Free Tender at the Bone by Ruth Reichl Page A

longest conversation I had ever had in French and I would have taken Béatrice anywhere just to keep her talking. The streetlights came on as we walked down the snowy boulevard, and I told Béatrice about smoked meat sandwiches and the English movie theater. “We’ll go tomorrow,” she said confidently. I didn’t argue.
    “I’m so glad you have someone to play with,” said Mademoiselle Petit at breakfast the next morning.
    “She sounds like we’re going to run outside and jump rope,” whispered Béatrice. “How much money do you have?”
    I was too grateful for her company to ask why we were spending my money, but it was enough to eat all day. We started at the deli. I translated. “She’s never had smoked meat before,” I confided to my friend behind the counter.
    “Never?” he asked, horrified. His knife flashed as he piled the meat on extra thick. Béatrice shook her head. “Nevaire,” she said in a thick French accent.
    “Does she eat as much as you do?” he asked. She did.
    Afterward we went next door to the pastry shop, and then down the street to a small Chinese restaurant. Béatrice had never had Chinese food either and I inducted her into the joys of egg rolls, fried rice, and chop suey. “C’est superbe!” she cried. “What other strange foods do you know about?”
    A girl who had never had an egg roll, I thought, must have been brought up very oddly. I tried to think what other exotica I knew in Montreal, but the only restaurant I’d been to was Moishe’s.
    We started walking, happy to be away from the school, happy to be together, not particularly concerned about where we were going or what we would find. In the end we had more smoked meat; every coffee shop in Montreal had its three watery vats of steaming cured beef. We came out, walked a little farther, and bought cones of French fries with malt vinegar. When those ran out we went into a candy store and bought a box of chocolate-covered cherries with stems. After we had polished those off we found a pastry shop. I bought a dozen éclairs; Béatrice, more adventurous, asked for one of everything. “We’ll taste them all and see which is best,” she said. “Then tomorrow we can come back and buy some more.”
    I wondered if Béatrice would abandon me when the other girls came back. When they spilled into the school on Sunday night they flashed significant looks in my direction and chorused “Pauvre toi,” to Béatrice. But she just looked annoyed and said, “Pas du tout.” And then she announced that staying in school was so much fun she intended to do it again the following weekend.
    Her parents had other ideas. They wanted her to come home, and when she told them about the poor lonely American at the school they insisted that I come too. And so the following Friday when the other girls left for the station, I was with them.
    There were twelve of us on the train to Ottawa; the French ambassador’s daughter, the Haitian ambassador’s girls, and the daughters of lesser people attached to various embassies. We were laughing and calling to each other, making the sort of noise only teenagers can, when a woman at the end of the car turned to her companion and said, “These French …” in a cold, high, disapproving English voice. I froze. I realized that, without even thinking about it, I had actually been speaking their language.
    Friendly groups of parents collected their girls with hugs and laughter. There was a chauffeur for us; he touched his hat, said, “Bonjour, Mesdemoiselles,” and picked up our luggage. It hit me that I was going to spend the weekend in a millionaire’s house.
    The chauffeur took us to a huge gated mansion set in a private park. It was forbidding, but not nearly as forbidding as Béatrice’s mother. Impeccable and elegant, Madame du Croix looked askance at her daughter’s rumpled suit and my frizzy hair. She kissed Béatrice on both cheeks, and shook my hand. But the biggest shock was when Béatrice