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.
For about five seconds I stood stock-still and prayed that they wouldn’t see me. I tried to edge off to the side of the lounge, to skirt the entire area, thinking that there had to be some way to duck onto the escalator, grab my bags, and escape. But then Bruce’s eyes locked on mine, and I knew it was too late.
He bent down, whispering something to the girl, who turned her head away before I could get a good look. Then he crossed the concourse, walking right toward me, wearing a red T-shirt that I’d snuggled up against a hundred times and blue shorts that I remembered seeing him put on, and pull off, just as often. I sent up a quick prayer of thanks for Garth’s haircut, for my tan, for my diamond earrings, and endured a sudden spasm of misery that I wasn’t still wearing that grand and gaudy diamond ring. It was completely superficial, I knew, but I hoped I looked good. As good as somebody seven and a half months pregnant could look after a six-hour plane trip, at least.
And then Bruce was right in front of me, looking pale and solemn.
“Hey, Cannie,” he said. His eyes fell to my midsection as if it were magnetized. “So you…”
“That’s right,” I said coolly. “I’m pregnant.” I stood up straight and tightened my grip on Nifkin’s case. Nifkin, of course, had smelled Bruce and was in the midst of trying to leap out and greet him. I could hear his tail thumping as he whined.
Bruce raised his eyes to the computerized board over the doorway I’d just passed through. “You’re coming from L.A.?” he asked, showing that his reading abilities had not diminished during our time apart.
I gave another curt nod, hoping he couldn’t tell how badly my knees were shaking. “What are you doing here?” I asked.
“Vacation,” he said. “We’re going to Florida for the weekend.”
We, I thought bitterly, staring at him. He looked just the same. A little thinner, maybe, with a few more strands of gray in his ponytail, but still, same old Bruce, right down to his smell, to his smile, and the half-laced doodled-on basketball sneakers. “How nice for you,” I said.
Bruce didn’t take the bait. “So were you in L.A. for work?”
“I had some meetings on the coast,” I said. I have always wanted to say that to someone.
“The Examiner sent you to California?” he asked.
“No, I had meetings about my screenplay,” I said.
“You sold your screenplay?” He seemed genuinely happy for me. “Cannie, that’s great!”
I said nothing, glaring at him. Of all the things I needed from him— love, support, money, the bare acknowledgment that I existed, that our baby existed, and that any of it mattered to him, his congratulations felt exceedingly paltry.
“I… I’m sorry,” he finally managed. And with that I was furious. How rotten of him, I thought, showing up at an airport to take Little Miss Pageboy on vacation, mouthing his pathetic apology, as if it could undo the months of silence, the worry I’d gone through, the anguish of missing him and figuring out how to provide for a baby on my own. And I was furious, too, for his complacency. He didn’t care— not about me, not about the baby. He’d never called, never asked, never cared. Just left me— left us— all alone. Who did this remind me of?
I knew, at that moment, that my anger wasn’t really for him. It was for my father, of course, the Original Abandoner, the author of all of my insecurities and fears. But my father was three thousand miles away from me, with his back eternally turned. If I could only step back and look at it clearly, I’d see that Bruce was just some guy, like a thousand other guys, right down to the pot and the ponytail and the half-intended slipshod lazy life, right down to the dissertation he’d never finish, the bookshelves he’d never build, and the bathtub he’d never clean. Guys like Bruce were as common as white cotton socks sold in six-packs at the Wal-Mart, if not as clean, and all I’d have to do to acquire another one would be to show up at a Phish concert and smile.
But Bruce, as opposed to my father, was right here… and he was far from innocent. After all, hadn’t he left me, too?
I set Nifkin down and turned to face Bruce, feeling all of my fury— years of it— curl in my chest and rise to my throat. “You’re sorry?” I spat.
He took a step backward. “I am sorry,” he said, and his voice was so sad it sounded like he was being ripped open from the inside. “I know I should have called you, but… I just…”
I narrowed my eyes. He dropped his hands. “It was just too much,” he whispered. “With my father and all.”
I rolled my eyes to show what I thought of that excuse, and to make it clear that he and I would not be exchanging tender reminiscences of Bernard Guberman, or anything else, anytime soon.
“I know how strong you are,” he told me. “I knew you’d be okay.”
“Well, I have to be, don’t I, Bruce? You didn’t leave me much of a choice.”
“I’m sorry,” Bruce said again, looking even more wretched. “I… I hope you’ll be happy.”
“I can feel those good wishes radiating right off you,” I retorted. “Oh, wait. My mistake. That’s just pot smoke.” It felt as if a part of me had detached from my body, floated up to the ceiling, and was watching this scene unfold in terror… and in great sadness. Cannie, oh, Cannie, a little voice mourned, this isn’t who you’re angry at.
“And you know what?” I asked him. “I’m sorry about your father. He was a man. You, you’re nothing but a boy with big feet and facial hair. And you’re never going to be anything else. You’ll never be more than a third-rate writer at a second-rate magazine, and God help you when you can’t peddle any more memories of what we had together.”
The girlfriend sidled up to his side and laced her fingers through his. I just kept talking. “You’ll never be as good as me, and you’re always going to know that I was the best you ever had.”
The girlfriend attempted to say something, but I wasn’t going to stop.
“You’re always going to be some big goofy guy with a bunch of tapes in cardboard shoeboxes. The guy with the rolling papers. The guy with the Grateful Dead bootleg. Good old Bruce. Except that shtick gets tired after sophomore year. It gets old, the same way that you’re getting old. It’s unimproved, just like your writing. And you know what else?” I stepped right up to him, so we were practically toe to toe. “You’re never going to finish that dissertation. And you’re always going to live in New Jersey.”
Bruce stood there, stunned. His mouth was literally gaping open. It wasn’t a good look, emphasizing as it did his weak chin, and the network of wrinkles around his eyes.
The girlfriend looked up at me.
“Leave us alone,” she said in a little squeaky voice. My new Manolo Blahnik slides gave me an extra three inches and I felt Amazonian, powerful, untroubled by this little wisp of a thing who barely cleared my shoulders. I gave her my very best shut-up-and-let-the-smart-people-talk look, the one I’d perfected over the years on my siblings. I wondered if she’d ever heard of tweezers. Sure, she could probably be looking at me and wondering whether I’d ever heard of Slim-Fast… or of birth control, for that matter. I found that I didn’t much care.
“I don’t think I was actually saying anything to you,” I said, and dredged up a line from the Take Back the Night March, circa 1989. “I don’t believe in blaming the victim.”
That snapped Bruce back to reality. He tightened his grip on her hand. “Leave her alone,” he said.
“Oh, Jesus.” I sighed. “Like I’m the one doing anything to either one of you. For your information,” I told the girlfriend, “I wrote him exactly one letter when I found out I was pregnant. One letter. And I won’t do it again. I’ve got plenty of money, and a better job than he does, in case he neglected to mention that when he gave you our history, and I’m going to do just fine. I hope the two of you are very happy together.” I picked up Nifkin, tossed my great hair, and breezed past a security guard. “I’d search his luggage,” I said, loud enough for Bruce to hear, “he’s probably holding.”
And then, still being pregnant, I went to the bathroom to pee.
My knees felt like water, my cheeks were hot. Hah, I thought. Hah!
I stood, flushed, and opened the cubicle door. And there was the new girlfriend, her arms crossed against her meager chest.
“Yes?” I inquired politely. “You have a comment?”
Her mouth twisted. She had, I noticed, a bit of an overbite.
“You think you’re so smart,” she said. “He never really loved you. He told me he didn’t.” Her voice was getting higher. Squeak, squeak, squeak. She sounded like a little stuffed animal, the kind that bleated when you squeezed it.
“Whereas you,” I said, “are obviously the real love of his life.” I knew, deep in my heart, in my good heart, that whatever quarrel I had, it wasn’t with her. But it was as if I couldn’t help myself.
Her lip curled, literally curled, like Nifkin’s when we played with his fluffy toys.
“Why don’t you leave us alone?” she hissed.