Chapter 1
I was flunking at school. In French. All my grades were pretty average but French, I couldn't get it. I couldn't because it was all about Goddard. And his scary movies and how they kill in French. I was a very impressionable teenager.
My parents decided that I should have some help, so they posted an ad on the Village Voice for a French Tutor. So many people answered the advertisement, from young French hipsters making America to very old Professors from Columbia. Everyone wanted to get some extra source of income, but more of that, everyone was tempted to come inside an apartment at Central Park and furthermore to get the type of connections that a tutor job on Fifth Avenue would provide.
Nevertheless, my parents chose a middle-aged French woman that used to coach singing students at Julliard for their French pronunciation and singing. That was the school I was supposed to go after I finish High-School, and it came to help that I was already accepted, being my godmother a chairwoman at the schoolboard.
On Tuesday, Giles opened the door when my future tutor rang. He took her to the study, where my mother was awaiting her to discuss the terms of the contract and the salary. Yes, a contract. My parents didn't believe in lawsuits, that's why they were assessed by their lawyers to cover any ambiguities. When Mme. Lagalice signed the contract, my mother called me and introduced me to her: –Jason, this is Mme. Lagalice, in her best French learned at several summers at the French Riviera. –Enchantée, she said, to which I answered and shook her hand. I had already brought my schoolbooks and dictionaries, which were already on the table. My mother left us and closed the sliding doors, not before Giles came and left the tea tray with some snacks on the side table.
"Let's start to know each other", –said Mme. Lagalice with a light, but very cute accent.
She took off the upper part of her two-piece cantaloupe Chanel and left it gently over the couch. Her white blouse was buttoned until the top. She proceeded to open the top button and I could have a glimpse of her ivory neck. I could remark her blue eyes behind the glasses but didn't have too much time to check because she sat right next to me and started to pass the book pages. Her smell was of violet, and she had her black hair tied at the back with an almost invisible net.
She then checked my exams and shook her head. –Well, well, it looks we have a pretty difficult job here. These mistakes are not from a person that has taken four years of French, but from a beginner. She stood up and went to the board and wrote: je suis/je sais.
I could see her now: she was thin but had a good figure. She wore panties, very unusual for the weather, but I guess it made her look serious and get a job at the house of the Vanderkerk family.
She started to explain me the difference, and I thought it to be very boring. I guessed she noticed it and stopped. –Fine, she uttered, we are going to need some other approach, as I see you don't seem to understand or want to learn. She took a while and said: we are taking this class outside; I will ask your mother if she would allow us to go out for a walk next time. For the time being I think we could do some exercises and concentrate on the learning of some verb conjugations.
That evening I was very excited before going to bed. It was a very new experience to me, and I didn't know how to cope. I was the whole night thinking of her cherry lips instead and her severe attire, but curiosly thinking of her black lack stilettos.
My mother agreed to let us go out to be a part of the lesson. Mme. Lagalice came next Thursday, as she was to come twice a week during the spring.
She was dressed up less severe this time, only wearing a long skirt, a lace blouse with a jacket and leather boots, ornamented with a Carré Hermès around her neck. She left her attaché at the apartment, and we went down for a walk.
When we were crossing the street, she took my arm gently in order to step over a puddle built by the recent rain. We reached Central Park and she started talking.
–Now we will have your first lesson. We will review the essential vocabulary. Start with the car.
–La voiture, -I answered.
–Good.
–You know this was the place where John Lennon got killed? –I said pointing the Dakota Building.
–Everybody knows that. And I think you like to divert your attention from the main subject, and it is difficult for you to concentrate. I will have to be more severe with you in the future.
When she articulated that word, I felt a strange sensation, like an itch all over my body. My parents were well born and bred, and never told me anything out of place, especially my mother. When she was angry at something, she will sit at the piano and play Mozart until her anger was gone, a very British aristocratic way to handle irritation. My father would go to the tennis club and play for hours, come late and go straight to bed; a very American upper-class way to deal with frustration.
I was never angry, nor happy, I think. Life was just passing by, but I had no special fun in any of the things I normally did. Being an only child does not let you compare to the happiness of your brothers and sisters or their moods. Birthdays were good, Christmas were better. School trips to exotic destinations were interesting. Lacrosse was right and summers in the Hamptons were nice. Nevertheless, I always felt alone in a way, although I was a very popular guy at school and had many friends and acquaintances. I also got invited very often, especially by mothers and grand-mothers that wanted to match me with their daughters and grand-daughters, for the cachet of being half English and possible heir to a modest fortune, but more because our old Dutch family name opened every door in New York: restaurants, discotheques, country clubs, societies and company boards.
We went through cars, parks, plants, buildings and people in French. And I asked her with curiosity: –do you really need the job, or you are doing it just for fun?
–I need money like everyone. I came to the city four years ago after I got divorced to an American in Boston. But you are very curious.
–I know I am.
–Well, let's finish for now and we will keep on talking next Thursday. Let's go up.
Giles had already her leather attaché prepared when he opened the door. She said goodbye and surprised me with three kisses. I was very clumsy and didn't know how to react, so my hand touched her stomach as I tried to shake hands instead. The three kisses provoked a mixed up feeling of shame and shyness on me, the very same when I was younger and a very beautiful Hollywood actress came home with some friends of my parents and hugged me when greeting, making everyone uncomfortable in the room and rolling their eyes as she screamed in a very Texan accent: "what a cute boy we have here".