“So… you talked to her?”
“For about an hour,” I said. “Great stuff. Really great. We really hit it off. I think,” I said, drawing the words out to prolong the torture, “I think we might even be friends.”
Gabby’s mouth fell open. I could tell she was trying to figure out whether to ask if anyone had mentioned her planned chat with Maxi, or to just hope I hadn’t learned about it.
“Thanks for asking, though,” I said sweetly. “It’s so nice of you to look out for me like this. It’s almost like… gee!… like you’re my boss.” I pushed back my chair, got to my feet, and walked by her regally, my back straight, my head held high. Then I went into the bathroom and threw up. Again.
Back at my desk, I was groping through my drawers, searching desperately for a mint or some gum, when the phone rang.
“Features, Candace Shapiro,” I said distractedly. Thumbtacks, business cards, three sizes of paperclips, and not an Altoid to be found. Story of my life, I thought.
“Candace, this is Dr. Krushelevansky from the University of Philadelphia,” said a deep, familiar voice.
“Oh. Oh, hi,” I said. “What’s up?” I gave up on the desk drawer and started going through my purse, even though I’d already looked through there.
“There’s something I need to discuss with you,” he said.
That got my attention. “Yes?”
“Well, you know that last blood draw we did…” I remembered it well. “Something came up that I’m afraid makes you ineligible for the study.”
I felt my palms go icy. “What? What is it?”
“I’d prefer to discuss this with you in person,” he said.
I quickly ran through everything else that a blood test could reveal, each possibility more awful than the one before. “Do I have cancer?” I asked. “Do I have AIDS?”
“You don’t have anything life-threatening,” he said sternly. “And I’d prefer not playing Twenty Questions.”
“Then just tell me what’s wrong,” I begged. “High cholesterol? Hypoglycemia? Scurvy? Gout?”
“Cannie…”
“Do I have rickets? Oh, God, please not rickets. I don’t think I can stand being fat and bowlegged.”
He started laughing. “No rickets, but I’m starting to think you might have Tourette’s. How do you know all of these diseases anyhow? Do you have a physician’s desk reference in front of you?”
“I’m glad you think this is amusing,” I said plaintively. “I’m glad this is your idea of fun, calling up innocent reporters in the middle of the day and telling them there’s something wrong with their blood.”
“Your blood is fine,” he said seriously. “And I’ll be happy to tell you what we found, but I would prefer to do it in person.”
He was sitting behind his desk when I came in, and he got to his feet to greet me. I noticed, once again, how very tall he was.
“Have a seat,” he said. I dropped my purse and backpack on one chair and parked myself on another.
He fanned my folder out on his desk. “As I told you, we do a standard series of tests when we draw blood, looking for conditions that could possibly disqualify study participants. Hepatitis is one of them. AIDS, of course, is another.”
I nodded, wondering if he’d ever get to the point.
“We also test for pregnancy,” he said. I nodded again, thinking, okay, already, but what’s wrong with me? And then I realized. Pregnancy.
“But I’m not…” I stammered. “I mean, I can’t be.”
He flipped the folder around and pointed to where something was circled in red. “I’d be happy to arrange for another test,” he said, “but generally, we’re very accurate.”
“I… I don’t…” I stood up. How had this happened? My mind was whirling. I sank back into the chair to think. I’d gone off the Pill after Bruce and I had broken up, figuring it would be a long, long time before I had the need to contracept again, and it hadn’t even occurred to me that I was at risk during the shiva call. It had to have happened then.
“Oh, God,” I said, jumping to my feet again. Bruce. I had to find Bruce, I had to tell Bruce, surely he’d take me back now… except, my mind whispered, what if he didn’t? What if he told me that it was my concern, my problem, that he was with somebody else and I was on my own?
“Oh,” I said, slumping once more into the seat and burying my face in my hands. It was too horrible to even think about. I hadn’t even noticed that Dr. K. had left the room until the door opened and he was standing there. There were three Styrofoam cups in one of his hands, a fistful of creamers and sugar packets in the other. He set the cups down on the desk in front of me: tea, coffee, water. “I wasn’t sure what you like,” he said apologetically. I picked up the tea. He opened his desk drawer and produced a half-empty bear-shaped squeeze bottle of honey. “Can I get you anything else?” he asked kindly. I shook my head.
“Would you like to be alone for a bit?” he asked, and I remembered that this was the middle of a work day, that there was a world going on around me, and that he probably had other things to do, other fat ladies to see.
“You probably don’t do this a lot, do you?” I asked. “Tell people that they’re pregnant, I mean.”
The doctor looked taken aback. “No,” he finally said. “No, I guess I don’t do it a lot.” He frowned. “Did I do it wrong?”
I laughed weakly. “I don’t know. Nobody’s ever told me that I’m pregnant before, so I don’t have much to compare it to.”
“I’m sorry,” he said tentatively. “I take it this is… unexpected news.”
“You could say that,” I said. Suddenly, I was gripped with a vivid memory of the Cannie and Maxi Tequila Tour. “Oh, my God,” I said, imagining that the putative kid was probably pickled by this point. “Do you know anything about fetal alcohol syndrome?”
“Hang on,” he said. I heard him moving quickly down the hall. He came back with a book in his hands. What To Expect When You’re Expecting. “One of the nurses had it,” he explained. He flipped to the index. “Page 52,” he said, and handed me the book. I skimmed the salient paragraphs and learned that basically, provided I quit drinking to the point of incoherence for the duration, things would be okay. Assuming, of course, that I wanted things to be okay. And, at that moment, I had no idea what I wanted. Except, of course, not to be in this situation at all.
I put the book on his desk and gathered my purse and backpack. “I guess I should be going,” I said.
“Would you like another test?” he asked.
I shook my head. “I’ll do one at home, I guess, and then I’ll figure out…” I closed my mouth. Truthfully, I didn’t know what I’d figure out.
He pushed the book back toward me. “Would you like to hang onto it? In case you have other questions?”
He was being so nice to me, I thought. Why was he being so nice to me? He was probably some crazy right-to-lifer, I thought meanly, trying to trick me into staying pregnant with the beverage sampler and the free guidebooks.
“Won’t the nurse want it back?” I asked.
“She’s had her babies,” he said lightly. “I’m sure she wouldn’t mind. You’re welcome to have it.” He cleared his throat. “With regard to the study,” he began. “If you choose to continue the pregnancy, you won’t be eligible, of course.”
“No thin pills?” I joked.
“They haven’t been approved for use by pregnant women.”
“Then I could be your guinea pig,” I offered, feeling myself teetering on the edge of hysteria. “Maybe I’d have a really skinny baby. That’d be good, right?”
“Whatever you do, just let me know,” he said, tucking a business card inside of the book. “I’ll make sure you get a full refund if you decide not to continue.”
I remembered, very clearly, somewhere in the sheaf of forms I’d filled out the first day, something stating that there would be no refunds allowed. Crazy right-to-lifer, for sure, I thought, and stood up, strapping my
backpack over my shoulders.
He looked at me kindly. “Listen, if you want to talk about it… or if you have any other medical questions, I’d be happy to try to help.”
“Thanks,” I muttered. My hand was already on the doorknob.
“Take care of yourself, Cannie,” he said. “And give us a call, either way.”
I nodded again, turned the handle, and hustled out the door.
I made bargains with God the whole way home, the same way I’d invented letters to the Celine Dion fan, poor Mr. Deiffinger, the least of my concerns now. Dear God, if you make me not pregnant I’ll volunteer at the pet shelter and the AIDS hospice and I’ll never write anything nasty about anyone again. I’ll be a better person. I’ll do everything right, I’ll go to synagogue and not just on high holy days, I won’t be so mean and critical, I’ll be nice to Gabby, only please, please, please, don’t let this be happening to me.
I bought two tests at the drugstore on South Street, white cardboard boxes with beaming mothers-to-be on the front, and peed all over my hand doing the first one, I was shaking so hard. By then I was so convinced of the worst that I didn’t need the plus sign on the EPT wand to tell me what Dr. Krushelevansky already had.
“I’m pregnant,” I said to the mirror, and mimed a smile, like the woman on the box.
“Pregnant,” I informed Nifkin later that night, as he bounded all over me and licked my face at Samantha’s house, where I’d stashed him while I was at work. Samantha had two dogs of her own, plus a big, fenced-in yard and a pet door, so the dogs could go in and out as they pleased. Nifkin wasn’t crazy about her dogs, Daisy and Mandy – I suspected that he much preferred the company of people to other pets – but he was a big fan of the premium lamb and rice kibble that Samantha served, and so, on balance, seemed happy to hang out at Sam’s house.
“What did you say?” Samantha called from the kitchen.
“I’m pregnant,” I called back.
“What?”
“Nothing,” I yelled. Nifkin sat on my lap, looking gravely into my eyes.
“You heard me, right?” I whispered. Nifkin licked my nose and curled into my lap.
Samantha came into the living room, wiping her hands. “You were saying?”
“I said, I’m going home for Thanksgiving.”
“Lesbian turkey again?” Samantha wrinkled her nose. “Didn’t you tell me that I was under strict instructions to slap you if you ever mentioned spending another holiday with Tanya again?”
“I’m tired,” I told her. “I’m tired and I want to go home.”
She sat down beside me. “What’s going on, really?”
And I wanted so badly to tell her then, to just turn to her and spill it all out, to tell her, help me, and tell me what to do. But I couldn’t. Not yet. I needed time to think, to know my own mind before the chorus started. I knew the advice she’d give me. It would be the same thing I’d tell her if she were in the same situation: young, single with a great career, knocked up by a guy who wasn’t returning her phone calls. It was a no-brainer, a $500 afternoon in the doctor’s office, a few days of cramps and crying, end of story.
But before I went for the obvious, I wanted some time, even just a few days. I wanted to go home, even if home had long since gone from a happy refuge to something closer to a Sapphic commune.
It wasn’t hard. I called Betsy, who told me to take as much time as I needed. “You’ve got three weeks of vacation, five days you never took from last year, and comp time from New York,” she said, in a message on my machine at home. “Have a happy Thanksgiving, and I’ll see you next week.”
I e-mailed Maxi. “Something has come up… unfortunately, not the thing I might have hoped for,” I wrote. “Bruce is dating a kindergarten teacher. I am brokenhearted and going home to eat dried turkey and let my mother feel sorry for me.”
“Good luck, then,” she’d written back immediately, even though it had to be three in the morning there. “And never mind the teacher. She’s his transition object. They never last. Call or write when you’re home… I’ll be in the States again in the spring.”
I cancelled my haircut, postponed a few telephone interviews, arranged for my neighbors to pick up my papers and my mail. I didn’t call Bruce. If I decided not to stay pregnant, there’d be no reason for him to know. At this stage in our non-relationship, I couldn’t very well imagine him sitting beside me in a clinic tenderly holding my hand. If I did stay pregnant… well, I’d burn that bridge when I came to it, I thought.
I hitched my bicycle rack and mountain bike to the back of my little blue Honda, put Nifkin in his traveling case, and tossed my bag in the trunk. Ready or not, I was going home.
PART THREE. I Go Swimming
TEN
The summer between my junior and senior years at Princeton, I had an interns hip at the Village Vanguard, the oldest and most attitudinous of the alternative newsweeklies in the country.
It was a wretched three months. For one thing, it was the hottest summer in years. Manhattan was boiling. Every morning I’d start sweating the instant I exited the shower, keep sweating through the subway ride downtown, and basically continue sweating the whole day.
I worked for a horrible woman named Kiki. Six feet tall and skeletally skinny, with henna’d hair, cat-eye thrift shop eyeglasses, and a permanent scowl, Kiki’s summer uniform was a miniskirt paired with thigh-high suede boots, or, alternately, the noisiest clogs in the world, topped with a tight T-shirt advertising Sammy’s Rumanian Restaurant, or the Boy Scouts Gymboree, or something else so square that it was hip.
Initially, Kiki confounded me. The hipster garb made sense, and the bad attitude was par for the Vanguard course, but I couldn’t figure out when she was getting any work done. She showed up late, left early, and took two-hour lunches in between, and seemed to spend most of her time in the office on the phone with a cadre of interchangeable-sounding friends. The mosaic nameplate on the white picket fence she’d ironically erected around her cubicle read “associate editor.” And while she associated plenty, I’d never seen her edit.
She was, however, the master of delegating unpleasant chores. “I’m thinking about women and murder,” she’d announce on a Tuesday afternoon, idly sipping her iced coffee while I stood before her, sweating. “Why don’t you see what we’ve done?”
This was 1991. The back issues of the Vanguard weren’t stored online, or even on microfilm, but in huge, dusty, falling-apart, oversized binders that each weighed at least twenty pounds. These binders were housed along the hallway that linked the offices of columnists to the feeding pen of metal chairs and cigarette-scarred desks that served as workspace for the Vanguard’s lesser luminaries. I spent my days hauling the binders off the shelves, lugging them over first to my desk, then to the copying machine, all the while trying to avoid the gin breath and wandering hands of the nation’s preeminent gun rights activist, whose office was right next to the shelves, and whose favorite summer hobby seemed to be accidentally on purpose brushing against the sides of my breasts when my arms were loaded down with binders.
It was miserable. After two weeks I gave up on the subway and started taking the bus. Even though it made the ride twice as long and just as hot, it kept me out of the sweltering, fetid pit that the 116th Street subway stop had become. One afternoon in early August, I was sitting on the M140, minding my own business and sweating as usual, when, just as the bus lurched past Billy’s Topless, I heard a very small, perfectly calm voice that sounded as if it was coming from the precise base of my skull.
“I know where you’re going,” said the voice. The hair on my arms and the back of my neck stood straight up. I got goosebumps, and was suddenly freezing cold, and I was completely convinced that what I was hearing was… not human. A voice from the spirit world, I might have said that summer, laughing it off with my friends. But really, I thought it was the voice of God.
Of course it wasn’t God, just Ellyn Weiss, the small, strange, androgynous-looking
Village Vanguard contributing writer who’d sat down behind me and decided to say, “I know where you’re going” instead of “hello.” But in my mind, I thought that if I ever got to hear the voice of God, it would sound exactly like that: small and still and sure.
Once you’ve heard the voice of God, it changes things. That day, when the preeminent gun rights activist waggled his fingertips against the side of my right breast as he made his lurching way back to his office, I accidentally on purpose dropped 1987 on his foot. “So sorry,” I said, sweet as pie, when he turned the color of a dirty sheet and stumbled away, never to lay a finger on me again. And when Kiki told me, “I’ve been thinking about women and men, and how they’re different,” and asked whether I could start pulling pages, I told her a bald-faced lie. “My advisor says I won’t get credit for this if all you’ve got me doing is photocopying,” I told her. “If you can’t use me, I’m sure the copy editors can.” That very afternoon I slipped Kiki’s skinny, angered clutches and spent the rest of the summer writing headlines, and going out for cheap drinks with my new copy-editing colleagues.
Now, seven years later, I sat cross-legged on a picnic table, my face turned up to the pale November sunshine and my bike parked beside me, waiting to hear that voice again. Waiting for God to take notice as I sat in the center of Pennwood State Park in suburban Pennsylvania five miles from the house I grew up in, for God to look down upon me and intone either, Keep the baby, or Call Planned Parenthood.
I stretched out my legs, lifted my arms over my head, breathing in through my nose, out through my mouth, the way Samantha’s yoga instructor boyfriend said would rid my bloodstream of impurities and increase clear thoughts. If it had happened the way I figured – if I’d gotten pregnant the last time Bruce and I were together – then I was eight weeks along. How big was it, I wondered? The size of a finger-tip, a pencil eraser, a tadpole?
Good in Bed Page 18