Ellen Sussman - French Lessons

And forget about words-she’s lost the cultural clues! Is Philippe’s shirt cool or dorky? It’s kind of shiny-that wouldn’t pass muster in New York. And he’s got one earring that looks like a cross, but maybe it’s an X. Does that mean something? Is he charming or creepy? Doesn’t matter. She likes to look at him. He’s handsome and that seems to translate well enough in any language.

He opens his book to a page that has a picture of a house. Pictures she likes. Pictures she can read. She feels like Cole, watching intently while Papa reads the text. If Philippe keeps this up for long, she’ll need her blankie and a nap.

Philippe stops talking and points to a picture of a bedroom. He’s pointed right at the bed! Yes, she wants to say: Let’s go!

But she says, “lit.” Amazing. When it matters, the words come to her. The important words.

“Le lit,” Philippe says.

Who the hell cares? Feminine, masculine. When will the gender revolution come to France? Maybe it’s a cross-dressing bed. Riley looks up. Philippe’s watching her. Why does she have this goofy grin on her face because she’s looking at a bed? Well, no fucking chance she can explain this one.

“Où est le lit?” she asks.

“Dans la chambre,” Philippe says.

“Où est la chambre?” she asks.

He looks at her. Is he so pleased because they’re having an infantile conversation or because they’re talking about sex?

No one’s talking about sex, Riley reminds herself. It’s just in the air, wafting toward her.

“Dans la maison,” Philippe says.

“Where is your maison ?” Riley asks.

“En français,” Philippe says.

“I know it’s in France. Where in France?”

He shakes his head. But he’s still smiling. He’s left a couple of buttons open on his shiny shirt. Riley can see that he has a boy’s chest, hairless and lean.

She has never cheated on Vic. She once desired a man who worked in the art department at her PR firm and she told Vic, and Vic told her he desired a woman who worked in the finance department of his company and that was the end of that. Tit for tat. Well, she hoped there wasn’t any tit involved. There certainly wasn’t any tat for her.

Is Vic cheating on her now? Is he really meeting boring French businessmen every hour of the day and night? She asked him once-mid-dinner on a date night-and he said, “My God, Riley. Can’t we even spend one night out without your ruining it?”

She had a sudden image of herself as a shrew, the kind of woman a husband complained about to his office mates. Wasn’t she the siren a few years ago, the woman Vic boasted about? “My wife loves sex,” he once told a friend of theirs. “You lucky fuck,” the friend said. Whenever they finished making love, Riley would whisper in Vic’s ear: “You lucky fuck.” And he would fall asleep with a smile on his face.

She hasn’t seen that smile in a long time.

“J’habite près du Centre Beaubourg,” Philippe says.

She understood him! The Pompidou Center! But they call it whatever he said. She remembers standing on the top floor of the museum and looking out at the rooftops of Paris and thinking: Everyone else is having a wonderful life. Just look. Charming attic apartments, sex in a single bed, the smell of bouillabaisse and hashish floating through the air.

Now she knows: Philippe is one of those people.

I had a wonderful life, she wants to say. She remembers the bon voyage party her friends threw for them a few weeks before they moved to Paris. She and Vic wore matching berets and striped shirts (hers stretched over a pregnant belly). Mid-party they had a fencing match with baguettes as weapons. They were grown-up kids embarking on a grand adventure. “Will you be lonely over there?” one friend asked her. “Not with Vic and Cole and little Miss Wiggle Worm. Besides, it’s Paris,” she said.

Wonderful slips away, day by day. Why, even yesterday she was more wonderful than today. Yesterday her mother didn’t have cancer. Riley has lost her mind in a tangle of thoughts and Philippe has asked a question.

She smiles.

He repeats it.

She shakes her head. “No comprendo.”

“Je ne comprends pas,” he corrects her.

Why bother trying to explain it’s an expression in English-well, not in English exactly, but something everyone says in English even though it’s in Spanish.

“Right,” she says. “What you said.”

Vic speaks French. He speaks it so well that he’s now changed his name to Victor. He says that the French don’t use nicknames and so he’s now Victor. “The Victor.” That’s what she calls him when she’s really annoyed, as in: “Will you be home for dinner, The Victor?” To which he usually responds no. He used to say “Don’t call me that.” But now he doesn’t bother. “No” takes care of everything-it’s an all-purpose word. In fact, it’s the same word in French even if they do put an extra unnecessary letter on the end. Non! I won’t be home for dinner!

But Riley is Riley in any language. “What am I supposed to call myself now,” she asked The Victor. “AllRiledUp?”

“Clever,” he said.

Of course he calls Gabi Gabrielle, which is her real name, but damned if Riley’s going to start burdening her daughter with a name that’s longer than she is. Cole is Cole is Cole is Cole. Thank God.

Does anyone call Philippe Phil? In bed, maybe? A kiss here, my Philistine? Sometimes sex draws a thing out, doesn’t it?

So they’re back to the lit and the lampe and all things de la chambre . Riley learns a few new words while gazing at the book. Then she imagines her mother in the bed in the picture. When Riley was little she would climb in bed with her mother and they would read, side by side, their cottony arms rubbing up next to each other. Her mother often hummed, but she said she didn’t. And now Riley hums while she gives Cole a bath. It’s the same tune. How can she ask her mother what the tune is when her mother says she never hums? Riley feels a kind of urgency and peers at her mother in the bed. The image begins to fade until poof-she’s gone-and a goddamn tear splashes on the page.

Philippe says something, real alarm on his lovely face, and Riley wipes her eyes, shakes her head and says, “Rien, rien.” Amazing what words appear when she needs them.

But in a quick moment, Philippe is packing up. Men and tears. She half expects him to dash out and leave her behind, but at the last minute he gestures for her to follow him.

Whatever.

They stand outside the café, in the middle of the Marais, looking at each other.

Philippe says something.

Riley smiles.

“Bon,” he says.

He takes her arm and they start walking down rue des Francs-Bourgeois.

For the first time in a year, Riley feels French. She’s walking next to a Frenchman-a handsome Frenchman at that-and instead of doctor’s appointments and playground visits and pain au chocolat shopping, there is only this: mystery. She has no idea where they’re going. She’s been dropped from her life into a French novel.

Never mind that Riley looks pathetically American. Before she moved to Paris, everyone told her “Whatever you do, don’t wear sneakers.” She left them all behind. And now, in a swift change of fashion trends, every goddamn Frenchwoman is wearing little white sneakers. But it’s not the clothes, it’s the breasts. No one in France has breasts this size. She tried buying a new bra and got tired of the way the saleswomen rolled their eyes and sadly shook their heads. And then there’s the hair! She has long, curly hair, messy hair, hair that won’t be contained in rubber bands or hair clips. It explodes from her head like confetti. “Cut it,” Vic said. “Non!” she told him. She loves her hair.