Good in Bed

“I think they’re from this woman,” said Josh.

“What woman?” I asked.

“The one who’s living here,” said Josh. “Mom says she’s her swim coach.”

A live-in swim coach? This was the first I’d heard of it.

“It’s probably nothing,” I told Josh.

“It’s probably nothing,” Bruce told me, when I’d talked to him that night.

And that was how I started my conversation with my mother when she called at work two days later: “This is probably nothing, but…”

“Yes?” asked my mother.

“Is there, um, someone else… living there?”

“My swim coach,” she said.

“You know, the Olympics were last year,” I said, playing along.

“Tanya’s a friend of mine from the Jewish Community Center. She’s between apartments, and she’s staying in Josh’s room for a few days.”

This sounded slightly suspect. My mother didn’t have friends who lived in apartments, let alone who slept over because they were between them. Her friends all lived in the houses their ex-husbands had left, just like she did. But I let it go until the next time I called home and an unfamiliar voice answered the telephone.

“H’lo?” the strange voice growled. It was, at first, impossible to tell whether I was talking to a woman or a man. But whoever it was sounded as if they’d just gotten out of bed, even though it was almost eight o’clock on a Friday night.

“I’m sorry,” I said politely, “I think I have the wrong number.” “Is this Ca

“Yes. Who’s this, please?”

“Tanya,” she said proudly. “I’m a friend of your mother’s.” “Oh,” I said. “Oh. Hi.” “Your mother’s told me a lot about you.” “Well, that’s… that’s good,” I said. My mind was churning. Who was this person, and what was she doing answering our telephone?

“But she’s not here right now,” Tanya continued. “She’s playing bridge. With her bridge group.” “Right.” “Do you want me to have her call you?” “No,” I said, “no, that’s okay.” That was Friday. I didn’t speak to my mother again until she called on Monday afternoon at work.

“Is there something you want to tell me?” I asked her, expecting her to say some variation of “No.” Instead, she took a deep breath.

“Well, you know, Tanya… my friend? She’s… well. We’re in love and we’re living together.”

What can I say? Subtlety and discretion run in the family.

“I’ve got to go,” I said, and hung up the phone.

I spent the whole rest of the afternoon staring blankly into space, which, believe me, did nothing to add to the quality of my article about the MTV Video Music Awards. At home, there were three messages on my machine: one from my mother (“Ca

I ignored all of them, instead rounding up Samantha for an emergency dessert and strategy session. We went to the bar around the corner, where I ordered a shot of tequila and a slab of chocolate cake with raspberry sauce. Thus fortified, I told her what my mother had told me.

“Wow,” murmured Samantha.

“Good God!” said Bruce, when I told him later that night. But it wasn’t long before his initial shock turned into… well, call it shocked amusement. With a heavy helping of condescension. By the time he arrived at my door he was in full-blown good liberal mode. “You should be glad she’s found someone to love,” he lectured.

“I am,” I said slowly. “I mean, I guess I am. It’s just that…”

“Glad,” Bruce repeated. He could get a little insufferable when it came to toeing the P.C. party line, and to mouthing the beliefs that were practically mandatory among graduate students in the northeast in the nineties. Most of the time I let him get away with it. But this time I wasn’t going to let him make me feel like a bigot, or like I was less open-minded and accepting than he was. This time it was personal.

“How many gay friends do you have?” I asked, knowing what the answer was.

“None, but…”

“None that you know of,” I said, and paused while he let that sink in.

“What does that mean?” he demanded.

“It means what I said. None that you know of.”

“You think one of my friends is gay?”

“Bruce, I didn’t even know my own mother was gay. How do you expect me to have any kind of insight about your friends’ sexuality?”

“Oh,” he said, mollified.

“But my point is that you don’t really know any gay people. So how can you assume it’s such a terrific thing for my mom? That I should be happy about it?”

“She’s in love. How can that be a bad thing?”

“What about this other person? What if she’s awful? What if…” I was starting to cry as the horrible images piled up in my head. “What if, I don’t know, they’re walking somewhere and someone sees them and, and, throws a beer bottle at their heads or something…”

“Oh, Ca

“People are mean! That’s my point! It’s not that there’s anything wrong with being gay, but people are mean… and judgmental… and rotten… and, and you know what my neighborhood’s like! People won’t let their kids trick or treat at our house” Of course, the truth was that nobody’d let their kids trick or treat at our house since 1985 when my father began his downhill slide by neglecting the yardwork and getting in touch with his i

“So who cares what people think?”

“I do,” I sobbed. “I mean, it’s nice to have ideals and hope that things will change, but we have to live in the world the way it is, and the world is… is…”

“Why are you crying?” Bruce asked. “Are you worried about your mother, or yourself?” Of course, by that time, I was crying too hard to answer, and there was also a mucus situation that needed immediate attention. I swiped my sleeve across my face and blew my nose noisily. When I looked up, Bruce was still talking. “Your mother’s made her choice, Ca

Well. Easy for him to say. It wasn’t as if the Ever Tasteful Audrey had a

The thought of Bruce’s mother in her whirlpool bathtub for two, discreetly dabbing at her own privates from beneath an Egyptian cotton washcloth with a high thread count, made me laugh a little.

“See?” said Bruce. “You just have to roll with it, Ca

I laughed even harder. Having discharged his boyfriendly duty, Bruce switched gears. His voice dropped from his concerned-guidance-counselor tenor to a more intimate tone. “Come here, girl,” he murmured, sounding for all the world like Lionel Richie as he beckoned me beside him, tenderly kissing my forehead and not so tenderly tossing Nifkin off the bed. “I want you,” he said, and placed my hand on his crotch to remove any doubt.

And so it went.

Bruce left at midnight. I fell into an uneasy sleep and woke up the morning after with the telephone shrilling on my pillow. I unglued one eyelid. 5:15. I picked up the phone. “Hello?”

“Ca

Tanya?

“Your mother’s friend.”

Oh, God. Tanya.

“Hi,” I said weakly. Nifkin stared at me as if to say, what is this about? Then he gave a dismissive sniff and resettled himself on the pillow. Meanwhile, Tanya was talking a blue streak.