Hilary Reyl - Lessons in French

Noon passed. It was almost twelve-thirty. I had looked into the courtyard several times to see the door to the street as shut as a sleeping eye. Twice, I noticed Madame Fidelio peering from her own curtains. Had she also been alerted to Olivier’s arrival? Was she too waiting for his return from Italy and his final farewell? Did she also long for closure?

Roaming the empty apartment, I fingered my precious note.

Again and again, I returned to Portia’s closet, where, beside a neat stack of shoe boxes, I stared at his duffel bag, unzipped, his neatly rolled socks, a swatch of soft gray sweater.

Above the bag hung the three shirts Portia had had me pick up from the pressing on the rue de Vaugirard. “You can put them in my closet. You should see a duffel there. Hang them above it.” I had detected a wisp of melancholy in her tone, as if she might somehow intuit how left-out she made me feel, as if she might be human.

With all these possessions here, Olivier couldn’t not show up. I took comfort in the socks, the sweater, the worn leather luggage tag whose writing matched the writing in my hands. Even if it was going to make me feel terrible, I was going to see him again.

The doorbell rang. The hallway pulsed as I moved toward the entryway. I opened the door. He had grown a beard, golden and slight. It tickled when he leaned in for the double kiss.

“I’m going to have to shave it off in a couple of days.” He laughed. “And I guess I should probably cut my hair.”

“How was Italy?” I managed.

“Amazing. Are you going to let me in?”

I realized I was frozen in the doorway. I let him pass, followed him into the kitchen.

“Anyone else around?” He cast his eyes about. “Clarence here?”

“No, just me. Would you like something to drink?”

“No thanks, let’s get out of here. Can I take you to lunch?”

“Sure.”

Lunch. It must be okay to get lunch. Lunch was only a moment. Why not enjoy it?

Olivier said he didn’t like to stay in the apartment while Clarence was here so he was in a hotel room in the Marais. Did I know that part of town, the winding old Jewish quarter that was getting so funky? He could show me around if I had time. He was going to be here until Friday.

So not just a few more minutes. Two more days.

He took me to a narrow Italian restaurant called the Cherche-Midi. Our table was so small that our knees almost touched underneath.

We shared a tomato and mozzarella plate. Then I had spaghetti with baby clams and red pepper, which I tried to eat as neatly and prettily as I could.

“It’s such a pleasure,” he sighed, “to be with a woman who actually eats. So many women just play with their food.”

I flushed as the specter of impossibly delicate Portia rose between us, batting pasta around into little piles with a silver fork. I wanted to be her, and I wanted to be the opposite of her.

I took a tiny bite and got a burst of garlic.

“Sensing my discomfort, he changed the subject, “What was your French family like?”

The question caught me off guard.

“They were great. My cousin Solange taught preschool and she was really energetic. And Jacques always made these corny jokes about how everyone in the world was really a Balzac character from The Human Comedy. He was a teacher too, a literature teacher in a lycée. And they had this wild son, Étienne, who I had this love-hate relationship with. They were lovely. I mean, they are lovely.”

“But you haven’t seen them yet? Not since you’ve been here this time?”

“How did you know?”

He smiled indulgently, tossed back a curl. “I know something about moving on. You’ll look back eventually.”

“There’s something kind of martyr-like about them that makes me sad. Maybe because they are so pure. Solange has these firm, busy arms, always in motion like the kids she taught. And Jacques is quieter, with a dark mustache and a slow smile and an absolute certainty that Balzac was the greatest writer in the history of the world. He knows it’s funny—he’s onto himself—but it does nothing to shake his conviction. They took me in when my dad was sick and made me so much part of the family that I felt kind of guilty for how attached I got to them, disloyal to my own parents.”

“But your own parents sent you away.”

“They had to,” I almost snapped. I stared into the olive oil shining up from my plate. Why had my parents left me in Paris for so long? In a trough between two waves? Learning French? Life had traded me fluency for my father’s last touch. Not the bargain I would have chosen. But, as Mom would say, there you have it. Instead of asking so many questions, go make something of your gifts.

“Sorry,” Olivier said. “You shouldn’t call them until you feel ready.”

No, I wanted to protest. Ready or not, I was going to call them later today.

“Although you may not get around to much of anything,” he continued, “after Lydia gets here. It’s hard to get out of her orbit once you get caught. She and the family can be pretty overwhelming. They can erase everything else.”

He told me that I would surely be conscripted to deliver letters between the offices of husband and wife, as they preferred to speak through third parties.

I replied that while Lydia remained mysterious to me, so different from anyone I had ever dealt with, Clarence was quite knowable despite being so erudite. He never appeared shocked by my ignorance. He often liked what I had to say. And he was available to me.

Olivier warned that Clarence could be devious and that I should be careful.

“You’re wrong there,” I said, refusing to get upset. “But then again he’s wrong about you too.”

“Oh, so he talks about me, does he?” Olivier grinned, suspending a fork full of penne.

“I’m sure it’s complicated,” I tried to sound light and knowing. “I mean, you’re dating his daughter. Fathers and daughters can be close.”

“I’m going to break up with Portia,” he declared, putting down his uneaten bite.

I dropped my fork. The wall between us crumbled to lace. “Why are you telling me this?”

“Why do you think, Kate?”

I thought of Portia’s voice, so taut and wiry, its oblique mentions of Olivier, never by name, making sure his luggage was in order, managing his shirts, having me go to Hédiard for a gift bag of foie gras and several jars of the jam of a green plum impossible to find Stateside. “Reines Claudes, they’re called. It can’t be any other kind of jam. And get goose foie gras, not duck. One bloc with truffles and one without. Make sure they put a bow on the bag. A red bow. The color is important. You can leave it on the dressing table in my room.”

The dressing table.

“Does Portia know you’re breaking up with her?” I asked.

“On some level. She can’t not. But you must have noticed that the truth is not exactly an obstacle in this family. Portia has inherited this sort of sad romantic version of her parents spoiledness. She’s really not a bad kid, and I care about her. But I can’t do it anymore. I can’t take the sense of entitlement, the cluelessness, the assumption that her jet-set intellectual parents make her someone. She’s always saying someone in italics to indicate all the people she hangs out with by proxy and all the parents at the New York prep school she went to. And I think she thinks I will be someone too by virtue of some inherent prestige. It’s all very flattering and pathetic and I want out. Besides,” he smiled, “I’ve met another girl.”

In spite of myself, the idea that I might be that girl washed through me, stunningly warm. I took a sip of water, choked, looked away from him.