Good In Bed Part 24

"Did she, um, have an eating disorder?"

"No. Just neuroses about food. She was in a car accident... that's how she died. I remember my parents were at the hospital, and n.o.body would tell me for the longest time what was going on. Finally my aunt, my mother's sister, came to my room and said that Katie was in Heaven, and that I shouldn't be sad, because Heaven was a wonderful place where you got to do all your favorite things. I used to think that heaven was a place full of Devil Dogs and ice cream and bacon and waffles... all the things that Katie wanted to eat, and would never let herself have." He turned to face me. "Sounds silly, doesn't it?"

"No. No, actually, that's kind of how I imagine Heaven myself." I felt terrible as soon as I'd said it. What if he thought that I was making fun of his poor dead sister?

"You're Jewish, right?"

"Yeah."

"I am, too. I mean, I'm half. My father was. But we weren't raised as anything." He looked at me curiously. "Do Jews believe in heaven?"

"No... not technically." I groped for my Hebrew school lessons. "The deal is, you die, and then it's just... like sleep, I think. There's no real idea of an afterlife. Just sleep. And then the Messiah comes, and everyone gets to live again."

"Live in the bodies they had when they were alive?"

"I don't know. I personally intend to lobby for Heidi Klum's."

He laughed a little bit. "Would you..." He turned to face me. "You're cold."

I had been s.h.i.+vering a little bit. "No, I'm okay."

"I'm sorry," he said.

"No, it's fine! I actually like hearing about other people's, um, lives." I had almost said "problems," but I'd caught myself just in time. "This was good."

But he was already on his feet and three long-legged strides ahead of me, almost to the door. "We should get you inside," he was muttering. He held the door open. I stepped into the stairwell, but didn't move, so that when he shut the door he was standing very close to me.

"You were going to ask me something," I said. "Tell me what it was."

Now it was his turn to look fl.u.s.tered. "I... um... the, uh, pregnancy nutrition cla.s.ses, I think. I was going to ask you if you'd consider signing up for one of those."

I knew that wasn't it. And I even had a faint inkling that it might have been something completely different. But I didn't say anything. Maybe he'd just had a brief, fleeting thought of asking me... something... because he'd been talking about his sister and he felt vulnerable. Or maybe he felt sorry for me. Or maybe I was completely wrong. After the whole Steve debacle, and now with Bruce, I wasn't feeling very trusting of my instincts.

"What time do they meet?" I asked.

"I'll check," he said, and I followed him down the stairs.

THIRTEEN.

After much deliberation and about ten rough drafts, I composed, and mailed, Bruce a letter.

Bruce, There is no way to sugar-coat this, so I'll just tell you straight out that I am pregnant. It happened the last time we were together, and I've decided to keep the baby. I am due on June 15.

This is my decision, and I made it carefully. I wanted to let you know because I want it to be your choice to what extent you are involved in this child's life.

I am not telling you what to do, or asking for anything. I have made my choices, and you will have to make yours. If you want to spend time with the baby, I will try my best to make that work out. If you don't, I understand.

I'm sorry that this happened. I know it isn't what you need in your life right now. But I decided that this was something you deserved to know about, so you can make the choices you think are right. The only thing I ask is that you please not write about this. I don't care if you talk about me, but there's someone else at stake now.

Take care, Cannie I wrote my telephone number, in case he'd forgotten, and mailed it off.

There was so much more that I wanted to write, like that I still pined for him. That I still had daydreams of him coming back to me, of us living together: me and Bruce, and the baby. That I was scared a lot of the time, and furious at him some of the time I wasn't scared, or so racked with love and longing and yearning that I was afraid to let myself even think his name, for fear of what I'd do, and that as much as I filled my days with things to do, with plans and lists, with painting the second bedroom a shade of yellow called Lemonade Stand and a.s.sembling the dresser I bought from Ikea, too often, I'd still find myself thinking about how much I wanted him back.

But I wrote none of those things.

I remembered when I was a senior in high school and how hard it was to wait for colleges to send out their letters and say whether they were taking you or leaving you. Trust me, waiting for the father of your unborn child to get back to you as to whether or not he's willing to be involved with you, or the baby, is a lot worse. For three days I checked my phone at home obsessively. For a week I drove home at lunchtime to check my mailbox, cursing myself for not having sent the letter via registered mail, so I'd at least know that he'd received it.

There was nothing. Day after day of nothing. I couldn't believe that he would be this cold. That he would turn his back on me- on us- so completely. But it was, it seemed, the truth of the matter. And so I gave up... or tried to make myself give up.

"It's like this," I addressed my belly. It was Sunday morning, two days before Christmas. I'd gone on a bike ride (I was cleared to ride until my sixth month, barring complications), put together a mobile made of brightly painted dog bones that I'd made, myself, from a book called Simple Crafts for Kids, and was rewarding myself with a long hot soak.

"I think that babies should have two parents. I believe that. Ideally, I'd have a father for you. But I don't. See, your, um, biological father is a really good guy, but he wasn't the right guy for me, and he's kind of having a rough time right now, and also he's seeing somebody else" This was probably more than my unborn child needed to know, but whatever. "So I'm sorry. But this is the way it is. And I'm going to try to raise you as best I can, and we'll make the best of it, and hopefully you won't wind up resenting me horribly and getting tattoos and piercings and stuff to externalize your pain, or whatever kids will be doing in about fifteen years, because I'm sorry, and I'm going to make this work."

I limped through the holidays. I made fudge and cookies for my friends instead of buying them stuff, and I tucked cash (less than I'd meted out the year before) into cards for my siblings. I drove home for my mother's annual holiday open house, where dozens of her friends, plus all of the members of the Switch Hitters and much of the roster of A League of Their Own fussed over me, offering good wishes, advice, the names of doctors and day-care centers, and a slightly used copy of Heather Has Two Mommies (the latter from a misguided shortstop named Dot, whom Tanya immediately took aside to inform that I wasn't a lesbian, just a dumped breeder). I stayed in the kitchen as much as I could, grating potatoes, frying latkes, listening to Lucy regale me with the story of how she and one of her girlfriends had convinced a guy they'd met at a bar to take them back to his place, then opened all the Christmas presents under his tree after he'd pa.s.sed out.

"That wasn't very nice," I scolded.

"He wasn't very nice," said Lucy. "What was he doing, taking the two of us home while his wife was out of town?"

I agreed that she had a point.

"They're all dogs," Lucy continued loftily. "Of course, I don't have to tell you that." She gulped the clear liquid from her gla.s.s. Her eyes were sparkling. "I've got to get my holiday swerve on," she announced.

"Take your swerve outside," I urged her, and added another dollop of raw potato goo to the frying pan. I thought that Lucy was probably secretly delighted that it was me, not her, who'd wound up in this predicament. From Lucy, an unplanned pregnancy would have been almost expected. From me, it was shocking.

My mother poked her head into the kitchen. "Cannie? You're staying over, right?"

I nodded. Ever since Thanksgiving, I'd fallen into the pattern of spending at least one night every weekend at my mother's house. She cooked dinner, I ignored Tanya, and the next morning my mother and I would swim, slowly, side by side, before I'd stock up on groceries and whatever new-baby necessities her friends had donated, and head back to town.

My mother came to the stove and poked my latkes with a spatula. "I think the oil's too hot," she offered. I shooed her away, but she only retreated as far as the sink.

"Still nothing from Bruce?" she asked. I nodded once. "I can't believe it," she said. "It's not like him"

"Whatever," I said shortly. In truth, I thought my mother was right. This wasn't like the Bruce that I had known, and I was just as hurt and bewildered as anyone. "Evidently I've managed to bring out the worst in him."

My mother gave me a kind smile. Then she reached past me and turned the heat down. "Don't burn them," she said, and returned to the party, leaving me with a pan of half-cooked potato pancakes and all of my questions. Doesn't he care? I wondered. Doesn't he care at all?

All through the winter, I tried to keep busy. I made the rounds of my friends' parties, sipping spiced cider instead of eggnog or champagne. I went out to dinner with Andy, and went for walks with Samantha, and to birthing cla.s.ses with Lucy, who'd agreed to be my birth coach "as long as I don't have to look at your coochie!" As it was, we'd almost got thrown out the first day. Lucy started hollering "Pus.h.!.+ Pus.h.!.+" when all the teacher wanted to do was talk about how to pick a hospital. Ever since then, the mommy-and-daddy couples had given us a wide berth.

Dr. K. had become my new e-mail buddy. He'd write to me at the office once or twice a week, asking how I was doing, giving me updates on my friends from Fat Cla.s.s. I learned that Esther had purchased a treadmill and lost forty pounds, and that Bonnie had found a boyfriend. "Let me know how you're doing," he would always write, but I never felt like telling him much, mostly because I couldn't figure out what box to put him in. Was he a doctor? A friend? I wasn't sure, so I kept things topical, telling him the latest pieces of newsroom gossip, and what I was working on, and how I was feeling.

Slowly, I started telling the people close to me what was going on, starting small, then moving in ever-widening circles- good friends, then not-so-good friends, a handful of coworkers, a half-dozen relatives. I did it in person, wherever possible, by e-mail, in Maxi's case.

"As it turns out," I began, "I am pregnant." I gave her the condensed, PG-13 version of the events. "Remember when I told you about the last time I saw Bruce, at the s.h.i.+va call?" I wrote. "We had an encounter while I was at his house. That's how this happened."

Maxi's reply was instantaneous, two sentences long, and all in capital letters. "WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO?" she wrote. "DO YOU NEED HELP?"

I told her my plans, such as they were: have the baby, work part-time. "This isn't what I would have planned," I wrote, "but I'm trying to make the best of the situation."

"Are you happy?" Maxi e-mailed back. "Are you scared? What can I can do?"

"I'm sort of happy. I'm excited," I wrote. "I know my life will change, and I'm trying not to be too scared about how." I thought about her last question and told her that what I needed was for her to keep being my friend, to keep in touch. "Think good thoughts for me," I told her. "And hope that this all works out, somehow."

Some days, though, that didn't seem likely. Like the day I went to the drugstore to stock up on appealing pregnancy necessities including Metamucil and Preparation H and came across Bruce's latest "Good in Bed" column, a treatise on public displays of affection ent.i.tled "Oh, Oh, the Mistletoe."

"If it were up to me," he'd written, "I would hold E's hand forever. She has the most wonderful hands, tiny and slender and soft, so different from my own."

Or from mine, I'd thought sadly, staring at my own thick-fingered hands with their ragged nails and picked-over cuticles.

If it were up to me I'd kiss her on every street corner and hug her in front of live studio audiences. I don't need seasonal excuses, or random bits of greenery dangling from the ceiling as incentive. She's completely adorable, and I'm not shy about showing it.

It makes me unusual, I know. Lots of men would rather hold your shopping bags, your backpack, possibly even your purse, than hold your hand in public. They're okay kissing their mothers and sisters- years of conditioning have worn down their resistance- but they're not so great about kissing you when their friends can see. How to get your man over his hump? Don't stop trying. Brush his fingertips with yours while sharing popcorn at a movie, and hold his hand as you walk out the door. Kiss him playfully at first, and hope he'll reciprocate with more pa.s.sion, eventually. Try tucking that mistletoe in your bra.s.siere, or, better yet, that lacy garter belt you've never worn Lacy garter belts. Oh, that hurt. I remembered how, for my birthday and for Valentine's Day, Bruce would show up with boxes full of plus-size lingerie. I refused to wear it. I told him I was shy. In truth, the stuff made me feel stupid. Regular-sized women are ashamed of their b.u.t.ts and bellies. How could I feel good about pouring myself into the teddies and thongs he'd somehow procured? It felt like a bad joke, like a mean trick, like a Candid Camera stunt, where as soon as I showed that I was dumb or gullible enough to think I'd look good in this stuff, Allen Funt and his crew would pop out of the closet, bright lights flas.h.i.+ng and wide-angle lenses at the ready. No matter how Bruce tried to rea.s.sure me ("I wouldn't have bought it for you if I didn't want to see you wear it!") I just couldn't bring myself to even try.

I shut the magazine. I paid for my things, shoved them in my pocket, and trudged home. Even though I knew he'd written his December article months before he'd gotten my letter- if he'd gotten it at all- it still felt like a slap in my face.

Because I had no party plans (not to mention no one to kiss), I volunteered to work on New Year's Eve. I got out at 11:30, came home, bundled Nifkin in the little fleece sweats.h.i.+rt he despised (in my heart, I was sure he thought it made him look silly... and in my heart, I had to admit he was right), and packed myself into my winter coat. I stuck a bottle of nonalcoholic grape juice into my pocket, and we walked down to Penns Landing and sat on the pier, watching the fireworks go off, as drunken teenagers and South Philly denizens screamed and groped and kissed each other all around us. It was 1999.

Then I went home and did something I probably should have done much earlier. I got a big cardboard box and started packing away all the things I had around that Bruce had given me, or the things that reminded me of him.

In went the half-melted globe candle that we'd lit together in Vermont, and in whose flickering sweetly scented light we'd made love. In went all of the letters he'd sent me, each folded neatly into its envelope. In went all the lingerie he'd bought me that I'd never worn, and the vibrator and the edible body oils and the pink fur-lined handcuffs, which were probably things I shouldn't have lying around anyhow, what with a baby on the way. In went a hand-painted gla.s.s bead necklace his mother had given me for my last birthday, and the leather bag from the birthday before that. After some deliberation I decided to hang on to the portable phone, which had managed to lose its a.s.sociation with Bruce... after all, he wasn't calling. And I kept the CDs from Ani DiFranco and Mary Chapin Carpenter, Liz Phair and Susan Werner. That was my music, not his.

I bundled it all up, taped the box, and walked it down to my storage area in the bas.e.m.e.nt, thinking I could maybe sell some of the nicer stuff if it came to that, but for now, it would be out of sight, and maybe that would be enough. Or at least, a start. Then I came back upstairs and cracked open my new journal, a beautiful book with a marbled paper cover and thick lined pages. "1999," I wrote, as Nifkin hopped up and sat on the arm of the couch beside me, looking over my words with what I hoped was approval. "For my baby, whom I already love very much."

It rained through most of January and snowed almost constantly through February, turning everything white for about ten minutes, until the belching city busses and the guys hawking snot on the streets turned it gray again. I tried not to look at the red foil hearts in drugstore windows. I tried to avoid Moxie's red-on-pink Valentine's Day issue to which Bruce, the cover informed me, had contributed a piece ent.i.tled "Make Him Wanna Holler: 10 Sizzling New s.e.x Tricks for the Erotic Adventuress." One ill-fated day I'd flipped to his column while waiting in line at the convenience store, and had been a.s.saulted with a full-page picture of Bruce wearing lipstick-red silk boxer shorts and an expression of abject bliss as he lolled on bed with a woman I sincerely hoped was a Moxie model as opposed to the mysterious E. I'd thrust the magazine back into the rack as if I'd been burned, and decided, after in-person consultations with Samantha ("Just let it go, Cannie,") and e-mailed debate with Maxi ("I could have him killed, if you like,") that the best thing to do would be to just ignore it, and be grateful that February was a short month.

Time pa.s.sed. I developed a new and interesting set of stretch marks, and started craving the imported Stilton cheese that they sold at Chef's Market on South Street for $16 a pound. A few times, I came close to slipping a wedge in my coat pocket and slinking out of the store, but I never did. Too embarra.s.sing, I reasoned, having to explain my cheese habit to whoever would have to come and bail me out after my inevitable arrest.

I actually felt pretty good, which was how most of the relentlessly upbeat pregnancy books I'd read described the second trimester. "You'll feel radiant and alive, full of energy!" read one, beneath a picture of a radiant and alive-looking pregnant woman walking through a field of wildflowers, hand in hand with her devoted-looking spouse. It wasn't that great, what with the occasional overwhelming sleepiness, and my b.r.e.a.s.t.s aching so badly some days that I had fantasies of their falling off and rolling away, and the night I ate an entire jar of mango chutney while watching a rerun of Total Request Live on MTV. Occasionally- well, maybe more than occasionally- I'd feel so sorry for myself that I'd cry. All of my books had pictures of pregnant ladies with their husbands (or, in the more progressive ones, partners)- someone to rub cocoa b.u.t.ter on your belly and fetch you ice cream and pickles, to cheer you up and urge you on and help you pick out a name. I had n.o.body, I would mope, conveniently ignoring Samantha and Lucy and my mother's twice-a-night phone calls and weekly sleepovers. n.o.body to dispatch to the convenience store in the middle of the night, n.o.body who'd stay up late debating the relative merits of Alice and Abigail, n.o.body to tell me not to be scared of the pain and not to be scared of the future and tell me that everything would be fine.

And it felt like things were getting more complicated instead of less. For one thing, people at work were starting to notice. n.o.body'd come right out and asked me yet, but I was getting the occasional stare, or hearing the occasional hushed silence when I came into the ladies' room or the cafeteria.

One afternoon Gabby cornered me by my desk. She'd been gunning for me since the fall, when my forty-inch Sunday feature on Maxi ran on the front of the Entertainment section, much to the delight of my editors. They were thrilled that we were the only East Coast paper to have secured an interview with Maxi, and even more thrilled that we had the only story in which she spoke so candidly about her life, her goals, and her failed romances. I got a nice little bonus, plus a glowing note from the editor in chief, which I kept prominently posted on my cubicle wall.

All of this was good for me, but it meant that Gabby was in an increasingly foul mood- especially since I'd gotten the nod to write about the Grammys, while she'd been consigned to prewriting Andy Rooney's obituary, lest his health take a turn for the worse.

"Are you gaining weight?" she demanded.

I tried to turn the question around, the way Redbook's latest "10 Tips for Handling Difficult People" advised, aware that people's ears had p.r.i.c.ked up. "What an unusual question," I said through numb lips. "Why are you interested?"

Gabby just stared at me, refusing to bite. "You look different," she said.

"So what I'm hearing you say," I began, per Redbook's instructions, "is that it's important to you that I always look the same?"

She gave me a long, angry stare, then huffed off. That suited me fine. I hadn't decided what to tell people, or when to tell them, and for the time being I was wearing oversized s.h.i.+rts and leggings and hoping they'd chalk my weight gain (six pounds in the first trimester, another four since Thanksgiving) up to holiday overindulgence.

And it was true that I was eating well. I had brunch every weekend with my mother, and dinner once or twice a week with my friends, who seemed to be operating on some kind of top-secret schedule. Every night, somebody would call, and offer to come over for coffee or meet for a bagel in the morning. Every day at work, Andy would ask if I wanted to share leftovers from whichever fabulous place he'd dined at the night before, or Betsy would take me to the tiny, excellent Vietnamese luncheonette two blocks over. It was as if they were afraid to leave me alone. And I didn't even care that I was their sympathy case or their project. I sucked it all up, trying to distract myself from missing Bruce and obsessing over the things I didn't have (security, stability, a father for my unborn child, maternity clothes that didn't make me look like a small ski slope). I went to work and to see Dr. Patel, and made arrangements for all of the cla.s.ses and courses a new mother-to-be could want: Breast Feeding Basics, Infant CPR, Parenting 101.

My mother put the word out, and her friends all emptied their attics and their daughters' attics. By February, I had a changing table and a Diaper Genie, a crib and a car seat and a stroller that looked more luxurious (and more complicated) than my little car. I had boxes full of footie pajamas and little knitted caps, drooled-upon copies of Pat the Bunny and Goodnight Moon, and silver rattles with teeth marks. I had bottles and nipples and a nipple sterilizer. Josh gave me a $50 gift certificate to EBaby. Lucy gave me a packet of hand-drawn coupons agreeing to baby-sit once a week when the baby came ("as long as I don't have to change number two diapers!").

I gradually turned my second bedroom from a study into a nursery. I took the time I used to devote to the composition of screenplays and short stories and query letters to GQ and the New Yorker- to bettering myself, basically- and started a series of do-it-yourself home improvement projects. And, regretfully, I started spending money. I bought a sea-green rug that went nicely with the Lemonade Stand walls, and a Beatrix Potter calendar. I trash-picked a scarred rocking chair, had the seat recaned, and spray-painted it white. I started fill-ing the bookshelf with every children's book I could scrounge from the book editor, plus books from home, and books I bought secondhand. Every night, I read to my belly... just to get into the habit, plus, because I'd read somewhere that babies are sensitive to the sound of their mother's voices.

And every night, I'd dance. I'd pull the forever-dusty metal blinds down, light a few candles, kick off my shoes, crank up the music, and move. It wasn't always a happy dance. Sometimes I'd blast early Ani DiFranco and think about Bruce in spite of myself as Ani roared out "You were never very kind, and you let me way down every time..." But I'd try to dance happily, for the baby's sake, if not my own.

Was I lonely? Like crazy. Living without Bruce, and without the possibility of his eventual return, of even ever seeing him again, and knowing that he'd totally rejected me and our baby, felt like trying to live without oxygen. Some days I'd get angry and be furious at him for letting me stay with him so long... or for not coming back when I wanted him to. But I'd try to put the anger in a box, the way I'd put away his gifts, and keep moving forward.

Sometimes I couldn't help but wonder whether it was only pride that was keeping us apart, and whether it wouldn't be smarter for me to call him, or better yet, go see him, and just beg until he took me back. I wondered if maybe, despite everything he'd said, he did still love me. I'd wonder if he ever had. I'd try to make myself stop thinking these things, but my mind would churn and churn, until I'd have to get up and do something. I polished my silverware, child-proofed the cabinets, cleaned my closets. My apartment, for the first time ever, was neat, even beautiful. Too bad my head was such a mess.

FOURTEEN.

"The thing that every single woman has to remember," said Samantha, as we walked along Kelly Drive on a brisk, breezy early morning in April, "is that if he wants to talk to you, he'll call. You just have to keep repeating that. 'If he wants to talk to me, he'll call.' "

"I know," I said mournfully, resting my hands on the ledge of my belly, which I could do since I had officially started showing the week before. Being pregnant was strange, but it did have a few benefits. Instead of having people- okay, men- look at me with disinterest and/or scorn because I was a Larger Woman, people looked at me with kindness, now that I was visibly pregnant. It was a nice change. It even made me feel a little bit better about my own appearance- at least for a few minutes every now and then.

"I'm actually doing better," I said. "I'm trying to be proactive. Whenever I think of him, I force myself to think of something about the baby. Something that I have to do, or buy, or sign up for."

"Sounds good. How's work going?"

"Not bad," I said. Truthfully, work was a little weird. It was strange to be doing things that would have had me so excited... or nervous... or upset... or happy, just a year ago, and have them feel like they barely mattered. A personal audience with Craig Kilborn over lunch in New York, to discuss his show's new direction? Eh. A nasty spat with Gabby over which one of us was going to get to write the postmortem on The Nanny? Whatever. Even my coworkers' increasing and not-so-surrept.i.tious glances, from my belly (burgeoning) to my third left finger (bare) didn't seem to matter. n.o.body'd worked up the nerve to actually ask me anything yet, but I was ready for the questions when they came. Yes, I'd say, I'm pregnant. No, I'd tell them, not with the father any more. That, I thought, would maybe hold them... provided I could change the subject to their own pregnancy/birth/child-rearing stories.

"So what's on the agenda for today?" Samantha asked. "More shopping."

Samantha groaned.

"I'm sorry, but I really just need a few more things from the maternity place"

I knew that Samantha was trying to be a good sport about shopping with me. But I could tell it wasn't easy. For one thing, unlike any other woman I'd ever known, she loathed shopping. For another, I was pretty sure she was getting sick of everybody a.s.suming we were lesbian lovers.

While Samantha was extolling the virtues of mail-order catalogues and Internet shopping, a guy jogged by us. Tall, lean, shorts and a ratty-looking sweats.h.i.+rt advertising some college or another. Typical jogger on Kelly Drive on a Sat.u.r.day. Except that this one stopped.

"Hi, Cannie!"

I stopped and squinted, my hands resting protectively on my belly. Samantha stopped, too, gaping. The Mystery Jogger pulled off his baseball cap. It was Dr. K..

"Hey!" I said, smiling. Wow. Outside of that horrible fluorescent-lit building, outside of his white lab coat and gla.s.ses, he was kind of cute... for an older guy.

"Introduce me to your friend," Samantha practically purred.