French Lessons Read online

  Dana’s assistant opens the flap of the tent as if she’s been waiting all day to save her boss from the rain, and Dana shouts, “You’re a love!” as they rush through-first Dana, then Chantal, then Jeremy. The assistant follows them and leads Dana behind a screen, where she helps her out of her wet clothes. Jeremy knows the young woman-she’s been with Dana for a couple of years now. He likes her more than most, because this is all she wants-not her boss’s job, just this: to make her boss’s job a little easier. She’s a simple girl, and there aren’t many of those in the movie industry.

  “Don’t say a word,” Dana says from behind the screen. “I know what you’re thinking. I know you’re horrified.”

  “You’re horrified?” Chantal asks Jeremy.

  “He’s horrified. I warned him. But still-I wanted you to come. Wait. Let me dry my hair. Go on, Elizabeth. Would you get them hot tea? I can do the rest.”

  Elizabeth emerges from behind the screen. She hurries to a makeshift kitchen: hot pot, small fridge, all set up for a few hours’ shoot on a bridge in the middle of the Seine. Jeremy is still amazed by what the film industry can pull off-not only on the screen, but for the working lives of its stars.

  “Is it the nudity?” Chantal asks Jeremy quietly. Does she not want Dana to hear? No, she is encouraging me to speak, Jeremy thinks. She knows that in a moment Dana might answer for me.

  And oddly, he wishes Dana would answer for him. He doesn’t quite know why he’s so upset. It’s not the nudity-it’s the absurdity of the scene. It’s something else: It’s Dana.

  “You would not do that,” Jeremy says to Dana as she steps from behind the screen, wrapped in a plush robe, a towel turban around her wet hair.

  “What would I not do?” Dana asks.

  “You would not sit there and watch them.”

  “You don’t know my character,” she says simply.

  “No one would watch them.”

  “It’s a fantasy.”

  “But it’s a playing-out of someone’s inner desires. To watch her husband and his lover? That’s absurd.”

  “What would I do?” Dana asks.

  “I don’t know,” Jeremy says quickly. “I guess-you’re right-I don’t know your character in this film.”

  “What is she like, the role you play?” Chantal asks. She leans forward, eagerly taking it all in. For a moment, Jeremy had forgotten about her. They have switched to English. Chantal speaks perfect English! She has an American accent! Again, everything shifts in the kaleidoscope that is this young woman. I know nothing about her, Jeremy realizes. And I thought I-he stops his own thought. What did he think? That he wanted to sleep with her? That he wanted to love her? It seems ridiculous to him now. He’s as foolish as the man swinging his dick on the set.

  Dana takes a teacup from her assistant and sips at it. “I play a wealthy American woman who has come to Paris with her husband. She shops while the husband has his business meetings. But at some point during the day she finds him strolling through the park with a young girl-”

  “Who wrote this film?” Jeremy asks, interrupting her. His heartbeat is fast, his palms are damp. It’s clammy in this tent and the rain beats heavily on the canvas, creating a kind of hum like a beehive nearby.

  “Claude,” Dana says. “The young man you met at dinner.”

  “He’s a kid,” Jeremy snorts.

  “A very bright kid.”

  “What does he know about love?”

  “You’re so funny, darling,” Dana says.

  Jeremy looks at her, surprised.

  She is smiling at him, her wide, gracious smile. She reaches out and touches his arm. “Not everyone knows love like we do.”

  Jeremy is lost. He can’t find any words-in any language. His mind churns and comes up with nothing.

  And then the flap of the tent flies open and Lindy dashes in, laughing.

  “Oh my God, that was wild! Wild! How did that happen? I mean, the storm in the middle of the scene! It was like you planned it that way.” She shakes her body like a wet dog and water flies everywhere. She is radiant-the shine of her scalp seems to light up her face.

  “And that girl on the bed,” Jeremy says. “That was pornography.”

  “You’re still here,” Lindy says, staring at Chantal.

  “Lindy-” Jeremy says.

  Chantal stands. “I must go.”

  “No,” Dana says. “She’s being rude. You’re my guest now. Please stay.”

  Chantal looks at Jeremy. He nods. “No reason to leave,” he says weakly.

  Chantal looks at her watch. “The lesson is over anyway. And I will be meeting two other tutors.”

  “How do you speak English so well?” Jeremy asks.

  “It is a long story,” Chantal says.

  “I bet she had an American boyfriend,” Lindy says. “That’s the way to learn a language. In bed.”

  Chantal smiles and her face flushes.

  “I will walk you out,” Jeremy says.

  “No need-”

  “Please,” he insists.

  She nods. She turns back to Dana. “It was a pleasure to meet you,” she says in French. “Thank you for the opportunity to watch you work.”

  Dana steps toward her. She kisses Chantal on both cheeks.

  “You are a lovely girl,” she says. “I’m glad my husband had a chance to spend his week with you.”

  Again, Chantal’s cheeks flush. She turns to Lindy. “Au revoir et bonne chance.”

  “Why do I need luck?” Lindy asks.

  Chantal just smiles.

  She walks out of the tent and Jeremy follows.

  The rain has stopped and the bridge is in the process of a remarkable transformation. A group of young men in black T-shirts that read Boss’s BOYS shovel sand on the wooden deck of the bridge. The bed is gone and someone has moved a palm tree into its place.

  “Pascale has lost her mind,” Jeremy mutters.

  Chantal laughs.

  “This is like magic,” she says.

  “I guess it is,” Jeremy says with a smile. “I’m a little too serious.”

  “I like that,” Chantal says.

  They are speaking French again-it is the language they have shared all week and Jeremy finds it hard to speak to her in English. He wishes she didn’t speak English at all; somehow that has changed things between them. If he gets stuck, he could have an out. But he didn’t know that all week. He just kept pushing on, into unfamiliar territory.

  “You didn’t really need French lessons, you know,” Chantal says. “Your French is excellent.”

  “But I needed you to guide me along the way,” Jeremy says as they walk away from the set and toward the Louvre on the Right Bank. “In French. And in Paris.”

  “Sometimes I forgot that it was a language lesson,” Chantal says.

  “Yes,” Jeremy tells her. “It felt more like-” He can’t think of a word, in either language.

  Chantal glances at him, waiting.

  “Thank you,” he says.

  He has stopped at the end of the bridge. She will pass through the barricade and return to Paris; he will turn back and return to the wild world of his wife and his daughter and a bed on the bridge in the middle of the Seine.

  He kisses Chantal on both cheeks. She presses her hand on his arm as he does so.

  And then she turns and walks toward the crowd, who are waiting for the next scene.

  He watches Chantal disappear into the throngs of people. Then he turns back. He thinks about later tonight, when he will be in bed with Dana-it doesn’t matter what bed in what country. He will wrap himself around his wife. He will be able to say what he wants to say to her, without words.

  The Tutors

  ***

  ***

  Chantal is the first to arrive at La Forêt, but she’s not surprised. She’s always on time, which means that she’s always waiting for everyone else to arrive. She’s glad to have a moment to herself, to drink a glass of wine, to watch the others as th
ey enter.

  The café is at the end of an alley in the Marais. In the summer the tables spill into the street. She got a table under the awning just in case the rain returns. She hears music, but can’t see the street musicians-they’re blocked by a group of tourists, who watch as their guide points out a small synagogue tucked between two old buildings on the side of the street. The guide’s loud voice-Italian-fights to be heard over the chanteuse. Chantal imagines that yet another African American jazz singer has come to Paris to find success. The voice is throaty and deep, and the sound is ragged yet haunting. The walking tour moves on, and now Chantal can see the musicians-a very young white girl sings, accompanied by her father on guitar. The girl must be eleven or twelve, skinny and knock-kneed, timid behind the mike. How can that little thing produce such a big, mournful sound? How does she know enough about life to give the words weight?

  Chantal closes her eyes and imagines a different singer-a tall, willowy black woman with closely cropped hair, wide oval eyes, a look of tragedy about her. And, as she takes in the song-a Cole Porter song about the pain of saying goodbye-she thinks about Jeremy. The minute he saw his wife on the bridge, something about him changed. She could see it in his face-he had come home to his wife. He might have spent a day flirting with romance, with the possibility of love, but he belonged to someone else.

  She does not belong to Philippe.

  She remembers their first date. He invited her to stroll around the Parc des Buttes Chaumont, where she had never been. Mid-tour, Philippe recited a poem by François Villon about the Montfaucon gallows on the western edge of the park. She had kissed him then, stirred by the poetry, his Mick Jagger mouth, and the surprise of those lush hills in the middle of the nineteenth arrondissement. Months later one of his bandmates had teased her: Did she fall for the first-date trick? And then she remembered the waiter at the café near the park who somehow knew Philippe’s name. So-he brought all his first dates there.

  Philippe loves falling in love, she reminds herself. He does not love being in love.

  This day began with Philippe kissing another woman. And where will it end?

  She hopes that it’s Nico who arrives first. She thinks about their one night in bed, a drunken jaunt that turned into something else the moment he touched her. She closes her eyes and remembers this: They had finished making love and she turned toward him in the narrow bed. He tangled his fingers in her hair.

  “Thank you,” he whispered. “For this one night.”

  For a moment she thought: What would it be like to be loved by this man.

  When she opens her eyes, she sees the skinny white kid singing the blues.

  She wants something tonight. She doesn’t know what it is-maybe just a yearning for the day not to end.

  She looks up as someone walks by her table-not Nico, not Philippe. It’s a young girl who looks lost, scanning the tables for Maman or Papa. The girl turns and dashes down the street. Chantal thinks of Lindy, back with Dana and Jeremy, no longer lost, at least for a little while.

  She watches a couple at the table beside her. The woman is telling a long story, her hands waving wildly in the air, and the man, handsome and bored, glances in her direction. She realizes with sudden clarity that Philippe will not show up tonight. Perhaps he finally lured his big-breasted American into bed. Or he’ll take the new singer in the band to the Buttes Chaumont and recite a poem to her.

  She knows what he won’t tell any of his friends or lovers: He lost his brother in a car accident a year ago. The brother had been the good son, the med student, the one who showed up at his parents’ grand appartement in the sixteenth arrondissement every Sunday for lunch. Philippe had dropped out of school and used up all his money on drugs and music equipment. When he had gone to his family for help, they had cut him off.

  He told Chantal all of this late one night after he came back from his parents’ place. He was sad, quiet, and he made love to her in a very different way-as if he needed to press himself inside her and stay there for a long time. When they were done he held her close to him and told her the story. He asked if she would come with him to his parents’ apartment the following Sunday. It was too hard to go alone.

  “Of course,” she had said.

  “I don’t know who I am with them anymore,” he said. “Since Thierry died. They need a good son.”

  She wondered if she was his attempt to fill that role.

  But the following week he went to play a gig in Saint-Germain-en-Laye and he didn’t come back. He texted her: No lunch. Too trashed.

  So she was his good girl and he was her bad boy. Neither of them would change. He’d fuck his lead singer and she’d keep hoping for something like love.

  She’d keep hoping for someone like Jeremy.

  “May I join you?” a voice says in French, startling Chantal.

  She looks up-it’s Nico, with a radiant smile on his face.

  “Of course,” she says. Just seeing him lifts her heart.

  He sits across from her; the smile has not left his face.

  “You fell in love with your American French teacher,” she says. She is surprised to feel disappointment, hard and real, pressing like a stone against her ribs.

  “No. Yes,” he says. He looks away and then places an envelope on the table between them. “This is for you.”

  He looks shy and boyish and she wonders if she’ll have to hear all about the wonderful woman who captured his heart.

  “Open it,” he urges her.

  She reaches for the envelope.

  He reaches for her glass of wine, and their hands brush against each other. She feels the heat of him-that’s what love does to a man, she thinks. She watches him take a sip of her wine. It’s a remarkably intimate gesture. He hasn’t even asked her if she minds. She follows the glass to his lips and for a moment his smile disappears and then it’s there again, as if he’s pleased she ordered this wine just for him.

  “Champagne!” she says, remembering his promise to celebrate his book sale.

  Nico gestures for the waiter, who appears at their table. He orders a bottle of champagne and two glasses. It seems that neither of them is waiting for Philippe to appear.

  “Tell me about your book of poetry,” Chantal says. She places her fingers on the envelope but doesn’t open it.

  “Just this morning I thought my poems were about shame,” Nico says, and though his voice is serious, his face glows-he cannot contain his joy. “And now I think that’s wrong. When I was a kid, I spent a day in a root cellar, hiding. I had fallen asleep there, and my parents thought I was lost or kidnapped or God knows what. When I woke up and saw the policemen searching for me, I stayed where I was, too scared to step back into the world. Over the past years I’ve written countless poems, reinventing what might have happened during that day.”

  “And none of them is true?” Chantal asks.

  “They’re all true,” Nico says. “They all could have happened. They all continued to happen in my parents’ imagination because I never told them where I was. I said I couldn’t remember.”

  “Why?”

  “Ah, there’s the shame. But there’s something else. I wanted a secret. I wanted something that was all mine, that no one could take away from me.”

  “And now? You’re giving away your secret?”

  “I don’t need my secret anymore.” Nico sits back in his chair. He keeps his eyes on Chantal.

  “I don’t understand,” she says.

  “That little boy in the root cellar is so lonely,” Nico tells her. “I want something else.”

  “What do you want?”

  “Open this,” he says, touching her fingers, which rest on the envelope.

  Chantal hears the young girl’s new song, but this time the lyrics are in French. She sings about the language of love.

  “Did you see the chanteuse?” Chantal asks Nico.

  “She’s a child,” Nico says, nodding. “But if I close my eyes she’s Édith Piaf.”


  “Les mots d’amour,” Chantal repeats. “Sometimes at the end of a teaching day I feel like there are no words left.”

  “Did you say goodbye to your American?” Nico asks.

  “Yes. This time I think the student taught the teacher more than the teacher taught the student.”

  The singer’s voice rises and the conversations at the tables in the café all seem to pause for a moment.

  He is part of my heart, the girls sings.

  “What did you learn?” Nico asks.

  “Oh, I learned that there’s a kind of love which must feel like coming home,” Chantal says, smiling. “It gives me a vision of what I’d like to have.”

  His eyes are on her, so she looks at the envelope. It’s not sealed. She opens the flap and pulls out two tickets. It takes a few moments to make sense of them-theater tickets? Plane tickets? No, they’re train tickets to Avignon. She furrows her brow but he doesn’t say a word. She examines them more closely.

  The train leaves at nine P.M. from Gare de Lyon.

  “Say yes,” Nico tells her.

  She just looks at him.

  “Can I have my wine back?”

  He takes one more sip and passes it back to her. Again, their fingers touch.

  “I thought I had fallen in love with the American, I really did,” Nico says in a mad rush. “She was tragic and beautiful and I thought I’d save her. I invited her to Provence.”

  Why are you telling me this? Chantal thinks, but she doesn’t say a word.

  “She said she’d meet me at the train station. I got there early, and while I looked for her in the crowd I kept imagining your hair escaping from your bun, your eyes as they looked at me this morning, your graceful body walking through the crowd and appearing in front of me, ready to run away with me to Provence. I could smell summer-you smell like summer-I could feel your breath on my face. I’d shake the image away and tell myself no, that was nothing, that night we spent together. That was Chantal’s revenge. I was waiting for Josie, not you, but the longer I waited the more I wanted you to appear, the more I wanted to climb onboard that train with you at my side. And the girl never showed, but if she had I would have told her I had made a terrible mistake-that she had made a terrible mistake-but she didn’t appear, and I knew what I wanted.”