Then She Found Me (17 page)

A housewife in the first row would say, unamplified, “The father of your child?”

Bernice would nod to her audience, her best friends for this half-hour, with disbelief and reverence. Do you believe what is whirling around me? Do you believe what you’re seeing? This, this man; this reunion; this bone-deep personal moment?

Bernice would turn to Jack. “Why?” she would ask. “What are you feeling right now?”

He would smile nervously, search the audience for empathetic male eyes. Hey, guys! Help me out here! I got laid and she got pregnant. Now I’m supposed to feel something?

I sketched the fantasy for Dwight, but added that it was not what I wanted. A photo was enough, perhaps a photo of him as he was then, the young Jack Flynn who looked like a young JFK and who had seduced Bernice. I told Dwight that if he had to pursue this Jack Flynn thing to some kind of conclusion he should, in the interest of research, start with Bernice. She might tell him whatever she was hiding from me.

I called her Wednesday.

I expected her at least to pretend she was delighted that things were going well and that I had thought to report in. But she was quiet and distant, and I was sorry I had called. I asked if something was wrong. She said she was busy. Work was getting to her today.

“I thought you’d like to know,” I said.

“I do.”

I should have said, “Okay, catch you another time.” But I kept trying to engage her. Dwight was coming for dinner tomorrow night…. I thought I’d make that shrimp over linguini she had made for me … a salad.

No reaction, just a disembodied silence.

“And something chocolate for dessert,” I added.

She murmured something affirmative, still distant.

Usually I peeled myself away, begged to get off the phone and back to class. This time I was the one who pressed, “Talk to you soon?”

D
wight arrived promptly at six-thirty. He had gotten a haircut since I’d seen him at school; when he kissed me hello, I smelled the clove scent of barber’s talcum. “Delicious,” I said, resting against him, our first stand-up embrace.

He had tapes of two movies and a chilled bottle of white wine—a Sancerre, he said.

I told him I still had my collegiate corkscrew, the bamboo kind from Varsity Liquors on Mass. Ave.

“I had one of those.”

“I keep meaning to get a decent one.”

“I’m sure it’s fine.”

I stood in one spot while he helped himself to a hanger in the coat closet. He stopped what he was doing. “Is something bothering you?”

I gestured around my apartment. “I don’t grind my own beans. My dishes have pink and gray sprays of flowers
on them. My albums are a catalogue of Coop markdowns, nineteen seventy to seventy-four.”

Dwight hung up his raincoat and closed the closet door with deliberation. He walked into the living room and assembled himself easily in my rocker. “I love your apartment. It looks like Harvard Square meets turn-of-the-century Vienna.”

“It’s my parents’ piano, and the teacups were my mother’s anniversary collection. Freddie doesn’t want his girlfriends to think he collects knickknacks, so I took them. They’re not exactly my taste either.”

He smiled and rocked.

“What?”

“Are you going to apologize all night?”

“No,” I said.

“Don’t be a nervous hostess,” Dwight said.

“I am.”

“Maybe we should have gone out to dinner. I invited myself over without giving you an out.”

“I wanted you to come.”

“It’s just that I’m your most cool and urbane dinner guest, so you’re a little flustered?”

I laughed.

“Good. Enjoy yourself. I know you’re thrilled to have me.”

“I am,” I said, and I stopped smiling. I stared into his face. He studied mine to see if something was wrong, if my silence was an unhappy one. I walked up to his chair, so close that he had to stop rocking.

He loved my dinner, or at least praised every ingredient. Capers in scampi was a stroke of brilliance; black-pepper fettucini!

So easy, I said. Cut back on the garlic, add some lemon juice. Don’t overcook the shrimp.

We drank his entire bottle of Sancerre and left the kitchen, happy to stagger on to the living room couch like sitcom lovers under the influence of unaccustomed wine.

“Let’s make out,” said Dwight.

And just as it happens with sitcom lovers, after we had just started kissing, after his lovely hands had slipped to the back of my neck, the doorbell rang. We jumped. I waited for the interval it would take for a caller to ring a second time, assuming it had been a mispressed button, a false alarm. But the bell sounded again. Dwight gave me a boost up to my feet and I spoke into the intercom.

“It’s me—Bernice,” said the voice. “Can I come up?”

I turned to Dwight before buzzing her in. “Bernice,” I mouthed. He shrugged as if interested, as if letting Bernice in wasn’t the worst catastrophe to befall a second date. “I can’t believe it. She’s never dropped over here,” I said.

“Better buzz her in,” said Dwight.

I said no. I was going down to the lobby to explain to her that I had company and that it was an inconvenient time. The buzzer rang again.

“Be right down,” I called into it.

“Oh, let her up,” said Dwight. “She won’t stay when she sees me.”

“I wanted to be alone with you.”

Dwight pulled me by the hand until I let myself fall back onto his lap. He tipped me back for a Hollywood kiss as if to say, “Just wait.”

I got up from the couch and buzzed Bernice in. Seconds later, she was knocking at my door.

“Of all people to take it out on,” she said, embracing me and releasing me quickly.

“What?”

“The show!” She was several steps into the apartment and had just received some innate cue to pretend to be surprised by Dwight’s presence. “Oh, no,” she said,
pressing my arm to stop both of us. “You have company!”

Dwight stood up, looking enormous. Not enthusiastically I said, “You remember Dwight.”

Bernice swept toward him, murmuring apologies to him and back over her shoulder to me.

“I mentioned on the phone when I called you that Dwight was coming for dinner,” I said pointedly.

Bernice stopped her march and said simply, “You did, didn’t you?”

“I said I was making shrimp.”

“Mea culpa,”
said Bernice. “It totally flew out of my mind until now. That’s the state I’m in.”

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“We’re stopping production and going into reruns for the summer,” she said. “Do you believe it!”

“Is that bad?” asked Dwight.

“A talk show?” she asked.

“Not good?” said Dwight.

“I have a time line,” she explained. “I get newsmakers and headliners—topical ones. Not six months late. I get the ones who are in the middle of their fifteen minutes of fame—you’re familiar with the Warhol quote?”

Dwight smiled.

“I’m effectively off the air.”

“That’s too bad,” said Dwight.

“It’s not the first time they’ve pulled this one, believe me.”

“And you never went off the air any of those other times?” I said.

“But this is different.” Bernice sat down heavily on the couch. I sat down next to her, and Dwight took the rocker again. She looked around the room, remembering it was her first view of my apartment. “Cute,” she said.

“Thanks.”

“I know this is a breach of etiquette, bursting in on your little date. I should excuse myself and exit gracefully. But this whole mess goes beyond social convention. I had to see April; I instinctively reached out for her.”

Dwight smiled politely. “I’m sure April is happy to help.”

“Of course she is. She is a compassionate person.”

Cued, I asked a compassionate question. “Tell us why this time is worse than the other crises.”

“One word,” said Bernice. “One fucking word: ‘Donahue.’”

Dwight, doing Dracula in sunlight, recoiled, protecting his face with crossed hands. I giggled.

“They’re putting ‘Donahue’ in the nine-to-ten slot.”

“Why is that fatal?” I asked.

“Followed by ‘Hour Magazine’? Where do you suppose they’ll find room for a lowly local show?”

“How long have you been on?” asked Dwight.

“Eleven years.”

“And the show is popular?”

Bernice set her lips primly. “It’s carved its niche in Boston television,” she said.

“They wouldn’t just fire you,” I said.

“No, you’re right. They’d merely insult me by offering me a half-hour on Sunday morning.”

“Just Sunday?” asked Dwight.

“Eight
A.M.
As I said, ‘effectively off the air.’”

“What does your contract say?” he asked.

“My contract,” she repeated. “Who the hell knows? No protection, I assure you.”

“You should probably have a lawyer look at it. Even if they have the right to cancel the show, maybe there’s some due process you’re not getting.”

Bernice ignored his comment and said, “A Sunday
morning show has a certain religious ambience to it. Do you think they’re going to let me have call girls and male strippers on Sunday morning?”

“You don’t know that for sure,” I said.

“Boston television on the Sabbath. That’s the unspoken guideline.”

“You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to,” said Dwight.

Bernice looked at him with discovery and amazement. She smiled brilliantly. “Jesus Christ—this man is
right
. I don’t have to do a goddamn thing I don’t want to do! I can say, Fuck you. No, thanks. I don’t need your eight
A.M.
Sunday charity slot.”

I looked at Dwight to see if he was flattered by her revelation. He sneaked a look at me, moving just his eyes, signaling that her performance was being noted.

“The word will get out, ” she continued. “I’ll see that the word gets out that‘Bernice G!’is looking for a new home.”

“There’s always cable,” I said.

“I don’t know why this came as such a shock to me. I’m old for television, for a woman on television. They love their men
distinguished
—Donahue was nobody before he went gray—but they like their women to look like models in
Seventeen.”

“Do you think that’s the issue this time?” I said.

“It is and it isn’t,” said Bernice. She signaled interest in a new topic by looking squarely at the remnants of cheese and crackers on an end table. “What kind of cheese was that?” she asked.

“Smoked Gouda and Brie,” I said.

“With peppercorns,” said Dwight.

She smiled coyly at me.

“Are you hungry?” I asked.

“Starved!” she shrieked happily.

I went into the kitchen and returned with a box of cream crackers.

“You’re a doll,” she said.

“We finished the wine,” I said.

“Anything—soda, Perrier,” she said between bites.

“Diet Coke?”

“Fabulous. I’ll chug it down and get outta here, pronto.”

Dwight stood up and said he’d get it.

“How tall are you?” she asked.

“Six-five.”

“Ever play sports?” she asked.

Dwight said no, not seriously. He disappeared into the kitchen. Bernice didn’t look at me, didn’t try to catch my eye or signal her approval of him. When he returned with the can, half-emptied into a glass, she accepted both with excessive gratitude.

“Would you like anything?” he asked me. I shook my head no and smiled fondly.

Bernice caught the smile. It didn’t seem to please her. “Were you named after Eisenhower?” she asked.

“My parents say I wasn’t. They just liked the name.”

“April was going to be named Gabrielle,” said Bernice. “Her father’s mother’s name was Gabrielle.”

“It was?” I said.

She turned to Dwight. “I assume you inferred from our last meeting that I’m April’s real mother?”

Dwight said yes. He’d known from the beginning.

“I’d love to know what she’s told you,” Bernice said.

Dwight smiled a polite circulation-desk smile and said, “April hasn’t told me too much about her real father or even who he is.” It was a researcher talking, one who asked potentially embarrassing questions with equanimity.

Bernice didn’t give the easy answer. I almost said for
her, “His name was Jack Flynn,” but sensed that Dwight was conducting his own test. When she did say “Jack Flynn,” it sounded deliberate, as if two adults were talking about the tooth fairy with a child present.

“She didn’t tell you?” asked Bernice.

“It was confusing,” he said.

Bernice, settling in, opened her handbag and withdrew her cigarettes and lighter. “Confusing?” she repeated archly. “You can imagine what it was like to live through it.”

“Bad?” asked Dwight.

“The worst.”

I went in to the kitchen to get a saucer for her to use as an ashtray. I put it on her lap and said, “Things have turned out pretty well for you, all in all.”

“She hates me,” Bernice said blandly.

“No, I don’t.”

“Every time I talk about what I went through, you get defensive and take it personally. All I’m saying is, you don’t know what it was like.”

We were supposed to respond by asking for the missing details. We said nothing. Her time was up; we wanted to be alone. Bernice posed, smoking artfully, and waited. I took her dirty glass and the drying cheese into the kitchen. I heard Dwight say after an awkward silence, “I’m going to ask April if she’d like help with the dishes.”