Free French Lessons by Ellen Sussman Page B

Drama School and USC and the Tisch program at NYU, and I got all the catalogs and I read them before I go to sleep at night and then I can’t sleep, I’m so jazzed about this stuff. You should read what they say. I mean, it’s all about the stuff you talked about when we started the play. About searching within to find what you can bring to the part. About learning your character like you’re learning to breathe in a brand-new way.”
    He stood up and walked to one of the photos on the wall.
    “This is cool. This is really great. You took these?”
    “Yeah. Last summer.”
    “You’re great. You’re like the best teacher here.”
    He swung around and looked at her and then dropped back into the chair.
    “You gotta talk to my dad.”
    “I don’t think so, Brady.”
    “Yeah. You’d be so good at it. He’d listen to you. He’s not listening to me.”
    “It’s not my job.”
    “All you gotta do is tell him that I’m good enough. I’m good enough, right?”
    She looked at him and saw that he was terrified in that moment, that he had no idea if he was good enough.
    “You’re good enough, Brady,” she said.
    He shot up out of his chair again. “So you gotta talk to him. Tell him that. Tell him lots of smart kids go to drama school.”
    “I don’t know, Brady,” Josie said. “It’s not such a bad idea. What your dad wants. You can study acting later.”
    “But it’s all I care about!” he shouted. “Don’t you get it? I thought you’d get it. I thought you’d help me out here.”
    “I’ll talk to him,” she said quietly.
    “Soon,” he said. “We’re flying down to look at schools next weekend. He’s like all fired up about this. Father-son bonding time. He was never around and now he’s my best fucking friend.”
• • •
    Nico and Josie start to climb. The stairs of the tower wind around the inside of one of the legs, the Pilier Est. Josie feels like she’s in the belly of a giant erector set. It is hard work—Josie is glad that the stairs only go to the second level—after that, they have to take the elevator like everyone else. They’re alone in this maze of steel. At one point a young boy sprints past them, as if shot from a cannon below. Suddenly Josie feels old. How can that kid dash up these stairs? Wasn’t she young and fit about three weeks ago?
    Josie catches glimpses of the city through the ironwork of the tower’s leg, a peek of the meandering River Seine on one side, the grassy stretch of the Champ de Mars on the other. She has no fear of heights; she is not the little girl in her story. She has lost her mother, but she sure as hell doesn’t expect to find her waiting at the top of the tower. Her father, though, might just be waiting for her, perched in the window of her childhood house, the chandelier lit above him, staring out into the street. He is waiting for Josie to come home. Maybe she’ll bring a nice young man with her, a boyfriend. That’s all he wants.
    This is ridiculous, Josie thinks. Nico has invented some kind of therapy for her, some way for her to exorcize her grief while exercising her legs. Fine. At least they’ve stopped talking. At least he’s stopped staring at her like a hungry puppy.
    At least she’s still wearing her sneakers and not some ridiculous pair of stiletto heels.
    Nico is a few steps ahead of her, climbing steadily. Next she’ll find out he’s an Olympic athlete in his spare time. Odd , she thinks. She knows nothing about him. Why is he a tutor? Is that a career choice or something to do while writing poems? She used to be someone who was curious about people. She’d collect life stories from strangers on planes and buses. Now she talks to no one. And finally, here she is, spending a day with someone, and she’s learned so little about him. He loves another French tutor. He hid in the root cellar as a child. He has a child in Morocco. Who is he? Has he really fallen for her or is this his charming way to teach a foolish