On top of all that, her parents had landed, dazzled at having travelled so far. They had planned, over the telephone, a short week visiting San Francisco, then a jaunt to Disneyland. This had caused yet another quarrel with Samuel.
“I don’t want to go to Disneyland.” For a fraction of a second she saw herself with a Gaulish shield, blue and gold, raised above her head: “oh yes you will, oh yes you will.” “You’re not being nice, my parents are coming to America for the first time in their lives…” “It’s not the first time, they came for our wedding.” “Yes, but that was two years ago already, and it’s their first time in California, don’t quibble over words.” “I’m not quibbling over words, you’re the one who always exaggerates everything, they’re already lucky to be visiting California, it’s no big deal if they don’t go to Disneyland, is it?” “Fine, you know you don’t have to come with us, we’ll manage just fine on our own.” “There’s no having a conversation with you.” “This isn’t a conversation. For as long as I’ve known her, my mother has dreamed of going to Disneyland, she’s in California, how many times will she be here in her life? I’m taking her there, full stop. Don’t get me wrong, I have no desire whatsoever to do eight hours on the road to see some idiotic amusement park, but that’s how it is — you want to come, it’ll make them happy; you don’t, too bad.”
So Samuel sulked, but for once his parents paid him little attention. They were suddenly entertaining the possibility that he was not the ideal husband despite the fact that he was American and Jewish. It must be said that the poor things had often been shut up in the bedroom waiting for them to finish quarrelling. They were not satisfied with Samuel, and his father had declared that he was a dead weight on her. It had shocked her to hear this man, ordinarily silent, who left his wife the dubious privilege of voicing what they thought, express his disappointment so bluntly. What was more, like her, and unlike his son-in-law, her father did not much care for San Francisco. “Yes, it’s pretty, my darling, but it’s not what I call a city.”
She was intimately convinced of it: San Francisco was no metropolis. It was beyond doubt and beyond dispute a magnificent place; the blue sea you glimpsed from the tops of the hills, the houses of every colour tiered along the steep slopes, the bridges arching over the ocean, took the breath away from even the most jaded of travellers. But it was certainly also the most boring city in the world. No soul, nothing but people with good intentions, the kind that pave hell. San Francisco was a bottle of soap for blowing bubbles, a city made up of groups that rubbed shoulders but never mingled. Leather gays, non-leather gays, womanly lesbians and butch lesbians, dynamic young executives, happy families and their beautiful babies, former hippies, easygoing types, recyclers on a mission. None of it held much interest for her, and the feeling was mutual: she walked the streets with the sense that people had eyes in the backs of their heads. Her father and she wanted to go to a real city and knew exactly which one: Los Angeles. As for her mother, who usually adored everything her dear American son-in-law adored — so, in this instance, San Francisco — she was dead set on going to Disneyland. No such luck.
In the end, one fine February day, they all piled into the car and she got behind the wheel. She and her husband had settled it the night before. She wanted to go to Los Angeles, she would drive. She had very carefully hidden her delight; Samuel was a public menace, he had already wrecked two cars; the moment another driver’s behaviour displeased him, he lost his head and acted like a raving lunatic. “OK, I’ll drive.” “There and back.” “There and back.”
The trip was fabulous. First they stopped at Dimitri’s, a Greek settled in Pescadero Beach who made the best breaded artichokes on earth. The only ones, no doubt, as well. Her parents found it surprising that one could drive two hours to eat artichokes, even good artichokes, but they were beginning to understand that in America distances are not the same as in Europe and that this was part of the American experience. Then Big Sur, Carmel — where her father secretly hoped to catch sight of Clint Eastwood — and at last they reached Los Angeles. Without quibbling over words, her parents were in heaven; her mother seduced by the kitsch of the city and the shops on Rodeo Drive, her father by the mixture of violence and nonchalance that punctuated the streets. He expressed a single wish: to see the name of Errol Flynn on Hollywood Boulevard. They did not find it but deciphered the names of plenty of other actors and, before each one, all four of them played at Mr. Cinema.
In the Disneyland car park, after hesitating between Mickey, Jiminy Cricket and the Aristocats, they decided unanimously to park in the section marked by signs bearing the likeness of Tinker Bell. They intended to do everything, the ghost train as much as the very surprising Star Wars. If they were there, they might as well miss nothing. While her parents went from one attraction to the next under her tender gaze (most of the time she waited for them at the exit), Samuel was sulking again; he couldn’t bear that advertising brands sponsored the attractions; he grumbled from start to finish.
“Do they really have to crown the roller coaster with a Wonder Bread sign?” “But who cares.” “I care.” A pain in the neck, to put it politely. Samuel felt one of those terrible but typically American frustrations toward America and spoiled it for her parents, who understood neither his mad love nor his raging hatred. But they had decided to ignore him.
Throughout the whole trip she spent more time spying on her father and mother than looking around her; she was on a journey within her parents’ journey, proud to be able to offer them the dream that she herself, despite the difficulties, lived every day, and that, in fact, each of them in his own way had passed on to her.
Waiting for America. (éd. Maurice Nadeau, 2004) pp. 119–123