by Lois Cahall
As a child, Bernie McCann had been an altar boy - a real die-hard Irish-Catholic. But when he grew up he cast his religion aside and proudly admitted that he liked to play “covet thy neighbor’s wife.” For a while, he dated only married women. Sometimes he’d even cruise the real estate section of the Sunday paper in order to find rich recent divorcees or widows.
But it was in the lower level of Barney’s department store that he first spied Bebe, who was sniffing the Jo Malone candles. She wore a wedding band on her left ring finger, and she looked oddly aroused by the orange blossom scent dancing in her nostrils. Bernie was aroused by something else: Bebe smelled of devastation.
Bernie came from a beer-bottling empire, yet neither his childhood travels nor his father’s wealth had afforded him a proper education. Bernie might have been raised with his finger clutching a tea cup at Brown’s in London, but if you had told him that the Boston tea party had changed history more than two hundred years ago, he would have given you a completely blank look. He was as thick as an unabridged dictionary. That said, Bernie McCann knew who Sam Adams was. “He invented the first beer,” said Bernie, puffing his Cuban stogie and flashing his industrial whitened teeth, which contrasted oddly with his fake tan-gone-orange skin. Bebe beamed with pure admiration, for what she assumed was Bernie’s brilliance while Kitty and I looked for the nearest trash can to vomit.
Bernie was like a poor man’s Rat Packer - more of a ring-a-ding-dong - the perfect combination of ignorance and arrogance. Bebe’s version of an elegant man translates to my version of gumba. An elegant man doesn’t say “You’re fucking beautiful,” unless he’s Bebe’s man. It always amazed me how Bebe would attract these types. Put the two of us in a local Cape Cod bar and men of a certain kind flock to her; the same ones usually threatened by me. It’s as though they instinctively know I can see straight through them to the other side of stupid.
Kitty once tried to have a conversation with Bernie about one of her favorite artists, Francis Bacon. “I know all about Francis Bacon,” said Bernie. “My dad brokered a deal between him and Oscar Meyer, back in the 70s.”
Bebe saw only the good hair, good teeth and good penis but all we saw was how blind she was. She was a delicate vegetarian and Bernie was a loud, five-napkin burger kind of guy. And a drunk. Take the time we all went to Nantucket for a weekend. We were waiting in line for the 1:30 p.m. ferry – Bebe, Clive, Kitty, Ben and I - when Bernie excused himself to go to the men’s room. Ten minutes went by, then twenty and finally the harbor master couldn’t hold our seats any longer. After forfeiting our spots on the boat, we went in search of Bernie, whom we found at the Ropewalk drinking his third beer. We knew this because he liked to line up his empties. He didn’t even apologize. He just insisted on buying us a round. “There’s always another ferry!” he said handing out Cuban cigars. But there wasn’t another Bernie, that’s for sure.
Bernie wore Tommy Bahama everything. You know the look – loud, floral, clothes with parrots and tropical palms that scream insecurity, as do the gold chains swinging around his neck. On Cape Cod, there are two words that never go together: Boatshoes and socks. Bernie knew this, so he never wore socks in his boatshoes. He wore a gold ankle bracelet instead. He was so “Man overboard!”
And Bernie bought everything on the Men’s Marketplace page in the back of Esquire magazine from the “Pheromone 10x” attraction potion to the “4 minute exerciser” not to mention the “Liquid Trust” an Oxytocin product that “fuels intimacy,” “reduces your stress in social situations,” and “compels others to trust you.” Okay, so apparently, it wasn’t working.
But Bebe wasn’t – thank the Lord - married to Bernie. Actually, I had to give him credit – he was the first person who made Bebe smile after her beloved Henry’s departure. At least he gave her something to do besides rack up InCircle Points from Neiman Marcus.
Oh, and he did one other right. He had a vasectomy. To her friends, that was a blessing – it meant there wouldn’t be any baby Bernies running around – but Bebe wasn’t so sure, especially when her doctor told her that at age forty, “There would be only a 7% chance of conceiving a baby.”
One day two months or so ago, we were strolling home from a visit to the adoption agency where we had filled out more papers and dropped off a letter of recommendation I had written for her. I kept worrying – if the agency ever did find her a baby, would it be better for Bebe to rid herself of Bernie before she brought it home, or after? My advice – my gut feeling was not to wait. Bernie had become a codependent, needy-son-of-a-bitch who phoned her cell ten times an hour, and usually from some mahogany bar…and then if Bebe didn’t pick up, he’d hit redial over and over and leave fifty voice messages.
I feared that Bernie’s neediness was going to interfere with her life’s biggest moment. I could only imagine some orphanage House Mother dressed in dismal Pilgrim clothing, standing in the single beam of a light streaming into a dark room as in a Vermeer painting – and presenting the St. John’s-tailored Bebe with her prize: “Blonde-haired-blue-eyed-baby, meet your Mommy.” And just as the baby tumbled into her mother’s arms, Bebe’s phone would beep, and there would be Bernie’s utterly trivial message marked “urgent.”
These dark thoughts prompted me to blurt: “Are you sure you want your blonde-haired-blue-eyed baby to think of Bernie as daddy? It might confuse the little girl.” What I really wanted to say was: “Are you sure that you want Bernie? Maybe he’s your rebound from Henry? Maybe you need therapy? Maybe you need to really have your head examined? Maybe you need to do some more shopping to forget about him?”
But before I could utter any of that, and faster than you can say, “There’s a sale at Bottega Veneta,” Bebe exclaimed: “I don’t want Bernie anymore. Nobody will ever replace my beloved, Henry. I just have to figure out when to lose Bernie and how. And I don’t want to hurt the dear man. He does mean well.” And then she patted my hand as she always does.
Always the Miss Melanie. Even with the assholes! That was my Bebe. Every time I caught her having a blonde moment, she’d follow it with something smart, grounded and sensible. Not because she was smart in the head, but because she was smart in the heart.
Chapter Thirteen
Bebe examines the sale tag on a cashmere scarf she’s pulled out of a Henry Bendel bag as I pull my stool up to the lunch counter and sip the iced tea she’s already ordered me. She smiles as me, twirling the sweater in front of her face. “I’m helping the economy by shopping,” she beams.
“That’s nice,” I say.
And there’s Kitty, making her way to us through the revolving door, scrolling her Blackberry, banging into other patrons.
“Okay, spill it, I’m late for work,” says Kitty, glancing up. “And I have to pick up my prescription pain killers before tomorrow’s face lift.”
“You’re really going through with that, aren’t you?” I ask.
Kitty examines her profile in the window’s reflection. “I want to stop apologizing for the way I look. I’d rather make excuses when people tell me ‘I don’t know what it is, Kitty, but you look younger and refreshed.’” She turns her head the other way.
“You’re salted cashew nuts!” I say.
“Really?” she says, “Well after my face, I’m planning vaginal rejuvenation.”
“Girls!” says Bebe, startling us to attention, a little more forcefully than usual. “I need to change the subject. I wanted to say goodbye to both of you. This is really it. I’m leaving. I’m going to get my daughter.”
“Oh my god, you’re really sure about this, aren’t you?” I say, lighting up.
“Oh my god, you’re really sure about this, aren’t you?” says Kitty mocking me disdainfully. “If somebody is counting on a baby to rock her world, and give her peace of mind, she’s in for a big surprise.” The waiter is at her side. “Make mine a Long Island Iced Tea. Heavy on the Long Island. Oh no, wait. Shit! I can’t drink. I have surgery. Cancel the Long Island. Just the iced tea.
”
“Kitty,” says Bebe, reaching over to pat her hand. “Children are wonderful. You just aren’t a mother yet.”
“Oh she’s a mother all right,” I say.
“There’s no yet for me,” says Kitty. “Children take a bright sunny life and turn it into a tsunami. A toddler would take my perfectly content and selfish life about the Kitty, Kitty, Kitty, and turn it into a selfless life all about it, it, it.”
“Your child would give you love you’ve never known,” says Bebe.
“Hey, I don’t want to wear macaroni-and-cheese encrusted Prada pants!” says Kitty. “And I certainly don’t want to open my fridge and see strained carrots and some pump full of breast milk. I want to see a chilled Sauvignon Blanc and a nice block of Brie. I figure I’ve got five good years before pre-menopause kicks in and ten years until my first stroke. I’m not wasting them on raising kids.”
“Well, not everyone’s cut out for motherhood,” I say, “but kids do provide some pay-offs.”
“Really? Name one,” she says.
Well….um, there’s ahh…”
“See?” says Kitty.
“ Well, my daughters,” I say. “They’ll be there for me when I’m old. Right?”
“Oh sure, they’ll be there, after you’ve sacrificed the first twenty -five years of your life driving a minivan with side air bags and a bumper seat before they drain your nest egg. They don’t care if you’re using your retirement to pay off their student loans that they have fifty years to pay! You don’t have fifty years left!”
“Gee Kitty,” I say. “Now maybe you can tell us what you really feel.”
“I want to remain reckless, free – without constraints,” Kitty rants, “not like some caged lion longing for the free world. I don’t want to prioritize, organize and get all serious. Nobody likes serious.” The waiter brings Kitty her iced tea and she sips it while checking inbox messages but still talking to us. “And nobody likes seeing a fifteen-month-old kid who should have been tippy trained sucking on his mother’s breasts!” She glances over the screen to the woman next to us, whose fifteen-month old happens to be.
Bebe looks completely deflated. Now I’m doing the hand patting.
“Look, I’m not trying to be a bitch and rain on your parade, Bebe,” says Kitty. “It’s just that my brother, the fisherman – well he’s suffering up in Maine.”
“You have a fisherman in the family?” I say. “Cool.”
“Yes. I was a Daddy’s girl so I chose to tour with Daddy on his bus – saw the world from the eyes of his concerts. My brother stayed with mama, moved to Maine. Like Steve Tyler’s ex-wife from Aerosmith?
“Sort of,” says Kitty. She sips her iced tea again. “It’s just that I’m good old Auntie Kitty to my brothers’ four-mouths-to-feed. It’s been red tide, so he hasn’t been out to sea in months. Who do you suppose is supporting his children?”
“You?” asks Bebe, her eyes bright with the wonder of it. “Kitty, that’s so kind. What a generous thing…”
“Yes, I know!” says Kitty. “And I’m about to have a baby.”
“What?!” I blurt out.
“No not my baby, her baby! My niece! She went and got knocked up by some high school football star.”
“Oh the poor dear,” says Bebe. “That’s just horrible. Must have gotten in with the wrong crowd.”
“It doesn’t take a crowd to knock you up. Just one horny teenage boy,” says Kitty. “And the pregnancy was intentional.”
“I’ve heard about that,” I say. “There was a lot of press about Gloucester, one of the fishing capitals of New England. The school nurse noticed that in one semester she suddenly had a dozen pregnant teen girls. Turns out these girls had a pact and got pregnant on purpose.”
“Really?” says Bebe. “Maybe they were looking for something they couldn’t get at home. Love.”
“A lot of them are under age sixteen,” I say. “And maybe can’t get contraception because the health clinic is in a nearby town and they don’t have cars.”
“Well she wasn’t part of any pact, but that’s exactly what happened to my niece,” says Kitty. “And with the strong Catholic community, she can’t be seen going to a clinic for pills. She was afraid neighbors would recognize her mother’s car outside the clinic.”
“It’s so sad that these girls are losing direction,” says Bebe. “Their fathers are out of work and now they don’t know what the family’s future will bring. We should pray for them.” She bows her head in silence.
Okay, Miss Melanie, I think to myself, lowering my head. Kitty just rolls her eyes. I note the time on my watch. “Oh my god, I have to go,” I say, grabbing my purse. “Kitty, if you need me to pick you up after surgery let me know. “And Bebe. Call me when you get to Kazakhstan,” I say, digging for my wallet. “Shit, I’m late!”
The waiter drops the check off. Kitty grabs it.
“I’ve got it.” says Kitty. “Just go to your other job.”
“No,” I say, fighting for the bill.
“Let me,” says Bebe, putting a hand out that still bears Henry’s wedding band.
“I said I’ve got it,” says Kitty to Bebe. “You save your money for baby Borat. And you,” she says, pointing to me, “Save your money to save your families little cottage on Cape Cod.”
“But…”
“You gonna argue with me?” says Kitty, “I made $10,000 in commissions yesterday off of Helmut.” In one smooth motion, she swipes the bill from the table, hands it to the waiter, and returns to checking her messages on her crackberry.
Chapter Fourteen
The sign outside the shelter reads “We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.” Winston Churchill. I know this because I’ve just tripped in a pothole and landed flat out on my back looking up at it.
When times get rough for me, I don’t get a facelift or pull out the Saks Fifth Avenue credit card. I try to do something that reminds me it could be a lot worse. I volunteer.
Buzzed into the building, I enter a dark and dismal foyer with worn carpeting. The smell of mildew mingles with the stale-beer stench from the nubby-checkered fabric of the couches. It’s all very reminiscent of a frat house the night after a major blow-out.
A wall of bullet-proof glass separates me from the women at the front desk. One of them, Yvette, wearing a head of elaborate dreadlocks, acknowledges me and proceeds to buzz me through the next door.
“Where the hell you been?” says Yvette. “You know how she depends on you.”
“Sorry. The train broke down,” I lie.
“Okay, but she’s waiting. Says she only wants you. Imagine that?”
“I know but… Wait, she really said that?”
“Yes, she said that,” says Yvette. “As you can imagine, it ain’t easy learning that your step-dad’s your baby’s father.”
“Okay, but I’m here for her now.”
“Let me call upstairs and tell them,” says Yvette, shaking her head at me, and punching in a number. “And don’t go ak-sing me about my date last night.”
“Okay, I won’t,” I wink.
“It was okay, but he’s fifty-five.”
“That’s not so old.”
“Not old?” she says. “Honey it’s old seeing as he had his first child at seventeen, and that baby had his baby at seventeen and then you finds out his granddaughter is pregnant! You know what that means?”
“That they’re a very fertile family?”
“No. My date is gonna be a great-granddaddy!”
“Oh my God!” I say. “That’s funny.”
“Uh-huhhhh…,” says Yvette with a lot of attitude.
*
As Yvette chats on the phone, my mind drifts back to the day we met. It was about eight months ago, when I showed up here to volunteer for what I intended to be only a short while. I ended up staying six extra months, all the while wondering when they’d offer me a salary. Two of the teen mothers had done a complete turnaround since I c
ame into their lives and the other girls requested me when things went down. One was a pretty sad case, always writing in an imaginary journal that I found on the underside of her dresser drawer secured with duct tape. The girl wrote that she dreamed of killing off her family. Her mother was dying of cancer, her father went to look for a cure and got murdered at the corner store, while her brother drowned in the bathtub because he’d been left home alone. Then she’d say that after they all had died, she lived happily, riding off on the back of a unicorn.
That’s when the Head of the Department offered me “a dollar above minimum wage. It’s the best we can do.”
“I’ll take it!” I proclaimed, not because the money was any good, but just because it meant they took me seriously.
It was around the same time I met Yvette. “Hi, I’m here about volunteering,” I chirped like a naïve fool through the bullet-proof glass. Another black woman with a Pucci-esque turban around her head gave me the once-over. Her two phone lines rang, she held up a “wait a second” sign with her perfectly polished French-manicured acrylic nails. Several heavy silver charms dangled from her wrist. She transferred the two calls and then looked me in the eye. “Did you fill out the online form?” She sounded as if she hoped to trip me up instead of hiring me.
“Yes, I did it two weeks ago, remember? You were going to run a background check on me. Did you do that?” I asked.
She ignored my question. “Have a seat and I’ll call upstairs,” she said curtly, with a new tone that sounded like she was doing me the favor even though I was the one volunteering. As she picked up the receiver all her other lines rang like the bells in a Venetian steeple calling parishioners to prayer. She seemed unaffected by the ringing and moved about her station slowly. I couldn’t tell if it was lazy, overworked, or utterly bored.
I took a seat in a row of plastic chairs mounted to the wall, underneath a poster that talked about the importance of being checked for STDs. A young woman who sat next to me jostled a cute African-American baby on her knee. I smiled. She shot me a look that seemed to say, “I have to be tough because I can’t let fear creep in. I’m lost, I’m beat, and I’m broke, but I can stay tough.” That look pierced me to the core. It was enough to keep me from staring at the rest of the women, so I searched the walls covered in birth control announcements and welfare programs.
