Authors: Elinor Lipman
“W
e go on dates,” Bernice tells me. “We go on little dates like we used to when we lived in Oak Square, before you were born. Except we’re not sneaking out. Just the opposite—we’re going out on fucking
court-ordered
dates. Is that precious or what?”
We are sunbathing at the pool of our new condominium—Dwight’s and mine—in Needham. On weekends we clean and paint and move a few cartons around for effect. It is May, the first genuinely warm day of the spring. Bernice has never seen me in a bathing suit. I find her staring from behind her dark lenses when she thinks I’m not looking—a mother deprived of her child’s body for all those years of bathing and diapering, now analyzing the finished product. Stripped down this way we look remarkably alike, even though I’m wearing a navy blue tank suit and she’s in a white bikini. I laughed when I first saw what she was wearing under her hooded caftan; I pulled the
navy blue Lycra away from my own skin and said, “Look. Bathing suit as metaphor.”
Now we lie side by side on webbed lounge chairs and I ask her about her dates with Jack. “Are you still attracted to him?” I ask.
“How would I know?”
I repeat her words and say that’s a puzzling answer.
Is
she physically attracted to Jack, yes or no?
Bernice sits up in her chair. The skin over her belly droops and forms a fold. “Would you believe that I cannot remember a goddamn thing about us in bed? Nothing. Not his arms, his shoulders, his hands …” She lies down again, relaxing the frown so the sun won’t record it.
“That’s odd,” I say.
“Why? It’s been a whole lifetime, and a fair number of memorable men in between. I’m not saying it makes sense. I probably blocked it. I have a vague recollection of us groping around in his car. But I’ve blocked the married sex—you know, in a double bed; kosher.”
I adjust the arms of the aluminum chair so I’m lying perfectly flat. “You’re still married,” I say. “You could refresh your memory. I’m sure Judge Willson would give you his blessing.”
“That pervert! He’d be just the one I’d go running to for advice.”
I ask if she has any idea what Jack’s disposition is on their dating.
“He’s not so thrilled. We’re not exactly a computer match.”
“What do you talk about when you’re out?”
“You! What else?”
“Do you talk about your feelings?” I ask after a pause.
“My. Aren’t we the little psychiatrist.”
“You’re saying you don’t have things to say to each other about the stuff that happened between you—”
“Which we blame each other for, in case you haven’t noticed.”
“Well, there’s a starting point.”
Bernice says matter-of-factly, “Jack, I hate you and you hate me. Let’s spend the evening discussing it. April thinks it would be a good idea.”
“You don’t hate him.”
Bernice thinks this over and pouts behind her glasses. Finally she says, “You think every relationship in life is as easy as yours and Dwight’s. You meet, you fall in love, you paint your new condo together, you get married. Nothing’s that simple. I’m being asked to spend evenings with a man I feel nothing for so I can report back to the counselor and get A’s for effort. Period.”
I ask how many more dates they have to have to satisfy the counselor. Bernice says it’s open-ended.
“Do you want my advice?” I ask.
“Do I have a choice?”
“Maybe you just need to go back to when you were sixteen and seventeen, groping around in the car.”
“My, my. A few months of betrothal to an unusually tall man and my daughter thinks everything can be cured by a good stiff one.”
I laugh. Another attempt to make me supply the missing statistic in Dwight’s physiological equation.
“You know men, though. He’ll die of gratitude.” She softens the claim with a faint smile.
I laugh and say she might feel a little gratitude herself.
“And how do I broach this with him? Climb into the back seat?”
“It’s not so farfetched. Where did you used to go parking?”
“The Rez,” she says without hesitation.
“Where?”
“The Chestnut Hill Reservoir.”
“Is it still there?”
Bernice says slowly, “I have my own apartment and my own bed and my own French underwear. I’m not going to start jerking men off in the back seat of cars—”
“Not even for a good cause? For therapeutic reasons?”
“I can’t believe this is you talking,” says Bernice. “Besides, Sumner’s refiling as we speak.”
“How long will that take?”
“Four months for a hearing. Another two until it’s final, providing of course we don’t get another day in Judge Willson’s kangaroo court.”
“He wasn’t so far out of line. He’s probably presided over thousands of divorces, and he must have seen something worth preserving between you and Jack.”
“He wanted to stick it to me. Big-shot television star dumping her childhood husband.”
“You didn’t file. How was he supposed to have known who was dumping whom?”
Bernice sits up slowly, letting her abdominal muscles do the work. She removes her sunglasses to sting me with her eye contact. “You think he wants to dump me? Is that your assessment of this situation? Jack wants me out of the picture?”
“He’s the one who filed.”
“He filed because he was testing the waters. He was waiting for me to say, ‘But, Jack, everything’s all right now. April’s happy. You’re single. I’m unattached for the moment. Let’s see what happens. ’”
“I don’t think he’s that devious. I think he wanted to do the right thing.”
“You don’t think that
schlumpf
of a lawyer got to Willson and said, ‘Don’t allow it. He really doesn’t want to go through with it. Find some loophole so he can stall for more time’?”
I tell her no, I don’t think that.
“You think everything is just the way it appears to be? Jack is content with his quiet celibate life in New Hampshire, getting his jollies by showing women how to wrap themselves around a golf club? I come back into his life—a successful woman, still attractive, still single. The mother of his child. You don’t think he’s fantasized about us being together, one way or another?”
“I’m sure he has—”
“So what are you campaigning for—‘Do it and get pregnant and he’ll have to stick by you?’ Too late for that, kiddo. You say he’s not interested. Good. I’m not interested either. Everyone agrees.”
I shrug and roll over on my stomach. “The sun feels wonderful,” I say.
“You should have sunglasses on.” A few minutes later she asks, “What was that all about?”
“What?”
“Your theory—give him some great sex and everything will work itself out.”
I lift my face from my crossed arms and say, “Dwight.”
“This is Dwight’s idea?”
I put my head back down and mumble, “He thinks you two could end up together.”
Bernice forces a scornful laugh. “What does he base this brilliant theory on, other than some after-school special on tricking your divorced parents into reconciliation?”
I say carefully, “Dwight thinks that if you loved each other once, you can feel that way again.”
She answers patly with the favorite cliché of television guests discussing their divorces: “Instead of growing up, we grew
apart,
April.”
“What about the counseling?” I ask.
“Believe me, our therapist is not so keen on this so-called marriage. He’s no Pollyanna.”
“Not like me and Dwight, you mean?”
She shrugs and asks for the first time where he is. Not working on a Sunday, is he, in the archives?
He’s in New Hampshire, I say, getting lessons on how to wrap himself around a golf club.
Dwight returns for dinner, with Jack. I notice that with the men present, Bernice tosses her head and speaks in brittle phrases, television style. She interviews Dwight on his day’s activities: Does he like golf? Will he take up the game? Is his height an asset or a handicap?
“Maybe Jack would like to see the pool?” I ask Dwight pointedly.
He fakes a host’s enthusiasm and says, “Great! I’ll lend you a suit. We can turn on the Jacuzzi.” They take a few minutes to change and enthuse.
As soon as they’re out the door, Bernice turns to me, knowing I staged the field trip to gain a private audience. “What did I do
now?”
she asks, rolling her eyes.
“Is this how you charm all those other men?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
I imitate her well-modulated tones: “‘How was your golf game, Dwight? I understand it can be quite addictive.’”
“I see. This is my problem, then? If I talked some other way you’d be happier and I’d be a better person?”
“You never let your guard down with him. I’m sure he finds it quite intimidating.”
“I’m perfectly nice to him. As nice as I am to anyone.”
“And that makes you happy? Because sometimes I think I should work at shaping you into a normal person so you’ll have friends and you won’t be … needy.”
“In what way am I needy?”
“Not exactly needy—”
She holds up her hand: Wait. No turning back now with this character analysis. Tell me what you were thinking; tell me what it is I need to know.
I search for a phrase that will suit us both and pronounce it softly: “It’s lonely at the top, I bet.”
Bernice nods sadly. I sit down on an unpacked carton, and she does the same a few moments later. She speaks first. “I’m taking your criticism very well, don’t you think?”
“Yes,” I say. “Yes, I do.”
“When did you first see me as needy?”
I don’t answer but think, Always.
“It’s very perceptive of you to see it.”
“Thank you.”
“I hide it very well. I fool everyone, but not you.” She smiles broadly, prods my shin playfully with the pointed toe of her white, jeweled shoe.
“What?”
“It’s because you love me,” she says.
When the men return, Bernice and I are telephoning restaurants. I notice her studying Jack’s half-naked body, wrapped in a towel. He has a ludicrous golfer’s tan, his torso white within the outline of a short-sleeved polo shirt. I laugh and tease him about it. Dwight steps between us, flexing, and says, “You like it like that? I can do it too, baby.” Jack rubs the palms of his hands across his muscular chest and down his arms apologetically. Bernice continues to stare most solemnly.
The four of us go to Sally Ling’s where Bernice had told me version number one of my conception. She announces that Jack has come a long way from his subgum and sparerib days. He no longer looks for chow mein noodles or attacks his plate with soy sauce.
“Your influence?” asks Dwight.
“He’d never had anything but a combination plate. I gave him his first moo shu pork.”
“Was this on one of your dates?” I ask.
Jack’s face flushes a shade redder. Bernice says, “They don’t have good Chinese in southern New Hampshire. Not like this, at least.”
“I didn’t even think I liked Chinese food,” he adds.
Bernice uses her menu to shield one side of her face, pretending to shut Jack out. “He’s still at the cashew-chicken stage. I’m letting him think that’s the real thing until I phase in the Szechuan.”
“She thinks I’m a yokel,” says Jack. “She’s showing me life in the big city.”
I wait a few seconds and ask, “How’s that been?”
He checks Bernice for her reaction, but she is pretending to read the menu. I recognize that look of bland disregard and know she’s listening intently. “Like you see us,” he says. “She acts like Bernice and I go along for the ride.” He raises his voice and asks, “Would you agree with that?”
She raises her eyebrows innocently: Me? Was I supposed to be eavesdropping on your conversation with April?
I humor her by repeating, “Jack was saying that he’s been coming down to Boston every so often.”
“She has much more interesting dates with her businessmen and law professors,” says Jack.
“Those are not dates. They’re work-related. I’ve told you that.”
“People recognize her, you know. They come up to her, and then they look at me and wonder, Do I know him, too? Is he the guy who does the weather on her channel? Bernice doesn’t say, ‘I’d like you to meet Jack Remuzzi,’ because she might have to say, ‘He runs the pro shop at the Ponemah Country Club.’”
“That’s ridiculous. One doesn’t introduce one’s date to
fans.”
“If you were out with the president of Harvard University—”
“Who’s married, by the way.”
“He’s being hypothetical,” I say.
“If you were out with the president of Harvard University and some fan in a fur coat came over and said, Oh, Miss Graves, I love your show. I watch it whenever I have a day off from being a doctor at the Mass. General’—tell me you wouldn’t say, ‘Oh, thank you, Doctor. I’d like you to meet my date, the president of Harvard University.’”
“Don’t look now,” Dwight coughs into his closed fist.
A middle-aged woman is approaching our table with a fluttery smile. She’s in white slacks, girdled, and a crocheted pink shell—the summer version of every woman who has ever approached Bernice in public. The woman takes the last four steps up to our table on tiptoes.
Bernice’s voice gets louder; she says with false energy, “Oh, sure. I have dozens of occasions every year to have dinner with the president of Harvard!”
The approaching fan hears, and the smile grows even more reverential. “Bernice,” she says in a childlike voice.
Bernice stops in midsyllable as if she hasn’t seen the woman coming.
“I know I shouldn’t do this—I know you don’t remember me—but I was in the audience for your show on foot problems, and I was the one who asked the podiatrist about those jellies that little girls wear … ? Anyway, I got phone calls and cards from people I hadn’t seen for years who saw me on your show!”
“Did you,” says Bernice.
“And I still run into people who saw me, and I just
wanted you to know that more people watch your show than I ever would have believed.”
“What’s your name?” Bernice asks her suddenly.
“Cissy Panacek.”
“Well, Cissy, I’d like to introduce you to some people: my daughter, April, the Latin teacher. Her fiancé, Dwight, who’s with the Kennedy Library. And Jack Remuzzi, my
escort
for the evening.”