Aller/Retour: Paris
By Marcelline Krafchick
Returning to Paris like a long-straying lover, I surrendered to the fact that a once-adorable woman abroad in her sixties had to learn new roles. France and I had both changed since my twenties. Now the flavor would lack the zest of inescapable male attention — the dentist, the actor, the accountant, the government official, the interviewee, the fellow train passenger. Adorableness had defined me. Now divorced, no children, severed from professional context, I craved to remain relevant.
True, on my return, a youthful charmer would materialize in step along the Seine, asking rote questions and then for a phone number. And true, within five minutes a creaky avuncular veteran would join me at the BHV Café. But the sparkle of real possibilities had waned. Older men seemed either paired or impaired. Flirting struck me as grotesque. Would I now be reclusive? Scholarly? A tribal elder? Natural? What would natural look like?
I would play it case by case until a new mantle eased onto my shoulders.
The first excursion I’d planned was an all-day bus tour of the medieval castles and chateaux of the Loire Valley — bearing romantic names like Chenonceau and Chambord, with a series of stops for refreshment and a lunch at Amboise. The bus would gather passengers from hotels at the sadistic morning hour of 7 and return us at 9 in the evening, a marathon day.
A quick initial glance around told me the 30-odd fellow passengers were mostly Americans. No communication passed among us the first two hours, even those traveling together. At the first consummately welcome coffee stop, I found myself joined by a man about my age, a former New York lawyer now living his second life in Brazil. He looked a bit like a shorter De Niro with a larger nose. His name was Harry. Harry volunteered over cappuccino and crumbly almond croissant his rapture over a wife in her twenties and a two-year-old son — his overwrought Manhattan existence with an ex-wife/law partner but a memory. He asked if he could sit with me at lunch, and I agreed — why not? Though I nursed some resentment toward men nesting with females younger than their daughters, I’d come to appreciate that my battle was with Mother Nature and not the gentlemen who exploited her.
I soon found myself attentively companioned. In strolls through the castles as we half-listened to the guide’s robotic recital of dates, origins, and architectural facts, Harry and I exchanged Yogi Berra and Lady Day anecdotes. We’d both seen Coleman Hawkins at the smoky Metropole on Broadway. Alternating with these tales were his reports of how immensely satisfying his new life was.
At lunch, passengers from Ohio, Oregon, South Carolina gave us a wide berth as we gorged along with sole meuniere on names and issues — Peter Lindsay, Sinatra, Kissinger, Roe v. Wade, Ed Sullivan, Ed Koch, SNCC, Jimmy Durante, Pol Pot, the Russian Tea Room, the Stork Club, rent control, Sonny Rollins, Yankee Stadium. At a few points Harry became clearly wistful, then returned to touting Rio’s vibrant ambiance.
During further rest-stops and rambles through portrait-lined corridors and sunny gardens, cracks in Harry’s portrayal of delight with Rio wife and baby widened. They widened so alarmingly that, with nothing personal at stake, I became solicitous, as one does when watching any collapse.
During the stretch back to Paris in the darkened bus, my new chum slipped into a state of distress, struggling against tears. When the brakes squealed more frequently as we arrived at the city’s outskirts, he sighed deeply. He looked past me out the window and said that the day had opened a wound, reminding him of all that he’d given up. His young wife (never named) understood nothing he had to say, he had no patience with the child or his wife’s grasping family, he yearned for a civilized person to talk with, about anything, and he was in a trap of his own making.
We didn’t exchange last names or addresses. What would be the point? We shook hands before I descended at the Hotel de Seine.
My feelings were mixed. Harry had made the day tour more than an excursion of the Loire Valley. His suffering seemed genuine, and I was in no position to judge foolish romantic choices. And, as it came to me back in my room, his compliment had shed light on the wealth of new roles available to a woman in her sixties. I looked in the mirror and saw, not a bubbly young beauty, but a woman of substance.
And one who could be not only relevant but a downright menace.
