The Books: “Then She Found Me” (Elinor Lipman)

Daily Book Excerpt: Adult fiction:

Then She Found Me: A Novel by Elinor Lipman

What a wonderful writer Elinor Lipman is. She’s hugely successful – her books sell – but I don’t know if she gets the props she REALLY deserves. She tends to get lumped in with chick lit – you can see it in her cover designs – but seriously, she’s not like that. She’s way better. She’s been publishing well-crafted hysterical insightful books for decades now – it’s a rare writer who can make me laugh out loud. Lipman can. But she also has the gift of imagination: her characters live on in my memory – like Bernice, the biological mother who suddenly shows up in Then She Found Me. I remember her. She makes an impression. Her latest novel, My Grievance has garnered some of the best reviews of her career, and I was mostly interested in Fay Weldon’s words on her in The Washington Post. I read them and felt a ferocious sense of vindication, almost like, “YES. YES.” She SAID it. And she’s RIGHT:

Elinor Lipman is a far more serious novelist than she pretends to be or is allowed to be by reviewers. (I learned a long time ago that to be taken seriously you need to cut back on the funny lines. I once all but won the Booker Prize for a novel from which, on Kingsley Amis’s advice, I had removed anything remotely mirthful. Alas, it was still “all but,” so I reverted to my old ways.) Lipman, declining to learn this worldly wisdom, goes on making jokes and therefore tends to get described with adjectives that are good for sales but bad for literary reputations: “oddball,” “hilarious,” “over-the-top,” “quirky,” “beguiling” or, worst of all, “summer reading.” The prose slips down too easily and pleasantly to allow her to rise into the literary top division, where the adjectives become “piercing,” “important,” “profound,” “significant,” “lyrical,” “innovative” and so on. Dull, in fact.

But up there at the top is where this enchanting, infinitely witty yet serious, exceptionally intelligent, wholly original and Austen-like stylist belongs. Delicately, she travels the line where reality and fiction meet. Reality being more oddball, quirky and chaotic than fiction can ever be, Lipman inures us to the truth about the way we live by making it up as she goes along, cracking jokes and pretending it’s all fiction.

I agree with every word. “Enchanting” is right. “Exceptionally intelligent” is right. Reality is oddball. And you know, being “witty” is a dying art. Lipman keeps it alive. Her prose shimmers with wit. I am in love with her. If you have not discovered her novels, I tell you: do yourself a favor. Pick one up. Don’t let the chick lit covers put you off. She is the real deal. My mother actually gave me Then She Found Me as a gift – I don’t even think she had read it, but it looked like something I might like. I was so into Lipman’s writing from that that I went out and bought every book I could find. THAT is the mark of a good writer. I’m a fan for life.

Then She Found Me is the story of April, a high school Latin teacher, who lives a quiet boring little life. She spends her weekends in her pajamas. She is a serious person. She was given up for adoption. And then one day – Bernice Graverman (a local celebrity – she has a talk-show) swoops back into April’s life – saying, “Hi. I am your biological mother.” Bernice is the quintessential celebrity. She cares about designer labels. She’s always dressed to the nines, head to toe. Her earrings are like dinner platters. She wants to be congratulated for coming back … but April is kind of like, “Uhm … why can’t you go away again?”

The book has many elements – but one of the things that happens is that Bernice INSISTS on being April’s “mother” … even though April lets her know that kind of intrusion isn’t welcome. Bernice is horrified at her daughter’s plain appearance (“did that plain girl come from MY loins??”) – she can’t believe April would rather sit home and READ than go out for cocktails …

Now of course April resists this intrusion. But naturally, things start to shift anyway. Old patterns start to break up. And April can’t help but find herself affected.

It’s a wonderful book.

Here is an excerpt. Bernice loves to self-dramatize. She seems to have no concept that April might have some feelings about being abandoned back then … Bernice is more interested in pumping up the drama of her own life, and making the story into some kind of dramatic monologue. Oh, and her story keeps changing. April wants to know who her real dad is. Bernice hints, deflects, lies, changes her story …

Bernice sounds like a monster, and in many ways she is – but still, the way Lipman writes her, she is so so so funny. A whirlwind, of perfume and cleavage. Being all dramatic and self-involved. Completely oblivious to the fact that other people might not be so impressed. Obtuse.

This excerpt involves April and Bernice going out to lunch, and Bernice starting to do her monologue (the third or fourth version of it) about who April’s real father is. Notice how Bernice treats April like a guest on her talk show.

EXCERPT FROM Then She Found Me: A Novel by Elinor Lipman

“I want to know everything about you,” Bernice said, as we were being seated at Sally Ling’s. “Start from your earliest memory. Or start with your life today and work backwards.”

I shrugged out of my coat and draped it on the empty chair next to me. I told Bernice I had expected to talk about her first, at least the part about my father.

She pushed away her place setting and leaned forward, arms folded, elbows on the table. Without preamble or protest, she recited her story. “I met him when I was sixteen. I worked in Stockings on the street floor of Jordan Marsh, a buyer in training. It was a more personal department in those days with a great deal of customer contact. Stockings came in boxes, not on racks like greeting cards. I spent my days folding back tissue paper, carefully splaying my fingers inside nylons to demonstrate color and sheerness.” She paused. “Am I going into too much detail for you at this juncture?”

“Go on,” I said.

“I met Jack at my counter just before Mother’s Day. I recognized him as an educated man and spoke accordingly –”

“Jack who?”

“I’m getting to that. ‘Doesn’t this Schiaparelli have a lovely diaphanous quality?’ I asked. I saw the effect immediately. He started, then smiled his brilliant smile. For good measure, noticing his Harvard ring, I said, ‘I can’t wear my school ring because it snags the hosiery.’

“‘Where did you go to school?’ he asked.

“‘Girls’ Latin.’ I lowered my voice so the other salesgirl wouldn’t hear. ‘I’m going to be a senior. They think I’m staying on here full-time.’

“‘And where do you live?’

“‘Brighton,’ I told him. He grinned again and held out a tanned hand. ‘I hope to be your next congressman.’

“I said something like, ‘You do?’

“‘I’m running in the Democratic primary. Maybe you could put in a good word for me with your neighbors.’ That’s exactly what he said.

“‘With pleasure,’ I said.

“He patted his pockets and found a parking ticket to write on. I offered him my Jordan Marsh ballpoint. He wrote my n ame and address . . . . Nothing!” Bernice smiled triumphantly.

“Nothing?” I repeated.

“No flinch at the ‘Graverman’, no reneging on what I sensed was sexual rapport between us out of anti-Semitism. Nothing! He asked if I’d like to help out in the campaign. ‘Pretty girls are always needed,’ I think is what he said. I blushed, of course. I was totally inexperienced and hadn’t learned how to accept compliments graciously. ‘If you think I can be of some help,’ I said.

“He wrote a phone number on my sales pad. I said I’d call his headquarters that night. He was a beanpole then, and not terribly smooth, but I sensed his greatness. I should have kept that sales slip. It would be worth a lot of money today. And did I mention the stockings? A Mother’s Day present for Rose.”

Bernice ended her story with a quivering, pained smile.

I laughed. For the first time in her presence, I laughed.

“How dare you,” she whispered.

“You’re saying my father was Jack Kennedy?”

She stared for a long time, then said, “I know it’s not what you were expecting to hear.”

“Do you have proof?” I asked.

“He knew about you, if that’s what you were wondering.”

“John Kennedy got you pregnant?”

“We were deeply in love.”

“Wasn’t he married?”

“He hadn’t even met her yet.”

“Why didn’t he marry you?”

She patted her stiff bangs. “I loved him too much for that.”

“His career, you mean? You were being altruistic?”

“Of course. It would have been political suicide for him to marry me. He’d have been crucified because I was pregnant and it would have been worse that I was a Jew. Jack would have come to resent me, too. Ironically.”

“Why ‘ironically’?”

“Because if he had chosen me – us – he’d never have been elected. He’d be alive today.”

I asked if she was mentioned in any of the Kennedy biographies.

She stared at me again – it was my own schoolmarm’s stare, refusing to answer a question of such sass and ill will. “What sells books?” she asked finally. “You tell me. Bernice Graverman or Marilyn Monroe?”

I wanted to tell her that she was either cruel or crazy and in either case insulting my intelligence. I considered “You are a sick woman,” or “You’re lying.” I settled on “I don’t look like him at all.”

“You don’t,” she agreed.

“Wasn’t he tall?”

Bernice reached for the glass ashtray and placed it in front of her with a petulant clink.

“You’re annoyed,” I said.

She shrugged.

“Did you expect me to believe you?”

“When you’re telling the truth, you don’t worry about being taken for a liar.”

“So you said to you yourself, I’ll tell April I’m her mother and President Kennedy was her father, and then she’ll know. Period. That’ll impress the hell out of her. Something like that?”

Bernice poked a long red fingernail into an almost flat pack of cigarettes and found one more. She lit it with a silver lighter and exhaled gracefully toward the ceiling. “I’m not an analytic person,” she said. “I act first and live with the consequences.”

“How old was he?”

“Twenty-nine,” said Bernice, “but he looked twenty-two.”

“I can’t believe someone twenty-nine years old, running for public office, would seduce a sixteen-year-old campaign volunteer, practically on the spot.”

“You’re very naive. You don’t understand the way it was. Politicians did whatever they felt like doing, especially bachelor politicians.”

“Where did you go for your trysts?” I asked.

“Charlestown. An apartment of someone he trusted.”

“Was he your first?”

“Of course!”

“How long did it last?”

“Weeks, months.” Bernice looked away, then added: “For me, a lifetime.”

I smiled, thinking that for all her drama she was a terrible actress. I asked if they had managed to be together often.

“Whenever we could. His schedule was impossible.”

‘Was he good?” I asked in a low voice.

Bernice smiled indulgently. “Terrible, by today’s standards. All business. And his back always hurt.”

“Was he right- or left-handed?”

“Right.”

“Was he circumcised?” I asked.

“If you’re trying to trip me up, you won’t.”

“Why weren’t you angry? Didn’t you want to ruin his career after he abandoned you?”

Bernice closed her eyes and shook her head, rattled her head vigorously. One toad-sized clip-on earring flew off her earlobe.

I thought: This person is my mother.