Читать книгу Lessons in French - Hilary Reyl - Страница 14

Moments after I slipped back into the apartment, the phone rang. Clarence handed me the receiver in the kitchen. “A young man for you,” he said.

I was confused. The only young man I knew who had this number was Olivier, and Clarence would surely have recognized Olivier’s voice. I supposed my mother would have given the number to my ex, Peter, if he’d asked, but I couldn’t think what reason he would find to call me long-distance. He had never shown any urgency toward me. Why now? The mere thought of his indifference made me sure that no boy would ever telephone. There must be some mistake.

It was my cousin Étienne. He seemed to feel none of my trepidation about our cruel past. There was a familiarity in his voice that suggested memories on his part that had nothing to do with mine. He sounded as though we had always bantered playfully and were simply taking up where we had left off. He was, it turned out, a very good actor.

“Alors, c’est chic ta nouvelle adresse.”

“Assez chic, oui.” My new address was chic enough.

Who was this lady I was working for in such a posh part of town? Was she rich? Did she buy lots of jewelry? Because Étienne was about to start a jewelry line, part precious, part objets trouvés.

Very postmodern, I said.

Did he actually want to engage with me? Why was I so afraid? I was no longer the little girl he could tease in a Paris that belonged to him.

He sang the word “postmodern” back to me several times before he declared that he would call his jewelry line “PoMo” and thanked me for the inspiration although he wasn’t exactly sure what the term meant (I did not believe him) because he hadn’t gone to college (probably true). He hadn’t even gotten his high school baccalaureate. Had I heard? His parents were devastated. They had always seen him as a fonctionnaire, somewhere deep in the postal system or maybe a prof de gym. They hoped he would follow them back to his roots in Orléans, build his own little house down the street from theirs. Here he made himself laugh very loud, and I could see his eleven-year-old neck arched way back, his tongue halfway out and shining.

At ten in the morning, he sounded like he was on speed. I understood why Solange and Jacques were worried.

“I’m just home from a big night,” he said. “Hey, we should go clubbing together sometime.”

“With pleasure.”

So, he was going to court me now. How odd.

“Yes,” he said, “you’ve always been eager to please.”

Was it that simple? I winced.

This was the slender and harsh boy with the pitch-dark lashes who had made it clear that he did not want to know me in the schoolyard, me, the milk-fed American cousin who did not know the élastique routines of the other girls and had visible knots in her hair and who studied so hard that his parents never stopped asking why he couldn’t be more like me. They pointed to the big books I read and my promising drawings. He was forced to be polite to me because I was a pauvre fille, a poor girl who was losing her father. Didn’t he know how lucky he was, they whispered, not to be abandoned? Mais elle me barbe, he said. She bores me.

Did he remember that I had gotten lice and he had called me dégueulasse? Did he recall that I would do anything for a chocolate éclair, even slip him the answers to a math test or hold hands for ten seconds with the dirty old man on the bench outside the hardware store while his friends watched? Did he know now that it wasn’t for the éclair but for love of him that I had been willing to prove so brave? I had simply been more mortified by my love than by the base act of accepting a pastry for my favors. Shame is good cover.

Now, though, over this phone eleven years later, he wanted to know me.

What was I doing this weekend?

He was having un petit dîner chez lui on Friday night. Would I come?

Two nights from now. I took a deep breath and asked what I could bring.

He said he loved champagne and that it would be great to see me after all this time. He hoped I was still cute. He gave me an address. The closest Métro was Bastille. And by the way, did the woman I worked for shoot publicités?

Absolutely not, I said. She’s not that kind of photographer. Then I told him I loved champagne too, although I’d only had the real kind once or twice. Maybe we would discover some affinities after all.

Once I had seen him, I would call his parents and make a plan to visit them in Orléans.