Then She Found Me (20 page)

“What brought you up here in the middle of the week?” she asked Freddie.

“April and I had dinner together.”

“At the Athenian Gardens,” I added.

Bernice raised her arms above her head and snapped her fingers—Greek dancing from the waist up. Dwight and I exchanged our Bernice-being-Bernice look. “I had the most marvelous show with Greek-Americans during the
primaries,” she said. “Greek pride and all that. Half of them were restaurateurs who gave a fortune to Dukakis.”

I said, “There’s a thousand dollar limit on individual contributions.”

Bernice gave Freddie an indulgent, bonding smile, one that said, Is this the kind of technical, unemotional conversations you’ve endured with her your whole life?

Freddie said, “I think I saw that show. It was really interesting.”

“You didn’t really,” said Bernice.

“I must’ve been home sick. It rings a bell.”

“Was it all men on the show?” I asked.

Bernice looked at me squarely. “April thinks I’m boy crazy. But what she fails to understand is that I’m unattached, that I feel as
young”
—she leaned into the word to press every drop of sexual essence out of it—“as I ever did … and none of that is a crime. Yes! I like men.
Mea culpa!”
She smiled, happy to employ Latin in an argument against me.

Dwight said, “We wouldn’t want it any other way, Bernice. It enriches our lives immeasurably.”

Bernice smiled uncertainly. Was Dwight making fun of her or defending her?

“You’re a hot ticket,” Freddie said.

“The hottest,” I said.

“You must meet a lot of men who want to go out with a TV star,” said Freddie.

Bernice raised her face to the ceiling, exhaled a mouthful of cigarette smoke, and said, “Ha!”

“No?”

“You’d think so, wouldn’t you?”

“Yeah,” said Freddie.

“People don’t think I’m approachable. They’re intimidated by me. Men don’t ask for my phone number like they would an ordinary person. They think I’m not going
to give them the time of day, that I’m only interested in power or fame or money—”

“It’s lonely at the top,” I said.

“There you go again,” she said.

“You ask for it when you feed me such perfect straight lines.”

“It’s simple,” she said, ignoring me. “I’m like everyone else. Looking for … love, if I dare use the word.”

Freddie perked up. He had the answer to “looking for love” in his lap and he was happy to employ it. He said to me, the first time he had addressed me since Bernice’s arrival, “It’s really hard to find people out there. I don’t think you and Dwight know what it’s like in the real world. You found each other at school. You didn’t have to scrape and claw your way through the bar scene. I know what Bernice is saying.”

Bernice stared at Freddie for a few seconds. She turned to me and said, “Where have you been hiding this brother of yours?”

“I just met him for the first time myself,” said Dwight.

Bernice smiled painfully. She could have cared less about Dwight’s ideas. You couldn’t flirt with Dwight successfully; you couldn’t
perform
for Dwight and get any satisfaction. None of her tricks worked with him.

Freddie twisted around in the booth to see the bar. “Any food?” he said, searching for clues. Bernice studied him. She looked at his profile, measured his shoulders, hoping to be caught, I thought. On his way back around, he smiled at her.

This is remarkable, I thought. This ease. This purposefulness. He doesn’t have to do anything besides look handsome and emit endorphins.

“You can’t be hungry?” I said to him. Freddie hunched his shoulders and smiled winningly. Boys will be boys. Burgers and fries and shakes all day long.
“I could have a bite,” Bernice offered.

“Good!” he said.

“There’s no real food here. What about going to Chinatown? A movable feast!”

I said I was still full—I hadn’t even needed the baklava I’d eaten two hours earlier. Dwight said it was getting late for him. An early day tomorrow.

Bernice consulted with Freddie through the unspoken language of the sexually engaged: Shall we abandon these two to their curfews?

“Freddie drove in with us,” I said.

“That’s not a problem,” said Bernice.

“I could go for a pu-pu platter,” said Freddie.

“Does your sister let you stay out past ten?” Bernice asked.

“Sure,” said Freddie.

“Certainly with my mother,” I said pointedly.

Bernice stood up, snatching the check before sliding out of the booth. She tried to look innocent—how nice that Fred’s appetite gives us the opportunity to get to know each other over egg rolls.

Freddie followed, first shaking Dwight’s hand and ignoring my look. “It’s been great meeting you,” he said.

“Thanks, Fred,” said Dwight.

Bernice kissed her fingertips and fluttered them in my direction. “Ciao, baby,” she called.

I let her see my thoughts: I know what you’re up to.
Don’t
.

Dwight and I stayed and ordered coffee. He said he had enjoyed every minute, every nuance of her performance; this was the way of the world and I shouldn’t get my back up.

And wasn’t there, really, if I was honest with myself, a fearful symmetry to the coupling of Freddie and Bernice?

*  *  *

Bernice had me paged at school the next morning. Anne-Marie had long been challenging the imperiousness of Bernice’s calls and downgrading the “urgents” to pink message slips. The page meant Bernice had somehow prevailed.

I left my Latin I class with exercises to do at the end of the day’s chapter; Anne-Marie handed me the receiver with a comic grimace.

“Yes?” I said.

“Nothing happened,” said Bernice.

I asked what she meant.

“You know what I mean.”

“My brother?”

“If looks could kill, you murdered me at the White Glove last night.”

“It’s hard for me to talk now,” I said.

“That’s not what I called about. I have something I want to run by you. But don’t answer until you’ve given it adequate thought—”

“Okay.”

“A show … on the children of Holocaust victims.”

“Starring Mr. Frederick Epner?” I asked.

“Not necessarily. I thought you’d be my centerpiece.”

“I’m in the middle of class, Bernice.”

“And I’m in the middle of a production meeting with my entire staff.”

“I’m not going on television.” Anne-Marie pricked up her ears. I shook my head at her signaling, Don’t get excited; this is Bernice’s idea, not mine.

“Fred wasn’t opposed to the idea.”

“I’m not surprised.”

“Oh? Because you know him so well?”

I paused and measured how far I could open this particular Pandora’s box in the main office. I said, “I just think he’d like to please you.”

“What about the basic premise—the generation after and their scars?”

I paused, then said, “Did Freddie show you his scars?”

She ignored my baiting her. “We talked a great deal about your home life,” she said.

“Any new insights?”

“Let’s say, some history.”

“Like what?”

“Like you weren’t allowed to watch television during the week. That meant something to me.”

“It meant they wanted us to do our homework.”

“You really believe that?” she asked.

I rolled my eyes at Anne-Marie, who had given up all pretense of doing something else.

“Your brother and I hashed this over: your parents knew from the agency, the adoption agency, that I was a television personality. They were trying to avoid your turning on the set and coming face to face with your double.”

I laughed.

“Of course you’d laugh. That’s why I keep these things to myself. And that’s why discussing these highly pertinent theories with a much less judgmental audience is a godsend.”

“How could they have known?” I asked.

“The agency! You don’t think they knew who I was?”

“But you weren’t in television when they arranged the whole thing.”

“Updates! They watch television. They knew my name. That much didn’t change.”

I knew it was foolish and time-consuming to argue with her. Okay. My parents forbade TV because of my famous mother, the talk-show hostess. And Freddie agrees. Good. I said, “I really can’t stay on. I’ll talk to you later.”

“You don’t have to humor me. There are people who consider my opinions worth listening to.”

“Hundreds of thousands,” I said.

“Millions,” she snapped.

I said I had to get off.

Bernice released me with a clipped good-bye and hung up first. I blinked for effect at the mouthpiece and said before handing the phone back to Anne-Marie, “Wait, you didn’t tell me how my brother was in bed last night.”

“You’re shitting me,” hissed Anne-Marie. “Your
brother?”

I snapped my fingers. “Like
that.”

“Isn’t he young?”

“Twenty-nine.”

“How old is she?”

“Fifty-three.”

“Good bod?”

“She thinks so.”

Anne-Marie shook her head. “What a nerve, though, huh?”

“Him or her?”

“Both. Screwing his sister’s mother. Seducing your daughter’s baby brother. Some people don’t give a shit.”

“Sometimes I wonder how many men she’s slept with and where she’d draw the line.”

“Probably nowhere, if she likes what she sees.”

I looked around. “She doesn’t think much of Dwight as a sex object.”

Anne-Marie asked what my brother looked like.

“Handsome. Reddish hair; big. Women like him.”

Did I have a picture of him?

At home, I said.

“I wish she were on at night. I’d like a good long look at this dame.”

I told her I taped the show every morning; it gave me something to talk about with Bernice when she wasn’t
quizzing me about my love life. I could lend her a few shows if she had a VCR.

“Don’t let her give you any shit about Dwight. He’s worth fifty of her one-night stands, no offense to your brother.”

I was touched by her loyalty to Dwight and by the force of her conviction. “No offense taken,” I said.

“I
f it were anyone else, I’d be home in bed with him right now,” Bernice told me at a fund-raiser for the Institute of Contemporary Art. She had asked me to go as her date; promised to introduce me by name only and not by filial association. Her sleeveless black wool dress fastened up the back with turquoise buttons the size of Ritz crackers. “I did it for you,” she said. “I took a moral stand.”

I doubt that, I thought. Something must have gone wrong in the seduction, and Bernice had decided to turn it into an ethics lesson. “What was the moral stand?” I asked.

“You. My daughter. I didn’t want to antagonize you.”

“Thanks,” I said.

“I have a different social code that works for me, but I said, ‘This is not a private act between consenting adults. This is a family affair.’ So I asked him to leave.”

“Did Freddie accept your decision?”

“Fred. He didn’t have a vote.”

“Did he want to sleep with you?”

Bernice looked at me. Had I seriously asked if a male—a robust young male with sexual proclivities—
wanted
to sleep with her?

I explained: I needed to examine the ground under her feet in this moral stand. When did she decide she couldn’t? How heroic was her sending him away?

Bernice said, “Fair question.”

“Because if you really did this for me, and not for some other reason that conveniently makes you look principled—”

“Like what?”

“Like Freddie didn’t want to, or couldn’t, or his underwear was dirty …”

“You have a hell of a nerve, you know,” she said quietly. An anchorwoman from the station was approaching us. “Tracy Corcoran,” Bernice warned me without disturbing her smile. She and Bernice kissed and wiped lipstick off each other’s cheeks with practiced thumbs.

“I love your dress,” said the young woman.

“It’s a waste on-air. The buttons never show.”

“Black is one of the colors they let me wear on the new set,” said Tracy.

“They tell you what colors to wear?” I asked.

“The new set’s gray. I can wear red, maroon, pink, black, charcoal, and a certain shade of orange.”

“That’s unbelievable,” I said.

“What’s unbelievable is that I don’t get a clothing allowance.”

“This is April Epner,” said Bernice. “She’s not in the business.”

“What do you do?” asked Tracy.

“I’m a high school Latin teacher,” I said.

“You’re kidding!” said Tracy.

“Say something for her,” Bernice ordered.

“Tempus fugit,”
I said.

“Do you teach at Boston Latin?”

“Quincy High School.”

“I went to Girls’ Latin!” Bernice cried. “It was filled with girls like April.”

“Dull and drab?” I asked.

“No! Serious. Conscientious. Bright.”

I rolled my eyes: half “thanks, Mom,” and half “you’re full of shit.”

“Are you two related?” Tracy asked, looking back and forth between us.

Bernice cupped both hands over her mouth and nose. “Oh, my God,” I heard from behind her fingers.

“Did I say something wrong?” Tracy asked.