Lessons in French (26 page)

fift
y
-two

Christie’s internship at the law firm was over at the end of July. Throughout our time together, this moment had seemed so distant that we had hardly mentioned it to ourselves, and now it was only two weeks until Christie was bound for law school. We were suddenly inhabiting the horizon.

There were two
soirées d’adieu
in the works, one with Étienne and some of his clubbing friends from Queen, one with Bastien and
la bande.

“If this were America,” said Christie, “we would mix them all up and figure the various people could get along, but it would be easier for the different French social classes to mingle with someone from mainland China than to mingle with each other. And the funny thing is that the disdain is mutual. It’s beyond politics of left and right. It’s virulent on both sides. Ah, the French! How are you going to figure them out, Katie, without me around to explain them to you?”

I did not know.

•   •   •

Bastien and I met on the leafy
terrace
of a bar he liked on the Avenue Foch
,
outside the entrance to the Bois de Boulogne
,
to talk about Christie’s party. Afterward, he wanted to take me to the Jardin d’Acclimatation, the children’s amusement park in the
bois,
where he used to go all the time as a child.

“The French,” Christie had told me, “make no distinction between nostalgia and romance. Remember that when I’m gone.”

I told Bastien I felt like a glass of red wine, maybe a Côtes du Rhône, slightly chilled. He said that a woman drinking red wine without food in the afternoon was categorically depressing. People might think I was an alcoholic.
Á la limite,
white wine was much better. Champagne or a light beer or a citron pressé,
a coffee (but no milk in the heat of the day), these were all fine. Now, what did I want?

Water, I wanted water. No bubbles.

Plain water was too sad.

Okay, then, white wine. Any white wine he thought I should have.

I was annoyed at his particularity until I tasted the Montrachet.

Bastien had very specific ideas about Christie’s farewell. We should have drinks
chez lui
then go out to Neuilly,
where there was an outdoor restaurant overlooking the Seine. Then Castel. Then Les Bains. Then coffee and croissants back at his place.

I said this pretty much followed the arc of every night we had ever spent together. “Maybe Christie would like something a bit more
original
for her last night out? Maybe we could go find some jazz in one of the clubs near Les Halles?”

“Les Halles? With all the backpackers?”

“Christie loves live music. Have you even asked her what she wants? It’s her party, you know.”

“Katie, I do not like this attitude. You used to be so much softer. You are changing, Katie. Be careful.”

But I did not want to be careful. I needed to change.

When he asked if I was ready to go to the
bois,
I said the Montrachet
had made me so sleepy and relaxed that I hoped he wouldn’t mind if we did it another time.

“But, Katie, we had a plan. I want to show you the Jardin d’Acclimatation.
It will be charming after the wine.” He weighted the word “charming” with all the tragedy of his parents’ divorce. I melted and agreed.

I had been to this amusement park already, twice. With Cousine Solange, we had come once for Étienne’s birthday and once for mine. We had both turned ten here. We were each allowed to invite two friends, no more, because the Jardin d’Acclimatation
was very expensive and only for special occasions.

Recalling Solange’s descriptions of rare and extravagant pleasures as Bastien fished for two 10-franc coins for our admission to the park, I started to view the
bois
as one giant, barely attainable artichoke. I must be drunker than I realized.

Inside, I asked Bastien for cotton candy, called barbe à papa. I ate it on a small wooden train that did a circuit through the trees outside the jardin,
ending up at a fairy-tale station back at the center of things.

This train ride used to be epic. While Solange knitted on a bench, Étienne and I rode through the forest, pretending we might never come back.

Now the ride was dull, constrained and short.

I had eaten my cotton candy and was still hungry. Right by the train station, there was a guimauve
cart, looped all around with thick strands of fancifully colored marshmallow taffy. I would like a yellow one please. Because I could. Because I no longer had to hold to a seven-franc candy budget.

“
Petite gourmande!”
Bastien seemed delighted at my childlike embrace of the sweets. His enthusiasm sent a wave of affection through me, even though the guimauve had grown a lot sweeter over the years and I could barely stand it.

“Thank you for my nostalgic treat,” I smiled, “but I’m not sure I can finish it.”

“Then throw it away. All the pleasure is in the first few bites anyway.”

Bastien wanted to go on the bumper cars. He remembered his mother watching him drive with such
adorable angoisse maternelle
in her eyes every time someone ran into him that he had a
certaine tendresse
for the experience. So, we got in line for ride coupons. My childhood fear of limited tickets kicked in. Solange had doled them out so carefully. How many would he buy?

When he bought more than we could possibly use so that we wouldn’t have to wait in line again, my gratitude was disproportionate.

He said that, when we left, we would give the leftovers to a child, make his day. “In fact, Katie, why don’t you pick the lucky child? That would make me very happy.”

I moved to throw the yellow guimauve
away, hesitated by the
poubelle
, took one last bite and let go.

Was this rich French boy defiling my childhood?

No, I thought. As I evolved, whole parts of me were dissolving. This felt strange and it was sad. It was probably also normal. In any case, I couldn’t blame Bastien.

After the amusement park, we wandered the sandy paths through the woods. He held my hand too tightly for comfort. When he pressed me against a tree and moved up inside my t-shirt, I asked him gently to stop.

“But why?”

“I love being your friend, Bastien. I’m with someone else, though. I can’t keep kissing you.”

“But,” he did not take his hands away, “you are not the only girl I kiss. You can kiss other boys. Kissing is like eating. There is variety. And I want you, Katie.”

He pushed into me.

I ducked away, scraping my back against the bark.

“I am perplexed.” He frowned.

I almost told him I couldn’t have everything on the menu anymore, but I simply said that he was lovely and I treasured him but that I had made a choice.

He shrugged, took my hand again, and led me out of the woods.

fift
y
-three

In late July, right before Christie was to go, Joshua abruptly left Paris. He said he had something important to do at
home
, a word he invested with a quavering, weirdly patriotic fervor.

Lydia and Clarence did not seem worried. They had been dealing with his antics for years now. Besides, they had gotten him to promise, in a manner of speaking, that he would return to school in the fall to do the second semester of his senior year. After all, he
was
eighteen. As long as his education moved forward at some kind of pace, they were appeased.

“Sure, I’ll go back to school. If I’m around.”

While this answer seemed to satisfy his busy parents, it gave me the creeps. Joshua and I hadn’t spent much time alone together since our walk back from the Île St-Louis, but he would occasionally accompany Orlando and me to the park, always offering to take the leash, for which I was inordinately thankful. The day before he took off, I asked him if he would come along to the Luxembourg.

“How lovely to be invited somewhere,” he said in a stage whisper so that his father, having tea and toast at the kitchen table, could hear.

“Don’t be facetious, young man,” laughed Clarence, with a grateful wink at me.

Once we were outside, I asked him what it was he was planning to do back in the States and why it was so sudden and urgent.

“Hey, it’s nice that you’re worried and all, but I know what I’m about.”

“I realize that, Josh. No offense, but you’re at a weird time in your life. I am too. That’s how I can tell. In my art, the only thing I’ve ever been comfortable with is pitch-perfect imitation, and now I’m trying to find a style, and I keep screwing up.”

“What are you trying to say?” He jerked Orlando’s head out of a flower bed. The dog looked surprised and hurt.

“Okay, I don’t want to invade your space, but can I ask you to write me or call me if you think you might do something self-destructive? I know your parents think your nihilism is just a pose, but sometimes posing can get real. Don’t look at me like that! I’m not calling you a poser. Okay, I’m putting my foot in my mouth. I’m just hoping you’ll get in touch if you start to think about harming yourself because it’s not worth it. Not to prove a point.”

“So why do you put up with all this shit in our house? Is that worth it?”

“I’m betting it is. I’m like some endurance athlete, a long-distance runner. I’m suffering for a cause. I’m learning.”

We both smiled sadly.

“I’m not asking you to take me as a role model,” I continued. “I know I suck as a role model.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“How about this? If I’m thinking of doing anything I think might be dangerous, I’ll get in touch with you, and vice versa?”

“Deal.”

•   •   •

Only days after Josh had gone, it was time to say goodbye to Christie.

But, on the date of Étienne’s going-away for her at Queen, Lydia had a crisis. She realized she left behind several rolls of film in a hotel room in Marseille, where she had gone to shoot a rally for the far-right party of Le Pen, and she said I had to be the one to go get them. These pictures were crucial at the moment because Le Pen was deceiving the French into thinking that immigrants were a plague, and deception and racism were shaping into the themes of the nineties. Hence the vandalism in the Jewish cemeteries. Lydia sensed that it was all interconnected.

“You can take the overnight train, Katherine. Make sure you sleep on your backpack—those night trains are crawling with thieves.”

“Mother,” said Portia, who was on a rare visit to the office, “the least you could do is buy the girl a first-class ticket so she won’t have to be with all those gross people.”

“When Katherine is my age, she can ride first-class, but Katherine’s not soft, are you, dear? A first-class ticket would be an offense to your youth and vigor.”

Portia looked confused. “But, Mother, I’m young and
I
always travel—”

“Enough! The train leaves at nine tonight.”

“But, Lydia,” I stammered in protest, “my close friend is leaving Paris in a couple of days and tonight my cousin is throwing her going-away party. Couldn’t I go tomorrow morning?”

“Katherine, this is the wrong time to assert whatever you are trying to assert lately. My film has to be at the printer’s day after tomorrow. This is a critical moment in the history of French ideas. This is at the heart of your responsibilities. It’s not as though I’m asking you to go to the grocery store or take Orlando for a
stroll.”

I had been about to say that taking the train to Marseille for forgotten film felt more like an errand than an important mission, but I held my tongue. Lydia had finally given me an admission that there was a scale of importance in the tasks she assigned. This was information to store and use. And it was true, the cemetery vandalism was scary and potentially telling in its threat. I should assume my roll as guardian of her Le Pen photos. Besides, there would be another going away party for Christie in a couple of days, the one Bastien and the
bande
were planning.

So, I took the overnight train and I slept on my backpack. I rode a taxi to the hotel, where the film was in an envelope at the front desk, and then took the same cab right back to the train station. In Paris, I delivered the film straight to the printer’s.

Then I went home and got up the nerve to show Lydia a sketchbook of fledgling portraits of my friends, bits of Paris and copies from the Louvre. After looking for a long time, turning pages back and forth, she said that she was impressed with my effort, but that my framing was weak. I hadn’t given it enough thought. And, without framing, you had no sense of time. You weren’t authorial enough. For instance, look at this one of the child touching the Rodin (she recognized the Balzac sculpture from the garden instantly). The kid and the statue were right in the center of the picture, with a pretty border all around. Everything looked good, but there was no sense of anything coming in or out of frame, no evidence of the passing moment. No time stamp. Nothing.

“But, Lydia,” I said, “what if I want the image to be sort of timeless? I’m not going to be a journalist. I’m going to be an artist.”

“You can only achieve that if you’re willing to commit to a certain moment in time. Otherwise it’s bullshit.” She peered again into my Rodin drawing, then flipped to a profile of Étienne. “I need to qualify what I’m saying for you. You don’t need to choose your frames or define your moments, you need to admit that you are doing so. What you have here is a hell of a talent contorted into a surreptitious naiveté. Be bolder.”

“Thank you,” I said.

•   •   •

I was there for Christie’s very last night in Paris, her blowout with
la bande.

Since her flight was at ten the following morning, there was no point in her sleeping, was there? And we should all accompany her through the night. These boys were nothing if not loyal in their festivities.

When Portia asked what I was doing, I didn’t think to lie. She was so depressed that it never occurred to me she would invite herself along. But she said a mindless night out with people she didn’t really know might be just the thing to distract her.

“I’ll check with Christie,” I said, dreading the call. “I have to see what the plans are.”

Sensing the discomfort in my phone voice, Christie sighed and said fine, bring her along. Nothing was going to ruin her good time.

But when Portia and I showed up at Bastien’s apartment for drinks to kick off the evening, Christie pawned her off on Christian, pulled me into the leather couch and grilled me.

“Is it because you feel guilty or because you want to get close to her? I don’t know which is sicker.” She folded her knees into her chest.

“You know I still have to be nice to Portia.”

“There’s a difference between being nice and pretending to be her friend. You’re
still
acting like the boundary is not there.”

“There are no boundaries in that house, no real ones anyway, none that get any respect. I’ve been trying to set them here and there. No luck yet.”

“Oh yes there are. And you’re on your way to the wrong side of one. I’m telling you, the Schells could still all turn on you.”

“But they seem to have completely forgiven me for the whole Claudia debacle.”

“The Claudia debacle might not be over yet.”

“But she’s gone for real now. And I wish she weren’t sometimes. She was totally in the throes of her Clarence obsession, and it could make her a bad friend. But mostly, she saw straight to my heart. I think she cared about me. And Clarence and Lydia still care about me. You know, people do the best they can. So they can’t always control their passions.”

“Katie, I love you. Étienne loves you. Lydia and Clarence and Portia and Joshua do not love you. You are their
domestique.
They have a lot of affection for you, and that’s it. Face it. And you don’t really love them either.”

Although I began to sense that Christie was right about the quality of the Schells’ attachment to me, I wasn’t quite ready to admit that that was all there was. “Okay, I don’t really love Portia. But I do feel for her. I mean, she’s sad. It’s tough being Lydia’s daughter. Perks aside, jokes aside, it’s tough. But look at her over there flirting with Christian. For once, she’s having a good time. Why shouldn’t she have a good time? Why shouldn’t she realize that she’s perfectly capable of fun? After all, she’s been nice
to me.”

“What are you talking about? She makes you nervous and she talks your ear off and she drives you nuts with her clothes. And you hate it when she calls herself a ‘daddy’s girl’—remember you said it was like a slap in the face? And she won’t ride the Métro. Remember all those taxis she’s made you split? And, for Christ’s sake, she’s obsessed with your boyfriend, or you’re obsessed with her boyfriend. It’s still unclear.”

“No, it’s very clear to me that Olivier is with me now.” I looked across the room at Portia, holding an untouched glass of champagne, still porcelain pale in August, in a brand-new short black dress. In another week, she would leave Paris again. For a late-summer internship in New York. Would I miss her at all as the relief sunk in? Or would she fade gracefully back into the role of the fragile daughter? Would she finally disappear?

“Anyway,” I said, “she’s leaving.”

Once Portia was gone, I would go to Versailles. Clarence was on the verge of finishing his book. Lydia was plunging headlong into a new era of reportage. Time was speeding up.

Christie looked bleak for a moment. Then she took herself in hand, deciding to enjoy her last night in Paris, and went to find a boy to fill her glass.

I looked around the living room. I had developed a perverse affection for the beige and the leather, the wall-to-wall carpeting and for the bad blue orchid painting. The first time I had been here, I had floated above it all in indignant sympathy with Olivier, who had to work so hard and could not afford to be in Paris taking this lifestyle for granted, who had nothing but his
chevalière
to symbolize his loss. His image had been so strong in me that there had seemed no point in bothering to create other memories with other boys. And yet I had.

I could not completely recognize the person I had been when Christie first dragged me into this living room. Shades of her were missing now. Or maybe I had had too much champagne, vintage champagne no less, customary in this particular corner of my life. I felt the growing pressure of experience, but no ability to stop time and think.

•   •   •

I headed for the bathroom. Just as I was about to step out into the corridor, I heard Portia’s voice, soft and conspiratorial. “I’m sure Kate had never tasted champagne millésimé
in her life before meeting your group.” I peered through the doorway just long enough to see she was still talking to Christian. “She’s a fast learner, but she’s definitely not one of us.”

Loudly, I cleared my throat and headed straight past them.

•   •   •

At dinner under an awning in Neuilly, Bastien, Christian, Jean-Pierre and a couple of the others stood up and asked for silence.

“Oh God, they’re going to sing,” Christie whispered in my ear.

Sure enough, they had changed the lyrics to a French pop song to memorialize their friend Christie’s time in Paris. The gist of their version was that Christie had almost become one of them, but she still danced
le rock
like a cowgirl. The new refrain was,
“Et Christie danse le rock! Quel choc!”
as they spun each other in and out, then drew imaginary pistols from their impeccable leather belts.

“This is what they all do at weddings. They call it a ‘sketch.’ It always involves changing the words of a song that they all know, and it’s usually terrible.”

I looked over at Portia, who was picking at her appetizer, faintly appalled. Why the hell had I brought her?

“You realize,” Christie said during the applause, “that there were two counts and at least one duke in that group. Not bad for a Yankee upstart like me.”

•   •   •

Portia was trying to go home before we headed to Castel. Knowing she had shown her true colors back in Bastien’s hallway, she could not look me in the eye, and I could tell she wanted nothing more than to get away from me. The boys were trying to talk her into staying.

“What’s going on here?” asked Bastien.

“Portia says she’s too tired to dance,” Christian said.

“Christian”—Bastien was drunk—“take this girl and put her on the back of your motorcycle!”

As Christian led Portia away by the hand, Bastien informed me that my
copine
Portia wasn’t very
marrante,
but that she was
assez classe.

By morning, we were rid of her.

“What does she know about champagne anyway? I’m glad you finally have concrete proof that she’s a bitch. Must be a relief,” Christie said. “You should call Étienne. He was so disappointed when you didn’t show up at
his
goodbye party for me.”