Jennifer Weiner - Good in Bed

The nurse watched me closely. “You okay?”

“She needs a better hat,” I said. My throat felt thick, clotted with grief, and there were tears running down my face, but I wasn’t crying. It was more like leaking. As if I was so full of sadness and a strange, doomed kind of hope that there was nowhere for it to go but out. “At home, in her room, the yellow room with the crib, in the dresser, the top drawer, I’ve got lots of baby hats. My Mom has keys”

The nurse leaned down. “I have to bring you back,” she said.

“Please make them give her a nicer hat,” I repeated. Stupid, stubborn. She didn’t need fashionable headgear, she needed a miracle, and even I could see that.

The nurse bent closer. “Tell me her name,” she said. And sure enough, there was a piece of paper taped to one end of the box. “BABY GIRL SHAPIRO,” it read.

I opened my mouth, not sure what would happen, but when the word came I knew instantly, in my heart, that it was right.

“Joy,” I said. “Her name is Joy.”

When I came back to my room Maxi was there. A quartet of candy-stripers clustered at the door of my room, their faces like blossoms, or balloons packed tight together. Maxi pulled a white curtain close around my bed, shutting them out. She was dressed more soberly than I’d ever seen her – black jeans, black sneakers, a hooded sweatshirt – and she was carrying roses, a ridiculous armload of roses, the kind of garland you’d drape around a prizewinning horse’s neck. Or lay across a casket, I thought grimly.

“I came as soon as I heard,” she said, her face drawn. “Your mother and sister are outside. They’ll only let one of us in at a time.”

She sat beside me and held my hand, the one with the tube in it, and didn’t seem alarmed when I didn’t look at her, or even squeeze back. “Poor Cannie,” she said. “Have you seen the baby?”

I nodded, brushing tears from my cheeks. “She’s very small,” I managed, and started to sob.

Maxi winced, looking helpless, and dismayed at being helpless.

“Bruce came,” I said, weeping.

“I hope you told him to go to hell,” said Maxi.

“Something like that,” I said. I wiped my non-needled hand across my face and wished for Kleenex. “This is disgusting,” I said, and hiccoughed a sob. “This is really pathetic and disgusting.”

Maxi leaned close, cradling my head in her arm. “Oh, Cannie,” she said sadly. I closed my eyes. There was nothing left for me to ask, nothing else to say.

After Maxi left I slept for a while, curled up on my side. If I had any dreams, I didn’t remember them. And when I woke up Bruce was standing in the doorway.

I blinked and stared at him.

“Can I do anything?” he asked. I just stared, saying nothing. “Cannie?” he asked uneasily.

“Come closer,” I beckoned. “I don’t bite. Or push,” I added meanly.

Bruce walked toward my bed. He looked pale, edgy, twitchy in his own skin, or maybe just unhappy to be near me again. I could see a sprinkling of blackheads on his nose, standing out in sharp relief, and I could tell from his posture, from the way his hands were crammed in his pockets and how his eyes never left the linoleum, that this was killing him, that he wanted to be anywhere but here. Good, I thought, feeling rage bubble up in my chest. Good. Let him hurt.

He settled himself on the chair next to my bed, looking at me in quick little peeks – the drainage tubes snaking out from beneath my sheet, the I.V. bag hanging beside me. I hoped that he was sickened by it. I hoped that he was scared.

“I can tell you exactly how many days it’s been since we talked,” I said.

Bruce closed his eyes.

“I can tell you exactly what your bedroom looks like, exactly what you said the last time we were together.”

He grabbed for me, clutching blindly. “Cannie, please,” he said. “Please. I’m sorry.” Words I once thought I would have given anything to hear. He started crying. “I never wanted… I never meant for this to happen”

I looked at him. I didn’t feel love, or hate. I didn’t feel anything but a bone-deep weariness. Like I was suddenly a hundred years old, and I knew at that moment I would have to live a hundred more years, carrying my grief around like a backpack full of stones.

I closed my eyes, knowing that it was too late for us. Too much had happened, and none of it was good. A body in motion stays in motion. I’d started the whole thing by telling him I’d wanted to take a break. Or maybe he’d started it by asking me out in the first place. What did it matter anymore?

I turned my face to the wall. After a while, Bruce stopped crying. And a while after that, I heard him leave.

I woke up the next morning with sunlight spilling across my face. Instantly my mother hurried through the door and pulled a chair up beside my bed. She looked uncomfortable – she was good about cracking jokes, laughing things off, keeping a stiff upper lip and soldiering on, but she wasn’t any good with tears.

“How are you doing?” she asked.

“I’m shitty!” I shrieked, and my mother pulled back so fast that her wheeled chair scooted halfway across the room. I didn’t even wait for her to pull herself back toward me before continuing my tirade. “How do you think I am? I gave birth to something that looks like a junior-high science experiment, and I’m all cut open and I h-h-hurt…”

I put my face in my hands and sobbed for a minute. “There’s something wrong with me,” I wept. “I’m defective. You should have let me die”

“Oh, Cannie,” my mother said, “Cannie, don’t talk that way.”

“Nobody loves me,” I cried. “Dad didn’t, Bruce didn’t…”

My mother patted my hair. “Don’t talk that way,” she repeated. “You have a beautiful baby. A little on the petite side, for the time being, but very beautiful.” She cleared her throat, got to her feet, and started pacing – typical Mom behavior when there was something painful coming.

“Sit down,” I told her wearily, and she did, but I could see one of her feet jiggling anxiously.

“I had a talk with Bruce,” she said.

I exhaled sharply. I didn’t even want to hear his name. My mother could tell this from my face, but she kept talking.

“With Bruce,” she continued, “and his new girlfriend.”

“The Pusher?” I asked, my voice high and sharp and hysterical. “You saw her?”

“Cannie, she feels just awful. They both do.”

“They should,” I said angrily. “Bruce never even called me, the whole time I was pregnant, then the Pusher does her thing…”

My mother looked shaken by my tone. “The doctors aren’t sure that’s what caused you to…”

“It doesn’t matter,” I said querulously. “I believe that’s what did it, and I hope that dumb bitch does, too.”

My mother was shocked. “Cannie…”

“Cannie what? You think I’m going to forgive them? I’ll never forgive them. My baby almost died, I almost died, I’ll never have another baby, and now just because they’re sorry, it’s all supposed to be okay? I’ll never forgive them. Never.”

My mother sighed. “Cannie,” she said gently.

“I can’t believe you’re taking their side!” I yelled.

“I’m not taking their side, Cannie, of course I’m not,” she said. “I’m taking your side. I just don’t think it’s healthy for you to be so angry.”

“Joy almost died,” I said.

“But she didn’t,” said my mother. “She didn’t die. She’s going to be fine”

“You don’t know that,” I said furiously.

“Cannie,” said my mother. “She’s a little underweight, and her lungs are a little underdeveloped…”

“She was deprived of oxygen! Didn’t you hear them! Deprived of oxygen! There could be all kinds of things wrong!”