Ellen Sussman - French Lessons

So somehow she has arrived at a point in her life that she looks like a porn star. She has big hair and high heels and enormous breasts. In New York, everyone would know that she’s not a porn star, because she’s smart and funny and the clothes she wears are sophisticated and she has her sneakers. But here, there’s only one way to translate this: “Fuck me!”

Maybe that’s what Philippe plans, Riley thinks. She tucks thoughts of her mother away-no, Mom, you’re not coming along for this ride!-and clicks her heels as she struggles to keep up with Philippe’s long stride.

The sky darkens as suddenly as a full eclipse of the sun and then, in a flash of lightning and thunder, as if God is screaming, Get sex out of your mind right now! , the heavens open up. Philippe’s grip tightens on Riley’s arm and he leads her under the canopy of a corner restaurant. In a second, a crowd of people huddle under this teeny canvas, and they are squeezed together.

The crowd oohs and aahs as if God were a fucking superstar. Riley can barely see the street anymore-they’re sandwiched between so many people. Someone smells as if they had garlic oatmeal for breakfast; someone else has the hiccups and the whole crowd seems to jerk with each gasp of breath. Riley feels her heartbeat racing-she’s not sure if it’s the drama of the heavens or Philippe’s arm pressed into her breast. And for once, she doesn’t have to speak. She gets this: it’s weather and it’s wild. No need for a running commentary. Just take it in.

Riley remembers a camping trip with Vic in Vermont-pre-kids, pre-marriage-when a storm woke them in the middle of the night, pounding their tent so loudly that they knew it was hail, a freak midsummer hailstorm, and Riley began to tremble, suddenly sure that the thin fabric would give way and they’d be iced to death. Vic climbed on top of her and in a quick moment their sleeping bags were unzipped, their clothes pulled off, and their bodies pounded each other in the most violent, urgent, ragged sex they ever had. Afterward, the hailstorm too had ended and they lay there, gasping, staring at the roof of the tent in the dark, side by side, their hands clasped together. They never spoke about it afterward, as if there were something shameful about the way they tore at each other. Riley wonders now: What would it take to bring Vic back to me?

A clap of thunder and Riley transports herself on a transatlantic journey from Vermont to Paris, from Vic to the French tutor, from the smell of pine trees to the smell of wet wool. The rain stops as abruptly as it started. The sky lightens. The crowd doesn’t move as if they’re not ready for the show to end. No one says a word. Riley almost expects a call: “Encore!” But eventually the first few people break away from their tight little gathering, and then the next, and then Philippe’s arm leaves her breast. She sags a little-not her breast, which is firmly ensconced in an American 34 DD bra with underwire and wide straps-but her whole body feels a little post-orgasmic. The show is over.

Philippe looks at her. She feels closer to him now, as if they have shared something. And to her delight, he doesn’t speak. He wraps that wonderful hand around her upper arm and leads her onward.

The sidewalks are crowded with people, everyone on the move again, and the city streets glisten with light reflecting off the puddles. Riley thinks of Cole and his new green rubber boots with the frog eyes on the tips-he should be splashing his way to the Place des Vosges instead of sitting in front of the TV with Fadwa or Fatah or Fadul’s mother. Bad Mama! And tonight, when he wants Daddy to put him to bed, she’ll have to explain: It’s you and me, babe .

But no time for children! I’m off on a Parisian adventure! It’s all about me-me-me!

How odd that a person can lose herself in a city, in a family, in a marriage. How odd that she never felt lonely when she lived alone all those years in New York, and now, wrapped in the tidy package of nuclear family, a member of every fucking expat group that exists in Paris, every moms’ group for English-speakers, every wives’ group for expats, she feels like she’s the kid standing outside the school and everyone’s gone home and her mother has forgotten to pick her up.

Do they call it nuclear because it’s bound to explode?

She has not mentioned to her mother that her husband has gone AWOL on their marriage, that he’s rarely home, that he barely touches her, that the last time she told a funny story about the crazy woman who yelled at her for breast-feeding in the park he said, “Maybe you shouldn’t be breast-feeding anymore.” When Riley found out that her pet name for Vic, “coo-coo,” is something French people say to their infants, he told her, “Maybe you shouldn’t call me that anymore.” She has not mentioned to her mother that she wakes in the middle of the night with something like terror lodged in her chest. No wonder her mother forgot to metaphorically pick her up-she’s a fraud and her mother knows it. She used to tell her mother everything and now she has spent a year telling her mother not to visit her in Paris, and now her mother has cancer.

“Comment?” Philippe asks.

She looks up at him. Has she said something? In what language? The language of grief?

“Rien,” she assures him. “My mother hums when she’s thinking and apparently I do that, too.”

“En français,” Philippe says.

“Oh, shut the fuck up,” she tells him.

He laughs. Fuck -the international language.

He slides his hand on her lower back as he presses her in front of him. The crowd is so thick on the sidewalk that they can’t walk side by side and he keeps his hand there, guiding her forward, like a dancer, leading her through complicated moves on the dance floor. She is a terrible dancer; she doesn’t know how to follow a guy, or maybe she’s never been with a guy who knows how to lead. Before their wedding she and Vic took a couple of dance lessons and they were dismal failures, bumping into each other, turning the wrong way, smacking into each other’s shoes. One night they got stoned and danced in the empty living room of their new apartment and suddenly they could do it-they were Fred and Ginger-they spun and dipped and swooned. A week later, at their own wedding, they had to bear-hug through the first dance, too embarrassed to fumble through a merengue in front of the crowd. “I can’t feel your lead,” Riley had whispered to Vic. “What do you want, a steamroller?” Vic asked. “Steamroll me, baby,” Riley whispered in his ear when they made love that night.

Philippe’s hand slides around her waist and pulls her to a stop.

“Nous sommes arrivés,” he announces.

She looks around. They’re in the middle of the block; all around them people walk in every direction and cars blast their horns. She looks at Philippe, who’s gazing up-at a building that might have been built in the fifties and hasn’t been washed since. It would look like just about any building except it’s in the middle of Paris and every other building is a piece of art. This is not. It’s got a flat surface that is dull and soot-covered, the windows grimy and dark. Who lives here?

Apparently her dashing French tutor lives in this dump, because he’s tapping in a code and opening the front door. Riley’s feet are frozen in place. She hears a chorus of voices-Vic, her mom, Cole, Gabi-all shouting at her. She’s being stoned by words.

“Riley,” Philippe says, and the voices vanish, her feet thaw, and she’s hurrying inside the door. She was never a pushover before-now the sound of her name in this man’s mouth turns her into a hussy.

The elevator smells of dirty diapers. It’s hard to think about sex, and Riley tries not to breathe, as if she’d be allowing Gabi to enter her mind if she thought about dirty diapers. How does she know the babysitter’s mother will change Gabi’s diaper? She once left Gabi with her mother on her last visit home, six months ago, and came back from the beach with Cole to find Gabi drenched and soiled. “I thought they made diapers stronger these days,” her mother said, unbothered by the mess. “Next time, you take care of the baby and I’ll go to the beach with the munchkin.” Riley’s mom prefers Cole to Gabi, and has never tried to hide it.