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Waiting
for Respect “One
little gust
of wind and you see their buttocks!” The
young woman in the scarlet dress was sauntering down the rue de Buci in
Paris with
her husband when that remark—made about her in French by a hunched old
woman
walking by—reached her ears and caused her to blush.
She turned to look at her critic but the
elderly woman did not look back, continued rather on her way, the
tap-tap-tap
of her wooden cane marking her steps. “Did
you hear that?” the young woman asked her husband. “Yes,” he laughed.
“Is my dress that short?” “Well, yes it is, but so what?
Mini-dresses are fashionable and you have nice legs.
Why not show them off?” The year was 1968.
The young woman, Julie Sanford Ledoux, was 25
years old, a new bride, and happily rediscovering a city she had come
to know
intimately just three years previously, as a jeune
fille au pair.
She was married now, and about to embark
on a graduate degree in French literature.
Somehow, the old woman’s opinion of her and her attire—she
might as well
have called her a hussy —did not square with the image she was trying
to
cultivate. She had married a French professor, Hank Ledoux, and would
soon be pursuing
the same career. She was a respectable young woman, intelligent,
refined, professional. Wasn’t she? The image had already been sorely
tested
once, just a few weeks earlier, in Amsterdam.
Julie and Hank had checked into a small bed-and-breakfast
hotel. The family
name on Julie’s passport, issued
when she was still single, did not match that of her husband. Such a discrepancy would
not have raised
eyebrows a decade later. However,
prior
to the sexual revolution, even in “sinful” Amsterdam, the moral code
dictated
that unmarried couples should not share a hotel room. And married
couples
typically had the same last name.
It was
highly unusual in the 1960s for an American woman to keep her own name
after
marriage. The
proprietress, a woman of a
certain age, eyed Julie with suspicion. She only rented rooms to
married couples.
Julie produced their wedding certificate.
The proprietress studied it, pursed her lips, and handed
it back with a
look that said, “Who do you think you’re fooling?” by which Julie
concluded
that wedding certificates were easy to forge. But she gave them the key to their
room. The next morning, the staff treated
them
brusquely, serving their breakfast with the kind of scorn usually
reserved for the
ladies in the windows of Amsterdam’s notorious Red Light district.
Their cups
of coffee were plunked down on the table with such force that some of
the
coffee sloshed out into the saucer.
Julie was offended by this behavior; Hank, for his part,
was amused and
vaguely titillated. He
jokingly suggested
to Julie that they purchase bells so that the next day they could enter
the breakfast
room ringing them and calling out “Unclean!
Unclean!” like the lepers of medieval times. Julie did not find this funny. She had to admit, however, that the
frenzied lovemaking that followed when they returned to their room was
directly
related to their sense that they were doing something unlawful. Perhaps their moans and
gasps could even be
heard, through the thin walls, in the room next door? Slumbering afterwards, her head on
her
husband’s chest, Julie was transported to her days as an au
pair when she used vacation time to go hitchhiking with a
friend
and had to fight off men who picked them up, assuming that women who
would get
into cars with strange men were fair game.
One guy, whose last name was “Sauveur” (Some savior, she
thought later),
drove them about 100 kilometers, then offered them lodging for the
night in
Toulon. Leaving
them in his apartment,
he went in search of a friend to share the spoils.
The two Frenchmen cooked dinner for the naïve
young American women, plied them with wine, and made their move. Julie and her friend
somehow managed to
escape to one of the bedrooms, locked themselves in, and shouted, when
the
men’s gentle rapping on the door turned to pounding, “Nous sommes des
jeunes
filles sérieuses!” In the end, their insistence that
they
were “good girls” discouraged their suitors and their virtue was saved.
Obviously,
Julie’s desire to be respected went back a long way. And now this.
If the short red dress had scandalized the
old woman, what would she have thought of the other dress hanging in
Julie’s
closet, the one that was known as a hot pants dress?
Such dresses were made of gauzy material,
slit up the front to reveal a pair of matching short shorts. Julie shuddered at the thought of
meeting the woman again and made a decision to avoid the rue de Buci. But then she had another idea. It was crazy, she knew,
but she was
determined to correct the false impression that she had made upon the
old
woman. Her self-image depended on it.
She would dress conservatively, carry a briefcase, find a
place at a
sidewalk café on the rue de Buci, and wait for the woman to pass. At
this point
she would accost her, invite her to have a coffee with her, convince
her that
she was “a good girl.” “You’re mad!” said her husband. “In the first place,
you’ll never see that
old biddy again. And
if you did, would
you even recognize her?” “Of course I would!” insisted Julie. “She had short grey hair,
was wearing a plain
black coat, was bent over, and walked with a cane.” “Like 90% of the old women who pass
on
the rue de Buci.” But there was no stopping Julie
once she
“got the bit between her teeth” as Hank often used to say. Reasoning that old people
are creatures of
habit, that the woman probably lived in the quartier and took the same
route at
the same time each day to run her errands, she decided to give herself
a
two-hour window for the encounter.
The
fateful remark had been uttered on a Friday morning about 10 a.m. So the following Friday,
Julie dressed with
all the care of a young professor about to walk into the classroom for
the
first time: navy
blue pantsuit, low-heeled
black pumps, pearl earrings, shiny brown hair pulled up into a loose
bun. No lipstick
today. Rather, a
bit of mascara and the slightest
hint of blush. Words
often spoken by her
mother trotted through her head: “You
don’t need all that make-up, Sweetie.
You’re a natural beauty.” One last appraising look in the
mirror
and she was out the door, making sure that she tucked into her
briefcase a
serious-looking book that she would pretend to read.
She decided on Stendhal’s Le
Rouge et le noir. Perhaps
the woman would turn out to be a
retired literature teacher and they could discuss Stendhal’s novel.
Wouldn’t that be wonderful? As she walked along the Boulevard
Saint-Germain in the direction of the Rue de Buci she was aware that
while men
paid less attention to her, other women of her age and beyond gave her
approving
glances. She had
struck the right tone. Sinking onto a metal folding chair
on
the terrace of the Café de Paris, right at the edge of the narrow
sidewalk, she
ordered a large café-crème and pulled out her book.
The wait began. At first, the anticipation was
almost
unbearable. She sat
up straight, excited
but tense, her eyes trained on the people rushing by. Pedestrian
traffic on the
rue de Buci was somewhat heavy, but she couldn’t help but notice that
unlike much
of Manhattan, with its throngs of twenty- and thirty-somethings, there
was a
good age distribution on the Paris sidewalks, and she did not have to
wait long
before the first elderly woman came slowly along.
She had no cane. Julie sipped her coffee, turned one
unread page of the novel just in case people at the table behind her
were
looking over her shoulder, and continued to scan the passers-by. As time wore on, and she finished
her
coffee, and the passing old women didn’t correspond to her memory—this
one was
wearing a red hat, that one stood erect—she became discouraged. Perhaps Hank was right? Perhaps this was a fool’s errand.
At the
same moment, the waiter who had brought her coffee began to look at her
expectantly. She
looked at the card
attached to the menu, intended to discourage patrons from occupying
tables
indefinitely, without continuing to order food or drink: “Les consommations sont
renouvelables toutes
les heures.” She had been there over an
hour. According to
the card, it was time for her to
place another order. She
signaled the
waiter. “Encore un
grand café-crème,
s’il vous plaît,” she said, aware of a feeling of fullness in her
bladder area
but unwilling to quit her post. He
brought the coffee, placed a second little slip of paper under her cup. And the wait continued. At one point, a crowd of
middle school girls
skipped by in uniform, laughing and jostling each other and blocking
her view
of a little old lady on the outer edge of the sidewalk.
She was furious. Then
there was, curiously, a lull in the pedestrian
traffic and for several minutes, nobody passed. She saw an opportunity
to use
the WC, but just as she was starting in that direction, another woman
beat her
to it. By the time
she emerged,
pedestrian traffic had picked up. Slowly, painfully, another hour
went by. She ordered a third café-crème,
seriously
uncomfortable now, jiggling her foot to take her mind off the pressure
on her
bladder. The bells of l’Eglise de
Saint-Germain
des Prés were just ringing to announce noon when Julie saw her. The same short grey hair,
the same unadorned
black coat, the same dowager’s hump, the same tap-tap-tapping of her
cane. There was no
mistaking her. From
the front, she could see that she looked
somewhat ill-tempered too, and that made sense.
Would a happy person have made such a nasty, judgmental
remark? Julie leaped from her chair, nearly
sending her cup and saucer flying as she did so, and rushed to accost
the old
woman. “Excusez-moi, Madame,” she said. The woman, who was a good head
shorter
than she was, stopped in her tracks and looked up at her with
consternation. Julie had given no thought to what
she’d
say next. She
smiled nervously. Her
heart was pounding from her overdose of caffeine, and she realized that
her
hands were trembling. The woman did not return her smile. Summoning her best French, Julie
continued: “I know this is rather strange, but
I’d
like to invite you to have a coffee with me.”
“I don’t know you,” said the woman,
attempting to sidestep Julie and continue on her way. Julie blocked her path and the
woman
began to look truly alarmed. “Yes you do!” insisted Julie,
desperate
now. “Don’t you
remember me?” At that moment (so there is a God!
thought Julie), an elderly man passed and tipped his hat at the woman,
“Bonjour, Madame Antoine,” he said.
A name! She
had a name! Julie was feeling weak now, and her
bladder was about to burst. She
had to
act fast.
“Oh-là-là, I’m in pain!” she
cried, clutching her chest. (She
could scarcely use her hand to apply pressure
between her legs the way she did when she was a little girl.)
“Couldn’t you help me sit down, Madame
Antoine?” On the table lay a copy of Le Rouge et le noir. The book was
splayed open, cover up. Madame
Antoine
helped Julie into a chair and then, exhausted by the effort, slid into
another
chair herself. The strategy had been successful! There was Julie, sitting
at a café table
opposite her critic! Julie
couldn’t wait
to tell Hank. But
first she had an
urgent need to attend to. Excusing
herself once again, she made a beeline for the toilettes. When she returned, Madame
Antoine was gone. Gone!
Vanished into thin air! Not a sign of her anywhere. Julie ran out into the
street and scanned the
crowd. Now she’d
never know for sure whether
Madame Antoine had been her critic.
She’d never be able to redeem herself, to convince this
woman that she
was not a hussy but “une jeune fille sérieuse.”
Defeated, she motioned to the
waiter. “L’addition, s’il vous plaît,” “L’addition?”
asked the waiter. “Madame Antoine took care of it. I think she was worried
about you.” Julie was dumbfounded. Madame Antoine had paid
her bill! Was her
kind gesture an apology? Had
she
recognized Julie as the mini-skirted young woman of the previous week? Or was she simply a
generous old lady who
wished to help an obviously troubled young person?
In that case, she was almost certainly not
the mean-spirited old crone of the previous week.
Julie was halfway down the block
when it
occurred to her that perhaps the waiter knew Madame Antoine. He had called her by name
after all. She
returned to the restaurant. “Madame Antoine?” he asked. “Oh sure, she’s
well known in the
neighborhood. She
was a dancer at the Folies Bergère. Afterwards she ran a
brothel on the Avenue de
l’Opéra.”
Then, noticing Julie’s shocked
expression, he winked and added:
“Were you looking for a job?” Mary Donaldson-Evans had a career in academe, teaching students how to read literature. She’s now writing fiction and non-fiction narratives of her own. Her creative work has been published by The Lowestoft Chronicle, Boomer Lit Magazine and The Literary Hatchet, among others. She can be reached at marydonevans@gmail.com.
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