French Lessons

hasn’t even asked her if she minds. She follows the glass to his lips and for a moment his smile disappears and then it’s there again, as if he’s pleased she ordered this wine just for him.

“Champagne!” she says, remembering his promise to celebrate his book sale.

Nico gestures for the waiter, who appears at their table. He orders a bottle of champagne and two glasses. It seems that neither of them is waiting for Philippe to appear.

“Tell me about your book of poetry,” Chantal says. She places her fingers on the envelope but doesn’t open it.

“Just this morning I thought my poems were about shame,” Nico says, and though his voice is serious, his face glows-he cannot contain his joy. “And now I think that’s wrong. When I was a kid, I spent a day in a root cellar, hiding. I had fallen asleep there, and my parents thought I was lost or kidnapped or God knows what. When I woke up and saw the policemen searching for me, I stayed where I was, too scared to step back into the world. Over the past years I’ve written countless poems, reinventing what might have happened during that day.”

“And none of them is true?” Chantal asks.

“They’re all true,” Nico says. “They all could have happened. They all continued to happen in my parents’ imagination because I never told them where I was. I said I couldn’t remember.”

“Why?”

“Ah, there’s the shame. But there’s something else. I wanted a secret. I wanted something that was all mine, that no one could take away from me.”

“And now? You’re giving away your secret?”

“I don’t need my secret anymore.” Nico sits back in his chair. He keeps his eyes on Chantal.

“I don’t understand,” she says.

“That little boy in the root cellar is so lonely,” Nico tells her. “I want something else.”

“What do you want?”

“Open this,” he says, touching her fingers, which rest on the envelope.

Chantal hears the young girl’s new song, but this time the lyrics are in French. She sings about the language of love.

“Did you see the chanteuse?” Chantal asks Nico.

“She’s a child,” Nico says, nodding. “But if I close my eyes she’s Edith Piaf.”

“Les mots d’amour,” Chantal repeats. “Sometimes at the end of a teaching day I feel like there are no words left.”

“Did you say goodbye to your American?” Nico asks.

“Yes. This time I think the student taught the teacher more than the teacher taught the student.”

The singer’s voice rises and the conversations at the tables in the cafe all seem to pause for a moment.

He is part of my heart, the girls sings.

“What did you learn?” Nico asks.

“Oh, I learned that there’s a kind of love which must feel like coming home,” Chantal says, smiling. “It gives me a vision of what I’d like to have.”

His eyes are on her, so she looks at the envelope. It’s not sealed. She opens the flap and pulls out two tickets. It takes a few moments to make sense of them-theater tickets? Plane tickets? No, they’re train tickets to Avignon. She furrows her brow but he doesn’t say a word. She examines them more closely.

The train leaves at nine P.M. from Gare de Lyon.

“Say yes,” Nico tells her.

She just looks at him.

“Can I have my wine back?”

He takes one more sip and passes it back to her. Again, their fingers touch.

“I thought I had fallen in love with the American, I really did,” Nico says in a mad rush. “She was tragic and beautiful and I thought I’d save her. I invited her to Provence.”

Why are you telling me this? Chantal thinks, but she doesn’t say a word.

“She said she’d meet me at the train station. I got there early, and while I looked for her in the crowd I kept imagining your hair escaping from your bun, your eyes as they looked at me this morning, your graceful body walking through the crowd and appearing in front of me, ready to run away with me to Provence. I could smell summer-you smell like summer-I could feel your breath on my face. I’d shake the image away and tell myself no, that was nothing, that night we spent together. That was Chantal’s revenge. I was waiting for Josie, not you, but the longer I waited the more I wanted you to appear, the more I wanted to climb onboard that train with you at my side. And the girl never showed, but if she had I would have told her I had made a terrible mistake-that she had made a terrible mistake-but she didn’t appear, and I knew what I wanted.”

He stops talking as suddenly as he began. She wonders for a moment if she’s crazy or he’s crazy. This might be a joke of sorts, something he and Philippe have created to make a fool of her.

Because she must be a fool-she’s watching him with a smile on her face that she can’t hide. She imagines the darkness of the train, the great speed, the closed space, the quiet hours. They would arrive at midnight, find a hotel, and hold each other through the night. In the morning there would be Provence-green, lush, ripe-and they could step out into this new world.

“I don’t have clothes, toiletries,” Chantal tells him, a little breathlessly.

“You don’t need a thing. We’ll spend the entire weekend naked in bed.”

She smiles. “I’m the backup girl?”

“No,” he says. He’s quiet-it’s as if he’s run out of words. “I want you,” he finally says, his voice as hushed as a promise.

“I don’t know what I want.”

“You want Provence. We’ll figure it out from there.”

“Let’s go,” Chantal says, laughing.

Why not? she thinks. Why not look for love on a train from Paris to Provence. And in the morning, they’ll wake in each other’s arms, to greet the astonishing sun.

Acknowledgments

The writing process may be solitary, but the process of turning a manuscript into a published book takes a lot of help from my friends.

I’d like to thank my very smart readers: Neal Rothman, Lalita Tademy, Rosemary Graham, Elizabeth Stark, Amanda Eyre Ward, Allison Lynn, Meg Waite Clayton, Vicky Mlyniec, and Cornelia Read.

I owe a great deal to my remarkable agent, Sally Wofford-Girand.

I feel very lucky to have the talented Jennifer Smith as my editor. Gina Centrello, Libby McGuire, and Jane von Mehren, publishers extraordinaire, head up the Ballantine dream team. Sanyu Dillon was one of the first champions of French Lessons at Random House, and I greatly appreciate her unflagging support. A tip of the chapeau to Cindy Murray, my publicist, and to Kim Hovey and Leigh Marchant, who deserve a coupe de champagne and many, many thanks for their support and hard work. Bisous to all of you. The publishing process has never been so much fun.

Ilsa Brink designed my website-Ilsa, you’re brilliant.

I am part of a wonderful women writers’ community in the San Francisco Bay area: WOMBA (Word of Mouth- Bay Area). Thank you, Wombistas, for all your support along the way.

My fabulous students always inspire me. I’ll share champagne with all of you.

Thank you, Daniela De Luca, my very dear friend, for the use of your fabulous apartment in Paris.

I have spent blissful writing weeks at Ledig House, Ragdale, Ucross, and Atlantic Center for the Arts-I am so grateful for what those residencies have given me.

Thanks to my friend Gary Lee Kraut, travel consultant and founder of FranceRevisited.com, who checked the manuscript for any mistakes in French or in my portrayal of Paris.

As always, my undying love and gratitude to Neal.