Then She Found Me

National acclaim for Elinor Lipman and …

THEN SHE FOUND ME

THE WAY MEN ACT

ISABEL’S BED

INTO LOVE AND OUT AGAIN

Also by Elinor Lipman

Into Love and Out Again*

The Way Men Act*

Isabel’s Bed*

The Inn at Lake Devine

The Ladies’ Man

* Available from WASHINGTON SQUARE PRESS

Elinor Lipman

WASHINGTON SQUARE PRESS
New York  London  Toronto  Sydney

Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to reprint an excerpt from
THE BEST OF DAYTRIPPING AND DINING by Betsy Wittemann and Nancy
Webster. Copyright © 1985 by Betsy Wittemann and Nancy Webster. Reprinted
by permission of Wood Pond Press. West Hartford, Connecticut.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either
the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance
to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

A Washington Square Press Publication
1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020
www.SimonandSchuster.com

Copyright © 1990 by Elinor Lipman

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce
this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.
For information address Pocket Books, 1230 Avenue
of the Americas, New York 10020

Lipman, Elinor.

Then she found me / Elinor Lipman.

  p.  cm.

ISBN: 0-671-68615-1

eISBN: 978-1-4391-8672-5

I. Title.

[PS3562.1577T47  1991]

813′,54—dc20                         90-26437

                            CIP

First Washington Square Press trade paperback printing April 1991

20  19  18  17  16  15

WASHINGTON SQUARE PRESS and colophon are registered trademarks of
Simon & Schuster, Inc.

For information regarding special discounts for bulk purchases,
please contact Simon & Schuster Special Sales at 1-800-456-6798
or [email protected]

Cover design by Jeanne M. Lee

Front cover illustration by Coco Masuda

Woodcut by Charles Casey Martin

Printed in the U.S.A.

Special thanks to Henry Dutcher,
Grace Scanlan McDermott,
Atty. James C. Orenstein and Susan Z. Lynn for their
cheerful help in matters of
library science, Latin, law, and adoption, respectively.

Very special thanks to Lizzie Grossman,
dear and faithful agent,
and to Stacy Schiff, ideal editor.

Then She
Found
Me

M
y biological mother was seventeen when she had me in 1952, and even that was more than I wanted to know about her. I had no romantic notions about the coupling that had produced me, not about her being cheerleader to his football captain or au pair to his Rockefeller. When I thought about it at all, this is what I imagined: two faceless and cheap teenagers doing it listlessly in the unfinished basement where they jitterbugged unchaperoned.

“Adopted” was never a label that made me flinch. Its meaning within our family was “hand-selected,” “star-crossed,” “precious.” I loved the story of my parents’ first glimpse of me at the agency, how I solemnly studied their faces—hers, his, back to hers—then grinned. I was raised to be glad that the unlucky teenage girl couldn’t keep me; the last thing I wanted was some stranger for a mother. Still, I slept with a light on in my bedroom until I was twelve, afraid she’d exercise her rights.

Later it annoyed me. The teenage girl annoyed me, nothing more. Could she ever have worn real maternity clothes or taken a single prenatal vitamin on my behalf? Here is where I remember to feel relief and gratitude and say, no matter. I am healthy, happy, better off. It is a lucky thing she didn’t keep me. I’d barely have finished high school. I’d have become a beautician or a licensed practical nurse, and I would think I had a glamorous career. The grittier I made it the more righteous I felt. I invented these jitterbugging teenagers when I was in junior high school, as my adoptive parents began to look old. I voted against the irresponsible kids, emphatically for the Epners. My story suited me and I grew to believe it. I did not attend support groups for adoptees and I did not search for anyone.

Then she found me.

A
Boston Globe
staff photographer took the picture on a sunny Sunday. “One more time,” read the headline. “April Epner, 3 ½, makes her displeasure known as swan boat ride—first of the season—ends. Parents Gertrude and Julius Epner of Providence promise another.” In pony tails and clutching a miniature pocketbook to my chest, I howl adorably. Trude and Julius smile at each other over my barretted head, the smile of doting parents whose Sunday outing has succeeded beyond their fondest hopes. Wire services picked up the
Globe
photo and sent it out on the national wire with a new headline: “Make way for ducts.” It was used by newspapers all over New England and in odd spots where harbinger-of-spring photos were in short supply. Julius wrote to the
Globe
’s photo librarian expressing his interest in a glossy print, which he matted and framed alongside its grainy, newsprint twin.

*  *  *

In downtown Boston, Bernice Graverman passed the brass plaque that read “Florence Cohn Agency” on a lunch-hour excursion. She thought, It’s fate that made me get off the trolley at Boylston. I didn’t mean to, but now that I’m here I must go up. She was pleased with the way she looked that day in her camel’s-hair coat from the store’s Washington’s Birthday sale, and she had good news. She checked her brown pageboy, her lipstick, and the seams in her stockings before taking the elevator to the fourth floor. “Is Mrs. Prince here?” she asked the receptionist.

“There’s no one here by that name,” she was told.