Ellen Sussman - French Lessons

She looked back at the boy on the stage.

“Go ahead. Try it one more time,” she said gently.

But the boy was peering into the darkness of the theater. Now he’d never speak his lines louder than a whisper. Take a shy boy and put him onstage-and what? He discovers his inner strength and transforms himself in front of his peers? What was she thinking in casting Brady as the lead? She was thinking of saving him, nothing less. But Brady, as cute and sweet and smart as he may be, cannot belt out his lines, cannot plant a loud smacking kiss on the lips of lovely Glynnis Gilmore.

“Dad,” the boy said.

Josie looked into the darkness of the theater. The man was sitting there, somewhere. Damn him.

“Brady. Ignore your father. We have another fifteen minutes.”

Brady looked at her, his eyes wide with fear. “I can’t do it with him here.”

Josie walked toward him on the stage. He stood against the papier-mâché stone wall as if it were holding him up. She would have to show him how to use the stage as if he owned it, not as if he were hiding among the props.

“He might be here opening night,” she said quietly. “So will a lot of other people. You have to forget about that space. It’s this space here that matters.”

He nodded. His long straight hair fell in front of his face-his own private curtain. He was the kind of boy she would have loved in high school. Maybe that’s why she chose him. Twenty-seven years old and she was still behaving like a teenager.

“Try the line again. To me.”

He nodded. He held her eyes. He took in a gulp of air. He whispered, “I can’t say the line to you. I can’t say the line to anyone.”

Love me. Love me . “Say it over and over again,” she would tell him later. “Say it as if you’re ordering her to do as she’s told.” But right then, with his father in the theater, she whispered, “Go on home. We’ll work hard tomorrow.”

“My son thinks you’re wonderful,” the man said. He looked at her with his green eyes and she looked at his mouth instead, then at the open V of his sweater. Gray sweater under a black suit. Silver hair that curled at the nape of his neck. She had nowhere to look.

“I think he’s pretty great.”

“You teach French and theater?” he asked.

“I teach French and I stumble around in the theater.”

He smiled. He was handsome the way Brady might be some day. But this big, bold man could never have been shy or sweet. Was this the reason Brady couldn’t claim his role onstage?

“Simon,” he said, offering his hand.

“Josie.” She shook his hand and felt his palm press into hers like a secret passing between them.

“Can he do this?” Simon asked, gesturing to the stage. Brady had gone to get his books and jacket. They were standing near the back of the theater. Josie had forgotten to turn on the lights. The dark room, the woody smell of the newly built set, the rows of empty chairs facing the other way-Josie already felt as if they were doing something illicit.

“Yes,” Josie lied.

“Then you’re really good,” Simon said.

“Dad!” Brady called, bounding up the stairs.

“Nice to meet you,” Josie said, turning to leave.

“Wait,” Simon said.

She couldn’t wait. She could barely catch her breath.

“Have a nice evening, you two.” She slipped out the door.

Love me . She was sideswiped by it, she would later tell her friend Whitney. She leaned against the wall in the hallway, clutching the script to her chest. Some kid’s dad. One sly smile and she was smitten.

“Don’t even think about it,” Whitney told her.

“It’s all I can think about,” she said on the phone that night. “I’ll quit teaching and join the Peace Corps.”

“You haven’t done anything,” Whitney reminded her.

“He’ll call tonight,” Josie told her.

“I have no good reason for calling you,” he said.

“I have no good reason for talking to you,” she told him.

They were both quiet for a moment. Josie had gone to bed an hour before, and had twisted her mind around him, his words, his eyes, the V of his exposed neck, until she lay there, exhausted, as if beaten by something. When the phone rang, her hand leapt at the receiver.

“And I don’t do this,” he said, his voice surprisingly unsure. “I don’t call women-especially my son’s teacher-at home late at night.”

“You’re married.”

“I’m married.”

“I’m joining the Peace Corps. I decided earlier tonight.”

“Can I see you before you ship off?”

She could have said no. She could have said “I’ll lose my job. I’ll lose myself.” But she said yes. Yes.

“How did you come to be a French teacher?” the tutor asks.

Nico. His name slips away, as easily as her concentration. He keeps talking, the bus rumbles along busy streets, passengers come and go, bumping past them, the smell of sausage fills the stale air, and every once in a while he stops talking and she is required to say something. All of this used to be easy , Josie reminds herself. In fact, I used to do it so well .

“My parents didn’t have a lot of money,” she tells the tutor in French. She and Nico speak only French and she is surprised by how natural that is, as if the foreign words are easier for her to find than English words now. “We never traveled. I read a book about a young girl in Paris and I wanted to be that girl. And so I started studying French as if I could change everything in my life by speaking a different language.”

“Did it work?”

She looks at him. “No,” she says. “But maybe I’ll try again.”

“Is this your first trip to Paris?”

“Yes,” she lies. She had spent her junior year here, but she is tired of talking. There is nothing to say about that year unless she tells him about the boys, the sex, the hashish, the hangovers.

“Did you come alone?” he asks.

“No,” she lies. “My friend Whitney is spending the day at art galleries.” She has never been a liar before and now the lies spill from her lips. Whitney hates Paris, hates art galleries, and, in fact, hates Josie now. “If you sleep with him,” Whitney had said the next morning, when Josie told her she was meeting Simon for a drink, “you’re alone in this. He’s married, he’s old, and he’s your student’s father. I’m not getting on this love train with you, girl. I’m not even going to be there after the crash.”

The crash.

“You will love Paris,” the tutor says with his unending optimism. “I will make sure of that.”

She looks at him, surprised.

“I hired a French tutor. Not an ambassador.”

He doesn’t stop smiling. “I don’t charge extra for those services.”

She looks away. She wishes he were less attractive, less eager. She would like to hate him, but here she is, following him off the bus as if this is exactly what she wants to do. They are in the heart of the bustling Sixth Arrondissement, at the carrefour de la Croix-Rouge, and she stops on the sidewalk, panic-stricken. What is she doing here? How can she take another step forward?

“Don’t worry,” he tells her. “The stores are too expensive here. We’re just pretending.”

Pretending? Did she misunderstand him? So far, everything she has done since Simon died has been a pretense. Everything except for the deep, bottomless sleep she stumbles into, as if plummeting off a cliff, every night.

“I don’t understand,” she says.

He takes her arm and moves her effortlessly across the street with the flow of people. She’s astonished that it’s so easy-he leads, she walks. Yesterday, without someone at her side, she stood paralyzed in front of the gates of Père Lachaise Cemetery for over an hour. She wanted to see-what? Jim Morrison’s grave site? Oscar Wilde’s tomb? Finally, she turned, threw up behind a tree, métroed back to her hotel, and burrowed back into her bed.