Then She Found Me (8 page)

I
wrote Bernice a letter and told her that after a superficial checking of facts, I had confirmed that President Kennedy was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1946 at age twenty-nine; served 1947 to 1953.

She called me at work and got me: it was an emergency, Anne-Marie said. Urgent.

Without preamble Bernice said, “What does this letter refer to?”

“It refers to my not believing your story.”

There was no answer at her end. “Bernice?” I asked.

“I can’t talk here,” she hissed.

“You called me. Do you have proof of some sort?”

“You must have misunderstood what I told you.”

“You said he was running for Congress. When he introduced himself at Jordan’s he said, ‘I hope to be your next congressman.’”

“I distinctly said ‘incumbent.’ I never said he was running for the first time.”

“Don’t call me again if you’re going to lie,” I told her.

Sonia called me at home on Bernice’s behalf. I said I would not see her or talk to her again, or—as much as I hated to be rude—to Sonia, either. I would speak to a lawyer about my privacy if it came to that.

“If she sends you a letter of apology, will you read it?” she asked.

“No, I will not,” I said.

I passed the library on the way to the basement and remembered Mr. Willamee’s independent project on my behalf. I hadn’t checked back with him and it had been a week. The library door was closed. I could see through the fire glass that he was eating at a table with his back to the door. Ignoring the first knock, he rose immediately when he saw it was me—or at least when he saw I wasn’t a student. I apologized for the interruption; I hoped he hadn’t gone to any trouble with the research, because I had just severed my ties with the woman who lied about JFK.

“Can you come in?” he asked.

I stepped inside. He hesitated before closing the door. I walked over to the table and studied his lunch: peanut butter on whole wheat pita bread, Fig Newtons, carrot sticks, and an undisclosed beverage in a serious thermos. I hoped it wasn’t soup. He took his seat and asked if I was on my way to lunch.

I didn’t react right away, so he pointed to my brown bag.

“Isn’t that your lunch?”

“My sandwich.”

“Would you like to eat here?”

“I buy my milk and a bag of chips,” I said. “Thanks anyway.”

He unscrewed the stopper of his thermos and poured black coffee into its plastic cup. “All those kids in one teeming mass,” he said, offering it to me.

I smiled, accepted it, and sat down tentatively. “What about you?” I asked.

“That’s okay.”

I told him the coffee was delicious, and it was—a French roast, strong and perfectly brewed. Dwight said it was his weakness: he ground his own beans and made a fresh pot just before leaving for school. He was a coffee snob—couldn’t drink the stuff in the teachers’ room; got mail-order beans from San Francisco.

Gay, I thought immediately. Of course he was gay.

“I haven’t come up with anything substantial about Kennedy,” he began.

I said it was just as well. I didn’t want anything further to do with this woman.

“I’m checking the
New York Times Index
and
Globe
microfilm.”

“For what?”

Dwight chewed politely and wiped his mouth before answering. I brought forth my own sandwich. “Trips. Vacations. Operations … something that placed him in Washington or out of the country or in the hospital for the whole time frame we’re dealing with. Then at least you could refute her claim with some hard evidence.”

“It isn’t worth your time,” I said. “I appreciate your trying, but it’s not worth the effort. Really.”

Dwight said solemnly, “It’s no trouble, April.”

I was startled to hear him call me by my first name. I thought I should use his, too, then remembered I already had—last visit, for the students’ benefit; Dwight hadn’t
realized I was going after an effect. I wrapped up my uneaten sandwich, apologizing: now the library would smell like tuna fish.

“Not at all,” he said. “It’s nice to have the company.”

What could I say that wasn’t a lie? I told him his was the best coffee I’d ever had.

I agreed to one more dinner. “A thin man of Irish extraction” sounded plausible.

“He was handsome and freckled, with a touch of red in his brown hair”—Bernice studied my hair critically—“and with a great deal of self-confidence. ‘find Jewish women extremely beautiful,’ he said to me at Jordan Marsh. ‘I think they are the most beautiful women of all.’ I was vain then. I believed that kind of thing.

“‘You wouldn’t consider having lunch with someone who was forward enough to ask you without a formal introduction, would you?’ he asked. He was so good at appearing boyish—it’s a midwestern thing they can do, this ‘yes, ma’am’ stuff, with their clean freckled faces. Women from the East aren’t prepared for it. He said his name was Jack. He went to Harvard Medical School—”

“Last name?” I asked.

“Didn’t I say that? Flynn. Jack Flynn.”

“Okay,” I said. “Go on.”

“‘What time is your lunch hour?’ he asked. I looked at my watch and could tell he was staring at my hands. I had the softest-looking hands. ‘Fifteen minutes?’

“‘I’ll be back,’ he said with a charming grin.

“We ate cream cheese on date nut bread at Bailey’s. I asked him about school. ‘I’m at the hospital all day and I study all night,’ he said. ‘It’s a very boring life.’ It didn’t occur to me to ask what he was doing at Jordan Marsh looking ruddy and refreshed at noon, midweek. Medical students took lunch hours like everyone else, I thought. He asked again about the propriety of a date with a virtual stranger. I smiled reassuringly and said that waiting on
strangers all day had made me quite a good judge of character.

“He was waiting for me after work, and it was a beautiful late spring night. We walked and walked, across the Common, through the Garden, all the way up Commonwealth Avenue. He wanted to take me over to his lab to show me his cadaver. We got as far as the main door—some building at Harvard Med. ‘I can’t believe they locked it tonight,’ he said. ‘There’s a big anatomy exam on Monday.’ We walked back down Brookline Avenue and kissed at frequent intervals … in the twilight.”

Bernice lit a cigarette and watched my reaction. She looked proud of her narrative and checked to see if I found her story as poetic as she intended.

“I was in love,” she resumed dramatically. “I was drunk with love. It had been so simple—working at Jordan Marsh and finding love among my customers. And I truly believed, in the way that only a seventeen-year-old can believe, that it was fine to kiss this way, to give your … passion this way, when so fine a boy reciprocated your feelings.

“He had an apartment on Park Drive—L-shaped with an unmade bed at one end and a kitchenette at the other. There were two radios. We danced in one spot to whatever was playing, advertising jingles and all.

“‘I want to take our clothes off,’ he said. Yes, it would be all right. He loved me; he was crazy with love. The naked body was a beautiful thing, et cetera. Had I seen a man in the state of love without his clothes on? He was not ashamed of his body.

“He went first. His back and shoulders were freckled. He held me against him—I was still completely dressed and waging this internal war over what I should do. I knew it was his penis down there, hard against my skirt; I knew men got that way when they were aroused. And
then I decided: it wasn’t fair of me to hide my body when he was showing me his. I was a modern girl in many ways, thinking of equal rights many years before it was fashionable.

“‘Just your sweater,’ he said. It was a mint-green lamb’s wool cardigan from R. H. Steam’s with mother-of-pearl buttons. I was wearing a white dickey, and worried how silly I’d look in just a collar and bra. He liked it fine.

“‘Please,’ said Jack. ‘Let me see you with just the collar. I know you have beautiful breasts. ’

“I said no. He kissed me softly on my forehead, cheeks, nose and then unhooked my bra. I must have been saying no, but it was the kind of no, no, no you say when you’ve lost control. So there I was, my breasts peeking out from the starched dickey and Jack telling me I looked like Cleopatra. He was very skilled, if you haven’t already picked that up, working his way through my skirt, my garter belt and stockings, my half-slip and panties.

“‘You’ll be much happier when you’re completely naked,’ he told me. ‘Something wonderful happens when you’re naked, because our inhibitions are in our clothes. ’

“I believed him. He never stopped talking to me, gasping at each new sight, telling me that I had the most beautiful body he’d ever imagined. ‘I’ve never seen a woman naked in person,’ he said, ‘except in anatomy lab.’

“‘What about patients?’ I asked. ‘You must see them naked. ’

“‘That’s not until next year,’ he said.”

Bernice picked up her fork, approached one of the scallops on her plate, put the fork down again. “There’s an ironic tragedy here that I have to point out,” she said. “I didn’t know then that he was right, that I did have a fantastic body. I was too inexperienced to appreciate what he was saying.” She leaned across the table to bring her face as close to mine as I would allow. “He was the only
man ever to see me with that perfect body. First and last. Childbirth changes your skin tone. Places that used to be pink turn brownish.”

She slumped back against the booth as if the observation had exhausted her.

I asked if that was it—my conception.

As if responding to a cue, she continued, “He walked me to his bed. He straightened out the bedclothes and got in. He held his hand out lovingly and said, ‘Let’s just hold each other for a while.’ I followed him. He put his arm under my neck and nestled me in the crook of his arm. He sighed contentedly as if this was all he’d ever need. We kissed. He was a great kisser. He said I had great technique—a natural. He asked if he could he on top of me…. Of course, before long he had talked his way in.

“‘I’ll get pregnant,’ I said. At least I knew that much.

“‘Not the way I do it,’ he said. ‘I’ll withdraw before I ejaculate. It’s easy to control.’ I whimpered, my chin hooked over his shoulder. He pushed hard. ‘You’re a virgin,’ he said.

“‘What did you think?’

“He said it was okay. He wouldn’t hurt me. He was thrilled. Men love deflowering virgins. It’s one of the big ones in their catalogue. He worked himself all the way in. ‘There,’ he said. ‘The worst is over.’ He moved his hips back and forth without a sound and pulled his body away abruptly. He jumped expertly out of bed onto his feet. He leaned over and kissed me on the lips. ‘Congratulations,’ he said. ‘It’s all behind you now.’ I got up and went into the bathroom. I didn’t ask him what exactly was dripping into my underpants.”

“Did you ever see him again?” I asked Bernice.

She studied my face as if considering the pros and cons of possible responses, and said finally, “Yes. We had a relationship. Friday night dates and lots of lunches.”

“And then you got pregnant?”

“My period was late. Jack hadn’t come into the department for a whole week. He didn’t have a phone, so I couldn’t call him. It took me a couple of days, calling on my breaks, to confirm through the registrar that no Jack or John Flynn was enrolled at Harvard Medical School. ‘Try the college,’ a woman advised me with some compassion. ‘Maybe he said pre-med at Harvard and you misunderstood.’

“Finally he dropped by the stocking department on Thursday to confirm our Friday night ‘date,’ and I asked, ‘How is it that you can get away from classes on a weekday afternoon?’

“‘I just do it,’ he said cheerfully.

“‘You don’t get into trouble?’

“He smiled and leaned across the display case to pinch my nose—God, he was adorable—and said, ‘Just with you, apparently. ’ I had never known a pathological liar before, so I really expected he would have an explanation for everything.

“‘There are some things I’d like to talk over. I’ve been trying to reach you all week,’ I said.

“‘What are they?’ he asked, no longer smiling.

“‘Not here,’ I said.

“He took the ballpoint pen out of my hand and wrote on the serrated edge of a Jordan’s bag, ‘preg.???’ I scribbled over his writing until it was a blue blob, then crumpled it up in my fist. ‘Tell me if you are,’ he said.