French Lessons

by Ellen Sussman

  “Shhhh,” Riley says, patting Gabi’s head.

  Philippe shoots her dagger looks; even Cole looks up as if he’s about to belt her for failing to observe this sacred ceremony without the proper decorum. Fuck decorum, Riley thinks. The kid is hungry.

  She slides down along the trunk of the tree until she’s sitting on its roots. She pulls Gabi from the Snugli and quickly unbuttons her blouse. She pulls her bra up and over her breasts and lets the baby latch on for dear life. Ahhh. Now Riley releases her own deep sigh. This is love.

  While Gabi suckles and everyone else watches some stupid-ass scene on the bridge below-between Philippe’s legs Riley can see a naked young woman writhing on the bed, a pompous ass circling the bed as if he’s Elvis Presley incarnate-Riley thinks about love.

  It’s not s-e-x, though s-e-x is a grand substitute for love. It’s this child, this breast, this flow of milk. It’s Cole, watching his first naked woman in his life, only a short time after listening to the love song of a young girl in the courtyard below. It’s her mother in Florida, who has asked her every day if she could come visit, knowing that Riley is unhappy even though Riley never said a word. And in that moment, Riley knows what she has to do. Love doesn’t just sit around watching. Love jumps on a plane and shows up.

  She takes out her cell phone. She clicks her mom’s name and in moments her mother’s voice is in her ear.

  “That’s three times in one day,” her mom says.

  “I’m coming home. I’m your ride. Don’t argue,” Riley says.

  “I’m fine-”

  “Listen,” Riley says. “In a few months you’ll come visit me in Paris. You’ll love it here. I’ll take you to the Eiffel Tower, we’ll ride on a bateau-mouche. I haven’t done any of those things. But right now, I’m coming to Florida.”

  “Why are you whispering?”

  “Because everyone’s watching some film being made. Dana Hurley is in it. Oh, I think I can see her. She’s standing next to a bed on a bridge, and there’s some bare-assed chiquita doing some sex-kitten act on the bed.”

  “Where’s Cole?”

  “Watching. It’s art, Mom.”

  “I don’t understand how you kids raise kids these days.”

  “Yeah, well.”

  “You can’t come rushing home, Riley. You’re married.”

  “I hate it.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  “Not it. Him. Vic.”

  “Oh. Vic.”

  They’re both quiet for a moment. Finally her mother says, “I thought so.”

  “I want something else. I don’t know what.”

  Riley hears something whirring in the background.

  “What’s that noise?”

  “I’m making a smoothie. It’s an anti-cancer smoothie. Think it will work?”

  “Yeah. We’ll make it work.”

  “Thank you, sweetheart,” her mom says, and she’s crying, making gulping sounds that blend with the whirring sounds so that it’s an orchestral event on the other end.

  Riley doesn’t cry. She smiles and lets Gabi suckle and watches Cole gawk. This is love. She’ll go home with her children and take care of her mother who won’t let anyone in the world take care of her. Maybe she’ll even let her mother take care of her.

  Then there’s a roar of thunder, a gasp from the crowd, and the skies open up. Cole steps back and the three of them-she, Gabi, and Cole-huddle together under the canopy of the tree while the rain soaks the bed, the actors, the crowd, Philippe, and Paris in all its glory.

  Jeremy and Chantal

  ***

  ***

  Do I want to kiss my French tutor because I’ve had a fight with my wife, Jeremy thinks, or did I fight with my wife because I suddenly desire my French tutor?

  It’s his last day with Chantal, and all he can think of is his mouth on hers.

  Every other day he thought of conjugations and obscure nouns and colloquial expressions. Now he thinks of the space exposed by her open blouse, that blush of skin, the heat he feels when his eyes dip into the hollow of her neck.

  During last night’s argument, while he and Dana walked along Paris-Plage, too late for the last métro, too drunk for safe conversation, he said, “I need quiet. Your life is too noisy.”

  Did he mean that? Where did that come from? Had four days with Chantal-long, leisurely days of conversation-led to this clamoring in his mind?

  In the middle of sloppy, drunken, angry sex, the kind of sex he and Dana never had, the kind that left them raw and panting, Dana had asked, “Are you leaving me?”

  “No,” he assured her. “No. I love you. I’ll always love you.”

  And now this: Chantal standing in front of him at the entrance of the métro station, her hair slipping out of its barrette so that wavy tendrils trace the lines of her long neck. Her sideways glance at him, as if to say, I know you now. I know something’s up. Her smell. He fell asleep last night imagining the smell of jasmine and green tea, some heady mix that he yearns for as he leans toward Chantal now, kissing her on both cheeks, no handshake today. It’s their last day together. In Paris.

  Maybe it’s Paris that has me acting like a fool, Jeremy thinks. He looks around him and again, in an instant, he has that uncanny feeling that he’s seeing everything for the first time. It’s the surprise of it all, the non-Los Angeles of it, the new light, the old buildings, the discovery of learning a city by walking its streets.

  Immediately he’s hounded by guilt, as if Dana can hear his thoughts. No, his life with her is certainly not bland. It’s not her. It’s Los Angeles. It’s Hollywood. He’d feel this way if he were suddenly transported to the Teton mountains.

  But Chantal would not be standing in front of him in the Teton mountains.

  “Our last day,” Chantal says in French. “Are you ready?”

  There are so many things he can say. No, I am not ready for my French lessons to end. Yes, I am ready for you. No, I am not ready for my life to change. Yes, I am ready for you. No, I am not ready for Lindy, my stepdaughter, who showed up unexpectedly at the apartment last night with a newly shaved head. I am not ready for another night with the insufferable film crew.

  “Qui,” he says. “Je suis prêt.”

  The French tutor smiles her beguiling smile, and Jeremy relaxes for the first time this morning.

  They are standing outside the métro in the Fifth Arrondissement. Each morning they meet at a different métro station. Chantal and Jeremy stroll the streets of Paris while they speak French. Jeremy likes this system and wonders if Chantal always does this with her students or if she invented this program when she first met Jeremy, four days ago, and saw that he was more comfortable while in motion. If only I could have learned while on the move when I was a kid, he thinks. I might have liked a walking school.

  He doesn’t doubt that Chantal would be capable of knowing this about him in a few short hours. In these four days, she has found out that he likes to talk about architecture, about wood, about politics and literature. And so she has steered their conversations as well as their meanderings around Paris, suiting his needs without ever seeming to ask him what he would like to do.

  Yesterday’s brilliant summer sky is gone and clouds have moved in. Chantal carries an umbrella. The air is thick with humidity and rich odors.

  “We will start at the market,” Chantal says in French. “I will introduce you to the language of food.”

  Jeremy had not told Chantal that he loves to cook. He smiles at her and nods, pleased to be at her side.

  “I bought my husband a beautiful French girl for our anniversary,” Dana told their dinner companions last night.

  “Not exactly,” Jeremy added.

  “I wanted him to come with me on this shoot,” Dana explained, leaning conspiratorially toward the men and women at the table, her voice lowered as if sharing a secret. But they were the last patrons at the restaurant. Dana hadn’t finished filming until after ten o’clock. They began their dinner at 10
:30 or so, and it was now almost one in the morning. The waiters lingered at the doorway to the kitchen, anxious to leave. “It’s our tenth anniversary-I wasn’t going to spend it alone in Paris.”

  Dana is never alone. She has fellow actors and directors and agents and fans, so many fans that she is even recognized in this foreign city.

  “I just finished a restoration project in Santa Barbara,” Jeremy said. “I was happy to come along.”

  He cursed himself for feeling the need to remind their dinner companions that he too works, that he does have a life-and an artistic one at that. He doesn’t just follow Dana around from one movie location to the next. But they paid no attention to him. They waited to hear about the beautiful French girl. Jeremy wished he were back at the hotel with Dana, in bed, alone at last.

  “But what could he do all day in Paris while I’m filming?” Dana said to the group. “Well, Pascale gave me the name of a language school and I set him up with a full week of private tutoring. While I’m working he’s learning the language of love with someone named Chantal.”

  She spread the name open like it too was a gift: “Chan-t-a-a-al.”

  “Not quite,” Jeremy said. He’s accustomed to his wife’s stories, the way they grow. By tomorrow night Chantal might be the most beautiful woman in all of France. “We haven’t yet discussed love,” he explained.

  Everyone was charmed.

  “Thank God I trust you the way I do,” Dana added.

  “My stepdaughter would like to meet us for coffee,” Jeremy tells Chantal, in French, as they walk toward the steep hill of rue Mouffetard. Jeremy can see the long line of food stalls ahead; he can hear a man calling out, “Cerises! Melons!” Jeremy can understand Chantal’s French with surprising ease, but he’s lost with heavy accents or rapid-fire patter.

  “How old is your stepdaughter?”

  “She’s twenty,” Jeremy says. “She left me a note this morning. I haven’t even talked to her yet. She arrived sometime in the middle of the night. If you think it would be too difficult-”

  “No, not at all,” Chantal says. “I’d love to meet her.”

  Jeremy glances at Chantal. She is poised, elegant, a proper young Parisian woman. Suddenly he can’t imagine her next to wild Lindy. He hears loud voices ahead and turns his attention to the market. He’s not sure he wants to enter the noise and tumult-for the first time he considers suggesting something other than what Chantal has planned. A quiet street, someplace they can talk without shouting. They might talk about their lives, something they haven’t done all week. Who is this woman? He wants to know her-where she is from, where she lives now, what she wants in her life.

  Why shouldn’t they talk about matters of the heart? In French! He has always known that his French is good, but he’s not one to take risks, to try out unsure sentences on strangers. And he doesn’t like to make a fool of himself. With Chantal his sentences seem to come out fully formed, as if he has been waiting for twenty-five years, since his college French classes, to speak with this woman.

  And of course, whenever they come to Paris, it’s Dana who speaks. She had spent a year at the Sorbonne and fell in love with an Algerian man who returned with her to UCLA, living in her dorm room until her parents found out and disposed of him. Dana even looks French, or maybe it’s the short skirts and black tights she always wears. She urges Jeremy to speak in French when they shop or dine, but he finds that it takes too long to find the right words. Eventually she jumps in and helps him out.

  “Will you buy me a pastry, monsieur?” Chantal asks, and that’s the first stall they come to, a baker’s table, with pastries laid out in delectable rows-croissants, brioches, pains aux amandes, pains au chocolat, éclairs, palmiers.

  “What would you like?” he asks, turning to Chantal. It feels surprisingly intimate, this simple act.

  She looks for a moment and then points.

  “Deux palmiers, s’il vous plaît,” he says to the baker. There is no hesitation in his voice-he doesn’t sound like the tourist who’s unsure if he’s said it right. Usually when he speaks French, his voice is too soft and he is asked to repeat himself. Simple, he thinks. It’s just a question of confidence.

  The baker is a man his own age, too slim to be very interested in his own creations. He eyes Chantal and then smiles at Jeremy. Jeremy needs no translation here.

  He pays for the pastries and turns to Chantal.

  She looks away. Did she see the other man’s appreciative glance? She is suddenly shy with Jeremy.

  “Tell me about the food,” Jeremy says, pointing up the street at the stalls lining the narrow road. “We’ll talk about my stepdaughter later.”

  He feels oddly unfaithful talking about Lindy. She belongs to his life with Dana. And she’s complicated. She dropped out of school, stopped talking to her mother, and pulled Jeremy into her secrets. The fact that she appeared some time in the middle of the night, unannounced, and newly bald, has him worried. He has no idea what to expect from her. Easier to talk about eggplants and olallieberries.

  Jeremy hears music and looks past the baker’s table. How could he have missed the sounds of the accordions? Again he hears the shouts of vendors hawking their fruits and vegetables, and in the mix, the sweet voice of someone singing. There’s too much to hear, too much to see. He focuses his eyes on a small circle of people gathered in a tiny square at the foot of rue Mouffetard. Three men play accordions, a woman stands with a microphone and sings, and in the middle of the circle a couple dances.

  “Let’s go watch,” Jeremy says, and he leads Chantal through the market crowd to the performers. He glances at Chantal while they wrangle for space at the edge of the circle; her eyes are wide, a smile spreads across her face. He feels as if he’s created this Édith Piaf world.

  The dancing couple is elderly-early seventies, he’d guess. And yet they move nimbly, gracefully, keeping perfect time with the music. They’re both tall and slim and look as if they’ve spent a lifetime in each other’s arms, spinning, bending, pulling out and back again. The woman is dressed in a fifties-style dress, with a full skirt that billows while she twirls. She wears shoes with straps that lace around her ankles. The man wears all white-a white cap, white shirt, white slacks, white shoes. He’s dapper and delicate.

  A woman walks the perimeter of the circle, handing out sheets of paper. Jeremy takes one: it’s a song sheet. Already, he hears voices joining in song.

  “Do they do this every day?” he asks Chantal.

  “I’ve never seen it,” she says. “It’s beautiful.”

  Another couple steps out to dance. They’re younger, less talented, but thoroughly pleased with themselves. And a woman with an enormous floppy hat joins the circle to dance on her own, her arms gracefully floating in the air around her, perhaps circling an imaginary partner.

  “Would you like to dance?” Jeremy asks Chantal.

  “I’m a terrible dancer,” she says.

  “That’s impossible.”

  He takes her hand and steps into the circle. He places his hand on the narrow curve of her waist and feels her fingers lightly land on his shoulder. He lifts his other hand, and she curls her fingers around his. She looks up at him with a nervous smile.

  He begins to move her around the small space, listening to the sound of the accordions, testing her response to his gentle pressure on her back. She looks worried, unsure, and glances down at her feet.

  “Look at me,” he says. He knows how to dance-not skillfully, like the man in white. But he knows how to hear the music and move in its rhythm. This is what he does best: not talking, not storytelling or confessions or late-night arguments. He knows how bodies talk to each other.

  He sees Chantal’s worried frown disappear-he lets her spin and sees a smile stretch across her face.

  He imagines her in bed and pulls her closer. The music stops. She steps away.

  “Merci,” she says, but she doesn’t look at him.

  She steps off the makeshift dance fl
oor and into the crowd of spectators.

  He waits a moment before following her. It would be so easy, he thinks, to take her hand and pull her back. One more dance. Give yourself up to the music. Give yourself up to me.

  But he thinks of Dana, of her body under his in bed, of the hunger in her eyes. He feels something stir inside him-desire, need, frustration-whatever it is, he’s in love with his wife. He’s just spending the day with a French tutor. Get back to the lesson, he tells himself.

  He follows Chantal and they wind their way through the crowd. A new song has begun, something about le petit vin blanc. New dancers take the stage. But Chantal’s on the move and soon they’re back on rue Mouffetard, and the noise of the marketplace drowns out the accordions.

  They walk along the row of stalls that line both sides of the narrow street, most covered with colorful awnings, the tables piled high with fresh vegetables, lush fruit, bowls of olives, a profusion of flowers. Chantal discusses the cuts of meat, the varieties of fish, the classifications of cheese. Jeremy asks good questions-he wants to understand why the quality of the cheese is so superior in France, why there are vegetables and fruits he has never seen before, and what does one do with ramp leaves?

  Chantal unbuttons her cardigan sweater-the market is crowded and hot. People bump into them and push them against each other. She is wearing a pale pink blouse. Jeremy realizes that she has never worn any color before. All of her clothing seems to come in shades of gray and black.

  She looks at him; his eyes are on her neck. He looks away quickly.

  “Tell me about olive oil,” he says. In front of them are a dozen bottles of olive oil, and a beefy man urges them to taste one. Jeremy dips a wedge of bread into a small bowl of oil. When he tastes the oil on his tongue he realizes that it is the first thing he has eaten today and he is suddenly ravenous. He tastes all of the different selections of oil, dunking slices of baguette into each bowl, and Chantal laughs at his eager appetite. He then buys two bottles of the best oil, one for Chantal and one that he will take home with him. The taste will always remind him of this odd breakfast with Chantal.