Good in Bed

by Jennifer Weiner

  “A girl,” he said – reluctantly, I thought.

  “Girl,” I repeated, and started to cry. My daughter, I thought, my poor daughter whom I couldn’t keep safe, not even on her way into the world. I looked at my mother, who’d come back and was leaning against the wall, blowing her nose. Bruce put his hand awkwardly on my arm.

  “Cannie,” he said, “I’m sorry.”

  “Get away from me,” I wept. “Just go.” I wiped my eyes, shoved my matted hair behind my ears, and looked at the doctor. “I want to see my baby.” They eased me into a wheelchair, sore and stitched up, hurting all over, and wheeled me to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. I couldn’t go in, they explained, but I could see her through the window. A nurse pointed her out. “There,” she said, gesturing.

  I leaned so close my forehead pressed on the glass. She was so small. A wrinkled pink grapefruit. Limbs no bigger than my pinky, hands the size of my thumbnail, a head the size of a smallish nectarine. Tiny eyes squinched shut, a look of outrage on her face. A dusting of black fuzz on top of her head, a nondescript beige-ish hat on top of that. “She weighs almost three pounds,” the nurse who was pushing me said.

  Baby, I whispered, and tapped my fingers against the windows, drumming a soft rhythm. She hadn’t been moving, but when I tapped she pinwheeled her arms. Waving at me, I imagined. Hi, baby, I said.

  The nurse watched me closely. “You okay?”

  “She needs a better hat,” I said. My throat felt thick, clotted with grief, and there were tears running down my face, but I wasn’t crying. It was more like leaking. As if I was so full of sadness and a strange, doomed kind of hope that there was nowhere for it to go but out. “At home, in her room, the yellow room with the crib, in the dresser, the top drawer, I’ve got lots of baby hats. My Mom has keys”

  The nurse leaned down. “I have to bring you back,” she said.

  “Please make them give her a nicer hat,” I repeated. Stupid, stubborn. She didn’t need fashionable headgear, she needed a miracle, and even I could see that.

  The nurse bent closer. “Tell me her name,” she said. And sure enough, there was a piece of paper taped to one end of the box. “BABY GIRL SHAPIRO,” it read.

  I opened my mouth, not sure what would happen, but when the word came I knew instantly, in my heart, that it was right.

  “Joy,” I said. “Her name is Joy.”

  When I came back to my room Maxi was there. A quartet of candy-stripers clustered at the door of my room, their faces like blossoms, or balloons packed tight together. Maxi pulled a white curtain close around my bed, shutting them out. She was dressed more soberly than I’d ever seen her – black jeans, black sneakers, a hooded sweatshirt – and she was carrying roses, a ridiculous armload of roses, the kind of garland you’d drape around a prizewinning horse’s neck. Or lay across a casket, I thought grimly.

  “I came as soon as I heard,” she said, her face drawn. “Your mother and sister are outside. They’ll only let one of us in at a time.”

  She sat beside me and held my hand, the one with the tube in it, and didn’t seem alarmed when I didn’t look at her, or even squeeze back. “Poor Cannie,” she said. “Have you seen the baby?”

  I nodded, brushing tears from my cheeks. “She’s very small,” I managed, and started to sob.

  Maxi winced, looking helpless, and dismayed at being helpless.

  “Bruce came,” I said, weeping.

  “I hope you told him to go to hell,” said Maxi.

  “Something like that,” I said. I wiped my non-needled hand across my face and wished for Kleenex. “This is disgusting,” I said, and hiccoughed a sob. “This is really pathetic and disgusting.”

  Maxi leaned close, cradling my head in her arm. “Oh, Cannie,” she said sadly. I closed my eyes. There was nothing left for me to ask, nothing else to say.

  After Maxi left I slept for a while, curled up on my side. If I had any dreams, I didn’t remember them. And when I woke up Bruce was standing in the doorway.

  I blinked and stared at him.

  “Can I do anything?” he asked. I just stared, saying nothing. “Cannie?” he asked uneasily.

  “Come closer,” I beckoned. “I don’t bite. Or push,” I added meanly.

  Bruce walked toward my bed. He looked pale, edgy, twitchy in his own skin, or maybe just unhappy to be near me again. I could see a sprinkling of blackheads on his nose, standing out in sharp relief, and I could tell from his posture, from the way his hands were crammed in his pockets and how his eyes never left the linoleum, that this was killing him, that he wanted to be anywhere but here. Good, I thought, feeling rage bubble up in my chest. Good. Let him hurt.

  He settled himself on the chair next to my bed, looking at me in quick little peeks – the drainage tubes snaking out from beneath my sheet, the I.V. bag hanging beside me. I hoped that he was sickened by it. I hoped that he was scared.

  “I can tell you exactly how many days it’s been since we talked,” I said.

  Bruce closed his eyes.

  “I can tell you exactly what your bedroom looks like, exactly what you said the last time we were together.”

  He grabbed for me, clutching blindly. “Cannie, please,” he said. “Please. I’m sorry.” Words I once thought I would have given anything to hear. He started crying. “I never wanted… I never meant for this to happen”

  I looked at him. I didn’t feel love, or hate. I didn’t feel anything but a bone-deep weariness. Like I was suddenly a hundred years old, and I knew at that moment I would have to live a hundred more years, carrying my grief around like a backpack full of stones.

  I closed my eyes, knowing that it was too late for us. Too much had happened, and none of it was good. A body in motion stays in motion. I’d started the whole thing by telling him I’d wanted to take a break. Or maybe he’d started it by asking me out in the first place. What did it matter anymore?

  I turned my face to the wall. After a while, Bruce stopped crying. And a while after that, I heard him leave.

  I woke up the next morning with sunlight spilling across my face. Instantly my mother hurried through the door and pulled a chair up beside my bed. She looked uncomfortable – she was good about cracking jokes, laughing things off, keeping a stiff upper lip and soldiering on, but she wasn’t any good with tears.

  “How are you doing?” she asked.

  “I’m shitty!” I shrieked, and my mother pulled back so fast that her wheeled chair scooted halfway across the room. I didn’t even wait for her to pull herself back toward me before continuing my tirade. “How do you think I am? I gave birth to something that looks like a junior-high science experiment, and I’m all cut open and I h-h-hurt…”

  I put my face in my hands and sobbed for a minute. “There’s something wrong with me,” I wept. “I’m defective. You should have let me die”

  “Oh, Cannie,” my mother said, “Cannie, don’t talk that way.”

  “Nobody loves me,” I cried. “Dad didn’t, Bruce didn’t…”

  My mother patted my hair. “Don’t talk that way,” she repeated. “You have a beautiful baby. A little on the petite side, for the time being, but very beautiful.” She cleared her throat, got to her feet, and started pacing – typical Mom behavior when there was something painful coming.

  “Sit down,” I told her wearily, and she did, but I could see one of her feet jiggling anxiously.

  “I had a talk with Bruce,” she said.

  I exhaled sharply. I didn’t even want to hear his name. My mother could tell this from my face, but she kept talking.

  “With Bruce,” she continued, “and his new girlfriend.”

  “The Pusher?” I asked, my voice high and sharp and hysterical. “You saw her?”

  “Cannie, she feels just awful. They both do.”

  “They should,” I said angrily. “Bruce never even called me, the whole time I was pregnant, then the Pusher does her thing…”

  My mother looked shaken by my tone. “The doctors
aren’t sure that’s what caused you to…”

  “It doesn’t matter,” I said querulously. “I believe that’s what did it, and I hope that dumb bitch does, too.”

  My mother was shocked. “Cannie…”

  “Cannie what? You think I’m going to forgive them? I’ll never forgive them. My baby almost died, I almost died, I’ll never have another baby, and now just because they’re sorry, it’s all supposed to be okay? I’ll never forgive them. Never.”

  My mother sighed. “Cannie,” she said gently.

  “I can’t believe you’re taking their side!” I yelled.

  “I’m not taking their side, Cannie, of course I’m not,” she said. “I’m taking your side. I just don’t think it’s healthy for you to be so angry.”

  “Joy almost died,” I said.

  “But she didn’t,” said my mother. “She didn’t die. She’s going to be fine”

  “You don’t know that,” I said furiously.

  “Cannie,” said my mother. “She’s a little underweight, and her lungs are a little underdeveloped…”

  “She was deprived of oxygen! Didn’t you hear them! Deprived of oxygen! There could be all kinds of things wrong!”

  “She looks just the way you did when you were a baby,” my mother said impatiently. “She’s going to be fine. I just know it.”

  “You didn’t even know you were gay until you were fifty-six!” I shouted. “How am I supposed to believe you about anything!”

  I pointed toward the door. “Go away,” I said, and started to cry.

  My mother shook her head. “I’m not going,” she said. “Talk to me.”

  “What do you want to hear about?” I said, trying to wipe my face off, trying to sound normal. “My my asshole ex-boyfriend’s idiot new girlfriend pushed me, and my baby almost died”

  But what was really wrong – the part that I didn’t think I’d be able to bring myself to say – was that I had failed Joy. I’d failed to be good enough, pretty enough, thin enough, lovable enough, to keep my father in my life. Or to keep Bruce. And now, I’d failed at keeping my baby safe.

  My mother wheeled in close again and wrapped her arms around me.

  “I didn’t deserve her,” I wept. “I couldn’t keep her safe, I let her get hurt…”

  “What gave you that idea?” she whispered into my hair. “Cannie, it was an accident. It wasn’t your fault. You’re going to be a wonderful mother.”

  “If I’m so great, why didn’t he love me?” I wept, and I wasn’t even sure who I was talking about – Bruce? My father? “What’s wrong with me?”

  My mother stood up. I followed her eyes to the clock on the wall. She watched me watching, and bit her lip. “I’m sorry,” she said softly, “but I have to run out for a few minutes.”

  I wiped my eyes, buying time, trying to process what she’d told me. “You have to…”

  “I have to pick up Tanya at her continuing education class.”

  “What, Tanya forgot how to drive?”

  “Her car’s in the shop.”

  “And what is she studying today? Which facet of herself is she addressing?” I inquired. “Codependent granddaughters of emotionally distant grandparents?”

  “Give it a rest, Cannie,” my mother snapped, and I was so stunned that I couldn’t even think to start crying again. “I know you don’t like her, and I’m sick of hearing about it.”

  “Oh, and now is the time you decided to bring it up? You couldn’t wait until maybe your granddaughter makes it out of intensive care?”

  My mother pursed her lips. “I’ll talk to you later,” she said, and walked out the door. With her hand on the doorknob, she turned to face me one more time. “I know you don’t believe it, but you’re going to be fine. You have everything you need. You just have to know it in your own heart.”

  I scowled. Know it in my own heart. It sounded like New Age crap, like something she’d pirated from one of Tanya’s stupid Healing Your Hurt workbooks.

  “Sure,” I called after her. “Go! I’m good at being left. I’m used to it.”

  She didn’t turn around. I sighed, staring at my blanket and hoping none of the nurses had heard me spouting third-rate soap opera dialogue. I felt absolutely wretched. I felt hollow, like my insides had been scooped out and all that was left was echoing emptiness, vacant black holes. How was I going to figure out how to be a decent parent, given the choices my own parents had made?

  You have everything you need, she’d told me. But I couldn’t see what she meant. I considered my life and saw only what was missing – no father, no boyfriend, no promise of health or comfort for my daughter. Everything I need, I thought ruefully, and closed my eyes, hoping that I’d dream again of my bed, or of the water.

  When the door opened again an hour later I didn’t even look up.

  “Tell it to Tanya,” I said, with my eyes still shut. “ ’Cause I don’t want to hear it.”

  “Well, I would,” said a familiar deep voice, “but I don’t think she has much use for my kind… and also, we haven’t really been introduced.”

  I looked up. Dr. K. was standing there, with a white bakery box in one hand and a black duffel bag in the other. And the duffel bag appeared to be wriggling.

  “I came as soon as I heard,” he began, folding himself into the seat my mother had recently occupied, setting the box on my nightstand and the duffel bag on his lap. “How are you feeling?”

  “Okay,” I said. He looked at me carefully. “Well, actually lousy.”

  “I can believe it, after what you’ve been through. How is…”

  “Joy,” I said. Using her name felt strange… presumptuous somehow, as if I was testing fate by saying it out loud. “She’s small, and her lungs are a little underdeveloped, and she’s breathing with a ventilator…” I paused and swiped a hand across my eyes. “Also, I had a hysterectomy, and I seem to be crying all the time.”

  He cleared his throat.

  “Was that too much information?” I asked through my tears.

  He shook his head. “Not at all,” he told me. “You can talk to me about anything you want to.”

  The black duffel bag practically lurched off his lap. It looked so funny I almost smiled, but it felt as if my face had forgotten how. “Is that a perpetual motion machine in your bag, or are you just glad to see me?”

  Dr. K. glanced over his shoulder at the closed door. Then he leaned close to me. “This was kind of a risk,” he whispered, “but I thought…”

  He lifted the bag onto the bed and eased the zipper open. Nifkin’s nose popped out, followed by the tips of his oversized ears, and then, in short order, his entire body.

  “Nifkin!” I said, as Nifkin scrambled onto my chest and proceeded to give my entire face a tongue-bath. Dr. K held him, lifting him clear of my various tubes and attachments, as Nifkin licked away. “How did you… where was he?”

  “With your friend Samantha,” he explained. “She’s outside.” “Thank you,” I said, knowing that the words couldn’t begin to express how happy he’d made me.

  “Thank you so much.”

  “No problem,” said the doctor. “Here… look. We’ve been practicing.” He lifted Nifkin and set him on the floor. “Can you see?”

  I propped myself up on my elbows and nodded.

  “Nifkin… SIT!” said Dr. K., in a voice every bit as deep and authoritative as James Earl Jones’s telling the world that this… is CNN. Nifkin’s butt hit the linoleum at lightning speed, his tail wagging triple-time. “Nifkin… DOWN!” And down went Nifkin, flat on his belly, looking up at Dr. K. with his eyes sparkling and his pink tongue curled as he panted. “And now, for our final act… PLAY DEAD!” And Nifkin collapsed onto his side as if he’d been shot.

  “Unbelievable,” I said. It really was.

  “He’s a fast learner,” said Dr. K., loading the now-squirming terrier back into the duffel bag. He bent back to me. “Feel better, Cannie,” he said, and rested one of his hands on top of mine
.

  He walked out and Samantha walked in, hurrying over to my bed. She was in full lawyer garb – a sleek black suit, high-heeled boots, a caramel-colored leather attaché case in one hand and her sunglasses and car keys in the other. “Cannie,” she said, “I came…”

  “… as soon as you heard,” I supplied.

  “How do you feel?” asked Sam. “How’s the baby?”

  “I feel okay, and the baby… well, she’s in the baby intensive-care place. They have to wait and see.”

  Samantha sighed. I closed my eyes. I suddenly felt completely exhausted. And hungry.

  I sat up, tucking another pillow behind my back. “Hey, what time is it? When’s dinner? You don’t have, like, a banana in your purse or something?”

  Samantha rose to her feet, grateful, I thought, to have something to do. “I’ll go check… hey, what’s this?”

  She pointed at the bakery box that Dr. K. had left behind.

  “Don’t know,” I said. “Dr. K. brought it. Take a look.”

  Sam ripped through the string and opened the box, and there, inside, was an éclair from the Pink Rose Pastry Shop, a wedge of chocolate bread pudding from Silk City, a brownie still in its Le Bus wrapping paper, and a pint of fresh raspberries.

  “Unbelievable,” I murmured.

  “Yum!” said Samantha. “How does he know what you like?”

  “I told him,” I said, touched that he’d remember. “For Fat Class, we had to write down what our favorite foods were.” Sam cut me a sliver of éclair, but it tasted like dust and stones in my mouth. I swallowed to be polite, sipped some water, then told her that I was tired, that I wanted to sleep.

  I stayed in the hospital another week, healing, while Joy got bigger and stronger.

  Maxi showed up every morning for a week and sat beside me and read from People, In Style, and Entertainment Weekly magazines, embroidering each story from her own personal stash of anecdotes. My mother and sister stayed with me in the daytime, making conversation, trying not to linger too long at the pauses that came where I would normally be saying something smart-ass. Samantha came every night after work and regaled me with Philadelphia gossip, about the antiquated former stars Gabby had interviewed and the how Nifkin had taken to stopping, mid-walk, and planting himself in front of my apartment building and refusing to budge. Andy came with his wife and a box of Famous Fourth Street chocolate chip cookies and a card that everyone in the newsroom had signed. “Get Well Soon,” it read. I didn’t think that would be happening, but I didn’t tell him that.