Ellen Sussman - French Lessons

Jeremy is distracted by the light touch of Chantal’s hand on his forearm. It’s as if all his energy and attention has rushed, like blood, to this one part of his anatomy. His skin feels warm, and he imagines her hand making an impression on his skin, as if he were made of clay. She is saying something and he hasn’t been listening.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “What did you say?”

She looks at him, surprised. Of course, he always pays such close attention.

“There was a word I didn’t understand,” he says, finding a feeble excuse. “And so I got lost.”

“I will find you,” Chantal says, smiling. “Perhaps you were lost with the penguins?”

He looks to the right-there’s a display of penguins staring at him.

Her hand leaves his arm and she steps toward the magnificent march of the animals. She gestures toward them and names them all, slowly, as if Jeremy is not only lost but a little slow.

He laughs. “I feel like I belong with the schoolchildren.”

“You are not well enough behaved,” Chantal says.

“That’s not about to change now,” he tells her.

But that’s not true. Jeremy has not behaved badly in years. He has been a perfect partner to Dana since he met her. That first time-a chance meeting-changed him; he knew that by the end of the day, when he told her: “Come home with me.”

He had been working on a house in Bel Air, restoring a library that had been built in 1901 and neglected for more than a century. The owner of the house had warned him: A film crew was shooting a scene in the house, but the library was off-limits to them. No one told Dana that, and she had wandered in while the director was working on a scene that didn’t include her.

She had walked around the library quietly, and finally stood beside Jeremy’s ladder, watching him. He was fitting a delicately carved cornice onto the built-in breakfront bookcase. He had replicated the piece from old photos. It had taken weeks to shape, carve, and finish the intricate pierced form from a piece of mahogany.

He glanced at her, nodded, and returned his attention to his work.

“That’s very beautiful,” she said finally. “Do you live here?”

“No,” he said. “An actor lives here. Someone with enough money and enough good taste to save this place instead of tearing it down.”

“You don’t know who the actor is?”

“I don’t know much about that world,” Jeremy told her.

He noticed how her smile grew.

“I’m Dana Hurley,” she said.

“Jeremy Diamond,” he said, stepping down from the ladder.

“Would you like a glass of champagne?” she asked. “I can get it for you. Or something to eat?”

“You’re on the film crew?” he asked.

“I’m an actress,” she said.

“Somehow I bet I’m the only man in America who hasn’t heard of you,” he said.

“Can I hide here with you?” she asked, still smiling.

“Yes,” he said.

He set his chisel and wooden mallet aside and wiped his hands. They sat in the two club chairs by the bay windows and talked for a long time.

“This could be our house,” Dana said at one point.

“I would build us a much nicer house,” Jeremy told her.

He discovered in the first weeks after meeting her that he was more than ready to give up short-term relationships and one-night stands. Dana offered so much more than all of those many women he used to date. And then there was something new: real love, responsibility, taking care of someone. Fatherhood-that, too, changed him and made him want nothing else than what he had.

“What are those?” Jeremy asks Chantal, interrupting his own thoughts. He’ll be the good student again, pointing at some ratty thing nipping at the heels of a graceful deer.

Chantal offers vocabulary words that he’ll never use. He thinks of his dog at home, a pet sitter taking care of her and promising long walks in the hills. He needs a long walk in the hills. He’s been city-bound too long. These animals remind him that he needs air, space, motion. Everything about this beautiful museum is wrong. The animals are trapped inside.

“Let’s move outside,” Chantal says.

Jeremy glances at her. Does she read him so easily?

“The grounds are beautiful,” she says, as if he needs further urging.

She’s right, and Jeremy breathes more easily. Once they’re through the front door, the Jardin des Plantes spreads out before them. They walk through gardens that represent different ecosystems while Chantal offers the French names for different flowers, trees, wild ferns. On a central path in the large park, the children follow their teachers in two straight lines, like Noah’s animals. The air is thick with woodsy smells, and Jeremy remembers the evening after the rafting trip in Costa Rica. They had camped in the jungle along the side of the river, and the river guides had cooked fish wrapped in banana leaves on an open campfire. Lindy told Jeremy that she had a crush on their river guide, a wiry, dark-skinned young man who had taught them to spin the boat in the rapids. “Don’t tell Mom I like him,” she had said. “I won’t,” he told her. It was the first time she had offered a secret. He held it close to him, an extraordinary gift.

“I want to live in the country one day,” Chantal says.

Jeremy is surprised. She has told him so little about her life.

“Why not move?” he asks.

“My boyfriend loves Paris,” she says. “Though he told me this morning he’s thinking of moving to London.”

“And you?” He tries to ignore the twinge of jealousy. Of course she has a boyfriend. And what does it matter?

“I spend a lot of time in this garden. This is my favorite spot in the city.”

Jeremy looks around with different eyes. He wants to know why she loves this particular garden and yet he won’t ask. He thinks he might come to know Chantal if he knows this garden.

“Will you move to London with this boyfriend?” Jeremy asks.

“I saw him kissing another woman this morning,” Chantal says. “Maybe I deserve a better boyfriend.”

The sky darkens and then flashes white. A growl of thunder follows immediately.

“Let’s go inside,” Chantal says.

“No. We’ll duck under the trees,” Jeremy tells her. “Let’s watch the storm.”

She looks at him, surprised, and then her face lights up. They can hear the high-pitched shrieks of the children, who dash back into the closest exhibition hall as the skies open.

Jeremy wraps his hand around Chantal’s upper arm and leads her deeper into the woods. They step over a low fence-a sign reads INTERDIT! -and under the wide canopy of trees. The rain hits the back of Jeremy’s neck in sharp little stabs. And then they’re protected, the thick shelf of leaves and branches above them sheltering them from the downpour that surrounds them.

It is wild. The sky is almost as black as if day had changed to night. Peals of thunder roll across the sky, bumping into one another without a break. And the rain! It comes down in solid sheets, loud, crashing on the paths, the lawn, the tree canopy above them.

Chantal presses against Jeremy’s side as if frightened. But he sees her face-she is thrilled by the storm. He smiles to himself, glad that they didn’t run for cover.

And finally there are no words-even the jumble of French and English in Jeremy’s mind slows and quiets. There is only this: the lashing of wind at the trees, the pounding of the rain on the earth, the clamor of the sky.

Jeremy can smell Chantal’s shampoo-something like tangerines. He breathes her in.

He made love with Dana last night when they returned from their street fight sometime after three in the morning, having walked all the way from the Marais to their hotel near Saint-Sulpice church. She had turned to him as soon as they climbed into bed.