Hilary Reyl - Lessons in French

“We’re knocking off early,” I tried to laugh.

I had to stop myself from drinking too quickly and asking too many questions. My curiosity about this household was intense, but so was my awareness that Olivier was completely bound up in it.

After three Kirs with no food, I began to feel dizzy. Struggling to my feet, I said I had to go to bed. I couldn’t even count the hours since I had last slept. The jet lag was catching up to me.

Didn’t I want some dinner?

“No thank you.” Mom had taught me what a waste of time it was to long for the unattainable.

“Goodbye, then.” But I couldn’t quite close the door. “Maybe when you’re back between Italy and the States? Are you staying in Paris for a day or two then?” I hoped I sounded nonchalant. “Will you stay here?”

“I’m not sure that’s such a good idea.”

I blushed.

He smiled sadly. “But I might not be able to help myself,” he said. Flecks of green melted in his brown eyes as he leaned in for what I realized in the nick of time was a double-cheek kiss. The curls that only this morning had seemed such a rare vision actually brushed my neck, and then it was over.

I stumbled backward.

“Not sure of my exact dates yet,” he whispered, “but I’ll see you in two or three weeks.”

As soon as I reached my own tiny space, I knew I was too tipsy and tired to unpack. But I did manage to rummage for a half-eaten turkey sandwich I had leftover from the plane. My first dinner in Paris, alone, staring out at a sea of blinking windows. I had no idea what I was doing here. This was not the Paris of Jacques and Solange, bound by all the limitations of decency, where I first discovered how faithfully I could draw in the illustrated letters I sent home. This was a city whose shapes were still unclear. I had no idea what tomorrow would look like, except that it would be empty of the only person I thought I needed to see.

I forced down a final chalky bite.

I wondered what Olivier might have whipped up for me in the kitchen downstairs. A recipe of his mother’s? Of Lydia’s?

In a couple of weeks, he would pass through my life again, on his way back to Portia, whom we had hardly touched upon all day. Slender Portia of the toile and the bed skirt. Portia who was not me.

Lydia had told me that my sixth-floor maid’s room, the garret that came attached to “every Paris apartment,” would have a view of the Luxembourg Gardens. When I woke that first morning to the alarm on my digital watch, I looked out to the promised sliver of green visible through rain-glossed rooftops.

I had not told Lydia that my cousins had not had a maid’s room, or a cave for their wine for that matter, nor had I told her that it might be a problem for me to pay the $400-a-month rent for her maid’s room out of my salary. I had said that, of course, I understood, and I had implied that I was among the lucky few who did not have to worry about such things. The world was elitist, and this was a funny if slightly embarrassing fact. Common knowledge. The chambre de bonne with a view, c’était normal, normal at any price.

The rooftops and the little corner of Luxembourg trees in my line of sight were glossy and trembling. The room was spartan, but I took my time in arranging it with my few things. I had an hour before Lydia was to call me with my first instructions.

On an old trunk, I made a neat pile of books next to a framed black and white snapshot of my mother and father with me as a plump five-year-old with short hair, outsized eyes and an unsure smile for the camera. Dad was already sick in the picture. His own smile was strained, but he was still trying. Mom had unimaginably long hair and a roundness to her that I couldn’t actually remember, but the firm set of her mouth was the same as today.

I put my clothes on wire hangers on a bare metal bar, next to the single futon on the floor.

“We bought the futon for the last assistant because the springs in the old bed were simply gone,” Lydia had said. “It’s so comfortable that I’m a little jealous. Maybe we’ll get one for Portia. Can you imagine? Portia on a futon on the floor? She’d probably love it. She’s always saying she hates her bedroom in Paris, that it’s too precious.”

My bathroom was tiny and strange, a shower stall with a curtain that didn’t quite reach the floor and an electric toilet that made an alarming suction sound. The door was plastic and folded like an accordion. The sink was outside, next to a camping stove and a tiny refrigerator. In the cupboard by the refrigerator, I found a few dishes and a box of verveine tea bags. There was still sugar in the sugar bowl, but otherwise there was no sign of the disastrous assistant who had preceded me.

The string of events that led me to this garret was so tenuous that I believed it might snap at any moment and send me hurtling back across the Atlantic to the nothingness from which I’d come, to Peter, the noncommittal boyfriend who finally called it off, to the professors who told me that I had to outgrow my delusion that accurate contour drawing was art, to the mother who said she would hire me an LSAT tutor if I promised to get my act together.

It was only this past May that Lydia called me at school to say she had gotten my letter and résumé. She liked the fact that I had been a volunteer lifeguard in Nicaragua. Was my French really fluent? She needed to fire the assistant she had in Paris because she wasn’t working out. “I am far from uptight, but this girl has no morals.” Her voice was hoarse and breathy. So could I take the train into the city as soon as possible to meet with her? “I’m in the Village,” she said.

“Of course. I’ll come tomorrow.”

I was stunned that she had responded to me.

One of my college roommates had told me about the job with Lydia Schell. “I used to be friends with her daughter, Portia. They’re both kind of crazy, mother and daughter, but pretty brilliant. She always needs an assistant in Paris and it’s probably an interesting gig. Write to her. You can use my name.”

So, I had gone to the library and found books of Lydia Schell’s photographs. I had quickly learned that she had been a part of everything that mattered in recent history. I had written to her.

Lydia had made her name photographing the Civil Rights Movement and Vietnam War protests. Now she traveled all over the world, but she was based in Europe as a magazine correspondent, mostly for Vanity Fair of late. She was famous for a framing device whereby her pictures looked like they were from the point of view of one of their own subjects. They felt very intimate, but they told far-reaching and important stories.

After initial skepticism, Mom had been suitably impressed by my reports of Lydia Schell’s fame to support my effort. This was why she had sacrificed to send me to a good school, so that I would have this kind of opportunity. But I shouldn’t simply drift on it. I should make sure I always knew where the opportunity was taking me because people like us could not afford not to be practical.

“So, you’re telling me she’s in the big leagues,” said Mom, with the beginnings of approval.

“Mom, she probably won’t even answer my letter.”

“Well, then it won’t have been for you, will it? And you can use your French in a law firm. Max said he would be able to get you a paralegal job in any major city in the world in a heartbeat.” She took a rare pause. “But they do say,” she went on, “that law schools are looking for variety these days. Think about how that week in Nicaragua helped you get into college. You wrote such a great essay about it, remember? So your law school application may end up stronger if you work for this woman.”