“I was shy-I’m still somewhat shy-but then I was often silent in crowds of children, uneasy about myself in ways that made it hard to be free. With Sarah I felt bold, I felt older and wiser and more handsome than I really was.”
Chantal laughs and Jeremy takes a sip of the wine.
“Sarah asked me if I liked her. I told her yes. I told her that I thought she was the prettiest girl in the camp. I said that I wished I were old enough to be her boyfriend. She told me that she didn’t like the older boys, that they were full of themselves. She liked that I was quiet. So many boys talk about themselves all the time, she said.”
Jeremy realized that he was suddenly one of those boys, talking about himself. And none of the story sounded true-it was ludicrous that an older girl would choose such a boy. But Chantal waited for the story to continue, and Jeremy couldn’t imagine how to back out of his mistake.
“I asked her if she had ever swum in the lake at night. She said no, that it wasn’t allowed, that she once heard about a girl who went for a night swim and never came back. ‘Let’s go,’ I said. ‘It’s safe. No one will find us.’ ”
“Brave boy,” Chantal says.
No, Jeremy wants to shout. I am not that brave boy! I have never been that brave boy.
“We walked down to the lakeshore. There was a dance that night, so everyone was in the dance hall or the canteen-there was no one else at the beach. And it was so dark we could barely see each other. This is deep in the countryside of New Hampshire, far from any city lights or noise.”
“Sounds lovely,” Chantal says. She closes her eyes at one point, and Jeremy imagines that she is at the lake with him, standing at the water’s edge, conjuring up the nerve to take off her clothes.
“I was the first to undress. We walked out to the edge of the dock and I left my clothes in a bundle on the wood planks and then dove in a nervous rush into the water. When I came up for air she was mid-dive, naked, incredibly beautiful. I had never seen a naked girl before.”
Jeremy stops talking. He hasn’t eaten and somehow his first glass of wine is gone. He has had nothing to eat today but a few scraps of bread with olive oil. Maybe it’s the slow roll of the boat, but he feels off balance.
“Let the naked girl stop mid-dive,” he says, “but I need some of this cheese.”
Chantal laughs. “Poor Sarah,” she says. “Exposed like that.”
“Sarah can wait for the cool splash of the water. I can no longer wait.”
He reaches for some bread and slices into the Camembert that has run onto the plate. He spreads it onto the bread and fills his mouth with its pungent taste. Chantal takes a slice of pear, a slice of chèvre, lays one on top of the other, and passes it to him.
“Merci,” he says. The food seems to dissolve in his mouth.
“Please,” he says. “Tell me your story of first love so I can eat instead of talking.”
“But this is a French lesson,” Chantal says, smiling at him. She seems to be teasing him, but he’s not sure how. “You are supposed to talk.”
“Challenge my French with your story. Tell me a very complicated love story.”
“When you are done,” Chantal says.
For four days Jeremy has wished he could charm Chantal with stories, but he is not that sort of man. He is a listener, something that always made women respond to him as if he were better than the rest of his species. And now? He’s worse than the worst of them. He’s lying. And he can’t stop himself.
“She dove in a perfect arc, the moonlight revealing enough of her long, slim body for me to see her small breasts, her slim hips. And then she was in the water and racing toward me. I was treading water, caught in my Peeping Tom stare, and I thought she would swim right at me and pull me under. But she swam past me and kept swimming. I had to chase her and so I did, though of course she was faster and stronger than I.”
The boat wobbles and Jeremy grasps the table. Chantal laughs.
“The bateau-mouche,” she explains. “Even in the middle of the night I find myself thinking I’ll tumble from my bed and drown.”
For the first time, Jeremy considers that below deck is Chantal’s home. There will be a bed in the room. He looks away from her and out toward the river. On the deck of the bateau-mouche tourists wave at them, insistently. And foolishly, Jeremy waves back.
They think I’m French, he thinks.
But of course Chantal is not waving. How silly, he thinks. If you live here, you would never wave back.
I’m behaving like a thirteen-year-old boy, Jeremy thinks.
“You are swimming for dear life,” Chantal says.
End the story, Jeremy says to himself. Now.
“I would never have caught her. She was much too strong. So she must have slowed down for me, kind girl that she was. And when I caught her, somewhere out in the middle of the lake, I didn’t know what to do with her. I was so young. And she was beyond me in every way.”
“She showed you,” Chantal said.
“Yes,” Jeremy agreed. “She showed me what to do.”
They sip their wine. This time Jeremy prepares an apple slice and a piece of Roquefort for Chantal, who takes it gladly and eats it with pleasure. He refills their wine.
He feels an odd combination of relief-his story is over-and horror, as he is a man who invents himself to impress a young woman. At forty-five! Only a week ago, while lying in their bed in the Santa Monica Canyon, he had traced his fingers over Dana’s body and said, “I know every inch of you.”
“No surprises?” she had asked. “No chance to discover a scar on my leg, a tattoo on my hip?”
“I don’t want surprises,” he had said, pulling her closer. “I want just what we have. Nothing more.”
Dana hadn’t said anything. And for a quick, uncertain moment, Jeremy had thought, Maybe she wants more. She’s a woman of big emotions, a woman who lives life on a grand scale. And then she comes home to me. He felt an ache in his chest. Talk about it, he thought. But as so often happened, words didn’t come-they jammed up against one another somewhere inside him. He did what he knew how to do. He took Dana in his arms and made love to her, covering her small body with his own.
When they were done, he wrapped his arm around her familiar body and pressed himself against her back. Now he wonders: Was last night’s argument a way of twisting around his own fears? Is this part of his unease these last days in Paris? After ten years of loving Dana, has he lost his faith in their relationship?
“Tell me the story of your first love,” he says to Chantal, pushing his thoughts away.
She looks toward the river for a moment and seems almost shy again. Then she busies herself with the cheese and the pears.
“Or tell me the names of all the plants in your garden,” Jeremy says quickly.
“You’re kind,” she says. “An escape is offered.”
“If you’d like. I can’t even remember how we got to the dangerous topic of love.”
“My fault,” Chantal says, smiling. “The head of the language school would fire me.”
Jeremy smiles. “I won’t tell.” He wonders if lunch on her houseboat would also be interdit. Of course. The thought pleases him. She’s breaking the rules for him.
“I fell in love for the first time a year ago,” she says. She stops as if that is the end of her story.
“No stormy adolescent romances?” Jeremy asks.
“Plenty of storms. No calm after the storm.”
Jeremy nods. Yes. He knows what she means. He loved falling in love with Dana, but then, to his great surprise, he found that he enjoyed being in love with her even more. The calm.
And now? Is he creating a storm out of thin air?