garçon

So we went to have the second echographie (ultrasound) last week, in yet another Haussman-era apartment building remade into gracious offices. The monitor for the ultrasound machine actually sits in the fireplace of the former salon, which makes for elegant, albeit strange, viewing. The radiologist is yet another member of the Corsican medical mafia to which I’ve gained entry through my OB, and he speaks the same confident, Italian-voweled French that both delights and completely flummoxes me. (I’m at the point now that most everyday interactions don’t involve too many hand gestures, but at the doctor I generally find myself reduced to pantomime. I feel like I enter the building with a giant, glowing question mark over my head, the Alfred P. Newman of pregnant women. It makes my doctors take a vaguely paternalistic attitude toward me, which in other circumstances would irritate me no end, but I’m actually finding it sort of placid and comforting to play stupid.)

Anyway, after a few minutes of reading French Elle in Barcelona chairs, S. and I were ushered into the examining room. The general suavity of French doctors, who lean toward tailored suits under their white coats, preferably with open-necked shirts and a little chest hair showing, only heightens the strangeness of lying on a table while another man smears Astroglide all over your belly. But after a couple of seconds, the doctor directed our gaze over to the monitor and started pointing out pock marks in the moonscape that turned out, to our delight and surprise, to be our baby’s fingers and toes. I was concentrating on the counting – un, deux, trois, quatre, cinq – that verified the correct numbers belonging to each appendage, when I heard S say, in French, “hey, is that a --?” The doctor stopped in the middle of counting to shush him dramatically and say, “but does maman want to know?”

When I had assured him that maman did indeed want to know, he paused again for effect, pointed back at the screen, and said “Voilà le zizi!” (yes, that’s what they call it, which I think explains a lot about French sexual attitudes all the way back to Molière). And it really was like a magic trick, the tiny penis appearing out of the swirling void. Also, don’t you think every man on the planet secretly wants to say "Voilà!” every time he opens his fly?

The doctor seemed so proud, as if perhaps he’d had something to do with it, and he and S. beamed at each other for several seconds before S. turned to me and said, “So I guess you’re going to be outnumbered!”

Yes, but not outclassed. Voilà.

**********************************************************************


A word about the above image – let it be said that I have never, in any restaurant, on any continent, referred to a member of the serving staff as “garçon.” I just couldn’t resist the visual joke.