French Lessons (17 page)

He sees Chantal’s worried frown disappear—he lets her spin and sees a smile stretch across her face.

He imagines her in bed and pulls her closer. The music stops. She steps away.

“Merci,”
she says, but she doesn’t look at him.

She steps off the makeshift dance floor and into the crowd of spectators.

He waits a moment before following her. It would be so easy, he thinks, to take her hand and pull her back.
One more dance. Give yourself up to the music. Give yourself up to me
.

But he thinks of Dana, of her body under his in bed, of the hunger in her eyes. He feels something stir inside him—desire, need, frustration—whatever it is, he’s in love with his wife. He’s just spending the day with a French tutor.
Get back to the lesson
, he tells himself.

He follows Chantal and they wind their way through the crowd. A new song has begun, something about
le petit vin blanc
. New dancers take the stage. But Chantal’s on the move and soon they’re back on rue Mouffetard, and the noise of the marketplace drowns out the accordions.

They walk along the row of stalls that line both sides of the narrow street, most covered with colorful awnings, the tables piled high with fresh vegetables, lush fruit, bowls of olives, a profusion of flowers. Chantal discusses the cuts of meat, the varieties of fish, the classifications of cheese. Jeremy asks good questions—he wants to understand why the quality of the cheese is so superior in France, why there are vegetables and fruits he has never seen before, and what does one do with ramp leaves?

Chantal unbuttons her cardigan sweater—the market is crowded and hot. People bump into them and push them against each other. She is wearing a pale pink blouse. Jeremy realizes that she has never worn any color before. All of her clothing seems to come in shades of gray and black.

She looks at him; his eyes are on her neck. He looks away quickly.

“Tell me about olive oil,” he says. In front of them are a dozen bottles of olive oil, and a beefy man urges them to taste one. Jeremy dips a wedge of bread into a small bowl of oil. When he tastes the oil on his tongue he realizes that it is the first thing he has eaten today and he is suddenly ravenous. He tastes all of the different selections of oil, dunking slices of baguette into each bowl, and Chantal laughs at his eager appetite. He then buys two bottles of the best oil, one for Chantal and one that he will take home with him. The taste will always remind him of this odd breakfast with Chantal.

By the time they leave the market, they are both carrying plastic bags on their arms, as if they had set out on a shopping spree rather than a French lesson. Chantal tucks a baguette into her tote bag. They have not spoken about lunch, but Jeremy imagines a
pique-nique
in one of the hidden parks they have passed on their many walks.

They turn down a side street—a kind of medieval pedestrian alley—and in an instant the noise of the market dissipates. They are quiet for a moment and then Chantal tells him that they will walk to the Jardin des Plantes, where there is a museum of natural history. She thinks he will find it interesting.

“Yes, I’m sure I will,” he says, pleased with the idea.

On their second day together they walked through a neighborhood filled with antiques stores so that Chantal could teach him the language of furniture and jewelry and art. When she saw that he paid close attention to the kinds of wood in the best of the period furniture, she arranged for the two of them to speak with a man who restores antiques. They stood in the charming clutter of the old man’s atelier, with the man’s low, steady voice in his ear and the odors of the wood and solvents and Chantal’s fragrant perfume in his nose. The late-afternoon light filtered through the small, high windows of the shop, and Jeremy thought: I’m happy here. This is where I belong.

What a strange thought for him to have. He has never wanted to live abroad.

He has lived in California all his life and only began to travel when he met Dana eleven years ago. He’s a homebody; he wants his dog and his house projects and his books and his chair by the fire. He and Dana live in Santa Monica Canyon, and he only joins her for Hollywood events when she insists, which luckily she rarely does. He owns a couple of suits but lives in his work clothes. When he spends days on a project out of the house—restoring something that can’t be transported to his shop—he feels unsettled, as if he has stepped out of his skin. He can’t wait to get home in the evenings. So why should he now feel like he belongs in a foreign city?

He thinks about what has happened in this week that he’s spent with Chantal. He has looked at Paris with new eyes. It’s not only his view of his surroundings that has grown sharper, more vivid. He feels different in his own skin. He’s someone else when he speaks French—someone more intriguing, more mysterious. It’s invigorating, as if he is capable of anything in this new place.

He could take a woman’s hand and lead her onto the dance floor.

“While we walk to the museum,” Chantal says, “tell me about your stepdaughter.”

Jeremy wishes for a moment that they could walk in silence. But that’s absurd—this is a French lesson, after all.

He likes having Chantal next to him, her tall, slim body such a surprise to him after years of walking with Dana, who is petite and compact, a kind of miniature woman who seems to be in motion even when she is standing still. He shouldn’t compare his wife with his French tutor—it’s not as if he’s dating this young woman—but he’s become unaccustomed to the attentions of a woman. She’s paid, he reminds himself. His wife is paying her to be with him. The thought turns his mood sour in a quick second.

“Lindy is my wife’s daughter,” Jeremy says. “I came into her life when she was nine.”

“And you are close,” Chantal says. “I can see something in your face when you speak of her.”

“I love her,” he says, simply. It is true. He had not wanted children, and when Dana told him she had a child he had briefly considered ending the relationship. He was thirty-five when they met and every woman he dated wanted to have a baby—immediately—regardless of love or compatibility. Dana told him that she didn’t want another child, but that she hoped he would want this ready-made family. Lindy was a child-sized version of her mother, the same kind of radiance, the same kind of charm. He was doubly smitten.

And over the years he learned to be a father to the girl. Her own father was a portfolio manager, specializing in international real estate—he was always in Singapore, Tokyo, Sydney. Lindy had a room full of souvenirs but no picture of her father on her bureau. Instead she framed one photo of the three of them taken in Costa Rica four or five years ago. They are rafting the wild Pacuare River, bundled in orange life vests, the thick green jungle surrounding them. Dana is in the front of the raft, her eyes open wide with astonishment that some drop in the river is about to claim them, and behind her, sixteen-year-old Lindy leans into Jeremy, both of them smiling with pure delight.

Jeremy tells Chantal about Lindy’s recent rebellion—when she dropped out of college she disappeared for a while, sending her mother into a fury. Jeremy received an email from Lindy saying “I’m safe. I need to do this. Tell Mom not to get too wigged out. I love you.” Jeremy can’t translate “wigged out,” so he says the words in English and Chantal seems to understand. Funny. He doesn’t even know if his tutor speaks English.

“I think she needs to find her own path,” Jeremy says. “Her mother is very successful. I think that makes it hard for her to know how to define herself.”

“Does she want to be an actress too?” Chantal asks.

“Yes,” Jeremy says. “I can’t tell her not to try.”

“Is she talented?”

Jeremy nods. For a moment he thinks ahead of himself, in a rush of translated words that bump into one another. “I don’t know the word in French. She has talent but she doesn’t have the aggression—no, the
spirit
—I can’t explain it.” Aggression, he thinks. What an ugly word for what drives his wife.
Drive
, that’s it. But he’s too bewildered to try to explain himself.

“She’s only twenty,” Chantal says. “Most of us do not have direction at that age.”

“How old are you?” Jeremy asks. The minute he says it, he wants to take it back. It sounds like they’re on some kind of date.

“Twenty-eight,” Chantal says, unruffled. “And still searching for my own direction.”

“I always knew what I wanted,” Jeremy tells her. “I wanted to work with wood even as a child. I had a first job out of college with a contractor. But I didn’t want to build new things. I learned that very quickly. I’m drawn to old things, broken things. I take great pleasure in bringing them back to their original beauty.”

Chantal smiles at him. “I am not surprised,” she says.

“And you?” Jeremy asks. “What are you drawn to?”

Chantal doesn’t answer for a moment. Finally, she shrugs. “Language. Words. No, not teaching. Perhaps one day I’ll write something.”

“Poetry?”

She shakes her head. “I tell stories to my nephew when I visit him. About a dog who speaks many languages. It’s not very poetic. But it’s a good story.”

“Children’s books.”

Chantal shrugs. “I’m just dreaming.”

“You should. We all need to have our dreams.”

“For now, I pay the bills.”

Jeremy winces. He’s paying her bills. A rude reminder that this is not a date. Is he so out of practice that he can no longer tell when a woman might be interested in him? Before he met Dana he knew that he could win a woman if he wanted to—he simply paid attention. And he was good-looking. Now, ten years later, he assumes he is still good-looking, even if his hair is peppered with gray and his body is thicker. Women still glance in his direction, and sometimes try to charm him. He has never responded to any of those flirtations—he has fallen into a life he never expected, with a woman and child he loves.

Nothing has changed, he tells himself. It’s the week in Paris that has so disoriented him. It’s the fight with Dana last night—a rare fight—that has him on edge.

They had walked through Paris at two in the morning, passing up the offer of a ride from Pascale, the director. “We’ll walk,” Dana shouted to her crowd of admirers from across the street. “I want to be alone with my handsome man. Now all of you go away!”

After a block or two, she took Jeremy’s arm and leaned into him.

“This is what I want,” she said. “You.”

“Then why do you fill our lives with everyone else?” he asked.

“That’s work, my love. You know that.” Her voice was sleepy and drunk; she pressed herself against him.

“I shouldn’t come on these film shoots,” Jeremy said. “I feel like I lose you every time.”

“You’ve never said that before.”

“We want such different things.”

“No, we don’t. We both want this.”

She was right. He knew that whenever they were alone together, whenever their bodies found each other in bed, whenever they sat across from each other at the small table in their garden in the canyon and shared a bottle of wine. But at the restaurant earlier that evening, Jeremy had felt as if he’d married a movie star. He wanted Dana, not the star attraction.

“I have a blister on my heel,” Dana said, reaching down and rubbing her ankle. “I can’t walk in these damn things.”

“Let’s find a cab.”

“No, let’s walk. I drank too much. We can walk along the quai. Paris-Plage is set up for the summer. We’ll walk on the boardwalk. We’ll build a sand castle. We’ll pretend we’re at the beach.”

“It’s a long walk. You’ll kill your feet.”

“I don’t care. Tomorrow I’ll have a hangover and broken feet. Tonight I’ll have my head on your shoulder.”

Jeremy wrapped his arm around her.

“Don’t get tired of me,” she said quietly.

“I’m tired of the noise,” he said.

“What noise?” She stopped and pulled away from him. Her face hardened and she pulled off her shoe, hopped on one foot, bending the back of the shoe.

“You’ll ruin the shoe.”

“What noise? What are you talking about?”

“I need quiet. Your life is too noisy.”

She threw the shoe at him. He wanted to laugh—she looked small and furious—and he caught the shoe as if catching a grenade. He tossed it back at her.

“This happens a few times a year,” she said, her voice too loud in the dark street. A window slammed shut in the apartment beside them. “I shoot a film, get crazy busy, and then I come home and it’s all over and we have our life together. This isn’t my life. It’s my job. You’re my life, goddamn it! What are you talking about?”

He stared at her, amazed. He imagined her onscreen, those big emotions, those wild eyes, the husky voice. “You don’t have to scream,” he said softly.

“Yes, I do!” she shouted. She stuffed her foot back in the shoe and stormed off. He followed her.

Even off the screen, he was married to drama, he thought. He felt weary and angry with himself for starting something out of nothing. He imagined Chantal, somewhere in Paris, reading a book by the window, hearing the angry shouts of a married couple on the street below. She would quietly close the window.

“There it is,” Chantal says, pointing to the museum up ahead.

“Bon,”
Jeremy says, and they cross the street to the Muséum national d’histoire Naturelle. It’s a renovated old building, partially covered with a bold blue banner announcing all the exhibition halls in the Jardin des Plantes. Apparently, they’re headed to the Grande Galerie de l’évolution. Beyond the museum Jeremy sees long stretches of green lawn and well-tended gardens.

Inside, a double line of schoolchildren wait to get in. The teachers stand at the ticket booth, arguing with the agent, while the children stand obediently, shuffling their feet, talking quietly to one another.

“American children would be running all over the place,” Jeremy says. “This is amazing. The teachers don’t even have to scold them.”

“Oh, we follow so many rules,” Chantal says, “until we have had our fill. By the time we reach twenty we rebel like wild horses on short leads.”