French Lessons

“En francais!” she scolds. And then she turns to Chantal and offers her hand. “Je m’appelle Lindy.”

“Chantal. Enchantee.”

“Does he really speak French?” she asks conspiratorially, in French, as if Jeremy is not there.

“Very well,” Chantal says. “As do you.”

“Bof. I’ve forgotten my French. I need practice-I need a French boyfriend. That would help.”

“You can have mine,” Chantal says.

Jeremy looks at her-she is smiling effortlessly. Jeremy feels as if he’s lost control of this conversation. He doesn’t speak girl talk in any language.

“Shall we find the tearoom?” he asks in French.

“Oh, you sound different in French!” Lindy exclaims.

“How so?” he asks.

“I don’t know. You’re so-sexy.”

“Apparently I’m not sexy in English,” Jeremy explains to Chantal.

“No, not that,” Lindy says. “You’re like someone I don’t know. You could be anyone.”

“Not your stepfather.”

“My stepfather wouldn’t be out on the town with a beautiful young Frenchwoman.”

Chantal looks away quickly.

“Lindy,” Jeremy says, then stops. The girl’s smile looks devious. But Lindy is never devious. She is so truly an unaffected girl, even with all the flash and glamour of her mother’s life thrust upon her. She is always unfailingly honest.

“This is a French lesson,” he explains, his voice low and serious.

“Well, of course it is,” Lindy says.

They cross the street and enter the mosque. It’s a Moorish building with an impressive minaret, all white on the outside, coolly inviting. They pass through the outside cafe and enter the inner courtyard. It’s beautifully tiled, with tables set around fig trees and fountains. Arabic music plays in the background; Jeremy can smell incense. He feels transported to Morocco and remembers a trip with Dana to shoot a movie in Marrakesh. One evening they walked through the medina, and even though Dana wore jeans and a tunic, every man turned his head to watch her pass. Jeremy never relaxed his guard, watching and waiting for trouble while Dana shopped for trinkets, oblivious to the stir of male attention around her. By the end of the evening he was exhausted but oddly pleased. It was his job; she needed him there.

“Une table pour trois, monsieur?” the waiter asks. Jeremy looks up, surprised. The young man seems inordinately pleased with the sight of these two young women at Jeremy’s side.

“Oui. S’il vous plait.”

The man ushers them to a table at the edge of the courtyard. They’re next to a fountain, and suddenly the noise-of the cascade of water, the incantatory music, and, oddly, the squawk of a bird trapped inside the room- makes Jeremy feel claustrophobic. He should have chosen to sit outside.

The waiter says something in rapid-fire French and Jeremy looks at Chantal, completely lost.

“No,” she tells the waiter. “We’ll only be having drinks.”

They settle into their chairs and tuck their bags of cheese and fruit and meat under the table. Jeremy notices that the baguette is soggy from the rain. He looks up and sees Lindy, eyes on him.

“Tell me about your adventures,” he says to her.

“Well,” she begins, but then the waiter is there, speaking too quickly for him to understand. Is it the Arabic accent? Too much noise? There’s a pause. Chantal orders tea. He does the same. Lindy orders a citron presse.

“Spain? Portugal?” he prompts when the waiter is gone.

“Tell me about your French lessons,” Lindy says. “What are you learning? French conjugations? The imperfect tense?”

She’s looking back and forth between Chantal and him. She’s got a mischievous gleam in her eyes, as if she’s taunting him.

“Lindy,” he says, his voice low.

“Jeremy and I have conversations about the things we see as we walk around Paris. I teach him new vocabulary. I correct his mistakes. I encourage him to practice what he already knows.”

Chantal is remarkably calm, as if she is often confronted by irrational twenty-year-old bald daughters. Jeremy begins to relax.

“What fun,” Lindy says, as if it’s not fun at all.

“Your mother set up these lessons for me,” Jeremy explains. He doesn’t mention that it’s an anniversary gift.

“How gallant of her.”

Gallant, Jeremy thinks. Lindy’s French surprises him. She, too, sounds like someone else, someone more sophisticated. Someone with an edge.

“Tell us about your travels,” Jeremy urges.

“Well, here I am,” Lindy says. “All roads lead home.”

“But you’re not home,” Jeremy says.

“I’m with you,” Lindy tells him. “That’s home.”

He reaches out and places his hand over hers. She flinches but doesn’t take her hand away. He sees her glance at Chantal and back again, quickly.

The waiter arrives and sets tea in front of them, lemonade in front of Lindy. He makes a grand gesture of pouring tea for Chantal but leaves Jeremy to serve himself.

“Did you see your mother this morning?” Jeremy asks.

Dana was still sleeping when he left for his French lesson. Her filming doesn’t begin until late this afternoon- they’re shooting evening scenes on the Pont des Arts. He has promised to come watch tonight, something he doesn’t often do. But tomorrow is their anniversary and he needs to make up for last night’s fight. Before Lindy called to say she would arrive in the middle of the night, they had thought they would take a train to Chantilly and explore the chateau. But now Dana wants to stay in Paris, just the three of them, roaming the city. “I haven’t had a chance to walk the streets of Paris,” she had said last night. “You’re the one who’s having all the fun.”

“Mom was sleeping,” Lindy says. “My mother is an actress,” she tells Chantal.

“So I’ve heard,” Chantal says.

“You’ve mentioned her?” Lindy asks Jeremy.

“Chantal taught me the words for director and cinematographer and film editor,” Jeremy tells her. “Apparently I know more words about food than I do about film.”

“Mom could teach you those words.”

Jeremy looks at the teacup in front of him. He has the uneasy feeling that his French lesson has ended. He and Chantal have worked until three every day. Should he let her go early? But today is his last day with her. He wants to start over. He would tell Lindy that he can’t meet her until late afternoon, that he’s busy all day. But of course, he’s never been too busy for his daughter.

“Alors,” Lindy says. “Mom was sleeping and I didn’t want to wake her. Her note said that we should meet her at the Pont des Arts at six this evening.”

“We’ll watch them film a couple of scenes,” Jeremy says. “Should be fun.” He’s lying; it’s never fun. It’s slow and boring, and each scene is so out of context that it’s hard to know what’s actually going on. Lindy usually hates film shoots unless a sexy young actor is on the set. Even then, she resents that her mother is more often the object of the young man’s attention than she is.

Last summer, Lindy decided she wanted to be a theater actress. It’s more serious, she said. It has more substance, more weight. Jeremy worries that it’s even harder to succeed in the theater. He wishes his daughter would find something less daunting, something that is not filled with rejection and criticism and ego-driven competitors pushing you aside. Lindy is not made of the same stuff as her mother, he worries.

“Will she come?” Lindy asks.

Jeremy looks at her, confused. She’s gesturing with a nod of her head at Chantal. Will Chantal come to Dana’s