Jennifer Weiner - Good in Bed

“And that’s what you want to be to us? A disappointment?”

He sighed. “I can’t help you, Cannie. I don’t know what you want, but I can tell you this – I’ve got nothing to give you. Any of you.”

“We don’t want your money”

He looked at me almost kindly. “I’m not talking about money.”

“Why?” I asked him. My voice was cracking. “Why have kids and leave them? That’s the part I don’t understand. What did we do…” I gulped. “What did any of us do that was so awful that you never wanted to see us again?” I knew, even as I was saying the words, even as I was thinking them, that it was ridiculous. I knew that no child could be that bad, that wrong, that ugly, could be anything to cause a parent to leave. I knew that it was no fault of ours. We weren’t to blame, I thought to myself. I could let it go; I could set the burden down, I could be free.

Except, of course, that knowing something in your head is different than feeling it in your heart. And I knew at that moment that Maxi had been right. Whatever my father could say, whatever answer he could provide, whatever excuse he could muster, it wouldn’t be right. And it wouldn’t ever be enough.

I stared at him. I waited for him to ask me something, to ask what had become of me: Where did I live, and what did I do, and whom had I decided to spend my life with? Instead he looked at me again, shook his head once, and turned toward the door.

“Hey!” I said.

He turned to look at me, and my throat closed up. What did I want to tell him? Nothing. I wanted him to ask me things: how are you, who are you, what’s happened to you, who have you become. I stared at him, and he said nothing – just walked away.

I couldn’t help myself. I reached for him, for some sign, for something, as he was walking out the door. I felt my fingertips graze the back of that crisp white coat. He never stopped walking. He never even slowed down.

When I came back, I put the rings in their little velvet box. I washed the makeup off my face and the gel out of my hair. Then I called Samantha.

“You won’t believe it,” I began.

“Probably not,” she said. “So tell me.”

And I did. “He didn’t ask me a single question,” I told her at the end. “He didn’t want to know what I was doing out here, or what I was doing with my life. I don’t even think he noticed I was pregnant. He just didn’t care.”

Samantha sighed. “That’s awful. I can’t even imagine how you must feel.”

“I feel…” I said. I looked out at the water, then up at the sky. “I feel like I’m ready to come home.”

Maxi nodded when I told her, sadly, but didn’t ask me to stay.

“You’re done with the screenplay?” she asked.

“I’ve been done for a few days,” I told her. She surveyed the bed, where I’d laid my things out – my clothes and books, the teddy bear I’d bought for the baby one afternoon in Santa Monica.

“I wish we could have done more,” she said with a sigh.

“We did plenty,” I said, and hugged her. “And we’ll talk… and e-mail… and you’ll visit when the baby comes”

Maxi’s eyes lit up. “Aunt Maxi,” she proclaimed. “You’ll have to have it call me Aunt Maxi. And I’m going to spoil it rotten!”

I smiled to myself, imagining Maxi treating little Max or Abby like a two-legged Nifkin, dressing the baby in outfits she’d picked out to match her own. “You’re going to be a fabulous aunt,” I said.

She insisted on driving me to the airport, helping me check my luggage, waiting with me at the gate even though everyone from the flight attendants on down were staring at her like she was the rarest exhibit in the zoo.

“This is going to wind up on Inside Edition,” I warned her, giggling and crying a little bit as we hugged each other for the eighteenth time. Maxi kissed my cheek, then bent down and gave my belly a little wave.

“You’ve got your ticket?” she asked me.

I nodded.

“Got milk money?”

“Oh, yes,” I said, smiling, knowing how true it was.

“Then you’re good to go,” she said.

I nodded, and sniffled, and hugged her tight. “You’re a wonderful friend,” I told her. “You’re the greatest.”

“Be careful,” she replied. “Travel safe. Call me as soon as you get there.”

I nodded, saying nothing, because I didn’t trust myself to speak, and turned away from her, toward the walkway, the plane, and home.

First class was more crowded this time than it had been on my way out. A guy about my age and exactly my height, with curly blond hair and bright blue eyes, took the seat next to me as I was struggling to get the seat belt (much tighter this time) around myself. We nodded politely at each other. Then he pulled out a sheaf of important-looking legal documents with “Confidential” stamped all over them, and I pulled out my Entertainment Weekly. He shot a sidelong glance at my reading matter and sighed.

“Jealous?” I asked. He smiled, nodded, and pulled a roll of candy from his pocket.

“Would you like a Mento?” he asked.

“Is that really the singular?” I replied, taking one. He gazed at the roll of Mentos, then looked at me and shrugged. “You know,” he said, “that’s a good question.”

I reclined the seat. He was kind of cute, I mused, and clearly had a good job, or at least the paperwork to make it look like he had a good job. That was what I needed – just a regular guy with a good job, a guy who lived in Philadelphia and read books and adored me. I snuck another look at Mr. Mento and contemplated giving him my card… and then I pulled myself up short, hearing my mother’s voice and Samantha’s voice converging in my head in one loud, desperate shriek: Are you crazy?

Maybe in another lifetime, I decided, pulling the blanket up under my chin. But this one would work out okay. Maybe my father was never going to be my father again, maybe my mother would stay yoked to the Dread Lesbian Tanya forever. Maybe my sister would always be unstable, and maybe my brother would never learn how to smile. But I could still find good in the world. I could still find beauty. And someday, I told myself, before I fell asleep, maybe I’d even find someone else to love. “Love,” I whispered to the baby. And then I closed my eyes.

If you wish for something hard enough, the fairy tales teach us, you can get it in the end. But it’s hardly ever the way you thought it would be, and the endings aren’t always happy ones. For months, I had been wishing for Bruce, dreaming of Bruce, conjuring a memory of his face and holding it in front of me as I fell asleep, even when I tried not to. In the end, it was almost like I’d wished him into being, that I’d dreamed so hard and so often that he couldn’t help but appear before me.

It happened just the way Samantha had said it would. “You’ll see him again,” she’d told me that morning months ago when I told her that I was expecting. “I’ve seen enough soap operas to guarantee it.”

I got off the plane, yawning to clear my clogged-up ears, and there, in the waiting area directly across from me, beneath a sign that read “Tampa/St. Pete’s” was Bruce. I felt my heart lift, thinking that he’d come for me, that, somehow, he’d come for me, until I saw that he was with some girl I’d never seen before. Short, pale, her hair in a pageboy. Light blue jeans, a pale yellow Oxford shirt tucked in. Nondescript, fade-into-the-woodwork clothes, medium features and a medium frame. Nothing remarkable about her at all except for her thick unruly eyebrows. My replacement, I presumed.

I froze in place, paralyzed by the horrible coincidence, the outrageous misfortune of this. But if it was going to happen, this would be the place – the giant, soulless Newark International Airport, where travelers from New York, New Jersey, and Philadelphia converged in search of transatlantic flights and/or cheap domestic airfare.