French Lessons

don’t worry, it will pass.” He raged-throwing things, often including himself, onto the floor and most often in the most public places. She and Vic found a phrase that helped: “Use your words.” And miraculously, as Cole learned his first few words, the tantrums stopped. He could say “Pop Tart” or “Rug Rat” or “Pig in Wig” or “bad Mama” and they would nod and get him what he needed. (“Bad Mama” meant that Daddy should put him to bed.) When Riley is standing in the middle of Les Enfants Rouges farmers’ market and the cheese lady asks her something in rapid-fire French, Riley considers throwing herself on the ground and kicking her feet. Use your words! But there aren’t any.

The waiter returns with coffee and no pigs’ feet. Riley burns her tongue on the coffee. Doesn’t matter, she thinks. Don’t need this tongue. Everything about her feels raw. She has stopped crying and promised her mother she won’t be a drama queen. It’s only cancer, for Christ’s sake. Everyone has cancer these days. Her mother is redefining “tough cookie” and Riley is redefining ball of mush. “On with your day!” her mother ordered. This is her day then. On with it!

She looks around the cafe. The place is crowded though it’s mid-morning. Is Vic the only one who goes to work in this city? Everyone else seems to sit in cafes all day, drinking endless espresso until they start drinking wine. They’re immaculately dressed, as if eventually they’ll either go to the office or a movie premiere. One woman is wearing a leopard suit, skintight, with four-inch stilettos. Probably on her way to pick up her babies and go to the park, Riley thinks.

The door opens and Philippe breezes in.

He’s tall and gangly and has wasted-rock-star good looks. Too many drugs, too many hard nights. It becomes him. His hair always falls in his eyes and Riley spends much of the French lessons imagining something so simple: She reaches out and tucks that lovely hair behind his ear. Today it’s a little greasy, though. Maybe she’ll pay better attention to the lesson.

“Je suis desole,” he says breathlessly. She smells cigarettes and coffee and something else-sex? His clothes are rumpled. Did he rush here from his girlfriend’s bed?

She smiles at him. She could say something like “No big deal,” or “What is that delicious smell wafting from you?” but she doesn’t have the words.

When he had answered his cell phone earlier she had started to speak in English. “En francais,” he admonished her. And so she gave him the name and address of the cafe and a time. That’s all. She felt a little bit like a spy giving out only the crucial information. No chitchat for her. She’s got international intrigue on her mind!

“Bon,” he says, settling into the seat across from her, pulling out his books from his very distressed leather messenger bag, ordering something from the waiter who says something in response, and then he turns to her and smiles.

She smiles back.

He asks a question.

She smiles back.

He shakes his head, unleashing that lock of hair. She looks away.

“Bon,” he says again. Though nothing is good. Even the coffee tastes like burnt tongue.

“Okay, listen,” she says in English. “Maybe we try something different. Maybe we get to know each other a little bit, figure out something we’d both like to talk about-I mean, I don’t know a thing about you-and then we could, I don’t know, talk about that. In English. And then eventually I’d be speaking in French because it would be just so interesting that the French words would squeeze their way into my little brain and pour right out of my mouth. Whaddaya think?”

“En francais,” he says. He’s smiling though. Either he’s a nice guy or he understood every word she said.

That’s the other thing. She doesn’t know how to read people here. Back in the States, she had a sharp ear-she could figure out who was worth knowing by how they spoke, how witty they were, how observant and caustic and wry. She chose her best friend because the woman used remarkable metaphors, inventing them on the spot. She chose her first boyfriend because he skewered the sociology professor for his foppish mannerisms. She chose her husband because he was the first guy to beat her at Scrabble. She imagines a Scrabble game with Philippe. How often could she use the word bon?

And forget about words-she’s lost the cultural clues! Is Philippe’s shirt cool or dorky? It’s kind of shiny-that wouldn’t pass muster in New York. And he’s got one earring that looks like a cross, but maybe it’s an X. Does that mean something? Is he charming or creepy? Doesn’t matter. She likes to look at him. He’s handsome and that seems to translate well enough in any language.

He opens his book to a page that has a picture of a house. Pictures she likes. Pictures she can read. She feels like Cole, watching intently while Papa reads the text. If Philippe keeps this up for long, she’ll need her blankie and a nap.

Philippe stops talking and points to a picture of a bedroom. He’s pointed right at the bed! Yes, she wants to say: Let’s go!

But she says, “lit.” Amazing. When it matters, the words come to her. The important words.

“Le lit,” Philippe says.

Who the hell cares? Feminine, masculine. When will the gender revolution come to France? Maybe it’s a cross- dressing bed. Riley looks up. Philippe’s watching her. Why does she have this goofy grin on her face because she’s looking at a bed? Well, no fucking chance she can explain this one.

“Ou est le lit?” she asks.

“Dans la chambre,” Philippe says.

“Ou est la chambre?” she asks.

He looks at her. Is he so pleased because they’re having an infantile conversation or because they’re talking about sex?

No one’s talking about sex, Riley reminds herself. It’s just in the air, wafting toward her.

“Dans la maison,” Philippe says.

“Where is your maison?” Riley asks.

“En francais,” Philippe says.

“I know it’s in France. Where in France?”

He shakes his head. But he’s still smiling. He’s left a couple of buttons open on his shiny shirt. Riley can see that he has a boy’s chest, hairless and lean.

She has never cheated on Vic. She once desired a man who worked in the art department at her PR firm and she told Vic, and Vic told her he desired a woman who worked in the finance department of his company and that was the end of that. Tit for tat. Well, she hoped there wasn’t any tit involved. There certainly wasn’t any tat for her.

Is Vic cheating on her now? Is he really meeting boring French businessmen every hour of the day and night? She asked him once-mid-dinner on a date night-and he said, “My God, Riley. Can’t we even spend one night out without your ruining it?”

She had a sudden image of herself as a shrew, the kind of woman a husband complained about to his office mates. Wasn’t she the siren a few years ago, the woman Vic boasted about? “My wife loves sex,” he once told a friend of theirs. “You lucky fuck,” the friend said. Whenever they finished making love, Riley would whisper in Vic’s ear: “You lucky fuck.” And he would fall asleep with a smile on his face.

She hasn’t seen that smile in a long time.

“J’habite pres du Centre Beaubourg,” Philippe says.

She understood him! The Pompidou Center! But they call it whatever he said. She remembers standing on the top floor of the museum and looking out at the rooftops of Paris and thinking: Everyone else is having a wonderful life. Just look. Charming attic apartments, sex in a single bed, the smell of bouillabaisse and hashish floating through the air.

Now she knows: Philippe is one of those people.

I had a wonderful life, she wants to say. She remembers the bon voyage party her friends threw for them a few weeks before they moved to Paris. She and Vic wore matching berets and striped shirts (hers stretched over a pregnant belly). Mid-party they had a fencing match with baguettes as weapons. They were grown-up kids