Then She Found Me (27 page)

“Bingo,” I say.

Bernice says bitterly, “He’s straightforward, as opposed to me. I’m not to be trusted.”

I smile and say, “No one ever accused you of being straightforward, Bernice.” I even give her shoulders a jiggle until I elicit a pathetic smile. She puts her fingertips to her temples again. “Something in him appeals to you. Something about his … pragmatism. I can see it. I really can.”

“He just said what he felt.”

“Which was less flattering to some of us than to others.”

“What do you mean?”

“‘We got married for one reason only and that’s because you were pregnant’? That is
crap
. I wouldn’t have married him just to make you legitimate. He was nuts about me, not that he’d admit it.”

“Do you think he was lying on the show?”

“He put Bernice Graves in her place, didn’t he? ‘You think you’re so unforgettable? Well, all I remember is a
positive pregnancy test.’ That was clearly his message today. He was nuts about me! Yes, I was pregnant, but he was plenty happy to marry me. No one had to stick a gun to his head. And don’t you find it highly significant that he never remarried or had more kids?”

“He wasn’t divorced.”

“Big deal! Neither was I. That only means something if you want it to.”

“Maybe it’s painful for him to remember the good times,” I say.

Bernice closes her eyes, purses her lips. Shakes her head, No, April. Wrong again.

D
wight’s parents are in their late sixties, tall and plain like living Shakers. He has told me they won’t fuss over me or express gratitude or relief for pairing up with their bachelor son; they didn’t realize, he says, that he was past his prime and unloved. He smiles when he says this and I do, too; we both love his rescue version.

“Have you ever brought a woman home to meet them before?” I ask.

“Not like this,” says Dwight.

I ask if this means they won’t have any basis for comparison. Will they think he fell for the first skirt who got into his pants?

Dwight prods his chest with a macho thumb: he’s his own man. He doesn’t need his parents’ two cents. He picks his own women, baby.

“What if they hate me?” I ask.

“If they hate you … they can get someone else to shovel their sidewalk,” he answers.

“You’d do that for me?”

“Hell, yes,” he says.

We don’t kiss hello or good-bye, but we get along fine. Trude and Julius would have greeted Dwight with the same distance. I understand the Willamees’ reserve and almost admire it. His sister Lorraine is there to check me out, too, and to give the kind of mock warnings that big sisters are bound by the laws of filial teasing to dispense. I learn that he was called Butch, even Butchie. I rise and say regretfully that I can’t marry someone named Butch.

Mr. and Mrs. Willamee look to their children for an explanation. Their hearing is bad. “A joke,” Lorraine says, no louder than I had spoken. They hear her, though, and smile wanly.

Mrs. Willamee serves broiled scrod—in case I observe the dietary laws, she says.

“You could have asked me,” says Dwight.

I tell her I don’t. She tells me her dearest neighbors when they lived in their old house in Watertown were a family named Stern.

“Get it?” says Dwight loudly. “Stern? Jewish.”

His parents tsk-tsk him. Lorraine gives Dwight a look of such complex camaraderie—c’mon, you know what they’re trying to say; don’t make fun of them, they don’t get it, don’t think it as funny as you and I and April find it—that I want shares in this Willamee-children conspiracy. I ask about the other sister so I can fully picture our team. I know Carleen is older, married, living in New Hampshire, with two children, but I want to hear the collective version.

“Carleen,” says Mr. Willamee.

“The good one,” says Lorraine under her breath.

“She has children, right?”

“A boy and a girl,” everyone says happily. Jason and Lauren.

“How old?” I ask.

“Nine and eleven,” says Mrs. Willamee.

“Almost ten and twelve,” says Mr. Willamee.

“They’re very excited about Dwight getting married,” his mother says. She pronounces his name carefully as if she’s rehearsed dumping “Butch.”

I smile and say the correct thing about their not being the only ones who are excited. It’s not really true: I rarely enjoy parties and I never give them. Weddings are for families, and I don’t have one. Dwight and I are doing the polite thing.

Mrs. Willamee returns the courtesy of asking about siblings. She understands I have a brother?

“Freddie,” I say.

“Older or younger?” Lorraine asks.

“Younger. Twenty-nine.”

Mrs. Willamee says, “You’re very close in age, then?”

“Seven years.”

Her calculations strain the muscles of her face. Hasn’t Dwight told her I am thirty-six, old to be their son’s bride?

“Is he married?” asks Lorraine.

“No.”

“Divorced?”

The Willamees tsk-tsk again. Lorraine apologizes with exaggerated contrition. “Forgive me, April. I know that was a horribly rude question. What must you think of me?”

I smile a smile which I hope is sisterly in its overlapping messages. “No problem,” I say.

“Well? Is he?”

“Never been married,” I answer.

“A handsome young fellow,” says Dwight. “And fond of the ladies. Not unlike myself.”

I laugh, the only one. “You’ll meet him at the wedding, of course,” I say.

“When do you think you’ll do it?” Lorraine asks.

“As soon as school gets out.”

“What day?” asks Lorraine.

Dwight and I say we haven’t pinned it down yet.

Mrs. Willamee instructs her son to bring the calendar from the cellar door. “When does school get out?” she asks, as Dwight complies.

Dwight and I aren’t sure. The twenty-first, twenty-third? We’d have to check.

Mrs. Willamee leafs ahead to June, then July, back to June.

“How about Saturday the twenty-fifth? Because the next weekend will run into the holiday.”

“Can’t,” says Dwight.

“Actually,” I say, “we could if that’s best for everyone.”

Dwight tells them I am being overly accommodating. Jews don’t get married on Saturday and there isn’t any need to catholicize our plans.

“Are you religious?” asks Lorraine.

“No,” I say.

“There are five other days to choose from without stepping on anyone’s Sabbath,” Dwight says.

“Can your people get married on a weekday?” asks his mother.

“Yes,” says Dwight. “Her people can. So can my people.”

Mrs. Willamee looks at the calendar. It has taken on the complexity of an actuarial table now that Saturdays and Sundays have been eliminated.

“What day do you like?” Dwight asks me, gently transferring the calendar from his mother to me.

“I think it’s going to have to be midweek if we want to get a place for the reception. Most of these places are booked a year in advance.”

We consult the calendar. Monday, June 27? There shouldn’t be much going on that day. He points and I nod my agreement.

A Monday wedding. How nice, they say.

“Who will be officiating?” Mrs. Willamee asks quietly. “A priest and a rabbi?”

“We thought a justice of the peace,” I say.

“I suppose that would be the easiest way,” she says. After a pause she adds, “That means it won’t be a church wedding.”

“Correct,” says Dwight.

No one asks about my parents. It is a complicated subject for get-acquainted conversation. I raise the topic by saying, “Dwight probably told you that my parents are dead—”

“Yes, dear,” says Mrs. Willamee. She reaches for plates and begins scraping them onto hers. Enough of that uncomfortable subject.

“Did he tell you that my birth parents are alive, and will be at the wedding?”

Mrs. Willamee’s eyes brighten. “He did tell us. I hope to meet her.”

“The woman on TV,” says Mr. Willamee.

“Bernice G!” says his wife.

“And my father’s name is Jack Remuzzi. Dwight told you they were separated for thirty-five years and that Dwight found my father in two phone calls?”

“I’m looking forward to that show where she has him on,” says Mrs. Willamee. “Dwight says they talked about you.”

“That may never get aired. Jack doesn’t want it to. In
fact they’re not speaking to each other because of it.” I realize immediately that I have revealed more than they want to know, that they don’t thrill to the kind of personal offerings I mete out to Bernice.

“Won’t that be a bit awkward at the wedding?” Lorraine offers.

“No,” says Dwight. “They both want things to be right with April.”

“What do
you
want?” Lorraine asks me. I am startled by the forthrightness of the question. A succinct answer would be: I want them to be different. I want Bernice to be more like Jack. I want Jack to be more like my adoptive father. I want Trude and Julius to be alive; I want no complicating ghosts of saintly adoptive parents as models. I want Jack and Bernice to be the only parental package, so I could be the tolerant daughter of flawed parents—like you and them.

Instead I say, “I just want them to be guests.”

Mr. and Mrs. Willamee listen. They seem to accept it as if practiced in accepting the bewildering life-style decisions of modern children.

“Whatever is comfortable for April,” says Mr. Willamee.

“Do you want your brother involved?” asks Lorraine.

“Sure,” I say.

She asks if we are close. I choose the simplest answer and say that we are.

“So—you’re doing a quiet little number, then. Just immediate family?”

“And some friends,” I say, thinking of Anne-Marie and one or two colleagues.

Lorraine asks what I’ll be wearing.

“God only knows,” Dwight says dryly.

I explain: I am letting Bernice take me to her favorite
designer who will create my wedding outfit. It is her gift; she has insisted.

“Bernice won’t be able to live with herself for the fifteen minutes she’ll be watching the ceremony if April’s dress doesn’t suit her—if it’s not exactly what Bernice would wear. So her subtle way of doing things is to say ‘I’ll take over. I’ll design it. I’ll pay for it. I’ll produce and direct it.’” Dwight finishes his diatribe.

Lorraine and her parents are unmoved. Bernice’s actions do not offend them the way they offend me. So? they seem to be thinking. Of course she buys the dress; she’s the bride’s mother. It’s the way of the world.

Dwight says, “April will be a beautiful bride whatever she wears, don’t you think?”

The Willamees nod politely. They don’t offer any further compliments. Dwight looks worried for me over their lack of enthusiasm. He walks around the table to my chair and bends over to kiss me on the lips. It is seconds longer than a perfunctory public kiss would be. It is a declaration of independence, I think, a contract between us. The Willamees look on. Surely if he’s ever brought a woman home, he’s never kissed one in front of them. I mouth, “Thanks.”

He says aloud, “You’re welcome.”

B
ernice and I go for consultations on two consecutive Friday afternoons, but we make no progress on my dress. We have talked Lucia out of black silk and out of brown velvet. I keep saying, “I don’t understand what’s wrong with white.”

Lucia with the blond brush cut sets her lips; she is an artist and has no policy about the customer always being right. Bernice believes in her and acts as mediator, unhappy with my white and Lucia’s black. She has narrowed her preferences to the swatches labeled “Poppy,” “Melon,” “Inferno,” and “Burpee Big Boy.” I say no, no, no, no, to all the reds. Aren’t they bothered by the connotations of a red wedding dress?

Bernice says that’s exactly why it would be so wonderful—the Latin teacher and the librarian in their singular and quiet devotion to each other saying “fuck you” to the
world. She says we’re not exactly the Barbie and Ken statues on top of a wedding cake. Why not have fun, tease the guests?

I say, “No reds or oranges. I’m not trying to make a point, especially a half-baked one.”

“What do you
want?”
Lucia asks.

“Pastels are nice for early summer,” I say.