Reconsider Me 5 страница

But another part — the shrill, hysterical, hypercritical, and, unfortunately, much louder part — was saying something else entirely.

That I was dumb. That I was fat. That I was so fat that nobody would ever love me again and so dense that I couldn’t see it. That I’d been a fool, or, worse, been made a fool of. That Steve, the Teva-wearing engineer, was probably sitting at an empty table, eating calamari and laughing to himself about big, dumb Cannie.

And who was I going to tell? Who could comfort me?

Not my mother. I couldn’t really talk to her about my love life after I’d made it so clear that I didn’t approve of hers. And plus, with Bruce’s column, she’d learned enough about my after-dark activities for the time being.

I could tell Samantha, certainly, but she’d think I was crazy. “Why are you assuming this is about the way you look? ” she’d demand, and I’d mutter that it could probably have been about something else, or just a plain old misunderstanding, all the while feeling the truth in my bones, the Gospel according to my father: I was fat and I was ugly and nobody would ever love me. And it would be embarrassing. I wanted my friends to think of me as someone who was smart and funny and capable. I didn’t want them to feel sorry for me.

What I wanted to do was call Bruce. I wouldn’t tell him about this latest humiliation — I didn’t want his pity, either, or for him to think I’d come crawling back, or was planning to, simply because some fuzzy-legged jerk had rejected me — but I wanted to hear his voice. No matter what he’d said in Moxie, no matter how he’d shamed me. After three years, he knew me better than probably anyone else in the world, except Samantha, and at that moment, standing on the sidewalk on 17th and Walnut, I wanted to talk to him so badly that I got weak in the knees.

I hurried home and heaved myself up the stairs two at a time. Sweaty, hands shaking, I sprawled on the bed and reached for the phone, punching in his number as fast as I could. He picked up instantly.

“Hey, Bruce, ” I began.

“Cannie? ” His voice sounded strange. “I was just going to call you. ”

“Really? ” I felt a small spark of hopefulness flare in my chest.

“I just wanted to let you know, ” he began, and his voice dissolved into harsh, ragged sobs. “My father died this morning. ”

I don’t remember what I said then. I remember that he told me the details: He’d had a stroke and he’d died in the hospital. It had been very fast.

I was crying, Bruce was crying. I couldn’t remember when I’d felt so horrible about something. It was so unfair. Bruce’s father was a wonderful man. He had loved his family. He had even, I thought, maybe loved me, too.

But even as I was feeling horrible, I felt the spark growing. He’ll get it now, a voice in my head whispered. Once you’ve had a loss like that, doesn’t it change the way you see the world? And wouldn’t it change the way he saw me, my own fractured family, my own lost father? Plus, he’d need me. He’d needed me once before, to rescue him from loneliness, from sexual ignorance and shame … and surely he would need me again to help him get through this.

I imagined us at the funeral, and how I’d hold his hand, how I’d help him, hold him up, be there for him to lean on, the way I wished I could have leaned on him. I imagined him looking at me with new respect and understanding, new consideration, with the eyes of a man, not a boy.

“Let me help. How can I help? ” I said. “Do you want me to come over? ”

His reply was dismayingly instant. “No, ” he said. “I’m going home, and there’s a ton of people there now. It would be weird. Could you come to the funeral tomorrow? ”

“Of course, ” I said. “Of course. I love you, ” I said, the words out of my mouth almost before I’d finished thinking them.

“What does that mean? ” he asked me, still crying.

To my credit, I recovered fast. “That I want to be there for you … and help you any way I can. ”

“Just come tomorrow, ” he said dully. “That’s all you can do right now. ”

But something perverse in me persisted.

“I love you, ” I said again, and left the words hanging there. Bruce sighed, knowing what I wanted, and unwilling, or unable, to give it to me.

“I have to go, ” he said. “I’m sorry, Cannie. ”

PART TWO

Reconsider Me

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