Bon Appétit by Veronika Kelemen
A short story
A poor roommate and lustrous, spellbinding human being, Sofí embodied what it is that Americans find so fascinating about the French.
Her hair was always tousled, never messy; her clothes were simple, yet polished; her makeup was nonexistent, barring moisturizer and mascara she’d applied days earlier and forgotten (or not cared) to remove, resulting in a perpetual undone sheen. She was at turns quiet—when waiting for her moment to speak—and loud, bordering on boisterous when it came time to express her opinion.
Her vocabulary ranged from “I don’t give a fuck, man” to apt and precise cultural and political criticism in the goings-on of her family, our friends, and the world at large. She was, in short, staunchly herself, certain that every choice she made in her life was, whether “right” or “wrong,” inherently correct because it was hers: the very personification of free and brave.
Over the three years we spent together as roommates and best friends, Sofí taught me how to be, as she put it, “not so fucking American.” I borrowed her motorcycle boots and applied her rouge; I read her books and listened to her music. But I could not learn, or even imitate, her attitude towards food, which in many ways is what I admired, desired, and yearned for most.
I ate normally, but if I was a cartoon character, food was a devil that sat on my shoulder. It whispered to me about how I shouldn’t be eating that, in a constant monologue that burned on repeat and was so exhausting. I wondered how I still hadn’t grown tired of it, and whether it was audible to those around me. And yet Sofí couldn’t hear it, and what was more, she seemed to have no devils of her own at all.
Our budgets were moderate in the weeks following student loan disbursements, and sparse at all other times, with more than enough to go around for bottles, baggies, and band t-shirts and less than the bare minimum for food. To me, this was good and frustrating news in equal parts: it gave me an excuse not to eat, yes, but what was restriction without the reward? What was a three day green tea fast without pasta and chocolate on the fourth?
I liked my routine, but I liked it because it was all in my control, and this was now eliminated, which made it all seem less like a victory and more like a natural result. To Sofí, our lack of access to indulgent foods was a disappointment, but it didn’t matter much; she was happy to survive on a diet of bread, fruit, eggs, and other relatively inexpensive odds and ends.
She loved birthday dinners and holiday parties, where cakes and cheeses were not only options, but requirements, but she did not plan her life around them. She did not feel deflated when she happened upon a party without a snack table. When I talked about New York, I talked about the pizza, the dumplings, the falafel, the ice cream. When Sofí talked about Paris, she talked about the cafes, the cinemas, the parks. Hers was a life of experiences, with food sometimes in their orbits, sometimes not.
One spring break our wallets became lean enough that we decided it would be more fiscally responsible to spend the week in Paris with her parents (cross-Channel coach tickets ran €9 per head), rather than in our London council flat, shivering and smoking. When we arrived, Sofí and her parents enveloped each other in a tangle of neutral-toned coats and scarves, and we headed upstairs for a dinner of bread, cheese, beef, and potatoes, paired with a bottle of red wine.
We spoke mostly in English, sometimes in French (theirs clear and bold in its intonation, mine fragmented and grappling for sense, like a sputtering car stuck in the fast lane). We talked about her father’s newest film, her mother’s work at the elementary school where she taught, about all of our writing, about the terrible weather and terrible Prime Ministers affecting both of our cities in tandem.
Sofí and I both had seconds, and when we were finished, there were no leftovers. What they needed was to talk. About school and work and friends and everything they had missed about each other. What they needed was a meal together, and a fullness that was more emotional than physical, unrelated to the dinner entirely.
“Did you like the food, Veronika?” Sofí’s mother was smiling at me from across the table, her lipstick a little smudged, her cheeks flushed with the heat from the stove.
“Yes.”
On the long, dull, and semiaquatic coach ride back home, I took stock of my week among the French and realized in horror and disappointment that I hadn’t had the opportunity to try a real, Parisian crepe, which I imagined tasted like a cloud dredged in sugar and then tossed in the air twice over. I turned to Sofí and said as much.
She rolled her eyes.
“But you met all my friends and family, no? You saw a film at the Odéon, no? You danced in the bar until sunrise and walked home in the rain, no? You smoked a joint by the Seine, no? You sat and watched the people at La Rotonde, no?”
She hesitated and thought for a moment.
“And we ate a lot of fucking cheese, man. No?”
Yes.
BIO:
Veronika Kelemen is a New York-based writer. She received her MFA from Columbia University, where she was a Chair's Fellowship recipient. Her chapbook, As Above So Below, was published in 2020 by Choo Choo Press, and her novel Good Thing is forthcoming.
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