Lessons in French (5 page)

nine

“Dear Kate, So looking forward to seeing you tomorrow.
À bientôt
, Olivier.”

Even though I had no way of getting one to him, I composed several versions of a short answer. Letters were my main means of communication, the phone being so expensive, and it was impossible not to respond to one, even in my imagination.

“I hear you are coming at lunchtime. Perhaps we can grab a tomato tart. Can’t wait to hear about life on the Venice canals.”

“Look forward to seeing you too. Hope you won’t feel too landlocked.”

“Don’t let me forget to take your keys. Clarence made me swear to get them back. By the way, why does he hate you so much?”

“Will be good to have closure tomorrow before you go home to Portia. It’s been nice knowing you.”

“
Mon cher,
I have such trouble not smiling and laughing that I will surely be pleasant when you stop by, but know, even in the fantasy space of my writing, that you abscond with a little piece of my heart.”

I couldn’t sleep. At one point, I sat up and sketched my left hand with devilish accuracy, getting every skin crease, every suggestion of bone, leaving nothing undrawn, with the fantastic idea that I would give it to him as a keepsake and a proof that, despite my ramblings, I had consistency. Then I lay down and spun more lunatic words under my breath. Somehow I made it to morning.

Noon passed. It was almost twelve-thirty. I had looked into the courtyard several times to see the door to the street as shut as a sleeping eye. Twice, I noticed Madame Fidelio peering from her own curtains. Had she also been alerted to Olivier’s arrival? Was she too waiting for his return from Italy and his final farewell? Did she also long for closure?

Roaming the empty apartment, I fingered my precious note.

Again and again, I returned to Portia’s closet, where, beside a neat stack of shoe boxes, I stared at his duffel bag, unzipped, his neatly rolled socks, a swatch of soft gray sweater.

Above the bag hung the three shirts Portia had had me pick up from the
pressing
on the rue de Vaugirard. “You can put them in my closet. You should see a duffel there. Hang them above it.” I had detected a wisp of melancholy in her tone, as if she might somehow intuit how left-out she made me feel, as if she might be human.

With all these possessions here, Olivier couldn’t not show up. I took comfort in the socks, the sweater, the worn leather luggage tag whose writing matched the writing in my hands. Even if it was going to make me feel terrible, I
was
going to see him again.

The doorbell rang. The hallway pulsed as I moved toward the entryway. I opened the door. He had grown a beard, golden and slight. It tickled when he leaned in for the double kiss.

“I’m going to have to shave it off in a couple of days.” He laughed. “And I guess I should probably cut my hair.”

“How was Italy?” I managed.

“Amazing. Are you going to let me in?”

I realized I was frozen in the doorway. I let him pass, followed him into the kitchen.

“Anyone else around?” He cast his eyes about. “Clarence here?”

“No, just me. Would you like something to drink?”

“No thanks, let’s get out of here. Can I take you to lunch?”

“Sure.”

Lunch. It must be okay to get lunch. Lunch was only a moment. Why not enjoy it?

Olivier said he didn’t like to stay in the apartment while Clarence was here so he was in a hotel room in the Marais. Did I know that part of town, the winding old Jewish quarter that was getting so funky? He could show me around if I had time. He was going to be here until Friday.

So not just a few more minutes. Two more days.

He took me to a narrow Italian restaurant called the Cherche-Midi. Our table was so small that our knees almost touched underneath.

We shared a tomato and mozzarella plate. Then I had spaghetti with baby clams and red pepper, which I tried to eat as neatly and prettily as I could.

“It’s such a pleasure,” he sighed, “to be with a woman who actually eats. So many women just play with their food.”

I flushed as the specter of impossibly delicate Portia rose between us, batting pasta around into little piles with a silver fork. I wanted to be her, and I wanted to be the opposite of her.

I took a tiny bite and got a burst of garlic.

“Sensing my discomfort, he changed the subject, “What was your French family like?”

The question caught me off guard.

“They were great. My cousin Solange taught preschool and she was really energetic. And Jacques always made these corny jokes about how everyone in the world was really a Balzac character from
The Human Comedy.
He was a teacher too, a literature teacher in a lycée. And they had this wild son, Étienne, who I had this love-hate relationship with. They were lovely. I mean, they
are
lovely.”

“But you haven’t seen them yet? Not since you’ve been here this time?”

“How did you know?”

He smiled indulgently, tossed back a curl. “I know something about moving on. You’ll look back eventually.”

“There’s something kind of martyr-like about them that makes me sad. Maybe because they are so pure. Solange has these firm, busy arms, always in motion like the kids she taught. And Jacques is quieter, with a dark mustache and a slow smile and an absolute certainty that Balzac was the greatest writer in the history of the world. He knows it’s funny—he’s onto himself—but it does nothing to shake his conviction. They took me in when my dad was sick and made me so much part of the family that I felt kind of guilty for how attached I got to them, disloyal to my own parents.”

“But your own parents sent you away.”

“They had to,” I almost snapped. I stared into the olive oil shining up from my plate. Why had my parents left me in Paris for so long? In a trough between two waves? Learning French? Life had traded me fluency for my father’s last touch. Not the bargain I would have chosen. But, as Mom would say, there you have it. Instead of asking so many questions, go make something of your gifts.

“Sorry,” Olivier said. “You shouldn’t call them until you feel ready.”

No, I wanted to protest. Ready or not, I was going to call them later today.

“Although you may not get around to much of anything,” he continued, “after Lydia gets here. It’s hard to get out of her orbit once you get caught. She and the family can be pretty overwhelming. They can erase everything else.”

He told me that I would surely be conscripted to deliver letters between the offices of husband and wife, as they preferred to speak through third parties.

I replied that while Lydia remained mysterious to me, so different from anyone I had ever dealt with, Clarence was quite knowable despite being so erudite. He never appeared shocked by my ignorance. He often liked what I had to say. And he was available to me.

Olivier warned that Clarence could be devious and that I should be careful.

“You’re wrong there,” I said, refusing to get upset. “But then again he’s wrong about you too.”

“Oh, so he talks about me, does he?” Olivier grinned, suspending a fork full of penne.

“I’m sure it’s complicated,” I tried to sound light and knowing. “I mean, you’re dating his daughter. Fathers and daughters can be close.”

“I’m going to break up with Portia,” he declared, putting down his uneaten bite.

I dropped my fork. The wall between us crumbled to lace. “Why are you telling me this?”

“Why do you think, Kate?”

I thought of Portia’s voice, so taut and wiry, its oblique mentions of Olivier, never by name, making sure his luggage was in order, managing his shirts, having me go to Hédiard for a gift bag of foie gras and several jars of the jam of a green plum impossible to find Stateside. “Reines Claudes, they’re called. It can’t be any other kind of jam. And get goose foie gras, not duck. One bloc with truffles and one without. Make sure they put a bow on the bag. A red bow. The color is important. You can leave it on the dressing table in my room.”

The dressing table.

“Does Portia know you’re breaking up with her?” I asked.

“On some level. She can’t not. But you must have noticed that the truth is not exactly an obstacle in this family. Portia has inherited this sort of sad romantic version of her parents spoiledness. She’s really not a bad kid, and I care about her. But I can’t do it anymore. I can’t take the sense of entitlement, the cluelessness, the assumption that her jet-set intellectual parents make her
someone.
She’s always saying
someone
in italics to indicate all the people she hangs out with by proxy and all the parents at the New York prep school she went to. And I think she thinks I will be
someone
too by virtue of some inherent prestige. It’s all very flattering and pathetic and I want out. Besides,” he smiled, “I’ve met another girl.”

In spite of myself, the idea that I might be that girl washed through me, stunningly warm. I took a sip of water, choked, looked away from him.

“Wait. You’re not responsible for anything,” he said. “Don’t get that guilty wrinkle in your forehead.”

Was he already familiar with my facial expressions? Of course I was guilty. This conversation was wrong. But I was also elated. These were two feelings that should not exist in the same picture, a travesty. I was out of my depth.

He pressed on. “All I meant was, you opened my eyes that day we walked around together. You’re making your own way as your own someone and I’m impressed by that. You’re also very, very pretty. You have eyelashes like tarantula legs. And I’d love to spend a little more time with you before I disappear into the mines.”

The only release I could find was laughter, which he took as encouragement because he made me promise to meet him in the Marais the following evening at seven. There was a tiny horseshoe-shaped bar he liked, called Le Petit Fer à Cheval.

I said I would be there. I refrained from asking why we couldn’t meet tonight. Now that I was on this insane path, I wanted heedlessly to find out where it led. I was scared, and preferred to know the worst rather than be in the dark.

After lunch, he kissed me briefly on the lips.

We walked our separate ways down the rue du Cherche-Midi. I had to get back to my time lines for Lydia. He did not say where he was headed. I turned to look at him a couple of times, his back maneuvering through autumn’s trench-coated crowd, shouldering the duffel into which he had packed the clean shirts and the gifts from Portia, which now seemed pathetic rather than intimidating, her desperate stab at buying his waning affections.

Much to Clarence’s irritation, I had virtually emptied the “petty cash” drawer to pay for these presents. “Portia asked you to do what?! Poor thing . . .”

ten

Moments after I slipped back into the apartment, the phone rang. Clarence handed me the receiver in the kitchen. “A young man for you,” he said.

I was confused. The only young man I knew who had this number was Olivier, and Clarence would surely have recognized Olivier’s voice. I supposed my mother would have given the number to my ex, Peter, if he’d asked, but I couldn’t think what reason he would find to call me long-distance. He had never shown any urgency toward me. Why now? The mere thought of his indifference made me sure that no boy would ever telephone. There must be some mistake.

It was my cousin Étienne. He seemed to feel none of my trepidation about our cruel past. There was a familiarity in his voice that suggested memories on his part that had nothing to do with mine. He sounded as though we had always bantered playfully and were simply taking up where we had left off. He was, it turned out, a very good actor.

“
Alors, c’est chic ta nouvelle adresse.”

“Assez chic, oui.”
My new address was chic enough.

Who was this lady I was working for in such a posh part of town? Was she rich? Did she buy lots of jewelry? Because Étienne was about to start a jewelry line, part precious, part
objets trouvés.

Very postmodern, I said.

Did he actually want to engage with me? Why was I so afraid? I was no longer the little girl he could tease in a Paris that belonged to him.

He sang the word “postmodern” back to me several times before he declared that he would call his jewelry line “PoMo” and thanked me for the inspiration although he wasn’t exactly sure what the term meant (I did not believe him) because he hadn’t gone to college (probably true). He hadn’t even gotten his high school baccalaureate. Had I heard? His parents were devastated. They had always seen him as a
fonctionnaire,
somewhere deep in the postal system or maybe a
prof de gym
. They hoped he would follow them back to his roots in Orléans, build his own little house down the street from theirs. Here he made himself laugh very loud, and I could see his eleven-year-old neck arched way back, his tongue halfway out and shining.

At ten in the morning, he sounded like he was on speed. I understood why Solange and Jacques were worried.

“I’m just home from a big night,
”
he said. “Hey, we should go clubbing together sometime.”

“With pleasure.”

So, he was going to court
me
now. How odd.

“Yes,” he said, “you’ve always been eager to please.”

Was it that simple? I winced.

This was the slender and harsh boy with the pitch-dark lashes who had made it clear that he did not want to know me in the schoolyard, me, the milk-fed American cousin who did not know the
élastique
routines of the other girls and had visible knots in her hair and who studied so hard that his parents never stopped asking why he couldn’t be more like me. They pointed to the big books I read and my promising drawings. He was forced to be polite to me because I was a
pauvre fille,
a poor girl who was losing her father. Didn’t he know how lucky he was, they whispered, not to be abandoned?
Mais elle me barbe
, he said. She bores me.

Did he remember that I had gotten lice and he had called me
dégueulasse
? Did he recall that I would do anything for a chocolate éclair, even slip him the answers to a math test or hold hands for ten seconds with the dirty old man on the bench outside the hardware store while his friends watched? Did he know now that it wasn’t for the éclair but for love of him that I had been willing to prove so brave? I had simply been more mortified by my love than by the base act of accepting a pastry for my favors. Shame is good cover.

Now, though, over this phone eleven years later,
he
wanted to know
me
.

What was I doing this weekend?

He was having
un petit dîner chez lui
on Friday night. Would I come?

Two nights from now. I took a deep breath and asked what I could bring.

He said he loved champagne and that it would be great to see me after all this time. He hoped I was still cute. He gave me an address. The closest Métro was Bastille. And by the way, did the woman I worked for shoot
publicités
?

Absolutely not, I said. She’s not that kind of photographer. Then I told him I loved champagne too, although I’d only had the real kind once or twice. Maybe we would discover some affinities after all.

Once I had seen him, I would call his parents and make a plan to visit them in Orléans.