Then She Found Me (9 page)

“‘Could I be?’ I asked.

“He backed away as a customer approached. ‘I’ll call you,’ he mouthed. It was the last time I ever saw him, leaving Jordan Marsh in his poplin suit and blue shirt, heading back to … what? An office job in an insurance agency or a cash register somewhere? I never found out.”

I stirred my coffee with a demitasse spoon, around and around. Finally I said, “That’s it, then?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“Jack Flynn.”

“Who the hell knows what his name really was.”

After a moment I said, “What is this thing you have about Jordan Marsh?”

“I worked there! I don’t have a
thing
about Jordan Marsh.”

I took a sip, added a sugar cube, stirred some more. “So this is the real story? Jack Flynn is my father.”

“Yes, he is,” said Bernice. She winced—the pain of such poor judgment.

“And you never tried to find him?”

“Where? He didn’t even live at that place he took me to, and he certainly didn’t give me his real name.”

“And you know that because you called every John Flynn in the Boston phone book and none was this Jack.”

“Why would I do that?” she asked calmly. “He didn’t want me. And he was a bum. A piece of shit.”

“No clipping service?” I asked sarcastically.

“Sure—and I’d be buried by now under a truckload of newspaper clippings about the seven million John Flynns in America.”

“That’s convenient,” I said.

“Convenient?” she repeated.

“Convenient: you were too young to know any better. You were an innocent, he was a cad—but a cad with a common name who posed as a medical student, which God knows explains the attraction. He seduced you, lied to you, abandoned you. And did it all under a false name and occupation. That’s what’s convenient.”

She closed her eyes. “Unbelievable,” she said. “Unbefuckinglievable.”

“Me?”

“Yes, you! I’d like to know who did this to you?”

I shook my head, not understanding.

“Your paranoia! You’re suspicious of everything. You mistrust everyone. Can you explain this—what made you this cynical and … unromantic? It certainly wasn’t my genes.”

“I consider myself extremely romantic,” I said.

“This is not the outlook of a romantic person, believe me. You don’t even know how negative you’re being.”

“I have good reason,” I said.

She raised her eyebrows. Good reason? Something juicy and confessional at long last?

“I meant your JFK story.”

She looked away, gathering patience and strength. “I apologized for that! Am I going to have to do penance for the rest of my life?”

No, I told her. Just tell the truth. I can tell the difference.

She stared for a few moments, then said, “I just hope you remember this smug little accusation. Memorize this moment so you’ll feel like a goddamn fool when you get to know me better.”

I said, “I’m sorry. I hope you’re right.”

She said slowly, “Call me naive and stupid for letting it happen. Call me promiscuous. Call me a lousy historian. But don’t tell me who put his dick in me and got me pregnant. I’m the only one who knows that.”

I said quietly, “And it was Jack Flynn? You stand by that story?”

Bernice opened her purse and extracted a cigarette. She shook it at me in warning. “Memorize this moment,” she repeated.

B
ernice enlisted Anne-Marie as her informer. Was there anyone at school for April? Perhaps a widower with children, someone a fussy woman might overlook on the first, second, or third inspection?

“Forget it,” said Anne-Marie, taking it all down in shorthand for transmission later to me. “The ones who aren’t already married you wouldn’t want to know about.” I was walking into the office as she said it. She handed me the receiver. I covered the mouthpiece and said, “You were having a nice chummy conversation.”

Anne-Marie swatted away the remark. Go on, talk. You’re tying up my line.

“Is this important?” I asked Bernice.

“Hello to you, too,” she said.

“I’m not supposed to leave my class—”

“Blah, blah, blah. What are you doing tonight?”

I asked why.

“How does this sound: Double. Date.”

I made a screwy face for Anne-Marie and said, “Sorry, I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Work. Quizzes I promised I’d hand back yesterday.”

“That’s not a reason,” said Bernice. “That’s the excuse of someone who is avoiding a social life. Look, you bring someone and I bring someone and we have dinner together, the four of us.”

“I think not,” I said.

“Because you’re truly too busy or because you don’t want to?”

“Because I have work to do and a deadline.”

“In other words, you don’t have anyone to ask.”

I said, “This is not an emergency phone call. I thought we agreed that only emergencies warranted phone calls to school.”

“What about a fix-up?” Bernice asked. “I’ve had some marvelous fix-ups over the years. I’m sure if I thought about it I could come up with someone.”

“No, thanks,” I said.

“Why not?”

“I’ve never had a fix-up that wasn’t a disaster.”

“That’s ridiculous. That’s like saying, ‘I’m going to shut myself off from a huge number of potential men out of a false sense of pride. ’ We’d all rather meet a man on our own in some natural, spontaneous way. But it doesn’t always work out that way and we have to keep ourselves open-minded about the B-list.”

Anne-Marie signaled that I should wrap it up. She needed the phone.

“I’ve got to go.”

“Are you happy?” asked Bernice.

“This minute?”

“You know what I mean.”

“Am I in love or anything like that?”

She didn’t prompt me further, but just waited the answer out.

“No,” I said. “I would have to say no.”

“Listen,” said Bernice, “I’m not happy either, but I do something about it. I’m not sitting passively by the telephone waiting for Mr. Right.”

“I hate that expression,” I said.

“Look, you come up with someone at your end, and I’ll be going through my list of possibilities and Ted’s,” said Bernice. “I’ll call you at home later to see if you’ve come up with anything.”

“You can call, but I won’t have.” Ted? I thought. Who’s Ted?

After a pause, Bernice said, newly tranquilized, “Fine, April. Then I won’t bother you at home.”

“What’s the matter?” I asked.

“Nothing is the matter.”

“You sound mad.” Anne-Marie looked up, engaged, granting me an extension.

“I thought you had to get off,” said Bernice.

“I do.”

She said easily, “It bothers me that you don’t want your friends to meet me.”

“That’s not true.” I rolled my eyes.

“Have you told
anyone
about me?”

“Sure, I have.” I shrugged at Anne-Marie. Haven’t I? Don’t you count?

“Have any of your friends said, ‘Wow, I’d love to meet her’?”

“Well … sure. Implicitly.”

“Who?” demanded Bernice. “Who have you told?”

“Oh,” I said. “Anne-Marie, of course. She’s very interested in our relationship. And”—I dragged it out, surveying
a mental list for the most convincing white lie—“Rita and Sheryl—”

“Whoever they are.”

“Teachers I eat lunch with, and …”

Anne-Marie mouthed a name. I squinted, and she mouthed it again.

“And, of course, Dwight Willamee,” I said, nodding my thanks.

Bernice’s tone brightened. “I’ve heard that name,” she said.

Anne-Marie refused my invitation. She said it was a double date, no matter what I wanted to call it; it had to be a man. Let Bernice fix you up, she said. Or find someone yourself. Or ask Dwight Willamee, for God’s sake; any warm body would do. She considered her own advice and decided it might not be such a bad idea; might shut Bernice up about the great supply of men around this convent.

I did ask Dwight to join us for dinner. I didn’t want to embarrass him, and I didn’t want to see him turn purple at the suggestion that my invitation was remotely social. It was not my business that he was gay; he should not have to confide what he so far had kept hidden. I went to the library carrying my brown bag and displaying my milk money.

“Don’t feel you have to accept,” I began, “but the bane of my existence is offended that I haven’t told anyone at school she’s found me, and I thought you might be interested in meeting her, since you’ve actually seen her show.”

Mr. Willamee almost smiled. He said, “She’s offended that you haven’t told anyone about her, so you want me to meet her so she’ll know you told someone?”

I nodded.

“Sure,” he said.

“It would be for dinner, if that’s not too weird.”

“Not too,” he said.

“She’ll be very charming. And she’ll probably pick some pretentious place.”

“I thought you were breaking off communication with her,” said Mr. Willamee.

“So did I. But she retracted her JFK story, and we reached an understanding about telling the truth. You know: nobody’s perfect, life is short, the whole bit.”

“Did she tell you who your real father is?”

“A Jack Flynn. Another Irish-American who picked her up at Jordan Marsh—that part I’m beginning to believe—who posed as a medical student, seduced her regularly, walked out when she was pregnant. I sat there politely and listened to every detail of what he said and what he did and what parts of her body he touched in which order.”

“Doesn’t sound half bad,” he murmured.

I smiled uncertainly. Had Dwight Willamee said that? Would a gay man say that? Had I heard a clue to his sexual preference, or had I imagined the words and the emphasis?

He said, serious again in a way that erased his moment of wryness, “She’s a talk-show hostess, and they’re all exhibitionists of one sort or another.”

“Yeah,” I said, still off balance. Then: “I think she thinks I’m fascinated, though, and that she’s giving me an education.”

Dwight blushed. He used both hands to rearrange the lunch in front of him: two sandwiches, one banana, one large, lumpy homemade cookie; his thermos.

“Please go ahead and eat,” I said.

He swiveled to look at the wall clock behind him, and said he might have to begin.

I reiterated:
So
. Just a dinner. He and I could talk about
school. Bernice loved to hear about school. He must not feel he has to create any kind of false impression that I talk positively about Bernice. And he mustn’t feel he has to pretend that we had worked more closely than we actually—

I understand, said Mr. Willamee.

“You’re being a good sport,” I said.

“It’s fine.”

“I don’t know why she makes me so crazy.”

Mr. Willamee said, blinking for effect, “Your birth mother appears out of the blue and tells you your father is John F. Kennedy and you wonder why she makes you crazy?”

I smiled and said, “Thanks. Good point.”

“What time tonight?”

“I’ll call you,” I said. “Are you going to be home after school?”

He patted his breast pocket for a pen. I pulled one out of my purse and offered him my lunch bag. He wrote the numbers carefully and handed me back both. “Don’t throw it out with your crusts,” he said, smiling.

“I eat my crusts.”

“And don’t ask for Mr. Willamee or you’ll get my father.”

“Okay. Dwight.”

“Good,” he said.

S
he asked me to meet her at the piano bar at the Ritz. There would be a man with her. My Indian imports, she said, were nice, entirely suitable for the classroom, but would I dress up tonight? Did I have something chic?

“I’m bringing Dwight Willamee,” I said.

She paused. “Why do I know that name?”

“He works with me. I mentioned him on the phone.”

“Seee,”
she sassed. “Look and ye shall find.”

“It’s not a date.”

“Dwight? Isn’t that a man’s name?”

“He’s a colleague.”

“Married?”

“Married?” I repeated.

“You’re such a prude,” said Bernice. “Was he ever? Is he now?”

“No.”

“Good. Sort of.”

I didn’t pursue it. I didn’t want to hear her version of why not being married was good, sort of.

“What does he look like?”