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  “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

  FIVE

  Thinking back, there was probably some way I could have felt worse at Berna rd Guberman’s funeral. Like if I’d killed him myself.

  The service started at two o’clock. I got there early, but the parking lot was already full, with cars backed down the driveway, spilling onto the highway. I finally parked across the street, dashed across four lanes of traffic and straight into a cluster of Bruce’s friends. They were standing in the vestibule, in what were surely their interview suits, hands in their pockets, talking quietly and looking at their feet. It was a brilliantly sunny fall afternoon – a day to look at leaves, to buy apple cider and build the first fire of the year. Not a day for this.

  “Hey, Cannie,” George said softly.

  “How’s he doing?” I asked.

  George shrugged. “He’s inside,” he said.

  Bruce was sitting in a little vestibule, holding a bottle of Evian water and a handkerchief in his right hand. He was wearing the same blue suit he’d worn on Yom Kippur, when we’d sat side by side in temple. It was still too tight, the tie still too short, and he was wearing canvas sneakers that he’d decorated with drawings of stars and swirls during some particularly boring lecture. The second I saw him it was as if our recent history fell away – my decision to ask for a break, his decision to describe my body in print. It was as if nothing was left but our connection – and his pain. His mother stood above him with one hand on his shoulder. There were people everywhere. Everyone was crying.

  I went over to Bruce, knelt down, and hugged him.

  “Thank you for coming,” he said, coolly. Formally. I kissed his cheek, scratchy with what looked like three days’ growth of beard. He didn’t appear to notice. The hug his mother gave me was warmer, her words a marked contrast to his. “Cannie,” she whispered. “I’m glad you’re here.”

  I knew it was going to be bad. I knew I’d feel terrible, being there, even after our parking-lot breakup, even though, of course, there was no earthly way I could have known that this would happen.

  But it wasn’t just bad. It was agony. Agony when the rabbi, whom I’d seen at Bruce’s house at dinner a few times, talked about how Bernard Leonard Guberman had lived for his wife and his son. About how he’d take Audrey to toy stores, even though they didn’t have grandchildren. “Just to be ready,” he’d say. Which was when I lost it, knowing that I was the one who was supposed to produce those grandchildren, and how much the kids would have loved him, and how lucky I would have been to have that kind of love in my life.

  And I sat there on the hard wooden bench in that funeral parlor, eight rows back from Bruce, who was supposed to have been my husband, thinking how all I wanted was to be beside him, and how I’d never felt farther away.

  “He really loved you,” Bruce’s Aunt Barbara whispered to me as we stood washing our hands outside the house. There were cars double-parked in the cul-de-sac, cars circling the block, so many cars that they’d had to station a policeman outside the cemetery for the burial service. Bruce’s father had been active in the temple, and had had a thriving practice as a dermatologist. Judging from the throngs, it looked like every Jew or teenager with a skin condition had shown up to pay their respects.

  “He was a wonderful man,” I said.

  She looked at me curiously. “Was?”

  Which was when I realized that she was talking about Bruce, who was still alive.

  Barbara wrapped her maroon fingernails around my forearm and dragged me into the immaculate, Downy-scented laundry room.

  “I know you and Bruce broke up,” she said. “Was it because he didn’t propose?”

  “No,” I said. “I guess… I just felt more and more that maybe we weren’t a good fit.”

  It was as if she hadn’t heard.

  “Audrey always told me that Bernie said how happy he’d be to have you in the family,” she said. “He always said, ‘If Cannie wants a ring, she’ll have a ring in a minute.’ ”

  Oh, God. I felt tears starting to build behind my eyes. Again. I’d wept during the service, when Bruce stood on the bimah and talked about how his father taught him to catch a ball and drive, and I’d cried at the cemetery when Audrey sobbed over the open grave and said, over and over, “It isn’t fair, isn’t fair.”

  Aunt Barbara handed me a handkerchief.

  “Bruce needs you,” she whispered, and I nodded, knowing that I couldn’t trust my voice. “Go,” she said, pushing me into the kitchen. I wiped my eyes and went.

  Bruce was sitting on the porch with his friends around him in a forbidding-looking circle. When I approached, he squinted at me, observing me like a specimen on a slide.

  “Hey,” I said softly. “Is there anything I can do for you?”

  He shook his head and looked away. There was someone in every chair on the porch, and nobody looked like they were moving. As gracefully as I could, I squatted down on the step behind them, just outside of the circle, and sat there, holding my knees. I was cold, and hungry, but I hadn’t brought a jacket, and there wasn’t anywhere to balance a plate. I listened to them talk about nothing – about sports, and concerts, and their jobs, such as they were. I watched as Bruce’s mother’s friends’ daughters, a trio of interchangeable twentysome-things, made their way onto the porch with paper plates full of petit fours, and gave Bruce their condolences, and their smooth cheeks to kiss. It felt like swallowing sand, watching him go out of his way to smile at them and show how he’d remembered all their names, when he could barely spare me a glance. Sure, I knew when – if – we decided to break up, he’d most likely find somebody else. I just never thought I’d have to suffer through a preview. I sat on my hands feeling wretched.

  When Bruce finally stood up, I got up to follow him, but my leg had fallen asleep, and I stumbled and went sprawling, wincing as a splinter dug its w
ay into my palm.

  Bruce helped me up. Reluctantly, I thought.

  “Do you want to take a walk?” I asked him. He shrugged. We walked. Down the driveway, down the street, where more cars were massing.

  “I’m so sorry,” I told him. Bruce said nothing. I reached for his hand, my fingertips brushing the back of his palm. He didn’t reach back. “Look,” I said, feeling desperate, “I know things have been… I know that we…” My voice trailed off. Bruce looked at me coldly.

  “You aren’t my girlfriend anymore,” he said. “You were the one who wanted a break, remember? And I’m small,” he practically spat.

  “I want to be your friend,” I said.

  “I’ve got friends.”

  “I noticed,” I told him. “Mannerly bunch.”

  He shrugged.

  “Look,” I told him. “Could we… could we just…” I put my fist against my lips. Words were failing me. All I had left were sobs. I swallowed hard. Get through this, I told myself. “Whatever happened between us, however you’re feeling about me, I want you to know that your father was a wonderful man. I loved him. He was the best father I ever saw, and I’m sorry he’s gone, and I just feel so terrible about all of this…” Bruce just stared at me. “And if you want to call me…” I finally managed.

  “Thanks,” he finally said. He turned to walk toward the house, and after a moment I turned to follow him, like a chastened dog, walking numbly behind him with my head hanging down.

  I should have just left, but I didn’t. I stayed on through the evening prayers, when men with tallits over their shoulders crowded Audrey’s living room, bumping their knees on the hard wooden mourning benches, pressing their shoulders against the covered mirrors. I stayed when Bruce and his friends gathered in the white-and-chrome kitchen to pick over deli trays and make small talk. I hung on the edge of the group, so full of sadness I thought I would burst, right there on Audrey’s Spanish-tiled floor. Bruce never looked at me. Not even once.

  The sun set. The house slowly emptied. Bruce collected his friends and took us up to his bedroom, where he sat down on his bed. Eric and Neil and Neil’s hugely pregnant wife took the couch. George took the chair at Bruce’s desk. I folded myself up on the floor, outside of the circle, thinking with some small and primitive part of my brain that he’d have to talk to me again, he’d have to let me comfort him, if our years together were to have meant anything.

  Bruce unfastened his ponytail, shook out his hair, and tied it back again. “I’ve been a child my whole life,” he announced. Nobody seemed to know quite how to respond to that, so they did what I supposed they normally did, up in Bruce’s room. Eric filled the bong, and George fished a lighter out of his suit jacket pocket, and Neil shoved a towel under the door. Unbelievable, I thought, biting back a burst of hysterical laughter. They cope with death the exact same way they cope with a Saturday night when there’s nothing good on cable.

  Eric passed the bong to Neil without even asking me if I wanted it. I didn’t, and he probably knew it. The only thing pot ever did for me was make me want to sleep and eat even more than I already did. Not exactly the kind of drug I needed. Still, it would have been nice if he’d offered.

  “Your father was really cool,” George mumbled, and everyone else mumbled his assent, except for Neil’s pregnant wife, who made a big production of heaving herself to her feet and walking out the door. Or maybe it’s always a production to get up and go when you’re that pregnant. Who knows? Neil gazed at his sneakers. Eric and George said again how sorry they were. Then everybody started talking about the playoffs.

  Always a child, I thought, looking at Bruce through the haze. For a minute, I caught his eye, and we looked right at each other. He tilted the bong toward me: Want some? I shook my head no, and took a deep breath into the silence.

  “Remember when the swimming pool was finished?” I asked.

  Bruce gave me a small but encouraging nod.

  “Your father was so happy,” I said. I looked at his friends. “You guys should have seen it. Dr. Guberman couldn’t swim…”

  “… he never learned how,” Bruce added.

  “But he insisted – absolutely insisted – that this house have a swimming pool. ‘My kids aren’t going to sweat for another summer!’ ”

  Bruce laughed a little bit.

  “So the day the pool was finished, he threw this gigantic party.” Now George was nodding. He’d been there. “He had it catered. He ordered, like, a dozen watermelon baskets…”

  “… and a keg,” said Bruce, laughing.

  “And he walked around all afternoon in this monogrammed bathrobe that he’d bought just for the occasion, smoking this gigantic cigar, and looking like a king,” I concluded. “There must have been a hundred people here…” My voice trailed off. I was remembering Bruce’s father in the hot tub, a steaming cigar clenched between his teeth, a Dixie cup full of beer sweating on the ledge beside him, and the full moon hanging like a circle of gold in the sky.

  And finally I felt that I was on more stable ground. I couldn’t smoke pot, and he wouldn’t let me kiss him, but I could tell stories all night long. “He looked so happy,” I said to Bruce, “because you were happy.”

  Bruce started to cry quietly, and when I got up and crossed the room and sat beside him, he didn’t say anything. Not even when I reached for him. When I put my arm around his shoulders he leaned into me, holding me and crying. I closed my eyes so I only heard his friends getting up and filing out the door.

  “Ah, Cannie,” he said.

  “Shh,” I said, and rocked him, moving him back and forth with my whole body, easing him back onto the bed, beneath a shelf lined with his Little League trophies and perfect attendance plaques from Hebrew school. His friends were gone. We were finally alone. “Sshh now, shh now.” I kissed his wet cheek. He didn’t resist. His lips were cool underneath mine. He wasn’t kissing me back, but he wasn’t pushing me away, either. It was a start.

  “What do you want?” he whispered to me.

  “I would do whatever you wanted,” I said. “Even… if you wanted that… I’d do it for you. I love you…” I said.

  “Don’t say anything,” he whispered, sliding his hands up under my shirt.

  “Oh, Bruce,” I breathed, unwilling to believe that this was happening, that he wanted me, too.

  “Shh,” he said, shushing me the way I’d quieted him moments before. His hands were fumbling with the many clasps of my bra.

  “Lock the door,” I whispered.

  “I don’t want to let you go,” he said.

  “You don’t have to,” I told him, tucking my face into his neck, breathing in the smell of him, sweet smoke and shaving cream and shampoo, glorying in the feel of his arms around me, thinking that this was what I wanted, was what I’d always wanted – the love of a man who was wonderful and sweet and who, best of all, understood me. “You don’t have to ever again.” I tried to make it good for him, to touch him in his favorite places, to move the way that I remembered he liked. It felt wonderful to me, to be with him again, and I thought, holding his shoulders as he thrust himself into me and moaned, that we could start over; that we were starting over. The Moxie article I was willing to write off as water under the bridge, provided he’d swear a solemn oath to never again mention my body in print. And the rest of it, his father’s death, we’d get through as a couple. Together. “I love you so much,” I whispered, kissing the side of his face, holding him close, trying to quiet the small voice inside of me that noticed, even in the throes of passion, that he wasn’t saying anything back.

  Afterward, with my head on his shoulder and my fingertips tracing circles on his chest, I thought that nothing had ever felt so right. I thought that maybe I’d been a child, a girl, but now I was ready to step up to the plate, to do the right thing, to be a woman, and to stand beside him, holding him up, starting tonight.

  Bruce, evidently, had other thoughts. “You should get going,” he said, removing himself f
rom my arms and walking into the bathroom without looking back at the bed.

  This was unexpected. “I can stay,” I called.

  Bruce came out of the bathroom with a towel wrapped around his waist. “I’ve got to go to temple with my mom in the morning, and I think it would, um, complicate things if…” His voice trailed off.

  “Okay,” I said, remembering my vow, to be an adult, to think of what he needed instead of what I wanted, even though what I wanted was more along the lines of a long, slow, sweet snuggle, followed by both of us drifting gently off to sleep – not this hasty retreat. “No problem,” I said, and pulled my clothes back on. No sooner had I straightened my panties then Bruce was grabbing my elbow and walking me toward the door, hustling me past the kitchen and the living room, where, presumably, his mother was waiting and his friends had regrouped.

  “Give me a call,” I said, hearing my voice trembling, “whenever you want.”

  He looked away. “I’m going to be kind of busy,” he said.

  I took a deep breath, willing the panic to subside. “Okay,” I said. “Just know that I’m there for you.”

  He nodded gravely. “I appreciate that, Cannie,” he said, as if I’d just offered him financial planning advice instead of my heart on a platter. I went to kiss him. He offered me his cheek. Fine, I thought, getting into the car, gripping the steering wheel tightly so he wouldn’t see my hands shake. I can be patient. I can be mature. I can wait for him. He loved me so much, I thought, speeding home through the dark. He’ll love me again.

  SIX

  When I took Psychology 101, the professor taught us about random reinforceme nt. Put three groups of rats in three separate cages, each equipped with a bar. The first group of rats got a pellet every time they pressed the bar. The second group never got pellets, no matter how often they pressed. And the third group got pellets just once in a while.

  The first group, the professor said, eventually gets bored with the guaranteed reward and the rats who never get treats give up, too. But the random rats will press on that bar forever, hoping each time they press that this time the magic will happen, that this time they’ll get lucky. It was at that moment in class that I realized that I had become my father’s rat.