Leaps and landings

47

Celeste and Maria met a small trendy cafe in Williamsburg that supposedly served excellent vegan brownies. They'd exchanged a few pleasantries as they met, ordered from the counter and found a table overlooking the slow street. The weather was still freezing, Celeste pulling her hands into her sweater sleeves to get comfortable.

"I suppose you're wondering why I wanted to see you," Maria said, brushing her curly hair behind her ears, exposing the pair of climber earrings, after she'd sallowed a sip of her cappuccino.

"To be honest, yes," Celeste replied, adding, "not that I have anything against it," not wanting to seem impolite either. She added an hesitant smile.

"Two reasons - I honestly thought you were interesting, nice to me, easy to to talk to - it's not like a I have a ton of friends, but as were have a little bit of a business relationship, I wasn't really sure if it would be appropriate to just want to befriend you," she added with a chuckle. "Yeah, this is a forty-two-year-old single mom with no social life to speak of talking here," she added, raising her hands up apologetically. She blabbered a little, seeming a little nervous.

Celeste smiled softly, quite liking the idea that she was not the only person who perhaps lacked some social contacts, sensing the awkwardness of finding new friends at her age. And with somewhat of a similar taste in books or in Maria's case, writing, and the older-mom (or mom-to-be) similarity, she could theoretically see herself actually enjoy spending time with her.

"And for the second thing," she began, causing Celeste to concentrate intensely, curious to hear what more she had to say. "My daughter's dad is French, we're not together anymore and he doesn't want any contact, but his mother does. And while I won't plan on shipping her back and forth, I do think it's up to me to try to find opportunities to immerse her in the culture as much as possible, outside the visits we might be able to make," she began, almost causing Celeste to want to interrupt her with a row of questions - to begin with - how did she know she was French? She took a deep breath, letting her finish, wanting to hear her point.

"I was just wondering whether you plan on teaching your child French, and if you are, I was hoping that maybe in the future they could playdate or something. I know two years is quite an age difference, but I just thought I'd ask. I've been thinking of taking classes myself, but I doubt that without sufficient practice, I'd be ever fluent enough for her to pick up anything from me," Maira explained.

"How did you...?" Celeste asked with some hesitation. As far as she knew she didn't have much of an accent, but sure, on occasion she might slip, or pronounce some French word more like a French-speaker than an American, or maybe there was something about her mannerism that stood out. But that too she had been trying to hold back recently.

"Oh!?" Maria reacted, not having anticipated that question, "I just thought I recognized some pronunciation peculiarities like some of your vowels or the soft "h"," she began, realizing she needed to explain herself even more. "I used to work with phonetic algorithms, so I'm quite used to spotting things like that," she explained. "But I'm sorry, maybe it was wrong of me to assume?" she added, apologetically.

"Oh," Celeste sighed, unsure what to make of it. It seemed plausible, but her past made her a little hesitant. She wasn't sure what to say. She gathered her thoughts, while taking a sip of tea, recalling that she had a cover story after all, which didn't jeopardize anything even if she admitted to being French. "Well I am French, but I'm not really sure I'm the best person to be a cultural compass to somebody," she said. She hadn't even fully decided how she was going to introduce Evie to her history let alone someone else's kid. There were these little things, the nursery rhymes that she liked and had sung to Finny even, and mostly likely would do the same for Evie. There were some aspects of cooking and the hope to teach Evie appreciate unprocessed foods and good wine, the latter when she was old enough of course, which was still probably a lot younger than legal in the States. But was she going to speak French to her? How would she tell her about her grandparents if she asked? If she lied, would she hate her if she ever found out the truth?