Fletch and the Widow Bradley

horse is the last thing she has to worry about.”

“You ride horseback,” Fletch said. “I watched you this morning, on West 89th Street.”

“Yes, I enjoy riding. My brother enjoyed riding. Does that make me my brother?”

“The night we had dinner,” Fletch said, “last Friday night, you spent almost the entire time telling me a long, convoluted, not-very-funny barnyard story.”

“So what? I’m sorry if you didn’t like my story. I’d had a drink. I thought it was funny.”

“Long, not-very-funny dirty jokes are characteristic of Thomas Bradley. As reported to me by Mabel Franscatti, Alex Corcoran, Mary Blaine and Charles Blaine.”

“Tom and I had certain characteristics in common. We’re brother and sister. Fletch, are you insane?”

“Brother … sister. You are your brother.”

“I’m also my own grandfather.”

“Could be.”

“What’s the point of this joke?”

“The point is I have only one piece of paper, when I should have, by this time, three pieces of paper.” He took from his inside jacket pocket Thomas Bradley’s birth certificate and placed it on the coffee table in front of her. “Thomas Bradley was born in Dallas, Texas.”

She nodded. “Thank you. I knew that.”

“I went to Dallas, Sunday,” he said. “By the way, your old neighborhood’s torn down.”

She shrugged. “There goes the neighborhood.”

“You were not born in Dallas, Texas.”

“I told you. I was born in Juneau, Alaska.”

“Tuesday I was in Juneau, Alaska. You were not born in Juneau, Alaska.”

Francine stared at him.

“And Thomas Bradley did not die in Switzerland.” Fletch had returned to stand by the window, but he was still watching her. “So, instead of having two birth certificates and one death certificate, I’ve got only one birth certificate. And that’s yours. The Bradleys had only one child—a son named Thomas.”

“I was born well outside Juneau, about a hundred miles—”

“You weren’t born at all, Francine.”

She sighed and looked away. “My God.”

“And Tom Bradley didn’t die.”

“You do believe in pieces of paper, Fletcher. Bureaucracies, clerks, secretaries—”

“And Swiss undertakers. I believe in Swiss undertakers. You’ve been writing those memos to Accounting yourself, Francine, and initialing them ‘T.B.’, probably without even realizing you were doing it. We all have low-level habits that are just second-nature to us. We all do certain things in certain ways, and we continue doing them, under all circumstances, unconsciously.” Looking at her, he gave her a moment. “True?”

“No,” she said.

“Francine, would you come here, please?”

She looked a scared, unwilling child.

“Please come here,” he said.

She rose and came across the room to him unsteadily, leaving the low table between them.

“Look down,” he said.

She looked at the tile mosaic on the low table.

“Almost finished, isn’t it?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“When I first entered your apartment, a week ago, it was less than half finished.”

Looking down at the mosaic, her mouth opened slowly.

“I see.”

“Come on, Tom,” Fletch said. “I’m not trying to embarrass anybody. As you said, I’m just trying to save my own ass.”

Francine cupped a hand to her face, bridging cheekbone and forehead, turned, and started across the livingroom toward the foyer. She bumped into a free-standing chair.

Fletch heard her high heels click across the foyer’s hardwood floor. And then he heard her knock on a door.

“Enid?” she called. “Enid, would you please come help me, dear?”

38

“F L E T C H,   D O   Y O U believe in the soul?”

“The soul is immaterial,” he said.

Francine asked, “Is that meant as a pun?”

“Of course.”

Enid Bradley had entered the livingroom from the foyer, putting one sensible shoe unsteadily ahead of the other as if unsure of where she was going. “Hello, Mrs. Bradley,” Fletch had said. She looked worried, confused, and said nothing.

Francine entered more briskly behind her, and took her by the arm. Together they sat on the divan.

Fletch loosened his tie and collar and sat on the freestanding chair. “Sorry,” he said. Again he looked at Francine’s breasts. “I just don’t understand.” Seeing the two of them together he realized Francine was the shorter. In the photograph behind him, Thomas Bradley was shorter than his wife. “And I need to understand. I have to save myself.”

Each woman had her hands in her own lap. Francine sat the straighter. Enid always looks terrified of what the next moment will bring—you know, as if she’s afraid someone is going to say something dirty, Mary Blaine had said that night in Puerto de Orlando. Her husband usually does, Charles Blaine had answered. I mean, did.

“Fletch,” Francine asked. “Do you know what a transsexual is?”

“I can’t say I understand. I’d like to be able to say I do.”

You can’t understand everything that happens, Roberta, Ta-ta, had said jogging through the California woods … You can try to understand, of course. You can even act like you understand, when you don’t yet. But some things …

“A male can be born in a female body,” Francine said simply. “Or a female born in a male body.”

“What defines us as male or female, except our bodies?” Fletch asked.

“Our souls,” Francine said. “To use your word, there is an immaterial self independent of the material self— our bodies. I was a female born in a male’s body. That’s all there is to it. I’ve known it since I was two or three years old. As long as I can remember I had feminine desires. A great interest in feminine clothes. I had a feminine perspective on everything. I liked dolls and babies and pretend tea parties and having my hair done up. I remember the first time my father introduced me as his son, Tom, I stared at him in shock. I was a girl. That was all there was to it. I knew I was a girl.”

Francine went to the bar and began to pour out three Scotch and waters.

“I went through high school, as a boy, in Dallas, Texas. I wore trousers and sweat shirts and played on the varsity baseball team. I wasn’t a bad short stop. Gee, you know, I almost just said I could throw like a boy.” She smiled at Fletch. “I dated girls and was elected treasurer of my senior class. I became a superb actor. With every word, every expression on my face, I acted the complete male. I was the complete male. I had the equipment, and I could get it up on demand. Don’t ask me what I was really thinking, in the back seat with Lucy, or Janey, or Alice. Girls loved me especially because I understood them so well. All through college—boys’ dormitories, boys’ fraternity houses, well, all that was sort of nice. But I felt a cheater—because I was a girl.”

She brought Fletch’s drink to him.

“Can you imagine a worse conflict than being a girl in a boy’s body? Or a woman in a man’s body? No life can be worse than the life which obliges you to be dishonest with every word, every expression, in every living moment.”

She took the two remaining drinks from the bar to the divan, and, sitting down, handed one to Enid, who