Katherine Page - The Body in the Vestibule

He arrived each morning quite punctually, spread out a small tattered blanket, took a couple of bottles of wine from the battered attache case he carried like a proper homme d'affaires, then positioned his animals—an old mutt and a rabbit in a cage—and sat down. Just in time for the first mass. He took a small brass bowl from his case, set it down, and placed a ten-franc piece dead center. By the end of the day when he reversed the proceedings, his bowl runneth over. Faith wasn't too sure what the animals were intended to convey—a latent sense of responsibility or simply colorful window dressing. He was often joined by other clochards and frequently by non-clochards, especially teen-agers, all of whom appeared to invest him with some special kind of wisdom. The court of the bearded philosopher beg-gar. The large, greasy-looking cap, casquette, he always wore—his crown. She resumed writing.

So, there are the d'Amberts. They need a big apartment because they have five children. I see them on the stairs, very polite, very BCBG, "bon chic, bon genre," Stephanie Leblanc told me. It's some sort of French version of a well-born Yuppie. Stephanie did not seem to be all that impressed. Tom told me the other version he'd heard from Paul, "bon cul, bon genre," considerably cruder and roughly translates as "nice ass, may be underused." I don't know the d'Amberts well enough yet to know to which, if any, category they belong. They do have a very elegant card on their mailbox and a fancy, highly polished brass nameplate on their door, though.

Then above us are the Joliets. He's also at the university and always to be found at the forefront of whatever anyone is protesting, Paul told us. Madame is Italian, Valentina, and owns a small art gallery a few blocks away. She has invited us to a vernissage, an opening, Saturday night. She's very lively, very pretty. No kids. She told me her husband was enough.

On the top floor, there are some students and, in a closet-sized apartment, Madame Yvette Vincent, the widow of another professeur —it's quite an academic building. Madame is over eighty and climbs up and down the stairs several times a day to do her marketing or take her little dog out. (Everybody seems to have dogs here, if the streets are any evidence. We even saw a couple bring their dog into a restaurant we ate at the other night, and order for him. When the food came, it was garnished with parsley, just like ours. Bonne preparation, as if FiFi would notice!) Back to Madame Vincent. Besides being agile, she's extremely elegant— well coiffed and very a la mode suits. I had a chance to see her apartment when she invited me for a cup of tea. The main room was filled with armoires, commodes, tables, fragile little chairs all from Louis somethingth. Her bed was behind a silk drape, which she proudly pulled to one side. Ben's crib was bigger. We drank from Sevres cups, of course, or I should say, bien sur. My French is improving dramatically, but not as fast as Ben's. He rattles on about le petit lapin —named Peter Rabbit!—at school and his bon ami Leonard.”

Faith looked at her watch. She'd have to finish the letter later. It was time to get said child. She glanced in the tiny mirror over the bathroom sink and put on some lip gloss and blush. French mothers, at least in Lyon, never appeared in the streets in untidy clothes or without makeup. They didn't have the kind of style Faith saw in Paris or even elsewhere in Lyon, on rues Victor Hugo or Emile Zola, where skirts were very short, and agnes b. or Clementine supplied them, yet the mothers still had that seemingly unconscious ability of most French women to look good—no matter how homely they were. She thought of her neighbors back in Aleford in their ubiquitous jogging suits, jeans, or, in the case of the older women, ensembles from Johnny Appleseed's. Informality was easier, but it didn't look as chic.

She raced down the stairs, paused almost at the bottom until the walls stopped spinning around, then opened a door and took Ben's stroller out. She'd been lugging this up and down the stairs with Ben and usually a full panier in tow until, happily, Madame d'Ambert pointed out that one of Faith's keys opened up what had formerly been living space for a concierge and was now a storage area for bicycles, etc. As she grabbed the stroller, she was struck as always that the good old days hadn't been so lovely for all concerned. The Belle Epoque in this case meant a low ceiling, a single interior round window, so dirty that little light passed through, and narrow rooms extending the length of the building. She locked the closet again and went out the door into the square, hoping Ben would consent to be pushed in his poussette and not demand to push it, as usual.

It was close to noon and everything in Lyon had come to a halt for the sacred hour, sometimes longer, for lunch— or almost everything.

Faith and Tom had been amused to discover that St. Nizier and the small, narrow surrounding streets composed one of Lyon's red-light districts. At lunchtime, the prostitutes were out in full force, as men put aside work for the pleasures of the table, and perhaps the bed, as well. Every day to and from school, Faith passed the same three women who stood casually a half block down from the butcher's. One had a small, fluffy dog that Ben adored and it wasn't long before they had entered into conversation. The dog's name was Whiskey, she told them. Faith realized that as an outsider, and a transient one, as well, she had the freedom to break the conventions people like the d'Amberts, and even the Leblancs, followed whether they wanted to or not. So she was fast becoming close friends with her butcher and his wife and could stop and shoot the breeze with the ladies at the corner. Their names were Marilyn, Monique, and Marie. Marilyn appeared considerably younger than the other two and wore glasses, which she pulled off whenever a car slowed at the curb, then called discreetly, "Tu viens mon minet?" The little dog was hers.

Monique appeared to be about Faith's mother's age and had the largest bust Faith had ever seen. She favored tube tops in a variety of neon colors, miniskirts in black, and patent leather go-go boots— a kind of universal outfit, as much at home over the years in Boston's Combat Zone or Paris's Pigalle as here.

Marie could have been twenty or forty. She smoked constantly—how constantly was a question that crossed Faith's mind—and had a mane of bright red hair to her waist. It was when Marie had told Faith one day last week to hurry upstairs, her husband had come home for lunch, that she'd begun to suspect Lyon was a village, too.

It was always difficult to get Ben to leave school, especially when he'd been playing with the riding toys in the big room, and today was no exception. It ended the same way as usual, too. The teacher, Jeanne, watched Faith cajole, speak firmly, start to leave in the blind hope he would follow; then, with a smile, she stepped in and said firmly, "A demain, Benjamin. Dit 'au revoir.' " And Ben kissed her, said good-bye, and left. Of course, it was one of life's perverse truths that children will always behave better for anyone else than a parent, but Faith was convinced Jeanne possessed some hidden powers. Mesmerism, or something she sprinkled in their milk.

The garderie was a godsend. Faith was afraid she might get a little boring about how wonderfully the French arranged their lives when she got back to Aleford, but the government-sponsored child care was truly wonderful. And the public transportation. And the health care. And the...

Benjamin was in high spirits and raced out to the street with Faith in swift pursuit, awkwardly lugging his stroller. She called, "Stop" at the top of her voice, then switched to "Arret," and he did. Miraculously, he also allowed himself to be strapped into the stroller. Ben's blond hair was losing its curls with each haircut, although hot weather and exercise produced the damp that restored them and his face was framed with tendrils. He gave her an angelic smile. It didn't fool her for a moment, but it was a nice moment.