beyond my comfort and acting skills. Dr. Tippy was an English girl’s secret weapon in Paris, the referral generously passed on to me from Jo when I finally decided to address some “female issues” I was having.

  “So then, how’re you doing?” Dr. Tippy asked in her clipped British accent. She was a fast talker. Even in the same tongue, I had a hard time catching just what the hell she was saying sometimes. And I wanted to be sure I heard every word she said today. It had been a good eight months since I’d had my period, and a couple weeks since I had come in for an exam and blood work. I wanted to know what was going on with my system. “Right, so I have the results to your blood tests,” she barreled on, rifling through the papers on her big wooden desk, not waiting for my response. “Hmmm, hmmm, that’s right,” she muttered to herself. I told the butterflies in my stomach to quit it, that everything was going to be okay.

  She finally looked up at me through her large owl glasses. “It looks like your estrogen levels are really quite low,” her voice also starting to get low. My butterflies were now fluttering in a tizzy, Dr. Tippy’s conspiratorial tone making me nervous. It reminded me of that scene from St. Elmo’s Fire when everyone’s gathered at the dining room table and the mom whispers “cancer” because it’s too ugly a word to say out loud. Oh God, was that where our conversation was heading? Were my nonexistent periods—something I had obviously known wasn’t right but was one less thing I had to deal with these past trying months—something more serious? More ominous? Dr. Tippy was glancing back down at her papers, voice now so low, she was purring. “They’re almost nonexistent, actually.”

  She continued talking, throwing out the names of female hormones—LH, FSH, proges
terone—but I could barely hear her above the shrieking inside my head. What the fuck? What the FUCK? This was all my fault. I knew I had ovarian cysts when I came to Paris. My super high-tech New York gyno had pointed them out to me on the sonogram screen and told me the first point of action in treating this “polycystic ovary syndrome” was going on the pill. That was three days before flying off to a new life in Paris. I had shoes and books to pack. People and bakeries to say good-bye to. Getting a birth control prescription just wasn’t at the top of my priority list. So I, well, I sort of pretended she never said it. I knew it was foolish and immature, and the knowledge of those little cysts had been lurking in the back of my mind ever since. But my Manhattan doctor had also said the cysts were benign, quite treatable, and nothing to get alarmed about, so I didn’t. Get alarmed. Until now.

  “So, what does that mean exactly?” I asked, in a calm voice that I hoped didn’t belie my internal profanity. “The ‘nonexistent estrogen levels’?”

  “Well, it could mean a few things,” Dr. Tippy responded in her speed-whisper. As she started ticking these things off, the words she used, like “ovulation,” “fertility,” and “menopause,” echoed nastily in my head. I felt rattled and disoriented. I didn’t understand what was happening. And then it just got worse. “Do you have a partner?” she asked. “Are children something you’re considering?” The benign look on Dr. Tippy’s face gave absolutely no indication of how loaded her questions were. The room was unbearably quiet as she waited. Inconsolable babies wailed in the waiting room down the hall.

  “No.” Was I considering children? “I mean, yes.” Exactly how did I feel about having kids? “No, yes. I don’t have a partner right now, but I probably do want kids. I think. Some day.”

  “Well listen, you have time. You’re thirty-six—oh wait, thirty-seven—I see you recently had a birthday,” her reference a little twist to the dagger she had dug into my gut five minutes ago. “Well, no matter. But this is obviously something that needs to be addressed sooner rather than later, especially if you do think kids are something you want in your future.”

  Dr. Tippy briskly shuffled her papers again, this time with a determined spirit. “I can only do so much for you so I’m going to give you the name of an endocrinologist, which is a hormone specialist. She’ll be able to explain things a bit further and take you through your options.” She tore the referral from her prescription pad and gave me that doctor smile that’s supposed to be calming and reassuring but just made me want to throw up.

  Needless to say, I was a wreck in the ensuing days. The littlest things—a conversational impasse at work, a rude Frenchie cutting me off in the street, my mom’s photo on the fridge—were all it took to turn me into a geyser of salty tears. I had to wait two weeks before I could get in to see the endocrinologist, which left me, once again, with too much time inside my head. Alone with my thoughts. Doubting myself.

  I kept hearing Dr. Tippy asking: Are children something you’re considering? It was a good question—one that I had cleverly avoided for years. I had always thought that I first needed to meet someone who knocked my socks off. Someone I knew I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. Then, maybe then, I’d feel strongly enough about having kids. To me, starting a family was the result of loving someone so incredibly much that you wanted to make a baby with him. While I had been in love with Max and had lovely memories of Eric, I had been too young or our situations just weren’t right for that sort of commitment.

  Had I forever altered my life, being so heedless about my biological clock? Would those young and fertile, willfully ignorant, years come back to haunt me? While I still didn’t necessarily know if I wanted babies, I certainly didn’t want anyone telling me they weren’t an option.

  As I muddled through my angst, my instinct was to call one of my girlfriends back home, but I didn’t feel right doing that. I didn’t want anyone to feel guilty for their deserved good fortune. AJ’s wedding was creeping up. She was getting married in a matter of weeks, and I knew she was excited to start trying to get pregnant. Everyone else already had kids, having largely gone the traditional route of marrying in their late twenties and starting families by their early thirties. I’d experienced a lot of the new motherhood drama with them: the lack of sleep, sex, and vacations. The soiled diapers, blouses, and couches. And the greater existential dilemmas like choosing between being a stay-at-home mom and a working mom, and the pressure to always be a supermom. Listening to my friends struggle throughout the years, I had secretly considered myself fortunate that I didn’t have to make those decisions. I knew it wasn’t easy. And selfishly, I was psyched that I never had to sacrifice designer sofas, lazy Sunday mornings, or spontaneous sex.

  I knew my girls wouldn’t see it this way, but I felt if I called them now in a puddle of fertility woes, they’d feel guilty. I had always felt fulfilled and proud of my solo lifestyle—how it gave me freedom and made every day more fun, adventurous, and unexpected. This Parisian boondoggle was the perfect case in point. I could only do it because I was unattached and had no obligations except a monthly mortgage payment and Milo’s cat food bills. And when I told everyone I was off to Paris to work on Louis Vuitton’s advertising and learn the difference between choux pastry and puff pastry, they showered me with excitement and envy. “Take me with you!” they joked.

  But now I was thirty-six years old—whoops, thirty-seven—and maybe the joke was on me. My knee-jerk “It would be nice if it happened” response had to be more carefully considered. I had been recklessly squelching the baby question, burying it deep inside of me as a maybe, maybe not scenario for years. Now it was maybe, maybe not too late. It was a reminder that I had stubbornly chosen to blaze a path of independence. The one on which I was now seemingly lost.

  “Oh, bunny, I’m so sorry. I know exactly what you’re going through.” As further evidence that Melissa and I were separated at birth, she really did know—five years earlier she had gone through a similar scare, hers leading to a final prognosis that she couldn’t have kids. Now she was offering me the comfort and reassurance that I really needed at that moment.

  “It’s like my body is betraying me. I’m only thirty-six—damn, I keep doing that. I keep thinking I’m thirty-six. But I’m thirty-seven—”

  “Still, Aim, thirty-seven is young. You have time.”

  “‘Young’ is pushing it. Thirty-seven is hardly ‘young.’ Especially when it comes to being a woman, much less getting pregnant.” We looked at each other knowingly, the indignity of aging, and the injustice of getting older as a woman versus as a man, noted for a conversation another time. “But seriously, is this a sign of things to come? Am I just going to start decaying and falling apart? I mean, my ovaries just decided they were done with producing eggs?! And these cysts that I have? You know, sometimes you grow beards as a result!”

  Melissa burst out laughing. “Beards?! What are you talking about?”

  “It’s true, it’s one of the symptoms in severe cases!”

  “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t be laughing. This is serious. But I think the last thing you should be worrying about is a beard. There’s nothing on your chin except adorable peach fuzz.” She reached out and cupped my face. I loved how affectionate she was. We were sitting in her sun-filled living room that overlooked Canal Saint-Martin, sans makeup, sans pretense. As our friendship had developed over the months, an easy intimacy enveloped us that made hanging out at home as comfortable as if I were with one of my girls back home. We didn’t need the distraction of a bustling bobo scene or the excuse of a new bar opening to get together. Listening to the bongos from the street urchins echoing across the waterway, seeing the chestnut trees swaying in the breeze outside her window, I was so grateful to have someone I could count on, heart and soul, in Paris.

  “I don’t think you’re going to grow a beard, bunny. But I do think you’re going to have kids. I just have a feeling that you’re going to meet someone and be a mother. I really, really see that for
you. I know it’s not my lot in life, and I am fine with that, but I do think it’ll happen for you.”

  “Really?” I asked imploringly, as if she were looking into a crystal ball and really could tell what my future held. I hadn’t been able to figure it out all those years. Maybe Mel could.

  “I know you have a referral—and, P.S., we don’t even know what your situation is yet, this could just be a blip—but I can give you the name of one of the best fertility experts in the city, just so you have it.”

  I had so many questions and doubts, so much uncertainty and frustration about what was going on with my body. Infertility? Babies? My future? Mon dieu. But having a friend to lean on made me feel invincible, if only fleetingly. The way a good AJ pep talk could. My appointment with the endocrinologist was tomorrow, and for the first time in two long weeks of waiting, I felt a sliver of optimism. I had Mel on my side. I could do this.

  I should have known better. By that time, I had been living in Paris for nearly nine months. I was intimately familiar with their all-business demeanor. Their eye-rolling and shoulder shrugging; their meh attitudes. So what did I expect, that this specialist I was sent to see would dispense hugs and compassion along with her prognosis?

  There I was the next day, shivering in yet another gown, on yet another examination table, in a different part of town. Once again, I was subjected to a naked weigh-in and recital of my family’s health history. My fingernails were blue, and my body was covered in goose bumps by the time we finally got to my current issues and symptoms. Despite my chills, my palms were collecting pools of sweat in my lap. I swallowed a lump of anxiety in my throat, but I managed to keep the tears in check. As I waited for the Specialist’s expert opinion, I could get no read from her. I was dying. I felt like my whole biological future was in the hands of this heavy-set, beautifully coiffed, blank-faced endocrinologist.