He thinks about what has happened in this week that he’s spent with Chantal. He has looked at Paris with new eyes. It’s not only his view of his surroundings that has grown sharper, more vivid. He feels different in his own skin. He’s someone else when he speaks French-someone more intriguing, more mysterious. It’s invigorating, as if he is capable of anything in this new place.
He could take a woman’s hand and lead her onto the dance floor.
“While we walk to the museum,” Chantal says, “tell me about your stepdaughter.”
Jeremy wishes for a moment that they could walk in silence. But that’s absurd-this is a French lesson, after all.
He likes having Chantal next to him, her tall, slim body such a surprise to him after years of walking with Dana, who is petite and compact, a kind of miniature woman who seems to be in motion even when she is standing still. He shouldn’t compare his wife with his French tutor-it’s not as if he’s dating this young woman-but he’s become unaccustomed to the attentions of a woman. She’s paid, he reminds himself. His wife is paying her to be with him. The thought turns his mood sour in a quick second.
“Lindy is my wife’s daughter,” Jeremy says. “I came into her life when she was nine.”
“And you are close,” Chantal says. “I can see something in your face when you speak of her.”
“I love her,” he says, simply. It is true. He had not wanted children, and when Dana told him she had a child he had briefly considered ending the relationship. He was thirty-five when they met and every woman he dated wanted to have a baby-immediately-regardless of love or compatibility. Dana told him that she didn’t want another child, but that she hoped he would want this ready-made family. Lindy was a child-sized version of her mother, the same kind of radiance, the same kind of charm. He was doubly smitten.
And over the years he learned to be a father to the girl. Her own father was a portfolio manager, specializing in international real estate-he was always in Singapore, Tokyo, Sydney. Lindy had a room full of souvenirs but no picture of her father on her bureau. Instead she framed one photo of the three of them taken in Costa Rica four or five years ago. They are rafting the wild Pacuare River, bundled in orange life vests, the thick green jungle surrounding them. Dana is in the front of the raft, her eyes open wide with astonishment that some drop in the river is about to claim them, and behind her, sixteen-year-old Lindy leans into Jeremy, both of them smiling with pure delight.
Jeremy tells Chantal about Lindy’s recent rebellion-when she dropped out of college she disappeared for a while, sending her mother into a fury. Jeremy received an email from Lindy saying “I’m safe. I need to do this. Tell Mom not to get too wigged out. I love you.” Jeremy can’t translate “wigged out,” so he says the words in English and Chantal seems to understand. Funny. He doesn’t even know if his tutor speaks English.
“I think she needs to find her own path,” Jeremy says. “Her mother is very successful. I think that makes it hard for her to know how to define herself.”
“Does she want to be an actress too?” Chantal asks.
“Yes,” Jeremy says. “I can’t tell her not to try.”
“Is she talented?”
Jeremy nods. For a moment he thinks ahead of himself, in a rush of translated words that bump into one another. “I don’t know the word in French. She has talent but she doesn’t have the aggression-no, the
“She’s only twenty,” Chantal says. “Most of us do not have direction at that age.”
“How old are you?” Jeremy asks. The minute he says it, he wants to take it back. It sounds like they’re on some kind of date.
“Twenty-eight,” Chantal says, unruffled. “And still searching for my own direction.”
“I always knew what I wanted,” Jeremy tells her. “I wanted to work with wood even as a child. I had a first job out of college with a contractor. But I didn’t want to build new things. I learned that very quickly. I’m drawn to old things, broken things. I take great pleasure in bringing them back to their original beauty.”
Chantal smiles at him. “I am not surprised,” she says.
“And you?” Jeremy asks. “What are you drawn to?”
Chantal doesn’t answer for a moment. Finally, she shrugs. “Language. Words. No, not teaching. Perhaps one day I’ll write something.”
“Poetry?”
She shakes her head. “I tell stories to my nephew when I visit him. About a dog who speaks many languages. It’s not very poetic. But it’s a good story.”
“Children’s books.”
Chantal shrugs. “I’m just dreaming.”
“You should. We all need to have our dreams.”
“For now, I pay the bills.”
Jeremy winces. He’s paying her bills. A rude reminder that this is not a date. Is he so out of practice that he can no longer tell when a woman might be interested in him? Before he met Dana he knew that he could win a woman if he wanted to-he simply paid attention. And he was good-looking. Now, ten years later, he assumes he is still good-looking, even if his hair is peppered with gray and his body is thicker. Women still glance in his direction, and sometimes try to charm him. He has never responded to any of those flirtations-he has fallen into a life he never expected, with a woman and child he loves.
Nothing has changed, he tells himself. It’s the week in Paris that has so disoriented him. It’s the fight with Dana last night-a rare fight-that has him on edge.
They had walked through Paris at two in the morning, passing up the offer of a ride from Pascale, the director. “We’ll walk,” Dana shouted to her crowd of admirers from across the street. “I want to be alone with my handsome man. Now all of you go away!”
After a block or two, she took Jeremy’s arm and leaned into him.
“This is what I want,” she said. “You.”
“Then why do you fill our lives with everyone else?” he asked.
“That’s work, my love. You know that.” Her voice was sleepy and drunk; she pressed herself against him.
“I shouldn’t come on these film shoots,” Jeremy said. “I feel like I lose you every time.”
“You’ve never said that before.”
“We want such different things.”
“No, we don’t. We both want this.”
She was right. He knew that whenever they were alone together, whenever their bodies found each other in bed, whenever they sat across from each other at the small table in their garden in the canyon and shared a bottle of wine. But at the restaurant earlier that evening, Jeremy had felt as if he’d married a movie star. He wanted Dana, not the star attraction.
“I have a blister on my heel,” Dana said, reaching down and rubbing her ankle. “I can’t walk in these damn things.”
“Let’s find a cab.”
“No, let’s walk. I drank too much. We can walk along the quai. Paris-Plage is set up for the summer. We’ll walk on the boardwalk. We’ll build a sand castle. We’ll pretend we’re at the beach.”
“It’s a long walk. You’ll kill your feet.”
“I don’t care. Tomorrow I’ll have a hangover and broken feet. Tonight I’ll have my head on your shoulder.”
Jeremy wrapped his arm around her.
“Don’t get tired of me,” she said quietly.
“I’m tired of the noise,” he said.
“What noise?” She stopped and pulled away from him. Her face hardened and she pulled off her shoe, hopped on one foot, bending the back of the shoe.
“You’ll ruin the shoe.”
“What noise? What are you talking about?”
“I need quiet. Your life is too noisy.”
She threw the shoe at him. He wanted to laugh-she looked small and furious-and he caught the shoe as if catching a grenade. He tossed it back at her.
“This happens a few times a year,” she said, her voice too loud in the dark street. A window slammed shut in
