Ellen Sussman - French Lessons

He walks around the boat, weaving through the planters. Some hold single plants, some hold a wild mixture of foliage that tumbles over the sides of the pots, verdant and alive. There is much color in these plants-shades of purple, from pale to vivid. And the blue! He fills his lungs with a deep breath, taking in the rich, loamy smells.

He hears music-Nina Simone-and he sees the speakers set in the very back of the boat. She is making lunch for him. She has invited him to her home. The boat rides a wave and his hand grabs the rail.

Suddenly he thinks, Will he tell Dana? Of course he will. There’s nothing to hide. His French tutor took him for lunch on her houseboat. They sat at a lovely table in the back of the boat and she taught him the words for flowers and plants and river life. He imagines telling this story at a dinner party. Amazing! And your wife bought you the French tutor!

Then he remembers Lindy and her reaction to Chantal. Was she jealous? Protective of her mother? Worried about losing Jeremy? Impossible. He will assure her that the lessons are over. There was nothing to worry about.

If he even needs to mention it at all.

He hears Chantal making her way up the stairs and he takes his hand off the rail.

“It is wonderful,” he tells her as she emerges, carrying a large tray.

She smiles at him, a smile as full as any he has seen. She is home, he thinks. She is where she belongs.

“Our lunch,” she says simply.

But it is far from simple. Jeremy follows her to the table, where she sets down the tray. He sees a bottle of red wine and two glasses, a plate of cheese, a basket of bread, a saucer of olives and cornichons, a bowl of sliced apples and pears. Every item of food looks perfect-or perhaps Jeremy is seeing the food as it should be seen, presented almost as a celebration of itself. The plates and bowls are creamy white ceramic, without design, the napkin in the bread basket is a pale rose color.

“A feast,” Jeremy says.

He is extraordinarily hungry. He sits at one of the chairs and offers to pour the wine while Chantal sets out the plates.

Then she sits across from him and lifts her glass.

He imagines a toast-last night at dinner there were almost a dozen toasts-to his and Dana’s anniversary, to the film, to France, to someone’s new book of art criticism, to the great director.

But Chantal simply reaches her glass across the table and clinks it against his. They smile and sip. The wine is delicious.

“Tell me your love story,” Chantal says.

“It’s nothing,” Jeremy says. “I’d like to hear about the boat.”

“First, love,” Chantal insists.

And so Jeremy begins his story. Or begins again. And this time, his story becomes a fairy tale, an enormous lie. He has never invented stories before.

“That night I went to the canteen at the camp, the place where we all hung out after the evening activity. She was waiting for me. She wore her hair down for the first time and it covered her back like a blanket. I had never seen such beautiful hair.”

Chantal looks pleased and so Jeremy continues, his voice deep, the French words spilling from his tongue as if he often sat on a houseboat with a young woman in Paris and fabricated impossible love stories.

“I was shy-I’m still somewhat shy-but then I was often silent in crowds of children, uneasy about myself in ways that made it hard to be free. With Sarah I felt bold, I felt older and wiser and more handsome than I really was.”

Chantal laughs and Jeremy takes a sip of the wine.

“Sarah asked me if I liked her. I told her yes. I told her that I thought she was the prettiest girl in the camp. I said that I wished I were old enough to be her boyfriend. She told me that she didn’t like the older boys, that they were full of themselves. She liked that I was quiet. So many boys talk about themselves all the time, she said.”

Jeremy realized that he was suddenly one of those boys, talking about himself. And none of the story sounded true-it was ludicrous that an older girl would choose such a boy. But Chantal waited for the story to continue, and Jeremy couldn’t imagine how to back out of his mistake.

“I asked her if she had ever swum in the lake at night. She said no, that it wasn’t allowed, that she once heard about a girl who went for a night swim and never came back. ‘Let’s go,’ I said. ‘It’s safe. No one will find us.’ ”

“Brave boy,” Chantal says.

No , Jeremy wants to shout. I am not that brave boy! I have never been that brave boy .

“We walked down to the lakeshore. There was a dance that night, so everyone was in the dance hall or the canteen-there was no one else at the beach. And it was so dark we could barely see each other. This is deep in the countryside of New Hampshire, far from any city lights or noise.”

“Sounds lovely,” Chantal says. She closes her eyes at one point, and Jeremy imagines that she is at the lake with him, standing at the water’s edge, conjuring up the nerve to take off her clothes.

“I was the first to undress. We walked out to the edge of the dock and I left my clothes in a bundle on the wood planks and then dove in a nervous rush into the water. When I came up for air she was mid-dive, naked, incredibly beautiful. I had never seen a naked girl before.”

Jeremy stops talking. He hasn’t eaten and somehow his first glass of wine is gone. He has had nothing to eat today but a few scraps of bread with olive oil. Maybe it’s the slow roll of the boat, but he feels off balance.

“Let the naked girl stop mid-dive,” he says, “but I need some of this cheese.”

Chantal laughs. “Poor Sarah,” she says. “Exposed like that.”

“Sarah can wait for the cool splash of the water. I can no longer wait.”

He reaches for some bread and slices into the Camembert that has run onto the plate. He spreads it onto the bread and fills his mouth with its pungent taste. Chantal takes a slice of pear, a slice of chèvre, lays one on top of the other, and passes it to him.

“Merci,” he says. The food seems to dissolve in his mouth.

“Please,” he says. “Tell me your story of first love so I can eat instead of talking.”

“But this is a French lesson,” Chantal says, smiling at him. She seems to be teasing him, but he’s not sure how. “You are supposed to talk.”

“Challenge my French with your story. Tell me a very complicated love story.”

“When you are done,” Chantal says.

For four days Jeremy has wished he could charm Chantal with stories, but he is not that sort of man. He is a listener, something that always made women respond to him as if he were better than the rest of his species. And now? He’s worse than the worst of them. He’s lying. And he can’t stop himself.

“She dove in a perfect arc, the moonlight revealing enough of her long, slim body for me to see her small breasts, her slim hips. And then she was in the water and racing toward me. I was treading water, caught in my Peeping Tom stare, and I thought she would swim right at me and pull me under. But she swam past me and kept swimming. I had to chase her and so I did, though of course she was faster and stronger than I.”

The boat wobbles and Jeremy grasps the table. Chantal laughs.

“The bateau-mouche ,” she explains. “Even in the middle of the night I find myself thinking I’ll tumble from my bed and drown.”

For the first time, Jeremy considers that below deck is Chantal’s home. There will be a bed in the room. He looks away from her and out toward the river. On the deck of the bateau-mouche tourists wave at them, insistently. And foolishly, Jeremy waves back.

They think I’m French, he thinks.