The Distance from A to Z (5 page)

Alice looks down, her long braids no longer in motion. Her right hand slides down the messenger bag strap until she's clutching the buckle hard. “I don't—”

“Come on, let's—”

“Abby, no.” Her voice is strong and purposeful, and her eyes are now on me. They aren't pleading; they're serious. “It's really not my thing. I'm barely comfortable with all this collective living. I need my space. I love hanging out with you, but meeting a whole bunch of people is way more than I can handle at this point. I'm still working up to being able to attend the Friday night poetry reading at my prof's house. I'm worried if I go too fast . . .”

I nod because it makes sense. I remember Si telling me that it's always a mistake for young pitchers to get drafted out of high school, that so many rush it because they want the prize now. But then they wind up far more likely to get hurt; he sees them as his PT patients over and over. If only they'd
gone to college instead, waited for their body to strengthen, worked on their technique, they'd have a much better shot.

“Well, I can go with you to your poetry reading on Friday night if you want . . .”

Soulful poets? Sign me up.

Alice smiles. “I might just take you up on that.”

ZEKE IS WAITING OUTSIDE THE
oak doors of the cafeteria building at seven forty-five, as promised. His fingers are moving furiously across his phone screen and he doesn't even notice I'm there.

“Es-tu prêt?”
I think I'm asking him if he's ready but I'm not actually sure.

“Un moment.”
He hasn't looked up but at least he's turned to face me.

I get out a notebook to begin charting out our word list. How many words do we need in order to prove we spoke to each other? Maybe if we get a really good list going, we can fudge the time commitment.

“Pardon,”
he mutters, putting his phone in the back pocket of his jeans. Judging from the worn fabric of the pocket that hugs the phone tightly, I'm guessing it's his usual spot. Not that I'm checking him out.

“So what do you want to do?” I ask. He's not the Zeke of this morning's class. Not even the angry Zeke I saw before. He's different. I'm not sure how it's possible to miss someone you only just met. Or the person you thought they were.

He shrugs. “Whatever you want.”

I don't even know this guy. This is a disaster, and I need to do well in this course. If he isn't going to talk, I'll have to find a new partner. “Listen, you're going to have to talk to me if we want to pass this class. And you might not care at all about it, but I do. I need this class, and I need this grade. So if you aren't in, I'll ask Marianne if I can switch partners.”

“Pourquoi est-ce que tu crois que je ne suis pas intéressé?”
Why do you think I'm not interested?

But while I understand his words in French, all I really hear is the smirk, the snide roll in his speech.

“Why are you even in this class? Did someone say it would be an easy A or something?”

Can you even say
un A facile
?
I don't even have time to wonder because he stops walking abruptly, a deep scowl now on his face.

“What's your problem?”

I can tell I went too far but I can't back down.

“This class is important to me. Really important. And if you're here just to hang out and have a good time, I want a different partner. I want someone who's serious about this.”

“Have I given you any indication that I'm not serious?”

I pause, searching for something that isn't totally insulting. But scanning him from head to toe, all I see is the baseball cap, Tigers jersey, gym shorts, and athletic shoes that are clearly top of the line. All together it says
all I care about is sports
.

“So you're saying that because I look like a jock, I must not be serious about French?”

The word
jock
sticks out like a sore thumb in his perfect rapid French and it makes me laugh. Maybe because he pronounced it like a French word:
joque
. The more I think about it, the harder I laugh. And maybe snort. A few times.

“Is
joque
even a word?” I ask, being sure to pronounce it just as he did.

He holds his angry look for another long moment and then shakes his head. “
Tu es folle
.” You're crazy.

“How about I look it up,” I say. “And then we can add it to our list.”

He rolls his eyes.
“Folle, je te dis, folle.”

“Yes, I'm crazy, I know.” I flip through my Petit Larousse dictionary, the cover in tatters.

“You know, I can just look it up on my phone.” Zeke sighs. “I don't even think my grandparents were alive when that dictionary was last updated.”

I recite the French letters in my head as I flip through the
pages.

Zeke looks at his watch. “We've been yelling at each other in French for a full ten minutes.”

Jock.
Sportif
.
“Tu es un sportif,”
I tell Zeke, who plops himself on a bench facing the lake.

“Why does that mean I don't care about French?” He shields his eyes from the lowering sun as he looks up at me.

The curls that escape from his cap are a sun-kissed blond, lighter than I remember his hair being. Though maybe his ends are lighter because they're always in the sun, like the darker pink at the top of his nose. There's a bump there where he must have broken it once.

“Quel sport est-ce que tu joues?”

“Why does playing a sport mean I don't care?” he repeats in French, ignoring my question. Now that I'm paying closer attention, his French is strong, solid. He doesn't pause between words like I do, searching for new ones.

“How do you say ‘that surprises me' in French?” I ask, switching languages.

“Comment dit-on ‘that surprises me' en français?”
he corrects.

I repeat, my eyes rolling for effect. And then I add
monsieur
at the end.

His lips rise only on one side.
“Ça me surprend.”

I grab my notebook from my bag and go back to my list.
Surprendre
, surprise.

“So why did you decide to learn French?” My French is halting, embarrassingly so. Apparently yelling in French is much easier. These words feel thick and awkward in my mouth, as though the muscles of my tongue and lips aren't used to making them. Which they aren't. But still. It's going to be a long eighty hours if this conversation is any indication.

“I love a woman named Emmaline, and she only speaks French,” Zeke says, shifting his eyebrows up and down.

Emmaline. In his flawless French accent, the name is fluid and lilting, conjuring images of a tall, long-haired beauty, a woman with the faintest trace of lipstick, a slim figure, and perfect skin. Stephie without the red hair.

I should have known. Not an easy A but an easy lay?

I snort at my own interior monologue and then try to cover it up with a cough.

Smooth.

“Did she fall in love with you?” I ask.

Amoureux
. In love.

“Bien sûr,”
he says: of course. “Apparently from the moment she saw me.”

There's laughter set deep in his voice, lightening his words. Like they're both true and not true at the same time.

“Even though apparently, I was spitting up at the time,” he continues. “Really, what else can you expect from a baby?”

Un bébé?

“But it's a grandmother's job to love her grandchildren.”

“Emmaline est ta grand-mère?”

“Oui.”
Zeke smiles, and I can't help it: I smack his shoulder.

“Shit!” he yelps, and I can tell the moment he says it that he's serious, that it really hurts. He swivels to the side so his back is to me.

“Oh my god, I'm so sorry.” I try to get around him to see his face but he keeps shifting.

“I'm fine,” he says in English, but by his strained face, I can tell it wouldn't be a good time to remind him we aren't supposed to use any English during our French hours.

“Are you okay?” I couldn't have hit him that hard. Maybe he's playing a trick on me, or faking me out?

“It's fine, just give me a minute.” He rolls his shoulders back and forth, and even from behind him I can hear him wince. It shouldn't hurt to make that motion.

“Are you sure—”

“I'll be fine. Just stop.” Zeke's voice is still strained, but now there's a tinge of anger in it and I shift back. I don't get it. I don't get what's happening.

“I'm really sorry, Zeke. Really. I didn't—”

“No, I'm sorry. I recently injured my shoulder so it's a little sore. I'm sorry for reacting like that, though. You didn't know. It wasn't your fault.”

It would be so much easier for me to believe his statement if his back wasn't still to me, if he wasn't massaging his shoulder with his opposite hand.

“Do you want me to get you some ice?”

He shakes his head. “I'll be fine.”

When he finally turns back around, he gets to his feet, doesn't meet my eyes.
“Pourquoi français pour toi?”
he asks. We walk along the lake and I can't help but notice that he's now put me on the side of his good arm. Just in case.

Why French?

“I fell in love with the movie
Amélie
when I was fourteen,” I say, my French still halting but the words gaining ground slowly in my mouth. “I loved that view of Paris, the beauty of it. And I loved Audrey Tautou. I wanted to be her. I still do.”

I pause because I feel like I'm saying too much, but it feels different saying it in French. Almost like it doesn't count.

“All I remember are those crazy orgasms,” Zeke says, and while part of me wants to tackle him to the ground for polluting my perfect movie, I pretend instead that I don't hear him. I've already injured him once in this half hour; I shouldn't push it.

“The Paris in that movie became my happy place,” I continue, though I can't help but catch the double meaning. Not to mention Zeke's obvious smirk. “I mean, the place I started going to when I didn't fit in anywhere else.” I'm sure
that means something else too, but I push past it, my words gaining steam as I go. “It got to the point that I'd watched the movie so many times that I didn't even need the subtitles. I'd taught myself enough French to understand it.”

There are baby ducks by the side of the pond and I pause for a moment to watch them go by.

“When did you start taking classes?” Zeke uses the French word
courses
instead of
classes
, and I make a note of it on the page.
Quand as-tu commencé à prendre des cours en français?

I chuckle, both at the question and with the relief that we've moved on from his fascination with the orgasms in my favorite movie. “Um. I never did. My school didn't offer French so I learned it on my own. I used my birthday money to pay for language courses online, and then I just worked on it. I read kids' books. Watched TV shows on the internet. Anything I could get my hands on.”

“You taught yourself French? Completely?”

“Complètement.”

“Tu es remarquable.”

You are remarkable.

“My family is obsessed with sports. So when they'd start talking at the dinner table, I started conjugating French verbs in my head. I'd rip out pages from an old copy of
Le Nouveau Bescherelle
, and I'd sit with verb tenses on my lap, practicing. And on the El going to school, or in the back of
my parents' car, I'd have my Larousse dictionary in my lap, and I'd translate ads and signs into French. I know it's kind of dumb.”

“It's not dumb.”

I shrug. “It's not terribly useful in this country. Spanish or even Mandarin would make more sense. But there's something about how it's totally not practical that makes it even more attractive in some ways. It feels like poetry, like a special secret.”

I scuff my shoe in the dirt, suddenly embarrassed by all I've said, all I've said to Zeke of all people. But somehow I can't yet stop. Because I feel like maybe . . .

I stare at my well-worn Chucks, how they fit me perfectly, broken in just the way I like them. “The fact that there's a whole country that speaks this beautiful language . . . Sometimes in my head, I picture France like some combination of Hogwarts and Narnia and
The Secret Garden
. And I know it's ridiculous, that France is a real place with real people who are sometimes kind and sometimes shitty, but I just . . .” This is too much. “I just want to be able to speak the language.”

We walk for a few minutes in silence as I try desperately to return my face to a color that isn't bright tomato red.

After that we make small talk about the places we've visited, our favorite cities. With a grandmother in Paris, Zeke
tells me about a few of the trips to France he's taken, his parents' insistence on him speaking only French while he's there, even with them. How his mother still makes him frequently switch to her native French to keep up his language acquisition.

“So why are you in this class—
course
—and not Advanced French?”

“Still trying to get rid of me?” he jokes.

But I shake my head. Because when I said the words out loud, I realized how much I didn't want to say them, didn't want to give him any ideas.

“My spoken French is much better than my written French, and my reading. And sadly I haven't been back to Paris in a few years, so even my spoken French has been fading.”

I want to grill him more about the places he's been to in France, but I feel like I've already made myself so vulnerable with my impassioned speech about the French language. Did I really compare France to a blend of Hogwarts, Narnia, and
The Secret Garden
?

Instead I think about what it would be like to have a grandmother who spoke French, a grandmother who loved what I loved.

I can't even imagine it.

“Are you keeping the list going for Marianne? To prove that we're really spending all this time talking?” I ask when
we stop because Zeke wants a drink.

“Bien sûr,”
he says, providing the pad in which he'd apparently been taking notes. How did I miss that?

As we approach the dorms, I glance at my watch. It's been dark for the last little bit but I'm not prepared for what it says.
“Mon dieu, il est presque onze heures!”

“No way can it be eleven o'clock,” he answers, flipping out his phone.
“Merde.”

“That means we've been speaking for three hours.”

Three hours out of ten. We're a third of the way through our weekly requirement and it's only the first day.

“Un moment.”
Zeke stares at his phone, swiping and tapping keys. After three hours of having his attention just on me, I can feel its absence.

Absence.
Absence
in French. I love words like that. I put it on the list, just because I can.

“Hey, man, I just got your message. Can we meet in five?” Zeke's voice sounds completely different in English, and I can't help it, I take a step back. “Great, great. Yup, definitely save me some.” He laughs and it's not the way he laughed when I told him my favorite word in French:
pissenlit
. Dandelion. Or his:
agrafeuse
. Stapler.