Good in Bed

by Jennifer Weiner

  “Thanks,” I rasped, “that’s very nice of you.” I drank the water, sucked on the Popsicle.

  “I’ve been trying to call you,” he said. “At work and at home.”

  “I’m very busy,” I recited.

  “Is Joy home yet?”

  I shook my head.

  He looked at me. “Are you okay?”

  “Busy,” I croaked again. My breasts were aching. I looked down and was unsurprised to see two circular stains beneath the V of sweat from my collarbone down.

  “Busy with what?” he asked.

  I shut my mouth. I hadn’t really planned any dialogue beyond “busy.”

  At a stoplight, he looked over at me, staring at my face. “Are you okay?”

  I shrugged. The car behind us honked, but he didn’t move. “Cannie,” he said kindly. A single tear trickled down my cheek. He reached out to brush it away. I jerked back as if I’d been burned.

  “No!” I shrieked. “Don’t touch me!”

  “Cannie, my God, what’s the matter?”

  I shook my head, stared at my lap, where the ruins of the Popsicle were melting. We drove in silence for a while, the car purring beneath us, cool air whispering from the air conditioner over my knees and my shoulders.

  At another traffic light, he started to talk again. “How’s Nifkin? Did he remember anything I taught him?” He glanced at me quickly. “You remember when we visited you, right?”

  I nodded. “I’m not crazy,” I said. But even as I said it, I wasn’t sure whether it was true. Did crazy people know they were crazy? Or did they think they were perfectly normal, all the while doing crazy things, wandering around filthy and with their shoes falling apart and their heads so full of rage it felt as if they’d explode?

  We drove for a few more blocks in silence. I couldn’t think of what to say, what to do next. I knew that there were questions I should ask him, points that I should make, but it felt as if my head was full of buzzing static.

  “Where are we going?” I finally managed. “I should go home. Or to the hospital. I should go back there.”

  We pulled up at a red light. “Are you working?” he asked me. “I haven’t seen your byline”

  It had been so long since I’d had this kind of normal cocktail-party conversation with anyone, it took me a while to get the words sorted out right. “I’m on leave.”

  “Are you eating right?” He squinted sideways at me in the dark. “Or maybe I should ask, are you eating anything?”

  I shrugged. “It’s hard. With the baby. With Joy. I go to the hospital to see her twice a day, and I’m getting things ready at home I walk a lot,” I finished up.

  “I can see that,” he said.

  Another few blocks of silence, another red light. “I’ve been thinking about you,” he said. “I was hoping you’d stop by, or call”

  “Well, I did, didn’t I?”

  “I thought maybe we could see a movie. Or go to that diner again.”

  It sounded so bizarre I almost laughed. Was there a time I’d gone to dinner, to movies, when my every thought hadn’t been about my baby and my rage?

  “Where were you going, when you got lost?”

  “For a walk,” I said in a small voice. “Just for a walk.”

  He shook his head but didn’t question me. “Why don’t you let me take you to my place? I’ll make you dinner.”

  I considered this. “Do you live near the hospital?”

  “Even closer than you. I’ll take you as soon as you like.”

  I nodded once, giving in.

  I was quiet on the elevator ride to the sixteenth floor, quiet as he unlocked his door, apologizing for the mess, asking if I still liked chicken and did I want to use the phone? I nodded for chicken, shook my head for phone, and walked through his living room slowly, running my hands along the spines of his books, considering the framed family pictures, seeing but not really seeing. He disappeared into the kitchen, then emerged with a stack of folded things: a fluffy white towel, a pair of sweatpants and a T-shirt, miniature bars of soap and bottles of shampoo from a hotel in New York City.

  “Would you like to freshen up?” he offered.

  The bathroom was big and clean. I stripped off my shirt, then my shorts, halfheartedly trying to remember when they’d been clean. From the look and smell, I surmised that it had been a while. I folded them, then folded them again, then decided the hell with it and tossed them in the trash. I stood under the water for a long time, with my eyes closed, and thought of nothing but the feeling of the water on my face. Found, I told myself. Try to get found.

  When I come out of the shower, dressed, with my hair toweled dry, he was putting food on the table.

  “Welcome back,” he said, smiling at me. “Is this okay?”

  There was a tossed salad, a small roast chicken, a platter of potato pancakes, which I hadn’t seen anyone serve outside of Chanukah in years. I sat down. The food actually smelled good – the first time anything had smelled good to me in a while.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  He piled my plate high, and didn’t talk while I ate, although he watched me carefully. Every once in a while I’d look up and see him… not staring, exactly. Just watching me.

  Finally, I pushed my plate away. “Thank you,” I said again. “That was really good.”

  He led me over to the couch and handed me a ceramic bowl full of chocolate ice cream and mango sorbet.

  “Ben and Jerry’s,” he said. I stared at him, my head still staticky, remembering that he’d brought me dessert once before, when I was in the hospital. “Remember when we talked about ice cream in class?”

  I looked at him blankly.

  “When we were talking about trigger foods?” he prompted. And I remembered then, sitting around the table a million years ago, talking about things I liked to eat. It felt unbelievable that I had ever liked anything… that I’d enjoyed regular stuff. Food, and friends, and going for walks and to movies. Could I ever have a life like that again? I wondered. I wasn’t sure… but I thought that maybe I could try.

  “Do you remember all of your patients’ favorite foods?” I asked.

  “Only my favorite patients,” he said. He sat in the armchair across from me while I ate it, slowly, savoring each mouthful. I sighed when I was finished. It had been so long since I’d eaten this well; so long since anything had tasted good.

  He cleared his throat. I figured that was my cue to go. He probably had plans for the night. He possibly even had a date. I racked my brain and tried to remember. What day was it? Was it the weekend?

  I yawned, and Dr. K. smiled at me. “You look so tired,” he said. “Why don’t you rest for a while?”

  His voice was so warm, so soothing. “You like tea, not coffee, right?” I nodded. “I’ll be right back,” he said.

  He went to the kitchen and I stretched out my legs on the couch, and by the time he came back I was half asleep. My eyelids felt so heavy. I yawned, and tried to sit up, as he handed me a mug.

  “Where were you going today?” he asked.

  I turned my head away, reaching for the blanket that was draped over the back of the couch. “I just went for a walk. I guess I got kind of lost or something. I’m fine, though. You shouldn’t worry. I’m fine.”

  “You’re not,” he said, sounding almost angry. “You’re very obviously not fine. You’re half-starved, you’re stomping around the city, you quit your job…”

  “Leave of absence,” I corrected. “I’m on a compassionate leave of absence.”

  “You don’t have to be ashamed to ask for help.”

  “I don’t need help,” I told him, reflexively. Because that was my reflex, ingrained as a teenager, honed over the years. I’m okay. I can handle it. I’m fine. “I’ve got everything under control. I’m fine. We’re fine. Me and the baby. We’re fine.”

  He shook his head. “How are you fine? You’re not happy”

  “Why should I be happy?” I shot back. “What’s
to be happy about?”

  “You have a beautiful baby” “Yeah, no thanks to anyone else.”

  He stared at me. I stared back, furious. Then I put down my tea and got to my feet.

  “I should go.”

  “Cannie…”

  I looked for my socks and my duct-taped shoes. “Could you take me home?”

  He looked distressed. “I’m sorry… I didn’t mean to upset you.”

  “You haven’t upset me. I’m not upset. But I want to go home.”

  He sighed, and looked down at his feet. “I thought…” he mumbled.

  “Thought what?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Thought what?” I repeated, more insistently.

  “It was a bad idea.”

  “Thought what,” I said again, in a tone that wasn’t taking no for an answer.

  “I thought that if you came here, you’d relax.” He shook his head, seeming stunned by his own hopes, his own presumptions. “I thought maybe you’d want to talk about things”

  “There’s really nothing to talk about,” I said. But I said it more gently. He had given me dinner, clean clothes, an orange Popsicle, a ride. “I’m okay. Really. I am.”

  We stood for a minute, and something passed between us, some small easing of the tension. I could feel the blisters on both feet, and how my cheeks felt tight and painful with sunburn. I could feel the cool thin cotton of his T-shirt on my back, and how nice it was, and my belly full of good food, and how nice that was. And I could feel my breasts, which ached dully.

  “Hey, you wouldn’t happen to have a breast pump in here?” I asked. My first attempt at a joke since I’d woken up in the hospital.

  He shook his head. “Would ice help?” he asked. I nodded, and sat back down on the couch, where he brought me ice wrapped in a towel. I turned my back to him and tucked the ice under my shirt.

  “How’s Nifkin?” he asked again.

  I shut my eyes. “With my mom,” I muttered. “I sent him to stay with her for a while.”

  “Well, don’t let him stay away too long. He’ll forget his tricks.” He took a sip of his tea. “I was going to teach him how to speak, if we’d had a little more time together.”

  I nodded. My eyelids were feeling heavy again.

  “Maybe some other time,” he said. He kept his eyes politely averted as I shifted the ice around. “I’d like to see Nifkin again,” he said. He paused and cleared his throat. “I’d like to see you, too, Cannie.”

  I looked at him. “Why?” A rude question, I knew, but I felt like I was past the point of good manners… of any manners, really. “Why me?” “Because I care about you.” “Why?” I asked again.

  “Because you’re…” He let the last word hang there. When I looked at him he was waving his hands in the air, like he was trying to sculpt phrases out of the air. “You’re special.”

  I shook my head.

  “You are.”

  Special, I thought. I didn’t feel special. I felt ridiculous, really. I felt like a spectacle of a woman, a sob story, a freak. How must I look, really? I imagined myself on the street that night, my shoe falling apart, sweaty and filthy, my breasts leaking. They should take a picture, put my poster up in every junior high school, staple it in bookstores next to the Harlequin novels and the self-help books about find-ing your soulmate, your life partner, your one true love. I could be a warning; I could turn girls away from my fate.

  I must have dozed off then, because when I came awake with a start, with my cheek against the blanket and the towel full of ice melting in my lap, he was sitting right across from me.

  He’d taken his glasses off, and his eyes were gentle.

  “Here,” he said. He had something in his arms, cradled like a baby. Pillows. Blankets. “I made up the guest bedroom for you.”

  I walked there in a daze, aching from exhaustion. The sheets were cool and crisp, the pillows like an embrace. I let him draw back the covers, help me onto the bed, tuck them up over me, smooth the blanket over my shoulders. His face seemed so much softer without his glasses, in the dark.

  He sat on the edge of the bed. “Will you tell me why you’re so angry?” he asked.

  I was so tired, and my tongue felt heavy and slow in my mouth. It was like being drugged, or hypnotized; like dreaming underwater. Or maybe I would have told anyone, if I’d let anyone get close enough to ask. “I’m mad at Bruce. I’m mad that his girlfriend pushed me, and I’m mad that he doesn’t love me. I’m mad at my father, I guess.”

  He raised an eyebrow.

  “I saw him… in California” I paused to yawn, to fight the words out. “He didn’t want to know me.” I passed my hands over my belly, or where my belly had been. “The baby…,” I said. My eyelids felt freighted, so heavy I could barely keep them open. “He didn’t want to know.”

  He brushed the back of his hand against my cheek, and I leaned into his touch like a cat, unthinking. “I’m so sorry,” he said. “You’ve had a lot of sadness in your life.”

  I breathed in, then out, pondering the truth of this. “That’s not exactly a news flash,” I said.

  He smiled. “I just wanted you to know,” he said, “I wanted to see you, so I could tell you…”

  I stared at him, wide-eyed in the dark.

  “You don’t have to do everything alone,” he said. “There are people who care about you. You just have to let them help.”

  I sat up then. The sheets and blankets fell around my waist. “No,” I told him, “that’s wrong.”

  “What do you mean?” he asked.

  I shook my head, once, impatiently. “Do you know what love is?”

  He considered the question. “I think I heard a song about it once.”

  “Love,” I said, “is the rug they pull out from under you. Love is Lucy always lifting the football at the last second so that Charlie Brown falls on his ass. Love is something that every time you believe in it, it goes away. Love is for suckers, and I’m not going to be a sucker ever again.” When I closed my eyes I could see myself as I was, months ago, lying on the bathroom floor, highlights in my hair and makeup on my face, the expensive shoes and fancy clothes and diamond earrings that couldn’t keep me safe, couldn’t keep the wolf from my door.

  “I want a house with hardwood floors,” I said, “and I don’t want anyone else to come inside.”

  He was touching my hair, saying something. “Cannie,” he repeated.

  I opened my eyes.

  “It doesn’t have to be that way.”

  I stared at him in the dark. “How else could it be?” I asked, quite reasonably.

  He leaned forward and kissed me.

  He kissed me, and at first I was too shocked to do anything, too shocked to move, too shocked to do anything but sit there, perfectly still, as his lips touched mine.

  He pulled his head back. “I’m sorry,” he said.

  I leaned toward him. “Hardwood floors,” I whispered, and I realized I was teasing him, and that I was smiling, and it had been so long since I had smiled.

  “I will give you whatever I can,” he said, looking at me in a way that made it clear that he was, somehow, oh miracle of miracles, taking this all seriously. And then he kissed me again, pulled the sheets up to my chin, pressed his warm hand on top of my head, and walked out of the room.

  I listened as the door closed and as he settled his long body onto the couch. I listened until he’d clicked the lights off and his breathing became deep and regular. I listened, holding the blankets tight around me, holding that feeling of being safe, of being tucked in and taken care of, around me. And I thought clearly then, for the first time since Joy had been born. I decided, right there in that strange bed in the dark, that I could go on being scared forever, that I could keep walking, that I could carry my rage around, hot and heavy in my chest forever. But maybe there was another way. You have everything you need, my mother had told me. And maybe all I needed was the courage to admit that what I needed was someone to lean
on. And then I could do it – could be a good daughter, and a good mother. Maybe I could even be happy. Maybe I could.

  I slipped out of bed. The floor was cool on my bare feet. I moved stealthily through the darkness, out of the room, easing the door shut behind me. I went to him there on the couch, where he’d fallen asleep with a book falling from his fingers. I sat on the floor beside him and leaned so close that my lips practically touched his forehead. Then I closed my eyes and took a deep breath and jumped into the water. “Help,” I whispered.

  His eyes opened instantly, as if he hadn’t been sleeping, but waiting, and he reached out one hand and cupped my cheek.

  “Help,” I said again, as if I were a baby, as if this was a word I’d just learned and could not stop repeating. “Help me. Help.”

  Two weeks later Joy came home. She was eight weeks old, and she’d topped seven pounds and was finally breathing on her own. “You’ll be fine,” the nurses told me. Except I decided that I wasn’t ready to be by myself yet. I was still too hurt inside, still too sad.

  Samantha offered to let us stay with her. She’d take leave from work, she said, she had weeks built up, she’d do whatever it took to get her house ready. Maxi volunteered to fly in or, alternately, to fly us both up to Utah, where she was shooting a cowgirl epic with the unwieldy title Buffalo Girls 2000. Peter, of course, was first in line to tell us that we could stay with him or that, if I wanted, he could stay at my place with us.

  “Forget it,” I told him. “I’ve learned my lesson about giving men the milk for free and then expecting them to buy the cow.”

  He turned a gratifying shade of crimson. “Cannie,” he began, “I didn’t mean…”

  And I laughed, then. It was still feeling good to laugh. I’d gone too long without it. “Kidding,” I said, and looked at myself ruefully. “Believe me, I’m in no shape to think about that for a while.”

  In the end, I decided to go home – home to my mother and horrible Tanya, who’d agreed to put her loom in storage for the duration and give me and Joy back the Room Formerly Known as Mine. Actually, they were both glad to have us. “It’s so nice to hold a baby again!” said my mother, considerately ignoring the fact that tiny, bristly, sickly Joy, with her sleep apnea monitor and myriad health concerns, was not exactly the sort of baby a grandmother would dream about.