Then She Found Me (33 page)

“Men,” says Anne-Marie.

“I’m fixing her up with Tony from the station, the traffic reporter.”

“The one in the helicopter,” says Anne-Marie.

“Does he know?” I ask.

“I’ll tell him!” Bernice says. She turns to Anne-Marie. “I’d steer him toward dinner at a place like Jasper’s and wear what you have on now.”

“I’d wait and see what Tony said first,” I suggest.

Bernice pats my cheek. She and Anne-Marie exchange smiles. “We know you would, darling,” says Bernice.

She says she must circulate and will be calling Anne-Marie at home. When we’re alone, Anne-Marie says she has been watching the famous Freddie, noticing his
extreme
politeness and respect for all,
despite
reports to the contrary. Most attractive, too, she’s noticed, the lack of formal introductions
notwithstanding
.

“He’s on his best behavior—under strict instructions not to hit on Bernice, you, or Dwight’s sisters.”

“How thoughtful,” she says sourly. She adds that she
feels sorry for Bernice’s date. “He looks like a lost soul. I felt like telling her to stop ignoring him.”

I look over at Jack, who is stretching the acceptance of an hors d’oeuvre into conversation with a waitress. I watch silently and say, “He’s not her date. That’s my father.”

Anne-Marie raps my midriff with the back of her hand and hisses, “Your
father’s
here, you asshole? And you just happened to forget to tell me?”

“I’m sorry. I thought you knew.”

Anne-Marie hands me her empty champagne glass. The sighting of Jack Remuzzi evidently requires her full concentration. “God! He must be mortified knowing everyone’s checking him out and thinking, So
he’s
the one…. And your brother running the show, giving you away and all, like you have no father.”

I hand the empty glass to a passing waitress and tell Anne-Marie I will introduce her.

“To Freddie?”

“C’mon.”

I lead her to Jack. He smiles gratefully when he sees us approaching. “Jack,” I say, “this is Anne-Marie Nardello. She runs the office at my school and is a close friend of mine and Dwight’s.” He nods, just enough to be polite. I can see he wants to talk to me and has little inclination to chat with a determined small-talker. Anne-Marie senses this and says congratulations, it’s lovely to make his acquaintance. Will we excuse her?

Freddie intercepts her immediately as if she is the very buffet customer he’s been waiting for. He guides her to the plates and silverware, an ambitious hand on her strapless back, whispering something that makes her smile.

Jack moves me a foot farther away from the milling guests and says, “Honey, I’ve got to take off.”

“Why?”

He jiggles his feet like a runner before a race. His shoulders shrug sheepishly. “You know,” he says.

“Are you having a terrible time?”

“I don’t know anyone. I feel kinda foolish, neither fish nor fowl.”

“Then you stay with me. I’ll introduce you to everyone.”

“Bernice took care of that, more or less. Ike introduced me to his family.”

“Dwight.”

“Yeah. He said, ‘This is Jack Remuzzi, April’s newly discovered dad.’ I thought that was nice. Like I was good news instead of a lizard that crawled out from under a rock.”

“You
are
good news. I thought you knew that.”

He quickly looks down at the floor, and I don’t press him for an answer. In a few moments he whispers, his voice cracking, “All I can say is, I give those people credit, God rest their souls.”

I know who he means, but I ask anyway. “People?”

“Your people. The Epners. Whatever they did”—he breaks off—“that you could be raised and not hate … the person—”

I put my hand on his sleeve and leave it there, hoping he’ll be able to finish the tribute.

“You don’t think ninety-nine out of a hundred kids would hate the people who did what we did?” He shakes his head in amazement. “They must have made you feel very secure, and loved. That’s the reason you’re the way you are now. That’s their doing. I wish they were here right now. I’d walk over and say, ‘Thank you, Brother Epner; thank you for what you did for my little girl. Whatever you did, I take my hat off to you!’”

“I wish they were here, too,” I say after a shaky silence.
“And I wish Bernice had heard what you said about them.”

“She’s jealous,” Jack says. “She wants to close the gap and pretend she never lost you, that no one else ever stepped in.”

I hold out the full width of my skirt. “This is my mother’s wedding dress. We copied the original from a picture.”

“It’s a knockout. You look beautiful.”

“Then you don’t think it’s a morbid thing to do—wear the dress of your dead mother?”

“Hell, no. I think it’s nice.”

“It’s a way to have her be a part of the wedding.”

He says, “Sure; that makes sense.”

“I have to work at it, to preserve her, because Bernice is right there, stepping on her heels, halfway into her shoes. It’s like losing a baby and having a replacement right away, even calling her by the same name, as if the first one didn’t count.”

Jack chews on his lower lip for a few seconds, thinking it over. “But maybe Bernie thinks
she
was the original, and she got totally forgotten. You got a new mother and never looked back.”

“I don’t think she automatically becomes ‘Mother’ because Trude’s dead. It’s something I have to feel.”

Jack raises his shoulders apologetically. “Maybe it’s just a matter of time.”

I say I don’t know. Bernice would die of happiness if I were to call her Mom. You’d think I’d be able to push myself to do it, wouldn’t you? Sometimes I want to, but once it slipped out, there would be no turning back. “Do you and she talk?” I ask.

“Sure.”

“Do you talk about me?”

“Of course! What else do we have to talk about?”

“Your marriage,” I say carefully.

“Jesus,” says Jack. “You call this a marriage?”

“Technically.”

“Look—” he says, then hesitates. After all, it’s my wedding day. No time for an argument, not the time to say, It won’t work out, not the way you think it should.

“Are you fighting?”

He shrugs. “We’re polite. She brought me around to meet a few people.”

“I should’ve asked you to bring a date or something so you wouldn’t feel alone.”

He shakes his head. “No, no, I wouldn’t have. I thought Bernice and I would be in the same boat, sit together at the reception. Have our private toast for you; have a good cry. Mother and father of the bride, without the papers. But she has her friends here and we’re on our own.”

I ask if he’s sorry he came.

He says I’ve got to be joking. Miss my wedding? All he’s been saying to himself, a hundred times a day, is “How lucky can a guy get—his daughter doesn’t get married at twenty-one, twenty-two, like a lot of girls do, but waits until her father can be there.” He looks worried suddenly. “I didn’t mean you were waiting on purpose for me to show up. I just meant it was a lucky coincidence for me that you met Dwight later and got married now instead of then.”

“Worth the wait on all counts, I’d say.”

“That’s for damn sure. I like this husband of yours. He makes you smile, and that’s when I think you look like my side of the family.”

We grin at each other self-consciously. I motion to Dwight to join us. “Jack’s leaving now,” I tell him, slipping my arm around Dwight’s waist.

“So soon? Before the cake?”

Jack puts his hand on his stomach and says he couldn’t eat another bite. Great food. A feast.

“He’s got a long ride back,” I say.

Dwight shakes Jack’s hand and says, “I can’t thank you enough for coming.”

“Me, too,” I say, and cut myself off. The lump in my throat allows nothing more. Jack hears it in my voice and can’t answer either. I sniffle, and he blows his nose into his handkerchief.

“What a pair,” says Dwight.

I go into the powder room and within seconds Bernice is by my side. “I saw you having a heart-to-heart with your father,” she says, watching me in the mirror.

Instead of answering, I trace my lips with my pinkie as if it has cosmetic properties.

“Do I get to hear what you were talking about?”

When I still don’t answer, she says, “You looked upset when you were talking to him.”

“No, I wasn’t.”

She hesitates, then says, “I thought he said something that made you cry.”

“I guess you were watching pretty closely.”

“Am I right?”

I say carefully, “He said some lovely things to me. I got a little weepy, that’s all. We both did. It’s my wedding day”.

Bernice says, “Oh,” and clamps her mouth shut. She’s not interested in tears of joy.

“Don’t do this,” I say.

She purses her lips and says, “Don’t do what?”

I turn to speak to her directly instead of to her image in the mirror. “He understands about Trade and Julius. He was saying that if they were here today he’d walk over to them and shake their hands and say ‘Thank you for taking
care of April. You did a great job.’ He’s not jealous of them.”

“And I am, of course. Is that a given?”

“You’ve never said anything like that, something as basic as ‘Thanks for taking care of her when I couldn’t.’”

“They’re dead! Was I supposed to stage a séance?”

“You never said anything like that to me—about your being grateful.”

“But I think that!” she protests. “Of course I think that. Who wouldn’t? And I let you get this dress as your monument to her, didn’t I? I thought that was the same thing. I just didn’t say it in so many words.”

I ask myself, and repeat the question aloud: “Then why do you make me feel guilty about loving them?”

She flinches.

“You shouldn’t be jealous of them. They loved me … they were my parents. Children love their parents.”

“Like you love Jack?” she asks petulantly.

“Should I apologize for that?”

“You hardly know him. He walks onto the scene and does everything right. Instant father. Love at first sight.”

“Why? Is there something I should know about him, another deep secret you’ve forgotten to tell me, that should turn me against him? Something I’m too blind to see myself?”

“No,” she says.

“I just shouldn’t like him so much, because you say so, or because he’s not your type?”

“Don’t put words in my mouth. What I’m saying is, what’s so great about Jackie Remuzzi? What marvelous attribute does he have that I don’t have?”

I weigh the consequences of telling the truth, that there’s just something right between us, but say instead, “I feel sorry for him. He seems so sad.”

“And I don’t?”

“He always looks lost. It makes me want to rescue him.”

“Because he lives in the sticks and sells golf clubs, is that why? While I’m too successful to seem vulnerable? I don’t appear to need rescuing?”

“Maybe.”

“Well, I do! I wouldn’t have put myself through all this if I didn’t need you. And what you’re saying about wanting to rescue Jack is that you don’t love me. In all this time you don’t feel for me what you felt for him in the first five minutes. So what do I do now? Wait around and work harder, or just accept the inevitable?”

I turn back to my reflection. Trude’s dress in the mirror brings Trude forth. I hear whining complaints from the small April:
You love Freddie more than you love me. I was here first, so you should love me more
.

I see myself, the child, scowling; I remember Trude drawing me toward her, soothing me until I gave up the fight and let myself be hugged; the not-very-long arms and the small hands soothing me, telling me a truth I finally believed after she was gone, the answer I now give Bernice: “How can you even think that? I love you both the same.”

Without dancing, the reception is short. It is, after all, a Monday night, so the guests line up eagerly for the final ceremonial act, the cutting of the cake. Bernice pushes my sleeves up to my elbows and poufs my skirt to its maximum volume. She says, “I told the photographer not to take that idiotic shot of stuffing cake into each other’s mouth. You’ll never use it.” She steps back into the ranks. The cake is lemon poppy seed, frosted, with dozens of reed-thin candles crowning the third tier. They are lit expertly by the pastry chef, who signals to someone to
dim the lights. Our formal cake-cutting posture relaxes, waiting for the knife and the hotel’s next special effect. Dwight stands behind me, circles me with his arms. I lean back against him and move only to let his lips slide to new spots on my neck. The knife arrives and we separate reluctantly. The pastry chef makes the first incision, steps back to let us finish the job. One photogenic piece slips onto a small plate. After the guests realize we’re not feeding it to each other, they step forward, forming a ragged line. We cut a second piece, then a third. The pastry chef steps in to take over: enough amateur surgery and enough photo opportunities.

Dwight and I stand there, jobless, until we direct the serving. “Mom?” says Dwight, reaching around the others to honor Mrs. Willamee with the first slice.

“Give Bernice the next one,” I whisper to Dwight.

“You give it to her.”

I hold it out above the others’ heads, reserving the second slice until I spot her against the back wall.

“There,” says Dwight, but I’ve already found her.

She’s moving, suggesting the sways and dips of a solo cha-cha as faint music seeps in from the partitioned room next door. A passing stranger in a tux—a waiter? a stray guest from another function?—allows her one pirouette, then walks away.

I call her name; she smiles and waves. Her elbows resume their rhythmic pumping.

“Cake,” I say, holding the plate higher. Then, more softly, “Mothers first.”

She points to her own chest: Me? You’re calling me?

“C’mon.”

It’s a long walk, a long performance—Freddie has rented a grand and spacious room. She makes her way toward us, taffeta rustling. She tortures me with one playful cha-cha-cha en route.

One by one the guests turn back to the bride and groom and to the business of the wedding: isn’t it time to toast these two and leave?