Jennifer Weiner - Good in Bed

I carried it out onto the deck and opened it. The first thing I saw was a postcard with a picture of a small, wide-eyed, anxious-looking Nifkin-esque dog on the front. I turned it over. “Dear Cannie,” it read. “Samantha tells me you’ll be in Los Angeles for a while, and I thought you might like something to read. (They do read out there, right?) I’ve enclosed your books, and a few things to remind you of home. Feel free to call me if you want to say hello.” It was signed “Peter Krushelevansky (from the University of Philadelphia).” Under the signature was a postscript: “Samantha also tells me that Nifkin’s gone West Coast, so I’ve sent a little something for him, too.”

Inside the box I found a postcard of the Liberty Bell, and one of Independence Hall. There was a small tin of dark chocolate-covered pretzels from the Reading Terminal, and a single, slightly squashed Tastykake. At the bottom of the box my fingers encountered something round and heavy, wrapped in layers and layers of the Philadelphia Examiner (“Gabbing with Gabby,” I noted, was devoted to Angela Lansbury’s latest made-for-TV movie). Inside I found a shallow ceramic pet food bowl. The letter N was emblazoned on the inside, painted bright red and outlined in yellow. And around the outside of the bowl were a series of portraits of Nifkin, each accurate right down to his sneer and his spots. There was Nifkin running, Nifkin sitting, Nifkin on the floor devouring a rawhide bone. I laughed delightedly. “Nifkin!” I said, and Nifkin barked and came running.

I set the bowl down for Nifkin to sniff. Then I called Dr. K…

“Suzie Lightning!” he said, by way of greeting.

“Who?” I said. “Huh?”

“It’s from a Warren Zevon song,” he said.

“Huh,” I said. The only Warren Zevon song I knew was the one about lawyers, guns, and money.

“It’s about a girl who… travels a lot,” he said.

“Sounds interesting,” I said, making a mental note to look up the lyrics. “I’m calling to thank you for my presents. They’re wonderful.”

“You’re welcome,” he told me. “I’m glad you like them.”

“Did you paint Nifkin from memory? It’s amazing. You should have been an artist.”

“I dabble,” he acknowledged, sounding so much like Dr. Evil, of Austin Powers fame, that I burst out laughing. “Actually, your friend Samantha lent me some pictures,” he explained. “But I didn’t use them much. Your dog has a very distinctive look.”

“You’re too kind,” I said truthfully.

“They opened up a paint-your-own-pottery studio around the corner from campus,” he explained. “I did it there. It was some kid’s fifth birthday party, so there were eight five-year-olds painting coffee mugs, and me.”

I grinned, picturing it – tall, deep-voiced Dr. K. folded into a chair, painting Nifkin as the little kids gawked.

“So how are things going out there?”

I gave him the condensed version, telling him about shopping with Maxi – the cooking I’d been doing, the farmer’s market I’d found. I described the little house on the beach. I told him that California felt both wonderful and unreal. I told him that I was walking every morning and working every day and how Nifkin had learned to retrieve his tennis ball from the surf.

Dr. K. made interested noises, asked pertinent follow-up questions, and proceeded directly to the big one. “So when are you coming home?”

“I’m not sure,” I said. “I’m on leave right now, and I’m still fine-tuning a few things with the screenplay.”

“So… will you give birth out there?”

“I don’t know,” I said slowly. “I don’t think so.”

“Good,” was all he said. “We should have breakfast again when you come back.”

“Sure,” I said, feeling a pang for Sam’s Morning Glory. There was no place like it out here. “That would be great.” I heard Maxi’s car in the garage. “Hey, I’ve kind of got to run…”

“No problem,” he said. “Call me any time.”

I hung up the phone smiling. I wondered how old he was, really. I wondered if he liked me as more than a patient, as more than just another one of the big girls shuttling in and out of his office, each with her own tale of heartache. And I decided that I’d like to see him again.

The next morning Maxi proposed another trip.

“I still can’t believe that you have a plastic surgeon,” I grumbled, heaving myself into the low-slung little car, thinking that only in this city, at this moment in time, would a twenty-seven-year-old actress with perfect features keep a plastic surgeon on retainer.

“Necessary evil,” Maxi said crisply, powering past several lesser vehicles and zooming into the fast lane.

The surgeon’s office was a study in gray and mauve, all cool marble floors and glossy walls and even glossier receptionists. Maxi pulled off her oversized sunglasses and had a quiet talk with the woman behind the desk while I strolled, examining the poster-sized photographs of the doctors that lined the wall, wondering which one would have the pleasure of plumping up Maxi’s lips and erasing the invisible lines around her eyes. Dr. Fisher was a Ken doll-looking blond. Dr. Rhodes was a brunette with arched eyebrows who looked about my age, but probably wasn’t. Dr. Tasker was the jovial Santa Claus of the bunch – minus, of course, the roly-poly cheeks and double chin. And Dr. Shapiro…

I stood there, frozen, staring up at the larger-than-life picture of my father. He was thinner, and he’d shaved off his beard, but it was unquestionably him.

Maxi strolled over, her heels clicking on the floor. When she saw the look on my face, she grabbed my elbow and led me to a chair. “Cannie, what is it? Is it the baby?”

I tottered back to the wall on legs that felt like lengths of ossified wood, and pointed. “That’s my dad.”

Maxi stared at the picture, then at me. “You didn’t know he was out here?” she asked. I shook my head.

“What should we do?”

I nodded toward the door and started walking as fast as I could. “Leave.”

“So that’s what’s become of him,” I said. Maxi and Nifkin and I were out on the deck, drinking raspberry iced tea. “Liposuction in L.A.” I worked my tongue around it, trying the concept on for size. “Sounds like the beginning of a bad joke, doesn’t it?”

Maxi looked away. I felt sorry for her. She’d never seen me this upset, and she didn’t have any idea of how to help me. And I didn’t know what to tell her.

“Sit tight,” I said, getting to my feet. “I’m going to go for a walk.”

I walked down by the water, passed the rollerbladers in bikinis, the volleyball games, the screaming, Popsicle-sticky kids. I passed the vendors on stilts, the piercing parlors, and the four-pairs-for-ten-dollars sock vendors, and the dreadlocked teenagers sitting on park benches, playing their guitars, and homeless people in layers and layers of clothes, splayed like corpses underneath the palm trees.

As I walked I tried to lay things out in front of me, to organize them, like they were pictures at an exhibition, framed and hung on a gallery wall.

I pictured my family as it had once been – the five of us on the lawn at Rosh Hashanah, posing in our best clothes: my father with his beard neatly trimmed and his hands on my shoulder; me with my hair twisted back in barrettes, the barest buds of breasts pushing at the front of my sweater, both of us smiling.

I pictured us all five years later: my father gone; me, fat and sullen and scared; my mother, frantic; my brother, miserable; and Lucy with her Mohawk and her piercings and late-night telephone callers.

More pictures: my college graduation. My mother and Tanya, their arms around each other’s shoulders, at their softball league championship game. Josh, six feet tall and thin and solemn, carving a turkey at Thanksgiving. Years of holidays, the four of us arrayed around the dining room table, my mother at the head and my brother opposite her, various boyfriends and girlfriends showing up, fading out, all of us trying hard to look like there was nothing missing there.