French Lessons

by Ellen Sussman

  He calls her back.

  “It was me,” he says in English. “I was pretending to be your dashing French lover.” And then Chantal is standing there, in front of him. He looks down. She is wearing white sneakers-Keds-and again he thinks of his daughter.

  Dana laughs, her movie laugh-rich and deep. Chantal takes the tray and walks away.

  “I’d like to meet her,” Dana says.

  “Who?”

  “The French tutor.”

  “Why?”

  “Lindy says she is very pretty.”

  “You saw Lindy?”

  “Not yet. She called. Bring your tutor to meet me.”

  “The lesson is almost over,” Jeremy says, though it’s not. He glances at his watch. Two P.M. “There’s no reason to meet her.” He lowers his voice to a whisper.

  “We’re shooting early. Pascale called a couple of hours ago. Something about the rain. She’s setting up now. I want you both to come.”

  “Where?”

  “The Pont des Arts. Your little friend will enjoy it.”

  “Dana.”

  “Lindy says you’re smitten.”

  “She didn’t say that. That’s not even a word she would know.”

  “Maybe we’re all taking language lessons these days.”

  “Dana.”

  “I’ve got to go, sweetheart. Come by soon. We start in half an hour.”

  “Where’s Lindy-”

  “She’ll be there.”

  “Did she tell you about the monastery?”

  “Monastery? I have to throw clothes on and dash over there. I’ll see you soon.”

  She hangs up.

  Chantal is gone. So is the food, the wine, the momentary illusion of a different Jeremy.

  No, he thinks. He will not bring her to meet Dana. Lindy was behaving like a petulant child. That’s all.

  He remembers Chantal’s hand on his.

  He thinks of his house in the Santa Monica Canyon, his dog, his shop, and he wishes he were home.

  He walks to the front of the boat. He sees the stairs-a steep ladder really-that lead below. He can’t hear anything-no dishes being washed, no water running.

  “Chantal?” he calls.

  “J’arrive,” she says. I’m coming.

  She appears at the bottom of the ladder and looks up at him. Has she been crying? Did he say something on the phone that would have upset her? There’s no reason to meet her.

  He steps back and lets her pass by. She keeps on walking and he follows her to the edge of the boat and then onto the quai. This time she does not offer her hand as he leaps from the boat to the land.

  “My wife invited us-” he begins and she turns to him. She has put on lipstick. Her lips are moist. I can go back, he thinks. I can take her hand.

  “Yes?”

  “-to watch them film. She thought you might be interested.”

  “How nice of her.”

  “We don’t have to.”

  “Of course,” Chantal says.

  “It’s very slow. It’s nothing as glamorous as Hollywood would like us to believe.”

  “I’d like that very much.”

  Lindy meets them at the entrance to the Pont des Arts. A huge crowd has gathered behind barricades on both sides of the river. Lindy hands them badges on twine that they hang around their necks.

  “Mon papa!” she tells the young guard, who has not taken his eyes off the girl. Jeremy looks at his daughter through this man’s eyes. She is luminous, despite the shaved head-the word “ripe” comes to mind, and Jeremy hates himself for the thought of it. She’s wearing a tight tank top over breasts that seem to have grown since last fall. She’s gained a little weight, which becomes her-her face is fuller, her body less waiflike. Jeremy looks back at the guard and wants to deck him.

  Lindy leads them through the opening in the barricade and past the guard. She takes Jeremy’s hand as if she were a child. His heart swells. She is still his child, he thinks.

  He feels the tug back to his life, this daughter he never imagined he’d have, ten years of girldom, a complicated path through the teenage wilderness and now this, a quest to a monastery and back. All his. He squeezes her hand.

  Ahead, in the middle of the bridge, is a whirlwind of noise and commotion and equipment and lights-in the center of it all a petite, wild-haired redhead, Pascale, shouts commands. Jeremy likes Pascale. She’s a director Dana has worked with before, and she seems to keep her sanity in this crazy business. Pascale catches his eye and blows a kiss. She points toward a tent at the other end of the bridge. And then she goes back to yelling at a couple of ponytailed guys carrying a bed. A bed on the bridge?

  “Did you meet your friends?” Jeremy asks Lindy as they walk toward the tent.

  “No friends,” she says. “I was leaving you to your French lesson.” She glances back at Chantal, who follows a step or two behind. “Why is she here?”

  “Your mother invited her,” Jeremy says quietly, hoping Chantal cannot hear.

  Jeremy looks back at Chantal. She is distracted by the set and the crowd-her eyes are wide, her face aglow. She moves up closer to them.

  “Maman!” Lindy calls.

  Dana is standing at the entrance to the tent, watching them. Jeremy, caught between Chantal and Lindy, in the middle of the thick crowd, feels Chantal’s arm against his. He can’t move away. Dana smiles as if she knows what he’s thinking.

  She’s a mess, his beautiful wife. She wears no makeup-or is she wearing makeup to distort her perfect features? Her tan skin is pale, her hair flat and dull, her clothes baggy and worn. Is this a costume?

  For an impossible moment, Jeremy thinks she’s someone else-his wife’s ugly assistant-and in a moment the star will emerge from her tent.

  But Dana steps toward him and kisses his lips. Then she extends a hand toward Chantal.

  “Enchantée,” she says, her voice that buttery movie voice that everyone loves. At night, Jeremy hears a different voice: her bed voice, he calls it. He thinks of it as a voice she saves for him, unlike the voice she shares with the world.

  “So pleased to meet you,” Chantal says. “I’ve heard so much about you.”

  Lies, Jeremy thinks. He has invented a gorgeous wife, a glamorous wife, a larger-than-life wife. He has invented himself today as well. A boy who dives into a summer lake with a naked girl. A man who seduces a woman on a houseboat on the Seine.

  What if everything you’ve always been sure of-your wife’s beauty, your own fidelity-gets shaken?

  “You look awful!” Lindy says.

  Dana rubs her hand over Lindy’s head and then pulls her daughter to her and embraces her. It is a powerful hug; the girl is engulfed in her mother’s arms.

  “What’s this?” Dana asks, pulling back and peering at Lindy’s scalp.

  “It will grow back,” Lindy says.

  “You look gorgeous,” Dana tells her.

  “Really?” Lindy says, truly surprised.

  “Really.”

  Lindy throws her arms around her mother. Over Lindy’s shoulder Dana rolls her eyes, her smile broad and happy.

  “Is this your costume?” Lindy asks. “What are you?”

  Dana laughs. “I’m a wreck, apparently. I’ve just lost my husband to a younger woman.” She glances at Chantal. “And I’ve been caught in a rainstorm. We’re hoping it rains again. Though I can’t imagine looking any worse than this.”

  Her role, Jeremy thinks, and he feels his shoulders relax, his chest expand. Of course. It is makeup-he can see now that new lines have been etched into his wife’s flawless skin.

  He can’t remember the story of this film, though he’s sure that she’s told him. Have I not been paying attention? he thinks. But that’s who he is-a man who listens. When did she tell me the story? Last night at dinner? Months ago when she got the script? Why have I forgotten?

  “Why is there a bed on the bridge?” he asks in French.

  “See,” Dana says. “I knew you spoke French bea
utifully. Never with me, though.” She turns to Chantal. “I talk too much. See what happens if I stop talking?”

  “I’ve been making mistakes all day,” Jeremy says. It is another mistake. Suddenly everything has two meanings. Jeremy feels off balance.

  “Le lit?” he repeats.

  “Ah, the bed,” Dana says.

  “Attention! Atten-ci-on!” Pascale shouts over the loudspeaker. The movie is a French and American collaboration. The cast is half French, half American. Even the dialogue is a jumble of both languages. Jeremy remembers that much.

  “I must go,” Dana says, while Pascale shouts something over the loudspeaker. “I’m on right away. I hope we can talk later.” She says this last to Chantal, who seems inordinately pleased to receive the attentions of this actress, even if she is homely, poorly dressed, and the wife of the man who has spent the day pining for her.

  I mean nothing to her, Jeremy thinks, and then he catches himself. Of course not. I’m this week’s student. On Monday she’ll meet another student.

  Dana hurries off.

  “Come on,” Lindy says, breathlessly. “I want to be in front.”

  She sounds like a little girl at her first shoot. She should know better-that it will take longer than they anticipate to set up the scene, that something will go wrong right away and they’ll have to find a new lens or bring in the jib or reset the lighting. And if it does rain, they’ll need tarps above the cameramen and director, even while the actors get soaked.

  Lindy dashes ahead through the crowd.

  “Are you sure-” Jeremy says. He wants Chantal to say, Let’s leave. Let’s go someplace quiet.

  “Oh, I can’t wait to see them film!” she says. Of course, she is starstruck. Everyone is. Except for him. Can he love his wife and hate the star?

  Jeremy takes Chantal’s elbow and they maneuver through the crowd. Pascale has cleared a large space in the middle of the bridge. The bed sits there, with a single rose-colored sheet covering it. No blanket, no pillows. The sheet is rumpled as if already used.

  The sky darkens and thunder rumbles-the crowd lets out a collective Ooooh! They are waiting for drama and the approaching storm feeds their expectation. Nothing is happening yet on the set, but onlookers have quieted. Jeremy sees that gawkers on both sides of the Seine, lined up three or four deep, are obediently following the demands of the signs that have been lifted by young crew members. Silence!

  Jeremy finds Lindy at the front edge of the set and he helps Chantal squeeze in beside her. He then fits himself in the space between them. He knows only a few of the film people who hover near Pascale-he recognizes them from the last film Dana made with her, four years before. One of them was at dinner last night-a young Frenchman who worked with Pascale on the script. “He’s brilliant,” Dana told Jeremy while the young man told a long story about the immigrant revolution brewing in the banlieue of Paris. And pompous, Jeremy thought, but he didn’t say a word. Now the young man fixes Dana’s oversize shirt, unbuttoning two of the top buttons. He’s not from the costume department, Jeremy thinks. What business is it of his? But Pascale looks over and nods-apparently Dana should look horrible and bare her breasts at the same time.

  Pascale calls out some commands and then takes her seat on her director’s chair. The chair reads BIG BOSS. It was a gift from an earlier crew and Pascale uses it for every film now. It is the “big” part that Pascale likes. She is barely five feet tall.

  Again, the sky grumbles and Pascale claps and raises her hands to the heavens. A few people laugh.

  And then they are ready to film the scene. Jeremy wonders how it has happened so quickly, but perhaps things have changed since the last time he watched a shoot. We’ll watch a scene or two and then move on, he thinks.

  There is quiet and then a man and a woman walk onto the set. They are wearing bathrobes. They take off the robes and hand them to a young woman at their side. They are naked. There is a muffled gasp from the crowd. Pascale raises a hand and everyone quiets. A woman smacks the clapper board and the cameras roll.

  Jeremy glances at Chantal-she is transfixed. And then Lindy-her mouth has fallen open. Jeremy wants to cover her eyes. But of course, she’s twenty, she’s seen naked boys before. Men.

  Chantal shifts her weight and he feels the pressure of her arm on his. She doesn’t move away.

  The woman is very young, barely older than Lindy. She’s blond and her skin is ghostly white-she looks like some cross between angel and child prostitute. Her body is impossibly perfect-small and curvaceous with breasts as round as apples. Jeremy sees that her pubic hair is shaved! No wonder she looks like a child. There’s something unsettling about what she offers-sex and innocence-something pornographic, he thinks.

  She walks to the bed and lies down. She doesn’t seem to have any self-consciousness about her nudity. Jeremy wonders about children along the quai watching this. But we’re in Paris, he thinks. And for a moment, he wonders what kind of rating this movie might have. Of course, Dana has never done an X-rated film-it would kill her career. She’s a classy actress, like a younger Meryl Streep with a little more sass. She has never even done a sex scene in the nude.

  Will someone cover the girl’s bare crotch?

  The man walks around the bed, looking at the girl. He, too, is comfortable with his naked body. He has a large uncircumcised penis that weaves as he walks. Jeremy’s body tenses. He shouldn’t be here with these two girls at his side. Dana should not have invited them. He feels like a prude-this shouldn’t even be a public event.

  He looks up. A camera moves in close. Dana is hidden from sight. No one has spoken a word.

  The man is older than the girl, by a good twenty years. In fact, his body is a little slack-Jeremy sees with wicked pleasure that the man has a bit of extra weight around his waist. But it doesn’t concern him; he’s circling the bed and the naked girl as if he’s a lion tamer. Or the lion himself. The girl is his prey.

  Dana steps forward. Someone has poured water on her and she’s dripping wet. Her clothes cling to her; beads of water drip from her chin. This is no summer rainstorm-it looks as if she’s stepped from the shower. Jeremy expects Pascale to stop the filming, to yell at the person responsible for overdoing the effect this way-but the camera keeps moving, Dana keeps walking toward the man, and the man keeps circling the girl on the bed.

  “Look at me,” Dana says, her voice a throaty whisper.

  The man doesn’t look. He walks by her and keeps walking. The girl on the bed makes a moaning sound as if she’s already having sex. Jeremy is disgusted. What is this? The girl follows the man’s eyes with her own-her pleasure comes from his attention. She’s aroused; even her nipples stand out from her perky breasts. How did she do that? Can a woman make her nipples erect as part of her acting training? She can’t possibly be aroused by this fool with the big dick, Jeremy thinks.

  “Regarde,” Dana says, her voice more insistent.

  Thunder, right on cue. Was that real? Everyone looks up-except for the actors, who ignore the low rumble and the first drops of rain.

  A few of the technicians look at Pascale, who gestures with her hand: Keep going, keep going.

  The man sits on the edge of the bed. The girl curls toward him. Dana stops and watches them. Her face shows confusion, then pain.

  The man takes the girl in his arms and lies down next to her. It seems as if the girl is a half second from orgasm already. Her body is writhing, her low moan is rising. Jeremy thinks she should be pulled from the movie-she is overacting. She belongs in a porn film, not in a serious film of Dana’s!

  The man strokes the girl’s body, petting her as if she is, in fact, his cat. She purrs. Oh, God, stop! Jeremy wants to scream. What is this?

  Then Dana circles the bed, watching them. Her expression changes-is she enjoying this? Jeremy hopes that someone will let him in on the joke. Has Pascale made her first comedy?

  Dana sits at the edge of the bed. She reaches out her hand and lets it rest on the man
’s hip. He’s facing away from her, covering the girl with his caresses. He doesn’t seem to notice Dana.

  It’s a fantasy, Jeremy decides. The bed, the naked lovers, the distraught woman. She’s imagining this. And in a rare moment of poor cinematic taste, Pascale has brought the fantasy to life. On a bridge in the middle of the Seine.

  Spare me, Jeremy thinks.

  He turns to Chantal. He’ll shake his head, show her his disgust. But she doesn’t take her eyes from the scene in front of her.

  The rain gathers force. No one moves. A red umbrella appears above Pascale’s head. The crowd along the Seine leans forward over the barricades and peers-what can they see? Jeremy wonders. Do they see the man’s cock, the girl’s shaved vagina? Do they see Dana’s look of desire? What does she desire? The man? The girl? He wants to scream “Arrête!”

  And then-thank God!-Pascale yells, “Cut!” and calls, “Bravo!” The crowd applauds, as if they were at the ballet and the performance was exquisite. Jeremy can’t imagine what everyone is so goddamn pleased about. He’s the only one not cheering.

  “It’s art,” Chantal says, almost breathlessly.

  “What?” Jeremy barks.

  Chantal looks at him, surprised.

  “That was beautiful. She has the most expressive face.”

  Jeremy feels like a prude. Maybe everyone was looking at his wife’s face when all he could see was a penis and a vagina.

  Dana walks over to them, grabs Jeremy’s arm, and calls, “Follow me!”

  She wraps one hand around Jeremy’s elbow and the other around Chantal’s arm. She maneuvers them toward her tent at the far end of the bridge. Only then does Jeremy realize that the skies have opened and the rain is pounding on them.

  “Lindy!” he shouts. He feels a sudden panic, as if she has disappeared in the middle of this chaos.

  “I’ll be there in a minute!” Lindy calls back.

  Jeremy turns-she is right behind them and then she turns toward a young man with a clipboard and begins talking to him in French.

  “Let’s get out of all this!” Dana shouts.

  “All this” is the storm, the relentless grumble of thunder, the clatter of rain on the iron bridge, the movie people herding equipment in every direction. And Pascale is braying over the loudspeaker. Jeremy can’t understand a word she says.