Good in Bed (34 page)

“If it were me,” he said thoughtfully, “I would want to be told. And no matter what you do, or what he wants, you're still the one who ultimately gets to decide. What's the worst thing that can happen?”

“He and his mother sue me for custody and try to get the baby for themselves?”

“Wasn't that on
Oprah
?” he asked.

“
Sally Jessy
,” I said. It was getting colder. I pulled the lab coat tight around me.

“Do you know who you remind me of?” he asked.

“If you say Janeane Garofalo, I'll jump,” I warned him. I was forever getting Janeane Garofalo.

“No,” he said.

“Your mother?” I asked.

“Not my mother.”

“That guy on
Jerry Springer
who was so fat that the paramedics had to cut a hole in his house to get him out of it?”

He was smiling and trying not to.

“Be serious!” he scolded me.

“Okay. Who?”

“My sister.”

“Oh.” I thought about it for a minute. “Is she …” And then I didn't know what to say. Is she fat? Is she funny? Did she get knocked up by her ex-boyfriend?

“She looked a little bit like you,” he said. He reached out, his fingertip
almost brushing my face. “She had cheeks like yours, and a smile like yours.”

I asked the first thing I could think of. “Was she older or younger?”

“She was older,” he said, keeping his eyes straight ahead. “She died when I was nine.”

“Oh.”

“A lot of my patients when they meet me want to know why I got into this line of medicine. I mean, there's no obvious connection. I'm not a woman, I've never had a weight problem …”

“Oh, sure. Rub it in,” I said. “So your sister was … heavy?”

“No, not really. But it made her crazy.” I could only see the side of his face as he smiled. “She was always on these diets … hard-boiled eggs one week, watermelon the next.”

“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 nobody 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 shivering 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 flustered. “I … um … the, uh, pregnancy nutrition classes, 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.

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 assembling 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 passed 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 glass. 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 classes 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 gotten thrown out the first day. Lucy started hollering “Push! Push!” 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 Class. 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 shiva 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 entitled “Oh, Oh, the Mistletoe.”