French Lessons

by Ellen Sussman

  By the time they leave the market, they are both carrying plastic bags on their arms, as if they had set out on a shopping spree rather than a French lesson. Chantal tucks a baguette into her tote bag. They have not spoken about lunch, but Jeremy imagines a pique-nique in one of the hidden parks they have passed on their many walks.

  They turn down a side street-a kind of medieval pedestrian alley-and in an instant the noise of the market dissipates. They are quiet for a moment and then Chantal tells him that they will walk to the Jardin des Plantes, where there is a museum of natural history. She thinks he will find it interesting.

  “Yes, I’m sure I will,” he says, pleased with the idea.

  On their second day together they walked through a neighborhood filled with antiques stores so that Chantal could teach him the language of furniture and jewelry and art. When she saw that he paid close attention to the kinds of wood in the best of the period furniture, she arranged for the two of them to speak with a man who restores antiques. They stood in the charming clutter of the old man’s atelier, with the man’s low, steady voice in his ear and the odors of the wood and solvents and Chantal’s fragrant perfume in his nose. The late-afternoon light filtered through the small, high windows of the shop, and Jeremy thought: I’m happy here. This is where I belong.

  What a strange thought for him to have. He has never wanted to live abroad.

  He has lived in California all his life and only began to travel when he met Dana eleven years ago. He’s a homebody; he wants his dog and his house projects and his books and his chair by the fire. He and Dana live in Santa Monica Canyon, and he only joins her for Hollywood events when she insists, which luckily she rarely does. He owns a couple of suits but lives in his work clothes. When he spends days on a project out of the house-restoring something that can’t be transported to his shop-he feels unsettled, as if he has stepped out of his skin. He can’t wait to get home in the evenings. So why should he now feel like he belongs in a foreign city?

  He thinks about what has happened in this week that he’s spent with Chantal. He has looked at Paris with new eyes. It’s not only his view of his surroundings that has grown sharper, more vivid. He feels different in his own skin. He’s someone else when he speaks French-someone more intriguing, more mysterious. It’s invigorating, as if he is capable of anything in this new place.

  He could take a woman’s hand and lead her onto the dance floor.

  “While we walk to the museum,” Chantal says, “tell me about your stepdaughter.”

  Jeremy wishes for a moment that they could walk in silence. But that’s absurd-this is a French lesson, after all.

  He likes having Chantal next to him, her tall, slim body such a surprise to him after years of walking with Dana, who is petite and compact, a kind of miniature woman who seems to be in motion even when she is standing still. He shouldn’t compare his wife with his French tutor-it’s not as if he’s dating this young woman-but he’s become unaccustomed to the attentions of a woman. She’s paid, he reminds himself. His wife is paying her to be with him. The thought turns his mood sour in a quick second.

  “Lindy is my wife’s daughter,” Jeremy says. “I came into her life when she was nine.”

  “And you are close,” Chantal says. “I can see something in your face when you speak of her.”

  “I love her,” he says, simply. It is true. He had not wanted children, and when Dana told him she had a child he had briefly considered ending the relationship. He was thirty-five when they met and every woman he dated wanted to have a baby-immediately-regardless of love or compatibility. Dana told him that she didn’t want another child, but that she hoped he would want this ready-made family. Lindy was a child-sized version of her mother, the same kind of radiance, the same kind of charm. He was doubly smitten.

  And over the years he learned to be a father to the girl. Her own father was a portfolio manager, specializing in international real estate-he was always in Singapore, Tokyo, Sydney. Lindy had a room full of souvenirs but no picture of her father on her bureau. Instead she framed one photo of the three of them taken in Costa Rica four or five years ago. They are rafting the wild Pacuare River, bundled in orange life vests, the thick green jungle surrounding them. Dana is in the front of the raft, her eyes open wide with astonishment that some drop in the river is about to claim them, and behind her, sixteen-year-old Lindy leans into Jeremy, both of them smiling with pure delight.

  Jeremy tells Chantal about Lindy’s recent rebellion-when she dropped out of college she disappeared for a while, sending her mother into a fury. Jeremy received an email from Lindy saying “I’m safe. I need to do this. Tell Mom not to get too wigged out. I love you.” Jeremy can’t translate “wigged out,” so he says the words in English and Chantal seems to understand. Funny. He doesn’t even know if his tutor speaks English.

  “I think she needs to find her own path,” Jeremy says. “Her mother is very successful. I think that makes it hard for her to know how to define herself.”

  “Does she want to be an actress too?” Chantal asks.

  “Yes,” Jeremy says. “I can’t tell her not to try.”

  “Is she talented?”

  Jeremy nods. For a moment he thinks ahead of himself, in a rush of translated words that bump into one another. “I don’t know the word in French. She has talent but she doesn’t have the aggression-no, the spirit-I can’t explain it.” Aggression, he thinks. What an ugly word for what drives his wife. Drive, that’s it. But he’s too bewildered to try to explain himself.

  “She’s only twenty,” Chantal says. “Most of us do not have direction at that age.”

  “How old are you?” Jeremy asks. The minute he says it, he wants to take it back. It sounds like they’re on some kind of date.

  “Twenty-eight,” Chantal says, unruffled. “And still searching for my own direction.”

  “I always knew what I wanted,” Jeremy tells her. “I wanted to work with wood even as a child. I had a first job out of college with a contractor. But I didn’t want to build new things. I learned that very quickly. I’m drawn to old things, broken things. I take great pleasure in bringing them back to their original beauty.”

  Chantal smiles at him. “I am not surprised,” she says.

  “And you?” Jeremy asks. “What are you drawn to?”

  Chantal doesn’t answer for a moment. Finally, she shrugs. “Language. Words. No, not teaching. Perhaps one day I’ll write something.”

  “Poetry?”

  She shakes her head. “I tell stories to my nephew when I visit him. About a dog who speaks many languages. It’s not very poetic. But it’s a good story.”

  “Children’s books.”

  Chantal shrugs. “I’m just dreaming.”

  “You should. We all need to have our dreams.”

  “For now, I pay the bills.”

  Jeremy winces. He’s paying her bills. A rude reminder that this is not a date. Is he so out of practice that he can no longer tell when a woman might be interested in him? Before he met Dana he knew that he could win a woman if he wanted to-he simply paid attention. And he was good-looking. Now, ten years later, he assumes he is still good-looking, even if his hair is peppered with gray and his body is thicker. Women still glance in his direction, and sometimes try to charm him. He has never responded to any of those flirtations-he has fallen into a life he never expected, with a woman and child he loves.

  Nothing has changed, he tells himself. It’s the week in Paris that has so disoriented him. It’s the fight with Dana last night-a rare fight-that has him on edge.

  They had walked through Paris at two in the morning, passing up the offer of a ride from Pascale, the director. “We’ll walk,” Dana shouted to her crowd of admirers from across the street. “I want to be alone with my handsome man. Now all of you go away!”

  After a block or two, she took Jeremy’s arm and leaned into him.

  “This is what I want,” she said. “You.”

  “The
n why do you fill our lives with everyone else?” he asked.

  “That’s work, my love. You know that.” Her voice was sleepy and drunk; she pressed herself against him.

  “I shouldn’t come on these film shoots,” Jeremy said. “I feel like I lose you every time.”

  “You’ve never said that before.”

  “We want such different things.”

  “No, we don’t. We both want this.”

  She was right. He knew that whenever they were alone together, whenever their bodies found each other in bed, whenever they sat across from each other at the small table in their garden in the canyon and shared a bottle of wine. But at the restaurant earlier that evening, Jeremy had felt as if he’d married a movie star. He wanted Dana, not the star attraction.

  “I have a blister on my heel,” Dana said, reaching down and rubbing her ankle. “I can’t walk in these damn things.”

  “Let’s find a cab.”

  “No, let’s walk. I drank too much. We can walk along the quai. Paris-Plage is set up for the summer. We’ll walk on the boardwalk. We’ll build a sand castle. We’ll pretend we’re at the beach.”

  “It’s a long walk. You’ll kill your feet.”

  “I don’t care. Tomorrow I’ll have a hangover and broken feet. Tonight I’ll have my head on your shoulder.”

  Jeremy wrapped his arm around her.

  “Don’t get tired of me,” she said quietly.

  “I’m tired of the noise,” he said.

  “What noise?” She stopped and pulled away from him. Her face hardened and she pulled off her shoe, hopped on one foot, bending the back of the shoe.

  “You’ll ruin the shoe.”

  “What noise? What are you talking about?”

  “I need quiet. Your life is too noisy.”

  She threw the shoe at him. He wanted to laugh-she looked small and furious-and he caught the shoe as if catching a grenade. He tossed it back at her.

  “This happens a few times a year,” she said, her voice too loud in the dark street. A window slammed shut in the apartment beside them. “I shoot a film, get crazy busy, and then I come home and it’s all over and we have our life together. This isn’t my life. It’s my job. You’re my life, goddamn it! What are you talking about?”

  He stared at her, amazed. He imagined her onscreen, those big emotions, those wild eyes, the husky voice. “You don’t have to scream,” he said softly.

  “Yes, I do!” she shouted. She stuffed her foot back in the shoe and stormed off. He followed her.

  Even off the screen, he was married to drama, he thought. He felt weary and angry with himself for starting something out of nothing. He imagined Chantal, somewhere in Paris, reading a book by the window, hearing the angry shouts of a married couple on the street below. She would quietly close the window.

  “There it is,” Chantal says, pointing to the museum up ahead.

  “Bon,” Jeremy says, and they cross the street to the Muséum national d’histoire Naturelle. It’s a renovated old building, partially covered with a bold blue banner announcing all the exhibition halls in the Jardin des Plantes. Apparently, they’re headed to the Grande Galerie de l’évolution. Beyond the museum Jeremy sees long stretches of green lawn and well-tended gardens.

  Inside, a double line of schoolchildren wait to get in. The teachers stand at the ticket booth, arguing with the agent, while the children stand obediently, shuffling their feet, talking quietly to one another.

  “American children would be running all over the place,” Jeremy says. “This is amazing. The teachers don’t even have to scold them.”

  “Oh, we follow so many rules,” Chantal says, “until we have had our fill. By the time we reach twenty we rebel like wild horses on short leads.”

  “And you? Did you rebel?”

  “No,” Chantal says. “Not yet.”

  They both smile, and when she turns around quickly the baguette in her bag smacks Jeremy on his head. The kids burst out laughing and Chantal looks back at Jeremy, her face a sudden pink.

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “I’ll survive,” Jeremy says. “If I have a black eye tomorrow I’ll have to invent a much better story.”

  “Tell your wife I punched you,” Chantal says.

  “Did I give you good reason?”

  “Oh, yes,” she says.

  And then she hurries off to buy tickets. The schoolchildren have filed into the museum ahead of them and she is next in line.

  Jeremy glances at his watch. Ten forty-five. They will have only forty-five minutes before they meet Lindy at the café. He calls Lindy on his cell phone. She doesn’t answer, but he’s connected to her voice mail.

  “Bonjour, chérie,” he says happily. She’ll be impressed. Like her mother, she speaks French with ease. Good private-school training, a summer program in Aix-en-Provence during high school. Jeremy continues with his message in French. “Meet us at the mosque. It’s across from the entrance to the Jardin des Plantes in the Fifth. You can’t miss it.” He had noticed it on his walk here with Chantal. “There’s a tearoom inside. I can’t wait to see you, sweetheart. I peeked in this morning while you were sleeping. I-” He can’t think of how to refer to the bald head. Her new haircut? Her latest rebellion? He coughs and then hangs up as if their connection was lost.

  He didn’t mention the shaved scalp to Dana. She’ll be furious.

  “On y va,” Chantal says. She takes his arm, something she has never done before, and leads him into the grand entrance of the museum.

  The minute they step through the door, Jeremy takes a deep breath. It’s a spectacular space, vast and open, dark yet eerily beckoning. On the ground floor of the central exhibition space he sees the march of animals, life-size, regal and elegant-elephants, giraffes, zebras. He’s awed by their size, their numbers, their beauty. He and Chantal move forward and look up. The four-story space is open in the middle as if the animals need room to breathe.

  Jeremy is distracted by the light touch of Chantal’s hand on his forearm. It’s as if all his energy and attention has rushed, like blood, to this one part of his anatomy. His skin feels warm, and he imagines her hand making an impression on his skin, as if he were made of clay. She is saying something and he hasn’t been listening.

  “I’m sorry,” he says. “What did you say?”

  She looks at him, surprised. Of course, he always pays such close attention.

  “There was a word I didn’t understand,” he says, finding a feeble excuse. “And so I got lost.”

  “I will find you,” Chantal says, smiling. “Perhaps you were lost with the penguins?”

  He looks to the right-there’s a display of penguins staring at him.

  Her hand leaves his arm and she steps toward the magnificent march of the animals. She gestures toward them and names them all, slowly, as if Jeremy is not only lost but a little slow.

  He laughs. “I feel like I belong with the schoolchildren.”

  “You are not well enough behaved,” Chantal says.

  “That’s not about to change now,” he tells her.

  But that’s not true. Jeremy has not behaved badly in years. He has been a perfect partner to Dana since he met her. That first time-a chance meeting-changed him; he knew that by the end of the day, when he told her: “Come home with me.”

  He had been working on a house in Bel Air, restoring a library that had been built in 1901 and neglected for more than a century. The owner of the house had warned him: A film crew was shooting a scene in the house, but the library was off-limits to them. No one told Dana that, and she had wandered in while the director was working on a scene that didn’t include her.

  She had walked around the library quietly, and finally stood beside Jeremy’s ladder, watching him. He was fitting a delicately carved cornice onto the built-in breakfront bookcase. He had replicated the piece from old photos. It had taken weeks to shape, carve, and finish the intricate pierced form from a piece of mahogany.

  He g
lanced at her, nodded, and returned his attention to his work.

  “That’s very beautiful,” she said finally. “Do you live here?”

  “No,” he said. “An actor lives here. Someone with enough money and enough good taste to save this place instead of tearing it down.”

  “You don’t know who the actor is?”

  “I don’t know much about that world,” Jeremy told her.

  He noticed how her smile grew.

  “I’m Dana Hurley,” she said.

  “Jeremy Diamond,” he said, stepping down from the ladder.

  “Would you like a glass of champagne?” she asked. “I can get it for you. Or something to eat?”

  “You’re on the film crew?” he asked.

  “I’m an actress,” she said.

  “Somehow I bet I’m the only man in America who hasn’t heard of you,” he said.

  “Can I hide here with you?” she asked, still smiling.

  “Yes,” he said.

  He set his chisel and wooden mallet aside and wiped his hands. They sat in the two club chairs by the bay windows and talked for a long time.

  “This could be our house,” Dana said at one point.

  “I would build us a much nicer house,” Jeremy told her.

  He discovered in the first weeks after meeting her that he was more than ready to give up short-term relationships and one-night stands. Dana offered so much more than all of those many women he used to date. And then there was something new: real love, responsibility, taking care of someone. Fatherhood-that, too, changed him and made him want nothing else than what he had.

  “What are those?” Jeremy asks Chantal, interrupting his own thoughts. He’ll be the good student again, pointing at some ratty thing nipping at the heels of a graceful deer.

  Chantal offers vocabulary words that he’ll never use. He thinks of his dog at home, a pet sitter taking care of her and promising long walks in the hills. He needs a long walk in the hills. He’s been city-bound too long. These animals remind him that he needs air, space, motion. Everything about this beautiful museum is wrong. The animals are trapped inside.