Music Lessons. He and She

By Ellen Chances

"The lovers who kiss on public benches, Public benches, public benches,… Telling each other touching 'I love you'" -- from "Les amoreux des bancs publics," song by Georges Brassens

Young, tall, and awkward, they had been college lovers, she, for the first time, and he, for the umpteenth. He had tried to calm her fears, that first night in his dorm room, by playing a record of Mozart's "Jupiter Symphony." She was scared anyhow.

They did all those college-lover things that he's and she's did in the late 1960s. They went on Civil Rights marches and sang "We Shall Overcome." They organized protest marches against the war in Vietnam. They, liberals, argued for hours in the campus coffee shop, with SDS and Progressive Labor radicals. They stuffed envelopes for Robert Kennedy in his primary campaign for President. In college, together, they mourned the deaths of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy. In high school, separately, they had been numbed by the death of President John F. Kennedy.

They listened to records of Pete Seeger; Joan Baez; Peter, Paul, and Mary; and Bob Dylan. They walked hand-in-hand to and from showings of Mike Nichols' "The Graduate" and Franco Zeffirelli's "Romeo and Juliet." He was in love with her, he said. In her head and in her words to him, she said she loved him, too, although she wasn't sure she did. Her insides loved his kisses and the way he smelled and the warmth of his hand around hers.

After graduation, they went to Paris. She had thought that they would walk, arm in arm, like lovers in that old romantic film, "Ninotchka," Greta Garbo in her post-Bolshevik, cum-champagne bubbly mode, with hat, and Melvyn Douglas, fun-loving, flirtatious, suave and gentle.

Instead, he and she lived a different script. As they strolled together in beautiful Paris, city of twilight soft light and shimmering Seine, did he whisper sweet somethings, meant for her alone, into her ear? Did he gaze into her eyes and tell her that she was the one and only woman, meant for him alone? No. He talked, for what seemed like centuries, about his honors thesis adviser. They passed pont after Left Bank pont. And he catalogued witty or scathing remark after witty or scathing remark made by Professor Dirnbatten. And she got bored. And she told him that she was bored. And she told him that she wouldn't spend next week hitchhiking around France, nor the rest of her life, with him. He, out of anger, pinched her upper arm, hard. The red finger and thumb marks showed and hurt, for the rest of that day and the next.

On the airplane, on the way back to America, alone, she cried. At home, she listened to Charles Aznavour and Georges Moustaki sing songs of ill-starred love, and she cried some more. She missed being a couple. Years passed. She had love affairs, some short, some longer, none resulting in marriage because, she said, she "couldn't find the right man," none resulting in children because she never tried, without a husband. He, she heard, got married soon after she had left Paris, to a high school sweetheart from his hometown. From mutual college friends, she heard that they lived in Atlanta, that he taught high school cultural studies, that they had two children, that they were not happy.

Sometimes, tucked into shadow folds of her being, she wondered whether she had made a mistake way back then in Paris. She wondered whether she had really loved him, and whether her young college self had blown it. At the time, way back then, she had thought that if a man is not perfect, she should throw him out and just move on to the next. She thought about his and her potential life-to-be-that-she-had-aborted: two children, girl and boy, dog (collie), family hikes in the woods, with L.L. Bean shirts and shoes, white clapboard house, white picket fence, and probably, she with no job, instead of her fancy Manhattan international law career. Once she had even called information to get his phone number. When she had dialed and heard a woman's voice at the other end of the line, she had immediately hung up.

One day, two and something decades after the summer of the Paris break-up, she received a letter from him, the first since she had left him. He wondered how she was and all of that. He wrote that he had often started, but never finished, or mailed, a letter to her. She called him up, at school. They spoke of the floundering marriage (his) and of the dead-end love affairs (hers). They called each other every week and spoke of the best children in the world (his) and of exotic trips to faraway places (hers). He asked if he could see her in New York. She answered, "Why not Paris?"

He made arrangements to fly to Paris for five days to collect materials for his "American Influence in Europe" senior seminar. She pencilled in a long weekend between trips from somewhere to somewhere else. They had decided to stay in the same hotel, in separate rooms. He arrived a day before she did. He picked her up at Orly Airport, at the crack of dawn. She liked his hug again. On the Orly Bus into the city, she thought she smelled liquor on his breath, but quickly decided that the smell came from his rained-upon brown leather jacket. When they got to the quaint Left Bank hotel with open white shutters, her room was not yet ready. They deposited her luggage in his room. He informed her that he was thirsty, and he took a long gulp from a bottle of Scotch on a small brown table. They went for a walk. As they strolled in beautiful Paris, city of morning soft light and shimmering Seine, did he tell her how he had missed her, his only love, all through the years? Did he ask her whether she had mourned him, her faraway college love, all those years? Instead, he and she, no arm in arm, passed the Panthéon, walked by the bookstalls along the Seine, sat in cafés, she, sipping a cup of café crème, he, gulping down glass after glass of beer. He told her, in hour upon hour of Paris time, about the computerized card catalogue system of the Bibliothèque Nationale. As they walked, in Montmartre, near the Place du Tertre, with its outside tables under happy-red umbrellas, they heard an accordion player who was singing Georges Brassens' "Les amoureux des bancs publics." She had always loved that song, and she started to sing along. He stared at her. That evening, she, jet-lagged, slept through dinner. She was glad that she was in her room, and that he was in his separate room, and not in hers. She repeated to herself, "Je suis libre. Je suis libre." The next day, he said he had to go to the library. He suggested that they meet for lunch. They did. She was bored, in the café, as he spoke about the card catalogue in the Library of Congress. After lunch, he went back to the library. She took a long walk. She stopped in a pâtisserie to buy a petit pain au chocolat and a croissant. She tried on hats and long diaphanous dresses in the Galeries Lafayette. She walked slowly along the silent rose garden path that embraced Rodin's "Thinker." She hummed her favorite parts of Edith Piaf's "Milord." She smiled. He and she met for dinner. They talked about old college friends. Whatever happened to Tony? Have you heard from Maria? He drank a lot of wine, and she thought thoughts of other men. On the stairs they said good night. The next day, they didn't meet for lunch, nor did they on the day after that. On the last day, in the evening, during dinner, she said, "You know and I know that you and I are very different people and that nothing will ever be again between us." She asked him to tell her, from his point of view, in what ways they were incompatible. Among the many other things he enumerated, one sentence dangled in the cool, soft evening air. He frowned as he declared, "I don't sing in the streets of Paris."