French Lessons

by Ellen Sussman

  “Am I disturbing you?” Brady asked.

  “No, not at all.” She put the book on her desk, cover down, as if she had been doing something illicit. “What’s up?”

  “I was wondering…” Brady looked around the room, at the photos on her wall-photos she had taken of the creek behind her cottage-at the stack of books on the floor, and out the window where the rest of the students were piling into cars and heading home.

  In the silence she watched him. He had Simon’s startling green eyes, Simon’s thick, wavy hair, Simon’s height. In the small room she realized that he smelled like Simon and she pushed the thought away. Of course, she thought. They use the same soap.

  “My dad wants me to do the regular college thing. You know, liberal arts. Like everyone else in the world. That’s what I always thought I’d do. I mean, I never really thought about it, but now, I’m like a junior and I have to think about these things.”

  It all came out in a breathless rush, as if he couldn’t stop himself.

  “What do you want, Brady?” Josie asked.

  “Well, that’s it. That’s what I was wondering. I mean, this is completely crazy, but I really loved doing the play. It’s like I was someone else up there and I get it. I really get how actors inhabit other people, like they give themselves up and they live in someone else’s body for a while. And this is the wild part, the part that I never would have figured out except it happened to me. When the play is over and you go back to being you again, you’re like a different you. You’re changed. It’s like you’re not the guy you played onstage, but you take a little bit of him back with you.”

  He took a deep breath.

  “You think I’m nuts, right?”

  “No. I think you’re very smart.”

  “Really? Cool. I’ve been thinking about this and I didn’t really know if I could explain it or anything. And then if I could, like, who would I tell.”

  “Me.”

  “Yeah. You get it, huh? That’s really cool.”

  His smile was huge and he sat on the edge of his seat, his legs jangly, his fingers tapping on his knees.

  “And the school thing?” Josie asked, though she already knew everything he was about to say.

  “I could go to acting school. I could apply to UCLA Drama School and USC and the Tisch program at NYU, and I got all the catalogs and I read them before I go to sleep at night and then I can’t sleep, I’m so jazzed about this stuff. You should read what they say. I mean, it’s all about the stuff you talked about when we started the play. About searching within to find what you can bring to the part. About learning your character like you’re learning to breathe in a brand-new way.”

  He stood up and walked to one of the photos on the wall.

  “This is cool. This is really great. You took these?”

  “Yeah. Last summer.”

  “You’re great. You’re like the best teacher here.”

  He swung around and looked at her and then dropped back into the chair.

  “You gotta talk to my dad.”

  “I don’t think so, Brady.”

  “Yeah. You’d be so good at it. He’d listen to you. He’s not listening to me.”

  “It’s not my job.”

  “All you gotta do is tell him that I’m good enough. I’m good enough, right?”

  She looked at him and saw that he was terrified in that moment, that he had no idea if he was good enough.

  “You’re good enough, Brady,” she said.

  He shot up out of his chair again. “So you gotta talk to him. Tell him that. Tell him lots of smart kids go to drama school.”

  “I don’t know, Brady,” Josie said. “It’s not such a bad idea. What your dad wants. You can study acting later.”

  “But it’s all I care about!” he shouted. “Don’t you get it? I thought you’d get it. I thought you’d help me out here.”

  “I’ll talk to him,” she said quietly.

  “Soon,” he said. “We’re flying down to look at schools next weekend. He’s like all fired up about this. Father-son bonding time. He was never around and now he’s my best fucking friend.”

  • • •

  Nico and Josie start to climb. The stairs of the tower wind around the inside of one of the legs, the Pilier Est. Josie feels like she’s in the belly of a giant erector set. It is hard work-Josie is glad that the stairs only go to the second level-after that, they have to take the elevator like everyone else. They’re alone in this maze of steel. At one point a young boy sprints past them, as if shot from a cannon below. Suddenly Josie feels old. How can that kid dash up these stairs? Wasn’t she young and fit about three weeks ago?

  Josie catches glimpses of the city through the ironwork of the tower’s leg, a peek of the meandering River Seine on one side, the grassy stretch of the Champ de Mars on the other. She has no fear of heights; she is not the little girl in her story. She has lost her mother, but she sure as hell doesn’t expect to find her waiting at the top of the tower. Her father, though, might just be waiting for her, perched in the window of her childhood house, the chandelier lit above him, staring out into the street. He is waiting for Josie to come home. Maybe she’ll bring a nice young man with her, a boyfriend. That’s all he wants.

  This is ridiculous, Josie thinks. Nico has invented some kind of therapy for her, some way for her to exorcize her grief while exercising her legs. Fine. At least they’ve stopped talking. At least he’s stopped staring at her like a hungry puppy.

  At least she’s still wearing her sneakers and not some ridiculous pair of stiletto heels.

  Nico is a few steps ahead of her, climbing steadily. Next she’ll find out he’s an Olympic athlete in his spare time. Odd, she thinks. She knows nothing about him. Why is he a tutor? Is that a career choice or something to do while writing poems? She used to be someone who was curious about people. She’d collect life stories from strangers on planes and buses. Now she talks to no one. And finally, here she is, spending a day with someone, and she’s learned so little about him. He loves another French tutor. He hid in the root cellar as a child. He has a child in Morocco. Who is he? Has he really fallen for her or is this his charming way to teach a foolish American girl? And why the hell is she following him to the top of the tower?

  She tries to quiet the sound of her own ragged breath. It’s been too long since she hiked in the hills or biked out into the country. Since Simon. She’s lost her ability to breathe since Simon.

  “What will we do in Paris once we’ve bought your new shoes?” Simon had asked.

  She was the pro, the French speaker. He had traveled to Paris on business once or twice but knew nothing of the city. Had he been to the Eiffel Tower? Probably not. And, of course, now she’d never know.

  “We’ll do the same thing we do here,” she had told him.

  “Wrong,” Simon said, smiling. “We’ll drag our sorry asses out of bed and see the city. I want to walk every street of the city with you on my arm.”

  It was going to be their first trip together, their first chance to go to sleep together and wake up together for six straight days.

  “One more floor,” Nico calls out like a personal trainer urging her on to seventy-three more push-ups. Now the sky takes up more space, the river snakes longer and narrower, and the houses become rooftops, blending into one another.

  Josie sees that the skies are darkening, and a cold breeze passes through. She can feel the wind on her neck and she remembers her haircut. She lifts her hand and runs it through her hair. He’ll never see it, she thinks.

  “It’s not working,” she calls out to Nico.

  “What’s not working?”

  “Isn’t this your cure? Shouldn’t I be feeling better already?”

  “Keep climbing,” he calls back.

  Josie feels perspiration in the small of her back. She rolls her tank top up and wipes the sweat away. Then her hand snakes around to her belly, and she holds it there. It’s flat, it’s taut, it feels the same
way it’s always felt. But she’s pregnant, she knows it. She had gone off the pill and Simon had started to use condoms. Did they ever forget?

  The day in the rowboat. They weren’t thinking of condoms; they were thinking about the depth of the lake, the iciness of the water, the rockiness of the boat. They were risking his marriage, her job, his relationship with his son, her relationship with her father.

  They never thought about the other risk they took.

  Simon’s gone, Brady’s gone. She holds her hands over her belly and climbs the stairs.

  “I have never been to the top of the tower,” Nico calls back.

  “Are you afraid?” Josie asks.

  “Of heights? No. Of love. Perhaps.”

  “Is this about love?”

  “Every French man and woman either loves the tower or hates the tower. You can’t ignore it. It’s here, blocking our view or gracing our view, every day. It doesn’t matter where you are. The tower is always there.”

  “Do you love it or hate it?”

  “Today I will decide,” Nico says.

  Josie feels lighter on her feet. Somehow she has a second wind and the steps seem easier to scale. There is more air, a lighter breeze passing through. She loves the feeling of air on her neck.

  “Today I will decide,” she calls up to Nico.

  “About the tower?”

  “About Provence,” she says. “Whether I will lose my mind completely and run off with my tutor.”

  “This is a good place to lose one’s mind,” Nico tells her.

  They met in a motel off Highway 101, a half hour from their homes. It was a little dangerous-Simon told her he didn’t have time for a long drive. He was getting sloppy. He had called her from his house a few days before, late at night, when his wife was sleeping. Ten minutes into the conversation, they heard a click and then Brady’s voice, “Hello? Dad? You on the phone?”

  “I’ll be off in a second.”

  “It’s one in the morning.”

  “Brady, go back to bed. I’ll be up soon.”

  “Who you talking to?”

  “Germany. It’s a business call. Please don’t interrupt us any more than you have.”

  Brady slammed the phone down.

  This time Simon said, “I won’t know anyone there. It’s a dive. I need to see you.”

  “I know people who stay at dives,” Josie said.

  “Please, Josie. I have something to give you.”

  She called off a meeting with the Honor Society, which was planning a graduation tea.

  “We only have a week till graduation,” Alicia Loy whined. “We have to meet now.”

  “Alicia, it’s a damn tea,” Josie said, regretting it the minute the words were out of her mouth. “I can’t do it. I told you. I have an emergency.”

  She arrived at the motel. It was worse than a dive-it looked abandoned and ready for demolition. She parked next to Simon’s Audi and knocked on the only room that was lit.

  He opened the door and pulled her in, closing the door behind her.

  “Don’t breathe,” he said. “It smells like someone died in here.”

  “How romantic.”

  He held her pressed against him, her back to his chest. He lowered his head and kissed the top of her head.

  “On the bed,” he whispered, “is a gift.”

  She looked at the wool blanket, the gray sheets, the lumpy pillows. She could see where the bed sagged in the middle.

  “Under the bed,” she whispered, “is a dead body.”

  “It only smells that way,” Simon told her. “I checked.”

  “I don’t see your gift.”

  “It’s where gifts always are: under the pillow.”

  She turned in his arms and kissed him.

  “If I stay really close to you,” she murmured, “then I can only smell you. And you smell wonderful.”

  “Go get your gift.”

  She pulled back and looked at him. He looked boyish in his pleasure.

  She walked to the bed and lifted the closest pillow. An envelope. She reached for it and glanced at the front. A drawing of the Eiffel Tower. A good drawing, with an artistic flair.

  “Did you draw this?” she asked.

  “One of my many talents. And you thought I was only a good lay.”

  “Wow,” she said. “An artist.”

  “A French artist.”

  “Drawing the Eiffel Tower doesn’t make you a French artist, my love.”

  “Open the envelope.”

  She did. Inside were two business-class plane tickets to Paris.

  She turned toward him, her eyes wide.

  “You can do this?”

  “I can do this.”

  “How?”

  “A business trip. It doesn’t matter. We leave the day school ends for you.”

  “I have teacher meetings. No-yes. I’ll cancel everything. We’re going to Paris!”

  She threw herself into his arms.

  “You’ll help me find a hotel. I didn’t know which neighborhood, I didn’t know whether you would want something grand or something intimate. I want to know all these things about you. I want to eat in wonderful restaurants without worrying about who will see us.”

  “I’ll teach you French. We’ll talk dirty in French in bed with each other.”

  “I’m terrible at languages.”

  “I’ll be your French tutor.”

  “You don’t talk dirty in English.”

  “That’s just because I can’t catch my breath.”

  “Say ‘Undress me’ in French.”

  “Déshabille-moi.”

  “Say ‘Fuck me.’ ”

  “Baise-moi.”

  “Say ‘Devour me.’ ”

  “Dévore-moi.”

  “Say ‘Don’t ever stop.’ ”

  “N’arrête jamais.”

  “Say you’ll come with me to Paris.”

  “Je t’aime.”

  Nico and Josie reach the top of the tower. Josie takes a deep breath and finally allows herself to look out. She was glad for the elevator ride, but she kept her eyes closed as she was whisked to the top.

  Now she looks out, way out. The observation tower is crowded with people who all seem to be speaking at once-a jumble of languages and sounds. She walks slowly, unsteadily, to one window. She feels as if she’s not yet landed, that her legs need to keep climbing. She’s got sea legs, miles above the sea.

  When she reaches the window she takes in a lungful of air and then holds it. It’s as if she doesn’t want to let go of what she sees. All of Paris is spread before her, from the heights of Sacré-Coeur, down along the banks of the Seine, out to the farthest reaches of each arrondissement. The clouds swirl around her, at eye level, and every once in a while the city disappears and she’s heaven-bound. Then a gust of wind pushes away the cloud and, like magic, Paris sits at her feet.

  She looks straight out into the sky and sees what Simon must have seen in his small plane. Clouds, sky, space. It’s enormous and infinite and thrilling.

  “Take me,” she had said when he told her how he loved to fly.

  Now she knows. Now she has a piece of him that was missing. He loved this: the wild space of it, the changing possibility of clouds and sky, the power of height.

  “Thank you,” she says to Nico when he comes to her side.

  He stands next to her for a long while, both of them silent, both gazing out into the sky.

  Josie remembers the weight of Simon’s body after they would make love. They would fall into each other, wrapping themselves as closely into each other’s bodies as possible. “Come closer,” he would say. “Yes,” she would say. After losing themselves during sex, they would land, and they needed to take away all the space between them.

  Did he die in the sky? Did something happen in the plane while it flew through the sky? Is this what he saw before he died? Or did he come to earth and die when the plane crashed into the hard, unyielding ground? Did he and Brady kn
ow they were going to die? Did they hold each other and wait for it to happen?

  “Take me,” she had said to Simon.

  He left without taking her.

  She makes a sound and Nico puts his arm around her.

  The clouds move in and surround them. They can no longer see the city below. They’re wrapped in silvery black clouds, cocooned in space.

  “I love it,” Nico says finally. “My tower. My Paris.”

  • • •

  Simon had said he’d come over to Josie’s cottage after dinner. He told his wife another client was in town, that once again he needed to stop by the guy’s hotel to buy him a drink and talk up tomorrow’s meeting. When the doorbell rang Josie thought Simon was early. She ran to the door, threw it open, and saw her father standing on the porch, flowers in his hand.

  “Dad!”

  “I’m disturbing you?”

  “No, of course not. I’m just surprised.”

  “Your old man was in the neighborhood.”

  She ran dates through her mind-it wasn’t her mother’s birthday, their anniversary, the anniversary of her death.

  “You don’t need an excuse,” she said. “Come have dinner with me.”

  “Dinner? I don’t need dinner. I just need a little time with my girl.”

  “I’m eating, Dad. You want time with me, you have to eat, too.”

  She stepped aside and let him pass. He clung to his flowers as if he had no intention of giving them to her.

  “Smells good in here,” he said, heading straight to the kitchen.

  “I gotta make a call, Dad. Pour yourself a glass of wine. I’ll throw in the pasta in a second.”

  “Pasta. Wine. I should come more often.”

  She smiled and kissed him. He seemed smaller. No, she was used to standing on tiptoe to kiss Simon.

  She walked into her bedroom and closed the door. She had to reach Simon, to tell him not to come. He’d be home, having dinner with his wife and Brady. She’d call on his cell phone but still, it was risky. She had to do it-she didn’t want him showing up with her dad here.

  She dialed his number. It rang and rang. She hung up and texted him: Call me.

  They were careful about text messages-too easy for his wife to pick up the phone and find the revealing words.