Everyone Wants to Be Ambassador to France Read online

  EVERYONE WANTS TO BE AMBASSADOR TO FRANCE

  EVERYONE WANTS TO BE AMBASSADOR TO FRANCE

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  stories

  BRYAN HURT

  Red Hen Press | Pasadena, CA

  Everyone Wants to be Ambassador to France

  Copyright © 2015, 2018 by Bryan Hurt

  All Rights Reserved

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the prior written permission of both the publisher and the copyright owner.

  Stories in this collection appeared in the following publications: The American Reader, Connu, Denver Quarterly, Guernica, Hot Metal Bridge, Joyland, Kenyon Review, Los Angeles Review of Books, New England Review, Salt Hill Journal, Tikkun, Tin House, The Toast, TriQuarterly, and Watchlist: 32 Stories from Persons of Interest.

  Book design by Mark E. Cull

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Hurt, Bryan, author.

  Title: Everyone wants to be ambassador to France / Bryan Hurt.

  Description: Pasadena, California: Red Hen Press, [2018]

  Identifiers: LCCN 2017052115 |ISBN 9781597097000 (softcover)

  eISBN 9781597097512

  Classification: LCC PS3608.U779 A6 2018 | DDC 813/.6—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017052115

  The National Endowment for the Arts, the Los Angeles County Arts Commission, the Ahmanson Foundation, the Dwight Stuart Youth Fund, the Max Factor Family Foundation, the Pasadena Tournament of Roses Foundation, the Pasadena Arts & Culture Commission and the City of Pasadena Cultural Affairs Division, the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, the Audrey & Sydney Irmas Charitable Foundation, the Kinder Morgan Foundation, the Allergan Foundation, the Meta & George Rosenberg Foundation, the Riordan Foundation, and the Amazon Literary Partnership partially support Red Hen Press.

  Second Edition

  Published by Red Hen Press

  www.redhen.org

  For Marielle

  CONTENTS

  THE BEAST OF MARRIAGE

  HONEYMOON

  THE BILINGUAL SCHOOL

  SEAGULL

  MY OTHER CAR DRIVES ITSELF

  SPOOKY ACTION AT A DISTANCE

  SOME ZOMBIES

  VICISSITUDES, CA

  PANIC ATTACK

  HEAVENS

  MOONLESS

  ALL OF THE ARCTIC EXPLORERS

  THE LAST WORD

  CONTRACT

  ROSE

  THE SADNESS OF TYCHO BRAHE’S MOOSE

  THE FOURTH MAN

  GOOD WITH WORDS

  THE BEAST OF MARRIAGE

  Thomas Day was rich but very ugly. He couldn’t dance. “Who will marry me?” said Thomas Day. He thrust his hands into his pockets and asked his friend Richard. Richard took out his snuff box, lit a pipe. “My sister will marry you,” said Richard. But Richard’s sister wouldn’t marry him. Not even for all of his money, she said. Or all of the money in England, she said. He was that ugly. He was that bad at dance. “What about Anna Seward?” said Thomas Day. But Anna Seward heard about this and married someone else.

  Thomas Day went to the orphanage and adopted two girls. The girls had names but he didn’t like them. “From now on you will be Lucretia,” he said. “Sabrina,” he said. The girls were eleven and twelve years old. Thomas Day promised to make at least one of them into his perfect wife. He hired a boat and they all sailed to France.

  But in France nobody had a good time. Thomas Day, it turned out, didn’t like French people. He didn’t like French roads. In a letter to Richard: “The women prefer their lapdogs to their children; the roads are full of holes.” The girls got smallpox. They got fevers. They got mucus and pustules. Their crying kept him up all night. When they recovered they went on another boat ride, this time just for pleasure. The boat flipped over in the Rhône.

  Eight months it went on like this. Thomas Day dueled a French person. Thomas Day dueled a French person. Thomas Day dueled a French person. Thomas Day hated dueling as much as he hated French people. But in France what could he do? Whenever he went to the coffeehouse or the market there was always another French person insulting him in French. The girls went to all the duels: duels by the river, duels in the field, duels at daybreak, duels at dusk. They’d sit on the ground and pull up grass.

  And what about the girls? Turned out that Lucretia wasn’t perfect wife material. “Perfectly stupid,” Thomas Day wrote to Richard. When Thomas Day came back to England he apprenticed her to a milliner in Ludgate Hill. Later she married a linen draper. Everyone agrees that she lived a very happy life.

  Thomas Day and Sabrina moved to Lichfield. Thomas Day rented a big house in the country. He invited Richard over, invited lots of other people as well. There were hors d’oeuvres and a string quartet. But when the people wanted to dance Thomas Day wouldn’t let them. He took the bow from the violinist. No one was allowed to dance.

  Everyone met Sabrina. They all agreed that she had long eyelashes for a thirteen-year-old and fine auburn hair that hung in ringlets on her neck. “I will teach her to become the perfect wife,” said Thomas Day. “Bravo,” said Richard. Then there was the toast.

  But Sabrina wasn’t the perfect wife. She failed all of the tests. The pistol test, for example, where Thomas Day fired pistols at the girl and told her not to move. The hot wax test, which was just like the pistol test but, instead of shooting pistols, dripping hot wax. Richard asked Thomas Day why he was shooting guns at the girl. “Stoicism,” said Thomas Day. “My wife should be as fearless as the Roman heroines; she should be as intrepid as Spartan wives.” “Are you firing real bullets?” asked Richard. They looked at the girl, trembling and crying on the ground.

  Then Thomas Day fell in love with another girl. She wasn’t a girl, technically, because she was the same age as Thomas Day. Her name was Honora Sneyd and she combined everything Thomas Day wanted in a woman. Fortitude of spirit, literary and scientific tastes, a disinterested desire to please. Thomas Day offered her his noble hand. She told Thomas Day that she’d think about it. Really, she’d think about it. Even though he was ugly. Even though he couldn’t dance. Meanwhile, Thomas Day sent Sabrina to boarding school in Warwickshire. She was very happy there. Very happy. She was the happiest girl to have ever been sent away to boarding school. Her letters to Thomas Day went like this: “I’m so happy. Happy. Happy. Happy. Happy.”

  Honora Sneyd broke Thomas Day’s heart. All women eventually broke Thomas Day’s heart. Even his mother. She broke his heart by dying. He was one year old. Honora Sneyd broke Thomas Day’s heart because she could not love him. She tried, she said. Her heart, she said, could not be schooled into softer sentiments in his favor. Thomas Day made a list of things that could not be schooled. The list went:

  1.Hearts.

  2.Girls.

  Honora Sneyd broke Thomas Day’s heart two more times. The second time when she married Richard. The third when she died.

  There were other girls who broke his heart. Elizabeth Sneyd, for example, who was Honora’s sister. She broke his heart by playing with it. Told Thomas Day that she could love him for his money, but only if he learned how to dance. But when he returned from Bath she changed her mind. She liked him better the other way. Before he could waltz, she said. Before he could dance minuets.

  Later Thomas Day moved to London. He lived alone and wrote a poem about slavery and a book for children. Both were met by great success. He wrote letters to Sabrina at boarding school and, eventually, he wrote letters to Richard. Sabrina forgave him. He forgave Richard. In the letters everyone felt sorry about everything that had happened. A
t least they said they did.

  And there were other things besides the girls. Like Thomas Day’s love for horses. He liked to talk about the gratitude, generosity, and sensibility of horses. Whenever he met a disobedient or unruly horse he blamed its behavior on the mistreatment it must have suffered at the hands of its owner. He died trying to break a new horse. He was never a very good horseman, and the horse threw him off its saddle and stepped on his head. At the funeral everyone agreed that it was just like him to try to break a horse without a whip or a horsebreaker. “A victim of his own uncommon sys tems,” said Anna Seward. Foolish, said everyone else, that he would shoot his guns at girls but that he tried breaking a horse with kindness instead.

  HONEYMOON

  1

  The day before their honeymoon she got the flu. Then in the airplane she got an ear infection. In Paris the doctor gave her eardrops which gave her a skin rash because of her penicillin allergy. Then he got her flu and they got in a fight about the hotel because the walls were thin and they could hear the neighbors fucking. “Why not?” he said. “It’s our honeymoon,” he said. “We’re sick,” she said. “You’re puking. Your head is in the toilet.” Other than that it was a nice hotel. There was a toilet and a bidet and marble columns in the room and a receptionist named Laurent who brought them ice for her rash in a silver bucket at three in the morning. Eventually she got better and he got better and they left the hotel to go to museums. They looked at paintings and sculptures, some of which they’d seen before in their college textbooks. They saw some that they’d heard of but hadn’t seen before and others that they’d never even heard of. “I didn’t know Monet painted asparagus,” she said. “It says Manet,” he said, pointing at the nameplate.

  There was a subway strike. It rained the entire time. They walked everywhere. They got blisters, got wet, got sick again. They got in another fight back at the hotel room. “You’re not supposed to tip,” he said. “But Laurent’s been so nice,” she said. “You’re not supposed to,” he said. “It’s offensive. It’s against their culture.” They sat on the king bed and watched French-dubbed versions of American TV shows. Cop shows mostly but also sitcoms and soap operas. They made up and ordered champagne from Laurent even though their heads were sick and already fuzzy.

  Still they did not have sex, no sex, not on their honeymoon. His flu became a sinus infection. Her skin rash continued spreading. They went to churches, the Eiffel Tower, more museums. They got bored, got into another fight about all of the fights they’d been getting into. “I’m not fighting,” she said, “you’re fighting.” “You’re fighting,” he said. “You’re the one who’s fighting.” He sat on the bed and she left the hotel room to go walking. “Walking,” she said when he asked where she was going. “It’s raining,” he said. But maybe she hadn’t heard him because of the hotel room door slamming.

  2

  They went to another hotel. This one in the south of France on an island. Used to be a shipbuilder’s house is what the concierge told them. This concierge was also named Laurent but he had gold epaulets on his red jacket. “Wi-Fi?” he asked, our man, the honeymooner. “No Wi-Fi,” said Laurent. He said that the shipbuilder’s house had been built during the sixteenth century. And so the hotel had original sixteenth-century details. Four-poster beds, strapwork, authentic wallpaper. No TV, no Wi-Fi. But their room had views of the shipyard where the shipbuilder built his ships. Which of course was no longer a shipyard but now instead was a clam café. The island’s best, Laurent said. So they ate clams, did not check their email.

  “Sex?” she said after clams. Because the island was sunny and sun is good for moods and rashes. She felt warm and full and better. But no, no sex. He was still upset about the Internet. “Disconnected,” he said. “How will we know?” he said. There were things he wanted to know about. For example: his cat back home. Their cat, technically. But more his than hers since he’d had it since college. How was the cat doing, was it happy? He could not know because he could not email the cat sitter. He also wanted to know more about the island. Like where to eat. But with no Internet there was no Yelp and so no recommendations. Were the clams he ate any good? Were they the best clams he could have eaten? He could not know.

  “I thought they were good,” she said. But she had steamed clams, he had clam chowder. There was no parity, no ground for comparison. “Let’s go for a walk,” she said. “Clear our heads. Sea air. Sunshine.” He did not like this idea. Walks were her solution for everything. If they were doing her thing, they weren’t doing his thing. It was like she was winning. But he went with her anyway, walking. Because maybe they would walk by something, an Internet café, or something.

  They walked through town, over cobblestones, past souvenir shops, tourists, under striped awnings. They did not walk past an Internet café, at least if they did he did not see it. What was French for Internet anyway? They walked out of town, through meadows of sea grass, along a rocky beach, past the salt farms. They watched the salt farmers harvest salt. Sweating and sunburnt, dragging long rakes across evaporation fields.

  There was the salty breeze, the sun, hot sun. “I don’t feel good,” he said. “Your flu?” she said. “Your sinus infection?” “My stomach,” he said. He was clutching his stomach. Then she noticed his lips, which were pale and swollen. “Are you okay?” she said. He was dizzy. “Dizzy,” he said. The sound of rakes through salt was making him nauseous. “My eyes,” he said. Because now his eyeballs were itching. “You should sit down,” she said. “Sit down.” She was guiding him to the bench on the side of the path, a stone bench that looked out over the sea, deep, deep blue and with seagulls bobbing. But then she wasn’t. Rather she was guiding, pulling him, but he had stopped moving. “Get up,” she said, tugging his arm which was suddenly limp, not arm-like. He was lying on the path, on his back, gasping. She knelt down beside him. His breath on her cheek. Shallow breathing.

  3

  The third Laurent was the nurse at the hospital. This Laurent had a broad, puffy face, wide eyes with bags under them, was balding. “Anaphylactic shock,” he said, shaking his head. “Very serious.” It was funny, so funny, the ways that bodies change and surprise you. All of his life he, our man, had been one way. Now on his honeymoon he was suddenly another. Married with a shellfish allergy, deathly allergic.

  Also funny were all the Laurents in France. Who knew there were so many? He asked Laurent about this. A common name, Laurent? It was not common or uncommon, Laurent said. Just a name that some people gave their children. He checked the man’s pulse and hooked him into a new bag of saline. Then she came back from the cafeteria with sandwiches. They were simple sandwiches, bread and cheese, cut into rectangles. “Thank you, Laurent,” she said. Laurent grunted. She gave her husband his sandwich. They ate cheese sandwiches, held hands, listened to the machine beeps, the man’s heartbeats, thought about how close they’d come to losing each other. For the first time on their honeymoon, the very first time, it felt, really, like they were married.

  So sex, of course, finally. After he was discharged, their marriage finally consummated. Back at the shipbuilder’s house in the four-poster bed. Not the shipbuilder’s actual bed, not likely. But he liked to think so. That they were sleeping in the same bed that the man who built ships five hundred years ago had slept in. “France has such a deep history,” he said, now post-coital and somewhat melancholy. The afternoon sunlight was a white square on their white sheets, moving slowly. “Rich history,” she said. “Rich,” he said, “because marred with tragedy. The Revolution. The First World War. The Second World War.” “Not to mention Joan of Arc,” she said. “Yes,” he said. “Joan of Arc.” He pushed his fingers through her hair. “It’s the tragedy,” he said, “that makes history rich. The sadness that enhances culture.” “It brings people closer together,” she said. They kissed, ordered room service from Laurent, champagne and strawberries. Then they rode bikes to the beach, sat in the sand, watched the sunset.

  Later they would
tell their friends at home in Cleveland how good it was, their honeymoon. “Good food,” they’d say. “Good art, good beaches. Good memories, good everything. Nothing bad that lasted.”

  4

  But something lasted. If not the honeymooners’ bad memories then bad memories of them. Laurent’s, for example. The third Laurent’s, the nurse’s. The man and woman were sticky, gummed to his memory. When smoking a smoke-break cigarette in the ambulance bay, the thought would come to him: the man, the one with the clam allergies. Or he would think: that woman and her sandwiches. These thoughts annoyed him. Sudden adult onset clam allergies were serious but not that uncommon, so why were his thoughts stuck on them, this man and that woman? He hadn’t even liked them.

  These were his thoughts on the night they’d been discharged. Thinking about them and wishing he wasn’t thinking about them. His shift over and driving home past the salt farms. Salt pond after salt pond looping past his windows. Windows down because he liked to hear the breeze through the beachgrass. The ocean’s reflection of the full moon out the window to his right, rippling. Another thing, he thought, was that his father had been a salt farmer. His brother was still a salt farmer. Not easy work, backbreaking. Skimming salt sludge from seawater, drying it, shoveling it into wheelbarrows. They got paid by weight, which wasn’t much, considering. But sea salt sold in tiny, expensive vials in gift stores to tourists. So somebody made money, at least, the shopkeepers.

  It wasn’t that he blamed the honeymooners for his father’s death. Skin cancer, all those years under the sun, his cells cooking. Laurent didn’t draw a straight line between his father’s cancer and their participation in the salt economy. That wouldn’t have been fair. Not fair at all, but easy to do. But he didn’t blame them. Associated them with it, perhaps. Made them accessories after the fact, accomplices. But that was not why he hated them. Not because they bought salt, ate clams, perpetuated everything that made island life so small and oppressive. His dislike was deeper than that, more primal. Something in the smug way they held hands, ate their cheese sandwiches, said “Thank you, Laurent.” As if Laurent was not a proper name but something you called a servant.