Jennifer Weiner - Good in Bed

“Bruce!” she’d say triumphantly, having located his name in her notes.

“But I’m really worried that I’m, you know, leading him on or something.” I sighed. “I’m not sure I really love him.”

“Let’s go back to your sister for a minute,” she’d say, flipping faster and faster through her legal pad, while I sat there and tried not to yawn.

In addition to her inability to keep up, Dr. Blum was rendered less than trustworthy by her clothes. She dressed as if she didn’t know there was such a thing as the petite section. Her sleeves routinely brushed her fingertips; her skirts sagged around her ankles. I opened up as best I could, answered her questions when she asked them, but I never really trusted her. How could I trust a woman who had even less fashion sense than I did?

At the end of our ten sessions, she didn’t quite pronounce me cured, but she did leave me with two pieces of advice.

“First,” she said, “you can’t change anything anybody else in this world does. Not your father, not your mother, not Tanya, not Lisa…”

“… Lucy,” I corrected.

“Right. Well, you can’t control what they do, but you can control how you respond to it… whether you allow it to drive you crazy, or occupy all of your thoughts, or whether you note what they’re doing, consider it, and make a conscious decision as to how much you’ll let it affect you.”

“Okay. And what’s thing two?”

“Hang on to Bruce,” she said seriously. “Even if you don’t think he’s Mr. Right. He’s there for you, and he sounds like a good support, and I think you’re going to need that in the coming months.”

We shook hands. She wished me good luck. I thanked her for her help and told her that Ma Jolie in Manayunk was having a big sale, and that they made things in her size. And that was the end of my big therapy experience.

I wish that I could say that, in the years since Tanya and her loom and her pain and her posters moved in, that things have gotten easier. The fact is, they haven’t. Tanya has the people skills of plant life. It’s like a special kind of tone-deafness, only instead of not hearing the music, she’s deaf to nuances, to subtleties, to euphemisms, small talk, and white lies. Ask her how she’s doing, and you’ll get a full and lengthy explication of her latest work/health crisis, complete with an invitation to look at her latest surgical scar. Tell her that you liked whatever she cooked (and Lord knows you’ll be lying), and she’ll regale you with endless recipes, each with a story behind it (“My mother cooked this for me, I remember, the night after she came home from the hospital”).

At the same time, she’s also incredibly thin-skinned, prone to public crying fits, and temper tantrums that conclude with her either locking herself in my ex-bedroom, if we’re home, or stomping away from wherever we are, if we’re out. And she dotes on my mother in the most annoying way you could imagine, following her around like a lovestruck puppy, always reaching to hold her hand, touch her hair, rub her feet, tuck a blanket around her.

“Sick,” pronounced Josh.

“Immature,” said Lucy.

“I don’t get it,” is what I said. “Having somebody treat you that way for, like, a week would be nice… but where’s the challenge? Where’s the excitement? And what do they talk about?”

“Nothing,” said Lucy. The three of us had come home for Chanukah, and we were sitting around the family room after the guests had gone home and my mother and Tanya had gone to bed, all of us holding the gifts Tanya had woven for us. I had a rainbow-colored scarf (“You can wear it to the Pride Parade,” Tanya offered). Josh had mittens, also in the gay-pride rainbow, and Lucy had an odd-looking bundle of yarn that Tanya had explained was a muff. “It’s to keep your hands warm,” she’d rumbled, but Lucy and I had already dissolved into gales of laughter, and Josh was wondering in a whisper whether such a thing could be dropped to the bottom of the pool for a little summertime muff diving.

Nifkin, who’d been given a little rainbow sweater, was in my lap, sleeping with one eye open, ready to bolt for higher ground should the evil cats Gertrude and Alice appear. Josh was on the couch, picking out what sounded like the theme song from Beverly Hills, 90210 on his guitar.

“In fact,” said Lucy, “they don’t talk at all.”

“Well, what would they talk about?” I asked. “I mean, Mom’s educated… she’s traveled…”

“Tanya puts her hand over Mom’s mouth when Jeopardy comes on,” said Josh morosely, and switched to “Sex and Candy” on the guitar.

“Ew,” I said.

“Yup,” confirmed Lucy. “She says it’s obnoxious how Mom shouts out the answers.”

“It’s probably just that she doesn’t know any of them herself,” said Josh.

“You know,” said Lucy, “the lesbian thing is okay. It would’ve been all right…”

“… if it had been a different kind of woman,” I finished, and sat there, picturing a more appropriate same-sex love: say, a chic film professor from UPenn, with tenure and a pixie haircut and interesting amber jewelry, who’d introduce us to independent film directors and take my mother to Cannes. Instead, my mother had fallen for Tanya, who was neither well-read nor chic, whose cinematic tastes ran toward the later works of Jerry Bruckheimer, and who didn’t own a single piece of amber.

“So what is it?” I asked. “What’s the attraction? She isn’t pretty…”

“That’s for sure,” said Lucy, shuddering dramatically.

“Or smart… or funny… or interesting…”

We all sat, silent, as it dawned on us what the attraction might be.

“I’ll bet she’s got a tongue like a whale,” said Lucy. Josh made retching noises. I rolled my eyes, feeling queasy.

“Like an anteater!” cried Lucy.

“Lucy, cut it out!” I said. Nifkin woke up and started growling. “Besides, even if it is just sex, that’ll only get you so far.”

“How would you know?” said Lucy.

“Trust me,” I said. “Mom’ll get bored.”

We all sat for a minute, thinking that over.

“It’s like she doesn’t care about us anymore,” Josh blurted.

“She cares,” I said. But I wasn’t sure. Before Tanya, my mother had liked to do things with us… when we were all together. She’d visit me in Philadelphia, and Josh in New York. She’d cook when we came home, call us a few times a week, keep busy with her book clubs and lecture groups, her wide circle of friends.

“All she cares about is Tanya,” said Lucy bitterly.

And I didn’t have an argument for that. Sure, she’d still call us… but not as often. She hadn’t visited me in months. Her days (not to mention her nights) seemed full of Tanya – the bike trips they went on, the tea dances they attended, the weekend long Ritual of Healing that Tanya had taken my mother to as a special three-month-anniversary surprise, where they’d burned sage and prayed to the Moon Goddess.

“It won’t last,” I said, with more conviction than I felt. “It’s just an infatuation.”

“What if it isn’t?” Lucy demanded. “What if it’s true love?”

“It’s not,” I said again. But inside, I thought that maybe it was. That this was it, and we’d all be stuck, saddled with this horrible, graceless emotional wreck of a creature for the rest of our lives. Or at least the rest of our mother’s life. And after…

“Think of the funeral,” I mused. “God. I can just hear her…” And I dropped my voice to a Tanya rasp. “Your mother would want me to have that,” I growled. “But Tanya,” I said in my own voice, “… that’s my car!”

Josh’s lips twitched upward. Lucy laughed. I did the Tanya-growl again.