Good in Bed by Jennifer Weiner Read Free Book Online Page B

generous checks on birthdays, Chanukah, and sometimes just because. “Slow down,” he’d tell me when I’d slip out of bed early to work on a short story, or go into work on a Saturday to send out query letters to magazine editors in New York. “You need to enjoy life more, Cannie.”
    I thought sometimes that he liked to imagine himself as one of the lead characters in an early Springsteen song—some furious, passionate nineteen-year-old romantic, raging against the world at large and his father in particular, looking for one girl to save him. The trouble was, Bruce’s parents had given him nothing to rebel against—no numbing factory job, no stern, judgmental patriarch, certainly no poverty. And a Springsteen song lasted only three minutes, including chorus and theme and thundering guitar-charged climax, and never took into account the dirty dishes, the unwashed laundry and unmade bed, the thousand tiny acts of consideration and goodwill that actually maintaining a relationship called for. My Bruce preferred to drift through life, lingering over the Sunday paper, smoking high-quality dope, dreaming of bigger papers and better assignments without doing much to get them. Once, early in our relationship, he’d sent his clips to the
Examiner
and gotten a curt “try us in five years” postcard in response. He’d shoved the letter in a shoebox, and we’d never discussed it again.
    But he was happy. “Head’s all empty, I don’t care,” he’d sing to me, quoting the Grateful Dead, and I’d force a smile, thinking that my head was never empty and that if it ever was, you could be darn sure I’d care.
    And what had all my hustle gotten me, I mused, now slurping the boozy slush straight from the bowl. What did it matter. He didn’t love me anymore.
    I woke up after midnight, drooling on the couch. There was a pounding in my head. Then I realized it was someone pounding at the door.
    â€œCannie?”
    I sat up, taking a moment to locate my hands and my feet.
    â€œCannie, open this door right now. I’m worried about you.”
    My mother. Please God no.
    â€œCannie!”
    I curled tight onto the couch, remembering that she’d called me in the morning, a million years ago, to tell me she’d be in town that night for Gay Bingo, and that she and Tanya would stop by when it was over. I got to my feet, flicking off the halogen lamp as quietly as I could, which wasn’t very quietly, considering that I managed to knock the lamp over in the process. Nifkin howled and scrambled onto the armchair, glaring at me reproachfully. My mother started pounding again.
    â€œCannie!”
    â€œGo ’way,” I called weakly. “I’m … naked.”
    â€œOh, you are not! You’re wearing your overalls, and you’re drinking tequila, and you’re watching
The Sound of Music
.”
    All of which was true. What can I say? I like musicals. I especially like
The Sound of Music
—particularly the scene where Maria gathers the motherless Von Trapp brood onto her bed during the thunderstorm and sings “My Favorite Things.” It looked so cozy, so safe—the way my own family had been, for a minute, once upon a time, a long time ago.
    I heard a muttered consultation outside my door—my mother’s voice, then another, in a lower register, like Marlboro smoke filtered through gravel. Tanya. She of the sling and the crab leg.
    â€œCannie, open up!”
    I struggled back into a sitting position and heaved myself into the bathroom, where I flicked on the light and stared at myself, reviewing the situation, and my appearance. Tear-streaked face, check. Hair, light brown with streaks of copper, cut in a basic bob and shoved behind my ears, also present. No makeup. Hint—well, actuality—of a double chin. Full cheeks, round, sloping shoulders, double-D-cup breasts, fat fingers, thick hips, big ass,