Then She Found Me (13 page)

“I’m not sure what you’re talking about,” I said.

“Calling someone up out of the blue and making small talk. I’m not very good at it.”

Instead of being helpful and saying, “Not at all. You’re doing fine,” I said, “You were calling me about … ?”

“Going out some time!”

“I think there’s been some mistake,” I said.

“Are you April?”

“Yes, but Bernice didn’t discuss this with me first. I wouldn’t have agreed to it.”

“She said you were tough,” said Bob, pleased with a confirmation of sorts.

“I don’t do blind dates. Bernice took this upon herself without asking me first.”

“She said you’d put up a fight. She told me to be persistent. Anyway, what’ve you got to lose?”

“Look,” I said, “it’s nothing personal, but I’m seeing someone.”

“Oh, that’s it,” said Bob.

“That’s it,” I said. “Too bad Bernice didn’t ask me first. It would have saved you the trouble.”

“She doesn’t know about it?”

“No.”

“She told me she’s your mother.”

“She is.”

Bob laughed. “But who tells their mother everything, right?”

“We’re not very close,” I said.

“Not to hear her talk.”

“I was going to tell her one of these days. But you want a relationship to jell before you bring your parents in, you know what I mean?”

“Yeah,” said Bob.

“She’s quite opinionated.”

“And she might not like this guy?”

“Why do you say that?” I asked.

He laughed nervously. “She’s a tough cookie. And
you’re it, her one and only. Kind of puts the pressure on.”

“She doesn’t run my life,” I said.

“Well …” said Bob. “What can I say? Good for you. I hope it works out. With your mother, with the guy. Invite me to your wedding.”

“You’re a good sport,” I told him. “Considering.”

“It’s a crapshoot,” said Bob. “You can’t take it too personally when a girl turns you down if she’s never even laid eyes on you. At least you were nice about it.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“Want me to break the news to your mother?”

“Which news?”

“About the guy. She’d love hearing there’s someone. I get the feeling she’d be relieved.” He laughed. “She must’ve felt a little desperate to tap me for the job.”

“Au contraire,”
I said politely.

“Well, April—nice name—if things don’t work out with this guy, you know where to find me.”

“Thank you,” I said. “I will.”

“What’ll I say if Bernice asks me what happened? I know she will.”

“Tell her I refused. You don’t have to put yourself in the middle of anything.”

“I told her I’d work at it, though.”

“Some people hate blind dates. She’ll assume I’m like that.”

“Are you?” asked Bob. “Actually?”

“Yes,” I said.

“How’d you meet this guy you’re seeing?”

“I can’t really talk,” I said. “I should call Bernice up and straighten this out.”

“Okay,” said Bob. “I don’t want to be obnoxious. So … lots of luck. Have a nice life. Call me if I can ever do anything for you.”

I said, Thanks, I would.

“And don’t come down too hard on your mother. She saw me around and thought, Someone ought to snatch this guy up! Might as well keep him in the family.” He laughed unconvincingly.

“I’m sure she did,” I said. “But I’ve got to go now.”

“Take care,” said Bob. “And good luck.”

“You, too,” I said.

There was a message in my box by the end of first period Monday. “Call your mother at the station.” I waited until lunch and called from Anne-Marie’s phone.

“Don’t you have something to tell me?” Bernice coaxed.

“Do I?”

“A man in your life? Someone serious enough to make you reject the overtures of other interested men? I’m all ears.”

I rubbed my eyelids with my thumb and forefinger. Anne-Marie perked up. I said, “Didn’t you figure out I was making that up?”

“You can’t talk now,” she said. “Is that it?”

“Yes, I can. There’s nothing to tell.”

“You made up some romance to get Bob off the scent?”

“Right.”

“Shit,” said Bernice. “Shit, fuck, piss.”

“Don’t you ever tell a white lie to get off the hook? Or do you accept dates with every strange man who calls you up?”

“That’s different.”

“Why?”

“I have all sorts of crackpots calling me. I’m a television
personality. You’re a Latin teacher. This particular guy was hand selected by me.”

“Look—it’s not worth getting agitated over this. You don’t see me mooning over a lost date, and I’m the one who’s allegedly missing out.”

“You missed the point, April—I could give a crap about Bob Turits. But when he told me that you were in love with another man, I got excited. I didn’t know you were capable of thinking on your feet that fast—in social situations, that is. I assumed you had to be telling the truth.”

I laughed and said I thought there was a compliment buried in there somewhere.

“You’ll notice I’m not laughing,” she said dourly.

“Forget it. It wouldn’t have worked out anyway.”

“You know that for a fact? A sixty-second phone conversation and you
know
it wouldn’t have worked out? This is what depresses me more than anything.”

“It’s not your problem, though, is it?”

“I’ll concentrate on the up-side of this,” she said. “There
is
an up-side to this setback, you know.”

“I’m glad,” I said, careful not to ask what that was.

“A little voice inside me was saying, ‘It’s that librarian. He’s the reason April’s turning away blind dates with good-looking guys. He’s the mystery man.’ So in that regard, I’m relieved.”

I didn’t say anything. Bernice said, “Did you hear what I said?”

I turned my back so Anne-Marie wouldn’t hear, wrapping myself in the cord.

“April?”

I told her I had to get off. Really. I’d gotten memos about phone abuse.

“Do they understand ‘important’ there? Can’t they distinguish between truant parents and real life?”

“That’s it for today, then? The bad news and the good? I’ve got everything in perspective and we can both go back to the drawing board?”

I handed the phone to Anne-Marie and said, my hand over the mouthpiece, “I can’t get her off. You try.”

My choices for lunch were: return to the faculty room and talk about my roots with Frank Scanlon and the rest of the private club, or keep Dwight company in the library.

I crossed the overpass between buildings, passed Helen Langevin and Harold Drouin on their way to the lunch-room. They both telegraphed friendly, quizzical looks—No lunch today? Aren’t you going in the wrong direction? “I have a meeting,” I said, passing one, then the other. “A meeting.”

The library door was closed, Dwight’s lunchtime convention. Through the glass panel I saw him at his customary table, holding a disk of pita bread in his left hand and a pen in his right. He was writing, stopping, thinking, writing on yellow math paper. He finished, folded the page, wrote something on the outside. He tipped his chair back and reached behind—the window didn’t give me the peripheral vision to see where—and came back with a stapler. He stapled the note closed, three times on every side. Another reach with his long arm to set the note a safe, clean distance from the food and the coffee; a return to lunch—a bite of pita bread after its dip into something salad-like. I didn’t knock or go in; I couldn’t interrupt him, even now, even with the task finished and stapled, ready to be posted. I went back to my empty classroom to eat at my desk. It was one thing to find the yellow note in my mailbox and carry it away for a private reading, another
to collect it in person and confess I had spied on its creation.

The note appeared in my mailbox after fifth period. It said only, “Dear April, Don’t you have an overdue library book—or something? Yours, D.W.”

A
nne-Marie was cutting out an article from
USA Today
when I walked into the main office. “Checks are in,” she said. I emptied my mailbox. One yellow note, one pink telephone message. “Here,” she said, handing me the clipping. “Might come in handy.”

It was advice distilled from a how-to book on keeping office romances discreet. The author had eight important don’ts: Don’t close the door if you’re in an office alone together. Don’t pick lint, threads, or dandruff off your lover’s shoulder in public unless you do this for everyone. Don’t kiss or touch each other at the office. Don’t sit together at staff meetings. Don’t travel together; stagger your travel schedules even if you’re rendezvousing later. Don’t send love notes through in-house mail. Don’t use your secretaries as go-betweens. Don’t commute to work together or leave work together in the evening.

“Why did you give this to me?” I asked Anne-Marie.

“I think you know,” she said.

I dropped it on her desk and walked toward the door.

“I’ve got eyes,” she said. “And I’ve got ears.”

I walked back to her desk, checking for eavesdroppers. “And what do you think you’re seeing and hearing?”

She poked the bridge of her nose, once, twice.

“Cut that out,” I said.

She smiled smartly. The proof she needed. “I’ve got eyes,” she said.

“You need glasses.”

Anne-Marie pointed an unbending finger at the mail-boxes. Today’s long-sleeved leotard was a deep burgundy. “What’s with the notes, then? Two today, one yesterday, one Friday.”

“Do you read my mail?”

“I don’t have to read it! And I heard about dinner.”

“Did Bernice say anything to you?”

“Of course. She tells me everything. I don’t ask for it, but she unloads on me. She’s all hot and bothered over this.”

“And what do you say?” I asked after a few moments.

“I say, ‘It’s none of my business who April likes.’”

I picked up the clipping and waved it in her face.

Anne-Marie batted away the piece of paper. “What are you afraid of?” she whispered, her eyes darting in an automatic office check. “This is the twentieth century. You won’t get fired for dating another teacher.”

“Dating? We’re light-years away from anything resembling a date.”

“Why? Because you’re both retarded? Go ask him.
Jesus
. You think he’s going to turn you down? He’ll die of happiness, that’s all.”

The bell rang and the corridor stampede began. “It might be all in my head,” I said.

“It’s not,” she said firmly. “What’s your other excuse?” I cocked my head toward the masses in the corridor.

“They’re brutal.”

“So what? You’re entitled to a life.”

“They’re hard enough on him,” I said softly.

“Cut the shit, April,” said Anne-Marie.

I returned Bernice’s call from a phone booth so the operator could cut me off after three minutes.

“Did I do the right thing in turning down Ted’s proposal?” she asked.

“I think you did.”

“I taped a show this morning with a jealousy expert. He said marriage sometimes tames the impulse because the person feels more secure.”

“Ted’s nuts, though. You’re probably only remembering the good parts in retrospect.”

“You’re right,” she said. “I really know that in my heart of hearts.”

I hesitated, then said, “Are you a little down?”

“Of course I’m down. I’m fifty-three years old with no social or sexual prospects.”

“You have more prospects than anyone I’ve ever known. You always meet people.”

“I’m going to stop looking. Seriously. I don’t need a man to validate my existence. I’ve got a career that’s totally fulfilling; a daughter … in fact, a daughter I can use as a role model, who is independent, who doesn’t look at her life and see it as half empty. You’ve taught me that.”

“I have?”

“By example. You have your life, your work. You don’t bitch and moan about Saturday nights and about your biological clock. I’d like to think that some of that came from me—maybe from some latent part of me I haven’t used yet.”

“I think about men,” I said.

“Of course you do. But you’re not obsessed with them. It’s a marvelous way to be.”

“I think about them a lot. I just don’t talk about it all the time.”

“Which isn’t healthy, either, you know. But that I blame on your Germanic upbringing.”

I paused and said, “That may be.”

“Really?” said Bernice. “You’re acknowledging that?”

“They discouraged a lot of things. Some men, some opportunities …”

“I want you to come to dinner tonight,” said Bernice.

I stayed in the phone booth and opened my note from Dwight: “April—New bean today, Zimbabwe. Yours, D.W.” I wrote back below it, unsigned, my handwriting cramped to its tiniest script, “Are you doing anything Sat. nite?”

I went there after school, to the library. Dwight stood behind the circulation desk talking to a student. He looked up, smiled, and said, “Miss Epner.”

I signaled, Go ahead. I’ll wait.

I watched him. I saw that a V-necked sweater over a flannel shirt filled out his upper body. I saw that he had a fine nose. Eyes. I just stood there pretending to wait my turn with Mr. Willamee. And I thought: If he looks up again, he’ll know.

The student was saying, “She goes, ‘Not
Catcher in the Rye
and not
A Separate Peace
. Everybody picks them.’”