He sat me on the examination table again, his hands gentle on my back and my arms as he tied a piece of rubber tubing around my bicep and told me to make a fist. I looked away when he slid the needle in, but he’d done it so skillfully I could barely feel it. Both of us watched the glass vial filling up with my blood. I wondered what he was thinking. “Almost done,” he said quietly, before deftly removing the needle and pressing a piece of gauze over the wound.
“Do I get a lollipop?” I joked. He handed me a Band-Aid instead, and the piece of paper where he’d written two names, two phone numbers. “Take it,” he said. “And, Cannie, you’ve got to eat, and if you find that you can’t, you have to call us, and then I’d really suggest calling one of these counselors.”
“I’m so huge, do you really think a few more days is going to kill me?”
“It’s really not healthy,” he said seriously. “It can have an adverse impact on your metabolism. My suggestion is to start off with easy stuff… toast, bananas, flat ginger ale.”
Out in the lobby, he gave me a sheaf of papers easily three inches thick. “Keep exercising, too,” he said. “It’ll help you feel better.”
“You sound like my mother,” I said, tucking everything into my purse.
“And Cannie?” He put his hand on my forearm. “Try not to take it so hard.”
“I know,” I said. “I just wish things were different.”
“You’ll be fine,” he told me firmly. “And…”
His voice trailed off. He looked uncomfortable.
“You know how you said you were a bad person?”
“Oh,” I said, embarrassed. “Sorry. I just have this tendency to get a little melodramatic”
“No, no. That’s okay. I just meant… I wanted to tell you…”
The elevator doors slid open, and the people on it looked at me. I looked at the doctor and stepped backward.
“You aren’t,” he told me. “I’ll see you in class.”
I went home and lunged for the telephone. My one message was from Samantha.
“Hi, Cannie, it’s Sam… no, not Bruce, so get that pathetic look off your puss and call me if you feel like going for a walk. I’ll buy you an iced coffee. It’ll be great. Better than a boyfriend. ’Bye.”
I set down the phone, and picked it up again when it started ringing. Maybe it was Bruce this time, I thought.
Instead, it was my mother.
“Where have you been?” she demanded. “I’ve been calling and calling.”
“You didn’t leave a message,” I pointed out.
“I knew I’d get you eventually,” she said. “How’s it going?”
“Oh, you know…,” I said, my voice trailing off. My mother had really been making an effort since Bruce’s father had died. She’d sent a card to the family and made a donation to the temple. She’d been calling me every night, and insisted that I come to her softball league’s play-off series and watch the Switch Hitters take on Nine Women Out. It was all attention I could have done without, but I knew she meant well.
“Are you walking?” she asked me. “Are you riding your bike?”
“A little bit,” I sighed, remembering how Bruce used to complain that spending time at my house was more like triathlon training sessions than a vacation, because my mother was always trying to organize a walk, a bike ride, two-on-two basketball at the Jewish Center, where she’d gleefully body-check my brother under the boards while I sweated on a StairMaster and Bruce read the sports section in the Seniors’ Lounge.
“I’m walking,” I said. “I take Nifkin out every day.”
“Cannie, that’s not enough! You should come home,” she said. “You’ll be in for Thanksgiving, right? Are you going to come Wednesday, or the day of?”
Ugh. Thanksgiving. Last year Tanya had invited another couple— both women, of course. One of them wouldn’t touch meat, and referred to heterosexual people as “breeders,” while her girlfriend, whose buzz cut and broad shoulders gave her a disconcerting resemblance to my senior prom date, sat beside her looking embarrassed, then vanished into the family room, where we found her, hours later, watching a football game. Tanya, whose Marlboro habit had rendered her tastebuds defunct, spent the entire meal hustling from the kitchen to the table, bearing one bowl of overcooked, overmashed, oversalted side dishes after another, plus something called Tofurkey for the vegetarian. Josh had cut out early on Thursday night, muttering something about finals, and Lucy spent the entire time on the phone with a mysterious boyfriend, who, we would later learn, was both married and twenty years her senior.
“Never again,” I’d whispered to Bruce that night as I tried to find a comfortable position on the lumpy couch while Nifkin trembled behind a stereo speaker. Tanya’s loom occupied the space that had formerly housed my bed, and whenever we came home I had to camp out in the living room. Plus, her two evil cats, Gertrude and Alice, took turns stalking the Nif.
“Why don’t you come home for the weekend?” my mother asked.
“I’m busy,” I said.
“You’re obsessed,” she corrected. “I’ll bet you’re sitting there, reading old love letters Bruce sent you and hoping I’ll get off the phone in case he calls you.”
Damn. How does she do that?
“I am not,” I told her. “I’ve got call waiting.”
“Waste of money,” said my mother. “Look, Cannie. He’s obviously angry with you. He’s not going to come running back just yet”
“I’m aware of that,” I said frostily.
“So what’s the problem?”
“I miss him,” I said.
“Why? What do you miss so much?”
I didn’t say anything for a minute.
“Let me ask you something,” my mother had said gently. “Have you talked to him?”
“Yeah. We talk.” In truth, I’d broken down and called him twice. Both calls had lasted less than five minutes, both had ended when he told me, politely, that there were things he needed to do.
My mother persisted. “Is he calling you?”
“Not so much. Not exactly.”
“And who’s ending the calls? You or him?”
This was getting touchy. “I see you’ve returned to the heterosexual advice-giving arena.”
“I’m allowed,” my mother said cheerfully. “Now: Who’s hanging up?”
“Depends,” I lied. In truth, it was Bruce. Always Bruce. It was like Sam had said. I was pathetic, and I knew it, and I couldn’t stop myself, which was even worse.
“Cannie,” she said. “Why don’t you give him a break? Give yourself a break, too. Come home.”
“I’m busy,” I demurred, but I could feel myself weakening.
“We’ll bake cookies,” she wheedled. “We’ll go for long walks. We’ll go for a bike ride. Maybe we’ll go to New York for the day…”
“With Tanya, of course.”
My mother sighed. “Cannie,” she said, “I know you don’t like her, but she is my partner… Can’t you at least try to be nice?”
I thought about it. “No. Sorry.”
“We can have some mother/daughter time, if you really want it.”
“Maybe,” I said. “It’s busy here. And I’ve got to go to New York next weekend. Did I tell you? I’m interviewing Maxi Ryder.”
“Really? Ooh, she was great in that Scottish movie.”
“I’ll tell her you said so.”
“And listen, Cannie. Don’t call him anymore. Just give him some time.”
I knew she was right, of course. A), I wasn’t stupid, and b), I’d been hearing it from Samantha, and from every single one of my friends and acquaintances who had an even passing familiarity with the situation, and I’d probably be hearing it from Nifkin, too, if only he could talk. But somehow I couldn’t stop. I had turned into someone that I would have pitied in another life; someone who searched for signs, who analyzed patterns, who went over every word in a conversation looking for hidden meanings, secret signals, the subtext that said, Yes, I still love you, of course I still love you.
“I’d like to see you,” I’d told him shyly, during Five Minute Phone Conversation #2. Bruce had sighed.
“I think we should wait,” he said. “I don’t just want to jump right back in again.”
“But we’ll see each other sometime?” I said, in a tiny little voice that was utterly unlike anything I’d normally use for conversation, and he’d sighed again.
“I don’t know, Cannie,” he said, “I just don’t know.”
But “I don’t know” wasn’t a “no,” I’d reasoned, and once I had a chance to be with him, to tell him how sorry I was, to show him how much I had to give, how much I wanted to be back with him… well, then he’d take me back. Of course he would. Wasn’t he the one who’d said “I love you” first, three years ago, as we’d held each other in my bed? And hadn’t he been the one who was always bringing up marriage, always stopping on our walks to admire babies, always steering me toward jewelry shop windows when we walked on Sansom Street, and kissing my ring finger and telling me how we’d always be together?
It was inevitable, I tried to tell myself. Just a matter of time.
“Let me ask you something,” I began.
Andy the food critic shoved his glasses up his nose and murmured into his sleeve. “The walls are painted pale green, with gilt on the moldings,” he said softly. “It’s very French.”
“It’s like being inside a Fabergé egg,” I volunteered, looking around.
“Like being inside a Fabergé egg,” Andy repeated. I heard a muted click as he turned off the tape recorder he had concealed in his pocket.
“Explain men,” I said.
“Can we do the menu first?” Andy cajoled. This was our standard deal: first, the food, then, my questions about men and married life. Today we were casing the latest crêperie for a possible review.
Andy perused the menu. “I’m interested in the paté, the escargot, the greens with pear and warm Gorgonzola, and the mushroom in puff pastry to start with,” he instructed. “You can get any kind of crêpe you want for a main course, except not the plain cheese.”
“Ellen?” I guessed. Andy nodded. In one of life’s supreme ironies, Andy’s wife, Ellen, was possessed of the least adventurous palate of all time. She eschewed sauces, spices, most ethnic cuisines, and was constantly frowning over the menus, desperately scanning them for things like plain baked chicken breasts and mashed potatoes that weren’t truffled, garlicked, or otherwise gussied up. Her ideal evening, she’d once told me, consisted of rented movies and frozen waffles “with the kind of syrup that has absolutely nothing maple about it.” Andy adored her… even when she was screwing up his review meals by ordering yet another Caesar salad or plain piece of fish.
Our waiter ambled over to refill our water glasses. “Any questions?” he drawled. From his offhand manner, plus the blue paint caked under his fingernails, I had him pegged as a waiter by day, artiste by night. He seemed hugely, supremely, unassailably indifferent. Pay attention, I tried to tell him telepathically. It didn’t seem to work.
I ordered the escargot and a crêpe with shrimp, tomatoes, and creamed spinach. Andy took the paté and the salad, and a crêpe with wild mushrooms, goat cheese, and toasted almonds. We each had a glass of white wine.
“Now,” he said, as the waiter loped back to the kitchen. “How can I help you?”
“How can they…” I began. Andy raised his hand.
“Are we speaking in the abstract or the specific here?”
“It’s Bruce,” I acknowledged. Andy rolled his eyes. Andy was not a fan of Bruce… not since the first and last review dinner he’d come out for. Bruce was even worse than Ellen. “A picky vegetarian,” Andy had messaged me at work the next day, “is basically a food critic’s worst nightmare.” In addition to not finding a single thing he wanted to eat, Bruce also managed to tip his menu far enough toward the candle that lit our table to actually set the menu on fire, bringing three waiters plus the sommelier running and sending Andy, a stickler for anonymity, dashing into the men’s room lest he risk discovery. “It’s hard to keep a low profile,” he carefully pointed out the next day, “when you’re being sprayed with a fire extinguisher.”
“I just want to know,” I said. “I mean, the thing that I don’t understand…”
“Spit it out, Cannie,” Andy urged. The waiter returned, dumped my escargot in front of Andy, Andy’s paté in front of me, and hastily departed. “Excuse me,” I called toward his back. “Could I have some more water? When you get a minute? Please?” The waiter’s whole body seemed to sigh as he reached for the pitcher.
Once our glasses were filled, Andy and I traded plates, and I waited for him to describe, and taste, before continuing.
“Well, it’s like, okay, I know that I was the one who wanted to take a break, and now I miss him, and it’s like, this pain…”
“Is it a sharp stabbing pain, or more of a constant throbbing ache?”
“Are you making fun of me?”
Andy stared into my eyes, his own brown eyes wide and innocent behind his gold-rimmed glasses. “Well, maybe a little bit,” he finally said.
“He’s completely forgotten me,” I grumbled, spearing a snail. “It’s as if I never even mattered… like I never meant anything to him.”
“I’m confused,” said Andy. “Do you want him back, or are you just concerned about your legacy?”
“Both,” I said. “I just want to know…” I gulped a mouthful of wine to stave off tears. “I just want to know that I meant something, somehow.”
“Just because he’s acting like you didn’t mean anything doesn’t mean that you really didn’t,” said Andy. “It’s probably just an act.”
“You think?”
“The guy adored you,” Andy said. “That wasn’t an act.”
“But how can he not even want to talk to me now? How can it just be so completely…” I sliced one hand through the air to indicate a violent and absolute ending.
Andy sighed. “For some guys, it’s just like that.”
“For you?” I asked.
He paused, then nodded. “For me, when it was over, it was always over.”
Over his shoulder, I could see our waiter approaching… our waiter, plus two other waiters, trailed by an anxious-looking dark-haired man with an apron tied over his suit. The manager, I presumed. Which could only mean the one thing that Andy dreaded most— namely, someone had figured out who he was.
“Monsieur!” the man in the suit began, as our waiter set down our entrées, another one poured us fresh water, and a third waiter carefully decrumbed our not-very-crumby table. “Is everything to your liking?”
“Just fine,” said Andy weakly, as Waiter One set fresh silverware beside our plates, Waiter Two whisked fresh bread and butter to the center of the table, and Waiter Three hustled over with a lit candle.