Good in Bed

“Fine,” said my mother uneasily. “So we’ll walk.”

“No,” I said. “By myself. I want to be by myself right now.”

They all looked puzzled, even worried, as they filed out the door.

“Call me,” said my mother. “Let me know when you’re ready for Nifkin to come back.”

“I will,” I lied. I wanted them out already, out of my house, my hair, my life. I felt like I was burning up, like I had to move or explode. I stared out the window until they’d all piled in the car and driven off. Then I pulled on a jogging bra, a ratty T-shirt, a pair of shorts, a single sneaker, and thumped out of the house and onto the hot sidewalks, determined not to think about my father, about Bruce, about my baby, about anything. I would just walk. And then, maybe, I’d be able to sleep again.

May drifted into June, and all of my days were built around Joy. I’d go to the hospital first thing in the morning, walking the thirty blocks to the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia as the sun came up. Robed and masked and gloved, I’d sit beside her on a sterile rocking chair in the NICU, holding her tiny hand, brushing her lips with my fingertips, singing her the songs we’d danced to months before. Those were the only moments I didn’t feel the rage consuming me; the only times I could breathe.

And when I felt the anger coming back, when I’d feel my chest tightening and my hands wanting to hit something, I’d leave her. I’d go home to pace the floors and pump my breasts, to clean and scrub floors and counters that I’d cleaned and scrubbed the day before. And I’d take long, furious walks through the city, with my ankle in the increasingly filthy walking cast, charging through yellow lights and shooting evil glances at any car that dared inch toward the intersection.

I got used to the little voice in my head, the one from the airport, the one that had floated up to the ceiling and watched me rage at Bruce while mourning quietly that he wasn’t the one. I got used to the voice asking Why? every morning, when I laced up my sneakers and yanked a succession of nondescript shirts over my head… and asking Why? again at night, when I’d play my messages back – ten, fifteen messages from my mother, my sister, from Maxi, and Peter Krushelevansky, from all of my friends – -and then erase each one without ever calling back, until the day I started erasing them without even listening. You’re too sad, the voice would murmur, as I stomped up Walnut Street. Take it easy, said the voice, as I gulped scalding black coffee, cup after cup, for breakfast. Talk to someone, said the voice. Let them help. I ignored it. Who could help me now? What was there left for me but the streets and the hospital, my silent apartment, and my empty bed?

I let the voice mail keep taking my calls. I instructed the post office that I would be out of town for an indefinite period and to please hold my mail. I let my computer gather dust. I stopped checking my e-mail. And on one of my walks I dropped my pager into the Delaware River without missing a single step. The cast came off, and I started going on even longer walks – four hours, six hours, meandering loops through the city’s worst neighborhoods, past crack dealers, hookers of the male and female variety, dead pigeons in gutters, the burned-out skeletons of cars, without seeing any of it, and without being afraid. How could any of this hurt me, after what I’d already lost? When I ran into Samantha on the street, I told her I was too busy to hang out, shifting from foot to foot with my eyes on the horizon so I wouldn’t have to see her worried face. Getting things ready, I explained, waiting to be off again. The baby’s coming home soon.

“Can I see her?” Sam asked.

Instantly, I shook my head. “I’m not ready… I mean, she’s not ready.”

“What do you mean, Ca

“She’s medically fragile,” I said, trying out the term I’d heard over and over in the baby intensive care ward.

“So I’ll stand outside and look at her through the window,” said Sam, looking perplexed. “And then we’ll go have breakfast. Remember breakfast? It used to be one of your favorite meals.”

“I’ve got to go,” I said brusquely, trying to edge my way around her. Samantha didn’t budge.

“Ca

“Nothing,” I said, shoving past her, my feet already moving, my eyes fixed far ahead. “Nothing, nothing, everything is fine.”

NINETEEN

I walked and walked, and it was as if God had fitted me with special gl asses, where I could only see the bad things, the sad things, the pain and misery of life in the city, the trash kicked into corners instead of the flowers planted in window boxes. I could see husbands and wives fighting, but not kissing or holding hands. I could see little kids careering through the streets on stolen bicycles, screaming insults and curses, and grown men who sounded like they were breakfasting on their own mucus, leering at women with unashamed, lecherous eyes. I could smell the stink of the city in summer: horse piss and hot tar and the grayish, sick exhaust the buses spewed. The manhole covers leaked steam, the sidewalks belched heat from the subways churning below.

Everywhere I looked, I just saw emptiness, loneliness, buildings with broken windows, shambling addicts with outstretched hands and dead eyes, sorrow and filth and rot.

I thought that time would heal me and that the miles would soothe my pain. I waited for a morning where I woke up and didn’t instantly imagine Bruce and the Pusher dying horrible gruesome deaths… or, worse yet, losing my baby, losing Joy.

I would walk to the hospital at the break of dawn and sometimes before, and walk laps around the parking lot until I felt calm enough to walk inside. I would sit in the cafeteria gulping cup after cup of water, trying to smile and look normal, but inside, my head was spi

I imagined calling the university where Bruce had taught freshman English and telling them how he’d only passed his drug test by ingesting quarts and quarts of warm water spiked with goldenseal that he bought from a 1-800 line in the back pages of High Times. Urine Luck, the stuff was called. I could tell them he was showing up stoned at work – he used to do it, probably he still was doing it, and if they watched him long enough they’d see. I could call his mother, call the police in his town, have him arrested, taken away.

I imagined writing to Moxie, including a picture of Joy in the NICU, growing bigger, growing stronger, but still a pathetic sight, run through with tubes, breathing on a ventilator more often than not, with who knew what horrors strewn in her future – cerebral palsy, learning disabilities, blind, deaf, retarded, a menu of disasters that the doctors hadn’t mentioned. I’d gone online, to sites with names like preemie.com, reading first-person stories from parents whose children had survived, horribly damaged; who’d come home on oxygen or sleep apnea monitors or with holes cut in their throats so they could breathe. I read about kids who grew up with seizure disorders, learning disabilities, who never quite caught up, never quite got right. And I read stories about the babies who died: at birth, in the NICU, at home. “Our Precious Angel,” they’d be headlined. “Our Darling Daughter.”

I wanted to copy these stories and e-mail them to the Pusher, along with a photograph of Joy. I wanted to send her a picture of my daughter – no letter, no words, just Joy’s picture, sent to her house, sent to her school, sent to her boss, to her parents if I could find them, to show them all what she’d done, what she’d been responsible for. I found myself pla