Then She Found Me (19 page)

On the drive back to my apartment I asked, “How’s your love life?” I always asked. Freddie always told me. “Anyone new?”

He shrugged.

“Anyone special?”

He shrugged again.

“Playing the field?” I asked.

“That’s a nice way of putting it.”

“So I don’t have to worry about your being alone and lonely?”

Are you kidding? he said—no one waiting up for him? A house to bring his dates home to. An empty house all to himself …

“Just don’t get any diseases,” I said.

“Speaking of which,” said Freddie. “Who’s the guy?”

I turned into my building’s parking lot. Dwight’s car was there, which meant Dwight was upstairs waiting. I said, “Do you want to meet him?”

“No,” said Freddie.

“Aren’t you curious?”

I knew he wasn’t. He had the passivity of someone whose food had been cooked and arranged on plates for too many years. All he had to do was eat what was in front of him. “You’re a lump, Freddie,” I said.

“I don’t like meeting new people. I never know what to say.”

“What do you say to all these women you end up fucking? You must have a few good openers.”

He almost smiled. He moved his mouth in a circular motion and thought it over. “That’s different. A lot of them come on to me. They smile. I smile back. I ask them what they do. I ask them to dance. With guys, you get introduced and they say, ‘Nice to meet you,’ and you say, ‘I’ve heard so much about you,’ and then you stand there like two fools. It’s harder for me with guys.”

“Then say something else! Say, ‘So! Any friend of April’s is a friend of mine.’ Wink at him. Slap him on the back. Do the stuff Dad would never do. Play the old man.”

Freddie smiled. He liked our new conspiracy.

“Give us the Epner blessing,” I said.

Freddie opened the door and got out. He put his hands on his hips and squinted up to the imagined window where Dwight might be watching us. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s see this guy.”

“You don’t have to stay a long time. I’ll tell him you have a drive ahead of you.”

Freddie put his arm around my shoulder and squeezed briefly. He never did things like that; he had never been moved to affection by any words between us. I could almost imagine him with his arm around a woman, walking across her parking lot after winning her over at some bar with his receding auburn curls.

Inside the lobby, the elevator doors opened as if cued to meet us. Freddie’s lips moved in rehearsal. “Introduce me as Fred” was the only thing I actually heard.

Bernice’s laugh bounced off my head as I entered my foyer. Then there was audience noise. It was “Bernice G!” on tape—this morning’s show being played back. I
called Dwight’s name and walked into the living room.

It was not a smooth introduction. Dwight bounded up from the couch to hit the VCR as if he had been caught watching something disgraceful. The TV crackled unbearably. One of us hit the power button and then there was silence. “Dwight Willamee—my brother, Fred Epner.” The two shook hands manfully.

“Heard a lot about you,” Freddie mumbled.

“Same here,” said Dwight.

I took my coat off and remembered to kiss Dwight hello. He complied, looking miserable. “Were you watching Bernice?” I asked.

“I rewound it for you,” he said quietly.

“Bernice?” repeated Freddie. “The gal you told me about?”

“My mother.”

“The very gal,” said Dwight.

“Wanna see?” I asked.

Freddie said sure. Dwight cued up the tape, and we sat down on the couch with me in the middle. “What’s today’s show?” I asked.

“Hair,” Dwight said. “Hers.”

Her guests were Avi, Tate, and Lawrence of D’Image, Topper’s, and Kinks, respectively. It was one of Bernice’s cute openings: pretending to be pouting into a hand mirror as she was introduced.

“You watch her every night?” Freddie asked.

“April’s addicted,” said Dwight.

Bernice was saying, “I’m proud of my gray. I can’t believe people want to hide theirs.” She put down the mirror and picked up her index cards. This would be another show approached in the pseudoscientific manner she used for such nontopics and nonspecialists. “What
is
gray hair?” she asked the panel. The guests nodded at one
another and arrived at a quick consensus: hair that has lost its pigment and come in white. Gray is an optical illusion: white and black
equals
gray.

“Thank you, gentlemen,” said Dwight.

“She doesn’t have any gray hair,” said Freddie.

“I want the God’s honest truth,” Bernice was saying. “Forget that millions of people are watching. Tell me what you’d do with me if I gave you carte blanche. I’m in your hands.”

Tate announced she had marvelous bones while Avi squeezed and released clumps of her loose hair. Lawrence did nothing, only sat and looked superior.

Bernice faked a protest to her guests’ considered opinion that her pageboy was sophisticated, versatile, feminine, and suitable to her hair, face, and life-style. “Come on, guys,” she cajoled. “You mean you can’t improve on this old tired bob. Nothing? Not even a new”—she twisted a lock into an improvised tendril—“anything?”

“Uh-uh,” they murmured in unison.

They had little choice; Tate was the hairdresser who designed her hairstyle and groomed it three times a week. Bernice tried hard to make the evaluation look objective.

“Is this what they’re all like?” Freddie asked.

Dwight nodded strenuously.

“You’re not interested in hairdressing. A lot of people are,” I said.

“She specializes in guests with shit for brains,” Dwight said.

We paid attention to the next exchange: Avi announcing that a diluted vinegar rinse would bring out the sheen in black hair by restoring the acid mantle to the scalp—for pennies.
Pennies!
Yes, for her, too! The black in her salt-and-pepper was still … brilliant!

Dwight fast-forwarded during a commercial. We caught
Bernice reacting to her guests’ next tip as if it were startling and important. “Let me get this straight:
nothing
repairs split ends? These products we hear about, the ones that claim to repair split ends, are gimmicks?”

Tate and Lawrence and Avi nodded with varying degrees of conviction. “You cut them. You get trims raygoolarly and you don’t tease,” said the one sitting next to Bernice. Bernice looked into the camera triumphantly. “Even those advertisements where they show the split end magnified, getting rejoined?”

The same one—Avi, an Israeli?—held up two fingers in a scientific demonstration. He splayed them, then united them, only to separate them again: split ends
do not fuse
.

“Mr. Wizard,” said Freddie. Dwight laughed.

“Back in the late sixties I used to iron my hair to make it straight,” Bernice told the panel.

“I hope you gave that barbaric practice up,” said one.

Because
…? Bernice prompted.

“Because you can burn the hair and you can burn yourself. One of my clients came in with a red welt on her cheek like this”—he outlined an inverted V on his own face—“the point of her iron.”

“My hair became coarse when I had my daughter,” she said suddenly. “Does that happen often?”

We exchanged glances. Freddie was interested, finally. His eyes widened as if he couldn’t believe the bull’s-eye: the daughter, me, being mentioned the first time he tuned in.

On the screen all three men nodded sadly: the childbirth culprit. Changes in texture, in thickness, in color. No two women’s hair reacted quite the same way, said Lawrence. The bangs of a client from his last salon grew in titian after twins!

I was spooked by her invoking me. I didn’t want to see
her look into a camera and say, “Yes, April,
you
—you to whom I gave my sheen, my body, my youth.”

I shut off the tape before, I imagined, the three haughty beauticians addressed the topic of ungrateful daughters. Nobody protested. Dwight supplied the missing tag line: “My time with you is precious!”

Freddie stood up, smiling, all but rubbing his hands together. “When do I meet her?” he asked.

F
reddie fiddled with the piano keys while I called Bernice; Dwight stretched out on my couch and flipped through an old
Harvard Magazine
. “Guess what I was just doing?” I said to Bernice in greeting.

“Will I like the answer?”

“Yes.”

“Is Dwight there?”

“Yes. And Fred.”

“Fred?” she asked. “Who the hell is Fred?”

“My brother.”

“I get it,” said Bernice. “His grown-up name. They all do that.”

“We just watched this morning’s show.”

“Oh, God!” she shrieked. “I hated it—those pricks. They don’t get along and nobody told me until it was too late. They’re all ex-lovers or ex-rivals or something.”

I smiled at Dwight. “Fred would like to meet the woman who gave birth to me,” I announced grandly. Bernice loved it when I talked like that.

“You’re kidding, right?”

“Would you like to come over?”

She asked what time it was.

“Almost nine,” I said.

“It depends what you’re looking for. I’m too tired to do Mother of the Year.”

“Be yourself,” I said. “Come as you are.” Dwight distorted his features as if recoiling from such a prospect.

“How’s this: meet me at the Ritz bar in a half-hour,” she said.

“We’re not dressed for the Ritz.”

“What are you dressed for?”

I said I didn’t know. Maybe a place where she wouldn’t be recognized.

“You hate that,” she said agreeably.

“I don’t like to be constantly interrupted.”

“Unless they raise their hands first?”

“You’re so clever,” I said.

“Okay. The White Glove. Down from Government Center. It’s a Mass. General hangout. On Cambridge Street.”

I covered the mouthpiece and asked if we wanted to meet Bernice in town for a drink. Dwight pantomimed, Me? You?
He’s
the one who wants to meet her.

Freddie said, “Sure.”

I uncovered the receiver. “Fine. Half an hour, or however long it takes to get there. We’ll leave now.”

I hung up and said, “I’ll drive.”

Freddie put his hand inches from his mouth and exhaled to test his breath. He asked if he could use my bathroom to wash up.

*  *  *

The White Glove was almost empty. Bernice, of course, was not there. She always swept in after me, even if that meant smoking in her parked car for ten minutes.

We took a booth and ordered a pitcher of draft beer. Two women in white nylon pants suits—nurses? physical therapists?—watched Freddie discreetly from a neighboring table.

“Those women over there think I’m highly desirable,” said Dwight. “They’re hoping I’m the unattached one.”

Freddie looked over and acknowledged them with a nod.

“Did you see that?” Dwight said. “When no one else was looking the blond one licked her lips and whispered, ‘Baby, baby, baby.’”

I laughed and landed a kiss somewhere near Dwight’s mouth.

“Thanks a
lot
, April. Why don’t you just hang a sign around my neck that says, ‘Hands off. He’s taken’?”

“I think they’re looking my way,” Freddie said as if adjudicating a serious discussion. “They’re kind of young.”

“Oh, darn,” said Dwight.

I prodded Freddie’s forearm across the table and said, “He’s kidding.”

“Does this happen often?” Dwight asked.

“Only when I’m out in public,” said Freddie.

The door opened and Bernice rushed in. She was wearing a short, straight leather skirt in a hideous loden green and an oversize brown sweater that reached to mid-thigh.

Freddie rose and smiled lazily. “You don’t have to tell me who
this
is,” he said.

Bernice leaned over the table and kissed my brother’s cheek. “Not Freddie?” she asked, taking his right hand in a slow handshake.

“Fred,” he corrected.

“April never told me you were a hunk.” She slapped her cheek with her free hand. “Why do I say these things? I’m incorrigible.”

“Yes, you are,” I agreed.

“Hello, darling! And Dwight. Good to see you.” She nudged Freddie over in the booth and sat down.

“Beer?” she said, raising her eyebrows at me. “How reckless on a school night.” She shifted toward Freddie, all ears. “I’ve wanted to meet you for the longest time. Now I see why your sister was holding out on me.”

Freddie smiled agreeably.

“Tell me everything about you I need to know. Are you just like April, or are you fun?”

“I do programming,” said Freddie.

“Let me guess—another brain: M.I.T.”

“U.R.I.”

Bernice splayed her fingers against her chest. “Thank God! I couldn’t stand another one.”

Freddie smiled, uninjured. “They’re your genes. If she’s a brain, you should thank yourself.”

Bernice opened her mouth and clamped it shut as if Freddie’s genetic insight had rendered her speechless.

“All you have to do is watch ‘Bernice G!’ once to pick up on the cerebral resemblance,” said Dwight.

Bernice preened. I watched Freddie watch Bernice. He might have had a balloon floating next to his head reading: Attractive, yes. Should I go for it? Yes. Will she? Yes …