Lessons in French (12 page)

“That one. The palest one. The lilac, I think it is.” I stared harder at the molding, bit my lip.

“Thank you.” He flopped onto the bed. “This whole process is so bloody symbolic for Lydia. You know we make fun of her for it, but these are the kinds of rituals she has to go through, these neurotic rites, to give her a sense of a grasp on life so that she can work. Her whole career is about outrunning irrelevancy, you know, reinventing herself in the face of constant advances. It produces untold anxiety. We can’t possibly know what that’s like. She’s quite an amazing woman.”

“Yes, she is.”

Claudia called out goodnight to us without coming in. We heard the front door of the apartment close.

“You know she’s in a hotel room in Berlin right now, calling her lab every five minutes to check progress. She has to get her pictures on the wire first thing in the morning. It’s her whole life. She won’t go to bed on a night like tonight.”

I detected nostalgia in his voice for a time when he might have been sleepless in that hotel room beside her, and the notion of physical love between them became conceivable to me.

“So, what about Joshua’s room?” I asked. “Isn’t he going to come for Thanksgiving too?”

“Ah, there’s the rub. Do we try to do something nice so that he can mock us or do we neglect to do something nice so that he can point it out? We have no idea how to handle Joshua, you know. He smokes pot all day in that ridiculous boarding school of his. He thinks he hates us. Perhaps we could try to do something psychedelic? Can you imagine the expressions of those brutish housepainters if we asked them to do paisley and glitter?
Monsieur, êtes-vous certain? Que dirait Madame?
But seriously, there is no solution.”

“What about an Indian bedspread from that shop by the Luxembourg and some groovy pillows?”

His eyes moistened. He leaned deeper into Portia’s bed. “That just might work.”

“Maybe you could do the moldings dark, like magenta or something?”

“You think? You think magenta would give the right message? Lydia thought maybe even black. A touch of black. Not too much. But magenta? Katie, we rely on you. What do you think? Honestly?”

So they
had
been discussing Joshua’s room.

“Magenta or black? Let’s concentrate for a minute,” he said.

But I couldn’t concentrate. Or at least not on colors for the bedrooms of other children. Because what all this desperate painting and nest-feathering really meant was that Joshua and Portia would be here for Thanksgiving in less than two weeks.

twent
y
-three

“I don’t buy this, Katie. You
have
to be able to explain what’s wrong.”

“Nothing’s wrong. Bastien is perfectly nice. He might be fun to kiss at some point, but I’m just not attracted.”

“But he has all the elements for a Parisian fling! He’s good-looking, he’s nice, he’s festive, he even plays the piano, and he’s a count with a château and everything! Don’t you want to check out the château? In champagne country? Or the giant house in Deauville? What a hoot is that?
And
he doesn’t take the whole
noblesse
thing too seriously or call his parents
‘vous’
or anything absurd. He treats it as sort of a lark.”

“Well, he can afford to laugh.”

“You’ve said that before, and you know what it makes me think? It makes me think there’s some other boy who
can’t
afford to laugh, and I can’t believe you’re keeping it from me.
C’est pas sympa, ma belle!”

I fiddled with a pair of vivid pink underpants drying on a string. There were two pink pairs, two skin-colored, a black, and a lime green bra that I loved, all clothespinned in front of my electric space heater.

“You’re hurting my feelings,” said Christie.

“You swear you won’t tell anyone?”

“Who would I tell?”

“Just promise.”

“Okay.”

I looked around my garret. There was no spot anyone could possibly be hiding to listen in. Besides, no one was interested in this place. When I gave Lydia my monthly rent envelope (cash, please), she barely acknowledged it because we didn’t need to speak of such things. I simply appeared downstairs every morning. My room was unmentioned, left entirely to me. I had decorated it with scraps from my recent past, tacked up postcards of waterlilies and of a sculpture of a car that looked like a monkey from the Picasso Museum and a Polaroid of
la bande
splashing in the tiled pool at Les Bains Douches
in which I looked flushed and happy
.

Since I had no closet, virtually all of my clothes were on display on plank and cinder-block shelves or hanging on the metal bar. I had about a dozen books and a box of oatmeal by the pan on my burner, a couple of bananas, some raisins, some tea. With a glance, I could take stock. Only the old dresser held my dubious lot of treasure. It was safe to talk here.

“I’ll tell you everything,” I said, “but I need to ask a favor first. If I go away one of these weekends and Lydia and Clarence are out of town, can you walk Orlando for me?”

“Of course. Are you kidding? For a look inside that apartment? Now, come on, who is it?” She folded herself into a locust on my futon. I had splurged on one of the Indian bedspreads I had told Clarence about for Joshua. It was embroidered with elephants and chaotic swirls of tiny mirrors that spiraled from Christie’s lanky body.

“I’ve told you the Schells have kids, right? Well, when I first got here, their daughter—her name is Portia and I’ve never met her, just talked on the phone and she sounds horrible—her boyfriend, Olivier, was staying in the apartment because he was traveling around Europe for the last time before he started an intense banking job and wouldn’t be truly free again for years. And he was going to show me the alarm and the washing machine and the way up to my room, and we sort of fell in love, but obviously couldn’t fall openly in love, and then he came back to Paris one more time and we saw each other again and he told me he was leaving her.”

“Did you sleep with him?”

“Yep.”

“Oh my God.”

“It’s not like that. It’s not some scandal. We have this amazing connection. We’ve been planning to meet somewhere for a weekend. Not in Paris. Paris would be too dangerous. Portia is really upset about the breakup apparently. But maybe London.”

“Honey, you barely know him. From what you’re saying, you have a couple of nights’ worth of memories. Am I wrong?”

“Great memories.”

“Do you really believe you’re in love?”

“Um, yeah. I mean, sometimes I worry in the short term that the future is muddled and I can’t picture how it will all end. Things work out, though. That’s something I know in my bones. Maybe that’s why I can calm all these high-maintenance people down.”

“I doubt that. I think you calm crazy people down because you’re so eager to please that you never make them feel bad.”

“I do please people.” My voice cracked. She had struck a chord. “I guess it makes me seem stupider than I am. But I have this feeling, Christie, that being an idiot isn’t necessarily stupid. I mean I know just enough to know how little I know. Everyone I talk to is smarter than I am. Or at least they are in the moment. I want them to know how smart they are, and I want them to be happy. Does that make any sense?”

“Not much.” She looked at me as into a muddy puddle, and I felt all the emotional murk of my argument, but her voice had grown sympathetic. “I want to hear more about this Olivier. Has he broken up with the daughter-girlfriend yet?”

“Yes. According to Clarence, she’s taking it hard. That’s going to be weird. She’s coming for Thanksgiving and everyone expects me to be nice and cheer her up. I’m so nervous. Once I see her face, I’m going to feel terrible.”

“Wait a second. I have to point something else out to you as a friend, Katie. This all seems pretty incestuous to me. I mean, that’s how it looks from the outside. You’re wanting to be part of this family, but you stole this girl’s boyfriend.”

“I didn’t steal anyone! You can’t steal a person. This is
our
twist of fate.” I blurted. “A person does what a person wants,” I added lamely.

“Up to a point, and then a person becomes an asshole.”

I pushed down the thought that she might be talking about me.
“Olivier’s
not an asshole. He’s disentangling himself from Portia and her family. It may not be easy because she’s so spoiled, but I trust him.”

“You don’t feel guilty?”

Maybe if you are dying to please, I began to think, the things you end up doing for yourself can only turn out devious. But if you do nothing for yourself, then who are you?

“Do you want to know what Portia made me do today?” My voice strained with the effort at conviction. “She called with this skinny efficient voice of hers and told me I had to go to the pharmacy to pick up a prescription for her from some fancy doctor friend of her mother’s. She said that her mother had told her to call me. She always blames it on Lydia. Only Portia made sure I understood that whatever I was getting was for
her
because she ‘really needed it with everything that’s going on.’ But the way she said it wasn’t like she was letting me in at all, more like she’s showing me how important her emotional state is, how I need to drop everything and run to the pharmacy. She thinks she can interrupt my whole day to send me to stand in line for a shitload of Valium and then have the pharmacist tell me to ‘
ne pas en abuser, mademoiselle.
’ I mean, go pick up your own Valium. I’m not the—”

“You
are
the assistant.”

“I’m Lydia’s. I’m Lydia’s research assistant. I don’t need to know about Portia’s meds.”

“So Portia’s an exhibitionist. That doesn’t make you right.”

“Okay, but, if Olivier loved her, he wouldn’t have been spending the summer without her, right? Don’t you think she should have figured that out and taken the hint?”

“Okay. From one perspective, your adventure is all totally normal and hormones in the wind and utterly romantic. But from another perspective, it’s kind of fucked up. I mean, Portia is your boss’s daughter and you work in your boss’s house.”

“I know it sounds fucked up, but I’ve never seen her before in my life. Am I supposed to quit my job because I fell in love? People fall in love all the time.” I was hugging myself into a ball, the larva to her insect.

“You
will
know her, is all I’m saying. There has to be more to her than phone orders. And it won’t be easy. This is heavy, Katie.” Her tone shifted into a more pragmatic register. “If they find out, you’re going to be scapegoated to high hell. They will no longer think you are remotely great. We have to watch your back. Tell me, where is Olivier now?”

•   •   •

Later that afternoon, in a phone booth on the Place St-Sulpice, I called Morgan Stanley collect.

“Morgan!”

The international operator had a collect call from Paris for a Mr. Olivier de Branche Craft.

“Yes, of course, I accept.”

“Hi.”

“Hi. It’s so, so good to hear your voice. Like a ray of sunshine. I miss you.”

“I miss you too. It’s not sunny here at all, though. It’s raining.”

My breath, heavy from my attempt to outrun the storm, was misting up the booth. The shapes of the square outside, the stone slabs and the arches of the doors, the curved green news kiosks, all appeared to float. The passersby swam through my head. But, at the sound of Olivier’s voice, I felt anchored.

“I’d love to see the rain in Paris. Where are you?”

“Near St-Sulpice. By a café, the Café de la Mairie. And it’s pouring and gray and I’m wearing this horrible down jacket that I hate. I look ridiculous.”

“You couldn’t look ridiculous. I have no memory of anything ridiculous about you. I’m sure everyone passing your phone booth is falling madly in love with you and I hate that I’m not there to fend them off.”

I laughed. The people going by were either smoking under umbrellas or running with newspapers over their heads. “So, about the weekend in London? I have someone who could walk the dog. My friend Christie.”

“You have no idea how badly I want to see you, but there’s a chance that if we plan something I’ll get hammered at the office and have to cancel.”

“Well, it’s not like I have a zillion plans. So if you have to push it back, that’s okay.”

He took the kind of deep breath you might begin an acting class with. “You know what? You’re on. Four weekends from now. I’m looking at my calendar. The second weekend in December. You, me, London.”

“So, should I buy a plane ticket?”

“I’ll take care of all that.”

By the time we hung up, the glass of the phone booth was a film over my eyes. No matter where I went from here on out, I would see the world through this film because Olivier and I had a plan. In a month we would be together in London.

I went to the Café de la Mairie and spent a week’s food money on a mushroom omelet and a glass of Burgundy.

twent
y
-four

Suddenly, Claudia was leaving Paris. I came down from my
chambre de bonne
on a bright, cold morning, ready for tea, bread and honey with Clarence and Claudia around our table, but no one was there and the kettle was not on.

I found Claudia in the dining room. With Lydia away, Claudia had been spreading her materials over the big table again. We followed our routine of meals and work and talking into the evening until it was time for me to go upstairs and her to return to her studio in Montparnasse. Most mornings, she appeared in time for breakfast.

Claudia had taught me another couscous recipe, more elaborate than the lamb, with seafood and chicken. Things had become almost as gay as they had been back in September.

But now Claudia was unsmiling. She was sliding her piled notes and her printouts into manila folders, one for each of her Moroccan dissertation dreams, numbered and titled, and layering these folders into a dark red carry-on case. She was rolling up the sweaters and shawls she had strewn around the apartment and burying them in a large duffel bag by the front door.

She said that her thesis committee at Berkeley absolutely had to see her now. There was a problem with her adviser. She was going to have to finish writing in California.

But wasn’t her thesis adviser a cretin? Wasn’t Clarence her real guiding light? Where was Clarence anyway?

“Sleeping, I assume.”

Clarence never slept in.

Well, then perhaps he didn’t feel well, she said. In any case, she hadn’t seen him yet today, but she might have to leave without saying goodbye because her plane took off at noon and she wanted to go by RER train to the airport. Would I walk her to the Métro station at St-Michel?

Of course I would.

I stayed on her manic but methodical trail up and down the hallway, from dining room table to kitchen to living room, back and forth between the suitcases, as though I were trying to follow the logic of one of her dreams. But although I could shadow her movements, even hand her a notebook or a gold-embroidered wrap from the back of a chair, see the progressive layering of her dissertation and colorful clothes as she packed, I could not quite understand why she was leaving. It was clear that she was tired and nervous and that she was performing her own Baroque departure ritual. But it did not make sense. So, I tried asking questions.

“Did something happen in the last few hours? You didn’t know you were leaving last night, did you? You didn’t say anything.”

“Yes, I had some phone calls once I got back to my place.”

“But how can it be such an emergency for you to see your committee right now?”

“There is a deadline for my defense, and I did not understand how important it is. My work may not be accepted if I do not go to Berkeley now. Trust me, I have to find my adviser.” For the first time this morning, she looked directly at me and saw that I was sad. “And I also have my best friend in Berkeley who is very sick, so it is a terrible coincidence. I must see him also.”

“I’m sorry.” I did not know she had a best friend. “Did you have a phone call about that too?”

She stood still. “He has AIDS.”

“I’m so sorry. When did you find out?”

“I have known for a time. But now suddenly he feels very bad and I have to go home anyway for my work. So, the urgency is clear for me.”

Clarence appeared in the dining room in a brown bathrobe. His graying chest hair was matted. He rolled clouded eyes over the table, so alive only yesterday with evidence of Claudia’s work. He squinted at its bare surface. He did not see well without his glasses.

“Good morning,” he said.

We mumbled greetings.

“Cheer up, you two,” he yawned. “This seems like a sudden bloody nuisance for Claudia, but in truth it’s the best thing that could have happened to her, her committee threatening to pull the plug, as they say. She’s basically finished, you know, and her committee knows it. We all do. It’s now a question of doing the conclusion and formalizing some odds and ends. Then, she will have her degree and get on with her life.”

“Yes, I will get on with my life, won’t I, Clarence?” She shoved the last folder into her carry-on. “I have also told Katie about Francesco being sick.”

“Yes, but that’s not the reason you’re going.” His composure slipped. He sounded irritable. “No, the important thing is that you have been given an ultimatum, which is crucial to your career, my dear Claudia.”

“Yes, I suppose that is the true version of events.”

“It’s not a bloody version! It is the thing that is happening. Paris is nothing but procrastination for you. We’ve been over this.”

I had never heard Clarence bicker with Claudia before. Their arguments had always been playful and theoretical. Perhaps he realized this too because he apologized.

“I’m very sorry, you two,” he said. “I’ve had an awful bout with insomnia and I’m afraid I’m going to have to go back to bed. This happens to me from time to time. So, I’m not ‘in my plate today,’ as the frogs say. You’ll have to excuse me. And I can’t find my glasses. Claudia, you haven’t seen my glasses?”

“Why would I have seen them?” Claudia hissed. “Why don’t you look in your own bedroom?”

“Right, I’ll just go lie down now.”

Claudia went to the bathroom.

Instead of going back to bed, Clarence motioned me into the kitchen, put the kettle on, and told me that I should know that Claudia was quite unstable, if brilliant, and that in order for her to have a career, which she richly deserved, she would have to have her energies channeled by forces far stronger than ours. He was not up to the task, and he was not her official adviser. It was crucial that she build the kind of academic alliances she was going to need in the States. We couldn’t care for her forever. No, the time was right. Besides, he was on sabbatical to finish his own book. He had deadlines. He couldn’t afford to be distracted like this anymore.

“Well, I’ll miss her,” I said.

“She’ll miss you too. In fact, I hope you will help her to the Métro station. I would, but I feel awful, and Lydia’s on her way home so I have to pull myself together somehow.”

“Lydia’s coming today?”

“Yes, she called. She’s decided to descend on us early. She needs to start processing all her German photos. The nightmare resumes this evening.” He laughed.

“Oh.” It would be bad form to laugh with him, but I managed half a smile before I changed the subject. “It’s so horrible about Claudia’s friend with AIDS.”

“Oh, that. She’s conflating things, as usual. She has mentioned the sick friend once or twice, but, in all honesty, he may be made-up. Her grasp on reality is hardly firm, you realize. The AIDS story is simply heightening the drama of it all. Claudia is a bit crazy, you know, a bit touched.”

I wanted to shake him. Until this morning, I had assumed Claudia was one of us. But today she was a crazy distraction and we wanted to get rid of her and good riddance. Had she been a burden this whole time? Had Clarence been desperate all the while for her to leave so that he could concentrate? In my fantasy that she was in love with him and perhaps he a little bit with her, had I completely missed the point?

Claudia was out of the bathroom. She was ready to go. She strapped her duffel bag to a set of traveling wheels and slung her carry-on over her shoulder. She and Clarence had a stiff hug by the door.

As she and I set off across the courtyard, Madame Fidelio, clutching an armful of newspapers, watched us from her doorway.

At the top of the stairs of the St-Michel Métro station, Claudia took off her multicolored gloves to open her wallet for a ticket. I kept my hands in my pockets. It was freezing.

“Listen,” she said, quick and conspiratorial. “We finally have a few moments to speak. I am very sorry to leave you so suddenly. And there is something I must tell you. Clarence said to me last night that you are like the beautiful sky, serene over a battle.”

I shook my head. More proof of my role as a sanctioning observer.

“But you are not a placid sky. You cannot let him think that. It is very important that you start expressing your own opinions, giving them a voice. Like when you draw, you make choices, no?”

“Not really. I draw as purely as I can.”

“That’s not true. You make choice after choice, my dear.”

I wanted to tell her she was mistaken, but suddenly I wasn’t sure.

“I know you are very strong,” she went on, “not too high above the world at all. No, Clarence is wrong. He does not understand the way the real world is working.”

She embraced me less warmly than I would have liked and hurried into the station. The wintry air rippled around her disappearance, settling again within seconds.

I looked up at the leafless branches above St-Michel. I had been in Paris nearly three months. It was time to call Jacques and Solange.