NINETEEN. Loving a Larger Woman

NINETEEN

I walked and walked, and it was as if God had fitted me with special glasses, 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 spinning furiously, thinking knives? guns? car accident? I would smile and say hello, but really, in my head I was plotting revenge.

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 planning walking routes that would bring me by gun shops. I found myself looking in their windows. I didn’t go inside yet, but I knew that was next. And then what?

I didn’t let myself answer the question. I didn’t let myself think beyond the image, the picture that I treasured: Bruce’s face when he opened his door and saw me standing there with a gun in my hand; Bruce’s face when I said, “I’ll show you sorry. ”

Then one morning I was burning past a newsstand and I saw the new issue of Moxie, the August issue, even though it was only just July, and so hot that the air shimmered and the streets turned sticky in the sun. I yanked a copy off the rack.

“Miss, you gonna pay for that? ”

“No, ” I snarled, “I’m going to rob you. ” I tossed two bucks and change on the counter and started flipping furiously through the pages, wondering what the headline would be. “My Daughter the Vegetable? ” “How to Really, Really Screw Up Your Ex’s Life? ”

Instead I saw a single word, big black letters, a somber incongruity in Moxie’s light-hearted, pastel-heavy lineup. “Complications, ” it said.

“Pregnant, ” says the letter, and I can’t read any more. It’s as if the very word has poleaxed me and left me paralyzed, save for the icy crawling along the back of my neck, the beginning of dread.

“I don’t know an easy way to say this, ” she has written, “so I’ll just say it. I am pregnant. ”

I remember sixteen years ago standing on the bimah in my synagogue in Short Hills, looking over the crowd of friends and relatives and mouthing those time-honored words, “Today I am a man. ” Now, feeling this rush of ice to my stomach, feeling my palms start to sweat, I know the truth: Today, I am a man. For real, this time.

“Not quite, ” I said, so loudly that the homeless people loping along the sidewalks stopped and stared. Not hardly. A man. A man would have called me. At least sent a postcard! I turned my attention back to the page.

But I’m not a man. As it turns out, what I am is a coward. I tuck the letter in a notebook, stuff the notebook in a desk drawer, lock the drawer, and accidentally on purpose, lose the key.

They say — they being the great philosophers, or possibly the cast of Seinfeld — that breaking up is like pushing over a Coke machine. You can’t just do it, you have to set the thing in motion, rock it back and forth a few times. For C. and me it wasn’t like that. It was a clean, swift break — a thunderclap. Intense and awful and over in seconds.

Liar, I thought. Oh, you liar. It wasn’t a thunderclap, it wasn’t even a breakup, I just told you I wanted some time!

Then, less than three months later, my father died.

I went back and forth with the telephone in my hand, her number still first on my speed-dial. Call her? Don’t call her? Was she my ex or my friend?

In the end I opted for her friendship. And later, when a houseful of mourners picked over deli trays in my mother’s kitchen, I opted for more

And now, three months later, I am still mourning my father, but I’m feeling as if I’m over C., truly and completely. I know what real sadness is now. I can explore it every night like a kid who’s lost a tooth and can’t stop tonguing the pulpy, wounded, empty space where the tooth once was.

Except now she’s pregnant.

And I don’t know whether she’s set out to trick me or trap me, whether I’m even the father, whether she’s pregnant at all.

“Oh, this is unbelievable, ” I announced to Broad Street at large. “This is fucking unbelievable! ”

And, the thing is, I’m too chicken to ask.

It’s your choice, I imagine I say with my silence. Your call, your game, your move. I manage to silence the part of me that wonders, that wants to know how she chose: whether she went to the clinic on Locust Street and marched past the protestors with their pictures of bloody dead babies; whether she did it in a doctors’ office, whether she went with a friend, or a new lover, or alone. Or whether she’s marching around her home-town right now with a belly as big as a beachball and books full of baby names.

I don’t ask, or call. I don’t send a check, or a letter, or even a card. I’m done, empty, dried out and cried out. There’s nothing left for her or for a baby if there is one.

When I let myself think about it I get furious at myself (how could I have been so dumb? ) and furious at her (how could she have let me? ). But I try not to let myself think of it too much. I wake up, work out, go to the office, and go through the motions, try to keep the tip of my tongue away from that hole in my smile. But deep down I know that I can only postpone this so long, that even my cowardice can’t stave off the inevitable. Somewhere in my desk, tucked in a notebook and locked in a drawer, there’s a letter with my name on it.

“You’re late! ” the head nurse scolded, and smiled at me to show she didn’t mean it. I had the copy of Moxie curled up like I meant to smack a dog with it. “Here, ” I said, handing it off. She barely spared it a glance. “I don’t read this stuff, ” she said. “It’s worthless. ”

“I agree, ” I said, heading toward the nursery.

“There’s someone here to see you, ” she said.

I walked to the nursery and sure enough, there was a woman standing at my window, the window in front of Joy’s Isolette. I could see short, impeccably coiffed gray hair, an elegant black pantsuit, a platinum diamond tennis bracelet around one wrist. A light whiff of Allure was in the air, her freshly polished fingernails glittered under the fluorescent lights. The Ever-Tasteful Audrey had put together just the right ensemble for going to visit her son’s illegitimate premature firstborn.

“What are you doing here? ” I demanded.

Audrey gasped and took two giant steps backward. Her face went two shades paler than her Esté e Lauder foundation.

“Cannie! ” she said, and pressed one hand against her chest. “I … you scared me. ”

I stared at her, saying nothing, as her eyes moved over me, unbelieving.

“You’re so thin, ” she finally said.

I looked down and observed with not much interest that this was true. All that walking, all that plotting, my only food a snatched bite of bagel or banana and cup after cup of bitter black coffee, because the taste matched the way I felt inside. My refrigerator held bottles of breast milk and nothing else. I couldn’t remember the last time I sat down and ate a meal. I could see the bones in my face, the jut of my hipbones. In pro-file, I was Jessica Rabbit: nonexistent butt, flat belly, improbable bosom, thanks to the milk. If you didn’t get close enough to notice that my hair was dirty and matted, that I had giant black circles under my eyes and that, most likely, I smelled bad, I was an actual babe.

The irony had not been lost on me: After a lifetime of obsession, of calorie counting, Weight Watching, and StairMastering, I’d found a way to shed those unwanted pounds forever! To free myself of flab and cellulite! To get the body I’d always wanted! I should market this, I thought hysterically. The Placenta Abruptio Emergency Hysterectomy Premature and Possibly Brain-Damaged Baby Diet. I’d make a fortune.

Audrey fingered her bracelet nervously. “I guess you’re wondering …, ” she began. I said nothing, knowing exactly how hard this was for her. Knowing, and not giving a damn. A part of me wanted to see her twist in the wind like this, to struggle for the words. A part of me wanted her to suffer.

“Bruce says you won’t speak to him. ”

“Bruce had a chance to speak to me, ” I told her. “I wrote and told him I was pregnant. He never called. ”

Her lips trembled. “He never told me, ” she whispered, half to herself. “Cannie, he is so sorry about what happened. ”

I snorted, so loud I was afraid I’d bother the babies. “Bruce is a day late and a dollar short. ”

She bit her lip, twirling the bracelet. “He wants to do the right thing. ”

“Which would be what? ” I asked. “Having his girlfriend refrain from any more attempts on my baby’s life? ”

“He said that was an accident, ” she whispered.

I rolled my eyes.

“He wants to do the right thing, ” she repeated. “He wants to help out”

“I don’t need money, ” I said, deliberately crude, spelling it out. “Not his or yours, either. I sold my screenplay. ”

Her face lit up, so glad that we were on a happy subject. “Honey, that’s wonderful! ”

I said nothing, hoping she’d fall apart in the face of my silence. But Audrey was braver than I’d given her credit for.

“Could I see the baby? ” she asked.

I shrugged and stabbed one finger at the window. Joy was in the center of the nursery. She looked less like an angry grapefruit; more like a cantaloupe, perhaps, but still tiny, still frail, still with the science-fiction-looking ventilator attached to her face more often than not. The chart at the end of her glass crib read “Joy Leah Shapiro. ” She was wearing just a diaper, plus pink and white striped socks and a little pink hat with a pompom on top. I’d brought the nurses my stash, and every morning they made sure that Joy got a different hat. She was far and away the best chapeau’d baby in all of the NICU.

“Joy Leah, ” whispered Audrey. “Is she … did you name her after my husband? ”

I nodded once, swallowing hard around the lump in my throat. I can give her this much, I thought. After all, she wasn’t the one who ignored me, who didn’t call me, who had caused me to fall into a sink and almost lose my baby.

“Will she be all right? ”

“I don’t know, ” I said. “Probably. They say probably. She’s still small, and she has to get bigger, her lungs have to grow until she can breathe on her own. Then she’ll come home. ”

Audrey wiped her eyes with the Kleenex she extracted from her purse. “And you’ll stay here? You’ll raise her in Philadelphia? ”

“I don’t know, ” I told her. Honest to a fault. “I don’t know if I want to go back to the paper, or maybe back out to California. I have friends there. ” But even as I said it, I wondered if it was true. After dashing off a perfunctory thank-you note that couldn’t begin to express the gratitude I should have felt for everything she’d done for me, I’d been giving Maxi the same silent treatment as all of my friends. Who knew what she was thinking, or whether she even thought she was my friend still?

Audrey straightened her shoulders. “I would like to be a grandmother to her, ” she said carefully. “No matter what happened between you and Bruce”

“What happened, ” I repeated. “Did Bruce tell you I had a hysterectomy? That I’ll never have another baby? Did he happen to mention that? ”

“I’m sorry, Cannie, ” she said again, sounding shrill and helpless and even a little scared. I shut my eyes, slumping against the glass wall.

“Just go, ” I told her. “Please. We can talk about this some other time, but not right now. I’m too tired. ”

She put her hand on my shoulder. “Let me help you, ” she said. “Can I get you something? Some water? ”

I shook my head, shook her hand off, turned my face away. “Please, ” I said. “Just go. ” And I stood there, turned away from her, with my eyes shut tight, until I heard her soles slap-slapping back down the hallway. That was where the nurse found me, leaning against the wall and crying, with my hands curled into fists.

“Are you okay? ” she asked, and touched my shoulder. I nodded, and turned toward the door.

“I’ll be back later, ” I told her. “I’m going for a walk. ”

That afternoon, I walked for hours, until the streets, the sidewalks, the buildings turned into a grayish blur. I remember that I bought a Snapple lemonade somewhere, and a few hours later I stopped at a bus station to pee, and I remember that at one point the ankle I’d had the cast on started throbbing. I ignored it. I kept walking. I walked south, then east, through strange neighborhoods, over trolley tracks, past burned-out drug houses, abandoned factories, the slow, brackish twist of the Schuylkill. I thought maybe, somehow, I would walk all the way to New Jersey. Look, I would say, standing in the lobby of Bruce’s high-rise apartment building like a ghost, like a guilty thought, like a wound you’d thought had scabbed over that had suddenly started to bleed. Look at what’s become of me.

I walked and walked until I felt something strange, an unfamiliar sensation. A pain in my foot. I looked down, lifting my left foot, and watched in dumb confusion as the sole slowly peeled off the bottom of my filthy sneaker and flopped onto the street.

A guy sitting on a stoop across the street whooped laughter. “Hey! ” he shouted, as I stared stupidly from shoe to sole and back again, trying to make sense of it. “Baby needs a new pair of shoes! ”

My baby needs a new pair of lungs, I thought, limping and looking around. Where am I? The neighborhood wasn’t familiar. None of the street names rang any bells. And it was dark. I looked at my watch. 8: 30, it said, and for a minute I didn’t know whether it was morning or night. I was sweaty and grimy and exhausted … and lost.

I dug in my pockets, looking for answers, or at least cab fare. I found a five-dollar bill, a fistful of change, and some assorted lint.

I looked for landmarks, for a pay phone, for something.

“Hey, ” I called to the guy on the stoop. “Hey, where am I? ”

He cackled laughter, rocking back on his heels. “Powelton Village! You in Powelton Village, baby! ”

Okay, then. That was a start.

“Which way’s University City? ” I called.

He shook his head. “Girl, you lost! You all turned around! ” His voice was deep and resonant, and sounded Southern. He lifted himself off his stoop and walked over to me — a middle-aged black man in a white undershirt and khakis. He peered closely at my face. “You sick? ” he finally asked.

I shook my head. “Just lost, ” I said.

“You go to the college? ” he continued, and I shook my head again, and he moved even closer, his expression growing more concerned.

“Are you drunk? ” he asked, and I had to smile.

“No, really, ” I said. “I just went for a walk and got lost. ”

“Well, you better get found, ” he said. For one sick, terrifying moment I was absolutely certain he was going to start talking to me about Jesus. But he didn’t. Instead, he took a long, careful inventory of me, from my falling-apart sneakers, up my scabby, bruised shins, to the shorts that I’d folded over twice at the waistband so they wouldn’t slide down off my hips, and the T-shirt I’d been wearing for five days running, and my hair that had grown past my shoulders for the first time in more than a decade, and was doing a sort of impromptu dread-lock thing in the absence of being washed and brushed.

“You need help, ” he finally said.

I bowed my head and nodded. Help. This was true. I needed help.

“You got people? ”

“I do, ” I told him. “I have a baby, ” I began, and then my throat closed up.

He raised his arm and pointed. “University City that way, ” he said. “You go to the corner of 45th Street, the bus take you straight there. ” He dug in his pocket, found a slightly tattered bus transfer pass, and pressed it into my hand. Then he bent and looked at my shoe. “Stay here, ” he said. I stood, stock-still, afraid to move so much as a muscle. Afraid of what, exactly, I wasn’t sure.

The man came out of his house with a silver roll of duct tape in his hand. I lifted my foot, and he wrapped tape around and around it, holding the sole in place.

“Be careful, ” he said. Keffel, the word sounded like. “You a mother now, you need to be careful. ”

“I will, ” I said. I started limping off toward the corner he’d pointed at.

As filthy as I was, with duct-taped shoes and tears cutting slow tracks through the grime on my cheeks, nobody spared me so much as a glance on the bus. Everyone was too wrapped up in their own private coming-home-from-work thoughts — dinner, children, what was on TV, the minutiae of normal lives. The bus heaved and groaned its way across town. Things started looking familiar again. I saw the stadium, the skyscrapers, the far-off glimmering white tower of the Examiner building. And then I saw the University of Philadelphia’s Weight and Eating Disorders office, where I’d gone a million years ago. When the only thing I thought I had to worry about was not being thin.

Get found, I thought, and pulled the “Stop Requested” cord so hard I thought for a moment I’d yanked it off. I took an elevator up to the seventh floor, thinking that I’d find all the lights out and the doors locked, wondering why I was even bothering.

But his light was on, and his door was open.

“Cannie! ” said Dr. K., beaming. Beaming until he stood up, came around the desk, and got a good whiff of me. And a good look.

“I’m a success story, ” I said, and tried to smile. “Look at me! Forty pounds of ugly flab gone in just months! ” I swiped one hand across my eyes. “I’m thin, ” I said, and started crying. “Yay, me. ”

“Sit down, ” he said, and closed the door. He put his arm around my shoulders and eased me toward his couch, where I sat, sniffling and pathetic.

“Cannie, my God, what happened to you? ”

“I went for a walk, ” I began. My tongue felt thick and furry, and my lips felt cracked. “I got lost, ” I said. My voice had gone strange and croaky. “I went for a walk, and I got all turned around. I got lost, but now I’m trying to be found. ”

He put his hand on my head, stroking gently. “Let me take you home. ”

I let him lead me to the elevator, out the door, into his car. On the way out, he stopped at a soda machine and bought a cold can of Coke. I grabbed it without asking and guzzled the whole thing down. He didn’t say a word, not even when I burped hugely. He pulled into a convenience store and came out with a quart of water and an orange Popsicle.

“Thanks, ” I rasped, “that’s very nice of you. ” I drank the water, sucked on the Popsicle.

“I’ve been trying to call you, ” he said. “At work and at home. ”

“I’m very busy, ” I recited.

“Is Joy home yet? ”

I shook my head.

He looked at me. “Are you okay? ”

“Busy, ” I croaked again. My breasts were aching. I looked down and was unsurprised to see two circular stains beneath the V of sweat from my collarbone down.

“Busy with what? ” he asked.

I shut my mouth. I hadn’t really planned any dialogue beyond “busy. ”

At a stoplight, he looked over at me, staring at my face. “Are you okay? ”

I shrugged. The car behind us honked, but he didn’t move. “Cannie, ” he said kindly. A single tear trickled down my cheek. He reached out to brush it away. I jerked back as if I’d been burned.

“No! ” I shrieked. “Don’t touch me! ”

“Cannie, my God, what’s the matter? ”

I shook my head, stared at my lap, where the ruins of the Popsicle were melting. We drove in silence for a while, the car purring beneath us, cool air whispering from the air conditioner over my knees and my shoulders.

At another traffic light, he started to talk again. “How’s Nifkin? Did he remember anything I taught him? ” He glanced at me quickly. “You remember when we visited you, right? ”

I nodded. “I’m not crazy, ” I said. But even as I said it, I wasn’t sure whether it was true. Did crazy people know they were crazy? Or did they think they were perfectly normal, all the while doing crazy things, wandering around filthy and with their shoes falling apart and their heads so full of rage it felt as if they’d explode?

We drove for a few more blocks in silence. I couldn’t think of what to say, what to do next. I knew that there were questions I should ask him, points that I should make, but it felt as if my head was full of buzzing static.

“Where are we going? ” I finally managed. “I should go home. Or to the hospital. I should go back there. ”

We pulled up at a red light. “Are you working? ” he asked me. “I haven’t seen your byline”

It had been so long since I’d had this kind of normal cocktail-party conversation with anyone, it took me a while to get the words sorted out right. “I’m on leave. ”

“Are you eating right? ” He squinted sideways at me in the dark. “Or maybe I should ask, are you eating anything? ”

I shrugged. “It’s hard. With the baby. With Joy. I go to the hospital to see her twice a day, and I’m getting things ready at home I walk a lot, ” I finished up.

“I can see that, ” he said.

Another few blocks of silence, another red light. “I’ve been thinking about you, ” he said. “I was hoping you’d stop by, or call”

“Well, I did, didn’t I? ”

“I thought maybe we could see a movie. Or go to that diner again. ”

It sounded so bizarre I almost laughed. Was there a time I’d gone to dinner, to movies, when my every thought hadn’t been about my baby and my rage?

“Where were you going, when you got lost? ”

“For a walk, ” I said in a small voice. “Just for a walk. ”

He shook his head but didn’t question me. “Why don’t you let me take you to my place? I’ll make you dinner. ”

I considered this. “Do you live near the hospital? ”

“Even closer than you. I’ll take you as soon as you like. ”

I nodded once, giving in.

I was quiet on the elevator ride to the sixteenth floor, quiet as he unlocked his door, apologizing for the mess, asking if I still liked chicken and did I want to use the phone? I nodded for chicken, shook my head for phone, and walked through his living room slowly, running my hands along the spines of his books, considering the framed family pictures, seeing but not really seeing. He disappeared into the kitchen, then emerged with a stack of folded things: a fluffy white towel, a pair of sweatpants and a T-shirt, miniature bars of soap and bottles of shampoo from a hotel in New York City.

“Would you like to freshen up? ” he offered.

The bathroom was big and clean. I stripped off my shirt, then my shorts, halfheartedly trying to remember when they’d been clean. From the look and smell, I surmised that it had been a while. I folded them, then folded them again, then decided the hell with it and tossed them in the trash. I stood under the water for a long time, with my eyes closed, and thought of nothing but the feeling of the water on my face. Found, I told myself. Try to get found.

When I come out of the shower, dressed, with my hair toweled dry, he was putting food on the table.

“Welcome back, ” he said, smiling at me. “Is this okay? ”

There was a tossed salad, a small roast chicken, a platter of potato pancakes, which I hadn’t seen anyone serve outside of Chanukah in years. I sat down. The food actually smelled good — the first time anything had smelled good to me in a while.

“Thank you, ” I said.

He piled my plate high, and didn’t talk while I ate, although he watched me carefully. Every once in a while I’d look up and see him … not staring, exactly. Just watching me.

Finally, I pushed my plate away. “Thank you, ” I said again. “That was really good. ”

He led me over to the couch and handed me a ceramic bowl full of chocolate ice cream and mango sorbet.

“Ben and Jerry’s, ” he said. I stared at him, my head still staticky, remembering that he’d brought me dessert once before, when I was in the hospital. “Remember when we talked about ice cream in class? ”

I looked at him blankly.

“When we were talking about trigger foods? ” he prompted. And I remembered then, sitting around the table a million years ago, talking about things I liked to eat. It felt unbelievable that I had ever liked anything … that I’d enjoyed regular stuff. Food, and friends, and going for walks and to movies. Could I ever have a life like that again? I wondered. I wasn’t sure … but I thought that maybe I could try.

“Do you remember all of your patients’ favorite foods? ” I asked.

“Only my favorite patients, ” he said. He sat in the armchair across from me while I ate it, slowly, savoring each mouthful. I sighed when I was finished. It had been so long since I’d eaten this well; so long since anything had tasted good.

He cleared his throat. I figured that was my cue to go. He probably had plans for the night. He possibly even had a date. I racked my brain and tried to remember. What day was it? Was it the weekend?

I yawned, and Dr. K. smiled at me. “You look so tired, ” he said. “Why don’t you rest for a while? ”

His voice was so warm, so soothing. “You like tea, not coffee, right? ” I nodded. “I’ll be right back, ” he said.

He went to the kitchen and I stretched out my legs on the couch, and by the time he came back I was half asleep. My eyelids felt so heavy. I yawned, and tried to sit up, as he handed me a mug.

“Where were you going today? ” he asked.

I turned my head away, reaching for the blanket that was draped over the back of the couch. “I just went for a walk. I guess I got kind of lost or something. I’m fine, though. You shouldn’t worry. I’m fine. ”

“You’re not, ” he said, sounding almost angry. “You’re very obviously not fine. You’re half-starved, you’re stomping around the city, you quit your job …”

“Leave of absence, ” I corrected. “I’m on a compassionate leave of absence. ”

“You don’t have to be ashamed to ask for help. ”

“I don’t need help, ” I told him, reflexively. Because that was my reflex, ingrained as a teenager, honed over the years. I’m okay. I can handle it. I’m fine. “I’ve got everything under control. I’m fine. We’re fine. Me and the baby. We’re fine. ”

He shook his head. “How are you fine? You’re not happy”

“Why should I be happy? ” I shot back. “What’s to be happy about? ”

“You have a beautiful baby” “Yeah, no thanks to anyone else. ”

He stared at me. I stared back, furious. Then I put down my tea and got to my feet.

“I should go. ”

“Cannie …”

I looked for my socks and my duct-taped shoes. “Could you take me home? ”

He looked distressed. “I’m sorry … I didn’t mean to upset you. ”

“You haven’t upset me. I’m not upset. But I want to go home. ”

He sighed, and looked down at his feet. “I thought …” he mumbled.

“Thought what? ”

“Nothing. ”

“Thought what? ” I repeated, more insistently.

“It was a bad idea. ”

“Thought what, ” I said again, in a tone that wasn’t taking no for an answer.

“I thought that if you came here, you’d relax. ” He shook his head, seeming stunned by his own hopes, his own presumptions. “I thought maybe you’d want to talk about things”

“There’s really nothing to talk about, ” I said. But I said it more gently. He had given me dinner, clean clothes, an orange Popsicle, a ride. “I’m okay. Really. I am. ”

We stood for a minute, and something passed between us, some small easing of the tension. I could feel the blisters on both feet, and how my cheeks felt tight and painful with sunburn. I could feel the cool thin cotton of his T-shirt on my back, and how nice it was, and my belly full of good food, and how nice that was. And I could feel my breasts, which ached dully.

“Hey, you wouldn’t happen to have a breast pump in here? ” I asked. My first attempt at a joke since I’d woken up in the hospital.

He shook his head. “Would ice help? ” he asked. I nodded, and sat back down on the couch, where he brought me ice wrapped in a towel. I turned my back to him and tucked the ice under my shirt.

“How’s Nifkin? ” he asked again.

I shut my eyes. “With my mom, ” I muttered. “I sent him to stay with her for a while. ”

“Well, don’t let him stay away too long. He’ll forget his tricks. ” He took a sip of his tea. “I was going to teach him how to speak, if we’d had a little more time together. ”

I nodded. My eyelids were feeling heavy again.

“Maybe some other time, ” he said. He kept his eyes politely averted as I shifted the ice around. “I’d like to see Nifkin again, ” he said. He paused and cleared his throat. “I’d like to see you, too, Cannie. ”

I looked at him. “Why? ” A rude question, I knew, but I felt like I was past the point of good manners … of any manners, really. “Why me? ” “Because I care about you. ” “Why? ” I asked again.

“Because you’re …” He let the last word hang there. When I looked at him he was waving his hands in the air, like he was trying to sculpt phrases out of the air. “You’re special. ”

I shook my head.

“You are. ”

Special, I thought. I didn’t feel special. I felt ridiculous, really. I felt like a spectacle of a woman, a sob story, a freak. How must I look, really? I imagined myself on the street that night, my shoe falling apart, sweaty and filthy, my breasts leaking. They should take a picture, put my poster up in every junior high school, staple it in bookstores next to the Harlequin novels and the self-help books about find-ing your soulmate, your life partner, your one true love. I could be a warning; I could turn girls away from my fate.

I must have dozed off then, because when I came awake with a start, with my cheek against the blanket and the towel full of ice melting in my lap, he was sitting right across from me.

He’d taken his glasses off, and his eyes were gentle.

“Here, ” he said. He had something in his arms, cradled like a baby. Pillows. Blankets. “I made up the guest bedroom for you. ”

I walked there in a daze, aching from exhaustion. The sheets were cool and crisp, the pillows like an embrace. I let him draw back the covers, help me onto the bed, tuck them up over me, smooth the blanket over my shoulders. His face seemed so much softer without his glasses, in the dark.

He sat on the edge of the bed. “Will you tell me why you’re so angry? ” he asked.

I was so tired, and my tongue felt heavy and slow in my mouth. It was like being drugged, or hypnotized; like dreaming underwater. Or maybe I would have told anyone, if I’d let anyone get close enough to ask. “I’m mad at Bruce. I’m mad that his girlfriend pushed me, and I’m mad that he doesn’t love me. I’m mad at my father, I guess. ”

He raised an eyebrow.

“I saw him … in California” I paused to yawn, to fight the words out. “He didn’t want to know me. ” I passed my hands over my belly, or where my belly had been. “The baby …, ” I said. My eyelids felt freighted, so heavy I could barely keep them open. “He didn’t want to know. ”

He brushed the back of his hand against my cheek, and I leaned into his touch like a cat, unthinking. “I’m so sorry, ” he said. “You’ve had a lot of sadness in your life. ”

I breathed in, then out, pondering the truth of this. “That’s not exactly a news flash, ” I said.

He smiled. “I just wanted you to know, ” he said, “I wanted to see you, so I could tell you …”

I stared at him, wide-eyed in the dark.

“You don’t have to do everything alone, ” he said. “There are people who care about you. You just have to let them help. ”

I sat up then. The sheets and blankets fell around my waist. “No, ” I told him, “that’s wrong. ”

“What do you mean? ” he asked.

I shook my head, once, impatiently. “Do you know what love is? ”

He considered the question. “I think I heard a song about it once. ”

“Love, ” I said, “is the rug they pull out from under you. Love is Lucy always lifting the football at the last second so that Charlie Brown falls on his ass. Love is something that every time you believe in it, it goes away. Love is for suckers, and I’m not going to be a sucker ever again. ” When I closed my eyes I could see myself as I was, months ago, lying on the bathroom floor, highlights in my hair and makeup on my face, the expensive shoes and fancy clothes and diamond earrings that couldn’t keep me safe, couldn’t keep the wolf from my door.

“I want a house with hardwood floors, ” I said, “and I don’t want anyone else to come inside. ”

He was touching my hair, saying something. “Cannie, ” he repeated.

I opened my eyes.

“It doesn’t have to be that way. ”

I stared at him in the dark. “How else could it be? ” I asked, quite reasonably.

He leaned forward and kissed me.

He kissed me, and at first I was too shocked to do anything, too shocked to move, too shocked to do anything but sit there, perfectly still, as his lips touched mine.

He pulled his head back. “I’m sorry, ” he said.

I leaned toward him. “Hardwood floors, ” I whispered, and I realized I was teasing him, and that I was smiling, and it had been so long since I had smiled.

“I will give you whatever I can, ” he said, looking at me in a way that made it clear that he was, somehow, oh miracle of miracles, taking this all seriously. And then he kissed me again, pulled the sheets up to my chin, pressed his warm hand on top of my head, and walked out of the room.

I listened as the door closed and as he settled his long body onto the couch. I listened until he’d clicked the lights off and his breathing became deep and regular. I listened, holding the blankets tight around me, holding that feeling of being safe, of being tucked in and taken care of, around me. And I thought clearly then, for the first time since Joy had been born. I decided, right there in that strange bed in the dark, that I could go on being scared forever, that I could keep walking, that I could carry my rage around, hot and heavy in my chest forever. But maybe there was another way. You have everything you need, my mother had told me. And maybe all I needed was the courage to admit that what I needed was someone to lean on. And then I could do it — could be a good daughter, and a good mother. Maybe I could even be happy. Maybe I could.

I slipped out of bed. The floor was cool on my bare feet. I moved stealthily through the darkness, out of the room, easing the door shut behind me. I went to him there on the couch, where he’d fallen asleep with a book falling from his fingers. I sat on the floor beside him and leaned so close that my lips practically touched his forehead. Then I closed my eyes and took a deep breath and jumped into the water. “Help, ” I whispered.

His eyes opened instantly, as if he hadn’t been sleeping, but waiting, and he reached out one hand and cupped my cheek.

“Help, ” I said again, as if I were a baby, as if this was a word I’d just learned and could not stop repeating. “Help me. Help. ”

Two weeks later Joy came home. She was eight weeks old, and she’d topped seven pounds and was finally breathing on her own. “You’ll be fine, ” the nurses told me. Except I decided that I wasn’t ready to be by myself yet. I was still too hurt inside, still too sad.

Samantha offered to let us stay with her. She’d take leave from work, she said, she had weeks built up, she’d do whatever it took to get her house ready. Maxi volunteered to fly in or, alternately, to fly us both up to Utah, where she was shooting a cowgirl epic with the unwieldy title Buffalo Girls 2000. Peter, of course, was first in line to tell us that we could stay with him or that, if I wanted, he could stay at my place with us.

“Forget it, ” I told him. “I’ve learned my lesson about giving men the milk for free and then expecting them to buy the cow. ”

He turned a gratifying shade of crimson. “Cannie, ” he began, “I didn’t mean …”

And I laughed, then. It was still feeling good to laugh. I’d gone too long without it. “Kidding, ” I said, and looked at myself ruefully. “Believe me, I’m in no shape to think about that for a while. ”

In the end, I decided to go home — home to my mother and horrible Tanya, who’d agreed to put her loom in storage for the duration and give me and Joy back the Room Formerly Known as Mine. Actually, they were both glad to have us. “It’s so nice to hold a baby again! ” said my mother, considerately ignoring the fact that tiny, bristly, sickly Joy, with her sleep apnea monitor and myriad health concerns, was not exactly the sort of baby a grandmother would dream about.

I thought it would be for a week or two — just a chance for me to regroup, to rest, to get used to taking care of a baby. In the end, we stayed for three months, me in the bed that had been mine when I was a girl, and Joy in a crib beside me.

My mother and Tanya let me be. They brought trays of food to my door and cups of tea to my bedside. They retrieved my CDs and a half-dozen books from my apartment, and Tanya presented me with an afghan in purple and green. “For you, ” she said shyly. “I’m sorry about what happened. ” And she was, I realized. She was sorry, and she was trying — she’d even managed to quit smoking. For the baby, my mother had told me. That was nice.

“Thanks, ” I said, and wrapped it around me. She smiled like the sun coming out.

“You’re welcome, ” she said.

Samantha came a few times a week, bringing me treats from the city — grilled grape leaves from the Vietnamese food stall in the Reading Terminal, fresh plums from a farm in New Jersey. Peter visited, too, bringing books, newspapers, magazines (never Moxie, I was pleased to note), and little gifts for Joy, including a tiny T-shirt that read “Girl Power. ”

“That is so great, ” I said.

Peter smiled, and reached into his briefcase. “I got you one, too, ” he said.

“Thanks, ” I said.

Joy stirred in her sleep. Peter looked at her, then at me. “So how are you really? ”

I stretched my arms over my head. I was very very tan, from all that time walking in the sun, but things had started to change. I was taking showers, for one thing. I was eating, for another. My hips and breasts were coming back, and I felt okay with it … like I recognized myself again. Like I was reclaiming not only my body, but the life I’d left behind. And all things considered, it hadn’t been such a bad life. There were things that I had lost, true, and people who wouldn’t ever love me again, but there was also … potential, I thought, and I smiled at Peter. “Better, ” I told him. “I guess I’m doing better now. ”

Then one morning in September, I woke up and felt like walking again.

“Do you want some company? ” Tanya rasped.

I shook my head. My mother watched me lace up my sneakers, her brow furrowed. “Do you want to take the baby? ” she asked.

I stared at Joy. I hadn’t even considered it.

“She might like some fresh air, ” said my mother.

“I don’t think so, ” I said slowly.

“She won’t break, ” said my mother.

“She might, ” I replied, feeling my eyes fill. “She almost did before. ”

“Babies are stronger than you give them credit for, ” she said. “Joy’s going to be okay … and you can’t keep her inside forever. ”

“Not even if I home-school? ” I asked. My mother grinned and handed me the Snugli baby carrier. Awkwardly, I strapped it over my chest, and lifted Joy inside.

She was so small, still, so small, she felt like an autumn leaf against me. Nifkin looked at me and pawed my leg, whining softly. So I hitched him to his leash and took him, too. We walked slowly, down to the edge of the driveway, then out onto the street, moving at a pace that would have made an arthritic snail look speedy. It was the first time I’d been out on the street since I’d arrived, and I felt terrified — of the cars, of the people, of everything, I thought ruefully. Joy nestled against me with her eyes closed. Nifkin marched beside me, growling at cars that went by. “Look, baby, ” I whispered against Joy’s downy head. “Look at the world. ”

When we got back from our morning walk Peter’s car was parked in the driveway. Inside, my mother and Tanya and Peter were sitting around the kitchen table.

“Cannie! ” said my mother.

“Hello, ” said Peter.

“We were just talking about you, ” Tanya said. Even after close to a month smoke-free, she still sounded like Marge Simpson’s sisters.

“Hey, ” I said to Peter, pleased to see him. I gave a genial wave, then unstrapped Joy, wrapped her in a blanket, and sat down with her in my lap. My mother poured me tea as Joy stared at Peter, wide-eyed. He’d been over before, of course, but she’d always been asleep. So this was their first real meeting.

“Hello, baby, ” Peter said solemnly. Joy screwed up her face and started to cry. Peter looked distressed.

“Oh, I’m sorry, ” he began.

“Don’t worry about it, ” I told him, turning Joy so that she faced me, and rocking her until her sobs subsided into whimpers, then hiccoughs, then quiet.

“She isn’t used to men, ” said Tanya. I thought of at least six snappy comebacks to that, but prudently kept my mouth shut.

“I think babies are scared of me, ” Peter said, sounding mournful. “I think it’s my voice. ”

“Joy’s heard all kinds of voices, ” I said tartly. My mother shot me an evil look. Tanya didn’t seem to notice.

“She’s not scared, ” I said. She was, in fact, asleep, her lips slightly parted and her eyelashes long and dark against her rosy cheeks where there were still tears drying. “Here, ” I said, “see? ”

I wiped her face and tilted Joy toward him so he could see. He leaned down, looking at her. “Wow, ” he said reverently. He reached out one long, slender finger and gently touched her cheek. I beamed down at Joy, who promptly woke up, took one look at Peter, and started bawling again.

“She’ll get over it, ” I said. “Rude baby! ” I whispered in her ear.

“Maybe she’s hungry, ” said Tanya.

“Wet diaper, ” suggested my Mom.

“Disappointed with ABC’s prime-time lineup, ” I said.

Peter cracked up.

“Well, she’s a very discerning viewer, ” I said, bouncing Joy against my shoulder. “She really liked Sports Night. ” Once she’d settled down, I helped myself to tea, and to a fistful of the chocolate-chip cookies in the center of the table. I added an apple from the fruit bowl and went to work.

Peter looked at me approvingly. “You look much better, ” he pronounced.

“You say that every time you see me, ” I told him.

“You do, ” he insisted. “Much healthier. ”

And it was true. With three meals a day, plus snacks, I was quickly regaining my old prediet Anna Nicole Smith proportions. And I continued to welcome the changes. I could see it all differently now. My legs were sturdy and strong, not fat or ungainly. My breasts now had a purpose besides stretching out my sweaters and making it hard to find a non-beige bra. Even my waist and hips, riddled with silvery stretch marks, suggested strength, and told a story. I might be a big girl, I reasoned, but it wasn’t the worst thing in the world. I was a safe harbor and a soft place to rest. Built for comfort, not for speed, I thought, and giggled at myself. Peter smiled at me. “Much healthier, ” he said again.

“They’ll kick you out of the weight-loss center if it gets out about your telling me that, ” I said.

He shrugged as if it didn’t matter. “I think you look fine. I always did, ” he said. My mother was beaming. I shot her a mind-your-own-business look and settled Joy in my lap.

“So, ” I said, “what brings you to these parts? ”

“Actually, ” he said, “I was wondering if you and Joy would like to go for a ride. ”

I felt my chest tighten again. Joy and I hadn’t gone anywhere in the car since her arrival, except for checkups at the hospital. “Where to? ” I asked, trying to sound casual.

“Down the shore, ” he said, using the typical Philadelphia construction. “Just for a little drive. ”

It sounded nice. It also sounded absolutely terrifying. “I’m not sure, ” I said regretfully. “I’m not sure she’s ready. ”

“She’s not ready, or you’re not ready? ” asked my helpful mother. I sent her an even more intense mind-your-own-business look.

“I’ll be there, ” Peter said. “So you’ll have medical assistance, if you need it. ”

“Go on, Cannie, ” said my mother.

“It’ll be good for you, ” urged Tanya.

I stared at him. He smiled at me. I sighed, knowing I was defeated. “Just a short ride, ” I said, and he nodded, eager as a schoolboy, and stood up to help me.

Of course, it took a while — forty-five minutes, to be precise, and three bags full of diapers, hats, socks, sweaters, stroller, bottles, blankets, and assorted baby paraphernalia, all shoved in the trunk — before we were ready to leave. Then Joy got stowed in the infant seat, I sat on the passenger’s side, Peter took the wheel, and we headed down to the Jersey shore.

Peter and I talked a little at first — about his job, about Lucy and Maxi and how Andy’d actually gotten a death threat after savaging one of Philadelphia’s famous old fish-houses that had been coasting on its reputation and so-so snapper soup for decades. Then, when we turned on to the Atlantic City Expressway, he smiled at me and touched a button on the dashboard, and the roof over our heads slid away.

“A moon roof! ” I said, impressed.

“Thought you’d like it! ” he shouted back.

I looked back at Joy, tucked snug in her infant seat, wondering if the wind would be too much. But she actually looked like she was enjoying it. The little pink ribbon I’d tied in her hair, so that everyone would know she was a girl, was bobbing in the breeze, and her eyes were wide open.

We drove to Ventnor and parked in a lot two blocks from the beach. Peter unfolded Joy’s complicated carriage while I got her out of the car, wrapped her in more blankets than the warm September day merited, and set her into the carriage. We walked slowly down to the water, me pushing, Peter walking beside me. The sunshine felt wonderful, thick as honey on my shoulders, making my hair glow.

“Thank you, ” I said. He shrugged and looked embarrassed.

“I’m glad you like it, ” he said.

We walked on the boardwalk — up for twenty minutes, back for another twenty, because I’d decided I didn’t want Joy outside for more than an hour. Except the salt air didn’t seem to be bothering her. She’d fallen fast asleep, her little rosebud mouth slack, her pink ribbon coming unfurled, and her fine brown hair curling around her cheeks. I leaned close to hear her breathing, and to check her diaper. She was fine.

Peter returned to my side with a blanket in his arms. “Want to sit on the beach? ” he asked.

I nodded. He unfolded the blanket, I unstrapped Joy, and we walked down close to the water and sat there, watching the waves break. I worked my toes into the warm sand, and stared at the white foam, the blue-green depths, the black edge of the ocean against the horizon, and thought of all the things I couldn’t see: sharks and bluefish and starfish, whales singing to each other, secret lives that I would never know.

Peter draped another blanket over my shoulders, and let his hands linger there for a few seconds.

“Cannie, ” he began. “I want to tell you something. ”

I gave him what I hoped was an encouraging smile.

“That day on Kelly Drive, when you and Samantha were walking, ” he said, and cleared his throat.

“Right, ” I said. “Go on. ”

“Well, ” he said. “I, um … I’m not actually a jogger. ”

I looked at him, confused.

“I just … well, I remember how in class you used to say you went on bike rides there, and you’d go for walks, and I didn’t feel that I could call you …”

“So you started jogging? ”

“Every day, ” he confessed. “Morning and night, and sometimes on my lunch hour. Until I saw you. ”

I sat back, surprised by the extent of his dedication, knowing that if it were me, no matter how much I felt that I wanted to see the other person, it probably wouldn’t be enough to get me to jog. “I, um, have shinsplints now, ” he mumbled, and I burst out laughing.

“It serves you right! ” I said. “You could’ve just called me …”

“But I couldn’t, ” he said. “First of all, you were a patient …”

“Was a patient, ” I said.

“And you were, um …”

“Pregnant with another man’s child, ” I supplied.

“You were oblivious! ” he exclaimed. “Completely oblivious! That was the worst part! There I was, mooning after you, giving myself shinsplints …”

I giggled some more.

“And first you were sad about Bruce, who even I could tell wasn’t right for you …”

“You were hardly objective, ” I told him, but he wasn’t through.

“And then you were in California, and that wasn’t right for you, either”

“California’s very nice, ” I said, in California’s defense.

He sat down next to me and wrapped his arms around my shoulders, pulling me and Joy tightly against him. “I thought you were never coming home, ” he said. “I couldn’t stand it. I thought I’d never see you again, and I didn’t know what to do with myself. ”

I smiled at him, turning so I could look him in the eye. The sun was setting over us, and seagulls swooped and squawked above the waves.

“But I did come home, ” I said. “See? No shinsplints necessary. ”

“I’m glad, ” he said, and I leaned against him, letting him support me, with the setting sun glowing in his hair and the warm sand cradling my feet, and my baby, my Joy, safe in my arms.

“So I guess the question is, ” I began, in his car on the way home, “what do I do with my life now? ”

He smiled at me quickly before turning his eyes back to the road. “I was actually thinking more along the lines of whether you wanted to stop for dinner. ”

“Sure, ” I said. Joy was asleep in her infant seat. We’d lost her pink ribbon somewhere, but I could see sand glittering on her bare feet. “So now that we’ve got that settled …”

“Do you want to go back to work? ” he asked me.

I thought about it. “I think so, ” I said. “Eventually. I miss it, ” I said. Knowing, as soon as I said it, that it was the truth. “I don’t think I’ve ever gone this long without writing something. God help me, I even miss my brides. ”

“So what do you want to write? ” he asked. “What do you want to write about? ”

I considered the question.

“Newspaper articles? ” he prompted. “Another screenplay? A book? ”

“A book, ” I scoffed. “As if! ”

“It could happen, ” he said.

“I don’t think I’ve got a book in me, ” I said.

“If you did, ” he said seriously, “I’d devote all of my medical training to getting it out. ”

I laughed. Joy woke up and made a questioning noise. I looked back and waved at her. She stared at me, then yawned and went back to sleep.

“Maybe not a book, ” I said, “but I would like to write something about this. ”

“Magazine article? ” he suggested.

“Maybe, ” I said.

“Good, ” he said, sounding like it had been settled once and for all. “I can’t wait to see it. ”

The next morning, after I’d walked with Joy, had breakfast with Tanya, talked to Samantha on the phone, and made plans to see Peter the next night, I went down to the basement and fetched the dusty little Apple that had gotten me through four years of Princeton. I wasn’t expecting much, but when I plugged it in it chugged and bleeped and lit up obligingly. And even though the keyboard felt strange under my hands, I took a deep breath, wiped the dust from the screen, and started writing.

Loving a Larger Woman

by Candace Shapiro

When I was five I learned to read. Books were a miracle to me — white pages, black ink, and new worlds and different friends in each one. To this day, I relish the feeling of cracking a binding for the first time, the anticipation of where I’ll go and whom I’ll meet inside.

When I was eight I learned to ride a bike. And this, too, opened my eyes to a new world that I could explore on my own — the brook that burbled through a vacant lot two streets over, the ice-cream store that sold homemade cones for a dollar, the orchard that bordered a golf course and that smelled tangy, like cider, from the apples that rolled to the ground in the fall.

When I was twelve I learned that I was fat. My father told me, pointing at the insides of my thighs and the undersides of my arms with the handle of his tennis racquet. We’d been playing, I remember, and I was flushed and sweaty, glowing with the joy of movement. You’ll need to watch that, he told me, poking me with the handle so that the extra flesh jiggled. Men don’t like fat women.

And even though this would turn out not to be absolutely true — there would be men who would love me, and there would be people who’d respect me — I carried his words into my adulthood like a prophecy, viewing the world through the prism of my body, and my father’s prediction.

I learned how to diet — and, of course, how to cheat on diets. I learned how to feel miserable and ashamed, how to cringe away from mirrors and men’s glances, how to tense myself for the insults that I always thought were coming: the Girl Scout troop leader who’d offer me carrot sticks while the other girls got milk and cookies; the well-meaning teacher who’d ask if I’d thought about aerobics. I learned a dozen tricks for making myself invisible — how to keep a towel wrapped around my midsection at the beach (but never swim), how to fade to the back row of any group photograph (and never smile), how to dress in shades of gray, black, and brown, how to avoid seeing my own reflection in windows or in mirrors, how to think of myself exclusively as a body — more than that, as a body that had fallen short of the mark, that had become something horrifying, unlovely, unlovable.

There were a thousand words that could have described me — smart, funny, kind, generous. But the word I picked — the word that I believed the world had picked for me — was fat.

When I was twenty-two I went out into the world in a suit of invisible armor, fully expecting to be shot at, but determined that I wouldn’t get shot down. I got a wonderful job, and eventually fell in love with a man I thought would love me for the rest of my life. He didn’t. And then — by accident — I got pregnant. And when my daughter was born almost two months too soon I learned that there are worse things than not liking your thighs or your butt. There are more terryifing things than trying on bathing suits in front of three-way department-store mirrors. There is the fear of watching your child struggling for breath, in the center of a glass crib where you can’t touch her. There is the terror of imagining a future where she won’t be healthy or strong.

And, ultimately, I learned, there is comfort. Comfort in reaching out to the people who love you, comfort in asking for help, and in realizing, finally, that I am valued, treasured, loved, even if I am never going to be smaller than a size sixteen, even if my story doesn’t have the Hollywood-perfect happy ending where I lose sixty pounds and Prince Charming decides that he loves me after all.

The truth is this — I’m all right the way I am. I was all right, all along. I will never be thin, but I will be happy. I will love myself, and my body, for what it can do — because it is strong enough to lift, to walk, to ride a bicycle up a hill, to embrace the people I love and hold them fully, and to nurture a new life. I will love myself because I am sturdy. Because I did not — will not — break.

I will savor the taste of my food and I will savor my life, and if Prince Charming never shows up — or, worse yet, if he drives by, casts a cool and appraising glance at me, and tells me I’ve got a beautiful face and have I ever considered Optifast? — I will make my peace with that.

And most importantly, I will love my daughter whether she’s big or little. I will tell her that she’s beautiful. I will teach her to swim and read and ride a bike. And I will tell her that whether she’s a size eight or a size eighteen, that she can be happy, and strong, and secure that she will find friends, and success, and even love. I will whisper it in her ear when she’s sleeping. I will say, Our lives — your life — will be extraordinary.

I read through it twice, cleaning up the punctuation, fixing the numerous typos. Then I stood up and stretched, placing my palms flat against the small of my back. I looked at my baby, who was beginning to resemble an actual infant of the human species, rather than some miniaturized, prickly fruit-human hybrid. And I looked at myself: hips, breasts, butt, belly, all of the problem areas I’d once despaired of, the body that had caused me such shame, and smiled. In spite of everything, I was going to be fine.

“We both are, ” I said to Joy, who did not stir.

I called information, then dialed the number in New York. “Hello; Moxie, ” said a chirpy subteen-sounding secretary. My voice didn’t tremble even slightly when I asked for the managing editor.

“May I ask what this is in reference to? ” the secretary singsonged.

“My name is Candace Shapiro, ” I began. “I’m the ex-girlfriend of your ‘Good in Bed’ columnist. ”

I heard a sharp intake of breath on the other end of the line. “You’re C.? ” she gasped.

“Cannie, ” I corrected.

“Ohmygod! You’re, like, real! ”

“Very much so, ” I said. This was turning out to be very amusing.

“Did you have the baby? ” asked the girl.

“I did, ” I said. “She’s right here, sleeping. ”

“Oh. Oh, wow, ” she said. “You know, we were wondering how that turned out. ”

“Well, that’s why I’m calling, ” I said.

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