French Lessons

arrive.

“Yes?”

“I don’t know the word.”

“What word?”

“For the thing that the suitcases drop onto. The-Oh my God, I can’t even remember the word in English.”

“Le carrousel de bagages?”

“Yes. ‘Carousel.’ That’s the word.”

“Tell me the story.”

Josie feels panic stirring inside her. She looks around. Marilyn; a cigarette, a martini, puckered lips, long, manicured fingernails. Marilyn, Marilyn. She is drunk on Marilyn.

“We were all standing there, at the baggage claim, and first a shoe dropped down-not a suitcase, but a single shoe. It circled the carousel once and everyone watched it. When it passed by me a second time I recognized it. My mother’s navy-blue shoe. Someone laughed. I grabbed it and tucked it under my arm, embarrassed somehow. And then a pair of underpants dropped from the chute-I’m not kidding-my mother’s flowered underpants. The ones I chose from her drawer to have her buried in. Then her blouse. A peach-colored silk blouse she wore for special occasions. It almost floated down, as if worn by a fucking ghost. I grabbed each item and tucked the clothes in my arms. Her bra. Imagine: everyone was watching. Her C-cup rose-colored bra tumbled down. My father walked away. Finally my suitcase dropped down the chute and it was partially open, the items spilling out. I grabbed the bag and started stuffing everything back.”

Josie’s crying, tears running down her face, and she can’t stop. Nico pulls her toward him and holds her. She lets him. She swipes tears from her face but there’s no stopping them.

Simon’s gone.

• • •

“I’ve been sitting in my car across the street. I waited until your father was gone.”

Josie reaches out and places her hand on Simon’s chest.

“I wanted to walk up to him and say, ‘I’m Josie’s boyfriend. She doesn’t need another boyfriend.’ ”

“But it’s not true. You’re not my boyfriend. You’re someone’s husband. You’re the man I sneak away to have sex with. You’re the reason I can’t even talk to my best friend anymore.”

“Don’t.”

“I can’t give my father the one pleasure he wants.”

“I know, Josie. That’s why I sat in my car for the past two hours.”

“You have Brady’s play tonight. It starts in an hour.”

“I can’t go.”

“This can wait. Brady can’t wait.”

“I can’t give you more than this.”

“I know that. I’m not asking for more.”

“You’re asking for a man to introduce to your father.”

“Why are you here? What do you want?”

“I want you.”

“It stopped raining,” Nico says. “Let’s go have lunch.”

Josie finds a Kleenex in her purse and wipes her face. She has stopped crying but she feels raw. When she first learned about Simon, when Whitney called that Saturday morning and told her to turn on the television, she couldn’t cry-or scream or rage. She sat stunned, in front of her computer, Googling news reports, trying to find out everything she could about the crash of a small plane in the mountains near Santa Barbara. The phone kept ringing and she never answered it. Later there were dozens of messages from other teachers, a couple of Brady’s classmates, even a long, sobbing message from Glynnis Gilmore. She had fallen in love with Brady on opening night, she said.

Now a ridiculous memory of her mother’s death has unmoored her. And the French tutor has galloped in on his white horse.

They leave the museum in a hurry, as if chased by Marilyn’s hungry eyes. The boy at the front desk doesn’t even look at them as they leave.

“I know a restaurant,” Nico says, and he takes her arm, moving her quickly along the slick city streets. The sun reflects off puddles and wet cars; Josie digs into her purse for her sunglasses. She’s disoriented, her mind swimming in too many dark holes: her mother, Simon, Marilyn. She needs to come up for air; her lungs are bursting with the effort.

“Voila,” Nico pronounces, as if he created this restaurant on this corner, as if he’s responsible for its charming yellow walls, the pale blue tablecloths, the profusion of flowers. He’s transported them to Provence and Josie takes a deep breath.

“You like it?” he asks proudly.

“Very much.”

“I knew you would,” he says.

They’re seated in the back corner of the small room, and Nico orders a pichet of rose wine.

While he speaks to the waitress, Josie follows the dark path of memory to his funeral. Even this cheery restaurant can’t save her.

She remembers Simon’s wife-Brady’s mother-standing in the front of the church. The woman stepped away from her sisters and mother and friends and stood in front of the two coffins. No one dared to join her side. This was her grief, her devastating loss. She fell to her knees and wailed, a sound that echoed in the church. Josie turned and walked back to her car, parked almost a mile away since the crowd was so enormous. In that long walk she clenched her hands until her nails dug into the skin of her palms and bled. She had lost Simon and now she had lost the right to her grief.

Love me. Josie had never known that she needed the kind of passion in life that tipped her off balance, that carried her aloft. She had always thought of herself as a little too flimsy for love. With Simon, she lost her bearings, she gave herself up to love. And it filled her, made her weightier, fuller, richer.

“My boyfriend died,” she says aloud.

Nico looks at her, surprised. The waitress arrives with the pichet of wine and they are silent while she fills their glasses. She places menus on the table and walks away.

“I lied,” Josie says. “I’m not here with a friend. I’m alone. I was supposed to come to Paris with him. Simon.”

“What happened?” Nico asks gently.

“Three weeks ago he took his son, Brady, down to Santa Barbara to look at the university. Simon flies his own plane-he’s good, he’s been flying for years. They don’t know what happened. The plane went down in the hills above Santa Barbara. Both of them were killed.”

“My God.”

“I haven’t been able to talk about it with anyone. First he was my secret. Now my grief is my secret. I was his lover, not his wife.”

“It’s his baby.”

“Yes. I didn’t know. But I’m sure I’m pregnant.”

Nico reaches a hand across the table and places it on Josie’s hand. Her face is streaked with tears again.

“He has a lovely wife. She lost everything. I lost a lover. I don’t have a right to this grief. He wasn’t mine. Brady wasn’t mine. I was stealing someone else’s love.”

“I don’t think you were stealing love.”

“His wife deserved his love. His wife deserves this grief. I’m nobody. I went to the funeral because I was Brady’s teacher. But that’s a ruse, that’s a lie. No one knows about me. And if they did, they’d hate me.”

“It doesn’t matter what anyone else knows. Or what they think.”

“You’re a stranger. You’re French. What do you know?”

Nico laughs and suddenly Josie laughs, surprising herself. She drinks her wine, which is as light and cool as a