Two short stories
Learning French
The American had a heart attack in French class: that’s what they wrote on his chart at the hospital in Carcassonne when they rushed him in. His teacher went along because she knew he could barely speak the language, and right then he couldn’t speak at all. Perhaps she felt responsible for the attack? They were working on domestic vocabulary, verbs connected to gardening, bêcher, first conjugation, to dig, and tools, une tondeuse, a lawnmower, or his favorite, un marteau de forgeron, a sledgehammer, when she turned to him and asked if he liked tulips. He’d never thought of tulips in terms of like or dislike. Tulips, they just were, they were things Grace used to deal with and he’d not given them an honest thought. They came up or they didn’t come up, it had nothing to do with him, as alien as trying to learn French at his age. Colors, he knew there were many colors, he knew they often came from Holland for some reason, and they were pretty in a kind of obvious way, at least until they became blowsy which could happen in a day if the weather got suddenly hot. Did he like tulips? Philipe, aimez-vous les tulipes? In French the question seemed more philosophical than practical, implying an entire epistemology he didn’t know existed. It sounded challenging, almost demanding, as if he were required to have an opinion on a crucial political question with evidence to back it up. But a lot of French sounded like that.
The Woman on the Fifth Floor
Her earliest memory: Papi holding her above his head and laughing as he tossed her in the air. He’d catch her, pretend to drop her, bring her to his broad chest, and start again. He was such a big man, strong, and she was so high she thought she was the moon looking down on the world and it was her world, there at the castle and she was what, three? Three or four. She could date it if she tried, using the photos. He was home so little in those days of the war, in the sky-blue uniform he designed himself, or the white one. Photographers following him. Shots of the perfect family for the nation to admire.
Dennis Kennedy 