Ellen Sussman - French Lessons

“Sorry, baby.”

“No need to be sorry,” Philippe says.

“I was-”

“Bring the children. They are filming on the quai. Some famous American actress is here. We can watch, all of us together.”

One quick fuck-all right, two-and he’s creating a new nuclear family, Riley thinks. Let’s blow that one up before it even hits Code Orange.

“Listen, Philippe-”

“T’es belle. T’es magnifique, chérie.”

“Okay,” Riley says. She shakes her head. In some distant country her old friends scream at her: Pathetic fool! “Where?” she asks.

He gives her an address and whispers something in French. In a quick moment, he is her sexy lover again.

But she doesn’t want a sexy lover! She just wants someone to walk next to her in Paris, someone taller than three feet.

She leads the kids toward the nearest métro, already scrambling in her brain for a way out of this mess.

Cole used to love the métro, used to pull Riley toward the swirly green gables beckoning them to the underworld of speedy trains and flashy billboards. He watched the people who moved from car to car, making speeches, playing guitar, juggling balls, a wacked-out subterranean circus.

“What he say, Maman ?” he’d ask when the homeless man would stand at the front of the car and recite some story to the captive audience.

“I don’t know,” she’d tell him honestly.

Then, as his French got better, he understood their terrible stories: Ladies and gentlemen. My wife has a broken leg. There is no heat in our apartment. My oldest children are sick from the cold, the youngest one has a rare disease. I can no longer work because my child is at the hospital . Cole would bury his face in Riley’s coat, hiding his tears, worried that the child in the hospital would die and the man would never get work and the poor maman could not walk. “We’ll give the man money,” Riley would say, as if one euro would solve the problems of the world.

“We have to take the métro,” Riley tells Cole now, urging him down into the underworld of misery and hardship. We have to go see my lover , she won’t say, but she presses her hand on his small back and he’s such a good boy that he heads dutifully down-down-down the stairs and toward her own personal Satan.

Thankfully there are no speeches on the métro today, just a boy doing some kind of break dancing-though Riley thinks they call it something else now. Already she’s too old for the latest fads. Cole applauds when the boy is done, and Riley fishes out a euro for Cole to put in the boy’s filthy palm.

Gabi pokes her head out of the Snugli, watching the world. She’s a quiet baby and Riley loves her for it. She loves the weight of the baby pressed against her chest, the smell of her powdery scalp, the tufts of strawberry-blond hair that swirl on her head like a halo.

They climb the stairs from the métro and for a moment they’re blinded-it has stopped raining again, and the brilliant sun reflects from all the puddles that have gathered in the street. Riley finds her movie-star sunglasses and hides behind them. In Paris the women wear small, dignified glasses, arty things with frames of red, purple, bronze. She won’t give up her oversize tortoise-framed specs. They make her feel like Gwyneth dashing over to Paris for a little shopping expedition.

She pulls out her plan , the little blue book of maps that she carries like a Bible, and finds the First Arrondissement-then rue de Rivoli, where Philippe awaits. She has never arrived anywhere in Paris without getting lost. The streets are treacherous, evil places that might deliver you to a canal instead of a street corner. She will not ask directions-it’s useless, all that finger-pointing and hand-waving and word-flying.

But miraculously, the entrance to the courtyard of the Louvre is across the street, and in front of it is Philippe.

He waits for her to cross the street, then he steps toward her and leans forward to kiss her.

She pulls back.

“Les enfants,” she says.

“Aha. So now you speak French,” he says.

He shakes her hand. That is what they do when he comes to her apartment for her French lessons. And he shakes Cole’s hand and says, “Bonjour, monsieur.”

“Bonjour, monsieur,” Cole repeats, his accent perfect.

Philippe leans forward to kiss the top of Gabi’s head, and while he does it he sneaks a hand onto Riley’s neck. Both Gabi and Riley make some kind of whimpering sound.

“Arrête,” Riley says.

“Your French is very good, madame . ”

“It’s the only damn word you learn here in the playgrounds. Arrête, Antoine. Arrête, Marie-Hélène. Arrête . Arrête. ”

“You are spending time in the wrong playground,” Philippe says. “Follow me.”

He leads them into a passageway with windowed sides that show displays of ancient art-sculptures and relics, half-excavated buildings. Riley glances to each side as they hurry by. She still has not visited the Louvre. In fact, in a year of living in Paris, she has missed most of the tourist spots. That’s not where you go with two babies in Paris. These are adult playgrounds; again the day feels foreign and thrilling to her.

They enter the courtyard of the Louvre, and even though Riley has walked through here once, with Victor on a Sunday morning, both babies in strollers, she remembers only their argument about an office party that didn’t allow spouses.

“Why not?” she had asked.

“The French keep their private lives and public lives separate,” Vic told her.

“Why?” she asked. She felt like Cole- why-why-why?

“Maybe the wife shouldn’t meet the pretty assistant,” Vic said.

“Whose wife? Whose pretty assistant?”

“Theoretically.”

“That’s absurd. That’s crazy,” Riley insisted. “That’s so-so blind.”

“Blind is good,” Vic said.

“You think everything they do is good,” Riley argued.

“Sometimes we have to see the world through different glasses,” Vic explained calmly, as if talking to a two-and-a-half-year-old.

Riley has found a new pair of glasses.

Now she’s awed by the daring of I. M. Pei’s modern glass pyramid in the center of these lovely, ancient buildings. She looks around, eyes wide open. She hears a storm of language-French, English, Spanish, German, Arabic-and turns her head in each direction. Everyone comes from a different country, everyone speaks a different language, everyone gathers to look at this. History. Art. Grace.

“There is a café here,” Philippe tells her, leading them to one side of the courtyard.

“Do we have time before the filming?”

“I think so,” Philippe says. “We will sit for a moment and I will buy you a drink.”

They enter the arcade of the Louvre. Café Marly fills the vaulted space with lush red decor, gold and teal tones. It’s stunning and glamorous and it’s crowded with well-dressed people. No babies here, no wild two-year-olds, no breast-leaking moms. Riley looks at Philippe with a worried expression.

“We will not stay for very long,” Philippe says.

“Maman,” Cole says, pointing to the group of children playing with a ball in front of the fountain.

“Go ahead,” Riley says. “I’ll watch you from the café.”

Cole dashes off, his arms turning into airplane wings.

Philippe and Riley are seated at a small table with a perfect view of the courtyard and the pyramid. Riley keeps Gabi in her Snugli and pats the baby’s head as if to reassure her that Maman can have a glass of wine with her French lover at this fabulous café in the center of grand Paris.