Good In Bed Part 32

If you wish for something hard enough, the fairy tales teach us, you can get it in the end. But it's hardly ever the way you thought it would be, and the endings aren't always happy ones. For months, I had been wis.h.i.+ng for Bruce, dreaming of Bruce, conjuring a memory of his face and holding it in front of me as I fell asleep, even when I tried not to. In the end, it was almost like I'd wished him into being, that I'd dreamed so hard and so often that he couldn't help but appear before me.

It happened just the way Samantha had said it would. "You'll see him again," she'd told me that morning months ago when I told her that I was expecting. "I've seen enough soap operas to guarantee it."

I got off the plane, yawning to clear my clogged-up ears, and there, in the waiting area directly across from me, beneath a sign that read "Tampa/St. Pete's" was Bruce. I felt my heart lift, thinking that he'd come for me, that, somehow, he'd come for me, until I saw that he was with some girl I'd never seen before. Short, pale, her hair in a pageboy. Light blue jeans, a pale yellow Oxford s.h.i.+rt tucked in. Nondescript, fade-into-the-woodwork clothes, medium features and a medium frame. Nothing remarkable about her at all except for her thick unruly eyebrows. My replacement, I presumed.

I froze in place, paralyzed by the horrible coincidence, the outrageous misfortune of this. But if it was going to happen, this would be the place- the giant, soulless Newark International Airport, where travelers from New York, New Jersey, and Philadelphia converged in search of transatlantic flights and/or cheap domestic airfare.

For about five seconds I stood stock-still and prayed that they wouldn't see me. I tried to edge off to the side of the lounge, to skirt the entire area, thinking that there had to be some way to duck onto the escalator, grab my bags, and escape. But then Bruce's eyes locked on mine, and I knew it was too late.

He bent down, whispering something to the girl, who turned her head away before I could get a good look. Then he crossed the concourse, walking right toward me, wearing a red T-s.h.i.+rt that I'd snuggled up against a hundred times and blue shorts that I remembered seeing him put on, and pull off, just as often. I sent up a quick prayer of thanks for Garth's haircut, for my tan, for my diamond earrings, and endured a sudden spasm of misery that I wasn't still wearing that grand and gaudy diamond ring. It was completely superficial, I knew, but I hoped I looked good. As good as somebody seven and a half months pregnant could look after a six-hour plane trip, at least.

And then Bruce was right in front of me, looking pale and solemn.

"Hey, Cannie," he said. His eyes fell to my midsection as if it were magnetized. "So you..."

"That's right," I said coolly. "I'm pregnant." I stood up straight and tightened my grip on Nifkin's case. Nifkin, of course, had smelled Bruce and was in the midst of trying to leap out and greet him. I could hear his tail thumping as he whined.

Bruce raised his eyes to the computerized board over the doorway I'd just pa.s.sed through. "You're coming from L.A.?" he asked, showing that his reading abilities had not diminished during our time apart.

I gave another curt nod, hoping he couldn't tell how badly my knees were shaking. "What are you doing here?" I asked.

"Vacation," he said. "We're going to Florida for the weekend."

We, I thought bitterly, staring at him. He looked just the same. A little thinner, maybe, with a few more strands of gray in his ponytail, but still, same old Bruce, right down to his smell, to his smile, and the half-laced doodled-on basketball sneakers. "How nice for you," I said.

Bruce didn't take the bait. "So were you in L.A. for work?"

"I had some meetings on the coast," I said. I have always wanted to say that to someone.

"The Examiner sent you to California?" he asked.

"No, I had meetings about my screenplay," I said.

"You sold your screenplay?" He seemed genuinely happy for me. "Cannie, that's great!"

I said nothing, glaring at him. Of all the things I needed from him- love, support, money, the bare acknowledgment that I existed, that our baby existed, and that any of it mattered to him, his congratulations felt exceedingly paltry.

"I... I'm sorry," he finally managed. And with that I was furious. How rotten of him, I thought, showing up at an airport to take Little Miss Pageboy on vacation, mouthing his pathetic apology, as if it could undo the months of silence, the worry I'd gone through, the anguish of missing him and figuring out how to provide for a baby on my own. And I was furious, too, for his complacency. He didn't care- not about me, not about the baby. He'd never called, never asked, never cared. Just left me- left us- all alone. Who did this remind me of?

I knew, at that moment, that my anger wasn't really for him. It was for my father, of course, the Original Abandoner, the author of all of my insecurities and fears. But my father was three thousand miles away from me, with his back eternally turned. If I could only step back and look at it clearly, I'd see that Bruce was just some guy, like a thousand other guys, right down to the pot and the ponytail and the half-intended slipshod lazy life, right down to the dissertation he'd never finish, the bookshelves he'd never build, and the bathtub he'd never clean. Guys like Bruce were as common as white cotton socks sold in six-packs at the Wal-Mart, if not as clean, and all I'd have to do to acquire another one would be to show up at a Phish concert and smile.

But Bruce, as opposed to my father, was right here... and he was far from innocent. After all, hadn't he left me, too?

I set Nifkin down and turned to face Bruce, feeling all of my fury- years of it- curl in my chest and rise to my throat. "You're sorry?" I spat.

He took a step backward. "I am sorry," he said, and his voice was so sad it sounded like he was being ripped open from the inside. "I know I should have called you, but... I just..."

I narrowed my eyes. He dropped his hands. "It was just too much," he whispered. "With my father and all."

I rolled my eyes to show what I thought of that excuse, and to make it clear that he and I would not be exchanging tender reminiscences of Bernard Guberman, or anything else, anytime soon.

"I know how strong you are," he told me. "I knew you'd be okay."

"Well, I have to be, don't I, Bruce? You didn't leave me much of a choice."

"I'm sorry," Bruce said again, looking even more wretched. "I... I hope you'll be happy."

"I can feel those good wishes radiating right off you," I retorted. "Oh, wait. My mistake. That's just pot smoke." It felt as if a part of me had detached from my body, floated up to the ceiling, and was watching this scene unfold in terror... and in great sadness. Cannie, oh, Cannie, a little voice mourned, this isn't who you're angry at.

"And you know what?" I asked him. "I'm sorry about your father. He was a man. You, you're nothing but a boy with big feet and facial hair. And you're never going to be anything else. You'll never be more than a third-rate writer at a second-rate magazine, and G.o.d help you when you can't peddle any more memories of what we had together."

The girlfriend sidled up to his side and laced her fingers through his. I just kept talking. "You'll never be as good as me, and you're always going to know that I was the best you ever had."

The girlfriend attempted to say something, but I wasn't going to stop.

"You're always going to be some big goofy guy with a bunch of tapes in cardboard s...o...b..xes. The guy with the rolling papers. The guy with the Grateful Dead bootleg. Good old Bruce. Except that shtick gets tired after soph.o.m.ore year. It gets old, the same way that you're getting old. It's unimproved, just like your writing. And you know what else?" I stepped right up to him, so we were practically toe to toe. "You're never going to finish that dissertation. And you're always going to live in New Jersey."

Bruce stood there, stunned. His mouth was literally gaping open. It wasn't a good look, emphasizing as it did his weak chin, and the network of wrinkles around his eyes.

The girlfriend looked up at me.

"Leave us alone," she said in a little squeaky voice. My new Manolo Blahnik slides gave me an extra three inches and I felt Amazonian, powerful, untroubled by this little wisp of a thing who barely cleared my shoulders. I gave her my very best shut-up-and-let-the-smart-people-talk look, the one I'd perfected over the years on my siblings. I wondered if she'd ever heard of tweezers. Sure, she could probably be looking at me and wondering whether I'd ever heard of Slim-Fast... or of birth control, for that matter. I found that I didn't much care.

"I don't think I was actually saying anything to you," I said, and dredged up a line from the Take Back the Night March, circa 1989. "I don't believe in blaming the victim."

That snapped Bruce back to reality. He tightened his grip on her hand. "Leave her alone," he said.

"Oh, Jesus." I sighed. "Like I'm the one doing anything to either one of you. For your information," I told the girlfriend, "I wrote him exactly one letter when I found out I was pregnant. One letter. And I won't do it again. I've got plenty of money, and a better job than he does, in case he neglected to mention that when he gave you our history, and I'm going to do just fine. I hope the two of you are very happy together." I picked up Nifkin, tossed my great hair, and breezed past a security guard. "I'd search his luggage," I said, loud enough for Bruce to hear, "he's probably holding."

And then, still being pregnant, I went to the bathroom to pee.

My knees felt like water, my cheeks were hot. Hah, I thought. Hah!

I stood, flushed, and opened the cubicle door. And there was the new girlfriend, her arms crossed against her meager chest.

"Yes?" I inquired politely. "You have a comment?"

Her mouth twisted. She had, I noticed, a bit of an overbite.

"You think you're so smart," she said. "He never really loved you. He told me he didn't." Her voice was getting higher. Squeak, squeak, squeak. She sounded like a little stuffed animal, the kind that bleated when you squeezed it.

"Whereas you," I said, "are obviously the real love of his life." I knew, deep in my heart, in my good heart, that whatever quarrel I had, it wasn't with her. But it was as if I couldn't help myself.

Her lip curled, literally curled, like Nifkin's when we played with his fluffy toys.

"Why don't you leave us alone?" she hissed.

"Leave you alone?" I repeated. "Leave you alone? See, this is the theme you keep coming back to, and I don't understand it. I'm not doing anything to either one of you. I live in Philadelphia, for heaven's sake"

And then I saw it. Something in her face, and I knew what it was.

"He's still talking about me, right?" I asked.

She opened her mouth to say something. I decided I didn't want to stay around and hear it. I was suddenly enormously tired. I ached for sleep, for home, for my bed.

"He doesn't," she began.

"I don't have time for this," I told her, cutting her off. "I've got a life." I tried to walk past her, but she was standing right by the sink, not giving me the room to pa.s.s.

"Move," I said shortly.

"No," she said. "No, you listen to me!" She put her hands on my shoulders, trying to get me to hold still, shoving me slightly. One minute I was up, trying to get past her, and the next minute my foot slipped on a puddle of water. My ankle buckled, turning underneath me. And I fell sideways, slamming my belly into the hard edge of the sink.

Bright pain flared, and I was lying on my back, lying on the floor, my ankle twisted at an angle I knew couldn't mean anything good, and she was standing above me, panting like an animal, her cheeks flushed hectic red.

I sat up, putting both palms flat on the floor, and grabbed for the sink, when I felt a sudden tearing cramp. When I looked down and saw that I was bleeding. Not a lot, but... well, blood is not something you want to see anywhere below the belt when you're only halfway through month seven.

Somehow I yanked myself to my feet. My ankle hurt so badly I felt sick, and I could feel blood trickling down my leg.

I stared at her. She stared back, following my gaze down to where the blood was falling in thick drips. Then she clapped one hand over her mouth, turned, and ran.

Things were starting to go fuzzy around the edges, and waves of pain were making their way through my belly. I'd read about this. I knew what it meant, and I knew that it was too early, that I was in trouble. "Help," I tried to say, but there was no one there to hear. "Help...," I said again, and then the world went gray, then black.

PART FIVE.

Joy

EIGHTEEN.

When I opened my eyes, I was underwater. In a swimming pool? The lake at summer camp? The ocean? I wasn't sure. I could see the light above me, filtered through the water, and I could feel the pull of what was underneath me, the dark depths I couldn't make out.

I'd spent most of my life in the water swimming with my mother, but it was my father who'd taught me how, when I was little. He'd flip a silver dollar into the water, and I'd follow it down, learning how to hold my breath, how to go deeper than I thought I could, how to propel myself back to the top. "Sink or swim," my father would tell me when I'd come up empty-handed and sputtering and complaining that I couldn't, that the water was too cold or too deep. Sink or swim. And I'd go back into the water. I wanted the silver dollar, but, more than that, I wanted to please him.

My father. Was he here? I turned around frantically, paddling, trying to flip myself up toward where I thought the light was coming from. But I was getting dizzy. I was getting all turned around. And it was hard to keep paddling, hard to stay afloat, and I could feel the bottom of the ocean tugging at me, and I thought how nice it would be just to stop, not to move, to let myself float to the bottom, to sink into the soft silt of a thousand seash.e.l.ls ground down fine, to let myself sleep...

Sink or swim. Live or die.

I heard a voice, coming from the surface.

What is your name?

Leave me alone, I thought. I'm tired. I'm so tired. I could feel the darkness pulling me, and I craved it.

What is your name?

I opened my eyes, squinting in the bright white light.

Cannie, I muttered. I'm Cannie, now leave me alone.

Stay with us, Cannie, said the voice. I shook my head. I didn't want to be here, wherever here was. I wanted to be back in the water, where I was invisible, where I was free. I wanted to go swimming again. I shut my eyes. The silver dollar flashed and glittered in the sunlight, arcing through the air, plunging into the water, and I followed it back down.

I closed my eyes again and saw my bed. Not my bed in Philadelphia, with its soothing blue comforter and bright, pretty pillows, but my bed from when I was a little girl- narrow, neatly made, with its red and brown paisley spread tucked tight around it and a spill of hard-cover books shoved underneath. I blinked and saw the girl on the bed, a st.u.r.dy, sober-faced girl with green eyes and brown hair in a ponytail that spilled over her shoulders. She was lying on her side, a book spread open before her. Me? I wondered. My daughter? I couldn't be sure.

I remembered that bed- how it had been my refuge as a little girl, how it had been the one place I felt safe as a teenager, the place my father would never come. I remember spending hours there on weekends, sitting cross-legged with a friend on the other side of the bed, with the telephone and a melting pint of ice cream between us, talking about boys, about school, about the future, and how our lives would be, and I wanted to go back there, wanted to go back so badly, before things went wrong, before my father's departure and Bruce's betrayal, before I knew how it all turned out.

I looked down, and the girl on the bed looked up from her book, up at me, and her eyes were wide and clear.

I looked at the girl, and she smiled at me. Mom, she said.

Cannie?

I groaned as if waking from the most delicious dream and slitted my eyes open again.

Squeeze my hand if you can hear this, Cannie.

I squeezed weakly. I could hear voices burbling above me, heard something about blood type, something else about fetal monitor. Maybe this was the dream, and the girl on the bed was real? Or the water? Maybe I really had gone swimming, maybe I'd swum out too far, gotten tired, maybe I was drowning right now, and the picture of my bed was just a little something my brain had whipped up by way of last-minute entertainment.

Cannie? said the voice again, sounding almost frantic. Stay with us!

But I didn't want to be there. I wanted to be back in the bed.

The third time I closed my eyes I saw my father. I was back in his office in California, sitting up straight on his white examining table. I could feel the weight of diamonds on my finger, in my ears. I could feel the weight of his gaze upon me- warm and full of love, like I remembered it from twenty years ago. He was sitting across from me, in his white doctor's coat, smiling at me. Tell me how you've been, he says. Tell me how you turned out.

I'm going to have a baby, I told him, and he nodded. Cannie, that's wonderful!

I'm a newspaper reporter. I wrote a movie, I told him. I have friends. A dog. I live in the city.

My father smiled. I'm so proud of you.

I reached for him and he took my hand and held it. Why didn't you say so before? I asked. It would have changed everything, if I'd just known you cared He smiled at me, looking puzzled, like I'd stopped speaking English, or like he'd stopped understanding it. And when he took his hands away I opened mine and found a silver dollar in my palm. It's yours, he said. You found it. You always did. You always could.

But even as he spoke he was turning away.

I want to ask you something, I said. He was at the door, like I remembered, his hand on the k.n.o.b, but this time he turned and looked at me.

I stared at him, feeling my throat go dry, saying nothing.

How could you? is what I thought. How could you leave your own children? Lucy was just fifteen, and Josh was only nine. How could you do that; how could you walk away?

Tears slid down my face. My father walked back to me. He pulled a carefully folded handkerchief from his breast pocket, where he always kept them. It smelled like the cologne he always wore, like lemons, and the starch the Chinese laundry place put in, like they always did. Very carefully, my father bent down and wiped away my tears.