I called Audrey and apologized… well, I did whatever apologizing I could, in between her nonstop apologies for Bruce. She was sorry for how he’d behaved, sorry he hadn’t been there for me, sorriest of all that she hadn’t known so she could have made him do the right thing. Which, of course, wasn’t possible. You can’t make grownups do what they don’t want to do. But I didn’t say any of that.
I told her I’d be honored if she would have a role in Joy’s life. She asked, very nervously, if I had any intention of letting Bruce have a role in Joy’s life. I told her that I didn’t… but I told her that things change. A year ago I couldn’t have imagined myself with a baby. So who knows? Next year maybe Bruce will come over for brunch or a bike ride, and Joy will call him Daddy. Anything’s possible, right?
I didn’t call Bruce. I thought about it and thought about it, turned it over and over in my mind, and looked at it from every angle I could think of, and in the end I decided that I couldn’t. I’d been able to let go of a lot of the anger… but not all of it. Maybe that too would come in time.
“So you haven’t talked to him at all?” Peter asked, as he walked alongside me, balancing one hand beside mine on Joy’s stroller.
“Not once.”
“You don’t hear from him?”
“I hear… things about him. It’s this very Byzantine system. Audrey tells my mother, who tells Tanya, who tells everyone she knows, including Lucy, who usually tells me.”
“How do you feel about that?”
I smiled at him, beneath the sky, which had finally gone completely black. “You sound like my shrink.” I took a deep breath and huffed it out, watching it turn into a silver cloud and blow away. “It was awful at first, and it still is sometimes.”
His voice was very gentle. “But only sometimes?”
I smiled at him. “Hardly ever,” I said. “Hardly every anymore.” I reached for his hand and he squeezed my fingers. “Things happen, you know? That’s my one big lesson from therapy. Things happen, and you can’t make them un-happen. You don’t get do-overs, you can’t roll back the clock, and the only thing you can change, and the only thing it does any good to worry about, is how you let them affect you.”
“So how are you letting this affect you?”
I smiled sideways at him. “You’re very persistent.”
He looked at me seriously. “I have ulterior motives.”
“Oh?”
Peter cleared his throat. “I wonder if you’d… consider me.”
I tilted my head. “For the position of in-house diet counselor?”
“In-house something,” he muttered.
“How old are you, anyway?” I teased. It was the one topic we’d never quite gotten around to during our trips to bookstores and the beach and to the park with Joy.
“How old do you think I am?”
I took my honest guess and revised it five years downward. “Forty?”
He sighed. “I’m thirty-seven.”
I was so startled at that there was no way to even try to hide it. “Really?”
His voice, usually slow and deep and self-assured, sounded higher, hesitant, as he explained. “It’s just that I’m so tall, I think… and my hair started going gray when I was eighteen… and, you know, being a professor, I think everyone just makes certain assumptions”
“You’re thirty-seven?”
“Do you want to see my driver’s license?”
“No,” I said, “no, I believe you.”
“I know,” he began, “I know I’m still probably too old for you, and I’m probably not exactly what you had in mind.”
“Don’t be silly…”
“I’m not glamorous or quick on my feet.” He looked down at his feet and sighed. “I’m kind of a plodder, I guess.”
“Plotter? Like, Murder, She Wrote?”
A faint twitch of a smile lifted his lips. “Plodder. Like, one foot in front of the other.”
“Especially now with the shinsplints,” I murmured.
“And I… I mean, I really…”
“Have we come to the emotional part of the presentation?” I asked, still teasing. “You don’t mind that I’m a larger woman?”
He wrapped his long fingers around my wrist. “I think you look like a queen,” he said with such intensity that I was startled… and tremendously pleased. “I think you’re the most amazing, exciting woman I’ve ever met. I think you’re smart, and funny, and you have the most wonderful heart…” He paused, swallowing hard. “Cannie.” And then he stopped.
I smiled— a private, contented smile— as he sat there, holding my wrist, waiting for my answer. And I knew what it was, I thought, looking at him looking at me. The answer was that I loved him… that he was as kind and considerate and loving a man as I could ever hope for. That he was warm-hearted, and decent, and sweet, and that we could have adventures together… me, and Peter, and Joy.
“Would you like to be the first man I kiss this millennium?” I inquired.
Peter leaned close. I could feel his warm breath on my cheek. “I would like to be the only man you kiss this millennium,” he said emphatically. And he brushed my neck with his lips… then my ear… then my cheek. I giggled until he kissed my lips to quiet me. Snuggled against my chest, squeezed between us, Joy gave a little shout and waved one fist in the air.
“Cannie?” Peter whispered, his voice pitched low, for my ears only, and one hand in his jacket pocket. “I want to ask you something.”
“Shh,” I said, knowing in my heart what his question was, and what my answer would be. I do, I thought. I will. “Shh,” I said, “they’re starting.”
Above our heads, fireworks burst, in great blooms of color and light. Silver sparks showered down, racing toward the river, and the night was full of explosions and the whistling shrieks as the spent fire-crackers hurtled through the night and into the water. I looked down. Joy’s face was rapt, her eyes wide, both her arms extended, as if she wanted to embrace what she was seeing. I smiled at Peter, holding up one finger, asking him with my eyes to wait. Then I unstrapped Joy from her carryall, putting my hands under her armpits, holding her in front of me as I scrambled to my feet. Ignoring the good-natured shouts of “Down in front!” and, “Hey, lady, be careful!” I stood on the ledge, letting the cold and the light pour down over my hair, my face, and my daughter. I raised my arms over my head and lifted Joy up toward the light.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Good in Bed would not have been possible without my brilliant, patient, and devoted agent, Joanna Pulcini, who plucked Cannie from obscurity, cleaned her up, and found her a home. I’m grateful to Liza Nelligan’s careful reading and good advice. I also thank my editor, Greer Kessel Hendricks, whose keen eye and invaluable suggestions made this a much better book.
Thanks to Greer’s assistant, Suzanne O’Neill, and Joanna’s assistant, Kelly Smith, who answered a thousand questions and held my hand.
Thanks to Linda Michaels and Teresa Cavanaugh, who helped Cannie see the world, and Manuela Thurner, the German translator of Good in Bed, who caught a dozen discrepancies and learned the meaning of Tater Tot.
From elementary school through college, I was gifted with teachers who believed in me, and in the power of words: Patricia Ciabotti, Marie Miller, and most especially John McPhee.
I work with, and have learned from, the best people in the business at The Philadelphia Inquirer. Thanks to Beth Gillin, editor extraor-dinaire, and Gail Shister, Jonathan Storm, Carrie Rickey, Lorraine Branham, Max King, and Robert Rosenthal.
Thanks to my friends, who inspired me and amused me, especially Susan Abrams, Lisa Maslankowski (for the medical advice), Bill Syken, Craig and Elizabeth LaBan, and Scott Andron. Thanks to my sister Molly, my brothers Jake and Joe, and my grandmother Faye Frumin, who always believed in me, and to my mother, Frances Frumin Weiner, who still can’t believe it. Thanks to Caren Morofsky, for being a very good sport.
Thanks to my muse, Wendell, King of All Dogs.
And finally, thanks to Adam Bonin, first reader and traveling companion, who made the journey worthwhile.