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Authors: Alice Kaplan

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I was sitting at a table in the school's new wing when I
came to the end of The Great Gatsby. It was afternoon, and the
sun was coming in through an especially large window that
looked out toward the mountains. I looked up toward the
window and let the sun shine right in my eyes. The sunshine
made me realize I was crying. I put the book on the table,
spine down, to wipe my tears away.

Spring Break

In the spring my mother came to Geneva where I hid her
away in a lousy little hotel in Versoix before we took the train
together to Paris to meet the Vanderveers for vacation. My
high-school French teacher, Mrs. Vanderveer, had organized the trip. Her daughter, Priscilla, who was my age,
came, and so did her son, Johnny, a teenager who was mentally retarded at the fourth-grade reading level.

We stayed in one of those hotels in the Latin Quarter that
looks tiny from the outside, although when you go in, the
staircase goes up forever, the top-floor rooms have sloped
ceilings, and the windows look out onto a hundred roofs on
which you can see the cats prowling.

When my mother and I finished climbing all the stairs to
our little room, there was a bouquet of flowers waiting for
us: Mr. D had sent them.

Mr. D was a francophile in the grand manner. He owned a
big department store in Minneapolis, and he collected art.
He was Louise's father, Louise who had been in my class
since the first grade, and I wanted him to be my father. I
wanted to steal him from her.

From the beginning I had gone into Louise's house like a
thief. There was a huge oil painting in the front hallway with
giant letters arranged on it to spell the word "LOVE." I
looked at the painting and thought "yes." I remember all the
details of that house, the material on the couches, the white
wool rugs, the curves in walls and furniture, because I
wanted it all. I remember the details of Louise's body-the
first hair under her arms, the freckles on her chest when she
got tan-because I wanted to inhabit that body, to be the
person whose father was Mr. D.

I spent the night at Louise's house, in the trundle bed next
to her. She had an asthma attack in the middle of the night.
She wheezed and moaned. Her father came to take care of
her. He talked to her and gave her medicine. It seemed unusual to me that her father came, not her mother (I didn't
know that her mother was an alcoholic). I was annoyed that
Louise had to get sick, because she was getting so much attention that I was left out. But if she were really sick, if she
died, I'd get her father all to myself.

Because of my desire that everything that was Louise's be
mine, everything I saw in that house was a lesson. As we
grew I learned what Louise knew: I learned about the stages
of Mondrian's painting, from figures to abstractions; I
learned about the German expressionists and how they
were different from the French impressionists. I knew how
to tell the difference between a reproduction and an original. I learned about triptychs and oils and pastels and charcoal. I learned that the most beautiful art was French. Mr. D
would walk us up and down the gallery that led from the
main house to the new addition, telling us about each painting and each artist. In the same way he'd walk us through the
woods and teach us the names of the plants. Everything he
said stuck.

In the basement of the D's house, next to the woodpaneled room where Louise and I watched Bonanza on
Sunday night, was a storage room whose walls were lined
with shelves. The shelves were covered with boxes. There
were gray boxes with the name of the D department store
printed on them in red, and red boxes with the D department store name written in gray. There were boxes big
enough for a toaster and small enough for a ring. No matter
what size present Louise was giving, she always had the perfect box to wrap it in.

Louise was painfully shy, and I brought her out. Other
kids thought she was a snob; they were afraid of her. But I
would get her to talk to me. She told me all about her father,
what he liked, how to please him. She let me in on her passion for art and suffering, her sense of manners and how we
should behave. She wrote my mother perfect-thank you
notes on Crane's stationery every time she spent the night at
my house. Louise's favorite painting at the Art Institute was
Rembrandt's Lucretia: a blood-stained woman pointing a
sword at her own heart as she rang for her servant with her
free hand. (Louise looked like Lucretia, with shining brown
hair, translucent skin, and a fine Roman nose.) Lucretia became my favorite painting, too.

We spent more and more time with Louise's father. He
seemed to like our company better than anybody else's.
Louise wanted to share him with me, her friend who didn't
have a father. Even when he wasn't with us, we would plan
all day how we would tell him what we were doing. We
would spend the day shopping in the D family department
store: Louise would have the D's charge card, and when she
showed it the sales people would be nice to her and act
flustered. I would buy a lipstick or stockings to be in on it,
and then the driver would take us back to her house. We'd unwrap all the packages, together, in front of Mr. D, telling
him the story of each purchase. He'd always educate us,
pointing out the new package design, asking us if we had
spotted the undercover shoplifting detectives at the store;
his favorite was a woman who dressed like a bum.

On New Year's Eve when Louise and I were twelve, Mr. D
left his grownup's party in the main house. He came with a
bottle of champagne into the living room of the guest wing
where we were staying. It was my first taste of champagne.
Mr. D told us it was important to get used to drinking. Soon
we would go on dates. The boys would drink too much, and
it would be our responsibility to drive them home. Louise
and I drank the champagne until we were both dizzy. I woke
up with a headache. At 9 A.M. on New Year's Day, I stumbled
into the living room of the guest wing. I looked out the huge
picture window. Mr. D was galloping on a horse on the field
below. His horse took a jump over a wooden fence right below the window. I had a perfect view.

He looked sturdy. I could count on Mr. D not to die.

When I got my acceptance letter from the College du Leman, I called Mr. D. That same day, a bottle of perfume was
delivered to my house by Mr. D's driver. Joy perfume.

I sent cards to Mr. D during the year-one from Milan,
where my class went on a weekend trip. He wrote back to
say that Milan had one of the most beautiful cathedrals in
Europe. "I am surprised that you didn't climb up to the top
and take your whole group along. You have the energy and I
think you missed a good opportunity to show them what a
good sightseer you are." At Christmas I wrote him and enclosed notes to him from my friends at school. "I loved your
letter," he wrote back, "and I enjoyed hearing from all your friends." On Valentine's Day I got a card with a puppy dog on
it, signed "anonymous" in his hand.

In March I wrote him that I would be in Paris with my
mother for spring vacation. Was there any chance he would
be there, too? He wrote back right away, sending me an official itinerary of his vacation with Mrs. D-two weeks in the
Riviera and a week in Paris. He hoped I would get in touch if
my dates overlapped with his: "I would love to see you. It
would be especially nice to have you go walking around
Paris with me." He added that Louise and her sister would
be in Aspen for spring vacation: "I am sure she will have a
good time but I know she will miss not having you there."

But I knew I wouldn't miss her. Mr. D and I were going to
scale the cathedrals together!

My day with Mr. D in Paris was the best thing that happened to me when I was fifteen. I left my mother back in the
Latin Quarter with the Vanderveers. I crossed to the Right
Bank in a cab. The lobby of the Ritz Hotel where he stayed
was drenched in a golden light. Mr. and Mrs. D greeted me
in the living room of a vast suite, Mrs. D in a tapestry bergere, Mr. Don his feet, Michelin Green Guide in hand. Mr. D
asked me to telephone the lobby for a phone number. The
concierge on the other end of the phone dictated a long
number to me, and I got the number right, realizing that the
French have a different word for 70 than the Swiss. Mr. D
said, "I asked you to call because your French is better than
mine." I lived off that idea for a long time, the idea that my
French was better than Mr. D's and that I could be useful to
him because of it.

Mr. D and I said goodbye to Mrs. D for the day and walked
to the nearest metro. Mr. D bought a booklet of first-class tickets. It was my first time in the metro and I hadn't known
there were first- and second-class tickets. First class was
empty. I was sure we were the only people in Paris who were
riding first class that day.

We saw a day student from the College du Leman at the
Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. "He's with his parents," I
thought, "and I'm with Mr. D." I looked at his parents with
him, I looked at Mr. D with me. There were so many tourists
I couldn't see the tomb. I didn't care about the tomb. We
crossed the river to the Sainte Chapelle. We stood still in its
center. The stained glass windows turned the air around us a
saintly blue. On the Left Bank of the river, we went to the art
gallery whose phone number I had gotten for Mr. D. The
owner greeted him enthusiastically in English. Mr. D informed her that he was with me, a whiz in French. She was
to speak to us only in French. After we had seen the painting
he was considering adding to his collection, we crossed the
street to a boutique favored by Louise and Mrs. D. Mr. D said
I could have whatever I wanted. I knew it was rude to want
anything extravagant, so I chose a scarf. It was a carre (a small
square), rather than a longer foulard, in gold and blue. We
bounded toward the Jeu de Paume next, where the impressionist paintings used to be kept before they redid the Gare
d'Orsay. Mr. D was an indefatigable walker; he loved to walk
in the woods and he loved to walk in cities even better. I
could barely keep up with him, as he would walk and point
and talk, like a guide. There was nothing he liked better than
to show Paris to a young person for the first time.

We stood in front of Manet's Olympia in thejeu de Paume.

"Look at that painting, what do you see?"

I saw a naked woman lying on a couch with her black
maid standing behind her:

"A woman, lying on her side with no clothes on and another woman in back of her, a maid, holding flowers."

"Now, look at the colors. What color is the couch?"

"White."

"Is it just one white?"

The painting had a zillion different kinds of white in it,
beige gray snow ivory. As soon as I began looking for all the
different whites, the painting changed utterly. The picture
itself dissolved, but the paint came alive and I could see the
brush strokes, see that a person had been there, working, to
make the illusion.

Seeing the painting change like that before my eyes made
me feel sharp-sighted; I felt I was getting to the substance of
my vision, to the meaning of it. I attributed my new eyes to
Mr. D and also to the city of Paris, which seemed to be organized for looking. I had never been in a place where there
was so much to observe: the benches, the wrought-iron balconies, the long cars that looked like bugs, the policemen
with their huge caps, the food sold outdoors, bookstalls
outside along the river. Everywhere I went, there was a new
tableau to take in.

Mr. D and his wife took me and my mother to dinner that
night. He ordered a special souffle for dessert that came out
high in the waiter's hand; when I put my spoon in it all the
whites from the Manet painting came staring up at me, and I
ate the truth and light of impressionism in my souffle.

Mr. D and his wife left for the Riviera where they were
going to look at more paintings and Mrs. D would get to
spend some time on the beach. I was in Paris with my mother,
Mrs. Vanderveer, Priscilla, and Johnny. How can I say it
was still as vivid a place, as powerful as the Paris I shared with Mr. D? I'd be lying. I've looked in my memory for the
remains of the other Paris of that spring, and the first thing I
found was the back of Mrs. Vanderveer's neck. She had a
gray poodle hairdo cut short and lines on her neck, which
she held firm and determined. She led with her neck and
we, her scout troop, followed. I was used to looking at her
neck because she drove Priscilla and me to school in her VW
bug, Priscilla sat next to her in the front, I sat in the back seat
behind her, and in France I ended up behind her again. Mrs.
Vanderveer's Paris was the Paris of her own junior year
abroad at Smith College-the Latin Quarter, and poetry in
bookstores-but she didn't give into it, she didn't indulge
in nostalgia around us. She bit her nails, which was the only
sign that there was a lot on her mind, and that we weren't
always easy to take around. We were on a budget; we would
prowl the streets, her sure gray head in the lead, stopping in
front of the restaurants, studying the plats du jour that were
described on a sheet of paper posted in front. One day Priscilla and I got permission to buy our lunch at the street market on the rue de Seine and what we thought we had
identified as fried chicken turned out to be eggplant: our
first taste of eggplant. We wouldn't have known it was eggplant if Mrs. Vanderveer hadn't been there to explain: that's
eggplant, which is "aubergine" in French and also British
English.

My mother was sick with an ulcer and a spastic colon. The
medicine she took made her slow and dreamy. Her eyes
were unfocused. I wasn't sure she knew where she was.
"Mom!" I kept turning around while walking to make sure
we didn't lose her. I was afraid we might lose her. Johnny
was easily distracted, too. Priscilla and I were restless. I must
have spent a lot of time looking down at the street, knowing Mrs. Vanderveer was in the lead, because along with the
back of her neck I remember cobblestones-cobblestones
on steep streets that wound around. From my day with Mr.
D I remember sky, and clouds, and the caps on monuments.

BOOK: French Lessons: A Memoir
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