Irish Gilt Read Online Free PDF Page B

widened. “Henry Esperanza?”
    Henry had been Bernice’s father’s name. “My maiden name was Carlyle.”
    â€œMine was Waters.” Marjorie paused. “It still is.”
    â€œOh.”
    That explained why there was no husband in evidence. Given her equivocal status as an unwed mother, Marjorie had a nerve putting on airs. She barely acknowledged it when Bernice introduced her to Ricardo. When he left, Marjorie asked if he was a Mexican.
    â€œArgentine.”
    â€œWhat’s that?”
    â€œIs your husband coming?”
    â€œI don’t have one.”
    There was no way to score against Marjorie. She seemed to think that she was striking a blow for independence. She said she might call her daughter Conception. Bernice glowered at her.
    â€œMiss Conception,” Marjorie explained.
    â€œHa ha.” It was kind of funny.
    Despite everything, they became friends of a sort, and in the subsequent months they got together from time to time. Ricardo didn’t like it when Marjorie tried to speak Spanish to him: Cómo está usted? When the two women exchanged grievances, Bernice let it go when Marjorie began to refer to Ricardo as Green Card or made a point of how dark Henry was. It was from Marjorie that Bernice learned to think of taking care of Henry as cruel and unusual punishment. She left her daughter with her parents a lot. “I want to resume my career,” she had told Bernice in the maternity ward.
    â€œWhere do you work?”
    She was a receptionist in a realty office and went on about the money she hoped to make selling houses when she passed the exams.
    Did she still see her daughter’s father? Bernice asked.
    â€œI don’t even think of him. What do you plan to do?”
    Do? She was a wife and mother. Somehow she knew Marjorie wouldn’t take that for an answer. “I may go back to school.”
    â€œWhere?”
    After high school, Bernice had enrolled at IUSB and attended classes fitfully for a few years. The idea was that she would meet someone and get married. She met Ricardo in a sports bar. He was good-looking, no doubt of that, and when he said he worked at Notre Dame she got interested. He was Catholic, so they got married that way; it was all right with Bernice. She believed in God but didn’t want to go into any details.
    Ricardo didn’t make her go to Mass, although Henry was baptized, but it all became an issue when she had had enough. “I don’t believe in divorce.”
    â€œRicardo, I’m through.”
    â€œDon’t you remember what you promised?”
    Sometimes Bernice thought that if she didn’t have the album of photographs she would never even remember the day she made the mistake of her life. Ricardo dragged her off to a priest who told her that marriage was for life. A life sentence. That’s what it felt like, and she wanted a pardon. Ricardo contested the divorce, but he didn’t stand a chance. She had half a mind to let him have Henry.
    Marjorie stood by her during the battle. Afterward, she urged Bernice to resume her maiden name.
    â€œI can’t do that.”
    â€œWhy not? It’s yours.”
    â€œIt’s the name I intend to write under.” She said it on an impulse, to scare away the frightening thought of what she was going to do now. Freedom had looked pretty good until she had it.
    â€œYou’re going to be an underwriter?”
    â€œOh ha.”
    â€œI’m sorry. Tell me about it.”
    It was like putting a daydream into words. On the backs of the novels Bernice liked, there were photographs of the authors, and after she finished one Bernice would study the picture and imagine what it would be like to be rich and famous and a novelist. The ambition she described to Marjorie seemed to have been lurking in the back of her mind forever. It was the first time she had ever impressed Marjorie. Later, when she told Marjorie she was at Notre Dame,