Then She Found Me (23 page)

“You were saying something about a grand gesture?” said Dwight after positioning the candle just so.

“This. Running away.”

He put his fork and knife down, wrapped his hand around his glass of beer. “I think I can top that. If you don’t mind a prepared speech …”

What kind of speech? I asked.

He began: Six months is not a long time in the great scheme of things—

“I don’t want to talk about that. I’m trying to forget that number. Six months with a little baby—”

“Not that,” he said. “I’m sorry. I meant us. Our six months. I meant it’s a short time to feel the way I feel.” He took a sip of beer. “I had accepted things about my life and didn’t think it would happen, didn’t think anyone would bring out the things in me that someone might
actually find … compelling. And then this unbelievable thing happened. This dream, actually.”

He found my hand. “I didn’t drive you down here to set the scene or create a mood; if anything, I just wanted to get you away from her and from school. But now that we’re here, it seems incredibly important that I propose to you.”

I tried to answer before I lost my voice. The best I could give him—in return for a speech I was engraving on the soft tissue of my brain for future worship—was limp, ordinary words. I accept. I love you so much. These six months have been … I’ll be your wife. You knew I would.

On the way home Tuesday we found the same candle, worse in aqua and with “Cape Cod” written on it in glitter, at a drugstore on Commercial Street. We bought it for Anne-Marie and told her she deserved to be the first to know.

“I
don’t want to eat,” I said to Bernice. “I’m here to talk.”

I had just arrived at her condominium and handed over my winter coat. She held my brown knitted scarf at arm’s length and appraised it. “A paisley scarf in a wool challis would be stunning with camel,” she said.

“Fine. You can get me that for Valentine’s Day.”

Bernice’s eyes opened wide, her best impression of a child’s holiday enchantment. “When
is
Valentine’s Day?” she breathed.

“Next week.”

She put one arm around me; coat, scarf, hanger, and all. “Our first Valentine’s Day together,” she said. We walked to the closet this way, and I thought that for once she was telling the truth: born in April and given away in October.

The doorbell rang before Bernice had filled both wine-glasses
in her black kitchen, before I’d come close to beginning my prepared speech.

“Are you expecting someone?” I asked.

Bernice went right to the door—eagerly, I thought, as if every ring of the doorbell meant the promise of attention and companionship. “Who is it?” she sang.

“April,” said the voice.

Bernice scowled and called, “Go away.”

“It’s April,” the voice repeated.

“You’re lying.”

“How can you be April if I’m standing right here?” I said.

Bernice glared and shushed me.

The voice said calmly, “Bernice, I’d like to come in. It’s Gabrielle.”

“I’ll call the police,” said Bernice.

“I have to talk to you.”

Here it was, my chance to see the woman who thought she was Bernice’s daughter. I nudged Bernice: Why not? It’ll be okay.

Bernice touched her head: you’ve forgotten—she’s crazy.

“Who’s there?” I asked.

“Sandra Schneider,” the voice said politely, as if it were the first announcement.

Bernice was shaking her head no. Absolutely not. No way.

I looked through the peephole. Despite the fish-eye distortion, the woman looked normal—long dark hair, a perplexed expression, an elongated otter face.

“I won’t do anything,” Sandra said.

“I’d like to get a look at her,” I whispered to Bernice.

Bernice unlatched the door petulantly. She walked back to the kitchen and left me to face the intruder.

Sandra Schneider strode across the threshold into Bernice’s
foyer and whirled to greet me with a karate chop of a handshake. “Thanks,” she said. Everything about her was intense. She moved, talked, blinked her eyes, aggressively, purposefully. And she was handsome in a dark, jittery way, like a character actress playing an insane woman.

I looked toward the kitchen. No sign of Bernice. “I’m April Epner,” I said.

“No kidding,” said Sandra.

“Should I call you Sandra?” I asked.

“I don’t care.”

Bernice walked elegantly out of the kitchen. “Don’t you work nights?” she asked.

Sandra said yes.

“Did you trade with someone to get tonight off?”

“No, I didn’t
trade
with anyone to get tonight off.”

“What do you do?” I asked.

“I drive a taxi.”

“Do you like it?”

“It sucks.”

“So don’t do it anymore,” said Bernice.

“And what should I be doing? Making minimum wage selling Harvard nightshirts at the Coop?”

“Don’t yell at her,” I said.

Bernice said, “It’s okay,” meaning: Let her. It proves my point.

Sandra stared at me, our first staring contest. Finally she said, “I know where you’re coming from, so don’t criticize my manners.”

Bernice said, “Excuse me, but I have something on the stove.”

“I’ll help,” I said.

Sandra smirked as if to say, You’re just the type.

As soon as we stepped onto the black marble tile, Bernice said, “Don’t follow me! You’re the one who
wanted to ask her in. Go out there before she slashes my upholstery.”

“How did she happen to show up tonight? Pretty good timing, I’d say.”

Bernice signaled me to be careful. “She asked if she could see me tonight, and I said I had plans. She asked with whom and I said, ‘I’m having company.’ That was it. She didn’t pursue it beyond that.”

“How did she know where you lived?”

“How do I know? She’s lunatic enough to have trailed me here in that cab she drives.”

“Is this the first time she’s been here?”

“Of course she’s been here! But this is the first time I’ve been foolish enough to let her in.” She had a basket of corn chips in one hand and a bowl of melted cheesy-looking dip in the other. She nodded with her chin for me to leave, to break up the conference and get back to Sandra.

Bernice entered the living room seconds after I did, smiling the refreshed smile that followed commercial breaks on “Bernice G!” “This is hot,” she said, holding up the red ceramic bowl.

“Did you two have a nice time whispering about me in the kitchen?” asked Sandra.

Bernice made a classic Bernice face: thoroughly insulted, wrongly accused.

“We were a little surprised to see you,” I said.

Sandra glared at me, her lips forming and re-forming silent syllables. Finally she said, “I would think you’d be sympathetic.”

“Why?”

“I find it very strange that you wouldn’t identify with my problem.”

“Which problem is that?” I asked.

Sandra said, “Finding my real mother.”

“I’m not your real mother,” said Bernice.

“Why do you keep insisting that she is?” I asked.

“I just know it.”

“But why?”

“It’s the truth! I’m thirty-six years old. I was born in Boston. I look just like her. The part about my father fits so perfectly.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Do you know who Jack Kerouac was?”

“Yes—”

“It’s perfect, isn’t it? I write. I even write like him.”

“She doesn’t even have the right birthday,” said Bernice.

“Now
that
is total bullshit! I happen to know that the social workers assign a birth date so the new family can have a pretty little fantasy of when the birth took place, and so it will be harder for the birth mother to trace the kid.”

Bernice looked at me. Her expression was wonderfully ironic and her eyes showed something close to amusement: See. Didn’t I tell you?

“Your claims are ridiculous,” I said to Sandra. “You can’t
will
someone to be your birth mother because you want it that way.”

“That’s right!” said Bernice.

“Don’t you see what she’s doing?” Sandra asked me, her voice lowered. “She’s picking you over me because you fit the profile. It has nothing to do with biology. It’s a popularity contest, and I lost. Period.”

“You’re
not
my daughter!” Bernice yelled.

“Prove it!” Sandra yelled back.

“And what if I did? Are you going to tell me you’d be satisfied and would leave me alone? And not harass April?”

“It depends what you have.”

“What could I possibly tell you that would make you leave here in a civilized manner and drop this … campaign of yours?”

Sandra answered in flinches and grimaces. Her stare was off somewhere, darting to either side of our faces as if a sadistic Tinker Bell were demanding eye contact. “Do you think you’re dealing with one of the idiots who watches your show?” she asked finally.

Bernice turned to me with manufactured amazement: Did you hear that? How dare she?

“You really have problems, you know that?” I said to Sandra.

Sandra closed her eyes and shook her head violently.

“I think we need a lawyer present,” said Bernice. “I think you should leave now.”

“I’m not leaving,” said Sandra. She sat down on the fawn-colored sofa and folded her arms across her chest. “Give me the proof and I’ll leave on my own two feet.”

“I have proof,” I said.

Bernice looked at me quizzically. What proof? All she had was her
Boston Globe
clipping and her mother’s intuition. She stood up and said, “Sandra, will you excuse April and me for a minute?” She headed down the hall toward the bedroom, confident I’d follow. She closed the bedroom door, sat on her queen-size bed, all mauve satin and slippery, and smiled as if she’d caught me in the act of doing something of which she’d long suspected me.

“What are you smiling at?” I asked.

She took one of her bedside cigarettes and lit it, still smiling. She crossed her legs and let one of her snakeskin shoes swing from her bobbing toes.

“I don’t like her out there by herself,” I said.

“I can see that.”

“What did you want?”

Bernice smiled and smoked and bobbed her shoe around. Finally she said, “You’re jealous of her, aren’t you? Or can’t you see what’s happening?”

“I’m trying to get rid of her,” I said.

“You have no written proof to show her. You want her out of my life for good and you’re willing to lie to attain that. You’re seeing me through someone else’s eyes, aren’t you? Someone who desperately wants me for a mother.” She smiled prettily: Deny that one, April.

“I want to get rid of her,” I repeated.

“But this woman’s getting to you, isn’t she? I mean, she’s hitting a nerve. I’ve never seen you possessive. I love it!”

“I’m not possessive.”

“What do you call it? I’ve never seen you this hostile, even on one of your bad days. And frankly I’m surprised. I thought you’d be a more gracious winner.”

I held up an index finger. Wait one minute. There’s more to discuss, but I can’t concentrate with her out there.

“Tell her I’ll do what I can,” said Bernice.

I stopped and asked what that meant.

“I can say a word or two on air, help her find her birth mother. I’ll couch it anecdotally—‘I have this young friend, et cetera …’ maybe as a follow-up to my own appeal. Bring you on, too, to talk about our relationship. Tell her that, will you?”

I just stood there frowning. Could we be that far apart in our perceptions of Sandra Schneider’s needs? “You can’t bring her on the show. You have to end this whole mess, not prolong it.”

Bernice said, “But what’s it to me—a few words on air? Can’t you give her that much, the opportunity to find the woman who could give her the same …
sustenance
I give you? An identity?”

I went back to the living room. Sandra was eating corn chips, stabbing them into the dip.

“Bernice isn’t feeling well,” I said.

“I think she got pregnant as a result of a rape,” Sandra announced with a full mouth.

“What are you talking about?”

“My money’s on rape.”

“I don’t think so.”

“You wouldn’t.”

“I’m too stupid, you mean? Not street smart like you?”

“I mean it doesn’t fit your fairy tale. On the other hand, it fits for me,” said Sandra. “It explains a lot. Maybe everything. My despair, certainly. My being so fucked up about men. I’m the product of a violation.” Sandra looked pleased.

“Bernice wouldn’t hide that! Just the opposite—she’d do a show on it.”

“She did deny it! But I didn’t believe one word. She’s so full of crap that she’s started believing her own pathetic stories.”

“She’s told me the truth,” I said after a long pause. “And I’m sorry, but you’re not Gabrielle. I am.”

Sandra assessed my statement, squinting and grimacing as if her internal debate teams were presenting their arguments. Finally she said, “How do you know?”

I raised my shoulders apologetically. “Everything’s been confirmed through the adoption agency. A blood test. Everything.”

“That’s a lie,” said Sandra.

“I have the documents at home. If you leave us alone, I’ll mail you Xerox copies.” I retrieved her parka from the couch and gave it to her. “I’ll have to call the police if you don’t leave,” I said quietly.