Jennifer Weiner - Good in Bed

I closed my eyes against the memory.

Lucy stared at me. “Jeez, Cannie. Are you okay?”

I blinked back the tears. “Just tired.”

“Hmmph,” said Lucy. “Well, I’ll just mash a little something special into your potatoes.”

I shrugged, and made sure to avoid the potatoes at dinner. We followed my mother’s Thanksgiving tradition, going around the table and talking about what we were thankful for that year. “I’m thankful for having found so much love,” rasped Tanya, as Lucy and Josh and I winced and my mother took Tanya’s hand.

“I’m thankful for having my wonderful family together,” said my mother. Her eyes were glistening. Tanya kissed her cheek. Josh groaned. Tanya shot him a dirty look.

“I’m thankful…” I had to think for a while. “I’m thankful that Nifkin survived his bout with hemorrhagic gastroenteritis last summer,” I finally said. At the sound of his name, Nifkin put his paw on my lap and whined beseechingly. I slipped him a piece of turkey skin.

“Cannie!” yelled my mother, “stop feeding that dog!”

“I’m thankful I still have an appetite after hearing about Nifkin’s trouble,” said Ben, who, in addition to the nose ring, was irritating his parents by sporting a “What Would Jesus Do?” T-shirt.

“I’m thankful that Cannie didn’t dump Bruce until after my birthday, so that I got those Phish tickets,” said Josh in his deep, deadpan baritone, which went nicely with his six-foot-tall, skin-and-bones frame, and the little goatee he’d grown since I’d seen him last. “Thanks,” he stage-whispered.

“Think nothing of it,” I whispered back.

“And I’m thankful,” concluded Lucy, “that everyone’s here to hear my big news!”

My mother and I exchanged anxious glances. Lucy’s last big exciting news had been a plan – thankfully aborted – to move to Uzbekistan with a guy she’d met at a bar. “He’s a lawyer over there,” she’d said con-fidently, gliding smoothly over the fact that he was a Pizza Hut delivery guy over here. Before that, there’d been the plan for the bagel bakery in Montserrat, where she’d gone to visit a friend in medical school. “Not a bagel to be had down there!” she’d said triumphantly, and got as far as filling out the papers for a small business loan before Montserrat’s long-dormant volcano erupted, the island was evacuated, and Lucy’s bagel dreams died a hot molten death.

“What’s the news?” asked my mother, looking into Lucy’s shining eyes.

“I got an agent!” she trilled. “And he got me a photo shoot!”

“Topless?” asked Josh dryly. Lucy shook her head. “No, no, I’m done with all that. This is legitimate. I’m modeling rubber gloves.”

“Fetish magazine?” I asked. I couldn’t help myself.

Lucy’s face fell. “Why doesn’t anyone believe in me?” she demanded. Knowing my family, it was just a matter of time before somebody launched into Lucy’s Catalogue of Failures – from school to relationships to the jobs she’d never kept.

I leaned across the table and took my sister’s hand. She jerked her hand back. “No unnecessary touch!” she said. “What’s with you, anyhow?”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “We weren’t giving you a chance.” And that’s when I heard the voice. Not God’s voice, unfortunately, but Bruce’s. “Good,” he said. “That was nice.”

I looked around, startled.

“Cannie?” said my mother.

“Thought I heard something,” I said. “Never mind.”

And while Lucy prattled on about her agent, her photo shoot, and what she’d wear, all the while evading my mother’s increasingly pointed questions about whether she was getting paid for this or what, I ate turkey and stuffing and glutinous green bean casserole, and thought about what I’d heard. I thought about how maybe even though I’d never see Bruce again, it might be possible to keep part of him, or of what we were together, if I could be more openhearted, and kind. For all of his lecturing, for every time he was didactic and condescending, I knew that he was basically a kind person, and I… well, I was too, in my private life, but it could be argued that I was making my living by being unkind. But maybe I could change. And maybe he’d like that, and someday like me better… and love me again. Assuming, of course, we ever even saw each other again.

Underneath the table, Nifkin twitched and growled at something chasing through his dream. My eyes were clear, and my head felt cool and ordered. It wasn’t as if all of my problems were gone – as if any of them were gone, really – but for the first time since I’d seen the little plus sign on the EPT stick, it felt like I might be able to see myself safely through them. I had something to hold on to, now, no matter what choice I made – I can be a better person, I thought. A better sister, a better daughter, a better friend.

“Cannie?” said my mother. “Did you say something?”

I didn’t. But at that moment I thought that I felt the faintest flutter in my belly. It might have been all the food, or all of my anxiety, and I knew it was much too early to really feel anything. But it felt like something. Like something waving at me. A tiny little hand, five fingers spread like a starfish, waving through the water. Hello and good-bye.

The last day of my Thanksgiving break, before I was going to make the trek back into town and pick up the pieces of my life where I’d left them, my mother and I went swimming. It was the first time I’d been back to the Jewish Community Center since I’d learned that it was the scene of my mother’s seduction. After that, the steam room had never felt quite the same.

But I’d missed swimming, I realized, as I stood in the locker room and pulled on my suit. I had missed the tang of chlorine in my nose and the old Jewish ladies who’d parade through the locker room completely naked, completely unashamed, and swap recipes and beauty tips while they got dressed. The feel of the water, holding me up, and the way I could forget almost anything but the rhythm of my breath as I swam.

My mother swam a mile every morning, moving slowly through the water with a massive kind of grace. I kept up with her for maybe half of it, then slipped into one of the empty lap lanes and did a languid sidestroke for a while, thinking of nothing. Which I knew was a luxury I couldn’t afford much longer. If I wanted to get things taken care of (and that was the phrase I was using in my mind), it would have to be soon.

I flipped on my back and thought about what I’d felt at Thanksgiving dinner. That tiny hand, waving. Ridiculous, really. The thing probably didn’t have hands, and if it did, it certainly couldn’t wave them.

I’d always been pro-choice. I had never romanticized pregnancies, intended or otherwise. I wasn’t one of those women who sees her thirtieth birthday coming and starts cooing at anything in a stroller with drool on its chin. I had a few friends who’d gotten married and started their families, but I had many more friends in their late twenties and early thirties who hadn’t. I didn’t hear my clock ticking. I didn’t have baby fever.

I rolled back over and commenced a lazy breaststroke. The thing was, I couldn’t shake the feeling that it had been somehow decided for me. As if it was out of my control now, and all I was supposed to do was sit back and let it happen.

I blew a frustrated breath into the water, watching bubbles roil around me. I’d still feel better about all of this if I could have heard God’s voice again, if I knew for sure that I was doing the right thing.

“Cannie?”

My mother swam into the lane beside me. “Two more laps,” she said. We finished them together, matching each other breath for breath, stroke for stroke. Then I followed her into the locker room.