"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 st.u.r.dy and strong, not fat or ungainly. My b.r.e.a.s.t.s 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 sh.o.r.e," 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 a.s.sistance, 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 a.s.sorted 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 pa.s.senger's side, Peter took the wheel, and we headed down to the Jersey sh.o.r.e.

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 b.u.t.ton 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 embarra.s.sed.

"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 cla.s.s 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. G.o.d 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 bas.e.m.e.nt 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 antic.i.p.ation 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 b.u.t.t. 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 gla.s.s 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 st.u.r.dy. 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, p.r.i.c.kly fruit-human hybrid. And I looked at myself: hips, b.r.e.a.s.t.s, b.u.t.t, 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. "h.e.l.lo; 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.

"OhmyG.o.d! 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.

TWENTY.

The good thing about naming ceremonies for Jewish baby girls is that they're not tied to a specific time. With a boy, you've got to do the bris within seven days. A girl, you can do it in six weeks, three months, whenever. It's a newer service, a little bit free-form, and the rabbis who do namings tend to be accommodating, New Age-ish types.

Joy's naming was on December 31, on a crisp, perfect winter morning in Philadelphia. Eleven o'clock in the morning, with brunch to follow.