Too Many Animals
by Christine Sarkis
I suspect everything I've ever heard about why French women don't get fat. Because if French life is anything like French dinner parties, that the country hasn't already buckled under the weight of 300-pound women is nothing short of a miracle.
While living in Paris, the closest thing my sister Kathryn and I had to extended family was Penny, an old friend of my aunt's who lived with her husband Jean-Claude and their two daughters in a stately old building in the 16th arrondissement.
Penny invited us to dinner regularly, and we loved it. Evenings at her flat meant fabulous meals that lasted for hours, a chance to practice French, and a glimpse into domestic Parisian life. These dinners were also formative: in fact, it was just after one of these meals that Kathryn decided on a policy that she honors to this day. No more than two kinds of meat in one sitting.
On the evening in question, we got there at about 7 o'clock. Our arrival signaled the beginning of the parade of food, and everyone gravitated towards the table as Penny brought out a tray of deviled eggs.
Kathryn had never eaten one before, but she had skipped lunch that day, and liked the eggs so much she had five. Retrospectively, she said it was those early courses that doomed her.
Then Penny's husband Jean-Claude brought out a loaf of soft, dense bread, which we ate with fresh butter and radishes dipped in salt.
If Kathryn or I had been more disciplined in the art of the extended French meal, we would have, at that point, been aiming for a mere whetting of the appetite, a limbering up of the palate. But we were fools. Young, naïve, hungry fools.
The doorbell rang and Jean-Claude's half-brother Nicolas burst in, carrying a box proudly over his head. "Les Huitres!" he announced, dropping the box down in the middle of the table. Inside, pounds of oysters were nestled in a bed of raffia over ice.
Now, I can make no claims to knowing everything about Kathryn, even after knowing her for her whole life. But one thing I do know is that shellfish make her very nervous. It's not so much their existence as it is the food-borne illnesses they may or may not carry. So I was not surprised to see her enthusiasm a little strained.
Jean-Claude extended the box in her direction and she smiled and took one. He nudged the box towards her, and she smiled and took another. He cocked his head an inch and raised his eyebrows. She smiled and took a third.
Anxious to be done with the oysters and move onto the next course, Kathryn ate all three quickly and with as little fuss as possible. When Jean-Claude looked over to refill her glass of wine, he noticed her three empty shells and exclaimed, "They are delicious, no?" And he was a good host, so he put three more on her plate. Kathryn smiled the tight-lipped smile of barely disguised distress and responded "Oh yes. They are delicious."
Jean-Claude nodded in approval. "Two hours ago, they were in the sea. This is how fresh they are."
There was a flash of hope in her eyes. "And they come from," I watched her struggle to find a polite word that meant free from deadly bacteria. "Good? Waters?"
"Oh yes. The waters of beautiful Normandie."
Kathryn weighed his words and made a decision. If she was going to have to eat a dozen oysters, she would damn well enjoy them.
So she stopped monitoring her body for the first signs of poisoning and scooped out each oyster with finesse. After finishing, she triumphantly pushed the plate away and leaned back in her chair. Jean-Claude noticed and said, "Do not worry, there are more!" and dug around the in the raffia until he found another pocket of oysters.
Kathryn's face fell slightly, but she accepted them and was just finishing her last when a plate of pates and sausiccon sec appeared at the table. Kathryn, grateful to eat something else, accepted generous slices of each and added a slice of bread to her plate.
For the main course, Penny brought out an entire baked fish. And after that we lingered over a cheese plate with six different selections, cow and goat, soft and hard, young and old, and a green salad with a tangy shallot vinaigrette. For dessert, we ate small tarts dotted with summer fruit.
We left at about 10. Kathryn didn't talk much as we headed down and out the front door, but after we were safely outside, she grabbed a post that bordered the sidewalk, bent over, and groaned. I crouched down and looked at her face. She was covered in a thin veil of sweat, and was so pale she was almost transparent. With desperation in her voice, she said, "I ate too much." She paused to do a bit of improvised Lamaze breathing, then staggered to a stoop and sat down for a moment before rising and dragging her distended stomach towards a bench about 100 feet down the road. In this way, we eventually we made it all the way to the station. But things did not improve.
On the platform, she fanned herself with her tiny metro ticket, attempting to cool the roiling within. I gave her my ticket and she assembled a little fan out of them, not more than two inches high, and waved it furiously in front of her face and neck.
She looked down the tracks and said to me, "I'm not sure I can get on the train." We were about to spend 30 minutes on an old metro line with trains that lurched and wobbled down the tracks, so I saw her point.
She found a bottle of water in her purse and splashed some of it on her face, trying to cool down. We heard the train coming. Kathryn rolled her neck and circled her shoulders as the train rumbled into the station. It came to a stop and Kathryn handed me her purse, dropped her fan on the platform, took one last breath of station air, and stepped on.
As she stepped in she said, to no one in particular, "I ate six different animals tonight. Way more if you count the cheese."
After she'd collapsed into a seat, she looked at me and said, "I'm never, ever, ever, going to eat more than two meats in one sitting ever again." She paused, and then added, "Ever."
The tracks weren't smooth, and she punctuated every lurch with a whimper. A few people looked on sympathetically; others got up and moved away. But Kathryn didn't notice any of it. She was reclined with shut eyes, just trying to hold it together.
I knew that this was not an overeating to be trifled with; even from a seat away I could hear the grumbling of her stomach. She was experiencing loud anger from a wide cross-section of the animal kingdom.
Kathryn had been quiet for a few minutes when she suddenly opened her eyes and started batting furiously at the air around her head.
"Is that a bug?"
I looked around and saw nothing.
She insisted, "I heard something go by my ear." This was serious. She was having a meat-induced hallucination.
She looked around for another few seconds, and then closed her eyes again and waited for the journey home to end.
I woke her up when we reached Gare de Lyon. Groggy, she opened her eyes and allowed me to lead her off the train. We found a bench and sat down for a few minutes.
After a bit she stood up and stretched, first tentatively, and then with more confidence. We made it through the station and out into the cold fresh air. She walked with less difficulty now, and some of the color had returned to her cheeks. And, as we neared our tiny apartment, she even smiled and said, almost to herself, "And to think that before tonight I didn't even know I liked deviled eggs."