French Lessons Read Online Free PDF

awful.”
    “I think about it all the time. The kid would be three now. I wander through playgrounds looking for him. Or her.”
    Thunder rumbles through the skies.
    “Let’s find someplace to go,” Nico says, “before it rains.”
    But the skies open immediately and the rain blasts them. Josie feels Nico’s arm wrap around her back and move her along rue de Grenelle. She doesn’t mind the rain; she doesn’t mind his arm around her. She’ll give herself up to this, she decides. It is easier than every day of the past weeks.
    Nico opens a door and leads her inside. It is a small museum, though it looks nothing like a museum. It has vaulted ceilings and pale marble walls and floors. A sign reads: MUSÉE MAILLOL . A teenage boy chews gum behind a counter; he doesn’t even look up. Josie glances around—she doesn’t see anyone else in the building. Ahead of them is an enormous statue of a nude man.
    Nico leads her to the desk and buys two tickets.
    “I can pay,” she says.
    “No. Please.”
    The boy cracks his gum and pushes his comic book under the counter. He passes them the tickets and a brochure: Marilyn Monroe: The Last Photographs .
    They walk past the turnstile. There is no one to take their tickets. When Josie looks back, the boy is reading his comic book again. For a moment, he looks like Brady, serious and shy. Brady before he became a star. Brady before.
    She puts her hand on her belly. The nausea has passed, but now she feels light-headed, a little dizzy. She has never been pregnant, has never yet considered having a baby. She had thought that would be years away, when she was married and had moved from teaching to playwriting, her real passion. She had imagined a young husband, a cottage in the country, a couple of big dogs, and a vegetable garden.
    But she’s pregnant without the guy, the job, the house, the dogs. In fact, it’s all she has. This baby.
    She has no right to this baby. She thinks of Simon’s wife at the funeral, her skin the color of ash, her eyes as flat as a lake. The woman didn’t remember Josie. She nodded, accepting condolences that meant nothing. Nothing could penetrate that grief. What right did Josie have to her grief?
    “She is tragic, no?” the French tutor asks.
    Josie looks up. Marilyn Monroe stares back at her, her mouth slightly open, her eyes half closed. She looks drunk on sex, on booze, on death. She looks luscious and ripe and ready to die. Josie’s eyes fill up. She steps back, away from the seductive stare. They’re in a gallery space, full of Marilyn. Every photo—and the photos are huge, pressing the limits of each room—is of Marilyn. Marilyn with her head tilted back, a sated smile on her face. Marilyn drawing on a cigarette. Marilyn puckering up. Marilyn with her hand resting on the curve of her hip, stretched out on a couch, offering herself up. Love me .
    “She killed herself three days after this photo shoot,” Nico says, reading from the brochure.
    “You can see that she was ready,” Josie says.
    “To die?”
    “To give herself up to death. It looks like she was already dying.”
    “You will have the baby, yes?”
    Josie looks at him. Nico. He has the kindest eyes. She imagines his sweet child with eyes like this. It’s a boy and he’s holding his mama’s hand, walking through the market in Marrakesh. He’s got a swoon of sand-colored hair and everyone stops to stare at the lovely child.
    “Yes,” she says. The minute she says it, she makes it true. “He’s mine.”
    “It’s a boy?”
    “I think so,” she says. She has Simon’s boy in her belly. It’s not fair. His wife has nothing. And she has this.
    “Your boyfriend is very lucky.”
    She smiles. Her smile breaks and tears spill from her eyes.
    “I’m sorry,” Nico says.
    “No, no. It’s the photographs,” Josie tells him. “They’re so sad. Look at that one.” She turns back to the wall and Marilyn’s shadowed face. She can hear the rain against the glass roof that