Falling in Love

by Stephen Bradlee

  “Then my mother shipped me off to this Eastern boarding school with no equestrian facilities within a hundred miles. I hated that school and all those snooty rich bitches. All they had was intramural sports. I was so enraged that I wanted to take up boxing but they didn’t have it. So I played tennis just so I could smash some balls and ended up being the school champ.

  “I wanted to kill myself because I was sure that Cool was going to die. He would never let that bitch ride him. If he was a stallion, she could have studded him out and made money but if a gelding isn’t ridden, he’s pretty much worthless and I was afraid she was going to sell him to some slaughter house. Those were the two worst years of my life. I was beyond suicidal and tried to think of ways to kill myself but I never got it together.

  “Then one day I answered the phone and heard this ancient, gravelly voice say, ‘Young lady, I’m thinking of buying your gelding for my granddaughter but only if you tell me the secret to winning a national championship on a supposedly unrideable horse. I nearly got a concussion bouncing off the ceiling. Cool won two more national championships for his granddaughter and she still writes me every Christmas and says that her mother and Cool now go trail riding together and occasionally they go off trail and jump things.”

  Dede took another pull on her wine. Her face was flushed. She let out a long sigh and said, “I suppose you think I tell that story every time I pick up a guy.”

  I wasn’t sure. Dede was a great storyteller and seem to thrive on emotion but I couldn’t see her telling that story to every guy she met.

  She seemed to read my mind. “You’re right,” she concluded. “I’ve never told it before. It’s too painful. But I thought that since I’ve decided we are going to be sisters, you should know the biggest trauma of my life. And maybe one day, you’ll tell me your biggest trauma.”

  I was silent and Dede didn’t press the point. Instead she picked up her wine glass. “You never saw your mother because she wasn’t there. I saw my mother all the time and she wasn’t there.” Dede raised her glass in a toast. “Here’s to abandoning mothers.” We clinked our glasses and drank, as Dede said, “to the women who helped make us who we are.”

  She laughed. “I have an idea. Let’s become real sisters, blood sisters.” She reached down and grabbed her purse and extracted a hairpin. “I know this is really thirteenish but I never did it when I was thirteen, did you?”

  I shook my head. I wasn’t sure what she had in mind but whatever it was, I was certain that I’d never done it. “We’re going to mix our blood.” Dede quickly pricked her finger and began squeezing blood out. I suddenly wished I’d drunk as much wine as she had.

  “I just gave blood so I know I don’t have any deadly diseases, and I assume you don’t.”

  With my mostly blacked-out past, I wasn’t sure that I didn’t have any deadly diseases but I didn’t want to ruin Dede’s ritual. But hearing her discussing blood rituals and deadly diseases made me nervous of what others might think. I glanced at the adjoining tables. Next to us, a couple was discussing a New Yorker article over a shared vegetable plate. On the other side, two women were complaining about their new boss and at the next closest table, a father was teaching his young daughter how to eat with chopsticks although she seemed most proficient at stabbing her food with one stick and then navigating it up to her open mouth. Unlike the Lakeside restaurant, where almost everyone was glancing at Paul and me when we were reading poetry, no one seemed interested in Dede’s and my attempt at body piercing. I loved that about New York. No one cared what you did as long as you didn’t bother them.

  I took the pin from Dede. I pricked the tip of my finger and was glad that it didn’t hurt that much. Dede put her finger up to mine. I couldn’t tell if our blood mixed but they certainly dripped together onto the remains of her sesame chicken.

  Dede didn’t seem convinced and then held her finger above her untouched water glass as she dripped blood into it. “Come on,” she urged me. I did the same.

  Then with a wicked smile, Dede stirred the water into a rosy tint and took a sip from it before she handed it to me. I sipped it. Dede laughed. “That’s it,” she declared. “Your blood is my blood, and mine is yours. We are now blood sisters.” Satisfied, Dede again swigged her wine.

  Dede handed me a fortune cookie. She opened hers and read, “You will meet a mysterious stranger.” She laughed, “Maybe they make these just for New York. I meet mysterious strangers every day.”

  I opened mine and read, “‘Your persistence will pay off in a big way.’ You think it is talking about finding my mother?”

  “Sure,” said Dede. “Why not? Maybe she moved to New York and is living next to you.” We both laughed.

  Dede got up, dropped several bills on the table and waved goodbye to our waiter who loudly thanked us. Outside, Dede said, “Okay, we are now sisters. We don’t have to be that close because most families aren’t but we have to always have each other’s phone number and address and always write or call on Christmas and birthdays. Promise?”

  I promised.

  Dede waved her arm and a cab screeched to a halt before us. “I love New York,” Dede declared. “You can get totally smashed and then just pour yourself into a cab.”

  Although we supposedly split the cab home, Dede paid for most of that, too. On a night when I was supposed to buy her a drink. I owed her already but I wasn’t concerned about it because I had the rest of my life to pay her back. I now had a sister. I had family.

  For the next few weeks, things got better as I kept getting more jobs. Then I was offered a long-term assignment at another midtown law firm. I was filling in until a lawyer found a new secretary and was told that it could take up to a month. Also, if the lawyer, whose name was Mr. Lane, liked me, I could get hired permanently. I was ecstatic. I loved the idea of going the same place everyday for a month. No more daily calculations of which trains to take and how long it would take to get there and always having to find the best nearby cheap lunch spot. I put on my best cream fake-designer blouse that I had bought on sale and a new pair of slacks and headed up town.

  The secretarial supervisor was an attractive middle-aged, woman with long auburn hair and was wearing a dark suit and a cream blouse that looked almost exactly like mine. “Nice blouse,” she laughed. She literally had a shining smile. She told me how to get to my desk and added, “If you have any problems, let me know.”

  No one had ever said that to me before and I wasn’t sure what it meant but I suspected it wasn’t good. I got even more nervous when I arrived at my desk and a young blonde beside me interrupted her typing to say with a wan smile, “Good luck.”

  Then, before I could even sign onto my computer, it began. Mr. Lane, who was small intense-looking man with glasses and short black hair, came rushing out of his office with several tapes, saying that he needed them all typed within an hour. He didn’t bother to ask me my name. The tapes were all full and he talked so fast that I had to continually stop and rewind the machine but I managed to get them all done in a little more than an hour, which I thought was a major feat. He thought I had taken too long.

  From this rather dubious beginning, things then went downhill quickly. While the tapes were bad enough his handwriting was much worse. He wrote in a small barely-readable scrawl, and he always wanted everything typed immediately. I had worked harder than I ever had before but the harder I tried, the more he criticized me. He continually brandished documents at me, screaming that he didn’t have the time to proof them and that if I couldn’t do the job I shouldn’t be there.

  I didn’t take time to go to the restroom, worked through lunch, and then stayed late, all without overtime, to try to keep up.

  Before she left, the girl in the station next to me said encouragingly, “This is a good place to work. Just last as long as you can with him, and the secretarial supervisor will give you someone sane.” She gave me an encouraging smile and left.

  Finally, at 7:30 p.m., I desperately had to
go to the restroom and eat something because I was famished and told Mr. Lane that I would come in early to finish up. He then reviewed the day in such a way to let me know that I was easily the most incompetent secretary who had ever lived. Then he strode back into his office, slamming the door and leaving me in tears.

  As I walked out to Park Avenue, I felt like doing the world a favor and stepping in front of a bus. Only they didn’t have buses on Park Avenue.

  Near my hotel was a quaint little bar that I passed every night. I had avoided drinking since I had begun working because I knew that whenever I ended up doing things that I regretted, they usually started with a drink. But I was in desperate need of comfort, if only from a glass, and I figured that one drink wouldn’t hurt all that much. I promised myself, just one drink.

  I sat at the bar and ordered a glass of wine. I drank it in one gulp and felt a little better. I glanced at a good-looking guy in his late twenties wearing a sports coat and a white shirt with a loosened striped tie. He smiled at me and I knew I that I should look away but his smile seemed so soothing that I smiled back. I felt like I needed to see a friendly face, to acknowledge that one still existed in this world.

  After a few more smiles, he came over and offered to buy me a drink. I shook my head, saying that I had to leave soon. He sat down anyway and soon I found myself telling him about my dreadful day. He was very comforting and mentioned that the worst day of his life involved being shot twice. He explained that he used to be a policemen but that he was now on disability and that he ran a security agency. I remembered him asking again if he could buy me a drink but that was all I could remember until I woke up the next morning with a terrible hangover, nude and in a strange bed, and suddenly in a panic. I looked around and when I saw it was almost 10 o’clock, my head began throbbing harder. I was supposed to be at work by 9:30.

  I quickly threw on my clothes, while noticing a note on the bedside table. Below a phone number, it read, “Sherry, call me at work and I’ll take you to lunch. Thanks for a wonderful time. Mike.” Without the note I never would have known his name was Mike.

  Since it had been a neighborhood bar, I hoped that Mike lived near my hotel so I could run to my room, change and try to get cleaned up and make it to work by 10:30. But when I ran out of his building, I recognized nothing. I hurried to the corner newspaper stand where I learned that I was in Brooklyn. Brooklyn! I knew I couldn’t take the time to go back to my room and change. I wasn’t sure I had enough money for a cab so I took a train into the city, got lost and finally made it to work after eleven.

  I rushed to my desk but there was a redhead sitting there, struggling with a document. Mr. Lane strode out of his office and I said quickly, “I’m really sorry, Mr. Lane. It won’t happen again.”

  “I know,” he snapped, “You’ve been replaced.”

  I rushed down to the secretarial supervisor to apologize and explain about my broken alarm clock. She had been looking down at some papers and had seemed sympathetic but moment she looked up at me, her demeanor changed. I had been in such a panic that I hadn’t stopped to try to put myself together. My hair wasn’t combed and the neatly pressed blouse that I had worn the day before now had a wine stain on the front pocket. It was very obvious that I hadn’t gone home last night and that I had had a long night. She said, curtly, “Give me your time card. I’ll phone your agency if we have anything else for you.”

  I was too embarrassed to call the agency again but instead, I went to another agency on Dede’s list. I was working my way up to the top agencies that she had recommended. I was hoping that the higher up I went up on the list, the better secretary I would be but I was afraid that I might get to the top just in time to really go down in flames.

  Although I had purportedly come to New York to talk to my mother’s childhood friend, Elaine, I hadn’t worked up the courage to see her. A couple of times, I called her but always hung up after the first ring. I really only wanted to ask her two questions: did she know where my mother was and why did my mother leave me? I finally decided that the worst she could do was to tell me to go away and I was already used to people telling me that.

  One Friday afternoon, after working in midtown, I decided to walk by her place, which turned out to be an elegant limestone apartment building overlooking the East River. To see if she still lived there, I cautiously walked up to her entrance and saw the name, Harold Carter, PH. Since all the other apartments had numbers, I wasn’t sure what the PH stood for but I thought it might mean penthouse, which meant that Elaine must be fairly rich. I couldn’t see a girl from Rosebud making it to the top of New York. But there was the name. My shaking finger pressed her button.

  “Yes?” I heard a voice.

  “Hi. I’m—. My name is—” I stammered. Suddenly the door buzzed. I pushed it and entered the gleaming marble foyer. My heart was pounding furiously as I entered an elevator and pushed the top button. Three walls were mirrors from the waist up and I studied my frightened face. My body shook all the way up. I stepped out into a small hallway with mirrors and plants on each side of a lone door beside a brass container holding folded umbrellas.

  The door opened and I faced a plump but attractive brunette. Her brave smile seemed out of place because it was obvious that her brown eyes were puffy and bloodshot from crying. Her makeup looked like it had been hastily applied during my elevator journey.

  Suddenly, her smile disappeared. “You’re not from group. What do you want?” she snapped.

  Taken aback, I nervously tried to explain. “I’m—. I came to ask—.

  “Yes?” She demanded impatiently.

  Finally, I reached into my purse and retrieved the faded photograph of Elaine and my mother on the riverbank. “Have you ever seen this?”

  She stared at it for a long moment. Emotion drained from her face. She turned around, saying softly, “Come in.”

  I followed her into a large living room, furnished mostly with brightly-burnished antique bric-a-brac and soft furnishings. She sat down on a large sofa with floral-embroidered pillows and suddenly seemed as nervous as me. She asked, “Are you Sherry?”

  I nodded.

  She looked at me for a long time and then tried to smile, “I’m Elaine.” She got up and gave me a loving comforting hug. “Tea? Coffee?”

  “Either.”

  Elaine walked away, passing an antique dining table with a vase of flowers in the center framed by immaculate silver candelabra holding tall candles. In the small kitchen, as she opened cupboards and drawers, I heard her whisper, “Oh Lord, why today?”

  I called out, “Can I help?”

  She didn’t reply so I sat down next to a floral-embroidered pillow. The room was immaculate. Having absolutely nothing out of place made the room feel like a museum piece. Facing me were two large matching stuffed chairs. Behind them were closed French doors to a terrace that seemed to wrap around the apartment. Unlike the spotless interior, the outside garden furniture looked dirty with soot like it hadn’t been used in sometime despite it being summer. To one side, a beautiful Chinese screen hid a long hallway. On the other side was a fireplace with wood carefully arranged and ready to be lit.

  Atop the fireplace was a mantle lined with several framed photographs of a younger Elaine on her wedding day with her handsome young groom. Pictures of her two young children. Then one photo left me stunned. In a silver frame was the same photograph of Elaine and my mother that I had been carrying around for years.

  Elaine emerged with a glass coffee pot atop a silver tray. I turned to her. “You kept it all these years.” She nodded. “Why?”

  She sighed, sat down and poured me coffee. “Cream? Sugar?”

  “Black.”

  Elaine handed me a cup and glanced at the picture. “I don’t know why. Or I know it’s not an easy answer.”

  “Do you talk to my mother? Have you seen her?”

  Elaine shook her head. “Never.”

  Never? I was crestfallen. I had come to New York for n
othing. To see a woman who never saw my mother. “So you don’t know where she is?” She shook her head. I set the coffee down, unable to drink it. “Can you, will you tell me about her?”

  Elaine sighed. “She was a wonderful, loving person.” I nearly laughed out loud only it wasn’t laughable. Elaine took in my disbelief. “In her own way, she did what she thought was best for you.”

  “By leaving me?” I looked away. “Did she ever say why she did it?”

  “Yes. The night we both left town, in opposite directions. After your father died, she was a mess. She thought you’d be better off with Dottie, the boring sister.”

  “What kind of mother is that?” I blurted out. A lifetime of anger was simmering into rage.

  “She wasn’t a mother, Sherry. She was a seventeen-year-old girl who got pregnant and married the guy to get away from her family.”

  Elaine looked up at the picture of her and my mother. “That photo was taken on the last day of my innocence. Of our innocence.”

  “Why’s that?”

  Elaine’s eyes became misty. “God, I thought I was over this.” She turned to me. “Look, Sherry. I can’t deal with this now. I just can’t.” She was struggling to keep from breaking down in tears. Finally, she got control of herself and said, “I’m going to group soon. If you want to come along, maybe I can face this there.”

  I didn’t know what group was but I was all for anything that might help me learn more about my mother. Elaine said that her husband was “working late” and that she had been preparing a salad for dinner, which she could enlarge to accommodate me.