Then She Found Me Read Online Free Page A

campaign. ‘Pretty girls are always needed,’ I think is what he said. I blushed, of course. I was totally inexperiencedand 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’sstare, 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 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