Ульяна Солнечная – Its Never Too Late - As Long As Youre Alive (страница 4)

And suddenly she realized she was smiling.

The call lasted three minutes.

When she hung up, nothing in the apartment had changed.

The same table.

The same light outside the window.

But inside her, there was a lightness now, almost childlike.

She had done something unnecessary.

Something impractical.

Something not useful.

For herself.

Kate walked over to the notebook.

Next to the item about Paris, she placed a small checkmark.

Not as completed.

As begun.

And for the first time in a very long while, she felt not exhaustion —

but movement.

The First French Lesson

Kate arrived half an hour early.

She had always arrived early — to church, to doctor’s appointments, to parent-teacher conferences many years ago.

Being late meant being awkward.

And awkwardness was the thing she hated most in the world.

The college turned out to be bigger than she had imagined.

Glass doors.

Young people with backpacks.

Someone laughing loudly in the hallway.

Kate felt like a museum exhibit in her best dress — navy blue with a white collar, bought three years ago on clearance at Walmart.

She found Room 114.

A sign on the door read:

French Language — 50+ Group

Her heart gave a harder thud.

Fifty-plus was not the same as sixty-seven.

She would be the oldest one there.

Of course she would.

Kate pushed the door open.

Inside, the room smelled faintly of coffee and old books.

People were already sitting at the small tables.

Women.

Six women of different ages.

One wore a bright shawl and dyed red hair.

Another had a perfect silver bob and pearl earrings.

A third was dressed in a tracksuit with Oklahoma Sooners across the front.

A fourth was flipping through the textbook in thick glasses.

And there was one man — balding, in a plaid shirt, with kind eyes, looking like a retired farmer.

They were talking softly, a little tensely.

The way people talk when they do not know each other yet, but are already a little nervous together.

Kate froze in the doorway.

“Are you with us?” asked the woman in the bright shawl, smiling.

Her voice was low and warm.

“Come on in, don’t hover there. I’m Barbara. To be honest, we’re all shaking a little.”

Kate let out a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding.

“I’m Kate,” she said, and her voice sounded almost normal.

“Kate Morgan. I… I’m shaking too.”

Barbara laughed, and her laughter was so easy and friendly that Kate allowed herself to sit down at the next table.

“I’ve wanted to learn French since I was a little girl,” Barbara whispered conspiratorially.

“I used to watch Audrey Hepburn movies and think, I wish I could talk like that. Then came a husband, children, cows, chores. Now the husband’s dead, the children are grown, and the cows are gone. All that’s left is me and this ridiculous dream.”

Kate looked at her and suddenly wanted to cry.

From recognition.

From the relief of realizing she was not the only ridiculous old woman in the room.

“I want to go to Paris,” Kate breathed.

“I’ve wanted to my whole life.”

Barbara nodded as if this made perfect sense.

“Well then, we’ll learn the language and go.

I hear the croissants are worth dying for.”

The door opened, and in walked a young man.

Very young — maybe twenty-five — wearing a ridiculous striped sweater, a little goatee, and large glasses.