Silent Bird (5 page)

That night, after dropping off to sleep next to Jeannot, I had the dream.

Lightning pulsed in the black sky. Thunder boomed. The ferryboat rocked. I clung to my father’s leg as he sat on a bench. “The giant’s gonna come!” I cried half-gleefully, hiding my face. Then I peeked out, both hoping and dreading to see it happening.

Daddy looked down at me, his smile a
warm surprise. I didn’t know he liked the Giant.

“
But it’s not raining,” I whispered. “He can’t come unless it’s raining!”

Now Daddy leaned his head back and laughed:
ho-ho-ho
, like Santa Claus. “You funny little moppet,” he said, tucking me under the chin.

I climbed onto his lap and laid my head on his chest and looked up at his face.
Dark eyes, handsome cleft chin, lines around his eyes, that big lumpy Adam’s apple in his throat…and his breath all stinky, like cough medicine. Again.

“
I miss Mommy,” I said. “Don’t you?”

The thunder boomed louder than ever, making me jump.
It started raining.

I leaped to my feet and ran to the railing.
Nothing out there but endless black ocean and scary flashes of light. Raindrops ran down my face. I rubbed my eyes, wishing as hard as I knew how to find Mommy on this boat too.

“
It’s all right, love. Everything will be just grand, I promise.” Daddy held out his pinky, and I held out mine. The footsteps of the giant shook the boat, and I woke up in a narrow bed next to a man I barely knew, in a country not all that far from the place I’d gone in the boat.

I hated that dream.

But not as much as I’d hated experiencing
it as a little girl.

“
I am happy to see you,” Monique cried, rising from her desk at the
Bibliothèque Américaine
. It had been less than forty-eight hours since we’d first met, yet she kissed my cheeks like a dear old aunt at a family reunion. “You find me, no problem?”

“
No problem,” I said. “Only one person works here. How hard could it be?”

“
Voilà
, your library!” She gestured at the room: grand book-lined walls and oversized windows revealing bits of the Roman aqueduct that had been there long before King Charles the Handsome started burning Templars in the South of France.

Books…in English!
I felt like a shipwreck survivor glomming onto civilization.
Eye of the Needle,
by Ken Follet, zoomed into focus. Lovely English! Blissful English! I opened the book, feasting my eyes. I wanted to take a bite out of it.

I said,
“I can borrow them?”

Monique laughed.
She had frank gray eyes that approved of you or disapproved of you, and I was awfully glad they approved of me. “Of course! She is free, this library.”

“And you have a children’s section?”

“Yes, of course.”

“
Maybe one day one of my books will be there.”

“W
hy not? I believe this. I believe in dreams.”

I got the
official tour, such as it was: one homey reading room, a quiet work room with quaint roll-up desk and Corona typewriter, and children’s area with small tables, gaily colored chairs and scrumptious titles on the shelves such as Dr. Seuss’
Cat in the Hat
. The sight of that classic excited me more than the thrillers.

Back at her desk, Monique wrote down a number from my passport and handed me an official library card and checked out my books.
I noticed that her desktop was covered with photos of cheerful, contented people: a grinning old lady, a playfully smirking dark-haired man—must be her husband—holding a flaxen-haired toddler with one bewitching front tooth.

“This is my mother. And
this
is Big Louis and Small Louis,” Monique explained proudly.

She served me a puny cup of black coffee tha
t looked awful, so thick you could use it to pave a parking lot. And I drank it down. She told me about her husband participating in the upcoming Bastille Day gondola tournaments, and I told her about the July 4
th
celebrations back home, with barbeques and fireworks and flags galore. Then she asked about Jeannot.

“
How is your little friend—your boyfriend?”

I hesitated.
“He’s not…exactly my boyfriend.”

“
No? I am surprised. Does he know this?”

What a strange question.
“Well, we never defined it. Don’t get me wrong, Jeannot is wonderful. I care about him very much. But it’s not…serious. I’ve only known him a short while. About a month.”

She did
n’t respond, and I had the unpleasant sense that I had disappointed her. But that didn’t make sense. She didn’t know me or Jeannot. Why did it matter how we defined our relationship? Then the library door opened, and Monique glanced past me. A young woman walked in, pausing to read the bulletin board.

“Anyway, I don’t know how long I’ll be in France
,” I said, wanting—
needing
—my new friend to understand. “I mean: I love Jeannot’s company. He’s so…sweet and easygoing. But we can’t really talk. He doesn’t speak English and my French sucks. We just enjoy the moment. What’s wrong with that?”

The y
oung woman had reached the desk now. She gave a small, uncomfortable cough. “Pardon, you speak of Jeannot Courbois?” she asked in laborious English.

I nodded,
surprised.

Monique said something quickly in French, and that something turned into a conversation.
I glanced from one woman to the other, hoping for a translation, recognizing Jeannot’s name more often than made sense.

Who the hell…?

Tall, long-limbed, and green-eyed, this creature was the sexiest, most I’ve-got-it-put-together French person I’d ever encountered. She clutched a retro-style fur purse that came off as sophisticated despite resembling road kill. On her feet she sported a pair of heels I would need crutches to walk on. Her hair, lightened to the shade of nutmeg, was flat, shiny, and impossibly straight. What ever happened to Big Hair? Not that I had to work at Big Hair.

Finally
Monique explained. “The mademoiselle says she knows Jeannot very well. She is from his village. This is a big coincidence, yes?”

“Good friends—us
,” the other woman added helpfully. She thrust out manicured fingers for a limp shake. “Thérèse Bonnet.”

I shook
the fingers but forgot to talk.

Monique said,
“She overheard you say his name and…was surprised. This is why she spoke.”

“
Yes,” agreed this Thérèse person, her green gaze giving me the once-over. Staring at me in that way that made me so damn uncomfortable, whether it came from men or women. I recalled my mother’s words.
I am just a person.

Ironically, I could also see
Thérèse judging my clothes as substandard—my unfashionable T-shirt and flip flops. And I had the sudden, not so pleasant urge to poke her eyes out. This was a library, for God’s sake! Why dress up to go to a library on a hot summer day?

Why carry a faux-purse that looked like an eviscerated gopher?

Monique said, “She explains that they attended the same
lycée.
”

“
Lycée?”

“
School for children. They were infants together.”

“
Oh.”

“Name?”
Thérèse asked, eyeing my shirt again. My chest?

I crossed my arms. “
Pilar. Pilar Russell.”

“American.”

“Long Island,” I clarified, as if that mattered.

She frowned, shrugged, and
said in French: “Jeannot did not speak to me of you,” or something like that. Then she turned away to peruse the books, her rear end twitching, dead gopher banging against her hip.

“Ugh,” I said to Monique. “That was fun.”

She smiled knowingly. “Perhaps you will call this man your boyfriend now?”

“Don’t be silly,” I said and plunked down my coffee cup, thanked her, and left the library, flip-flops a-flapping.

I walked across town, stopping at a café for a milky coffee I could stand the taste of. I didn’t know where to go next, didn’t really feel like seeing anyone or doing anything.

But somehow I ended up at Jeannot’s apartment.

He opened th
e door looking more American than French. Real casual, cut-off shorts, no shirt, and feet bare. He hadn’t shaven. A bunch of music sheets in his hand fluttered to the floor as he stood staring back at me. And why shouldn’t he stare? I hadn’t visited his apartment since The Night of the Living Toe.

“
Bonjour
,” he said, opening the door wider, ignoring the fallen paper.

I pointed at it and said in French,
“You write?”

“
Yes. My compositions.”

I walked in, my arm brushing against his che
st. It was damp with sweat as if he’d been working out. He
had
been working out, I guess, at the piano. I did know him that well.

In the living room, a tray of food held the discarded end of a baguette, a soiled napkin, a heel of cheese.
A glass of red wine barely touched. Pencil and sharpener on the coffee table, pinning down more sheets of music, some filled, some empty, some crossed out and erased: neither filled nor empty. Not finished.

Jeannot sat on the couch
and waited. I sat across from him. We hadn’t kissed hello. His eyes seemed very bright.

“
You came here,” he said at last. “I did not expect this, but you did. You came to me.”

And I nodded, because
I understood him.
I understood his French!

That alone
seemed like a miracle when I very much longed for a miracle. I can do this, I thought. I can speak to this man in his own language, in French…

Once upon a time I’d read an article explaining how the brain cells for second and third languages are housed in a different part of the brain than the first, with each subsequent language hogging more and more brain space. And so I had truly believed I would never learn a third language; that my words in English and rudimentary Ladino Spanish had confiscated all available square footage. No Rooms for Rent. Why
should
my head make way for all these French invaders? I would never be able to sound like an adult here in my adopted city. I would never fully understand Jeannot or Monique or random annoying strangers like that woman at the library. I would always be Other.

Except
there was another truth that I had forgotten: I had languages in my blood. My mother’s Uncle Jack had been fluent in
eight
languages. I had his genes too, and that counted for something.

“
Today I disputed with my
chef
,” Jeannot said now (approximately). “I asked him permission to play my music at La Peña, on a night I do not work my normal job. But he said no.” He paused. “And I thought of you. I wanted to see you…but I did not call. I hoped you would call me. And then you came.”

This was ridiculous; my eyes misting over at how nice he was—how
warm and genuine and non-manipulative. Everything in his apartment felt simple and friendly. The sun poured over us because the shutters had been left wide open. I went to the sheets of music on the floor and gathered them into a pile. Then I handed it to Jeannot and sat right next to him. I could smell him, the apple shampoo. The sweat. The frustration, though with his boss, not with me.

Or maybe with me too, just a little. I should have come sooner.

“I am happy to be here,” I said in French.

He nodded, pleased, though at the content of what I’d said or the miracle of French, I was
n’t sure.

He talked some
more about work—about his determination to perform in the most authentic Brazilian restaurant in the city of Montpellier and something about his boss refusing to see him outside the category of waiter. I didn’t grasp every detail, of course. But I got the gist of each sentence, like a verbal pearl in those countless grains of French sand.

“
Play for me,” I asked softly.

And so he did.
The measures slowly expanded and swelled into something passionate and lush: the Amazonian jungle again. I heard the unmistakable chorus of birds, hinting of morning-song and exhilarating hot days and colors as bright as crayons. When he finished I threw my arms around him.

“
I love it, Jeannot. Your music is so beautiful…”

“
You believe this?”

“
Yes! You are professional.”

“No, I am
not. Right now I am a waiter.”

“
But in here”—I patted my heart—”you are a professional musician. I can hear it.”

He smiled.
“And you really mean this?”

“Yes, of course. D
on’t you?”

“
It is my dream.”

“
Good! I believe in dreams.”

I was quoting Monique.