Lessons in French (19 page)

thirt
y
-ei
g
ht

Clarence did not die. Not even close. After a battery of tests, his diagnosis was a bad case of
la grippe
aggravated by
le stress.
He simply had to wait it out.

By the approach of Christmas, his fever had broken and he was able to accompany Lydia back to New York, leaving me with the problem of the dog if I wanted to go to Deauville with Christie and Bastien, and, more important, to London for New Year’s with Olivier.

Were I going to see my cousins instead, I could have brought Orlando. They had a yard with a chestnut tree and a vegetable garden. They loved to walk and would have been happy to take him along on their
promenades
.

But I had decided that Bastien and Christie needed me, and that the experience of a legendary seaside resort was the sort of thing Dad always dreamed of for me. Besides, the thought of returning to Jacques and Solange for Christmas was frightening. All sorts of fantastical and pathetic hopes might be reborn. It might look like I was opting for the luxurious option because I was turning my back on my roots, but that was not the point, I told myself. The point was that my roots were uncomfortably tight and I needed to pull away.

Nonetheless, I felt guilty. So, I went to Hédiard and spent nearly all the money I had on an assortment of chocolates and exotic pâtes de fruits, which Jacques loved. I wrote my cousins a note to say that the
fêtes
had become busy for me in Paris and that I would see them soon, that I thought of them all the time, that Étienne was doing fine and eating well.

By this time, the Schells were long gone, and I was alone in the Sixth.

I had Lydia’s special Berlin Wall
Paris Match,
with the Brandenburg Gate on the cover, and a copy of Clarence’s best-known book,
Build Me a Ruin: The English
Romantics and Artificial Paradise,
on the trunk I called my coffee table, right next to the picture of me with my own parents.

But I was not spending much time among my things. Lydia preferred me to be in the house with Orlando when the family was away. “You might as well take Portia’s room.”

So I did, although I was careful not to touch her things. I resisted spraying on her perfume or wearing her shawls, even if they were beautiful. “Make yourself at home,” Portia said in a friendly phone call, but I did not want to be a creep.

Christie told me it was too late not to be a creep, that I had already completely screwed Portia over, but I tried to argue that every moment had its weight.

It was December 22. If I was to make it to Deauville by the twenty-fourth, I was going to have to figure out what to do with Orlando, and fast.

Before flying off, Clarence and Lydia had discussed my dilemma, but they hadn’t solved it for me. Clarence had said I should have my trip. Lydia had agreed but didn’t see how it was possible. It wasn’t as though I could take Orlando with me, was it?

No, Orlando might not be welcome.

“What about your family in Orléans? Surely you could take him there?”

“I—I don’t think that would work either.”

“Poor girl is going to have Christmas alone in this apartment. This is absurd. For years, Lydia, I’ve been trying to get you to hire someone to walk the dog in situations like these. I cannot fathom why you don’t do it.”

“This is not New York, Clarence. They don’t have dog-walkers here.”

“How do you know? You’re always making these categorical statements. The critics are right. You’re getting bourgeois and narrow-minded.”

“I’m bourgeois because I won’t hire a dog-walker?”

“All I’m saying is that Katie should go to Deauville or to see her family.”

“Watch it, Clarence. Katherine is my relationship.”

•   •   •

I decided to ask Étienne to help me out.

I called to invite him to go to the Pasolini movie, the one I had seen with Claudia about Jesus, made with the street people as actors. My mind kept returning to its painterly images, and I wanted to know if Étienne would find them as mesmerizing as I did. By way of enticement, I told him the film’s young men were gorgeous.

He accused me of using him for his cinema discount. Because he was
au chômage
, on unemployment, he got a
chômeur
’s
reduction at the movies. But he said that, even if I was exploiting him, he would love to go. Hadn’t Pasolini been killed by young boys in a ritual murder on the beach? He was curious.

Étienne nudged me through the first half. “
C’est chiant
, it’s boring, I’m dying.” But leading into the crucifixion and through the closing shots of stricken faces and the final chorus of the
St. Matthew Passion,
he kept quiet.

Afterward, we walked automatically back to his apartment in the Bastille, but he would not speak to me, except once in a barely controlled voice. “Why did you make me watch that?”

“I don’t know anymore. The first time I saw it, with Claudia, it seemed really important somehow, like this big stage in my development. And I formed these memories that have been haunting me. So I wanted you to see it too, but it fell a bit flat with you there. It didn’t seem as natural anymore. And it was more upsetting.”

We arrived at Étienne’s place. As always, it was immaculate. He used his shoplifted cleaning products aggressively.

In the entry hall was a large junk-shop mirror and a gilt-framed poster of Prince, naked except for a flashing gold cross on his chest and a collage cloak of dried pink rose petals that had taken him
une éternité
to glue on. Usually, he made me stop to admire the even spacing between the petals and the way the cloak cupped beneath Prince’s balls, like
chez Bernini
. But today, we walked right by the poster.

His living room was painted coffee brown, with gold accents.

Side by side, we sank into his satin couch. His eyelashes were still fluttering tragically in a prolonged reaction to the movie. I almost started teasing him: “I mean, what would Mick Jagger say if he could see his ass double acting so prissy?”

But I decided a better diversion would be to admire his latest jewelry, rings and pendants made of hot pink-graffitied Wall chips, arranged in two rows on a low lacquer table. True to his original idea, he had dangled cylinders from circles to suggest moonbeams.

“These are lovely,” I said. “You found a way to do the moonbeams just like you said you would. You know, maybe I should see if Lydia is interested. What graffiti is the pink from? A word or a picture?”

“Picture.”

“Of what?”

“A pink dog.”

“Doing what?”

“Peeing.”

“Peeing on anything in particular?”

“Another dog. A blue one.”

Slowly, I got him talking to me again. I asked him if he was going to see his parents for Christmas.

He didn’t know yet. What was I doing?

Well, I had thought of going to see them myself, but I would go after the new year instead. I was maybe heading to Deauville with the
BCBG
friends.

He looked at me funny. He said he supposed if he were me he wouldn’t want to spend his holidays in a housing development in outer Orléans either. Was I sure there wasn’t a boyfriend involved? Sex?

Not that I knew of yet, I said. I had not told him about Olivier, perhaps because he was so secretive about his own love life, but more likely because I wasn’t fully convinced that he wouldn’t turn on me again. I still couldn’t forget the backward glance over the bicycle as he abandoned me at Versailles. I had to keep something from him.

I said that maybe this Bastien character, who took me out to Lucas Carton for the best meal of my life the other night—by the way, most delicious chocolate soufflé ever—this Bastien might be shaping into a crush. Had Étienne ever been to Lucas Carton? It was a three-star restaurant.

“
Ta gueule
!” Shut up.

Anyway, it didn’t matter about Deauville. I probably couldn’t go because of Orlando.

“Le chien?”

“Oui, le chien.”

“You’re kidding.”

“No, I wish I were.”

“You want me to walk the dog for you?”

“I was going to ask you. But you’re sure you don’t want to go home for Christmas?”

“Yes.”

“Your parents won’t be sad?”

“I already broke their hearts when I said I wasn’t going to be a
fonctionnaire,
remember? They’re over me. They don’t get sad about things like Christmas. They have their own perspectives. They have their shelves of keepsakes and photos and Balzac volumes and pots and pans to rearrange. And their garden to obsess about. And, besides, if I stay to walk your dog, then I will see the chic apartment of Madame Papaye in the Sixième. And I will
flâne
in the Luxembourg with my big dog. Can’t you picture me, shaking my ass up and down the Luxembourg? What a delightful Christmas it will be.
C’est ma fête!”

“Why don’t I take you to the apartment to pick up Orlando? You can look at everything, I swear. You can rifle through every drawer, but you can’t steal anything. Promise? Then you can bring the dog here for a couple of days. He’s very calm.”

“Are you ashamed of me? Of your own flesh and blood?”

“No, I’m ashamed of my concierge. She won’t understand you.”

He narrowed his eyes until the lashes kissed. “And what am I supposed to do about your dog’s hair?” He gestured grandly around the room.

“I’ll lend you our vacuum cleaner.”

“I have a few of my own, thanks.”

“Then it’s settled.
Merci beaucoup.”

“Pas de problème, ma chère.”

There was such generosity in his voice that I thought I could venture another mention of the movie. I wanted to understand why it had upset him. I pulled out my sketchbook, where I had been copying a portion of Caravaggio’s
Death of the Virgin
in the Louvre, the upper torso and head of the laid-out Mary, her fingers draped with a childish poignancy, as though she were passed out rather than dead, and the woman sitting beside her, probably Mary Magdalene, bent over in sadness with her head sunk into her arms and lap. I had spent hours on the folds of their dresses. But I had also thought about the story they told as much as of the shapes they made. And this was a departure for me.

“Don’t you think these could be bodies from the film, sort of rough and heartbreaking? Caravaggio found all of his biblical models in taverns, you know.”

“No, I don’t know. I have never studied your theories. I’m ignorant, remember.”

“Are not.”

“But you are becoming more brave as an artist. You are no longer just drawing the perfect lines. You have stopped refusing to see the emotion. You have let your copy be sad.”

“Thank you.”

“Very sad.” Fingering the corners of my book, he looked like he might cry.

I didn’t want things to degenerate just when I had saved them, for Paris to be depressing, nothing but a city full of cigarette smoke and unaffordable Christmas presents. So, I suggested we go to Le Studio, his favorite restaurant, and he finally smiled.

“Super idée.”

As we were putting on our coats, he took my left hand. With a birdlike tremor, he slid a ring, studded with a roughly-shaped pink rectangle, onto my fourth finger.

“It’s beautiful, Étienne! Thank you!”

“It will help you remember me for a while.”

I found myself fighting back irrational tears as we put on our coats and headed for the Marais. All the way to Le Studio, I glanced proudly at my Berlin Wall ring. I couldn’t wait to show it to Olivier in London.

But if I was going to see Olivier in London, I had to ask Étienne for yet another favor. Christie would be out of town for New Year’s. I would need Étienne to take Orlando again. And I would have to tell him what was going on.

•   •   •

Le Studio
was a Mexican restaurant off the cobblestone courtyard of a ballet school.

From our table in the
vitrine,
we watched the dancers at their bars through windows on the higher floors.

“Je t’invite,”
I said. “I’ll buy you a taco.”

“Merci, ma belle.”

He wanted a margarita. I asked for a glass of Côtes du Rhône.

We each took a chip from a bowl. Above us, two men in sweatpants with bare torsos began to work at the barre.

“Aren’t they beautiful?” sighed Étienne. “Each one is the shadow of possibility. So many, many possibilities.”

I took a deep breath. “Étienne, you’re careful, aren’t you?”

“You need to be more specific, dear cousin.”

“Come on, you know what I mean. You don’t take risks?” I hadn’t known what I was thinking until I began to speak, but now it was alarmingly clear. I had wanted him to see this movie because I needed to know how he comported himself in a dangerous
world.

“You can’t say it, can you?”

“Well if you know what I mean, why are you making me say it? Can’t you just reassure me?”

He took my hand. “I take care of myself, Katie.”

“Promise?”

“I promise I take care of myself.”

We both stared at the dancers for a while.

“Étienne, what are you doing over New Year’s?”

“I do not plan that far into the future. But for you I will. Would you like me to take Madame Papaye’s dog again? I don’t mind. But you have to tell me where you are going and what is happening with you because I know you are hiding very much and it gives me pain.”

“Oh, Étienne!”

The story of Olivier and Portia and Lydia and Clarence came pouring out of me in all its convolution. At some point, he took my hand across the table.

“Ma chère,
” he said when I appeared to be finished, “you’re engaged in an orgy.”

“What do you mean?” Mostly, I didn’t want him to let go of my hand.

But he did let go. And he began to laugh so hard his curls shook.

“It’s not funny, Étienne. Please don’t make fun of me now. Just tell me everything is going to be all right.”