I'm Supposed to Protect You from All This (32 page)

I
called Josée from the train.

“
Oui, mon chat!
” she said as she picked up the phone.

“Just letting you know I'm on my way,” I said.

“Train six one five five, car six, upstairs, seat one fifteen, arrives at three oh five p.m.,” she said, apparently from memory.

“Yes,” I said, laughing, “I'll see you very soon.”

The TGV bisected the countryside, speeding south. Vineyards whipped past the windows. As the train pulled into the Hyères station, I scanned the platform. I didn't recognize Josée right away. She was wearing a pale yellow headband that held wisps of blond hair away from her eyes, and a soft yellow shirt that came down to the top of her thighs. She looked soft where I was expecting sharp.

She was gazing the other way down the platform. I tapped her on the shoulder. “Ahh!” she said with delight, turning toward me, her face lighting up. Her blue eyes appraised me quickly. I felt the charge of her energy on me. Up close, she became young again. And I became younger, too. My voice went high, my steps turned into a shuffle. Glancing at my reflection in a train window, I half expected to see a little girl in her best red velour dress.

As we got into the car, she outlined all the outings she had planned for us: friends we would visit, beaches we would see. She
had told me that we would drive back to Paris together on July 7, but now she told me that she'd decided that we ought to stay down south until the thirteenth. I felt kidnapped, but aloud I agreed happily. I had no good excuse to go back earlier. I went heavy with the deep discomfort of being a guest, of being on somebody else's schedule. As she spoke, laying out a verbal calendar and shuffling it around, I noted the urgency in her planning. When it looked as if there weren't time for something, she didn't say we would do it next year, and that broke my heart. Josée's health had gone through many dips these past few years, but each time she'd recuperated. I refused to believe she wouldn't live at least another decade.

We sped down the highway. In the opposite direction, cars were stalled in traffic that moved at a crawl.

“I hope you didn't have to sit through all that on your way to pick me up,” I said.

“No, that wasn't there. And anyway, nothing could have put me in a bad mood this morning. I was so excited you were coming,
je trépignais.
”

“What does that mean?”

“
Trépigner?
It means jumping from foot to foot like a child.”

“Oh, that's very sweet,” I said. It sounded like what I had felt that morning, trepidation.

“Do you want to go straight to the sea for a swim? Or go home and settle in? If we go home, I'm just warning you, we won't leave again this evening. My friends are coming over for dinner.”

I hesitated, trying to guess what the right answer was. I would have preferred to go settle in—I am the kind of person who takes twenty-four hours to travel, no matter how short the trip—but I had a feeling it was the other one.

“Let's go to the beach,” I said.

“That's what I thought!” she said. “I always want to jump in the water as soon as I get here.”

She went on to tell me a story about driving down here to the South of France with Sylvie, taking turns at the wheel. Josée had the final stretch, and Sylvie fell asleep. She drove the car straight to the beach, parked, and went swimming. When Sylvie woke up, it was getting dark, and she was annoyed. She insisted on having milk for breakfast the next morning, and the store in the village was about to close. “I told her to relax and enjoy the ocean but she refused to get out of the car, she just went on:
the milk, the milk.
So I struck up a conversation with the owners of this little cabana on the beach. I told them, ‘My daughter is acting out an operatic tragedy about milk. Do you have any to spare?' The woman went into the back and miraculously produced this little carton of milk, which I, soaking wet and triumphant, brought to Sylvie. ‘
Voilà!
Voilà
your milk,' I said, ‘Now will you just relax?' And immediately, she started in about how we needed to get home before the milk spoiled.
Ha!
That girl.”

Josée had told me a story about Sylvie, but all I could hear was how much this story was about her. Impulsive, free-spirited—this was the self that appeared in many of her stories, especially those where her daughters played the straight man. We got out of the car, and she helped me change into my bathing suit in the parking lot. “You have fifteen minutes to swim,” she told me. She sat on a bench to wait. The sun was setting and the air was cool. The cold water tickled as it climbed my body. My stomach pulled into my spine. I took a deep breath and plunged, happy as soon as the water hit my temples. I swam quickly, straight out into the ocean, my
thoughts smoothed out by the rhythmic strokes. I had this tugging feeling, a half-formed thought. It was the feeling that I'd met someone my mother would like. A memory rose without breaking the surface, just suffusing me with the emotion it contained, like a dream. It was of that time in Brazil, when my mother had pulled over so that she and my brother and I could go swimming during the thunderstorm, while my father waited anxiously in the car.
Yes,
I thought to myself dreamily as I swam,
it's a shame. My mother would have really liked Josée if she'd known her.

—

J
OSÉE H
AD ANOTHER
BEACH
, a secret beach. You could rent a chaise longue and they'd bring you food and drink from the snack bar, which was true of many of the beaches along that small stretch of coastline. But this one had the clearest blue water and was neither too crowded nor too expensive. She wouldn't tell her friends where it was. “Oh no, I can't meet you at the beach tomorrow,” she'd say. “We're going to
my
beach. Nadja can tell you, it's the best one around.” Then she'd insist that she'd be unable to give them directions, although each time she unerringly found her way there.

She presented me to the women who ran the beach,
les plagistes
, and they kissed us on each cheek. “They lick your peach,” my grandmother said of their matronly embrace. The young man who waited on the lounge chairs would probably tend to us with renewed fervor now that she was accompanied by the most beautiful girl on the beach, she continued. I blushed, not feeling beautiful in my too-soft body. I looked around and noticed that I was the youngest woman there. And when he placed two espressos by our feet, Josée said loudly, “Look, Nadja—you have coffee and a handsome French man kneeling in front of you. What more could you want?”

“Nothing,” I said with a lascivious laugh and a completely uncharacteristic wink. He stiffened and walked off quickly.

The next day, Josée's friend Julien invited us to lunch at his beach.

I liked Julien. He was seventy-eight and madly in love with my grandmother. He walked with a silver-tipped cane and wore smart tan linen suits and made grand pronouncements about ennui. He read history books about strong women. Josée said he tired her because he didn't enunciate his words. She had very little patience for those who'd grown frail.

“You'll need to dress up,” said my grandmother. “His beach is very chic.”

I showed her two different outfits, because I thought she would be prouder of my appearance if she'd vetoed one. I wound up in high-waisted printed silk pants, my bikini top, and a see-through silk blouse open to the waist and tied.

She told me that the restaurateur was extremely handsome, and sometimes she brought her friends to this beach just so they could throw themselves at him. “He used to play on the French national rugby team,” she said meaningfully, and I made a sound like I was impressed. “He'll surely find you very attractive.”

“Oh,” I said. I sank into worry. I knew she would be disappointed if he didn't.

As we walked down the boardwalk she said, “There he is! That big broad back, I'd recognize it anywhere.”

Facing away from us, at the entrance to the restaurant, a middle-aged man with a physique like an upside-down triangle was talking to a tall tan blonde in her sixties. Josée walked purposefully toward them. Just before she tapped him on the back, she turned and whispered to me, “Be beautiful!”

I didn't even have time to flip my hair back. But I thought to myself,
Okay. Okay. Be beautiful
. My shoulders pushed back and my chin leveled up and I tightened myself deep in my stomach.

“
Ma beauté!
” he exclaimed over Josée, bending to grab her shoulders and kiss her.

“
Je te presente ma petite-fille
.” Josée gestured to me with a sweep of her hand.

Be beautiful,
I commanded myself.

He kissed my cheeks, then leaned back and looked me up and down, his eyes lingering on my chest.

“
Elle est ravissante,
” he said, turning his face toward Josée but keeping his eyes on me.

“Of course she is,” Josée said briskly. “I wouldn't show her off if she weren't.”

He put his hand on her shoulder.

“Your lover is waiting for you over there, at that table,” he said, leaning low to speak in her ear.

“At the very center of the restaurant?” Josée said with disdain.

“He insisted on it.”

“He's not my lover,” Josée said, and we walked over to greet Julien.

Josée and Julien ordered grilled shrimp with risotto. I ordered a salmon tartare, because it sounded healthy but I had seen that it came with French fries. Josée worried about how little I had to eat. “You're going to die of hunger!” she said. I glowed, delighted. My salmon was served in a delicate cup that was much deeper than it looked.

Julien was telling me about one of his three ex-wives. “She had the second most beautiful conversation in Paris,” he said. “That's what everyone said about her.”

“Who had the first?” I asked.

“The wife of the minister of the interior,” he replied without hesitation.

“What does it mean to have beautiful conversation?” I asked.

“Oh, what a wonderful question!” he exclaimed. “It's a dying art, like literature or music, but an art all its own. There's a quality that's hard to describe—it's conversation that's light yet intelligent, with an ability to discuss a wide range of topics and put everyone at their ease. It's very rare these days.” He added, “Her son never liked me much. I think he was jealous.”

“Of what?” I asked, salting my French fries.

“Oh, how she wounds!” Julien exclaimed. “She's vicious, your granddaughter, with her seemingly innocent questions.”

“That's not how I meant it!” I said, laughing.

“Of what!” he repeated, clapping his hand to his heart.

The restaurateur came and asked how we were doing. Josée complained that her shrimp was dry. He clasped Josée's hand between his two huge palms, pulling her arm toward him across the table. “Did you know that bonobos . . . ,” he began.

“
Vraiment,”
Julien said petulantly.
“
You promised me you wouldn't talk about the bonobos today.”

“Julien and I talked about this this morning,” the restaurateur said. “He wants to keep the information for himself. But did you know that bonobos solve every conflict, between males and females, females and females, no matter, they solve every conflict by making love?”

“How interesting,” Josée said dryly.

“So my dear Josée,” the restaurateur continued smoothly, “I feel we're having some tension, you and I . . .” Josée laughed coquettishly and squeezed his hand once, quickly, before putting hers back in her lap. Julien scowled.

When he was gone, Julien asked me if I had a boyfriend and I blushed and mumbled yes, looking down.

“Is he in New York?”

“Yes,” I said, pushing my food around on my plate.

“Does he miss you?”

“I hope so,” I said.

“What does he do?”

“He's a graphic designer,” I said, willing the conversation to end and unable to raise my eyes from my plate. “Though sometimes he draws comics.”

“Really?” Josée asked, surprised.

“You see!” Julien crowed with pride. “It's all about asking the right questions. I bet you didn't plan to tell us that your boyfriend draws comics.”

“No,” I said truthfully, and Julien, sensing my discomfort, moved on.

After lunch, Julien held Josée a long time by the shoulders as he said good-bye. He tried several times to make another date to see her, but she told him that it was unlikely. He went home to nap and we returned to her beach.

“How do you do it?” I asked as we settled into our lounge chairs. “Will you teach me? How do you make so many men fall in love with you?”

“It's innate,” she said. “Don't worry, you have it. Your mother does, too.”

But I knew that wasn't true. Men lost interest in me as soon as they began talking to me. So I asked again.

“You can't be afraid to be disagreeable,” she answered. I laughed and begged for more specifics.

“It's like having a dog—you have to let men know that they have a master and that the master is you. And, oh, you flatter them, and you mother them a bit, too, but then you flatten them straight out. You keep them in line. Did you see, at lunch, Julien interrupted me and I looked straight at him and said slowly, ‘I am speaking'? They need to know who's in charge, just like a dog. But a pretty dog, too, one you're happy to show off.”

“What else?” I demanded.

“Well you must always have at least three suitors,” she said after a moment of thought. “One and he's bored, two and they get caught up fighting each other, but three and they're all jumping through hoops for your attention.”