“She’s… um. She’s into sharing. Lots of sharing.”
“That’s good,” he said, doing his squinchy-blinky thing. “You should do more sharing, Cannie.”
“Huh? Me?”
“You’re very closed with your emotions. You keep everything so tight inside you.”
“You know, you’re right,” I said. “Let’s find a total stranger so I can tell how my piano teacher groped me.”
“Huh?”
“She was molested,” I said. “And she told me all the gory details.”
Even Mr. Love Everyone seemed taken aback by this information. “Oh my.”
“Yeah. And her mother had breast cancer, and her stepmother convinced her father not to pay her community college loans.”
Bruce looked at me skeptically. “She told you all this?”
“What do you think, I drove home and read her diary? Of course she told me!” I paused to poach a few french fries off his plate. We were at the Tick Tock Diner, home of the enormous portion and the surliest waitresses south of New York. I never ordered fries there, but I used all my powers of persuasion to get Bruce to order them, so I could share. “She sounds seriously cracked.”
“You probably made her uncomfortable.”
“But I didn’t say anything! She’s never even met me! And she was the one who called me, so how could I make her uncomfortable?”
Bruce shrugged. “It’s just the way you are, I guess.”
I scowled at him. He reached for my hand. “Don’t get mad. It’s just that… you have this kind of judgmental thing going on.”
“Says who?”
“Well, my friends, I guess.”
“What, just because I think they should get jobs?”
“See, there you go. That’s judgmental.”
“Honey, they’re slackers. Accept it. It’s the truth.”
“They’re not slackers, Cannie. They do have jobs, you know.”
“Oh, come on. What does Eric Silverberg do for a living?”
Eric, as we both knew, had a full-time temporary job at an Internet startup, where, as best we could both figure, he spent his days trading Springsteen bootleg tapes, meeting girls on one of the three online dating services he subscribed to, and arranging drug buys.
“George has a real job.”
“George spends every weekend in a Civil War reenactment brigade. George owns his own musket.”
“You’re changing the subject,” Bruce said. I could tell he was trying to stay angry, but he was starting to smile.
“I know,” I said. “It’s just that a guy who has his own musket is such an easy punchline.”
I stood up, crossed the table, and sat down next to him on his side of the booth, squeezing his thigh and resting my head against his shoulder. “You know the only reason I’m judgmental is because I’m jealous,” I said. “I wish I could have that kind of life. No college loans to pay, rent taken care of, nice, stable, married heterosexual parents who’d set me up with their slightly used furniture every time they redecorate and buy me a car for Chanukah…” My voice trailed off. Bruce was staring at me hard. I realized that, in addition to describing most of his friends, I’d just described him, too.
“I’m sorry,” I said gently. “It’s just that sometimes it feels like everybody’s got things easier than I do, and that every time I get close to having things be kind of okay… something like this happens.”
“Did you ever think that maybe these things happen to you because you’re strong enough to take them?” Bruce asked. He reached down, grabbed my hand, and moved it up on his thigh. Way up. “You’re so strong, Cannie,” he whispered.
“I just,” I said, “I wish…” And then he was kissing me. I could taste ketchup and salt on his lips. Then his tongue was in my mouth. I shut my eyes and let myself forget.
I spent the weekend at Bruce’s apartment. It was one of those times where we got it just right: good sex, a nice meal out, lazy afternoons trading sections of the Sunday Times, and then I was on my way home before we started grating on each other. We talked about my mother a little bit, but mostly I got to just lose myself with him. And he gave me his favorite flannel shirt to wear home. It smelled like him, like us: like dope and sex, his skin and my shampoo. It was too tight across my chest – all of his things were – but the sleeves fell to my finger-tips, and I felt enclosed, comforted, as if he was there hugging me tight, holding my hands.
Be brave, I thought back home in my bed. I pulled Bruce’s shirt tight around me, tilted my cheek toward Nifkin so he could give me an encouraging lick, and phoned home.
Thankfully, my mother answered. “Cannie!” she said, sounding relieved. “Where have you been? I’ve been calling and calling…”
“I went to Bruce’s,” I told her. “We had theater tickets,” I lied. Bruce didn’t do well in theaters. Short attention span.
“Well,” she said. “Well. Um, I want to tell you that I’m sorry for springing things on you like that. I guess I should have… well, I know I should have waited and maybe told you in person…”
“Or at least not at the office,” I said.
She laughed. “Right. I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay.”
“So…” I could almost hear her testing half a dozen opening remarks in her head. “Do you have any questions?” she finally asked.
I took a deep breath. “Are you happy?”
“I feel like I’m in high school!” my mother said jubilantly. “I feel… oh, I can’t even describe it.”
Please, don’t try, I thought.
“Tanya’s really terrific. You’ll see.”
“How old is she?” I asked.
“Thirty-six,” said my fifty-six-year-old mother.
“A younger woman,” I observed. My mother giggled. You have no idea how disturbing that was. My mother has never been the giggling type.
“She does seem to have a little problem with… boundaries,” I ventured.
My mother’s voice got very serious. “What do you mean?”
“Well, she called me Friday morning… I guess you weren’t there”
A quick intake of breath. “What did she say?”
“It might take me less time to cover what she didn’t say.”
“Oh, God. Oh, Cannie.”
“I mean, I’m sorry she was, you know, molested…”
“Oh, Cannie, she didn’t!” But underneath the shocked, horrified tone, my mother sounded… almost proud. As if underneath the anger, she was indulging a favored child in the child’s favorite prank.
“Yup,” I said grimly. “I got the whole saga, from the piano teacher who tickled her ivories…”
