Ellen Sussman - French Lessons

“Voilà,” Nico pronounces, as if he created this restaurant on this corner, as if he’s responsible for its charming yellow walls, the pale blue tablecloths, the profusion of flowers. He’s transported them to Provence and Josie takes a deep breath.

“You like it?” he asks proudly.

“Very much.”

“I knew you would,” he says.

They’re seated in the back corner of the small room, and Nico orders a pichet of rosé wine.

While he speaks to the waitress, Josie follows the dark path of memory to his funeral. Even this cheery restaurant can’t save her.

She remembers Simon’s wife-Brady’s mother-standing in the front of the church. The woman stepped away from her sisters and mother and friends and stood in front of the two coffins. No one dared to join her side. This was her grief, her devastating loss. She fell to her knees and wailed, a sound that echoed in the church. Josie turned and walked back to her car, parked almost a mile away since the crowd was so enormous. In that long walk she clenched her hands until her nails dug into the skin of her palms and bled. She had lost Simon and now she had lost the right to her grief.

Love me . Josie had never known that she needed the kind of passion in life that tipped her off balance, that carried her aloft. She had always thought of herself as a little too flimsy for love. With Simon, she lost her bearings, she gave herself up to love. And it filled her, made her weightier, fuller, richer.

“My boyfriend died,” she says aloud.

Nico looks at her, surprised. The waitress arrives with the pichet of wine and they are silent while she fills their glasses. She places menus on the table and walks away.

“I lied,” Josie says. “I’m not here with a friend. I’m alone. I was supposed to come to Paris with him. Simon.”

“What happened?” Nico asks gently.

“Three weeks ago he took his son, Brady, down to Santa Barbara to look at the university. Simon flies his own plane-he’s good, he’s been flying for years. They don’t know what happened. The plane went down in the hills above Santa Barbara. Both of them were killed.”

“My God.”

“I haven’t been able to talk about it with anyone. First he was my secret. Now my grief is my secret. I was his lover, not his wife.”

“It’s his baby.”

“Yes. I didn’t know. But I’m sure I’m pregnant.”

Nico reaches a hand across the table and places it on Josie’s hand. Her face is streaked with tears again.

“He has a lovely wife. She lost everything. I lost a lover. I don’t have a right to this grief. He wasn’t mine. Brady wasn’t mine. I was stealing someone else’s love.”

“I don’t think you were stealing love.”

“His wife deserved his love. His wife deserves this grief. I’m nobody. I went to the funeral because I was Brady’s teacher. But that’s a ruse, that’s a lie. No one knows about me. And if they did, they’d hate me.”

“It doesn’t matter what anyone else knows. Or what they think.”

“You’re a stranger. You’re French. What do you know?”

Nico laughs and suddenly Josie laughs, surprising herself. She drinks her wine, which is as light and cool as a breeze.

“Let’s go to Provence,” she says.

“For a French lesson?” Nico asks, smiling.

“Yes,” Josie says. “Run away with me.”

“Avec plaisir,” Nico says, and the waitress stands before them, her pen poised above her pad.

Nico orders for the two of them, though he glances at Josie to make sure she agrees. She nods her approval.

“Today?” Nico asks when the waitress leaves. “On the next train?”

“Why not?”

They clink glasses.

“Maybe I shouldn’t drink,” Josie says. “The baby.”

“In France they say a glass or two of wine is good for the baby.”

“Bien sûr,” Josie says, and she drinks.

She feels giddy, as if the wine has already made her lightheaded. Maybe it’s the words that echo in her head: My boyfriend died . She finally has spoken the words.

“There is no friend at the art galleries today?”

“Whitney doesn’t approve of affairs and she can’t stand contemporary art. She’s at home in San Francisco, thinking I got what I deserved.”

“Leave her there,” Nico says. “I’m glad we won’t have to bring her to Provence with us.”

“And there is no one expecting you home for dinner tonight?” Josie asks. They are flirting-it’s a game, a life raft, a way out of the mess she’s in. She is talking again, she’s crying, she’s even laughing. What could be wrong with this? She sips her wine and leans close.

“Sometimes I meet two other tutors for drinks in the Marais. We complain about our students and drink too much. Sometimes we go home and have sex with each other.”

“All three of you?” Josie’s eyes open wide.

“No,” Nico says. “I’m not very interested in the other man. It’s his girlfriend I love.”

“My God,” Josie says. “We’re a mess. All of us. Why is love so complicated?”

“Today isn’t complicated,” Nico says, raising his glass. “This is the first day I have enjoyed myself in a very long time.”

They clink glasses again. The waitress arrives and places bowls of mussels in front of them. She tucks tall glasses packed with frites between the bowls. The table is suddenly filled with wonderful-smelling food.

“I haven’t eaten in a very long time,” Josie says.

The first time Josie met Simon, alone, the day after Brady’s rehearsal, they sat for a short time at a restaurant in a town far from where they both lived. They ordered drinks-martini for Simon, white wine for Josie-and then ordered dinner: steak for Simon, grilled salmon for Josie. The food sat there, untouched, while they leaned toward each other and talked. Simon asked questions-Who are you? Where do you come from? Why do you teach?-as if he were feasting on her rather than mere food. And Josie talked, as if she had never talked before, never told her story. When she said her mother died, he didn’t skip on to the next subject the way her boyfriends had. He asked her about her mother’s final week, about her father’s sadness, about the gold wishbone she wore around her neck that had belonged to her mother. The waiter asked them if there was anything wrong with their dinners.

“No, no,” they both said. “We’re fine. Everything’s wonderful.”

And still, they barely touched their food.

“What do you do on a perfect day?” Simon asked.

“I hike into the hills,” she told him. “I pack a picnic lunch and book and find a place to read by the river.”

“Take me,” he said.

He told her about flying, about the remarkable feeling of space and lightness and speed. He told her how he felt both reckless and safe at the same time-as if he could go anywhere, do anything, and yet he was master of his universe, completely in control.

“Take me,” she said.

But the only place they ever went was to bed-her bed, hotel beds, motel beds, a futon bed he carried to the middle of a field in the hills of West Marin. That first night they left the food on the table and too much money thrown onto the check and they drove for a long time. They found a country cabin, one of a small group of log cabins for rent on the side of a lake. Josie stayed in the car while Simon went into the office, but she could see the woman peering at her through the window. Josie looked away, fiddled with the radio, worried that her body would never stop trembling from so much desire.

When Simon returned to the car with a key in hand he said, “She asked if I was traveling with my daughter.”

“What did you say?”