Free Bon Appetit by Sandra Byrd Page A

at church, I’m reading along”.
    “Ah,” Philippe said. “Menu for the body
and
the soul”.
    I nodded.
    “Bon,”
Céline said, apparently satisfied I hadn’t changed too much. “Let’s go”. She looked at the board. “Chouquettes?”
    “I’m practicing at home. Next week I leave them behind to make macarons and petits fours,” I said.
    “Mmm,” Céline said as we left the house. Philippe opened the back door of his car for her, then opened the passenger door for me before walking around to his own side.
    Before he could get in the car, Céline said, “Odette calls you a chouquette”.
    “Oh,” I said. “That’s nice”. She must really think I made them well.
    “No, it’s not,” Céline insisted.
    “Why not?”
    “If you call someone a chouquette, it’s because they think you have nothing up here”. Céline tapped her head.
    Still Odious.
    Philippe carefully pulled out of the driveway and drove in a restrained manner all the way to Paris. I was amazed. Luc had told me all Frenchmen drove like crazy people.
    The three of us chatted along the way, uncomfortably at first,circling like birds around topics but never landing, then becoming more relaxed. After forty-five minutes, we pulled into a parking lot near a bridge over the Seine River.
    Philippe opened my door and Céline’s. We walked up the stone stairs from the water’s edge to the busy street above and stopped across from the entrance. As soon as we reached the top, I gazed at the Musée d’Orsay. Various families and street artists were scattered about the grounds like confetti, some sitting, some standing, several eating a quick meal from a cart.
    I love impressionist art. I like the idea that the borders are blurry, and that everything in life isn’t as crisp and clear as we think it should be. This, to me, was the most important place I wanted to visit in Paris.
    “Coming?” Philippe asked, ready to cross the street.
    I grinned.
“Mais oui!”
    As it was early autumn, the lines weren’t too long, but as it was Sunday, there was a small crowd. We stood in the queue, chatting while we waited to get in.
    “Have you ever been here?” I asked Céline.
    “But of course!” she said. “I think it’s boring”.
    Philippe looked at her. “You won’t when you’re older”.
    “I’m glad you came,” I told her, and she smiled, happy to be wanted. She reached for my hand and put her small one inside of it. We talked about art and artists. Once inside we wandered the long marble halls full of artwork. I looked up at the glass ceiling, light tumbling through the panes of glass like water, splashing on the tiles and the artwork below. Bleached white sculptures, flat and unglazed,commanded the floor—a woman on horseback, hair trailing behind her like the horse’s tail; a bronze, headless man, muscles flexing. I felt his energy.
    We headed toward the first floor. Intense art students squatted and sat on the floor, hair in their eyes, lead in their hands, deep in thought as they sketched page after page, imitating the masters.
    “Do you want to see my favorites?” asked Philippe.
    “Of course!”
    We walked up another floor till we reached the pointillists.
    “When you step away from the paintings, you see nothing but blend, like any other impressionist,” Philippe said. “But when you get closer, you can see there are actually no brush strokes at all. Only tiny dots. They blur in the eye from a distance”.
    “So very beautiful,” I said.
    We walked only two floors, aware of Céline’s little legs and flagging interest. But at every turn, one of us was able to point out something marvelous for the others to see.
    “I’m sorry you didn’t see it all,” Philippe said as we left the rare air of the museum and exited into the late blue afternoon light.
    “I’ll come back another time”.
    “Yes, you’ll live here a long time. You’ll be able to see this and more,” he said.
    A long time
. I looked at the Parisians