Page 88 of Hushed

I try not to glare at him. Bastard. He’s remembered my mother’s weak spot and weaponized it.

“Excellent!” She beams at him. “You are marrying into a French family. They must learn French.”

“Absolument, Madame.”

She shakes a finger at him. “Pas madame. Maman. Are you Catholic?”

“No.” He glances nervously at me. This is not something we have ever discussed. I hold my native religion loosely. Which is not the way that Levi is holding me right now. He’s got a death grip on my abdomen. His nervousness is almost palpable.

“Well, nobody’s perfect.” She taps his necklace and looks at me significantly. I know she recognizes it. She turns to me. “I like him very much, but his French accent is terrible,” she tells me in French.

My brother comes up the path behind her with his hands in his pockets. He’s a big, bluff man. “Lisette sends her love. She’s at home with the kids,” he says, kissing my cheeks. As always, he’s speaking in rapid-fire French. “Christophe has a spelling test. She wishes she were here. Uncle Raoul got a contract to rewire a grand house on Lac-Saint-Joseph.” He turns to Levi and smiles. “Is that a real Army shirt?” he asks in English.

“I’m a real Army man,” Levi says.

Michel gives me a significant look. “Apples and trees, mais non?” he asks in English.

Levi looks back and forth between me and my brother, and the look of joy that transforms his face is incomparable. “That’s right! Your father was in the Army! So, in other words, you really were made just for me,” he says, and kisses me on the cheek.

“Oh, come in, come in,” my mother says, leaning out the door. “You’re letting all the air out. Ce n’est pas Versailles ici!”

“Who are these people?” Levi whispers as they dutifully take off their shoes without being prompted and sit in the living room. The women line up to give us both formal cheek-kisses, and the men shake his hand heartily.

“Michel is my older brother. He is an electrician in my father’s firm and his wife Lisette is their secretary. That is my grandmother, Sandrine, who will say something appalling within about a minute. And my father,” I add, as my dad comes in and scrapes his clean shoes against the entryway rug as he’s done every day for as long as I can remember. My father is a big, burly electrician, taciturn by nature.

“Oh, now he’s handsome,” Grand-mère Sandrine says in French. She kisses him on both cheeks.

“She says you’re handsome.”

“Merci,” Levi says.

“I’ll bet he’s got a big cock,” Grand-mère Sandrine continues in French.

“Grand-mère!” I gasp.

“I think that word means the same in both languages, doesn’t it?” Levi asks. “Oui,” he tells my grandmother.

She laughs richly. “Oh, my dear sweet boy, finally marrying,” she says to me in her best broken English as I guide them into the living room. Levi helps himself to one of the bagels and makes a noise.

My mother eyes him with approval. “They are good, aren’t they? They say they are better than New York bagels.” She turns back to me. “What happened to the Bastien who said that marriage is an outdated, heteronormative institution?”

“I changed his mind,” Levi says.

“Oh, bravo. How did you do it?” she asks Levi, pivoting to him eagerly.

“I’m a soldier, ma’am. I realized that he was in opposition to the idea, so I thought strategically, analyzed weaknesses, and then waited for my moment.”

“Ask him the question,” my father says in French.

“Sérieusement, papa?” I ask. “I thought that was a joke.”

“It is not a joke! It is very vital,” my father snaps. “It is purity of blood.”

“This is so embarrassing,” I protest. I turn to my family. “Somebody tell him how embarrassing this is.”

My family is unhelpfully silent.

“What’s going on?” Levi asks.