Then She Found Me (2 page)

“Yes, there is,” said Bernice. “She was my social worker and it wasn’t that long ago.” She touched her stomach. One hundred sit-ups a day. As flat as ever.

The receptionist frowned and retreated, “You mean Mrs. Price.”

“Isn’t that what I said?”

“She’s no longer here.”

“Did she get fired?” the girl asked.

The receptionist pursed her lips and asked for Bernice’s name at the time of her association with the Florence Cohn Agency. She opened a dark wood door and passed through into inner offices. After several minutes, an impeccable-looking woman in cream-colored wool followed the receptionist back to the waiting room. The woman offered her hand, introduced herself as Mrs. Mazur. Bernice rose eagerly to take it and made a mental note about the effects of gold accessories against cream-colored wool.

“Why don’t we go into my office,” said Mrs. Mazur.

“Love to,” said Bernice.

It was Mrs. Price’s office, she noticed. Same sappy photographs of well-adjusted children on the walls; same
repeating medallions on the green wallpaper. Mrs. Mazur sat behind her desk; Bernice took the visitor’s chair.

“I bet you wonder what I’m doing here,” she said.

“Would you like to tell me?”

“I was just passing by and I said to myself, Maybe they like to see what happens to their mothers. See how they’re doing and how they’re adjusting. If they’re happy, and stuff like that.”

Mrs. Mazur’s clasped hands rested on the girl’s manila folder. Bernice saw her name typed on a label; she saw the itch in the social worker’s fingers. She knew their need to read words on paper, to perform evaluations, to study folders well before the client sat down to talk. “Mrs. Prince always made notes when we talked, too,” said Bernice. “I guess anything you’d want to know about me is in there.”

Mrs. Mazur’s fingers grazed the edges of the folder.

“Go ahead,” said Bernice. “How else are you going to know how well I’m doing?”

Mrs. Mazur hesitated—agency policy—then opened the file and scanned.

“I’m doing great,” Bernice continued. “I’m starting Northeastern in January and I’m going to study merchandising.”

Mrs. Mazur murmured her approval while she read.

“I’ve gotten three raises in two years at Jordan Marsh and everyone says I’m management material.”

Mrs. Mazur looked up, smiled anew, and closed the folder. “I’m so glad. I see it’s only been five months since the adoption.”

“It’s going to be work-study, so I’ll be earning my tuition practically at the same time.” She sat up straighter. Her navy voile blouse had tucks on the bodice; she wanted this nicely dressed Mrs. Mazur to appreciate its workmanship and notice the navy taffeta slip underneath. “I figured
you like to know these things … write them down in your official records.”

“We certainly do,” said Mrs. Mazur automatically. She wrote nothing in the folder. Bernice hated this one too.

“Can you tell Mrs. Prince I came in, and about my getting into college? And that I’m fine? I know she’d remember me.”

A buzz from the phone. The manila folder sat unattended on the desk blotter. Bernice stood and smiled, pretending to have been dismissed. In a second she slipped the folder toward her; she had opened and closed it even before the social worker lunged to its rescue. “Sorry,” Bernice said, flipping it back.

But she had seen the name—on a white card stapled to the inside of the file, first thing a person saw. How stupid could they be?

Her daughter’s name was now Epner. Her daughter was with the Epners.

“Don’t get excited,” said Bernice. “I didn’t see a thing.”

There were no Epners in the Boston phone book. The operator said no, there did
not
have to be anyone by that name in the city, no matter how much the young lady insisted, and would she like to talk to her supervisor?

“It’s not as if I want to call them or anything,” answered Bernice.

Two years later Bernice Graverman found her daughter in the
Globe
. There was that name, Epner, and this little girl, just the right age. It was clear to Bernice that this fair and Polish-looking couple could not have given birth to this dark, sharp-faced little girl. “April,” they had named her, of all things. Awful. Bernice cut out the picture, which she folded lengthwise, put in an envelope, and placed in the bottom of her jewelry box. She called information
in Providence and got a phone number and address for Julius Epner. She added this to her jewelry box.

She had no plan. She was twenty years old and no more interested in unwed motherhood than she had been three years before. Semiannual phone calls to Providence—polite requests for phony names, apologies for a wrong number, in which she learned that the parents had German accents and the little girl answered eagerly a step ahead of them—were all Bernice Graverman did about her daughter, her only child, for thirty-three years.

Y
ou’ve seen “60 Minutes”—the airport reunion between the child she gave up twenty-five, thirty years before and the hand-wringing biological mother. Who are these people who invite the television cameras? There’s the husband—not the biological father but the guy who married the young mother subsequently and understands her quest. There’s their legitimate family, two or three sons. They look like their father, lumpish. The arriving daughter, dressed smartly, is the perfect image of her biological mother, who has bought a black leather trench coat for the occasion and has tied a bandanna around her neck for a touch of the rodeo. They must be getting paid to do this on national television, you think. What we see must be a restaging of what took place minutes before.

But maybe not. The mother is crying, and so is the new daughter. So is the stepfather. So are we.

I met the woman who said she was my biological mother in a diner ten minutes south of Boston. A friend of hers arranged the meeting after a day of laughable surveillance, trailing me nervously in her black BMW. None of it was necessary: my name and address were listed in the phone book; all this friend had to do—since she looked about as dangerous as a buyer for Saks shopping undercover at Bonwit’s—was ask me if I was April Epner and I would have said, “Yes, sure.” But she had to be a gumshoe; she had to put on sunglasses and follow my old Corolla to my high-rise apartment building. She had to catch up with me in the lobby as I was approaching my mailbox, key extended, and stop me with a tap on my arm. Close up, I could see her lips had been enlarged with lip liner and painted in with a creamy pink. “Were you born April first, nineteen fifty-two?” they said.

I blinked and didn’t answer. I thought: This is one of those contests I didn’t even enter, a piece of junk mail I threw out.

She tried again: “I represent someone in your past who’s looking for an April Epner with that birth date.”

I knew then. It had to be her, the woman who gave birth to me; the other mother, the one I had successfully buried. I must have said something filial because the woman asked briskly, “Would that be welcome news?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t know, I just … My mother died.”

“I’m talking about your real mother,” she said. “Your biological mother.”

“It’s you, isn’t it?” I asked after a few moments of measuring myself against this pancaked face, these monogrammed sunglasses, the sweater set and ropey pearls.

“No,” said the woman. “But I’m a friend of hers. A dear, dear friend.”

No, I thought. You can’t be. You’re not right. You can’t be a dear, dear friend of the ragged teenage mother who couldn’t take care of me even though she loved me.

“Where is she?” I looked toward the woman’s car, half expecting to see a pregnant seventeen-year-old watching and sniffling.

“In Boston. She’s a celebrity. She had a baby girl thirty-six years ago on your birthday and gave her up for adoption.” The woman wore a gigantic square-cut amethyst where a wedding ring might be. I thought: a club of rich single celebrities searching for each other’s babies.

“Oh, my God,” I said. “What kind of celebrity?”

She pressed her lips together. “Did I say ‘celebrity’? I wasn’t supposed to reveal that yet. I’m just supposed to make the contact and the evaluation.” “Evaluation?”

“Not an evaluation. Just this, our conversation. I’m sure you understand.”

“No,” I said. “I’m sure I don’t.”

“Let me put it this way: my friend needs … certain parameters.”

I asked what that meant, “parameters”?

She appraised my plain tan trench coat, my corduroy shoulder bag, then smiled tersely. “Bernice is not a social worker by nature. She wants to meet her daughter, but she’s cautious. Anyone would be.”

Bernice
—that was the celebrity’s name, a telling slip if only I could think of a single famous Bernice. “And what are you going to tell this Bernice? That I’m suitable? Or that I’m rude and that my raincoat needs dry cleaning?”

“I’m definitely recommending that she meet you,” said the woman proudly. “Definitely. She’ll take it from there.”

“Gee,” I said, “are you sure? Without even checking my references?”

“You’re getting the wrong idea,” said the woman. “I’ve really given you a terrible impression of her.”

“Tell her I graduated from Radcliffe,” I said angrily. “See how she likes that. And tell her I’m not a social worker by nature, either. Tell her I love my parents and I’m doing just fine.”

“Radcliffe!” the woman repeated. “How wonderful.”

“Cum laude,” I added.

“She’ll be tickled,” said the woman. She held out her hand as if I’d just earned an introduction. “I’m Sonia Friedberg. I’m a dear, dear friend of your mother’s.” She lifted her sunglasses up to her forehead and said, “The resemblance is chilling, which is marvelous. It really makes things just that much … easier.” She squinted at my hair and asked if I used something on it.

“What?”

“Your hair has an auburn cast to it. And a bit of a wave. You don’t get that from her.”

“My hair’s just brown.”

“Her natural color was brown, too,” said Sonia. “And the eyes. You look like her especially through the eyes. That same deep brown; that same intensity.”

I moved a step away.

“You have a sweeter face than she does. But still, it’s marvelous. She’ll be delighted.”

“Who is she?” I asked angrily. “And what is so marvelous—that I look enough like her to close the case?”

“Oh,” said Sonia, “that was never the question! She’s always known you were the one. She’s known your name for years and years, but it’s only recently that she’s been ready for you.”

“But not ready enough to come herself instead of sending a spy?”

“She’s an extremely busy woman,” said Sonia. “She’s used to delegating.”

I fitted my key into the mailbox’s lock and saw my hand trembling. “She sounds despicable,” I said.

Sonia opened her mouth to register surprise. “Oh, no. She’s not at all.” She shook off the misguided image and laughed, as if picturing something indescribably delightful. “She’s fabulous,” she said. “Fab-u-lous.”

B
ernice Graverman was my mother, all right, and I hated her within minutes. She was striking in a slim, dark way that recalled Bess Myerson in her Catalina swimsuit being crowned Miss America. “Gabrielle,” she said theatrically as she saw me. “Gabrielle.”

I walked down the diner’s central aisle toward that voice. I know this woman, I said to myself. I know her on some level. Her voice … her face. I thought: it’s mine. Uncanny, really. A prenatal memory.

“Bernice has her own TV show,” Sonia was saying.

I didn’t get it immediately. Then I heard her—static overtaking a weak signal. The introduction registered: this knowledge of Bernice was not imbedded in my DNA. It was not that of a child finding her long-lost mother. It was that of a casual viewer, a channel-spinner. Sonia nudged me and I sat down.

Bernice Graves, Boston morning television: “Bernice G!” a show in upholstered wing chairs and coffee poured on air from a silver tea set.

“It’s the reason I found you,” Bernice said while I stared at her Buster Brown pageboy, tinted blue-black and stiff with shine. Her skin was tanned, except for wet-look white eye shadow. “I did a very
very
powerful show on the subject of adoption. Some birth mothers and some orphans. Just before the credits, I looked into the camera and said, ‘I’ve never told anyone this before, but I gave up a child thirty-six years ago.’” Bernice closed her eyes and recalled the pain and glory of that cathartic moment. “I didn’t feel it coming. Next thing I knew it was out….” Bernice opened her eves. “You didn’t happen to see the show, did you?”