Free Awake by Elise Daniels Page B

you,” he says. “Tonight I want to hear about first loves.”

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    We had a down home feast of pork chops, corn-on-the-cob and tapioca pudding. No pretense whatsoever although the pork chops did have a zesty Caribbean flavor to them.
    “Lovely,” I say with my last scoop of tapioca pudding. “Felt like I was back in Minnesota.”
    “We Midwest girls have to stick together,” Alodia says beginning to clear the table but William chases her away and does it himself.
    “Worked three years at the Olive Garden after college,” he says as he carries away every plate expertly. “This is child’s play.”
    William had just finished his wistful account of his first love. To all of our surprise it was a girl named Yvonne. She lived on his street back in Boulder, Colorado. A high-end neighborhood of doctors and lawyers. William’s dad was an ophthalmologist.
    After years of admiration from afar, William found the courage to ask Yvonne to prom. She reluctantly agreed but on the night of the prom, drunk on spiked punch, Yvonne confessed that she was pretty sure she was a lesbian.
    With the love of his life playing for the other team, so to speak, William said he had no choice but to become gay himself. In reality, he already knew he had similar desires as he enjoyed the opening of a show called Magnum P.I. way too much for a straight guy. They had to explain to me that the opening credits had a young Tom Selleck looking manly with his shirt off.
    I didn’t follow that up by confessing I had no idea who Tom Selleck was, but William read my mind. He explained that this Selleck guy also played Monica’s older boyfriend on the show Friends. I have heard of Friends and even Monica, but that’s an old show too. I haven’t watched more than one or two partial episodes.
    I’ll just have to google Tom Selleck later if I think of it.
    We move out back and sit on strangely comfortable wicker patio furniture under hanging Japanese lamps. The sky is darkening and the lamps bathe us in the soft orange and green light.
    Simone insists on getting around in her wheelchair unassisted and does so as gracefully as she does everything.
    “Where are you from, Simone?” I ask as I accept a glass of chardonnay from Alodia.
    “Our Simone is a French girl,” Alodia says. “Born in Paris no less.”
    “But you don’t have an accent,” I say to Simone.
    “There is a slight one in there,” Alodia corrects.
    “I mean no accent for the ears of mortals,” I tease.
    “I grew up in Southern California. West Covina,” Simone says. “I was born in Paris, in the Latin Quarter, because my father taught at the Sorbonne briefly. He was from West Covina too.”
    “But doesn’t it sound so cool to be born in Paris in the Latin Quarter?” William asks rhetorically.
    “I was born in Eden Prairie,” I say. “Not as cool.”
    “Oh I disagree,” Simone says. “That sounds like a magical place.”
    “It’s so Little House on the Prairie sounding,” William says. “You’re like a real live Laura Ingalls mixed with a little Paris Hilton.”
    William makes me laugh. Everything is a punch line of some type. I recognize that even if I am not always in on the joke.
    “So you were born in Paris,” I say to Simone redirecting the attention back to her.
    “Yes,” she says, “only that. We moved back to the states when I was two, but my mother was a petite French woman. She struggled to ever feel at home in California. West Covina could hardly compare to the City of Light.”
    I think of my own nostalgia for the quiet breezes of the rolling hills of Minnesota and feel I can relate to Simone’s mother. “Your poor mother,” I say to myself more than anyone.
    “And to be forever separated from your first language,” Alodia says sadly, “creates a hole in your soul.”
    Simone smiles at our empathy for her mother. “It’s true,” she says, “but love speaks a language of its own and my mother had that.”
    “What about our Simone?”