Good in Bed

He grabbed for me, clutching blindly. “Ca

I looked at him. I didn’t feel love, or hate. I didn’t feel anything but a bone-deep weariness. Like I was suddenly a hundred years old, and I knew at that moment I would have to live a hundred more years, carrying my grief around like a backpack full of stones.

I closed my eyes, knowing that it was too late for us. Too much had happened, and none of it was good. A body in motion stays in motion. I’d started the whole thing by telling him I’d wanted to take a break. Or maybe he’d started it by asking me out in the first place. What did it matter anymore?

I turned my face to the wall. After a while, Bruce stopped crying. And a while after that, I heard him leave.

I woke up the next morning with sunlight spilling across my face. Instantly my mother hurried through the door and pulled a chair up beside my bed. She looked uncomfortable – she was good about cracking jokes, laughing things off, keeping a stiff upper lip and soldiering on, but she wasn’t any good with tears.

“How are you doing?” she asked.

“I’m shitty!” I shrieked, and my mother pulled back so fast that her wheeled chair scooted halfway across the room. I didn’t even wait for her to pull herself back toward me before continuing my tirade. “How do you think I am? I gave birth to something that looks like a junior-high science experiment, and I’m all cut open and I h-h-hurt…”

I put my face in my hands and sobbed for a minute. “There’s something wrong with me,” I wept. “I’m defective. You should have let me die”

“Oh, Ca

“Nobody loves me,” I cried. “Dad didn’t, Bruce didn’t…”

My mother patted my hair. “Don’t talk that way,” she repeated. “You have a beautiful baby. A little on the petite side, for the time being, but very beautiful.” She cleared her throat, got to her feet, and started pacing – typical Mom behavior when there was something painful coming.

“Sit down,” I told her wearily, and she did, but I could see one of her feet jiggling anxiously.

“I had a talk with Bruce,” she said.

I exhaled sharply. I didn’t even want to hear his name. My mother could tell this from my face, but she kept talking.

“With Bruce,” she continued, “and his new girlfriend.”

“The Pusher?” I asked, my voice high and sharp and hysterical. “You saw her?”

“Ca

“They should,” I said angrily. “Bruce never even called me, the whole time I was pregnant, then the Pusher does her thing…”

My mother looked shaken by my tone. “The doctors aren’t sure that’s what caused you to…”

“It doesn’t matter,” I said querulously. “I believe that’s what did it, and I hope that dumb bitch does, too.”

My mother was shocked. “Ca

“Ca

My mother sighed. “Ca

“I can’t believe you’re taking their side!” I yelled.

“I’m not taking their side, Ca

“Joy almost died,” I said.

“But she didn’t,” said my mother. “She didn’t die. She’s going to be fine”

“You don’t know that,” I said furiously.

“Ca

“She was deprived of oxygen! Didn’t you hear them! Deprived of oxygen! There could be all kinds of things wrong!”

“She looks just the way you did when you were a baby,” my mother said impatiently. “She’s going to be fine. I just know it.”

“You didn’t even know you were gay until you were fifty-six!” I shouted. “How am I supposed to believe you about anything!”

I pointed toward the door. “Go away,” I said, and started to cry.

My mother shook her head. “I’m not going,” she said. “Talk to me.”

“What do you want to hear about?” I said, trying to wipe my face off, trying to sound normal. “My my asshole ex-boyfriend’s idiot new girlfriend pushed me, and my baby almost died”

But what was really wrong – the part that I didn’t think I’d be able to bring myself to say – was that I had failed Joy. I’d failed to be good enough, pretty enough, thin enough, lovable enough, to keep my father in my life. Or to keep Bruce. And now, I’d failed at keeping my baby safe.

My mother wheeled in close again and wrapped her arms around me.

“I didn’t deserve her,” I wept. “I couldn’t keep her safe, I let her get hurt…”

“What gave you that idea?” she whispered into my hair. “Ca

“If I’m so great, why didn’t he love me?” I wept, and I wasn’t even sure who I was talking about – Bruce? My father? “What’s wrong with me?”

My mother stood up. I followed her eyes to the clock on the wall. She watched me watching, and bit her lip. “I’m sorry,” she said softly, “but I have to run out for a few minutes.”

I wiped my eyes, buying time, trying to process what she’d told me. “You have to…”

“I have to pick up Tanya at her continuing education class.”

“What, Tanya forgot how to drive?”

“Her car’s in the shop.”

“And what is she studying today? Which facet of herself is she addressing?” I inquired. “Codependent granddaughters of emotionally distant grandparents?”

“Give it a rest, Ca

“Oh, and now is the time you decided to bring it up? You couldn’t wait until maybe your granddaughter makes it out of intensive care?”

My mother pursed her lips. “I’ll talk to you later,” she said, and walked out the door. With her hand on the doorknob, she turned to face me one more time. “I know you don’t believe it, but you’re going to be fine. You have everything you need. You just have to know it in your own heart.”

I scowled. Know it in my own heart. It sounded like New Age crap, like something she’d pirated from one of Tanya’s stupid Healing Your Hurt workbooks.

“Sure,” I called after her. “Go! I’m good at being left. I’m used to it.”

She didn’t turn around. I sighed, staring at my blanket and hoping none of the nurses had heard me spouting third-rate soap opera dialogue. I felt absolutely wretched. I felt hollow, like my insides had been scooped out and all that was left was echoing emptiness, vacant black holes. How was I going to figure out how to be a decent parent, given the choices my own parents had made?

You have everything you need, she’d told me. But I couldn’t see what she meant. I considered my life and saw only what was missing – no father, no boyfriend, no promise of health or comfort for my daughter. Everything I need, I thought ruefully, and closed my eyes, hoping that I’d dream again of my bed, or of the water.

When the door opened again an hour later I didn’t even look up.

“Tell it to Tanya,” I said, with my eyes still shut. “ ’Cause I don’t want to hear it.”

“Well, I would,” said a familiar deep voice, “but I don’t think she has much use for my kind… and also, we haven’t really been introduced.”

I looked up. Dr. K. was standing there, with a white bakery box in one hand and a black duffel bag in the other. And the duffel bag appeared to be wriggling.

“I came as soon as I heard,” he began, folding himself into the seat my mother had recently occupied, setting the box on my nightstand and the duffel bag on his lap. “How are you feeling?”