French Lessons (2 page)

“Philippe,” Chantal says. Her voice is mournful.

Nico remembers the surprise of Chantal’s skin. He undressed her slowly that night while the boat rocked and the light of the summer moon filtered through the porthole. He had imagined a different terrain—white skin untouched by the sun, a long, thin body. But her skin was tanned and her body dipped and rose in lovely curves. She lay on her side and they faced each other. Though he waited for her to stop him, to change her mind and ask him to leave, she gave him permission with her watchful eyes, with her playful smile, with her silence. He ran his fingers along the rise and fall of her body, neck to shoulder to waist to hip to the long stretch of her glorious leg. The landscape of Chantal, he thought.

Revenge sex, he reminds himself. Chantal didn’t need this morning’s display on the street corner to confirm what she already knew.

“Tell us about your book, Nico,” Chantal says.

He looks at her, surprised. She offers a strained smile. Has he lost her? Of course he lost her. He never had her.

“Not now,” he says. “Tonight. I’ll buy a bottle of champagne at La Forêt.”

Nico remembers the euphoria he felt after the phone call yesterday from the editor. I’ll tell Chantal, he had thought immediately. And through the long, restless night, he had imagined her pleasure at his news. He imagined her gentle questions, her admiration, her new respect. He had guarded his poems with a fierce secrecy and now, instead of enjoying the expansive pride he expected, he feels an odd sense of loss. Did he think he’d win her with poetry? Had he foolishly thought he had already won her with a night of sex?

“We’ll meet at seven?” she asks. Of course. They always meet on Friday nights. But everything has changed.

The waiter arrives and places their coffee cups on the table.

“Du sucre,”
Philippe says. The waiter always forgets to bring sugar.

“Will you come?” Chantal asks Philippe when the waiter leaves.

“Tonight? Who knows. By this evening you will have run off with your American,” Philippe says.

“Enough,” Chantal says, quietly dismissing him with a slight wave of her hand.

The waiter slides a bowl of sugar cubes onto the table as he hurries by. Philippe drops three into his cup. They all sip their coffee. Nico looks at the young couple at the next table; they are now kissing.

Finally Chantal looks up at Nico and says, “Champagne would be nice.”

“Seven
P.M.
, then.”

“I’ll be there,” Philippe says, and he slams his empty espresso cup on the table.

Nico looks at Chantal. She gives him a smile that is filled with secrets. For him? He doesn’t know her despite a night of lovemaking that has sent him into each day yearning for more. Does he yearn for more of her? He doesn’t even know that. He is a fraud, a poet with no understanding of his own desires. Does he just long for desire? No, it’s love he wants, he assures himself.

“I’m tired of Paris,” Chantal says.

“Why?” he asks.

“There’s too much noise. It’s too gray. Sometimes I feel like I can’t get enough air.”

Nico looks around. Along the rue de Paradis he can see a
tabac
, a
papeterie
, and a
plombier
tucked in among the apartment buildings. It’s a street like almost any street in Paris, and yet he loves the way the new sunlight hits the tall windows of the nineteenth-century buildings, the way the café spills into the street, the way the pedestrians rush past, all of them hurried and impatient. Paris has entranced him ever since he left Normandy at eighteen. He even likes the relentless rain. Today, though the skies are clear, he expects another onslaught of storms. The rain suits him—it keeps him inside on his days off, writing and listening to jazz. But of course Chantal would hate this weather. She is meant for sunshine.

“I’m going to London,” Philippe says. “In September.”

“You didn’t tell me,” Chantal says quietly.

“We’ve got a gig—I don’t know, I might stay. We can record a demo tape there. My drummer has a friend who can get us into a studio.”

“That’s great,” Nico tells him.

Philippe glares at him.

Nico reaches into his pocket for a couple of euros to pay for his coffee.

Chantal looks at her watch. While she reaches into her bag for money, she says, “I would move somewhere warm. Somewhere very green.”

Philippe drops coins on the table and charges off, his messenger bag banging against his back. He doesn’t say goodbye.

“Why did you tell him?” Nico asks Chantal.

“I’m sorry.”

“I thought it was between the two of us.”

“It never is.”

“Why not?” He tries to see her eyes but she bows her head and swirls the last bit of espresso in her cup.

“We all bring so many people to bed with us. We’re never alone.”

“He’s furious.”

“Because I changed the rules. I’m not supposed to play the same game that he plays.”

“And now? What game are you playing?”

Chantal looks up. She reaches out and touches his cheek. “I don’t know. Philippe has made me into someone else. I would like to believe in love again.”

They had talked for a long time in bed after making love that night. When Nico told her about his high school girlfriend, how they would sneak out of their houses in the middle of the night and sleep in the hayloft in the barn, Chantal had said to him, “Young love teaches you how to love. You’re so lucky. Most of us spend years trying to learn the ways of love.” Nico knows that Chantal believes in love. But she was drunk that night, she was cheating on her boyfriend, and she wants to forget what they did.

She stands up and gathers her things. With her purse over her shoulder, she starts off toward the métro station. She looks back.

“I am done with all this,” she says. “I’m ready for whatever the day might bring.” She offers a dazzling smile, something full of hope for something else, someone else.

Nico watches her leave. He tries to hold her in his view as long as he can. The sun ducks behind a cloud and then reappears, bathing the street in new light. Chantal disappears into the entrance of the métro. Nico pulls the paper out of his back pocket and opens it.
Josie Felton
. He looks at his watch. It is time.

osie is surprised that her tutor is a man, that he is young, and that he is startlingly handsome. She considers walking back into the office of that horrible modern building and telling the waif behind the desk that she’s made a mistake, that she doesn’t want a tutor for the day, that she wants to go back to her hotel room and drink Orangina and vodka.

The tutor shakes her hand, and she’s surprised by the heat of his skin—she has been cold for so many days. She pulls her hand away as if she’s been scorched.

“So you’re a French teacher,” he says to her in French.

“Oui,”
she answers. “But it’s been a long time since I’ve spoken French to anyone but American teenagers.”

She doesn’t say: It’s been a long time since I’ve spoken at all.

She decided to hire a tutor only yesterday when she realized that after three days in Paris she hadn’t said more than a few words—when ordering a croissant or a glass of wine or asking the hotel maid for an extra towel. Suddenly the prospect of a day of conversation terrifies her. She doesn’t feel capable of conversation.

“Are you here in Paris for business or pleasure?”

It’s a trick question. She has no business and she has no pleasure. She quit her job three weeks ago. The man she loved died three weeks ago.

“I’m here to buy shoes,” she finally answers.

He looks at her feet. She’s wearing red Converse sneakers, the same shoes she always wears. Her students loved her shoes. Her old boyfriends, slackers one and all, loved her shoes. But Simon wanted her to buy grown-up shoes, pumps with three-inch heels, strappy sandals, red stilettos. And so he bought them tickets to fly to Paris.

“We’ll go shopping,” the tutor says.

“No, I was—”

“No reason to sit in a classroom,” he tells her. “Paris is our classroom.”

He looks around while she presses her hand to her stomach, which is contracting in fierce spasms. She doesn’t want to get sick like she did yesterday on the métro. Yet another reason she should be back in her hotel room, under the musty covers.

“We’ll take the bus,” the tutor says. “More to see, more to talk about.”

His enthusiasm is killing her.

“I’m Nicolas, by the way. Call me Nico.”

“Josie,” she says.

“Josie,” he repeats, smiling, as if he’s just discovered something wonderful. “Let’s buy shoes.”

On the bus she loses herself in memory. Six months ago. She stood on the school stage, working with one of her students on the upcoming play. Josie looked up when the door to the theater opened and closed, letting in a flash of light and a glimpse of a tall man wearing a black suit. Silver hair. And then darkness again.

She looked back at the boy on the stage.

“Go ahead. Try it one more time,” she said gently.

But the boy was peering into the darkness of the theater. Now he’d never speak his lines louder than a whisper. Take a shy boy and put him onstage—and what? He discovers his inner strength and transforms himself in front of his peers? What was she thinking in casting Brady as the lead? She was thinking of saving him, nothing less. But Brady, as cute and sweet and smart as he may be, cannot belt out his lines, cannot plant a loud smacking kiss on the lips of lovely Glynnis Gilmore.

“Dad,” the boy said.

Josie looked into the darkness of the theater. The man was sitting there, somewhere. Damn him.

“Brady. Ignore your father. We have another fifteen minutes.”

Brady looked at her, his eyes wide with fear. “I can’t do it with him here.”

Josie walked toward him on the stage. He stood against the papier-mâché stone wall as if it were holding him up. She would have to show him how to use the stage as if he owned it, not as if he were hiding among the props.

“He might be here opening night,” she said quietly. “So will a lot of other people. You have to forget about that space. It’s this space here that matters.”

He nodded. His long straight hair fell in front of his face—his own private curtain. He was the kind of boy she would have loved in high school. Maybe that’s why she chose him. Twenty-seven years old and she was still behaving like a teenager.

“Try the line again. To me.”

He nodded. He held her eyes. He took in a gulp of air. He whispered, “I can’t say the line to you. I can’t say the line to anyone.”

Love me. Love me
. “Say it over and over again,” she would tell him later. “Say it as if you’re ordering her to do as she’s told.” But right then, with his father in the theater, she whispered, “Go on home. We’ll work hard tomorrow.”

“My son thinks you’re wonderful,” the man said. He looked at her with his green eyes and she looked at his mouth instead, then at the open V of his sweater. Gray sweater under a black suit. Silver hair that curled at the nape of his neck. She had nowhere to look.

“I think he’s pretty great.”

“You teach French and theater?” he asked.

“I teach French and I stumble around in the theater.”

He smiled. He was handsome the way Brady might be some day. But this big, bold man could never have been shy or sweet. Was this the reason Brady couldn’t claim his role onstage?

“Simon,” he said, offering his hand.

“Josie.” She shook his hand and felt his palm press into hers like a secret passing between them.

“Can he do this?” Simon asked, gesturing to the stage. Brady had gone to get his books and jacket. They were standing near the back of the theater. Josie had forgotten to turn on the lights. The dark room, the woody smell of the newly built set, the rows of empty chairs facing the other way—Josie already felt as if they were doing something illicit.

“Yes,” Josie lied.

“Then you’re really good,” Simon said.

“Dad!” Brady called, bounding up the stairs.

“Nice to meet you,” Josie said, turning to leave.

“Wait,” Simon said.

She couldn’t wait. She could barely catch her breath.

“Have a nice evening, you two.” She slipped out the door.

Love me
. She was sideswiped by it, she would later tell her friend Whitney. She leaned against the wall in the hallway, clutching the script to her chest. Some kid’s dad. One sly smile and she was smitten.

“Don’t even think about it,” Whitney told her.

“It’s all I can think about,” she said on the phone that night. “I’ll quit teaching and join the Peace Corps.”

“You haven’t done anything,” Whitney reminded her.

“He’ll call tonight,” Josie told her.

“I have no good reason for calling you,” he said.

“I have no good reason for talking to you,” she told him.

They were both quiet for a moment. Josie had gone to bed an hour before, and had twisted her mind around him, his words, his eyes, the V of his exposed neck, until she lay there, exhausted, as if beaten by something. When the phone rang, her hand leapt at the receiver.

“And I don’t do this,” he said, his voice surprisingly unsure. “I don’t call women—especially my son’s teacher—at home late at night.”

“You’re married.”

“I’m married.”

“I’m joining the Peace Corps. I decided earlier tonight.”

“Can I see you before you ship off?”

She could have said no. She could have said “I’ll lose my job. I’ll lose myself.” But she said yes. Yes.

“How did you come to be a French teacher?” the tutor asks.

Nico. His name slips away, as easily as her concentration. He keeps talking, the bus rumbles along busy streets, passengers come and go, bumping past them, the smell of sausage fills the stale air, and every once in a while he stops talking and she is required to say something.
All of this used to be easy
, Josie reminds herself.
In fact, I used to do it so well
.

“My parents didn’t have a lot of money,” she tells the tutor in French. She and Nico speak only French and she is surprised by how natural that is, as if the foreign words are easier for her to find than English words now. “We never traveled. I read a book about a young girl in Paris and I wanted to be that girl. And so I started studying French as if I could change everything in my life by speaking a different language.”

“Did it work?”

She looks at him. “No,” she says. “But maybe I’ll try again.”

“Is this your first trip to Paris?”

“Yes,” she lies. She had spent her junior year here, but she is tired of talking. There is nothing to say about that year unless she tells him about the boys, the sex, the hashish, the hangovers.

“Did you come alone?” he asks.

“No,” she lies. “My friend Whitney is spending the day at art galleries.” She has never been a liar before and now the lies spill from her lips. Whitney hates Paris, hates art galleries, and, in fact, hates Josie now. “If you sleep with him,” Whitney had said the next morning, when Josie told her she was meeting Simon for a drink, “you’re alone in this. He’s married, he’s old, and he’s your student’s father. I’m not getting on this love train with you, girl. I’m not even going to be there after the crash.”

The crash.

“You will love Paris,” the tutor says with his unending optimism. “I will make sure of that.”

She looks at him, surprised.

“I hired a French tutor. Not an ambassador.”

He doesn’t stop smiling. “I don’t charge extra for those services.”

She looks away. She wishes he were less attractive, less eager. She would like to hate him, but here she is, following him off the bus as if this is exactly what she wants to do. They are in the heart of the bustling Sixth Arrondissement, at the carrefour de la Croix-Rouge, and she stops on the sidewalk, panic-stricken. What is she doing here? How can she take another step forward?

“Don’t worry,” he tells her. “The stores are too expensive here. We’re just pretending.”

Pretending? Did she misunderstand him? So far, everything she has done since Simon died has been a pretense. Everything except for the deep, bottomless sleep she stumbles into, as if plummeting off a cliff, every night.

“I don’t understand,” she says.

He takes her arm and moves her effortlessly across the street with the flow of people. She’s astonished that it’s so easy—he leads, she walks. Yesterday, without someone at her side, she stood paralyzed in front of the gates of Père Lachaise Cemetery for over an hour. She wanted to see—what? Jim Morrison’s grave site? Oscar Wilde’s tomb? Finally, she turned, threw up behind a tree, métroed back to her hotel, and burrowed back into her bed.

She shouldn’t have come to Paris. She should have thrown away the plane tickets. The seat on the plane beside her was empty. Simon’s seat, in business class, her constant reminder of what should have been. Champagne, wine, long conversations about Montmartre and Giverny, whispered promises, perhaps even a wandering hand under the blanket. Instead, she took two sleeping pills and awoke in Paris, groggy and disoriented.

“How about these?” the tutor asks. Nico. If she can remember his name, she can pull herself out of the slog of her mind and back to Paris. Shoes. He’s holding a turquoise patent-leather shoe in front of her face. It’s got a four-inch heel that looks like a dagger.

“Perfect,” she tells him.

“She’ll try these on,” he tells a woman.

They’re in a shoe store, but Josie can’t remember walking in. The saleswoman knows that it’s all a ruse. She’s looking at Josie with contempt, as if her red Converse sneakers are sullying the white marble floor. Josie tells her she wears a size 38 and the saleswoman mutters
“Américaine”
under her breath.

Nico sits next to her on the zebra-striped bench.

“Your accent is perfect,” he whispers. “It’s the shoes that give you away.”

“How much do the blue shoes cost?” she asks him.

“Your salary. Don’t even think about it. We’re playing a game.”

“She knows.”

“Who cares? There’s no one else in this ridiculous store.”

The store has plastic pigs hanging from the ceiling. Everything is patent leather, even the saleswoman’s miniskirt and her go-go boots.

The woman places a box on the bench beside Josie. “We only have size thirty-nine.” She walks away.

“Even my feet are too small for this place,” she whispers to Nico.

“Your feet are perfect,” he says.