French Lessons

by Ellen Sussman

  But it is far from simple. Jeremy follows her to the table, where she sets down the tray. He sees a bottle of red wine and two glasses, a plate of cheese, a basket of bread, a saucer of olives and cornichons, a bowl of sliced apples and pears. Every item of food looks perfect-or perhaps Jeremy is seeing the food as it should be seen, presented almost as a celebration of itself. The plates and bowls are creamy white ceramic, without design, the napkin in the bread basket is a pale rose color.

  “A feast,” Jeremy says.

  He is extraordinarily hungry. He sits at one of the chairs and offers to pour the wine while Chantal sets out the plates.

  Then she sits across from him and lifts her glass.

  He imagines a toast-last night at dinner there were almost a dozen toasts-to his and Dana’s anniversary, to the film, to France, to someone’s new book of art criticism, to the great director.

  But Chantal simply reaches her glass across the table and clinks it against his. They smile and sip. The wine is delicious.

  “Tell me your love story,” Chantal says.

  “It’s nothing,” Jeremy says. “I’d like to hear about the boat.”

  “First, love,” Chantal insists.

  And so Jeremy begins his story. Or begins again. And this time, his story becomes a fairy tale, an enormous lie. He has never invented stories before.

  “That night I went to the canteen at the camp, the place where we all hung out after the evening activity. She was waiting for me. She wore her hair down for the first time and it covered her back like a blanket. I had never seen such beautiful hair.”

  Chantal looks pleased and so Jeremy continues, his voice deep, the French words spilling from his tongue as if he often sat on a houseboat with a young woman in Paris and fabricated impossible love stories.

  “I was shy-I’m still somewhat shy-but then I was often silent in crowds of children, uneasy about myself in ways that made it hard to be free. With Sarah I felt bold, I felt older and wiser and more handsome than I really was.”

  Chantal laughs and Jeremy takes a sip of the wine.

  “Sarah asked me if I liked her. I told her yes. I told her that I thought she was the prettiest girl in the camp. I said that I wished I were old enough to be her boyfriend. She told me that she didn’t like the older boys, that they were full of themselves. She liked that I was quiet. So many boys talk about themselves all the time, she said.”

  Jeremy realized that he was suddenly one of those boys, talking about himself. And none of the story sounded true-it was ludicrous that an older girl would choose such a boy. But Chantal waited for the story to continue, and Jeremy couldn’t imagine how to back out of his mistake.

  “I asked her if she had ever swum in the lake at night. She said no, that it wasn’t allowed, that she once heard about a girl who went for a night swim and never came back. ‘Let’s go,’ I said. ‘It’s safe. No one will find us.’ ”

  “Brave boy,” Chantal says.

  No, Jeremy wants to shout. I am not that brave boy! I have never been that brave boy.

  “We walked down to the lakeshore. There was a dance that night, so everyone was in the dance hall or the canteen-there was no one else at the beach. And it was so dark we could barely see each other. This is deep in the countryside of New Hampshire, far from any city lights or noise.”

  “Sounds lovely,” Chantal says. She closes her eyes at one point, and Jeremy imagines that she is at the lake with him, standing at the water’s edge, conjuring up the nerve to take off her clothes.

  “I was the first to undress. We walked out to the edge of the dock and I left my clothes in a bundle on the wood planks and then dove in a nervous rush into the water. When I came up for air she was mid-dive, naked, incredibly beautiful. I had never seen a naked girl before.”

  Jeremy stops talking. He hasn’t eaten and somehow his first glass of wine is gone. He has had nothing to eat today but a few scraps of bread with olive oil. Maybe it’s the slow roll of the boat, but he feels off balance.

  “Let the naked girl stop mid-dive,” he says, “but I need some of this cheese.”

  Chantal laughs. “Poor Sarah,” she says. “Exposed like that.”

  “Sarah can wait for the cool splash of the water. I can no longer wait.”

  He reaches for some bread and slices into the Camembert that has run onto the plate. He spreads it onto the bread and fills his mouth with its pungent taste. Chantal takes a slice of pear, a slice of chèvre, lays one on top of the other, and passes it to him.

  “Merci,” he says. The food seems to dissolve in his mouth.

  “Please,” he says. “Tell me your story of first love so I can eat instead of talking.”

  “But this is a French lesson,” Chantal says, smiling at him. She seems to be teasing him, but he’s not sure how. “You are supposed to talk.”

  “Challenge my French with your story. Tell me a very complicated love story.”

  “When you are done,” Chantal says.

  For four days Jeremy has wished he could charm Chantal with stories, but he is not that sort of man. He is a listener, something that always made women respond to him as if he were better than the rest of his species. And now? He’s worse than the worst of them. He’s lying. And he can’t stop himself.

  “She dove in a perfect arc, the moonlight revealing enough of her long, slim body for me to see her small breasts, her slim hips. And then she was in the water and racing toward me. I was treading water, caught in my Peeping Tom stare, and I thought she would swim right at me and pull me under. But she swam past me and kept swimming. I had to chase her and so I did, though of course she was faster and stronger than I.”

  The boat wobbles and Jeremy grasps the table. Chantal laughs.

  “The bateau-mouche,” she explains. “Even in the middle of the night I find myself thinking I’ll tumble from my bed and drown.”

  For the first time, Jeremy considers that below deck is Chantal’s home. There will be a bed in the room. He looks away from her and out toward the river. On the deck of the bateau-mouche tourists wave at them, insistently. And foolishly, Jeremy waves back.

  They think I’m French, he thinks.

  But of course Chantal is not waving. How silly, he thinks. If you live here, you would never wave back.

  I’m behaving like a thirteen-year-old boy, Jeremy thinks.

  “You are swimming for dear life,” Chantal says.

  End the story, Jeremy says to himself. Now.

  “I would never have caught her. She was much too strong. So she must have slowed down for me, kind girl that she was. And when I caught her, somewhere out in the middle of the lake, I didn’t know what to do with her. I was so young. And she was beyond me in every way.”

  “She showed you,” Chantal said.

  “Yes,” Jeremy agreed. “She showed me what to do.”

  They sip their wine. This time Jeremy prepares an apple slice and a piece of Roquefort for Chantal, who takes it gladly and eats it with pleasure. He refills their wine.

  He feels an odd combination of relief-his story is over-and horror, as he is a man who invents himself to impress a young woman. At forty-five! Only a week ago, while lying in their bed in the Santa Monica Canyon, he had traced his fingers over Dana’s body and said, “I know every inch of you.”

  “No surprises?” she had asked. “No chance to discover a scar on my leg, a tattoo on my hip?”

  “I don’t want surprises,” he had said, pulling her closer. “I want just what we have. Nothing more.”

  Dana hadn’t said anything. And for a quick, uncertain moment, Jeremy had thought, Maybe she wants more. She’s a woman of big emotions, a woman who lives life on a grand scale. And then she comes home to me. He felt an ache in his chest. Talk about it, he thought. But as so often happened, words didn’t come-they jammed up against one another somewhere inside him. He did what he knew how to do. He took Dana in his arms and made love to her, covering her small body with his own.

  When t
hey were done, he wrapped his arm around her familiar body and pressed himself against her back. Now he wonders: Was last night’s argument a way of twisting around his own fears? Is this part of his unease these last days in Paris? After ten years of loving Dana, has he lost his faith in their relationship?

  “Tell me the story of your first love,” he says to Chantal, pushing his thoughts away.

  She looks toward the river for a moment and seems almost shy again. Then she busies herself with the cheese and the pears.

  “Or tell me the names of all the plants in your garden,” Jeremy says quickly.

  “You’re kind,” she says. “An escape is offered.”

  “If you’d like. I can’t even remember how we got to the dangerous topic of love.”

  “My fault,” Chantal says, smiling. “The head of the language school would fire me.”

  Jeremy smiles. “I won’t tell.” He wonders if lunch on her houseboat would also be interdit. Of course. The thought pleases him. She’s breaking the rules for him.

  “I fell in love for the first time a year ago,” she says. She stops as if that is the end of her story.

  “No stormy adolescent romances?” Jeremy asks.

  “Plenty of storms. No calm after the storm.”

  Jeremy nods. Yes. He knows what she means. He loved falling in love with Dana, but then, to his great surprise, he found that he enjoyed being in love with her even more. The calm.

  And now? Is he creating a storm out of thin air?

  “I met Philippe at the language school. Every spring there is a party to celebrate the director’s birthday. It’s a silly thing-the director is like a child in many ways. He would like all of us to teach our classes with games and prizes and songs. I’m not very good at that and so he uses me for the private lessons.”

  Jeremy cannot imagine Chantal in front of a class of adults, singing a French ditty and tossing bonbons to the best student. And of course, he can’t imagine himself in such a class. How lucky, he thinks, that we found each other.

  “Philippe was new to the school. He is very handsome-I am not usually drawn to men like him.”

  Men like him. Jeremy has always been told that he is handsome. But because he is shy, or quiet, or less bold than most good-looking men, he has always felt that he has little in common with a ladies’ man, a Romeo.

  “He spoke to me at the end of the party. I had been watching him, of course-every woman had her eyes on Philippe. And then his eyes were on me. He has that ability to make you feel that you’re the only one.”

  She stops and her gaze drifts off-she follows the passing of a tugboat along the river. She looks sad, as if this isn’t a love story at all.

  “I’m sorry,” she says, looking back at him. “Perhaps I shouldn’t have started this.”

  “Go on,” Jeremy says.

  “Enough new vocabulary,” she tells him. “It’s our last day together.”

  She reaches for the wine and refills their glasses. Her story continues with a surer voice now.

  “We left the party and went to a café, had another drink together. He’s a charming man, of course-he knows how to win a woman’s heart. And I suppose I was waiting to give mine away. Twenty-eight years old. I’m a little out of step with my generation.”

  “Except for the hippie commune in the Indian Ocean,” Jeremy says.

  “Oh, that. An aberration. A desperate attempt to be youthful and wild.”

  “Look at you here,” Jeremy says. “This is wild.” He opens his arms to the jardin she has created on the Seine.

  “This is just my refuge.”

  “From what?”

  “From the busyness of the world. I come here to hide.”

  Jeremy thinks of himself in his workshop. He is happiest there, whether he is working on a project for a client or building a new armoire for their home. He likes the smell of sawdust, the sound of a plane trueing the edge of a plank, the steady focus of design. When Dana goes to work she is surrounded by people and words and passions so large that they move others to tears. So what happens at the end of the day? Does she really want what he offers? Why is he suddenly worried about this, after so many years of confident love?

  “Philippe and I dated for a while and I enjoyed his attention. He’s a funny man-I think he truly believes he falls in love with every woman he dates. In fact, I think he’s merely in love with love. It fills him up for a while, makes him think life is grand. And it is grand. He’s very good at love.”

  “But you-you said you fell in love.”

  “One weekend we went to visit his parents in the Loire. They have a weekend home near a grand château, one of those the tourists like to visit. This one offers classical concerts in the summer. They’re lovely, really. Everyone sits on the great lawn under a canopy of stars and the air fills with the music of some wonderful symphony.

  “Philippe took me to one of these concerts. We brought a picnic-not unlike the one we have here.”

  Jeremy feels a pang of proprietary jealousy, as if this might be the only time Chantal had offered such a display of food. Idiot, he thinks.

  “We ate and drank and listened to the music. At one point, in the middle of the concert, Philippe took my hand and gestured for me to follow him. We made our way through the crowds of people while the orchestra played. I started to ask him where we were going, but he put his finger to his lips. He looked positively delighted with himself, so I let him lead me away.

  “We circled behind the château. The building was closed and only the dramatic outdoor lighting was in use-illuminating the turrets, the massive entrance, the balconies, the guard towers on each end. No one lives in the château anymore. It is used for tours and is rented out for weddings and business functions. Perhaps someone lives in the caretaker’s cottage at the entrance, but this evening there was no sign of anyone patrolling the place.

  “Philippe knew of a door in the back-a part of the servants’ quarters-that had a broken padlock. I wondered if he had taken other women here before me, but I pushed the thought away. We sneaked into the château and climbed the many stairs to the master bedroom, guided by Philippe’s flashlight. We stepped over the rope that blocked the entrance to the room and Philippe took me to bed.”

  Chantal is looking at her hands, which rest on the table in front of her. She has long, tapered fingers and pale skin. Jeremy imagines those hands on his face. And then Chantal looks at him, breaking her own trance. Her eyes are bright and wide.

  “I had never done anything so daring in my life. I loved him that night.”

  She stops speaking and shakes her head.

  “Crazy. Imagine if we were caught.”

  “Did you love him or did you love danger?” Jeremy asks.

  Chantal looks puzzled.

  “I’m sorry,” Jeremy says quickly. “It’s none of my business.”

  “It’s a good question,” Chantal says. “I can answer it.” She pauses and sips her wine. “I loved him.”

  “And you still love him?”

  “I don’t know,” Chantal says.

  “Does he make you a more daring person?” Jeremy asks.

  “For one night,” Chantal says with a sly smile. “And for that I loved him.”

  Jeremy doesn’t understand. He wants to ask questions but he feels that he has intruded enough.

  And then, like a sudden storm, he feels irrationally angry: What does breaking into a château and making love in someone else’s bed have to do with love?

  For a moment he confuses Chantal with his daughter. He wants to give her advice, tell her that she’s wrong, that Philippe is the wrong man, that love has nothing to do with danger. And then a loudspeaker breaks their uneasy silence and he hears a static-filled roar of words-something about Notre Dame and the Île Saint-Louis. It is the bateau-mouche again. And again, tourists are waving madly. Why? What would it matter if he waved back? He turns away from them and reaches for more cheese.

  She places her hand on his. “I’m
sorry,” she says. “It was an inappropriate story.”

  “I remember what you said at the café earlier,” Jeremy says. “That sometimes we have to run away from ourselves to find ourselves. Maybe Philippe helped you do that.”

  Chantal smiles. “I like that. And so I have learned once again that I am truly a good girl at heart. And I should find myself a better man.”

  He looks at her hand and she takes it away.

  Jeremy is not accustomed to so much talk. If he were younger, he would take her hand and lead her downstairs to her bedroom. No, it has nothing to do with age. He would do it now. This is the moment he has waited for since he arrived at the métro this morning.

  He thinks about sex with Dana. In bed with her, he finds his truest self. Their lovemaking is deep and rich-they rarely speak in bed, and yet he feels he knows her best when they’ve made love. She gives herself to him, he gives himself to her. In ten years, their passion has not quieted.

  “Let’s walk,” he says to Chantal.

  She stands too quickly and knocks the table. Her glass of wine topples and Jeremy catches it before it falls to the deck. But wine spills on Chantal’s sandaled feet.

  “Oh, how clumsy!” she says, and her face turns the same shade of pink as her blouse. She flees-Jeremy can hear her feet clattering down the stairs of the boat and into the space below.

  Jeremy cleans up. Most of the wine landed on her feet, and he mops what landed on the deck with a napkin dipped in water.

  He gathers the bowls and plates and basket and puts them back on the tray. Much of the food is gone-and so is the wine. He’s surprised to see the empty bottle.

  He’d clear the dishes, but he knows that the kitchen is below-along with Chantal and her bedroom. No, he’ll leave it all here.

  His cell phone rings. He pulls it out of his back pocket. It is Dana.

  For a moment he feels caught-but then he shakes his head. I’ve done nothing wrong. A lunch, some wine.

  “Allô?” He says it with a French accent-she’ll be amused, he thinks.

  “I’m sorry,” she says quickly, and then in French: “I have the wrong number.”

  She hangs up before he can stop her.