One afternoon Gabby cornered me by my desk. She’d been gunning for me since the fall, when my forty-inch Sunday feature on Maxi ran on the front of the Entertainment section, much to the delight of my editors. They were thrilled that we were the only East Coast paper to have secured an interview with Maxi, and even more thrilled that we had the only story in which she spoke so candidly about her life, her goals, and her failed romances. I got a nice little bonus, plus a glowing note from the editor in chief, which I kept prominently posted on my cubicle wall.
All of this was good for me, but it meant that Gabby was in an increasingly foul mood— especially since I’d gotten the nod to write about the Grammys, while she’d been consigned to prewriting Andy Rooney’s obituary, lest his health take a turn for the worse.
“Are you gaining weight?” she demanded.
I tried to turn the question around, the way Redbook’s latest “10 Tips for Handling Difficult People” advised, aware that people’s ears had pricked up. “What an unusual question,” I said through numb lips. “Why are you interested?”
Gabby just stared at me, refusing to bite. “You look different,” she said.
“So what I’m hearing you say,” I began, per Redbook’s instructions, “is that it’s important to you that I always look the same?”
She gave me a long, angry stare, then huffed off. That suited me fine. I hadn’t decided what to tell people, or when to tell them, and for the time being I was wearing oversized shirts and leggings and hoping they’d chalk my weight gain (six pounds in the first trimester, another four since Thanksgiving) up to holiday overindulgence.
And it was true that I was eating well. I had brunch every weekend with my mother, and dinner once or twice a week with my friends, who seemed to be operating on some kind of top-secret schedule. Every night, somebody would call, and offer to come over for coffee or meet for a bagel in the morning. Every day at work, Andy would ask if I wanted to share leftovers from whichever fabulous place he’d dined at the night before, or Betsy would take me to the tiny, excellent Vietnamese luncheonette two blocks over. It was as if they were afraid to leave me alone. And I didn’t even care that I was their sympathy case or their project. I sucked it all up, trying to distract myself from missing Bruce and obsessing over the things I didn’t have (security, stability, a father for my unborn child, maternity clothes that didn’t make me look like a small ski slope). I went to work and to see Dr. Patel, and made arrangements for all of the classes and courses a new mother-to-be could want: Breast Feeding Basics, Infant CPR, Parenting 101.
My mother put the word out, and her friends all emptied their attics and their daughters’ attics. By February, I had a changing table and a Diaper Genie, a crib and a car seat and a stroller that looked more luxurious (and more complicated) than my little car. I had boxes full of footie pajamas and little knitted caps, drooled-upon copies of Pat the Bunny and Goodnight Moon, and silver rattles with teeth marks. I had bottles and nipples and a nipple sterilizer. Josh gave me a $50 gift certificate to EBaby. Lucy gave me a packet of hand-drawn coupons agreeing to baby-sit once a week when the baby came (“as long as I don’t have to change number two diapers!”).
I gradually turned my second bedroom from a study into a nursery. I took the time I used to devote to the composition of screenplays and short stories and query letters to GQ and the New Yorker— to bettering myself, basically— and started a series of do-it-yourself home improvement projects. And, regretfully, I started spending money. I bought a sea-green rug that went nicely with the Lemonade Stand walls, and a Beatrix Potter calendar. I trash-picked a scarred rocking chair, had the seat recaned, and spray-painted it white. I started fill-ing the bookshelf with every children’s book I could scrounge from the book editor, plus books from home, and books I bought secondhand. Every night, I read to my belly… just to get into the habit, plus, because I’d read somewhere that babies are sensitive to the sound of their mother’s voices.
And every night, I’d dance. I’d pull the forever-dusty metal blinds down, light a few candles, kick off my shoes, crank up the music, and move. It wasn’t always a happy dance. Sometimes I’d blast early Ani DiFranco and think about Bruce in spite of myself as Ani roared out “You were never very kind, and you let me way down every time…” But I’d try to dance happily, for the baby’s sake, if not my own.
Was I lonely? Like crazy. Living without Bruce, and without the possibility of his eventual return, of even ever seeing him again, and knowing that he’d totally rejected me and our baby, felt like trying to live without oxygen. Some days I’d get angry and be furious at him for letting me stay with him so long… or for not coming back when I wanted him to. But I’d try to put the anger in a box, the way I’d put away his gifts, and keep moving forward.
Sometimes I couldn’t help but wonder whether it was only pride that was keeping us apart, and whether it wouldn’t be smarter for me to call him, or better yet, go see him, and just beg until he took me back. I wondered if maybe, despite everything he’d said, he did still love me. I’d wonder if he ever had. I’d try to make myself stop thinking these things, but my mind would churn and churn, until I’d have to get up and do something. I polished my silverware, child-proofed the cabinets, cleaned my closets. My apartment, for the first time ever, was neat, even beautiful. Too bad my head was such a mess.
FOURTEEN
“The thing that every single woman has to remember,” said Samantha, as we walked along Kelly Drive on a brisk, breezy early morning in April, “is that if he wants to talk to you, he’ll call. You just have to keep repeating that. ‘If he wants to talk to me, he’ll call.’ ”
“I know,” I said mournfully, resting my hands on the ledge of my belly, which I could do since I had officially started showing the week before. Being pregnant was strange, but it did have a few benefits. Instead of having people— okay, men— look at me with disinterest and/or scorn because I was a Larger Woman, people looked at me with kindness, now that I was visibly pregnant. It was a nice change. It even made me feel a little bit better about my own appearance— at least for a few minutes every now and then.
“I’m actually doing better,” I said. “I’m trying to be proactive. Whenever I think of him, I force myself to think of something about the baby. Something that I have to do, or buy, or sign up for.”
“Sounds good. How’s work going?”
“Not bad,” I said. Truthfully, work was a little weird. It was strange to be doing things that would have had me so excited… or nervous… or upset… or happy, just a year ago, and have them feel like they barely mattered. A personal audience with Craig Kilborn over lunch in New York, to discuss his show’s new direction? Eh. A nasty spat with Gabby over which one of us was going to get to write the postmortem on The Nanny? Whatever. Even my coworkers’ increasing and not-so-surreptitious glances, from my belly (burgeoning) to my third left finger (bare) didn’t seem to matter. Nobody’d worked up the nerve to actually ask me anything yet, but I was ready for the questions when they came. Yes, I’d say, I’m pregnant. No, I’d tell them, not with the father any more. That, I thought, would maybe hold them… provided I could change the subject to their own pregnancy/birth/child-rearing stories.
“So what’s on the agenda for today?” Samantha asked. “More shopping.”
Samantha groaned.
“I’m sorry, but I really just need a few more things from the maternity place”
I knew that Samantha was trying to be a good sport about shopping with me. But I could tell it wasn’t easy. For one thing, unlike any other woman I’d ever known, she loathed shopping. For another, I was pretty sure she was getting sick of everybody assuming we were lesbian lovers.
While Samantha was extolling the virtues of mail-order catalogues and Internet shopping, a guy jogged by us. Tall, lean, shorts and a ratty-looking sweatshirt advertising some college or another. Typical jogger on Kelly Drive on a Saturday. Except that this one stopped.
“Hi, Cannie!”
I stopped and squinted, my hands resting protectively on my belly. Samantha stopped, too, gaping. The Mystery Jogger pulled off his baseball cap. It was Dr. K..
“Hey!” I said, smiling. Wow. Outside of that horrible fluorescent-lit building, outside of his white lab coat and glasses, he was kind of cute… for an older guy.
“Introduce me to your friend,” Samantha practically purred.
“This is Dr. Krushelevansky.” I pronounced it slowly and correctly, I think, because he smiled at me. “From the University of Philadelphia program I was doing.”
“Peter. Please,” he said.
Handshakes all around, as two rollerbladers almost crashed into us.
“We’d better get moving,” I said.
“I’ll walk with you,” he said, “if that’s okay. I need to cool down”
“Oh, sure! Absolutely!” said Samantha. She gave me a short but significant look, which I took to mean, “Is he single, and is he Jewish, and if he is, what possible excuse could you have for not mentioning him to me?”
I gave her a brief shrug and raised eyebrows, which I was certain she would understand as, “I have no idea if he’s single, and aren’t you supposed to be taken?” Samantha seemed to have broken her bad-luck streak of third-date lunacy and was still with her yoga instructor. Many of our non-Bruce discussions revolved around whether he was too Zen to consider marrying.
Meanwhile, completely oblivious to our eyebrow-encrypted messages, Dr. K. was introducing himself to Nifkin, who’d been the object of several discussions during Fat Class.
“So you’re the famous little guy,” he said, as Nifkin demonstrated his vertical leap, bouncing higher and higher each time. “He should be in the circus,” Dr. K. told me, rubbing Nifkin vigorously behind his ears as Nifkin preened.
“Yeah, well, a few more pounds and I’ll go, too. They still hire fat ladies, right?”
Samantha glared at me.
“You look very healthy,” Dr. K. pronounced. “How’s work?”
“Good, actually.”
“I read your piece on The View,” he said. “I thought you were absolutely right… it does remind me of Thunderdome.”
“Five girls enter, one girl leaves,” I intoned. He laughed. Samantha looked at him, looked at me, did a few quick equations in her head, and grabbed Nifkin’s leash.
“Well!” she said cheerfully. “Thanks for walking with me, Cannie, but I really need to get going.” Nifkin whined as she started dragging him toward where she’d parked her car. “I’ll see you later,” she said. “Have fun shopping!”
“You’re going shopping?” asked Dr. K.
“Yeah, I need some…” What I actually needed was new underwear, as my Jockey For Her briefs were no longer covering the waterfront, but I was damned if I was going to tell him that. “Groceries,” I said weakly. “I was heading over to Fresh Fields”
“Would you mind if I came?” he asked. “I actually need to pick up a few things. I could drive you,” he offered.
I squinted up at him in the sunshine. “Tell you what. If you can meet me in an hour, we can get breakfast, then shop,” I said.
He told me that he’d lived in Philadelphia for seven years but had never been to the Morning Glory Diner, my absolute favorite breakfast spot. If there’s one thing I love, it’s introducing people to my food finds. I walked home, took a quick shower, pulled on a variation on my standard outfit (black velvet leggings, giant tunic top, lace-up Chuck Taylor low-tops in a subtle shade of periwinkle that I’d bought for $10), then met him at the diner, where, blessedly, there wasn’t even a line— a total fluke on a weekend. I was feeling pretty good about things as we slid into a booth. He looked nice, too— he’d showered, I thought, and changed into khakis and a button-down plaid shirt.
“I’ll bet it’s weird for you, going out to eat with people,” I said. “They probably feel very self-conscious about ordering what they really want.”
“Yes,” he said, “I have noticed some of that.”
“Well, you’re in for a treat,” I told him, and flagged down a dread-locked waitress in a halter top with a tattoo that snaked across her exposed belly. “I’ll have the neighborhood fritatta with provolone cheese and roasted peppers, a side of turkey bacon, a biscuit, and would it be possible to get potatoes and grits instead of just one or the other?”
“Sure thing,” she said, and wiggled her pen toward the doctor.
“I’ll have what she’s having,” he said
“Good boy,” she said, and twitched off toward the kitchen.
“It’s brunch,” I said, by way of explanation. He shrugged a little bit.
“You’re eating for two,” he said. “How have… things… been?”
“If by ‘things’ you mean my situation, it’s going fine. I’m actually feeling a lot better now. Still kind of tired, but that’s about it. No more dizzy, no more barfing, no being so exhausted that I fall asleep on the toilet at work”
He was laughing. “Did that happen?”
“Just once,” I said. “But it’s better now. Even though I realize that my life has turned into one of the lesser songs in the Madonna catalogue, I limp along.” I passed a hand dramatically across my brow. “Eh-lone.”
He squinted at me. “Was that supposed to be Garbo?”
“Hey, don’t hassle the pregnant lady.”
“That was the worst Garbo imitation I have ever heard.”
“Yeah, well, I do it better if I’ve been drinking.” I sighed. “God, do I miss tequila.”
“Tell me about it,” said our waitress, as she deposited our heaping plates on the table. We tucked in.
“This is really good,” he said between mouthfuls.
“Isn’t it?” I said. “They make the best biscuits. The secret is lard.”
He looked at me. “Homer Simpson.”
“Very good.”
“You do Homer much better than you do Garbo.”
“Yeah. Wonder what that says about me?” I changed the topic before he could answer. “Do you ever think about cheese?”
“Constantly,” he said. “I’m tormented, really. I lie awake at night, just thinking… about cheese.”
“No, seriously,” I said, and poked at my fritatta. “Like, who invented cheese? Who said, ‘Hmm, I’ll bet this milk would taste really delicious if I let it sit until a rind of mold grew around it?’ Cheese had to be a mistake.”