French Lessons (18 page)

“And you? Did you rebel?”

“No,” Chantal says. “Not yet.”

They both smile, and when she turns around quickly the baguette in her bag smacks Jeremy on his head. The kids burst out laughing and Chantal looks back at Jeremy, her face a sudden pink.

“I’m so sorry.”

“I’ll survive,” Jeremy says. “If I have a black eye tomorrow I’ll have to invent a much better story.”

“Tell your wife I punched you,” Chantal says.

“Did I give you good reason?”

“Oh, yes,” she says.

And then she hurries off to buy tickets. The schoolchildren have filed into the museum ahead of them and she is next in line.

Jeremy glances at his watch. Ten forty-five. They will have only forty-five minutes before they meet Lindy at the café. He calls Lindy on his cell phone. She doesn’t answer, but he’s connected to her voice mail.

“Bonjour, chérie,”
he says happily. She’ll be impressed. Like her mother, she speaks French with ease. Good private-school training, a summer program in Aix-en-Provence during high school. Jeremy continues with his message in French. “Meet us at the mosque. It’s across from the entrance to the Jardin des Plantes in the Fifth. You can’t miss it.” He had noticed it on his walk here with Chantal. “There’s a tearoom inside. I can’t wait to see you, sweetheart. I peeked in this morning while you were sleeping. I—” He can’t think of how to refer to the bald head. Her new haircut? Her latest rebellion? He coughs and then hangs up as if their connection was lost.

He didn’t mention the shaved scalp to Dana. She’ll be furious.

“On y va,”
Chantal says. She takes his arm, something she has never done before, and leads him into the grand entrance of the museum.

The minute they step through the door, Jeremy takes a deep breath. It’s a spectacular space, vast and open, dark yet eerily beckoning. On the ground floor of the central exhibition space he sees the march of animals, life-size, regal and elegant—elephants, giraffes, zebras. He’s awed by their size, their numbers, their beauty. He and Chantal move forward and look up. The four-story space is open in the middle as if the animals need room to breathe.

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.

“I need you,” she whispered, and he glared at her. Did she need sex or him? He pushed her back on the bed and, pinning her shoulders down, climbed on top of her.

“What do you need? Say it,” he said.

“You.”

“Sex,” he said.

“You.”

“You don’t need me,” he said. He leaned close to her and she reached up for his mouth—their kiss was full of hunger and rage. They tore at each other, tangling themselves in the sheets, and at one point Jeremy felt Dana’s mouth on his neck, her teeth sharp. They turned each other over and pushed each other back, each fighting to overpower the other. They had never done this, never been rough or scrappy in bed. Their lovemaking was always tender, intimate; their eyes always locked on each other. This time, they barely looked at each other.

When Jeremy came, his orgasm seemed to go on for a long time. And then Dana didn’t wait for him to pleasure her—she took his hand and pressed it between her legs. She held it there and moved against him, her body scrambling for release. When she found it she called out his name.

“Are you all right?” he asked her, when they slid into their sleeping positions, his body curled against her back, his arm wrapped around her and curled between her breasts.

“I need to come home to you,” she said softly.

The storm stops as suddenly as it began. Chantal moves away from Jeremy’s side. It makes him catch his breath, as if he might stumble without the weight of her against him.

“Merci,”
she says simply.

“Avec plaisir,”
he tells her, smiling.

“Regarde,”
she says, pointing out toward the expanse of gardens. New light spreads across the lush greenery, bouncing off drops of rain as if electric. Everything looks newly sprouted, astonishingly different. It’s as if he hadn’t even seen the garden before.

She does not name what they are looking at.

They step carefully through the wet grass and over the small fence and back onto the path. Chantal lifts her closed umbrella and laughs. “What a silly thing it is.”

“I hate to leave,” Jeremy says with real regret, “but we need to meet my daughter.”

“Of course,” Chantal says.

“I asked Lindy to meet us across the street at the mosque.” He pauses, searching her face. “If that’s okay with you.”

“That’s a very good plan,” she says. “I would have suggested it myself.”

Jeremy feels a swelling of pride, as if he has written an A paper.
A schoolboy’s crush
, he thinks.
What a fool
.

And yet there is some comfort in naming these odd sensations swirling through him today. As if now he can put it in its place. It is translatable, after all.

He wonders suddenly: Did Lindy sleep with the river guide that night? The next day, at the airport in San José, she had sobbed before they boarded the plane, and she wouldn’t talk to her mother. When Dana went to the bathroom, Lindy whispered to Jeremy, “I want to stay with Paco. I can’t leave him.” Jeremy kissed the top of her head. “Is this love?” he asked, smiling. “Of course it’s love!” she shouted, and stormed off.

Why does naming a thing give it so much power? Jeremy wonders.

Chantal glances at her watch. “It is almost eleven-thirty. I am the only person in Paris who is always on time. Let’s not ruin my good record.”

That, too, pleases Jeremy. Of course, Dana is always late—the meeting ran over, the photographer didn’t show up, the director demanded twenty takes of the same damn scene. He brings a book with him whenever he sets out to meet her. And he expects to wait. When she finally arrives, he usually forgets any annoyance as soon as she begins to tell him about her day. Her days are filled with stories. He works quietly with his wood and his tools and his silence. At the end of his day, it’s as if Dana opens the window and lets the world in.

They walk quickly through the gardens. Jeremy feels breathless, as if the storm might reappear at any moment. But no, the sky is light, the clouds gone. Chantal has shifted the bags on her shoulders and now, instead of feeling her body brush against his, it is only her tote bag that bumps his hip as they hurry along.

“Jeremy!” Lindy shouts when they reach the gates of the Jardin des Plantes. She dashes across the street and throws herself in his arms before he even gets a good look at the girl. She squeezes tight and he finds himself laughing. His child. There is no question she is his, even though she has only spent half her life with him. She has chosen him, which is even better than what most dads get.