French Lessons Read online

  “I worry about you,” he said.

  “You shouldn’t worry,” she said gently. “I take care of myself.”

  “So who’s the boyfriend?”

  “There’s no boyfriend, Dad. I told you.”

  “You got any cake? Coffee cake or something?”

  Josie stood up and walked to the pantry. She took a loaf of whole wheat bread and sliced a couple of pieces, put them in the toaster. While she gathered jam, butter, plates, and knives, her dad told her about Emily’s new boyfriend, a lawyer in San Jose.

  “Good for Emily,” Josie said, placing the toast in front of her dad.

  “You and Emily used to be best friends. You couldn’t go anywhere without that girl.”

  “That was a long time ago, Dad.”

  “You call this coffee cake?”

  “It’s all I have.”

  “I should have told you I was coming. You could have bought me a cake.”

  “I would have bought you a cake, Dad,” Josie said, smiling.

  “I like a little surprise sometimes. But this is the price I pay.” He held up the whole wheat toast.

  “Put jam on,” Josie urged him. “It needs a little something.”

  “So what happened with you and Emily?”

  “Nothing, Dad. Life. We grew up. I moved away, she stayed home. People change.”

  “I don’t change.”

  “Thank God for that.”

  “You making fun of me?”

  “Never.”

  He smiled and she thought of her mother, sitting next to him, both of them short and a little fat, both of them fighting over every little thing, smacking each other’s arms like some married version of the Three Stooges. Josie was always embarrassed by them, embarrassed by her love for them, and then, when her mother died, she yearned for the noise of them.

  “You could have a girlfriend,” Josie said gently. “It’s enough time.”

  “Ha,” her father said. “You think there’s another Franny out there somewhere?”

  “No.”

  “One of a kind.”

  “I know. Maybe the next one is a different kind.”

  “There’s no next one.”

  “You might try.”

  “You want Emily to ask her nice boyfriend if he has any friends at the law firm for you?”

  “No, Dad.”

  The phone rang. She leapt at it.

  “Hello.”

  “I miss you.”

  “My dad’s visiting. Can I call you later?”

  “No. I’m headed into the meeting. I just wanted to tell you-”

  He didn’t say anything. She waited. She watched her dad, who fiddled unhappily with his toast.

  “Will he be there tonight?”

  “No.”

  “I’ll come by.”

  “No.”

  “Why?”

  “Hey, Whitney. My dad wants me to start dating. You know any eligible single guys to fix me up with?”

  “Don’t.”

  “Okay. Give it some thought. He’s right. I should have a boyfriend. I should fall in love with someone and bring him to meet my dad.”

  Her dad nodded, smiling, his lips smeared with boysenberry jam.

  “I wanted to tell you I’m falling in love with you,” Simon said.

  “That’s crazy,” Josie said. “You must know some guys. The good ones can’t all be married.”

  “Stop it.”

  • • •

  “My father would like you,” Josie tells Nico. They’re standing side by side, gazing at a photo of Marilyn, naked, a sheer scarf draped over her body.

  “Not your mother? It’s usually the mothers I charm.”

  “My mother’s dead.”

  She moves to the next photograph on the gallery wall-Marilyn taking a long, lazy drag on her cigarette.

  “Lung cancer. Eight years ago. She never smoked a cigarette in her life.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “My father smoked. Quit the day she was diagnosed. A bit late, though.”

  “You were so young.”

  “I’ll tell you a story I’ve never told anyone. About my mother’s death.”

  He looks pleased. This man is way too easy.

  “That last winter my parents were in Palm Springs, staying with my aunt for a month. I flew down there a couple of days before my mom died and then flew back with my dad. They had my mother’s body flown up-Dad wanted her buried at a cemetery near their house. I had packed my mother’s clothes to have her buried in. When we were waiting for our luggage at SFO, standing in front of the…” Josie stops. She is suddenly there, waiting for the bags, no longer telling a story. It had been sweltering hot in Palm Springs and now it was frigid, even in the airport. Her coat was packed in her suitcase and she stood there, teeth chattering, waiting for the bags to arrive.

  “Yes?”

  “I don’t know the word.”

  “What word?”

  “For the thing that the suitcases drop onto. The-Oh my God, I can’t even remember the word in English.”

  “Le carrousel de bagages?”

  “Yes. ‘Carousel.’ That’s the word.”

  “Tell me the story.”

  Josie feels panic stirring inside her. She looks around. Marilyn; a cigarette, a martini, puckered lips, long, manicured fingernails. Marilyn, Marilyn. She is drunk on Marilyn.

  “We were all standing there, at the baggage claim, and first a shoe dropped down-not a suitcase, but a single shoe. It circled the carousel once and everyone watched it. When it passed by me a second time I recognized it. My mother’s navy-blue shoe. Someone laughed. I grabbed it and tucked it under my arm, embarrassed somehow. And then a pair of underpants dropped from the chute-I’m not kidding-my mother’s flowered underpants. The ones I chose from her drawer to have her buried in. Then her blouse. A peach-colored silk blouse she wore for special occasions. It almost floated down, as if worn by a fucking ghost. I grabbed each item and tucked the clothes in my arms. Her bra. Imagine: everyone was watching. Her C-cup rose-colored bra tumbled down. My father walked away. Finally my suitcase dropped down the chute and it was partially open, the items spilling out. I grabbed the bag and started stuffing everything back.”

  Josie’s crying, tears running down her face, and she can’t stop. Nico pulls her toward him and holds her. She lets him. She swipes tears from her face but there’s no stopping them.

  Simon’s gone.

  • • •

  “I’ve been sitting in my car across the street. I waited until your father was gone.”

  Josie reaches out and places her hand on Simon’s chest.

  “I wanted to walk up to him and say, ‘I’m Josie’s boyfriend. She doesn’t need another boyfriend.’ ”

  “But it’s not true. You’re not my boyfriend. You’re someone’s husband. You’re the man I sneak away to have sex with. You’re the reason I can’t even talk to my best friend anymore.”

  “Don’t.”

  “I can’t give my father the one pleasure he wants.”

  “I know, Josie. That’s why I sat in my car for the past two hours.”

  “You have Brady’s play tonight. It starts in an hour.”

  “I can’t go.”

  “This can wait. Brady can’t wait.”

  “I can’t give you more than this.”

  “I know that. I’m not asking for more.”

  “You’re asking for a man to introduce to your father.”

  “Why are you here? What do you want?”

  “I want you.”

  “It stopped raining,” Nico says. “Let’s go have lunch.”

  Josie finds a Kleenex in her purse and wipes her face. She has stopped crying but she feels raw. When she first learned about Simon, when Whitney called that Saturday morning and told her to turn on the television, she couldn’t cry-or scream or rage. She sat stunned, in front of her computer, Googling news reports, trying to find out everything she could about the crash of a sma
ll plane in the mountains near Santa Barbara. The phone kept ringing and she never answered it. Later there were dozens of messages from other teachers, a couple of Brady’s classmates, even a long, sobbing message from Glynnis Gilmore. She had fallen in love with Brady on opening night, she said.

  Now a ridiculous memory of her mother’s death has unmoored her. And the French tutor has galloped in on his white horse.

  They leave the museum in a hurry, as if chased by Marilyn’s hungry eyes. The boy at the front desk doesn’t even look at them as they leave.

  “I know a restaurant,” Nico says, and he takes her arm, moving her quickly along the slick city streets. The sun reflects off puddles and wet cars; Josie digs into her purse for her sunglasses. She’s disoriented, her mind swimming in too many dark holes: her mother, Simon, Marilyn. She needs to come up for air; her lungs are bursting with the effort.

  “Voilà,” Nico pronounces, as if he created this restaurant on this corner, as if he’s responsible for its charming yellow walls, the pale blue tablecloths, the profusion of flowers. He’s transported them to Provence and Josie takes a deep breath.

  “You like it?” he asks proudly.

  “Very much.”

  “I knew you would,” he says.

  They’re seated in the back corner of the small room, and Nico orders a pichet of rosé wine.

  While he speaks to the waitress, Josie follows the dark path of memory to his funeral. Even this cheery restaurant can’t save her.

  She remembers Simon’s wife-Brady’s mother-standing in the front of the church. The woman stepped away from her sisters and mother and friends and stood in front of the two coffins. No one dared to join her side. This was her grief, her devastating loss. She fell to her knees and wailed, a sound that echoed in the church. Josie turned and walked back to her car, parked almost a mile away since the crowd was so enormous. In that long walk she clenched her hands until her nails dug into the skin of her palms and bled. She had lost Simon and now she had lost the right to her grief.

  Love me. Josie had never known that she needed the kind of passion in life that tipped her off balance, that carried her aloft. She had always thought of herself as a little too flimsy for love. With Simon, she lost her bearings, she gave herself up to love. And it filled her, made her weightier, fuller, richer.

  “My boyfriend died,” she says aloud.

  Nico looks at her, surprised. The waitress arrives with the pichet of wine and they are silent while she fills their glasses. She places menus on the table and walks away.

  “I lied,” Josie says. “I’m not here with a friend. I’m alone. I was supposed to come to Paris with him. Simon.”

  “What happened?” Nico asks gently.

  “Three weeks ago he took his son, Brady, down to Santa Barbara to look at the university. Simon flies his own plane-he’s good, he’s been flying for years. They don’t know what happened. The plane went down in the hills above Santa Barbara. Both of them were killed.”

  “My God.”

  “I haven’t been able to talk about it with anyone. First he was my secret. Now my grief is my secret. I was his lover, not his wife.”

  “It’s his baby.”

  “Yes. I didn’t know. But I’m sure I’m pregnant.”

  Nico reaches a hand across the table and places it on Josie’s hand. Her face is streaked with tears again.

  “He has a lovely wife. She lost everything. I lost a lover. I don’t have a right to this grief. He wasn’t mine. Brady wasn’t mine. I was stealing someone else’s love.”

  “I don’t think you were stealing love.”

  “His wife deserved his love. His wife deserves this grief. I’m nobody. I went to the funeral because I was Brady’s teacher. But that’s a ruse, that’s a lie. No one knows about me. And if they did, they’d hate me.”

  “It doesn’t matter what anyone else knows. Or what they think.”

  “You’re a stranger. You’re French. What do you know?”

  Nico laughs and suddenly Josie laughs, surprising herself. She drinks her wine, which is as light and cool as a breeze.

  “Let’s go to Provence,” she says.

  “For a French lesson?” Nico asks, smiling.

  “Yes,” Josie says. “Run away with me.”

  “Avec plaisir,” Nico says, and the waitress stands before them, her pen poised above her pad.

  Nico orders for the two of them, though he glances at Josie to make sure she agrees. She nods her approval.

  “Today?” Nico asks when the waitress leaves. “On the next train?”

  “Why not?”

  They clink glasses.

  “Maybe I shouldn’t drink,” Josie says. “The baby.”

  “In France they say a glass or two of wine is good for the baby.”

  “Bien sûr,” Josie says, and she drinks.

  She feels giddy, as if the wine has already made her lightheaded. Maybe it’s the words that echo in her head: My boyfriend died. She finally has spoken the words.

  “There is no friend at the art galleries today?”

  “Whitney doesn’t approve of affairs and she can’t stand contemporary art. She’s at home in San Francisco, thinking I got what I deserved.”

  “Leave her there,” Nico says. “I’m glad we won’t have to bring her to Provence with us.”

  “And there is no one expecting you home for dinner tonight?” Josie asks. They are flirting-it’s a game, a life raft, a way out of the mess she’s in. She is talking again, she’s crying, she’s even laughing. What could be wrong with this? She sips her wine and leans close.

  “Sometimes I meet two other tutors for drinks in the Marais. We complain about our students and drink too much. Sometimes we go home and have sex with each other.”

  “All three of you?” Josie’s eyes open wide.

  “No,” Nico says. “I’m not very interested in the other man. It’s his girlfriend I love.”

  “My God,” Josie says. “We’re a mess. All of us. Why is love so complicated?”

  “Today isn’t complicated,” Nico says, raising his glass. “This is the first day I have enjoyed myself in a very long time.”

  They clink glasses again. The waitress arrives and places bowls of mussels in front of them. She tucks tall glasses packed with frites between the bowls. The table is suddenly filled with wonderful-smelling food.

  “I haven’t eaten in a very long time,” Josie says.

  The first time Josie met Simon, alone, the day after Brady’s rehearsal, they sat for a short time at a restaurant in a town far from where they both lived. They ordered drinks-martini for Simon, white wine for Josie-and then ordered dinner: steak for Simon, grilled salmon for Josie. The food sat there, untouched, while they leaned toward each other and talked. Simon asked questions-Who are you? Where do you come from? Why do you teach?-as if he were feasting on her rather than mere food. And Josie talked, as if she had never talked before, never told her story. When she said her mother died, he didn’t skip on to the next subject the way her boyfriends had. He asked her about her mother’s final week, about her father’s sadness, about the gold wishbone she wore around her neck that had belonged to her mother. The waiter asked them if there was anything wrong with their dinners.

  “No, no,” they both said. “We’re fine. Everything’s wonderful.”

  And still, they barely touched their food.

  “What do you do on a perfect day?” Simon asked.

  “I hike into the hills,” she told him. “I pack a picnic lunch and book and find a place to read by the river.”

  “Take me,” he said.

  He told her about flying, about the remarkable feeling of space and lightness and speed. He told her how he felt both reckless and safe at the same time-as if he could go anywhere, do anything, and yet he was master of his universe, completely in control.

  “Take me,” she said.

  But the only place they ever went was to bed-her bed, hotel beds, motel beds, a futon bed he carr
ied to the middle of a field in the hills of West Marin. That first night they left the food on the table and too much money thrown onto the check and they drove for a long time. They found a country cabin, one of a small group of log cabins for rent on the side of a lake. Josie stayed in the car while Simon went into the office, but she could see the woman peering at her through the window. Josie looked away, fiddled with the radio, worried that her body would never stop trembling from so much desire.

  When Simon returned to the car with a key in hand he said, “She asked if I was traveling with my daughter.”

  “What did you say?”

  “I said no. I don’t want to get arrested for what I’m going to do to you tonight.”

  “She’ll never know.”

  “She’ll know. The whole world will know.”

  Josie was never loud in bed. She once bit the neck of a boyfriend in college. Better that than scream. She liked sex-it was a kind of game, a kind of athleticism that she was good at. But she didn’t know what it was to give herself to someone, to abandon herself, to take someone in.

  That night she made enough noise for the woman to ask Simon in the morning: “Was everything all right in there?”

  “Fine,” Simon said. “Everything was perfect.”

  “How did you know?” she asked Simon weeks later. “That first time. How did you know what would happen when we made love that night?”

  “I couldn’t stop trembling,” he said. “All through dinner. While we drove to the cabin. My body was electrified. I had never felt anything like it.”

  “That never happened to you before?” Josie asked.

  “You never happened to me before.”

  Josie and Nico feast on mussels and fries. They lick their fingers, they toss shells into the bowl, they sop sauce with the hearty crusts of bread. When they are done the waitress brings a tangy green salad and a cheese plate, and more bread, this time filled with walnuts and cranberries.

  Nico tells Josie about his childhood in Normandy, on a small farm, how once he got drunk on Calvados and fell asleep in the root cellar until morning. When he woke up he saw the police were everywhere, combing the grounds of the house, talking to neighbors, leading dogs into the woods.