Then She Found Me (28 page)

“Maybe with an Easter bonnet and a little white patent leather pocketbook?” says Bernice.

“What about lavender? That’s not too clichéd.”

Lucia ponders the suggestion. Finally she chants with her eyes closed, “Gray, maybe, with a suggestion of purple in it. Not bridesmaidy. A smoky gray. Not too pale. A swishy silk. With touches of color hand-painted on it. Subtle but not somber.”

“What for flowers?” asks Bernice. “A deep purple?”

“No flowers,” says Lucia firmly.

“I want flowers,” I say.

“What do you mean, ‘no flowers’?” Bernice asks carefully, shushing me.

“I don’t do costumes. I don’t do veils and trains. I don’t do seed pearls and alençon lace. I design dresses that are beautiful enough to carry the day without props.”

“This is my wedding, though. Not yours.”

Lucia is not accustomed to back talk. She says, “Most clients want to be original. If they want clichés, they go to Filene’s or Priscilla’s after they’ve read
Bride’s
magazine to see which stores carry the off-the-rack Princess Diana dress that’s pictured on the cover.”

I say, “My mother got married in a long white dress with all the frills and the flowers.”

“Everybody’s mother did,” says Lucia.

“I
got married in a peach wool crepe suit with three-quarter sleeves,” says Bernice. “I eloped.”

“I’m confused,” says Lucia.

“Her adopted mother had the frills. I’m her real mother.”

“What I meant was that my mother cared enough about tradition that she came out of mourning to get married in white with all the props, as you would put it.”

Lucia drags her unhappy gaze over to Bernice for explanation. Bernice says, “They were in concentration camps and their families were wiped out by Hitler. They met in this country after the war and got married.”

Lucia is temporarily silenced by this profile.

I add, “They couldn’t even have children after what they’d been through.”

“That’s awful,” says the designer.

“You’ve heard of Auschwitz? They had numbers tattooed on their forearms.”

Bernice looks at me, advising caution. I can’t stop myself, at least until I’ve said, “Well, they’re dead now.” It is their whole story from Bernice’s point of view: survived, met, married, adopted, died. I’m perversely feeding it back to her.

Lucia asks if my mother saved this white wedding dress of hers. I answer that I don’t know for sure. She was probably too tidy and efficient to keep a dress for forty years.

“Why do you ask?” Bernice interrupts.

Lucia looks hopeful now. Her voice gains some modulation. “I do retros of old wedding gowns. Maybe I could take a look at this one. Or reproduce it from a picture.”

“It was probably a
shmatteh,”
says Bernice.

“There’s definitely a picture. It’s on the dining room wall.”

“Can you get it?” asks Lucia.

“She hasn’t said she wants that,” says Bernice. “I don’t particularly like the idea of some postwar Andrews Sisters’
dress for April. I think it would look kitschy, which is not her look.”

“What do you think?” Lucia asks me.

“I doubt whether my mother kept it,” I say.

“Still better. I’ll modify it. Use some color. Maybe do it in a pale gray satin, heavy satin, ballerina length. How soon can you get the picture?”

“I’ll ask my brother to mail it up right away.”

“Have it sent to me and I’ll get a jump on it.”

Bernice huffs. Don’t bother to consult
me
, it says. I’m only paying for it.

“What do you think, Bernice?” I ask.

“I think Lucia is a genius,” she says obediently.

“You mean that? You’d go along with this idea?”

“It’s not my decision.”

“Say it like you mean it,” I coax.

“Whatever you want is fine.”

“It’ll be gorgeous,” says Lucia. “No matter what the original looks like. I have the artistic license to make it ten times better.”

Bernice still looks worried. I ask what it is about the idea that gives her trouble.

“There’s just one thing,” she says. “No one’s going to know it’s a copy of Trude’s gown. It’s not like it’s going to register with anyone. It’s not like Trude and Julius will ever know, or that it’s going to mean anything to anyone there.”

I don’t answer right away. As always, I measure my need to jump down her throat against the futility of doing so.

Finally she says, “Except you, I meant. And possibly Fred.”

“Maybe it’s a way of having her at the wedding. Of her seeing me finally get married. A symbol. That’s all.”

“Like that scene in
Carousel,”
offers Lucia, “where the
dead father is at the daughter’s high school graduation, and when she feels his arm around her it makes her stronger and she sings ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ in white chiffon?”

“Exactly,” I say.

“I hated that movie,” says Bernice.

Freddie says why bother to mail the wedding picture when he can hop in his car and be at my apartment in fifty-five minutes. We have not seen each other since he attempted to seduce Bernice, and have only talked once. That time I called to announce my engagement and he said, “To Dwight, the guy I met?”

“Yeah. The same night you met Bernice.”

Freddie chuckled nervously.

“Don’t worry,” I said. “I heard nothing happened. No thanks to you.”

“What’d she tell you?”

“She said she didn’t think it was seemly to fuck my brother, so she sent you home, despite your willingness to break the incest taboo.”

“Incest! She’s not my mother. You don’t know what would’ve happened if I’d stuck around.”

“Am I wrong? Did you try?”

“I always try,” said Freddie solemnly.

“Well, you’re a jerk, then.”

“I didn’t start it. She came on to me.”

“And you always take what’s offered, regardless? You don’t ever set any limits—with women you work with, or friends’ girlfriends? Ever just walk away out of loyalty or common sense, or anything? Or do you just fuck whatever’s in your path?”

“You’re making a bigger deal out of this than you have to.
Nothing happened.”

“Are you sure?”

“Why would I lie?”

That was true. Freddie didn’t have the sexual ethics to recognize when a lie might be prudent. “How are you ever going to meet someone normal?” I asked.

“I meet people all the time.”

“I know. But you’re infantile. You don’t seem to care about establishing a relationship. Do you even like these women you pick up?”

“Sure I do. I see some of them on a repeat basis.”

“You should, you know. Because what’s cute at twenty-nine can be pathetic at thirty-nine.”

“What do you mean?”

“You have to start relating to women on other levels. It’s a sign of arrested development to see them only in terms of sex. And you can start with Bernice.”

“Look,” he said. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. Guys are different from girls, a
lot
different from some girls—”

“Like me, for instance. You think I don’t know which end is up, right?”

“Well, I
assume—”

“You don’t know anything. If you can seduce my mother—”

“Mom was your mother,” he said angrily. “Bernice is the one who had you and gave you away.”

I said, slowly and distinctly, “I’m the one in the middle. And I’m telling you that I resent your hitting on her, no matter how good your argument is.”

Freddie didn’t say anything.

“You think I’m wrong, don’t you?”

He exhaled a long, misunderstood breath. I waited. Finally he said, “Not every woman views sex as the biggest deal in the world.”

“Not like your sister.”

“That’s right.”

“And Bernice is one of those others?”

“Do you disagree?”

“All I know is that at some point Bernice said, ‘This is wrong. I shouldn’t sleep with my daughter’s brother.’”

“Or maybe
I
said that—I shouldn’t sleep with my sister’s so-called mother.”

“Did you?”

“I might have. It didn’t reach a point where I had to make any big moral decisions. Okay?”

“You were lucky on this one.”

“What do you want me to say, April? I’m sorry?”

“Say you’ll smarten up and show some judgment.”

I heard him sigh, then recite back, “I’ll smarten up. I’ll show some judgment. I’ll find a nice girl and settle down.”

“‘I won’t marry a bimbo.’”

“I won’t marry a bimbo.”

Before we hung up I asked if he was mad at me. “Mad?” he asked cheerfully. Why should he be mad?

Now I tell him that would be great if he’d mail me the wedding portrait. Just wrap it carefully, frame and all. Mail it? he says. Hell, I’ll drive it up. Tonight, tomorrow. He asks what I want with it anyway. I tell him that a dressmaker is going to copy Ma’s wedding gown for me.

“Whose idea was that?” he asks.

“The dressmaker’s.”

“Sounds like a lot of trouble.”

“I don’t mind.”

“Look,” he says. “About the wedding. Doesn’t the bride’s family pay for it?”

“Usually, but not always.” Particularly if they’re dead, I think.

“I’d like to do it,” says Freddie. “I think Mom and Dad would want me to, and I don’t think you should have to, just because you waited until they had passed away.”

“No,” I say. “I think that’s incredibly nice of you, but you shouldn’t spend your money on this.”

“Who’s going to pay for it if I don’t?”

“Me.”

“Not her?”

“Bernice? Uh-uh. She wants to, but I won’t let her.”

“How come?” he asks.

“Because it’s my wedding. She’ll make it her production, and I don’t want her in charge.”

“I’ve got the money. I’d rather spend it on this than take a trip or something.”

I am silent for a few moments, and then I say, “We’re actually keeping it small and simple.”

“Good! I’ll get away cheap.”

“Are you sure you want to?”

“I really want to.”

I tell him there’s one thing; and I’m sorry I didn’t ask him before he offered to pay for everything, because now he would think that was the reason. Would he do me the honor of giving me away?

“Huh?” says Freddie.

“Walk me down the aisle? Haven’t you ever been to a wedding?”

“I’d like that,” says Freddie.

“Good. It would mean a lot to me.”

He hesitates, then says with difficulty, “It would mean a lot to me, too. Thanks.”

“Thank
you
.”

His voice brightens. “So we have a deal all around? You don’t have to run it by Dwight?”

I tell him no. It’s a bride’s prerogative, letting her family pay for the wedding.

“Good! You make whatever arrangements you want and send me the bills, okay? Whatever you want. Prime rib, baked stuffed shrimp. You don’t have to ask.”

I think him, then can’t help but ask if he thought of this himself.

“You think I’m a jerk I coudn’t come up with this myself?”

I laugh and say, “Yeah.”

N
ow that our engagement is public, Dwight regularly pops into my homeroom, grinning, to ask ridiculous questions. Should we go to Niagara Falls or the Poconos for our honeymoon? How do I feel about microwave ovens? It escalates into a routine, with each day’s question getting goofier. The students love it; they particularly like the variety of endearments he tosses into my room as he passes: “sweet pea,” “Tootsie Roll,” “lamb chop,” “cream puff.” I swat Dwight away and wait for the laughter to pass, thrilled actually to see him conspire with the kids. At first I didn’t answer; I restored decorum by ignoring him and getting on to homeroom business. Finally one morning, after he’d ducked out, I waited a beat and asked my class, “Whatever happened to ‘darling’ and ‘sweetheart’?”

He is loose now because he knows he’s leaving, and
knows he won’t have to maintain the act or the good-guyism past this term. On July first he will start his new job as an archivist at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library. He was hired after one interview, returned with the inevitable tall tale about getting hired because his wife was Jack Kennedy’s illegitimate daughter—God, they couldn’t believe their ears; they begged him to stay; could he bring my blood, hair, and tissue samples on his first day? When we told Bernice the great news, she said, “I thought you wanted to open a bookstore.”

Decided against it, we said: the hours, the bookkeeping, the capital, the public, the details, the racks of Cliff Notes….

“The John F. Kennedy Library is the only place he can go? What about Harvard or M.I.T.? They must need librarians.”

“Do you think he did this to get your goat?” I ask.

“Dwight enjoys a joke at my expense.”

“I thought you would like the sound of ‘my son-in-law the archivist,’” he says.

“It’s a great job,” I say, “and as far away from a high school library as you can get and still be a librarian.”

Bernice thinks it over. “Is it prestigious?” she asks.

“Certainly,” says Dwight.

“Are you
the
archivist at the library or are there more?”

“More.”

She makes a face: So? What’s the big deal?

“It’s my dream job,” says Dwight. “I get to do interesting work with intelligent people and to look at the ocean while I eat my lunch.”