Lessons in French

Deconstruction was a joke? The form of literary criticism I had felt so terrible not mastering in college, hell, not even grasping, except to understand that all language pointed nowhere but back upon itself, which wasn’t very helpful. This concept that had walled me out with its jargon, these lit majors who had hurt my feelings so many times, this momentous testament to my lack of sophistication was really a gag. Here in the land of jet-set intellectuals, it was a mere farce between husband and wife. I felt my world gelling anew as if I had finally found the right prescription for a pair of glasses. So, this was the point of view of choice. Deconstruction was not glowering and intimidating. It was funny.

“What’s so amusing?” Clarence asked. He was annoyed, but not with me.

“Lydia wanted me to pretend I was a Deconstructionist because I did some literature at Yale. I was an art major, actually, but I did try some theory courses because you kind of had to in order to know what anyone was talking about. She said you would think it was funny because you’re a Historicist.”

“I hope she said I was a ‘New Historicist.’”

“I’m sure she did.”

“Probably not, but it’s not your fault. Anyway, is that her idea of a joke?”

“Well, she said the Deconstructionists were your nemesis, that I was the enemy.”

He practically spat. His trembling lips were a comical version of Portia’s gorgeous pout from the leather frame.

“Where is the woman’s sense of nuance? My nemesis indeed! She likes to pretend I’m some sort of reactionary. I am a cultural critic. I incorporate deconstruction into my work. I appreciate the text-only approach for what it meant to its time, but it’s passé, you understand.”

“Not exactly.”

Clarence explained it to me in fatherly tones. He said that it was simply the jargon that got you. Most critics should be shot. Their writing was rubbish.

“Can you believe that Derrida was the first photo in Lydia’s last book?” he asked. “You must have seen it. A travesty. I nearly convinced her not to do it, but you’ll learn how stubborn she can be. Anyway, I can help you sift through the jargon if you’re interested. Then you’ll see how easy it is to move beyond it.”

My perspective adjusted again. So, deconstruction wasn’t a joke exactly. Instead, it was a historical phase that I would master because this lovely professor, whose eyebrows did not frown and who did not assume I knew what hermeneutics were, was going to help me. Yet another vista to take in. There were cocktail parties where the German chancellor was giving you the inside scoop on when the Berlin Wall would come tumbling down and a room full of Monets that made your mother sigh as though she had once possessed them in her boudoir. There was faience abandoned in a secret garden, chestnut croissants at Hédiard.

The doorbell rang. Clarence jumped out of his seat, then sank back.

“Who could possibly be here now? Are you expecting anyone?”

I shook my head.

“Shall we go see?”

We were just intimate enough by now for me to know perfectly well that he knew perfectly well who was at the door.

seven

“Are you sure these people aren’t exploiting you?”

“Mom, it’s a different world here. Things don’t work like that. It’s not like I’m punching a time clock and they aren’t paying me for my overtime. It’s a full situation I’ve moved into. You should see this place. I’m in the heart of Paris, Mom. Henri Cartier-Bresson stopped in yesterday for tea. This world-famous old man just dropped by the house. He’s a friend of Lydia and Clarence’s. Apparently, Lydia has already mentioned me to him. She told him I was an artist in the making. He asked about my work because he’s started to draw as a second career. He said he likes the exertion. He’s questing, Mom, at his age, and doing something he’ll never be nearly as famous for only because it’s interesting. He looked at my Paris sketchbook and said my work was beautiful, almost without flaws, he said. People like this are talking to me. They like me.”

“I’m sure they do. What’s not to like? All I’m saying is that you’re paying a ridiculous amount for one room and you have almost no salary and you’re transcribing notes for the husband and running errands at all hours. You have to learn to protect yourself. I don’t want you to get to a year from now and feel like you’ve wasted your time.”

“It’s not wasting time. It’s experience. This is what experience is. I’ve only been here a couple of weeks and I’ve already learned so much.”

“I’m telling you, if you’re not careful, you’ll be a dog-walker before you know it.”

“The dog isn’t even here yet. Clarence is getting him from the country tomorrow. He’s been boarding at some farm in Normandy. Nice, huh?”

“You mean there is a dog? I was kidding, darling. It was a manner of speaking. Listen, if this Lydia person says that her fancy magazines can only pay you so much, then she asks you to walk her dog, she should supplement your salary. And if you end up working for her husband, then he should pay you too.”

“Mom, you’re being cynical. These people aren’t petty. I’m telling you, it’s not a tit-for-tat world. They feed me and it’s not like they send me bills. Clarence and his friends even take me out to eat with them sometimes, and I know Lydia will too when she gets here. She already said there are all these places in the neighborhood where we’ll be regulars. I could never afford that if it was just me working in an office. And it won’t be so bad to walk a dog in Paris, anyway. I can take him to the Luxembourg.”

“So, you are going to walk the dog. You know that already. They’ve prepared you to walk their dog. It’s part of the deal. Admit it.”

“They bought the dog for their son, and he doesn’t take care of it anymore and the whole thing breaks their hearts. So, he’s become sort of a family project. Everyone pitches in. I will too. Apparently he’s cute. He’s some big sheep dog. And, by the way, if I worked in a law firm, I’d pick up dry cleaning and make coffee and do all kinds of stupid errands. You know I would. Only they’d be boring.”

“You’d be paid for it and it would lead somewhere. I don’t want you to get exploited and hurt. I’m not denying that these people are interesting. I’m just saying they’re fishy. Watch out. Now, have you called your cousins?”

I reddened. I fingered the brown suede of Portia’s Maud Frizon boots, which had been delivered several days ago but which I hadn’t managed to send. They lay in their open box on Lydia’s desk.

Jacques, Solange and Étienne knew I was here. Before I had arrived, they had written to say how thrilled they would be to see me again. They would be confused by my silence. How could I explain it?

“I haven’t had a whole lot of time.”

“Well, I’ve called them for you. Solange told me they are worried about Étienne in Paris. They’d love it if you reconnected. Maybe you could let them know how he’s doing. It sounds like he’s losing touch.”

“Mom, Étienne thought I was the biggest loser he’d ever met. I’m sure he has no desire to talk to me.”

“That was over ten years ago. Give him another chance.”

“He always walked way ahead of me in the street on the way to school and pretended not to know me.”

“You said he was nice to you in private. He asked you if you weren’t sad about your father.”

“Once or twice.”

“Well, Solange tells me they are worried about him and would you please call? We owe them a lot, you know.”

“Of course I know.”

“I have Étienne’s number for you. They feel very cut off from him in Orléans and they would appreciate some news.”

“Mom, you don’t pronounce the s in Orléans.”

“I’m too old to start pretending I can speak French, dear. I have other skills. Do you have a pen for the number?”

eight

In the three weeks between Clarence’s arrival and Lydia’s appearance, life was Clarence and me and Orlando, the brown dog with the giant yellow eyes that looked like Métro headlights, with constant visits from Claudia, the passionate graduate student who had been at the door that first day when Clarence pretended not to know who was there, and the friendly Moroccan housepainters cracking the windows so that the late September breezes mingled with the music of a tape of Lemchaheb, playing over and over.

Claudia, who was half-Moroccan and half-French, was writing her dissertation for a professor at Berkeley about comparative dream analysis. She was petite, although her dramatic clothes and elaborate shoes could make you forget it. The first impression she made was one of strange and striking beauty, but once you looked at her for a few minutes and all the signs fell into place, you realized that the one beautiful thing about her, the thing that instantly stood for everything else, was her long straight black hair.

She had rented a cheap studio apartment in Montparnasse, which she could not stand to work in, but it was all she could afford. Ever since meeting Clarence at an anthropology and literature conference at Harvard, she had had trouble staying away. Most mornings, she showed up to work before breakfast time and stayed into the evening. Clarence would read over her work, discuss it with her endlessly, feed us both.

Her thesis covered a year she spent in a Moroccan village, keeping a dream journal. She was interpreting her dreams both from a Freudian point of view and a traditional Moroccan one. Clarence was not working with her in any official capacity, but he was a brilliant student of culture, she said, and it helped her to write in his house, to be able to talk things over with him as they occurred to her, because she couldn’t stand her adviser back in the States.

“He is the worst kind of imperialist,” she said one evening, the day’s paint fumes fading, Orlando napping at my feet, Clarence opening a cheap bottle of wine that Lydia would never notice missing from the cellar. “The man stumbles along in benevolent self-interest.” Not so Clarence. She gulped her wine. “Clarence is a theorist, not a critic, you understand. He can see that the position of my dreams in this thesis is like a horizon between east and west. He gets that it is both a dividing line and also a joining place. Clarence, he knows so much, he is so wise and yet he has such a youthful mind. Nothing is set in stone for him. Nothing is fixated. Not language. Nothing. He is truly agnostic, this man, which takes so much more strength than dogma, you know. It is so easy to be dogmatic. But you grasp that, Katie.”