French Lessons

by Ellen Sussman

  But he returns, carrying two glasses of champagne.

  She takes a glass and sips. It’s flat and warm but it tastes wonderful. She sips some more.

  When she looks up at Philippe he leans over and kisses her, a long kiss that seems to include the exchange of champagne from his mouth into hers. It’s creepy and she almost chokes, but then his hand reaches under her shirt and touches her skin. She hasn’t been touched in a long time. Her mind goes silent, and her body goes liquid.

  He picks her up and carries her to the bed. They tumble down-did he trip on a beer can or did she suddenly get too heavy for him?-and they fall in a tangle of limbs on the thin futon. Riley bangs her elbow hard, but Philippe’s kissing her neck and the pain gets lost in the heat coursing through her body. She tears at his clothes, pulling them off. He gets stuck on one of her buttons and she pushes him back, then yanks the shirt off her. He makes a deep animal sound at the sight of her breasts and dives in.

  Philippe slides his hand into her panties and she whimpers.

  Riley bites his neck and he groans.

  Philippe’s finger slips inside her-she’s already wet despite months of thinking she’d gone frigid sometime after Gabi’s birth-and Riley gasps.

  Riley’s hand grabs his cock-when did his pants come off? What’s on the end of his cock?-and he moans.

  Philippe’s finger presses deep inside her, his mouth pulls at her breast, his cock grows in her hand. Riley’s panting but that’s the sound of his heavy breath in her ear and the noise makes her wrap her legs around him, pull him inside her, then pull him out. “Condom,” she says.

  “Quoi?”

  “Whatever,” she says. “Just put one on.”

  Philippe reaches for the side of the futon and of course he has a bowlful of condoms or whatever they’re called here, and in a flash his lovely penis-yes, it’s uncircumcised and it’s a thing of beauty-is swathed in latex and it towers above her, pointing every which way in its wonderful excitement, until it finds its way home.

  Both of them sigh-deep, long, luxurious sighs.

  And then they begin to move together and the song in Riley’s head, the song she’s been humming since childhood, spills out of her, a nursery rhyme, a Russian folk song, something her grandmother taught her mother, something her mother hummed to her while bathing her and dressing her and walking her to school, and while Philippe batters her with his cock, bites her breasts, pulls at her hair, Riley cries. It’s a flood up there, tears spilling down the side of her face, and Philippe washes her face with his tongue, a tongue as wondrous as his penis.

  He doesn’t stop. He’s grunting, making some kind of whoo-whoo-whoo sound. His body is hard, his muscles taut, his movements powerful. Riley watches him, amazed-it’s a feat of athleticism, this kind of sex, it’s a descent into darkness, it’s a wild-animal mating ritual.

  When he comes, he hoots-a cowboy shout, a rodeo ride, this bucking bronco-and then he collapses on top of her, their bodies slick with each other’s sweat.

  So. This is sex.

  Every other sex she has experienced in her life had something to do with love, or the search for love, or the end of love. This is just sex.

  Her mind floods with words again.

  Amazing. For however many minutes that took, Riley had turned off her brain. And now it’s someplace new. She’s thinking about love.

  Not love for Philippe-no! How soon till she can shower, dress, and flee! Not love for The Victor-no! Love is lost, she’s sure of that now. Love cannot be found, no matter how hard one looks in all the nooks and crannies of their foolish, over-furnished apartment. Not love for all the old boyfriends who didn’t know how to have sex like this-Franklin and his too-small penis, Luca and his wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am performance, Terry and his doughboy body, Johnny and his stick-it-in-during-the-middle-of-the-night obsession, Jesse and his terror of the female netherlands.

  She’s thinking about her love for Paris!

  Paris. The city of sex. The city of clandestine affairs. The city of handsome French tutors in pathetic apartments. The city where the pain au chocolat you eat in the morning is only the first erotic taste of the day. The city where you can stop talking long enough to hear the song your mother sang.

  Just in time-just as Riley remembers her mother’s phone call this morning-Philippe turns her over, holds her hands spread open on the bed, pushes her legs apart with his knees, and enters her from behind.

  We are speaking the same language, she thinks.

  And this time the sex is even harder-he bites her shoulder at one point, he pushes so hard inside her that she feels herself opening, breaking up, crumbling, splitting.

  When he comes, he falls beside her on the bed.

  She puts her hand between her legs and makes herself come. She’s almost there, and he’s not going to do anything about it. He watches, his face full of something like wonder.

  When she’s done, she’s crying again. This time the tears are for Vic, the old Vic, the old marriage, the love vanished in thin Parisian air. Riley slides away from Philippe and hobbles to the shower. Sure enough, it’s a pit, a hole, and she doesn’t mind one bit. She washes and cries and washes some more. She hums.

  Philippe is sleeping when she comes out. She finds her clothes and gets dressed. A button has torn off her shirt-it gapes open, exposing her baby belly. Who cares? She’s a sexpot.

  She leaves, pulling the door closed behind her. She doesn’t want to talk to him. Besides, she doesn’t speak the language.

  • • •

  On the way home Riley sees a couple walking down the street, their pigtailed little girl between them, all of them holding hands. To let Riley pass, the dad drops the girl’s hand, like the child’s game London Bridge Is Falling Down. Riley walks past and then looks behind her-sure enough, the little girl skips ahead, untethered, and the parents walk with a gap between them.

  Riley imagines that anything that once held Vic and her together-love, passion, Cole’s hands-has fallen down. She knows that cheating on Vic didn’t kill love. Love was already gasping its last dying breath. Even if Vic has been cheating on her, it’s what he did to fill the space between them.

  She race-walks down the street, her heels clattering on the pavement.

  Twenty minutes later, she is home. Gabi is taking her nap-with a clean diaper-and Cole is playing checkers with the babysitter’s mom. Riley pays the woman twice what she’d normally pay and bows too many times, backing the woman out the door. Cole wraps his arms around Riley’s leg as if she’s been gone for years.

  “Let’s call Nana,” Riley says.

  “Nana!” Cole repeats, rapturously. He loves his grandma.

  It is early morning in Florida-her mother will be reading the paper in the sunroom overlooking the golf course. It is early afternoon in Paris-Riley and Cole sit in the breakfast nook overlooking the courtyard below. A little girl, the concierge’s granddaughter, stands in the middle of the courtyard, her mouth open in a wide O.

  “Open the window,” Riley says. “I think she’s singing.”

  Cole climbs over the chair and slides the window open. It squeaks and the girl looks up at them, caught mid-note. She pauses and the sound of tey-tey-tey hangs in the air. In a quick moment, she’s singing again, in a thin, high voice. It’s a beautiful song and she watches them while she sings.

  “Mom,” Riley says when her mother answers the phone.

  “Don’t start calling me every two minutes, Miss Worry-wart,” her mom says.

  “I just want to talk to you,” Riley says quietly.

  “Is my favorite little man there?”

  “Cole,” Riley says, handing him the phone. “She wants you.”

  “Nana?” Cole says.

  He listens, but he never once takes his eyes off the girl in the courtyard below. He has his grandmother’s voice in one ear and a child’s song in the other ear. His smile spreads across his face.

  “I love you, too,” he says, probably to both of them
.

  He hands Riley the phone.

  “I’m fine,” her mother says right away. “I’ll have the surgery, they’ll take it out.”

  “Chemo,” Riley says. That’s all she can say.

  “So I’ll do chemo. I won’t be the first person in the world.”

  “What does the doctor say?”

  “He says we should all be so tough at sixty-four years old. He says what I already know. I’m a fighter.”

  “How come you didn’t give any of that fight to me?”

  “You got plenty of fight. Who else goes to live on the other side of the world with two babies?”

  Riley looks around the kitchen-it’s all white, as if aliens or nuns live here.

  “You’re the only one I ever talk to.”

  “You don’t talk to your husband?”

  “No, Ma. Not much.”

  “He’s never there. Who takes his bride to the other side of the world and leaves her all alone?”

  “Vic.”

  “Oh, baby.”

  Luckily Cole is staring out the window so he doesn’t see the tears pouring down Riley’s face.

  “I’m coming home,” Riley says.

  “No. Stay where you are and fix your problems. You have two babies. You can’t just go gallivanting across the world every time you have a little fight with your husband.”

  “It’s not a little fight. And it’s not across the world. It’s an ocean. It’s a six-hour flight.” Riley’s mother never left the United States, never jumped on a plane at a moment’s notice, never served a cheese course after dinner.

  “Tell Mr. International Businessman to pay a little attention to his wife. Tell him his mother-in-law said so.”

  “It’s not so easy, Ma.”

  “Nothing’s easy, Riley. No one ever said life is easy. You kids-”

  “Don’t start that.” Riley hates the “you kids” lecture. No one ever served her her life on a silver platter anyway.

  Her mother is quiet again, and it begins to worry Riley. Her mother has never waited for words to come to her. They just spill from her mouth.

  “Your father came home to eat dinner with his family every night of the week,” her mother finally says.

  Riley has heard this chant for years, and though she knows it’s not true-he worked late and she usually ate dinner hours before he came home-she loves the memory of her father’s entrance each evening. At the front door, he’d take off his suit jacket and place it over Riley’s shoulders. He’d perch his hat on her head. She’d smell his aftershave, his sweat, the stuffy air of his accounting office, and she’d feel the weight of him as the jacket pulled on her small shoulders.

  “I miss Dad,” Riley says. It’s not something she ever says to her mother. She remembers the years of her mother’s grief after her father died ten years ago, years when she worried that her mother would suddenly grow old. But then her mother moved to Florida and forged a new life for herself-grief was no match for her. Riley’s own sense of loss became quiet, hidden, as if now, as an adult, she doesn’t have a right to miss her daddy the way she does.

  “I miss him, too,” her mother says. “It’s quiet in an apartment all by yourself. I leave the TV on all day just for the noise.”

  “Who’s taking you for your surgery?” Riley asks.

  She has no idea if her mom has boyfriends, though she seems to have a lot of men in her life. There’s Art, the trainer at the gym who might be gay, but if he isn’t, go get him, Mom! And Stitch, the construction worker who has dinner over a few times a week, even though there isn’t any more work to do at the condo. Last Riley heard, a guy named Al was swimming laps with Mom every morning.

  “Wally,” Mom finally says.

  “Who’s Wally?”

  “You know about Wally.”

  “Never heard his name.”

  “Doesn’t matter. He’s just driving me to the hospital. I’ll be fine.”

  “What doesn’t matter?”

  “Who he is. He’s just a ride.”

  “Does he know he’s just a ride?”

  Philippe is just a ride, she thinks. Why didn’t I listen to my mother years ago?

  “Go take your prince to one of those fancy bakeries. Tell him Nana wants to buy him one of those French pastries you keep talking about.”

  Riley nods and mumbles something and hangs up the phone. Cole is still spellbound by the chanteuse below. Riley looks out the window.

  The girl in the courtyard finishes her song and takes a bow. She blows a kiss and Cole catches it, a trick Nana had taught him six months ago. He is in love, Riley thinks. For the rest of his life, this will be love.

  “Nana wants to buy you a pain au chocolat,” Riley says.

  “How? Nana in Florida.”

  “She told me to buy you one. When Gabi wakes up, we’ll go for a walk, sweetie.”

  “Mama cry,” Cole says, looking at her for the first time.

  “Runny nose,” Riley says. “Gotta catch it.” And she heads for the Kleenex box on the kitchen counter.

  With Gabi in her Snugli and Cole by her side, Riley decides to embark on a quest: to eat the best damn pain au chocolat in all of Paris. At the last expat moms’ group-another miserable experience-everyone swapped favorite parks, favorite children’s clothing stores, favorite child-friendly restaurants, favorite pediatricians, and of course, favorite pâtisseries. Next meeting, Riley imagines herself spreading the word: Best tutor for a midday fuck fest-Philippe!

  She heads toward numéro uno on the pâtisserie list. It has stopped raining and she needs to shake the spooks from her psyche. Somehow between now and late tonight when The Victor crawls into bed, she’s got to figure out what to do with her life.

  Her cell phone rings.

  “Hello?”

  “Riley.”

  “Philippe?” His voice sounds different, as if it’s been dipped in honey.

  “Meet me for a glass of wine.”

  “You’re speaking English.”

  “The French lesson is over.”

  “You speak English. All this time you speak English.”

  “Not so well. But your French is-how you say-it sucks.”

  His accent is not Maurice Chevalier charming but kind of high and whiny. He’s not sexy in English. In fact, he’s Philip in English. She would never fuck a Philip.

  “I’ve got the kids, Philippe. Real life and all of that.”

  “Oh.”

  She thinks of his uncircumcised penis waving in the air above her. She almost runs into a street light but Cole shouts, “Maman!” Weird. On the street Cole calls her Maman. In their apartment he calls her Mama. How does a two-year-old navigate such complicated terrain?

  “Sorry, baby.”

  “No need to be sorry,” Philippe says.

  “I was-”

  “Bring the children. They are filming on the quai. Some famous American actress is here. We can watch, all of us together.”

  One quick fuck-all right, two-and he’s creating a new nuclear family, Riley thinks. Let’s blow that one up before it even hits Code Orange.

  “Listen, Philippe-”

  “T’es belle. T’es magnifique, chérie.”

  “Okay,” Riley says. She shakes her head. In some distant country her old friends scream at her: Pathetic fool! “Where?” she asks.

  He gives her an address and whispers something in French. In a quick moment, he is her sexy lover again.

  But she doesn’t want a sexy lover! She just wants someone to walk next to her in Paris, someone taller than three feet.

  She leads the kids toward the nearest métro, already scrambling in her brain for a way out of this mess.

  Cole used to love the métro, used to pull Riley toward the swirly green gables beckoning them to the underworld of speedy trains and flashy billboards. He watched the people who moved from car to car, making speeches, playing guitar, juggling balls, a wacked-out subterranean circus.

  “What he say, Maman?” he’d ask
when the homeless man would stand at the front of the car and recite some story to the captive audience.

  “I don’t know,” she’d tell him honestly.

  Then, as his French got better, he understood their terrible stories: Ladies and gentlemen. My wife has a broken leg. There is no heat in our apartment. My oldest children are sick from the cold, the youngest one has a rare disease. I can no longer work because my child is at the hospital. Cole would bury his face in Riley’s coat, hiding his tears, worried that the child in the hospital would die and the man would never get work and the poor maman could not walk. “We’ll give the man money,” Riley would say, as if one euro would solve the problems of the world.

  “We have to take the métro,” Riley tells Cole now, urging him down into the underworld of misery and hardship. We have to go see my lover, she won’t say, but she presses her hand on his small back and he’s such a good boy that he heads dutifully down-down-down the stairs and toward her own personal Satan.

  Thankfully there are no speeches on the métro today, just a boy doing some kind of break dancing-though Riley thinks they call it something else now. Already she’s too old for the latest fads. Cole applauds when the boy is done, and Riley fishes out a euro for Cole to put in the boy’s filthy palm.

  Gabi pokes her head out of the Snugli, watching the world. She’s a quiet baby and Riley loves her for it. She loves the weight of the baby pressed against her chest, the smell of her powdery scalp, the tufts of strawberry-blond hair that swirl on her head like a halo.

  They climb the stairs from the métro and for a moment they’re blinded-it has stopped raining again, and the brilliant sun reflects from all the puddles that have gathered in the street. Riley finds her movie-star sunglasses and hides behind them. In Paris the women wear small, dignified glasses, arty things with frames of red, purple, bronze. She won’t give up her oversize tortoise-framed specs. They make her feel like Gwyneth dashing over to Paris for a little shopping expedition.

  She pulls out her plan, the little blue book of maps that she carries like a Bible, and finds the First Arrondissement-then rue de Rivoli, where Philippe awaits. She has never arrived anywhere in Paris without getting lost. The streets are treacherous, evil places that might deliver you to a canal instead of a street corner. She will not ask directions-it’s useless, all that finger-pointing and hand-waving and word-flying.