Ellen Sussman - French Lessons

She shouldn’t have come to Paris. She should have thrown away the plane tickets. The seat on the plane beside her was empty. Simon’s seat, in business class, her constant reminder of what should have been. Champagne, wine, long conversations about Montmartre and Giverny, whispered promises, perhaps even a wandering hand under the blanket. Instead, she took two sleeping pills and awoke in Paris, groggy and disoriented.

“How about these?” the tutor asks. Nico. If she can remember his name, she can pull herself out of the slog of her mind and back to Paris. Shoes. He’s holding a turquoise patent-leather shoe in front of her face. It’s got a four-inch heel that looks like a dagger.

“Perfect,” she tells him.

“She’ll try these on,” he tells a woman.

They’re in a shoe store, but Josie can’t remember walking in. The saleswoman knows that it’s all a ruse. She’s looking at Josie with contempt, as if her red Converse sneakers are sullying the white marble floor. Josie tells her she wears a size 38 and the saleswoman mutters “Américaine” under her breath.

Nico sits next to her on the zebra-striped bench.

“Your accent is perfect,” he whispers. “It’s the shoes that give you away.”

“How much do the blue shoes cost?” she asks him.

“Your salary. Don’t even think about it. We’re playing a game.”

“She knows.”

“Who cares? There’s no one else in this ridiculous store.”

The store has plastic pigs hanging from the ceiling. Everything is patent leather, even the saleswoman’s miniskirt and her go-go boots.

The woman places a box on the bench beside Josie. “We only have size thirty-nine.” She walks away.

“Even my feet are too small for this place,” she whispers to Nico.

“Your feet are perfect,” he says.

“I have a boyfriend,” she tells him. It slips out of her mouth.

“Of course you do,” Nico says. He’s unstoppable.

She’s oddly pleased. For six months she could never say “I have a boyfriend.” She couldn’t say: “I’m having dinner with my boyfriend Wednesday night. My boyfriend is meeting me in San Francisco for the weekend. I’m going with my boyfriend to Paris.” For six months her happiness was a secret. Now her grief is a secret. She had no right to the boyfriend. And she has no right to this grief.

Nico lifts the shoes from the box and hands one to her. It’s an astonishing thing, this stiletto. She holds it in both hands, loving it.

“Put it on,” Nico says.

She takes off her sneakers and slides one bare foot into the shoe. It fits; in fact, it hugs her foot and feels as sleek as a new skin. She needs a new skin. Maybe her new skin is a turquoise “fuck me” shoe. She puts on the other shoe and stands.

Her feet wobble. She giggles and the sound of her own laugh surprises her. She looks at Nico and feels herself blush.

“Look at you,” he says.

She looks in the mirror. She’s wearing jeans and a black tank top. The electric blue shoes transform her into someone else. She stands tall in the mirror, taller than she’s ever been. She’s lost weight in the past few weeks and she sees her own cheekbones, the clavicles below her neck. She’s not a schoolteacher. She’s a woman with a boyfriend on a trip to Paris. He couldn’t come but she’ll bring back some shoes that he’ll love. Josie smiles and the woman in the mirror smiles back. It’s a devilish smile.

“I’ll take them,” she says.

Nico laughs. “I wish I could buy them for you.”

“Seriously,” Josie says. “I want them.”

“They cost four hundred euros.”

Josie’s stomach somersaults; she thinks she might throw up. And in that second, instead of calculating the impossible cost of this pair of shoes, she counts weeks, weeks since she made love with Simon, weeks since her last period. She is pregnant. She knows this when she lifts her eyes in the mirror-from her wobbling feet to her belly. It’s the same taut stomach, the same narrow waist. But now she’s carrying Simon’s baby.

“Let’s go,” she says to the French tutor. She can’t remember his name. She teeters back to the bench on the perilous heels and drops down beside him. She can’t get the shoes off fast enough. The saleswoman is smirking, leaning back against her perch by the desk, a pink-snouted pig hovering about her head.

Josie drops her head between her legs.

“Are you all right?” the tutor asks. He places his hand on her back. His hand is on fire and the heat spreads through her thin top, wraps around her body, and heats up her belly.

“No,” she tells him, taking in deep, slow breaths.

“Hey, Josie. C’mere,” Brady called from across the room.

She looked up. Brady usually called her Ms. Felton. She insisted that her students call her Josie and watched as they struggled with the name, a kid’s name for a teacher, a young teacher who dressed like they did, a teacher who hated claiming authority for any reason other than that she earned it.

He was standing next to the snack table, holding a plastic glass as if it were a gin and tonic, his arm thrown around an attractive older woman. This was the new Brady, the star of the show.

Josie walked toward him, thinking, Yes, he’ll be his father’s son after all, there’s the bold smile, the look-at-me tilt of the head. Josie stopped and someone bumped into her from behind. The attractive woman under Brady’s arm was his mother. Josie was walking to meet her lover’s wife.

“Mom, this is Josie. Ms. Felton. The director!”

Josie shook the woman’s hand, looking at her hand, and then, seeing a diamond there, looked up, into warm eyes, a wide smile. A tiny half-moon scar on a high cheekbone.

“I want to thank you,” the woman said. Her voice was deep and honeyed. A beautiful voice.

Josie, who always had something to say, was struck dumb. The woman’s hand moved to her arm, holding her there.

“You did so much for him,” she said in a conspiratorial whisper.

“Mom,” Brady complained.

“He’s good,” Josie said, stupidly, as if that was all she could muster.

“He’s amazing,” the woman said. “But until today, no one else knew that. Just his father and I. Brady didn’t even know it.”

Josie stared at her.

“But you must have known,” the woman insisted.

“Mom.” Brady shook his head. “Parents and teachers should never meet. It’s a mortifying experience.”

“Have you met my husband?”

“No.”

“Yeah,” Brady said. “At rehearsal that day.”

“I forgot. Did he come tonight?”

She knew he was in San Francisco. She would drive in and stay with him at his pied-à-terre tonight.

“He’s got a meeting in the city,” Brady said. “He’ll come tomorrow night.”

“You did a wonderful job,” the woman said, her hand still holding Josie’s arm. “At the point when Brady says, ‘Do you love me’-or ‘Will you love me’-what is it…”

“ ‘Love me,’ ” Brady says, his voice soft, his eyes hidden behind his curtain of hair.

“That’s it,” his mom went on. “When he said that to the girl-who was very good, what a beauty she is-well, I almost cried. I don’t know why. It just… touched me somehow.”

“It’s a good moment in the play,” Josie said.

The woman was lovely. She was warm and straightforward and vibrant. Josie had wanted a shrew. Instead, this woman smiled and said, “You have a gift.”

They climbed the stairs to the third floor. Josie looked at every apartment door of this Russian Hill town house and silently pleaded, Don’t come out . She couldn’t imagine what Simon would say to his neighbors. This is my son’s teacher! This is my lover! This is Josie. I just met her a couple of weeks ago and now I’m bringing her home for a quick fuck!