Ellen Sussman - French Lessons

“Nana!” Cole repeats, rapturously. He loves his grandma.

It is early morning in Florida-her mother will be reading the paper in the sunroom overlooking the golf course. It is early afternoon in Paris-Riley and Cole sit in the breakfast nook overlooking the courtyard below. A little girl, the concierge’s granddaughter, stands in the middle of the courtyard, her mouth open in a wide O.

“Open the window,” Riley says. “I think she’s singing.”

Cole climbs over the chair and slides the window open. It squeaks and the girl looks up at them, caught mid-note. She pauses and the sound of tey-tey-tey hangs in the air. In a quick moment, she’s singing again, in a thin, high voice. It’s a beautiful song and she watches them while she sings.

“Mom,” Riley says when her mother answers the phone.

“Don’t start calling me every two minutes, Miss Worry-wart,” her mom says.

“I just want to talk to you,” Riley says quietly.

“Is my favorite little man there?”

“Cole,” Riley says, handing him the phone. “She wants you.”

“Nana?” Cole says.

He listens, but he never once takes his eyes off the girl in the courtyard below. He has his grandmother’s voice in one ear and a child’s song in the other ear. His smile spreads across his face.

“I love you, too,” he says, probably to both of them.

He hands Riley the phone.

“I’m fine,” her mother says right away. “I’ll have the surgery, they’ll take it out.”

“Chemo,” Riley says. That’s all she can say.

“So I’ll do chemo. I won’t be the first person in the world.”

“What does the doctor say?”

“He says we should all be so tough at sixty-four years old. He says what I already know. I’m a fighter.”

“How come you didn’t give any of that fight to me?”

“You got plenty of fight. Who else goes to live on the other side of the world with two babies?”

Riley looks around the kitchen-it’s all white, as if aliens or nuns live here.

“You’re the only one I ever talk to.”

“You don’t talk to your husband?”

“No, Ma. Not much.”

“He’s never there. Who takes his bride to the other side of the world and leaves her all alone?”

“Vic.”

“Oh, baby.”

Luckily Cole is staring out the window so he doesn’t see the tears pouring down Riley’s face.

“I’m coming home,” Riley says.

“No. Stay where you are and fix your problems. You have two babies. You can’t just go gallivanting across the world every time you have a little fight with your husband.”

“It’s not a little fight. And it’s not across the world. It’s an ocean. It’s a six-hour flight.” Riley’s mother never left the United States, never jumped on a plane at a moment’s notice, never served a cheese course after dinner.

“Tell Mr. International Businessman to pay a little attention to his wife. Tell him his mother-in-law said so.”

“It’s not so easy, Ma.”

“Nothing’s easy, Riley. No one ever said life is easy. You kids-”

“Don’t start that.” Riley hates the “you kids” lecture. No one ever served her her life on a silver platter anyway.

Her mother is quiet again, and it begins to worry Riley. Her mother has never waited for words to come to her. They just spill from her mouth.

“Your father came home to eat dinner with his family every night of the week,” her mother finally says.

Riley has heard this chant for years, and though she knows it’s not true-he worked late and she usually ate dinner hours before he came home-she loves the memory of her father’s entrance each evening. At the front door, he’d take off his suit jacket and place it over Riley’s shoulders. He’d perch his hat on her head. She’d smell his aftershave, his sweat, the stuffy air of his accounting office, and she’d feel the weight of him as the jacket pulled on her small shoulders.

“I miss Dad,” Riley says. It’s not something she ever says to her mother. She remembers the years of her mother’s grief after her father died ten years ago, years when she worried that her mother would suddenly grow old. But then her mother moved to Florida and forged a new life for herself-grief was no match for her. Riley’s own sense of loss became quiet, hidden, as if now, as an adult, she doesn’t have a right to miss her daddy the way she does.

“I miss him, too,” her mother says. “It’s quiet in an apartment all by yourself. I leave the TV on all day just for the noise.”

“Who’s taking you for your surgery?” Riley asks.

She has no idea if her mom has boyfriends, though she seems to have a lot of men in her life. There’s Art, the trainer at the gym who might be gay, but if he isn’t, go get him, Mom! And Stitch, the construction worker who has dinner over a few times a week, even though there isn’t any more work to do at the condo. Last Riley heard, a guy named Al was swimming laps with Mom every morning.

“Wally,” Mom finally says.

“Who’s Wally?”

“You know about Wally.”

“Never heard his name.”

“Doesn’t matter. He’s just driving me to the hospital. I’ll be fine.”

“What doesn’t matter?”

“Who he is. He’s just a ride.”

“Does he know he’s just a ride?”

Philippe is just a ride, she thinks. Why didn’t I listen to my mother years ago?

“Go take your prince to one of those fancy bakeries. Tell him Nana wants to buy him one of those French pastries you keep talking about.”

Riley nods and mumbles something and hangs up the phone. Cole is still spellbound by the chanteuse below. Riley looks out the window.

The girl in the courtyard finishes her song and takes a bow. She blows a kiss and Cole catches it, a trick Nana had taught him six months ago. He is in love, Riley thinks. For the rest of his life, this will be love.

“Nana wants to buy you a pain au chocolat ,” Riley says.

“How? Nana in Florida.”

“She told me to buy you one. When Gabi wakes up, we’ll go for a walk, sweetie.”

“Mama cry,” Cole says, looking at her for the first time.

“Runny nose,” Riley says. “Gotta catch it.” And she heads for the Kleenex box on the kitchen counter.

With Gabi in her Snugli and Cole by her side, Riley decides to embark on a quest: to eat the best damn pain au chocolat in all of Paris. At the last expat moms’ group-another miserable experience-everyone swapped favorite parks, favorite children’s clothing stores, favorite child-friendly restaurants, favorite pediatricians, and of course, favorite pâtisseries. Next meeting, Riley imagines herself spreading the word: Best tutor for a midday fuck fest-Philippe!

She heads toward numéro uno on the pâtisserie list. It has stopped raining and she needs to shake the spooks from her psyche. Somehow between now and late tonight when The Victor crawls into bed, she’s got to figure out what to do with her life.

Her cell phone rings.

“Hello?”

“Riley.”

“Philippe?” His voice sounds different, as if it’s been dipped in honey.

“Meet me for a glass of wine.”

“You’re speaking English.”

“The French lesson is over.”

“You speak English. All this time you speak English.”

“Not so well. But your French is-how you say-it sucks.”

His accent is not Maurice Chevalier charming but kind of high and whiny. He’s not sexy in English. In fact, he’s Philip in English. She would never fuck a Philip.

“I’ve got the kids, Philippe. Real life and all of that.”

“Oh.”

She thinks of his uncircumcised penis waving in the air above her. She almost runs into a street light but Cole shouts, “Maman!” Weird. On the street Cole calls her Maman . In their apartment he calls her Mama. How does a two-year-old navigate such complicated terrain?