French Lessons

by Ellen Sussman

  She waited a few minutes, pacing in her room. It was rude to leave her dad alone after he had driven all this way. Simon was probably in the middle of dinner. She’d try him again later.

  She found her dad in the kitchen looking for a vase.

  “Up here,” she told him, and reached above the refrigerator for the tall glass cylinder. “They’re beautiful.” Blue irises. Her mother loved irises. Again Josie tried to remember what day it might be-not Mother’s Day or her father’s birthday. Something made him get in the car and drive an hour and a half to drop in. She didn’t have a clue.

  She took the flowers and placed them in the vase, filled it with water. She set the vase on the windowsill, next to her kitchen table. “Nice,” she said, pleased. “You’ve never brought me flowers.”

  “Someone should spoil you,” he said.

  The phone rang. She leapt at it.

  “Hey, you,” Simon whispered in her ear.

  “Mr. Reed. Thanks for calling me back. I need to talk to you about your son’s college choices. He and I met a few days ago and I promised I’d chat with you.”

  “Well, thank you, Ms. Felton. Very responsible of you.”

  “But my father just dropped in for a visit. Let’s talk about this another time?”

  “You go ahead,” her father insisted. “I can wait.”

  She shook her head. Now there would be no reason to take the phone into the other room. She was caught in her lie.

  “Why don’t we talk about it during the parent-teacher conference tomorrow,” Josie said into the phone. “What time are you coming by? I have it written somewhere-”

  “Can you go home for lunch?” Simon whispered. “I’ll stop by then. Brady and I fly out at three.”

  “Noon it is, then. Thanks very much, Mr. Reed.”

  She hung up the phone.

  “You’re very good at what you do,” her father said. “It seems like it wasn’t very long ago that I might have been having that conversation with one of your teachers.”

  No, Josie thought. You would never have had that conversation.

  She walked over and kissed him again.

  “Thanks for coming, Dad. I’ve missed you.”

  “You could visit once in a while. It wouldn’t kill you.”

  “I have so much work on the weekends.”

  “You bring it with you. I can cook you a dinner once in a while. Where’s that wine? I couldn’t find it.”

  Josie found a bottle of wine in her cupboard and opened it. Her father never would have had an affair. He was such a good husband, such a loyal man. But Simon had told her that he had never imagined that he would slip out the back door and take another woman to bed. “I’m a good man,” he had told her. Had he stopped being a good man when he fell in love with her?

  She poured wine into their glasses. She handed her father a glass and took a sip of hers. An evening with her dad instead of her lover. She wasn’t disappointed. It was a chance to catch her breath.

  “Sit down and let me get this meal together,” she told him.

  He sat at the table and watched her. She put the pasta in the boiling water, then set the small table. She already had the sauce made-a simple tomato sauce with herbs from her garden. She tossed the salad with some vinaigrette.

  “Look at you,” her dad said. “You would have made your mom proud.”

  Josie smiled. She had often thought of that: Mom should see me cook. Mom should see me teach. But when she began her affair with Simon she no longer wished her mother alive to watch over her. When she thought about her mother now, she felt a hot blast of shame.

  “Tell me what’s new, Dad. How’s the store?”

  “Same old,” he said. “Nothing changes anymore. One of these days I’ll sell out and move to Palm Springs.”

  “No you won’t,” Josie said. “You’d leave me?”

  “Maybe you’ll visit more in Palm Springs.”

  “Hey, guess what. I’m going to Paris!”

  The timer rang and she tested the pasta, then poured it into the colander. She heated it with the sauce for a moment while she concocted her lie.

  “You remember Whitney? My friend from college? We’re going together for six days.”

  “You can afford something like that on your teacher’s salary?”

  “Whitney got a great deal. I’m really happy about it. Paris!”

  “Yeah. Good for you, Josie. You bring me back one of those berets the old men wear. I’d look good in one of those.”

  Josie smiled. “You’d look great in one of those.”

  She served them and sat across from her father.

  “You really going to move to Palm Springs?”

  “Who knows? I’m thinking about it. There’s a lady I know who’s got a place down there. She wants me to visit.”

  “A lady?”

  “You never heard of a lady before?”

  “A girlfriend lady?”

  “It’s not impossible.”

  “Dad. That’s great. Since when?”

  “Since never. I said it’s not impossible.”

  “Tell me about the lady.”

  “Somebody I met at bridge. A nice lady.”

  “I’m glad, Dad. I’m really glad.”

  “So what’s wrong with you? Your old man can meet a lady and you can’t bring home a boyfriend?”

  “I’ll bring home a boyfriend, Dad. I promise.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I don’t know. It’s very complicated. There’s a man I like. I don’t know.”

  “What’s not to know?”

  “Like I said, it’s complicated.”

  Her father put his wineglass down on the table. He pushed his chair back and stood up.

  “He’s married,” he said, his voice low.

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “Love isn’t complicated. Married men are complicated.”

  “Forget I said anything.”

  “Your mother would be very upset with you.”

  “Don’t bring her into this.”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “Dad. Sit down.”

  Her father walked into the other room. Josie was furious with herself for saying something-there was no reason to talk about Simon. She got up and followed her father into the living room.

  He was standing by the front door as if considering his escape. He gazed through the window; his face was dark and brooding.

  “This is the day your mother was diagnosed,” he said quietly, as if he weren’t even talking to her. “Eight years ago.”

  “Oh,” Josie said weakly. She stood back, scared that if she went to him, he’d throw open the door and disappear.

  “I went with her to the doctor’s appointment. We thought it was nothing-some swelling in her ankles, a little discomfort, nothing important. But you know how much she hated the doctor.”

  His hands hung limply at his sides. He looked helpless, lost, as if what happened eight years ago happened over and over again.

  “She went in to the appointment and I stayed in the waiting room with all the ladies. Then the nurse came into the room and said, ‘The doctor will meet with you now.’ I knew everything I needed to know right then. I didn’t need him to say a word.”

  “How was Mom?” Josie asked.

  “Quiet. Scared. We sat in front of the doc’s desk in his fancy office and listened to him talk about surgery and chemo and new kinds of treatment. But right then I knew: I had lost her. I lost my world. I lost my life.”

  There were tears running down his face. Josie swiped at her own face with the back of her hand.

  “I’m sorry I was so far away,” she said.

  “Oh, you did what you needed to do. What all kids do. We never blamed you for that.”

  “Come have dinner with me, Dad.”

  “Eight years go by. And there’s still all these feelings I have. Like I can’t gather them up and put them away in a box.”

  Josie walked over to her fathe
r. He turned toward her and let her hold him.

  After a moment he stepped away. “No married men,” he said.

  “Who said anything about a married man?” she told him.

  Nico and Josie take the elevator down from the top of the Eiffel Tower.

  “Let’s walk along the Seine,” Nico says.

  “This is the first day I have spent back in the world,” Josie tells him as they head toward the river. First they walk along the wide boulevard at the side of the road; below them, to their left, is the Seine and across it, the Grand Palais. Farther up is the Louvre. Then a stairwell takes them to a lower path, one that brushes the river and protects them from the street traffic and the mad crush of pedestrians.

  “You have been hiding?”

  “Hiding?” Josie says, considering the word. “No, there’s no place to hide. I try the bed, with the covers pulled high, but even then, it finds me and knocks me out.”

  “Sadness?”

  “I wish it were sadness. That seems kinder than what I feel now. It’s a gut punch now. It’s a wallop of grief.”

  “When your mother died…?” Nico lets the question trail off. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m asking too many questions.”

  “You are,” Josie says. But she slides her hand around his arm and walks at his side with their arms linked together.

  They’re quiet for a while. The clouds have darkened the sky and they hear thunder far off in the distance.

  “When my mother died,” Josie says, “I remember thinking I was no longer a child. It all ended at once. I had just graduated from college, I was thousands of miles from home, and then she was gone. I floated for a while-it’s so different. This grief has me crawling on the earth; that time I was cut loose and I couldn’t ground myself. I had a lot of sex. Isn’t that odd? I slept with every boy I knew-old friends, new friends, passing acquaintances. I guess I was trying to feel something. Now I feel too much.”

  “What happened?”

  Josie looks at him, puzzled. “Oh, not much. I spent a year or two like that. And then I missed my father. All at once. I applied for every teaching job within a hundred miles of home. And I ended up in Marin. I never told him I came home to be with him.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because once I got there, I rarely saw him.”

  Josie thought of her dad’s last visit. They never talked about Simon again. They ate pasta and salad, they drank their wine in silence. After a while, he told a long story about two boys who tried to rob the grocery store but they got in a fight in the middle of the robbery. One boy punched the other, and they chased each other out of the store. Josie told her dad to sell the place; maybe Palm Springs was a good idea. It was so simple, sitting and sharing dinner with her father. When he got up to leave she said, “I’ll come down next weekend.” His face lit up.

  And then Simon died. She called her father and told him she was sick in bed and couldn’t travel.

  “I’m tired of talking,” Josie says to Nico, but she keeps her arm tucked around his. “Tell me about the woman you love. The other tutor.”

  “Did I mention her?”

  “You did. You sleep with her but not with her boyfriend.”

  “Hmm. I must have had too much to drink at lunch.”

  “What is her name?”

  “Chantal.”

  “A pretty name.”

  “A pretty woman. I only slept with her once. Though she’s in my mind many nights when I go to bed.”

  “We imagine love so easily.”

  “Yes. That is the simple part.”

  “Does she love you?”

  “She has a boyfriend, remember.”

  “Does she love her boyfriend?”

  “I can’t imagine. But then I don’t understand women very well. He has a reputation of sorts. He’s been known to sleep with his students.”

  “Not you,” Josie says, smiling. “You wouldn’t do a thing like that.”

  “I would not get so lucky,” Nico says.

  “But you were lucky enough to sleep with his girlfriend.”

  “Yes. Last week we all went out for a few drinks after work.”

  “You’ll do that tonight?”

  “Tonight I’m taking a train to Provence.”

  “Of course.”

  A bateau-mouche glides by on the river and they hear the loudspeaker barking out indecipherable words. They both turn to look. The tourists all seem to be looking at them: a couple strolling along the Seine. It should have been Simon, she thinks. She takes her hand away from Nico’s elbow and tucks her hands in her pockets.

  “That night…” she says, prompting him. The boat passes by and they continue walking.

  “That night Philippe was flirting with a girl at the café. She was sitting at a table nearby, with her dog at her feet, and he kept walking over and petting the dog. Finally he invited the girl to join us. For me, he said. So I wouldn’t be so lonely. The girl and her dog moved to our table. I knew that Chantal was unhappy with Philippe; she is often unhappy with him. But she usually goes home with him at the end of each evening. I don’t understand her.”

  “But you love her.”

  “Oh, I don’t know if I love her. She’s beautiful in a very serious way. Not like you.”

  “I’m beautiful in a silly way.”

  “Not at all. Even now, you have something so alive in you.”

  “Even now.”

  “You will come through this.”

  “You’re very kind. And you’re off the subject. Chantal.”

  “Yes,” Nico says. “Chantal was angry. She doesn’t show her emotions very easily. But I watch her face and I see how it changes.”

  “I like you, Nico.”

  He stops walking and looks at Josie.

  “No kissing,” she says. “Keep walking and keep talking.”

  “Chantal doesn’t like dogs. The girl’s little dog climbed up on Philippe’s lap and sat there looking very smug.”

  “And the girl?”

  “She was loud. She told a bawdy story about getting a lap dance from a stripper in a club the night before. Philippe asked her if she likes girls, and she said she likes girls and boys and foreigners. She especially likes foreigners.”

  “Charming.”

  “Chantal asked me to walk her home. Philippe was supposed to say no, that he would take her. Philippe was too busy having his fingers licked by the awful dog.”

  “You walked her home.”

  “I walked her right into bed. It was revenge sex. But when we were done Chantal asked me not to tell Philippe.”

  “So why did she sleep with you?”

  “To prove that she didn’t care about the girl and her dog.”

  “Does she know that you love her?”

  “No-yes. I don’t know what I feel. How could she know what I feel?”

  “Sometimes women are better at this than men.”

  “True,” Nico says. “If I meet her for a drink tonight she’ll tell me if I love her. But if I go with you to Provence, I’ll never know.”

  “You deserve love,” Josie tells him.

  Nico looks at her and she sees that his face is open with hope.

  “Look,” Josie says, pointing ahead. “The film shoot that the hairstylist told us about.”

  They can see a mass of people ahead, spread across both sides of the river. On the Pont des Arts, an iron pedestrian bridge that crosses the Seine from the Institut Français on the Left Bank to the Louvre on the Right Bank, there are cameras and lights and a couple of tents set up at the far side.

  “Let’s go watch,” Josie tells him, her voice excited.

  “Why is everyone so starstruck?” Nico asks, holding back.

  Josie takes his hand and pulls him forward. “Oh, come on. We need our movie stars. We need the big screen.”

  “Why? Why is that any more important than this? Because it has bright lights and cameras?”

  “Because it’s bigger than we are. We disappea
r. This day? Tomorrow it’s gone. But that-that might be a day on the Seine that happens over and over for a hundred years.”

  After the funeral-with the two matching caskets-after Josie left the hundreds of students and parents and friends and relatives and drove herself home, she lowered the shades in her cottage and crawled into bed. She took a sleeping pill and sometime in the middle of a dreamless sleep, the phone rang.

  Before she thought better, she reached over to her bedside table and answered it.

  “You okay?” It was Whitney again. After months of silence, Whitney was back. The married boyfriend was gone.

  “I can’t talk, Whitney. I’m sleeping.”

  “Don’t talk. Listen.”

  “I don’t want to listen.”

  “This is for the better-”

  “Fuck off, Whitney.”

  “I don’t mean his death. That’s tragic. And his son. I can’t believe it.”

  Josie hung up the phone. Her mouth was dry and there was no water left in the glass by her bed. She pushed herself up and out of bed. She was sweaty from sleeping under too many covers. She threw off her clothes and when she glanced in the mirror she saw her body, the body that Simon made love to over and over again. She turned away, found fresh pajamas, and covered herself in them.

  She shuffled to the kitchen and poured a glass of water.

  The window was filled with late-evening light and her father’s blue irises. She had forgotten to move them and lower the shade. She dropped into the seat and gazed at the flowers. Then behind them, through the window, she saw a deer. It looked at her and tilted its head to one side. Then it turned away, and in one graceful leap, it crossed the creek and disappeared into the woods.

  I want to leave, Josie thought. I want to flee.

  She walked to the phone and picked it up. She called her boss, the head of the school, at her home.

  “Did you go to the funeral?” Stella asked. “There were so many people there. I didn’t see you.”

  “I was there,” Josie said.

  “That poor woman,” Stella muttered.

  “Listen,” Josie said. “This might be bad timing. But I wanted to tell you that I won’t be back next year.”

  “Let’s talk about this on Monday, Josie.”

  “I have to do it now. I’ll finish up classes. But that’s it.”