French Lessons Read online

He hid for a day, and at night he sneaked out and back into the woods. He wandered home minutes later and his parents rushed to embrace him.

  “Where were you? What happened? Did someone take you?” they asked.

  “I don’t know,” he said.

  They determined that he had blocked out some terrible memory and for years after that, his parents, his friends, the neighbors, all treated him as if he carried some dark secret within him. His secret was his shame, that he had fallen asleep in a dark corner and that he had caused so much commotion over nothing.

  “Did you ever tell them?” Josie asks. “Wouldn’t they now rather know that nothing bad happened to you?”

  Nico shakes his head. “I’ve written a series of poems about that night,” he says. “Eventually they’ll read the poems. But even then, there’s no true story. I can’t undo the lie.”

  They eat three kinds of cheeses-a runny, pungent Camembert, an aged chèvre that tastes like the earth, and a Roquefort that reminds Josie of her father, a man who eats bland food and sprinkles his salad with blue cheese.

  “Our parents don’t know us,” Josie says. “They can’t know us. We hide ourselves from them. Once they knew everything about us and in order to escape them we keep our secrets, our private selves.”

  “Did you escape your parents?” Nico asks.

  “I had to. I was desperate to. They wanted me to go to San Jose State College and live at home. But I wanted to be a continent away from them. I thought they were old-fashioned and uneducated and-quelle horreur! I wanted to be a French girl! I wanted to be a sophisticate! I went to NYU and a year later my mother got sick. I should have stayed closer to home. I should have taken care of her that year. My father needed me.”

  “You couldn’t have saved her.”

  “No, but I could have saved my father.”

  “I doubt it, Josie. You might have helped the burden, but you wouldn’t have made a bit of difference when it came to what he lost.”

  Josie looks at him, surprised.

  “How do you know?”

  “I’m listening to you. I’m imagining your life.”

  “But it’s more than that. How do you know about grief?”

  “I don’t know,” Nico says. “My parents are alive. I’ve never lost someone I loved. I just think I know about you.”

  “Is that because we’re strangers? I can tell you about Simon and you can tell me about your night in the cellar. We’ll disappear. It doesn’t mean anything. It’s like talking to a stranger on a plane.”

  “No. I’m right here. I’m listening to everything you’re saying.”

  Josie looks around the restaurant. For a long time, the noise of other people’s conversations had faded, along with the clang of silverware, the soft music of a violin concerto. She had lost the world and found Nico-not a lover, not even a boyfriend for a night or two, but someone to talk to.

  “Thank you,” she says.

  “Don’t think I do this for all my students,” he tells her, smiling.

  “You haven’t even corrected my French.”

  “Your French is perfect.”

  “Now you’re lying. Let’s not tell any lies today.”

  “Then you should make your vowels more precise. They tend to float between consonants.”

  “Really?”

  “I wouldn’t lie.”

  “All these years I’ve been speaking French with floating vowels?”

  “You had no one to show you the way.”

  Josie looks down, suddenly shy. He is smitten and she will leave him. She’s just promised that she won’t lie. And yet there is a lie in everything they share today. Because she won’t go to Provence with him. It’s another Josie who could catch the next train and curl up in a couchette with this blue-eyed Frenchman. This Josie-the one who lost Simon and quit her job, lied to her father, flew to France by herself-this Josie isn’t capable of anything more than a day with a French tutor.

  But she has finally eaten a meal and had a conversation.

  “I won’t ask for my money back from the school,” she tells Nico. “You’ve taught me something after all.”

  “We’re not done,” he tells her.

  Simon called her at school though she had told him not to. She could no longer focus on her work. She whispered into her cell phone, “I can’t talk. I have class in two minutes.”

  “Meet me at the lake,” he whispered back. “At four.”

  “I can’t,” she told him. “I have advisory.”

  “Cancel it,” he said, and he hung up, so sure he was in the knowledge that she’d risk her job to see him. She canceled her meeting. She had canceled so many meetings, she had cut out of soccer practice even though she was supposed to be the assistant coach, and she had told the senior drama class that they should prepare their one-act plays on their own and that she’d step in to supervise in the final week. After three years as star teacher she was suddenly the slacker, the fuckup. She kept telling herself that she’d make up for it-this affair can’t go on forever-and besides, she needed Simon more than she needed this job. There are other jobs.

  She met him at the lake where they first started their affair, an hour’s drive from the school. They’d been back a few times and Simon always asked for the same cabin. It was unseasonably cold and no one was renting these shacks, so the nasty woman who ran the place should have been happy to get their money. Instead, though, she asked Simon the same question every time. “Is that your daughter?”

  Josie had never stepped into the office, had never seen the woman face-to-face, but she always felt the woman’s eyes on her back as they rushed into the cabin moments later.

  “One of these days I’ll take you for a grown-up haircut,” Simon said. “I’ll buy you high-heeled shoes and we’ll toss those silly red things in the lake. I’ll buy you a cashmere sweater and wool slacks.”

  “And then you’d lose interest in me,” Josie said. “I’d look like all the women you know. Your wife and your wife’s friends. Your business associates.”

  “My wife-”

  “I’m sorry,” Josie said. The unspoken rule. The unspoken wife. Off limits. Keep her out of the bedroom, the cabin, the motel room, off the futon in the middle of the field.

  “Come here,” Simon said, and she stepped into his arms, silencing both of them.

  Josie began to pull him toward the bed, but he resisted, smiling mischievously at her.

  “We’re not going to bed,” he said. “Yet.”

  “I can’t wait,” she told him. “I’ve already buried my face in your neck.”

  She loved the smell of him, the soapy, musky Simon smell of him, and had told him that she could live off it, that if she could breathe him in every day she’d never need food again. “You’re losing weight,” he had told her. “Then let me breathe in more of you,” she had said.

  “You have to wait. I rented a rowboat.”

  “It’s freezing!”

  “I have blankets. I brought a thermos of hot buttered rum.”

  “You’ve done this before.”

  “Stop.”

  It was the other taboo, the other locked door. She didn’t believe that she was his first lover. He was too good at it. He knew how to have an affair and she was a novice, a child in an adult’s world.

  “I’ve never loved like this,” he would insist.

  “How have you loved?” she’d ask him. “Tell me.”

  “No. Stop. Believe me.”

  She never believed him.

  Now he took her hand and led her out of the cabin. He retrieved a duffel bag from the trunk of his car and threw it over one shoulder. They walked toward the lake, which was shrouded in fog, a cold, damp fog that chilled her despite the down jacket she wore. The sky was bleached gray and the lake was the color of iron. A rowboat bobbed on the water at the end of the dock, candy-apple red, astonishing against all that muted color.

  “The oars are in the boat!” a voice called, and they both turned toward the
office. The old lady stood there, arms locked across her heavy chest, squinting at them.

  “Thanks!” Simon called back.

  The woman kept her eyes on Josie. The look was hateful, as if Josie had stolen all the good men from all the older women in the world.

  “She scares me,” Josie whispered to Simon.

  “Ignore her,” he said.

  “I can’t. I can feel her watching me.”

  But the door slammed behind them and the old crone was gone.

  Simon held the side of the boat and Josie climbed in. He placed the duffel bag on the floor of the boat. Then he stepped in and took the oars.

  “Grab some blankets,” he told her. “Stay warm while I row.”

  She pulled out a Hudson Bay blanket, a couple of fur hats, and the thermos. She placed a hat on Simon’s head and leaned over to kiss him.

  “Put yours on,” he said.

  She pulled the hat low on her head and was immediately warmer. She took a swig from the thermos and the sweet, thick liquid spread through her body.

  She passed it to Simon, who paused mid-row, drank, smiled, and then rowed again. After a few moments, the world around them vanished and they were engulfed by fog. The colors around them bled into one another-sky, fog, water-and only the red outline of the boat held them in, containing them.

  Simon stopped rowing. At first the boat moved, rocking slightly, and then it slowed and finally stopped. They were silent and the only sound they could hear was the call of a crow somewhere far away.

  “I want to make love to you here,” Simon said, his voice soft in the hushed air.

  “It’s so cold.”

  “We’ll bury ourselves in blankets.”

  “We’ll tip over and drown and no one will ever find us.”

  “Then we better not thrash around.”

  “Impossible.”

  “We’ll do our best.”

  They drank more hot rum and they cocooned themselves in blankets on the bottom of the rowboat. They shimmied out of their clothes and the boat rocked. Icy water splashed against the side of the boat. They giggled and passed the thermos back and forth and held each other under the blankets, their bodies naked and electric. Josie was both cold and warm, scared and thrilled, energized and terrified of moving. When Simon ran his hand along her thigh, her hip, her stomach, she felt more than she had ever felt before-as if her nerve endings were jagged, exposed. His breath on her neck, his mouth on her breast, his hand between her legs, and the need to keep still, to restrain herself, as if any movement would plunge her into the black lake, made her feel as though she were caught in the whirling white fog around her.

  When he slid inside her they kept very still and she could feel his deep breath; she could see his face looking down at her, his eyes holding hers.

  “Don’t move,” he said, smiling.

  When she came she felt her body exploding within, as if containing herself created something deeper, bigger, more seismic. And then he came, and kept coming, and the boat rocked and the water held them and the fog held them and the heavy sky held them.

  He eased himself down and she felt his weight and the heat of his body.

  Suddenly there was a cacophony of sound as if the birds had discovered them there, in the middle of their lake. The caws and screeches and trills were deafening, and though they turned their heads skyward, they couldn’t see a thing.

  “It’s us making all that noise,” Simon said. “Echoes from orgasms.”

  “That’s just what it sounds like inside me,” Josie said.

  “I know,” Simon told her. “I just didn’t know everyone else could hear.”

  It was later, back in the cabin, when they had taken a long, hot bath and finished the thermos of hot rum, that Simon said, “I love you,” and Josie said, “Don’t leave me.”

  Nico looks up at the sky. Clouds linger, and somewhere in the far distance they can hear the grumble of thunder.

  “We’re safe,” he says. “For a short while. Shall we try to walk to the train station?”

  “We could walk to Provence,” Josie says.

  “I’ve never been a patient man,” Nico says. “Put me on the fast train.”

  “Then let’s walk to the train station.”

  She doesn’t know if he is serious. She doesn’t know him. She doesn’t know herself these days, nor does she understand much of the ways of the world. So why not walk to the train station?

  “What about my shoes?” she asks. Her red high-tops are wet from the rain and her feet are damp and cold.

  “We’ll buy them in Provence. We have many things to accomplish today. Make your vowels more precise. Run away together.”

  “I don’t even know if you speak English,” Josie says.

  “Does it matter?”

  “Not at all. In fact, don’t tell me. We need one secret between us.”

  “Do you have a secret?”

  “I’ve told you all my secrets,” she says.

  “Tell me about the book you read when you were young. The book that made you want to come to Paris.”

  “Can we sit down? My stomach-”

  “Are you going to be sick?”

  “I don’t know. We started out too quickly. I’m not used to eating.”

  Nico leads her across the street and into a building. She’s confused. Is he looking for a bathroom? It’s a museum-Rodin-but she doesn’t want to walk through a museum right now. He buys two tickets for the gardens, one euro each, and leads her outside again, into a lovely open space. There’s a long expanse of lush, verdant lawn and a wide basin at the far end. She’s stunned. Right here in the middle of Paris they’ve been transported to Eden.

  Nico walks with her slowly across the long lawn and they find two lounge chairs at the water’s edge. Josie sits and sighs; her stomach roils.

  “Shall I get you some water?”

  Josie glances off to the right-there’s a café in the garden.

  “No. Sit with me a moment.”

  He sits beside her.

  “Perhaps the baby doesn’t love wine after all.”

  “Impossible,” Nico says.

  She glances at him; he looks worried.

  “I’m fine,” she assures him. “I’m a little tired. My body isn’t used to food.”

  “Take your time. This is a good place to rest.”

  They look out into the park. A crowd gathers around a sculpture, and Josie sees the head of Le Penseur towering above the mere mortals below. Other sculptures dot the landscape but Josie doesn’t care about them. She loves the green water in the basin, the long stretch of green lawn, the abundance of green leaves on the rows of trees. A gust of wind stirs the air around her and with it the smell of newly cut grass. She’s wrapped in her green blanket.

  “I read the book so many times I could still probably recite the first paragraphs,” Josie says. “But I’ll spare you. It’s an odd little story. A young girl loses her parents in the Champ de Mars. She looks everywhere for them-and then she decides that they’ve gone up to the top of the Eiffel Tower without her. But she’s scared of heights. She can’t go after them. So she waits and waits. Finally it begins to get dark and her parents never appear. With terror in her heart, she begins to walk up the stairs of the tower.”

  “Why doesn’t she take the elevator?”

  “There are only steps. This is fiction.”

  “Of course.”

  “She walks and walks, and the higher she climbs the more frightened she becomes. But she can’t go back. She has to decide which is more frightening-life without her parents or climbing to the top of the tower. She keeps climbing. The sky darkens and night falls and soon all the lights of the city come on and there are as many stars below her as there are above. She’s never seen anything so beautiful in her whole life. She forgets that she’s scared and she runs to the top of the tower. There she circles the observation deck, looking up to the sky and down to the city streets with all the brilliant lights. She has no fear-s
he’s on top of the world.”

  Josie pauses and takes a deep breath. Her stomach tightens and releases.

  “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “And the girl on the top of the Eiffel Tower?”

  “A guard comes up to her. ‘Mademoiselle,’ he says. I loved that word when I was little. It was my first French word. Mademoiselle. ‘Oui, monsieur,’ she says. She’s a very well-mannered little girl.”

  “Is she American?”

  “Oh, no. She’s very French. She lives on the edge of the Champ de Mars and she’s never ever gone up to the top of the Eiffel Tower. Now here she is. And she can see all of her city below her.”

  “Her parents?”

  “You are impatient,” Josie scolds. “So the guard tells her that the tower is closing and she’ll have to climb down again. She tells him that she’s lost her parents. He promises her that they’ll be waiting for her at the bottom of the tower. So she climbs down the many, many stairs, as happy as can be, because she’s no longer afraid of anything. At the bottom of the tower she steps out and it’s Paris and everything she’s ever known, but it all looks magically different now. She doesn’t see her parents anywhere and she skips home, imagining a life without parents. Maybe she’ll never go to school! Maybe she’ll kiss the boy she likes! Maybe she’ll wear the purple tights her mother hates! When she gets to her house she looks up into the window of her living room and she sees her parents standing there, under the bright chandelier, looking out. They don’t see her. She looks back at the Eiffel Tower. It’s sparkling with light. It’s positively luminous. When she looks back at her own house the lights go out.”

  Josie smiles and rests her hands on her belly.

  “That’s the end?” Nico asks.

  “The end. In big, swirly letters. La fin.”

  “This is a French book?”

  “Of course it is. If it were an American book the girl would never be allowed to climb the stairs alone and the guard would have taken her to the police station, and even if she ran away and got home and saw her parents in the window she would have run to them and promised to never ever get lost again.”

  “You think that’s it? She doesn’t go home again?”

  “It’s not clear. Maybe she does. Maybe she doesn’t.”