Ava Fodor, a slightly plump, frizzy-haired nineteen-year-old American au pair in Paris struggles with being less than perfect. Jean-Michel is Ava's fussy, exacting first French boyfriend whose provincialism drives her up the wall yet who educates he...
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Four years later, my Yale graduation took place. I'd done it. Not knowing whether I'd passed my Calculus of Two Differentials class until one week before graduation had been a nail-biter, but at least I'd taken it pass/fail so as not to screw up my grade point average.
No matter. I'd screwed up my GPA regardless. As my two suitemates shared their summa cum laude status with me, I was unable to offer back even the mention of a cum laude to crown my B.A. in history, sub-specialty European intellectual history. This was largely tied to my receiving a B minus on my senior essay, the crowning achievement of a Yale undergraduate's four years. My topic had been Martin Luther. Never having nailed exactly what point I was trying to make about one of my favorite church reformers, I'd enjoyed researching the fact that he'd been an avid beer drinker and had married a former nun who'd become his housekeeper. They'd had six children together. I'd been delighted to report that Luther was one all-around man, but my senior essay advisor, a leading religious history scholar, had not deemed this an essential point of original scholarship.
My plans, post-graduation, were as up in the air as my mortarboard hat at the close of the graduation ceremony. Everything looked rosy. That summer, my mother was taking my sixteen-year old half sister and me on a tour of Europe. My revisionist version of my childhood was starting to look like it had worked. Mom was actually in the audience somewhere making nice with my father. My grandmother sat as far away from my parents as possible, looking for fellow respectable white Anglo-Saxon Protestants to exchange civilities with – having none to share with family members, with most of whom she was not on speaking terms. Instead, she trained her Southern-style warmth and charm on my girlfriend's younger Downs' Syndrome brother, whose family was sitting next to her. My grandmother was a saint to people less fortunate than she, so long as they weren't related to her.
It rained like hell. Campus security handed out black utility-sized trash bags for families of graduates to cover their fine spring outfits. The entire ceremony was outdoors. A tent covered our heads to shield us from the drenching downpour, but nothing protected us from the unbearable humidity of the late spring day. In photos taken that day female graduates were memorialized forever with hairdos turned to frizz. My long, blonde hair looked like puffy yellow cumulus clouds haloing my head. After four years of end-of-semester all-nighters and academic stress combined with social maneuvering on the order of membership in the late nineteenth century Hapsburg Court, I was no longer plump. Stress had burned off the puppy fat.
In just a few weeks, I'd be in Paris, where I'd meet my mother and half sister. From there we'd roam around Europe for three weeks.
My mother had just inherited a substantial sum from her uncle, who died childless. He was my grandfather's brother, the accommodating family member who hosted secret visits between my grandfather and his daughter, while she continued to be in the doghouse with her own mother.
One of my mother's finer points was her recklessness. For the first time in perhaps her entire adult life, she wasn't hovering above poverty level. She may not have been able to contribute a penny toward my Yale education, but she was now in a position to give me a traditional graduation present, a tour of Europe with herself and my sixteen-year-old half sister as companions.
