Une belle dinde

The holidays, all of them, have snuck up on me this year. I expected the fall to last longer, somehow, but it didn't, and a few weeks ago C. started talking about whom to invite for Thanksgiving, and now that's past and we are rollicking on towards Christmas, not to mention Hanukkah, of which we are now in the midst and which I very nearly forgot altogether.

But back to Thanksgiving. A. was still here when C. began working on the guest list, and in her helpful way she asked where we would get a turkey. I realized that I had no idea, aucune idee, where to find a turkey. I had never seen one in the poultry section of any of the grocery stores where I shop. I don't go into butcher shops very often, but I realized, after thinking for a moment or two, that I could not remember seeing a turkey in any of them. No turkeys were ever advertised as being on special; the most evidence of turkey that I had ever seen was the occasional package of escalope de dinde in the poultry section. An almost endless variety of chickens, large, small and medium, male and female: but never a turkey.

Yet it was our intention to have a full American Thanksgiving. L. and G. were coming from Paris, and bringing us cranberry sauce, canned pumpkin puree, and (not without some guilt and ambivalence on my part, but to E. and G.'s complete delight) a bag of marshmallows to put on the sweet potato pudding. And so I would have to find a turkey.

On a cold morning two weeks before Thanksgiving I ventured in to our local butcher shop. I had bought a roasted chicken or two there before--most recently, I had bought a roasted chicken in the evening that had been roasted in the morning, and my willingness to do so baffled the butcher, who seemed to take it both as a personal favor to him (buying chicken that was not moments off of the rotisserie!) and to find it deeply puzzling (why would Madame buy a chicken left over from this morning's roasting?)--but I was far from being a regular, a cliente. The shop was empty when I went in. Chickens were roasting, quiches and tartes were arranged on the top of the meat case, and the case itself was full of an elaborate and bloody assortment of cuts of beef, lamb, veal, rabbit arrayed in carnivorous glory.

I asked for some chicken breasts and, while the butcher was wrapping them, I ventured my request. I would like to order a turkey, if that's possible.

Ah. Vous faites le Thanksgiving americain. You are making American Thanksgiving. The butcher smiled and wiped his hands on his apron.

I smiled back, encouraged. Can you get turkeys for Thanksgiving?

But of course. A woman in Valbonne ordered one the other day. It is what you always eat for Thanksgiving, no? Turkey farcis? Stuffed turkey?

Yes, yes. We will be 12 people; can you get me a turkey the right size for that many people?

We conferred a bit about what the right size was, and when I should pick it up, and he took my name and phone number. I had one last request.

When you prepare the turkey, Monsieur, can you make it very clean? The roast chicken I had bought recently had come with shins attached. Did you know that chickens have shins? They do. In a rare moment of courage, I had snapped the roasted shins off of the legs before I carved the bird and before anyone else in the household could see them and decide to commence vegetarianism that night. However, I did not trust myself to be able to come to terms with turkey shins, or feet, or any other parts of the turkey never reproduced as a Normal Rockwell illustration of Thanksgiving.

The butcher looked quizzically at me. I tried to explain: no gizzards, no organs, no shins, but my French failed me. I fell back on foreignness. Could you, Monsieur, prepare the turkey as though it was for an American lady?

Now he nodded. Do not worry, Madame. It will be all clean.



The day before we were to make our Thanksgiving americain, L. and I went to pick up the turkey. The shop was busy; two butchers were on duty, the one from whom I had bought the chicken with shins and the one who had taken my turkey order. The turkey order man was attending to three ladies of a certain age. The ladies were turned out in sunglasses, leopard prints, sleek black suits, heels, and gloves; they looked like they had just been transported from one of the more fashionable shopping streets on the Right Bank. They were ordering an assortment of items for lunch.

Meanwhile, the chicken shins butcher turned to us. I explained that I had ordered a turkey. Ah! Une belle dinde! He smiled, glad that this time I was not settling for a leftover chicken. A pretty turkey! He rubbed his hands together and went behind the counter, where he opened a large door. I had seen that door, of course, but had never wondered what was behind it, in the same way, I imagine, that we Americans can look at a piece of meat on white styrofoam wrapped in plastic and not wonder where it came from. Well, wonder no more. The door opened to reveal a walk-in meat locker easily half the size again of the shop itself. Entire sides of beef hung from hooks in the ceiling. L. and I both drew back a half step.

Three turkeys hung from hooks across from the sides of beef. Our butcher took the first one and brought it out into the shop to weigh it. It was a little feathery and--how does one say this?--obviously quite fresh. Perhaps the best way to describe it is to describe something else in its place: a turkey from an American supermarket, for instance. What I have always unwrapped, or asked someone else to unwrap for me, on the kitchen counter on Thanksgiving morning, has been a white, white bird. If there were organs, they were neatly wrapped in waxed paper in the cavity of the bird. No feathers. No suggestion that this creature walked around recently, and no suggestion, either, of what it might have walked around on. The turkey that the butcher happily began to wrap up for us looked like it had probably enjoyed a hearty supper the night before.

That's not her turkey; someone's already bought that turkey, the other butcher interrupted him. Go get one of the other turkeys for her.

Our butcher shrugged and went back in the meat locker. Meanwhile, the leopard ladies were still ordering. We'll take some slices of roast beef; it's rare, isn't it?

Their butcher took a slab of roast beef the size of his forearm out of the case. With an immense knife, he shaved off a few deep pink slices.

And some of these beignets, these little doughnuts. They're so good with coffee. The taller leopard lady turned to the shorter one and they bobbed their heads at each other confidentially.

Their butcher wrapped the roast beef in paper and reached up to the top of the counter for a handful of beignets. There was no intermediate step: wrap the bloody beef, pick up the beignets.

Our butcher emerged from the meat locker with a second turkey. This one was a few grams smaller and had fewer feathers. The leopard ladies went off with their bloody roast beef and beignets, and our butcher wrapped and bagged the turkey--5 kilos and change--and handed over the bill with a flourish: Ca fait 79 euros, s'il vous plait, Madame.

In years past I have hesitated, as I stood at the turkey desk in Whole Foods, over whether to order the organic, free-range, baptised turkey at $3.47 per pound or to order instead the slightly less well-cared for bird at $2.50 per pound. Those days are gone. Thirty, forty dollars for a turkey? I will scoff at Thanksgiving tables in the future. Why, I remember the year I paid over a hundred dollars for a turkey in France.

It was a good turkey, though. It tasted different from the Butterballs of my childhood, and from the organic Toms of the past few years, a stronger taste, a turkier taste. We were pretty sure, L. and C. and I, that this turkey had not been injected with anything, and we could see for ourselves that there had been no chemical solvents, unless you count water, involved in preparing it for sale. And, though I'm sure the butchers and the turkey farmer are not going hungry, I don't think there was a whole lot of profit injected into the price. There are fewer people wanting turkeys, and fewer turkeys to be had, so turkeys cost more. (A lot more.)

The distance between production and consumption is shorter, and is not shrink-wrapped. Feathers and blood are a part of life and death, and eating beignets that have been close to roast beef juices probably won't kill you or even make you sick. (At least if you don't think about it too much.)

Nevertheless, I think we'll give turkey a miss for Christmas. Lobster might be cheaper.

In the rue Servandoni

Last week I was back in Paris with L. and G. We went to lunch, L. and I, at a creperie in the rue Servandoni. The creperie--and as far as I can tell, that is its only name--is the size of a smallish American living room, with tables and benches at the front, near the plate glass window and the door, and an open kitchen at the back, with the crepe-making griddle jutting out into the center of the narrow room. Madame, a sturdy woman in late middle age who looks like she would be equally comfortable standing in front of a grill at an American lunch counter, stands behind the griddle, spatula at the ready. Her ancient Jack Russell terrier either sleeps in his basket in the corner or patrols the tables looking for scraps. There are two steps up from the street into the dining room, but, due to a trick of the pavement, three steps down, and either Madame or the young woman waiting tables will remind you when you leave to watch out for the third step.

E., G., and I found this creperie on Easter day in 2005, and I keep going back to it every chance I get. After I stopped weeping daily about the outcome of the 2004 elections, I thought about what kind of excursion would make me really happy. And I thought of Paris. It had been nine years at that point since I had been in France; we had always talked about bringing the girls to France when they were of travelling age. It was time. We made airplane reservations and found an apartment to rent that was near where I had lived as a student and around the corner from the Eglise de Saint-Sulpice and its beautiful place. Thus we came to spend Easter vacation 2005 in the rue Servandoni.

We arrived at the apartment in the rue Servandoni on Easter weekend. The street is a block long, and connects Saint-Sulpice to the Luxembourg Gardens. That much I knew from my dog-earred Michelin Plan de Paris. But the instructive plaques on the street--you cannot walk more than a few feet in central Paris without coming across a plaque on a building, telling you about a historical character who was born or lived or died there--told a longer story. If you sit at the table in the window of the creperie, as L. and I did last week, and as we did last March, and as I did a year before that, and, again, with G. and E. on Easter day 2005, then when you look out the window and across the street you see a plaque that tells you that William Faulkner lived in that building for several months in 1925. If you are a southerner and a reader then, voila, you are connected: from Yoknapatawpha County to the City of Lights before you even order lunch.

Finish your crepe--I recommend the crepe parmentier, potatoes and cheese and an egg folded inside a warm crepe au sarrasin--and, minding the third step, walk out of the creperie and to the right, up towards Saint-Sulpice. Another plaque appears. William Faulkner's neighbor, two doors up and a century and change earlier, was the revolutionary Olympe de Gouges. De Gouges took her revolutionary brothers' bet and raised them, publishing in 1790 her proto-feminist Declaration of the Rights of Women to match the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man. Looked on as a novelty for a while, she eventually wore out her welcome and went to the guillotine, but not before she lived in the rue Servandoni for a while. She survives now in history books and dissertations--one of them mine. When I wrote about women in the French Revolution, her papers came across my desk in the Archives nationales across the Seine in the rue Rambuteau.

A little further up the street, and this time I saw a plaque I had missed before: Condorcet, one of the gentlest philosophers and scientists of the Enlightenment, and also one of the most unfortunate, had hidden in an apartment in that building for several months during the Revolution, after he had fallen from the good graces of the National Convention. My dissertation advisor--not a particularly nice or gentle man, but a good historian--wrote his first major book on Condorcet, and it sat on my shelves (reddish-orange binding, black letters) for years.

L. and I walked past these plaques and all their connections last weekend, and just as we passed the building where I stayed with my family nearly three years ago, my cell phone rang. It was C.: where was the cinnamon? L. and I had finished it off making pumpkin pie for our Provencal Thanksgiving. As we spoke on the phone L. and I turned the corner into the place Saint-Sulpice, where the booths for the Christmas market were already set up.

On my best days I feel part of a web of connections--connections of love and of the mind and of the past, my own and the world's--and it is so startling to me, so surprising, to find that web so dense on this little street in the Left Bank. The other day I found this, from Emily Dickinson, in my reading: To live is so startling it leaves little time for anything else. I am very busy.

Une action de grace

The New York Times today includes an article on the psychological benefits of gratitude. Turns out that being grateful and saying thank you, even making lists of things for which you are grateful, can actually make you a happier person--and not just on Thanksgiving Day, which is what today is, but all the time. I would describe myself as generally happy with a chance of late afternoon irritation, but in the spirit of the our first Thanksgiving in France, here is my list.

Thanksgiving is not a noun in French but a phrase: it is une action de grace, literally, an action of grace. So here are some actions of grace for which I am particularly grateful this Thanksgiving day:

Alice and Wendy, curled up at my feet in my warm kitchen, while chicken stock simmers on the stove and rain falls outside. They keep thinking they want to go outside, but when I open the door and they see the rain, they look up at me in horror and go back to the rug.

M. LaChaix, who just phoned me from a traffic jam in Paris to say that I should absolutely feel free, not hesitate one half minute, to use the refrigerator in his house up the hill to store our Thanksgiving overflow. He does go on, but inside the bossy Parisien exterior there lurks a kind heart.

Olivier, who, last night before he went home, gave me two large bottles of eau de cologne, made at the parfumerie where his wife works. One bottle of lavender water, the other of a lemony, light scent, and when I thanked him he said, Non, non, c'est normale.

C., who took me to the hospital last weekend for stitches in my hand after I dropped a tea cup, who found his way to the hospital on the far side of Grasse in the dark and with a bleeding and woozy wife in the front seat beside him. Who figured out where to park the car--which was not evident, pas du tout--and made me laugh. Who stood beside me holding my hand for the whole event; who, even though the sight of blood makes him faint, never paled.

E. and G., who have held my hand every night this week while C. changed my bandage, even though there hands are so small in mine that I am afraid I will hurt them if I squeeze too tightly.

A. and L. and Paris. Oscar Wilde said that when good Americans die they go to Paris; I have not been particularly good, but nevertheless the universe afforded me sufficient grace not just to go to Paris again, but to go with my two best girlfriends. We walked down the Avenue Victor Hugo at dusk, and as we looked at the beautiful cakes in the windows at Le Notre, the trumpeter in a strolling Dixieland band rolled out the first few notes of "Hello, Dolly." His confreres joined in as we gazed in at the pink and green macaroons stacked up into a baroque festival of a patisserie, and then the band followed us as we strolled down the street towards home, where there were people we loved waiting for us, and good food and light and warmth.

Pas mal, as the French say. Pas mal du tout. Thanks.

Menusier

La Bastiole is a new house, and when we moved into it a few months ago, there were still odds and ends remaining to finish. Our landlord, M. LaChaix, assured us that all would be completed quickly and efficiently, and work continued after we moved in, albeit at a decidedly summer-in-Provence pace. At the end of the summer, as our landlord was closing up his house and preparing to drive back to Paris, he told me not to worry. Instead of having Olivier finish all the work inside the house, the landlord's own favorite carpenter, M. Duc, would be coming. From Paris. For a week, in October, to finish all the odds and ends.

The local equipe greeted this news with much rolling of eyes and shaking of heads. He has to have a carpenter from Paris, you know, because of course we don't have any carpenters around here, said the gardener at the villa below us. From Paris? Un menusier Parisian? Violette stopped just short of spitting. C'est typique. Luigi, the Italian man who comes to help Olivier sometimes, sighed and shrugged. Parisians like Parisians, he said, in his Italian-accented French. And Olivier shook his head. C'est ca, c'est M. LaChaix. The work that M. Duc from Paris was to do for us was not complicated or involved or even particularly skilled--there was some sanding to be done here and there, a couple of missing screws to put in, a trap door to fit. Nothing that could not have been done by Olivier, or Luigi, or any of their friends and colleagues in the village. But, the Parisian menuisier it was to be.

Before he took the autoroute for Paris, M. LaChaix came down the hill for a final look over the house. He took me and Olivier down to the basement and pointed to a heap of old kitchen cabinetry in the corner. This, he showed us, this was going to become shelving for my laundry room. He directed Olivier to help him sort the cabinets out, talking the whole dusty time about how the cabinets could be placed, arranged against the wall, to help me put--and here he glanced pointedly at the detritus of our moving--everything in order. M. Duc would do it; he would understand exactly how it was all to be done. The cabinets were old, but they still had a lot of use left in them.

Olivier leaned over to me, unnoticed by M. LaChaix, who was in full voice on the subject of arranging the cabinets, and said in perfect English, These are good for firewood.

Eventually, after a lot of phone calls from M. LaChaix in Paris, the day came when the menusier was to arrive. The night before, I had a long conversation on the phone with our landlord, and we made a list together of what M. Duc's priorities would be. He was driving down from Paris with his apprentice, and would be at our house the next morning at 8:00.

And he was. M. Duc is approaching 50, with thick grey hair and an impressive moustache, and the beginnings of a serious paunch. When he came into our kitchen, his pants were held up by a length of cord looped through the beltloops. The apprentice, Mathieu, was skinny in the way that only 20-year-olds with a heavy dose of attitude and multiple body piercings can be.

I took out my list and began to go over it with M. Duc. He nodded, puzzled, and I continued, using my best French, trying to make myself understood. But no, language was not the problem. After I continued for a few minutes, M. Duc stopped me. "C'est M. LaChaix qui me dirige, Madame. It is M. LaChaix who is telling me what to do, Madame."

I retreated behind southern graciousness and left him to his business. Later on in the day, I saw Luigi and Olivier outside, working on the mysterious septic pipes. We compared notes on the Parisien arrivals, and I allowed as how I had been put in my place. There was some shrugging and rolling of eyes--no accounting for foreign manners, and for once I was not the foreigner under discussion--and we went on to talk of other things. When the locals turned and knelt back down on the terrace to put their heads in the septic pipes, I thanked them for working on the septic. It's not a pleasant job, and they were at it day after day, resigned but cheerful. Olivier popped his head back up. He grinned. "C'est M. LaChaix qui nous dirige. It's M. LaChaix who tells us what to do."

The week progressed slowly, as M. Duc and Mathieu unloaded an entire carpentry workshop from the hatchback of their Peugeot and set it up on our back terrace. The temperature hit 65, and Mathieu took his shirt off, affording all of us the opportunity to wonder how exactly one decides to have the back of one's neck pierced, and the opportunity to hope that Mathieu's hips, skinny as they were, would be sufficient to hold up his low-slung, baggy blue jeans. The knot in the cord holding up M. Duc's pants held, and, after a few days, he even managed to be somewhat friendly to me, in a distant, cool sort of way. I suppose that if you pay a carpenter from Paris to install second- or third-hand cabinetry in Provence for a week, some hauteur comes with the territory. I coped with the attitude and the hauteur and the sawdust pretty well, thinking about the end result: cabinets, such as they were, installed in the basement, fewer loose doorknobs, and, ultimately, the hatchback gone back to Paris.

Wendy never warmed to M. Duc, though. She detested him on sight, and still detested him five days later when he was packing up to go. Luigi and I were in the kitchen with Wendy when M. Duc came in. Wendy barked her best GO AWAY NOW bark and retreated under the table.

Elle ne vous aime pas, Monsieur, I said. She doesn't like you.

Mais non! Dogs always like me, see? M. Roy went towards Wendy and made vaguely soothing sounds. She barked louder and finished off with a growl.

Non, Monsieur, c'est vous. Elle ne vous aime pas. I shook my head and smiled. No, it's you. She doesn't like you.

Luigi, always softspoken, looked up from his sanding and smiled. Elle n'aime pas les Parisiens.

Ecurie, again.

This is a story about horses and dogs and Abraham Lincoln.

First, horses: Another lesson yesterday, and another daughter off a horse.

We missed two lessons during the school vacation. E. and G. were quiet at the prospect of another lesson, and got quieter as we drove to the stable and lesson time approached. Once in the ring on their horses, they both seemed fine. I stood in the gallery above the ring with two other mothers--one Italian, one French--and we consoled each other while our children took their horses, or while horses took our children, over low jumps.

The Italian mother brings her two Golden Retrievers with her to the stable. Her way of managing anxiety is to walk the dogs up and down outside the ring. The French mother copes by smoking. I cope by trying to call the States on my cell phone, one of those tricks that theoretically my cell phone can do but at which it sometimes balks. By the end of the lesson, we have exhausted our coping tricks and just stand and watch.

G.'s horse yesterday was not unlike my phone: theoretically, it knew how to take jumps and was capable of it, but sometimes it just balked. On the first balk, G. fell off but did so so slowly as to make it look like an awkward but capable dismount. She landed on her feet, grabbed the horse's reins, and put out her hand to touch his muzzle. I think she was reassuring him. She got back up in the saddle and came around again. This time, the horse took the jump but came back down with a lurch. G. lost both stirrups--France, Italy, and two dogs leaned in towards me--and went over the left shoulder. She landed on her knees, but caught the underside of her chin on a plastic cube that was dividing the large ring in half.

I played it cool up in the gallery. We all leaned over a bit, none of us breathing, and watched the monitrice come over to G. and put her hand on G.'s shoulder to keep her from standing up too fast. Not until the monitrice who had been teaching at the other end of the ring stopped her class and came over to G.--a full, count them, 25 seconds or so after she fell--did I go down to the ring. I walked over to where the monitrices were telling G. to breathe.

Ca va, she's fine, she's fine, don't worry. The monitrice for G.'s class reminds me of one of my aunts who, if flames were spouting out of the Lincoln Tunnel, and we were stuck in traffic with theatre tickets and dinner reservations, could say, it's all fine, don't worry, and I would believe her. I patted G. and checked for tears; she was completely collected. Her breathing was shaky but when the monitrices asked her questions, she responded in perfect French.

Then I realized that there was blood--not much--and that G. had about a centimeter-wide split under her chin where she had hit the cube. The monitrices saw it at the same moment I did. Did I know the pharmacie down the road? It was open until 6--half an hour from now--and I should ask for a particular type of bandage, and have the pharmacist take a look at it. Probably no stitches...but we should go right now. And, by the way, if G. vomited in the night or complained of headaches, she should see a doctor.

What you do not want to hear from your child's horseback riding teacher is the phrase: if she vomits tonight after hitting her head in a fall, take her to the doctor.

The French mother appeared with a bandage to cover her on the way to the pharmacy, and the Italian mother looked on sympathetically. The girls and I rushed off to the car and to the pharmacy, where the pharmacist handed over a bandage--two euros--and told me not to worry. We came home, treated the patient with a hot bath and chocolate, bandaged the wound, and are now engaged in trying not to worry.

And it's not about the injury, really. It's not very bad; there will be a small scar, but it's under her chin and will be hard to see. It will make a good story for her to tell, and I can imagine her telling it: I was taking horseback riding lessons in the south of France... What we worry about is our responsibility. We're the ones in charge, making the decisions, trying to find a way that is "reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to all. With high hope for the future,"--here's Lincoln in his second inaugural address--"no prediction in regard to it is ventured."

Now dogs: Last weekend we took the dogs and the girls on another Sunday afternoon walk up on the plain of Caussols. The dogs were happily off leash, and we heard sheep bells in the distance. Rounding a hill, we learned a critical fact about sheep bells: the sound they make is easily distorted, and what sounds like it is in the distance can in fact be as close as the next curve. Wendy and Alice saw and smelled what must have been 500 sheep--a glimpse of heaven for them, I imagine--and bolted towards them. Out of nowhere appeared two of the biggest white dogs I have ever seen. They were more like polar bears than dogs. As we watched, they stopped our little terrier-poodles in their tracks with a few firm but surprisingly gentle and tooth-free nips, and within seconds, probably about 25, Wendy and Alice were back at our sides. E. and G. both thought it was a great adventure.

But what about next time? What if the next polar dogs are not so gentle?

Last night I dreamt about Abraham Lincoln. (Stay with me here.) I was with a group of people from different places in my life. We all knew that Mr. Lincoln was in danger of being assassinated, and together we came up with a plan to protect him. It was a good plan; I don't remember what it was, but I remember the feeling of satisfaction after we had hatched it. Some of us were going to go to Ford's Theater, and others were going to take the president somewhere else, somewhere safe, and then we were going to meet later. The plan worked--everyone did what they were supposed to do--but at the end of my dream, someone shot President Lincoln, and he died.

So here's the moral, as revealed by my subconscious. Even if there's a really good plan, sometimes good presidents get shot, even if they're already dead and memorialized. Sometimes dogs get into trouble, and sometimes girls fall off of horses. What we have to do--back to the second inaugural--is bind up the wounds our charges get, and try to hold firm in what we see to be right, and"do all which may achieve and cherish" lives which are "just and lasting."

If I were to venture a prediction for the future, though, I do not think it would include a lot more horseback riding lessons.

American English

The voice at the other end of the phone spoke perfect English, with a slight German accent.

Are both of you English?

No, no, I replied. Neither of us is English; we are both American.

But I spoke with your husband before, and neither of you sound American. You must have lived in England for a long time.

No, no. We have never lived in England.

But you don't sound American. Maybe your parents were English?

No, no. I thought I would turn the conversation a bit. Can you tell me more about the English Club at school that I am going to teach? How many students am I likely to have?

Oh, not so many, eight or 10. Eight or 10 native French fifth- and sixth-graders, once a week at lunchtime, for the remainder of the year. She went on: And they have English during their regular class time, so this is really just for practicing conversation, you know. 50 minutes, and it goes fast. I'll be there, too, I'll be in the next building, doing the ping-pong club, if you need anything.

It goes fast when you have prepared material for 100 minutes, in my experience, but I decided not to say so. Instead, what sort of things have been successful in other years?

Oh, you can talk about culture, sing a song or two. Talk about the Queen. Or--I guess--maybe not talk about Mr. Bush? If we really insist on being American, the hesitation tells me, then maybe I can't talk about the Queen. But maybe not Mr. Bush. Maybe you could find something to talk about in American culture? Or...your national anthem?

I have a vision of trying to hit the high G in the Star Spangled Banner in front of a room of French pre-adolescents. Not the Star Spangled Banner. Not Mr. Bush. Lincoln's Second Inaugural might be a bit beyond their English skills. Thunder Road might be hard to explain in a country that doesn't have screens on windows, much less doors. The Red Sox? Julia Child? E. B. White? Mr. Smith Goes to Washington? Town meetings? New York City in the snow? My moment to touch the future of France, and show these children an America besides the Iraq war and McDonald's, and it's hard to know where to begin.

If the 50 minutes gets long, I can always talk about the Queen.

Picasso

The rental car company came and took away the Oldsmobile-Citroen the other day and left me with a Peugeot minivan, a Picasso. The name comes to us, I imagine, courtesy of the Peugeot linguists. I would like to have been at that meeting. What else, I wonder, was on the list of possible names? Other Spanish artists--could I be driving a Dali? (What would the clock in a Dali-mobile have looked like?) Or other ex-patriate artists who lived in France--Hemingway, maybe? (Probably not a name for a minivan; Hemingway was probably an SUV kind of guy.)

If Picasso had designed this car, it would be one of his late, intensely abstract works, when he had turned away from all those quaint art-school concepts like perspective. The control panel--odometer, tachometer, all those sorts of things--rests in all its digital glory in the center of the dashboard, a solid 2 or 3 second glance away from oncoming delivery trucks. A second glove box occupies the space between the steering wheel and the windshield. The heating and air conditioning controls are all to the left of the steering wheel, just above where the engine release lever often is, another 2 or 3 second glance away. The steering wheel has all sorts of controls on it--I am sure that one is about the radio, and I think that I could use another to make a phone call.

The car has no parking gear; instead, there is a parking brake lever in the center of the dash, centered under the control panel. To park the car, you put it in neutral and engage the parking brake. The gear shift is on the steering wheel shaft, just slightly above the controls for the windshield wipers (five settings, so that when you accidentally brush the wiper wand on your way to the gear shift there are five different ways you can startle your passengers).

And then there's the shifting itself: I require an automatic transmission. Our friends at Peugeot made the car automatic, and I do not wish to take anything away from their efforts. However, let me just say that on a good day I can shift from first to second to third gear as smoothly as does our friend Pablo. When we start up a hill and the moment arrives for a change of gears, there is a lurch and a bump and if you listen closely you can sometimes hear the engine curse softly. (The difference here is that I would swear audibly, and in English.)

The rental car company left me a key ring with the Picasso's vital statistics: registration number, type of transmission, and color. And there, in the color, is where, so far as I am concerned, the Peugeot linguists really earned their coffee break. My car is not brown: it is noisette.