Jennifer Weiner - Good in Bed

He sat me on the examination table again, his hands gentle on my back and my arms as he tied a piece of rubber tubing around my bicep and told me to make a fist. I looked away when he slid the needle in, but he’d done it so skillfully I could barely feel it. Both of us watched the glass vial filling up with my blood. I wondered what he was thinking. “Almost done,” he said quietly, before deftly removing the needle and pressing a piece of gauze over the wound.

“Do I get a lollipop?” I joked. He handed me a Band-Aid instead, and the piece of paper where he’d written two names, two phone numbers. “Take it,” he said. “And, Cannie, you’ve got to eat, and if you find that you can’t, you have to call us, and then I’d really suggest calling one of these counselors.”

“I’m so huge, do you really think a few more days is going to kill me?”

“It’s really not healthy,” he said seriously. “It can have an adverse impact on your metabolism. My suggestion is to start off with easy stuff… toast, bananas, flat ginger ale.”

Out in the lobby, he gave me a sheaf of papers easily three inches thick. “Keep exercising, too,” he said. “It’ll help you feel better.”

“You sound like my mother,” I said, tucking everything into my purse.

“And Cannie?” He put his hand on my forearm. “Try not to take it so hard.”

“I know,” I said. “I just wish things were different.”

“You’ll be fine,” he told me firmly. “And…”

His voice trailed off. He looked uncomfortable.

“You know how you said you were a bad person?”

“Oh,” I said, embarrassed. “Sorry. I just have this tendency to get a little melodramatic”

“No, no. That’s okay. I just meant… I wanted to tell you…”

The elevator doors slid open, and the people on it looked at me. I looked at the doctor and stepped backward.

“You aren’t,” he told me. “I’ll see you in class.”

I went home and lunged for the telephone. My one message was from Samantha.

“Hi, Cannie, it’s Sam… no, not Bruce, so get that pathetic look off your puss and call me if you feel like going for a walk. I’ll buy you an iced coffee. It’ll be great. Better than a boyfriend. ’Bye.”

I set down the phone, and picked it up again when it started ringing. Maybe it was Bruce this time, I thought.

Instead, it was my mother.

“Where have you been?” she demanded. “I’ve been calling and calling.”

“You didn’t leave a message,” I pointed out.

“I knew I’d get you eventually,” she said. “How’s it going?”

“Oh, you know…,” I said, my voice trailing off. My mother had really been making an effort since Bruce’s father had died. She’d sent a card to the family and made a donation to the temple. She’d been calling me every night, and insisted that I come to her softball league’s play-off series and watch the Switch Hitters take on Nine Women Out. It was all attention I could have done without, but I knew she meant well.

“Are you walking?” she asked me. “Are you riding your bike?”

“A little bit,” I sighed, remembering how Bruce used to complain that spending time at my house was more like triathlon training sessions than a vacation, because my mother was always trying to organize a walk, a bike ride, two-on-two basketball at the Jewish Center, where she’d gleefully body-check my brother under the boards while I sweated on a StairMaster and Bruce read the sports section in the Seniors’ Lounge.

“I’m walking,” I said. “I take Nifkin out every day.”

“Cannie, that’s not enough! You should come home,” she said. “You’ll be in for Thanksgiving, right? Are you going to come Wednesday, or the day of?”

Ugh. Thanksgiving. Last year Tanya had invited another couple – both women, of course. One of them wouldn’t touch meat, and referred to heterosexual people as “breeders,” while her girlfriend, whose buzz cut and broad shoulders gave her a disconcerting resemblance to my senior prom date, sat beside her looking embarrassed, then vanished into the family room, where we found her, hours later, watching a football game. Tanya, whose Marlboro habit had rendered her tastebuds defunct, spent the entire meal hustling from the kitchen to the table, bearing one bowl of overcooked, overmashed, oversalted side dishes after another, plus something called Tofurkey for the vegetarian. Josh had cut out early on Thursday night, muttering something about finals, and Lucy spent the entire time on the phone with a mysterious boyfriend, who, we would later learn, was both married and twenty years her senior.

“Never again,” I’d whispered to Bruce that night as I tried to find a comfortable position on the lumpy couch while Nifkin trembled behind a stereo speaker. Tanya’s loom occupied the space that had formerly housed my bed, and whenever we came home I had to camp out in the living room. Plus, her two evil cats, Gertrude and Alice, took turns stalking the Nif.

“Why don’t you come home for the weekend?” my mother asked.

“I’m busy,” I said.

“You’re obsessed,” she corrected. “I’ll bet you’re sitting there, reading old love letters Bruce sent you and hoping I’ll get off the phone in case he calls you.”

Damn. How does she do that?

“I am not,” I told her. “I’ve got call waiting.”

“Waste of money,” said my mother. “Look, Cannie. He’s obviously angry with you. He’s not going to come running back just yet”

“I’m aware of that,” I said frostily.

“So what’s the problem?”

“I miss him,” I said.

“Why? What do you miss so much?”

I didn’t say anything for a minute.

“Let me ask you something,” my mother had said gently. “Have you talked to him?”

“Yeah. We talk.” In truth, I’d broken down and called him twice. Both calls had lasted less than five minutes, both had ended when he told me, politely, that there were things he needed to do.

My mother persisted. “Is he calling you?”

“Not so much. Not exactly.”

“And who’s ending the calls? You or him?”

This was getting touchy. “I see you’ve returned to the heterosexual advice-giving arena.”

“I’m allowed,” my mother said cheerfully. “Now: Who’s hanging up?”

“Depends,” I lied. In truth, it was Bruce. Always Bruce. It was like Sam had said. I was pathetic, and I knew it, and I couldn’t stop myself, which was even worse.

“Cannie,” she said. “Why don’t you give him a break? Give yourself a break, too. Come home.”

“I’m busy,” I demurred, but I could feel myself weakening.

“We’ll bake cookies,” she wheedled. “We’ll go for long walks. We’ll go for a bike ride. Maybe we’ll go to New York for the day…”

“With Tanya, of course.”

My mother sighed. “Cannie,” she said, “I know you don’t like her, but she is my partner… Can’t you at least try to be nice?”

I thought about it. “No. Sorry.”

“We can have some mother/daughter time, if you really want it.”

“Maybe,” I said. “It’s busy here. And I’ve got to go to New York next weekend. Did I tell you? I’m interviewing Maxi Ryder.”

“Really? Ooh, she was great in that Scottish movie.”

“I’ll tell her you said so.”

“And listen, Cannie. Don’t call him anymore. Just give him some time.”

I knew she was right, of course. A), I wasn’t stupid, and b), I’d been hearing it from Samantha, and from every single one of my friends and acquaintances who had an even passing familiarity with the situation, and I’d probably be hearing it from Nifkin, too, if only he could talk. But somehow I couldn’t stop. I had turned into someone that I would have pitied in another life; someone who searched for signs, who analyzed patterns, who went over every word in a conversation looking for hidden meanings, secret signals, the subtext that said, Yes, I still love you, of course I still love you.