Free Then She Found Me by Elinor Lipman Page B

needed the phone.
    “I’ve got to go.”
    “Are you happy?” asked Bernice.
    “This minute?”
    “You know what I mean.”
    “Am I in love or anything like that?”
    She didn’t prompt me further, but just waited the answer out.
    “No,” I said. “I would have to say no.”
    “Listen,” said Bernice, “I’m not happy either, but I do something about it. I’m not sitting passively by the telephone waiting for Mr. Right.”
    “I hate that expression,” I said.
    “Look, you come up with someone at your end, and I’ll be going through my list of possibilities and Ted’s,” said Bernice. “I’ll call you at home later to see if you’ve come up with anything.”
    “You can call, but I won’t have.” Ted? I thought. Who’s Ted?
    After a pause, Bernice said, newly tranquilized, “Fine, April. Then I won’t bother you at home.”
    “What’s the matter?” I asked.
    “Nothing is the matter.”
    “You sound mad.” Anne-Marie looked up, engaged, granting me an extension.
    “I thought you had to get off,” said Bernice.
    “I do.”
    She said easily, “It bothers me that you don’t want your friends to meet me.”
    “That’s not true.” I rolled my eyes.
    “Have you told
anyone
about me?”
    “Sure, I have.” I shrugged at Anne-Marie. Haven’t I? Don’t you count?
    “Have any of your friends said, ‘Wow, I’d love to meet her’?”
    “Well … sure. Implicitly.”
    “Who?” demanded Bernice. “Who have you told?”
    “Oh,” I said. “Anne-Marie, of course. She’s very interested in our relationship. And”—I dragged it out, surveyinga mental list for the most convincing white lie—“Rita and Sheryl—”
    “Whoever they are.”
    “Teachers I eat lunch with, and …”
    Anne-Marie mouthed a name. I squinted, and she mouthed it again.
    “And, of course, Dwight Willamee,” I said, nodding my thanks.
    Bernice’s tone brightened. “I’ve heard that name,” she said.
    Anne-Marie refused my invitation. She said it was a double date, no matter what I wanted to call it; it had to be a man. Let Bernice fix you up, she said. Or find someone yourself. Or ask Dwight Willamee, for God’s sake; any warm body would do. She considered her own advice and decided it might not be such a bad idea; might shut Bernice up about the great supply of men around this convent.
    I did ask Dwight to join us for dinner. I didn’t want to embarrass him, and I didn’t want to see him turn purple at the suggestion that my invitation was remotely social. It was not my business that he was gay; he should not have to confide what he so far had kept hidden. I went to the library carrying my brown bag and displaying my milk money.
    “Don’t feel you have to accept,” I began, “but the bane of my existence is offended that I haven’t told anyone at school she’s found me, and I thought you might be interested in meeting her, since you’ve actually seen her show.”
    Mr. Willamee almost smiled. He said, “She’s offended that you haven’t told anyone about her, so you want me to meet her so she’ll know you told someone?”
    I nodded.
    “Sure,” he said.
    “It would be for dinner, if that’s not too weird.”
    “Not too,” he said.
    “She’ll be very charming. And she’ll probably pick some pretentious place.”
    “I thought you were breaking off communication with her,” said Mr. Willamee.
    “So did I. But she retracted her JFK story, and we reached an understanding about telling the truth. You know: nobody’s perfect, life is short, the whole bit.”
    “Did she tell you who your real father is?”
    “A Jack Flynn. Another Irish-American who picked her up at Jordan Marsh—that part I’m beginning to believe—who posed as a medical student, seduced her regularly, walked out when she was pregnant. I sat there politely and listened to every detail of what he said and what he did and what parts of her body he touched in which order.”
    “Doesn’t sound half bad,” he