By the Book (21 page)

“He’s fine, I guess, considering.” She didn’t really want to think about this right now. She wanted tea. She wanted pity. “I just left him. His mouth is wired closed and his arm is in a cast and he has bruises all over, but the nurses say he’s fine.”

“So sad. Such a dear, sweet boy, when he’s not under the weather.”

They were walking down the hall, toward her door. Ellen could almost taste the tea already.

“He wasn’t under the weather when this happened, you know, he—”

“Well, we won’t keep you, dear,” she said when they reached her door. “Your young man said you weren’t feeling well and you do look tired.” She hesitated. “Do you need anything?”

“Well ...” She’d been hoping for the familiar invitation to tea, but it didn’t look as if it was coming. Good thing she wasn’t too nice anymore. “I was hoping we could have tea.”

Mrs. Phipps’s head tipped to one side as she considered her neighbor with great fondness.

“You are such a dear, sweet girl, Ellen,” she said, her voice cracking with feeling. She stepped forward and put a hand on Ellen’s arm. “But you don’t have to have tea with us anymore, dear. In fact, I think we owe you an apology.” Ellen would have stopped her if she knew what she was talking about. Instead she stood in stunned silence while Mrs. Phipps said, “The past few days have made us realize that we’ve been abusing your friendship, and we never meant to do that. We ... we get lonely sometimes, and we so very much enjoy your company that ...” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “Well, we’d think up things for you to buy at the store so you’d have to stop by every evening and chat with us.” The sincerity in her expression was tearing Ellen to shreds. Her throat was tight and tears were pushing at her eyes. She was afraid to speak for fear the wail of despair building inside her would cut loose and bring the house down on both of them. “We didn’t stop to think that you were young and busy and had better things to do with your time than sit around having tea with an old woman and her cat. Goodness, we were young once. We remember how it is.”

Ellen wanted to die. Just lie down on the floor and die. Nothing, not one thing she’d done that week, had been anything but a well-intentioned attempt to improve her own life, and yet she’d done nothing but hurt other people in the process.

“But we’re mending our ways,” Mrs. Phipps said. “We’ll be doing our own shopping from now on, and we won’t press you to have tea with us so often. Any time you feel like coming down, we’ll be delighted to see you. We love you, dear. Come when you have the time to spare and only when you really want to.”

It crossed Ellen’s mind to fall on her knees and beg the old lady’s forgiveness, but she had a feeling that she’d never get up again if she did. How had she managed to hurt the kindest woman in the world?

“This week has been a little unusual,” she said, feeling as flat and heavy as an anvil. “And maybe I am a little tired,” she added, starting up the stairs to her apartment. “But Mrs. Phipps?” She look over the banister at her. “I love having tea with you.”

The woman smiled and nodded. “Then you come down when you’ve rested up a bit and we’ll have some.”

She smiled back at her, hoping everything she’d screwed up that week was as easy to fix; that everyone she’d hurt or deceived was as forgiving and understanding. Then she saw the trash bag still propped against the wall outside her door. She trudged to the top step and stood staring at it, then over at Eugene’s door. Apparently even small rodentlike people who lived in the dark were not without feelings. No food, no neighborly trash disposal. She looked back at the small white plastic bag of trash.

She’d have to think this one over.

She let herself into the apartment, closed the door, and leaned back against it. Her eyes closed automatically—in relief, but in self-defense too. Her mind was too numb to take in one more thought, one more ounce of guilt or even half a question. All she wanted to do was sleep, close out the world, hide for a little while.

She opened her eyes and the first thing she saw was not the blinking light on her answering machine telling her she had nine messages waiting, but the purse she’d used two nights ago, tossed upside down in the chair. The purse with the teal blue negligee wrapped so carefully in tissue, hope and excitement inside. Jonah wedged his way back into her thoughts, pushed everything else aside, putting more pressure on her heart than she ever dreamed possible. Part of her desperately wanted him there, to hold her and comfort her. Another part wanted him there so she could finally be honest with him. But another part was dreading their next encounter, afraid of the truth, afraid of disappointing him, afraid that being herself wouldn’t be enough for him.

She picked up the purse and kicked off her shoes on her way to the bedroom, and that was all she could remember. She was asleep in seconds.

It requires wisdom to understand wisdom; the music is nothing if the audience is deaf.

—Walter Lippmann

Don’t beat your head against walls. It’s not only stupid, it’s disfiguring. Any gambler will tell you that you have to know when to hold and when to fold. Choose your battles carefully. And remember, failure isn’t really failure if a lesson’s been learned.

O
KAY, SO SOME PEOPLE
had to be hit with baseball bats. It wasn’t going to take more than one good whack on the head for Ellen to figure things out. And okay, so she’d bought a pamphlet from the grocery store and followed the advice in it. That didn’t
really
make her a fool. So okay! Where did she go from there? How did she go about reclaiming her peace of mind?

She came awake at dusk feeling a little stronger but no better. She felt restless and disjointed. She sat on the edge of the bed for some time, her mind in a muddle, hating what she’d done to her life and yet easily recalling the frustrations of being too nice.

Frustration or guilt? They tipped the scale evenly, pushed and pulled with equal force, and there she was in the middle—miserable.

A shower made things cleaner but no clearer. She couldn’t even decide what to wear. Get dressed? Get ready for bed? Take care of herself or take care of others? Go back to the hospital to be with Felix? Stay home? With the damp towel still wrapped tight about her, she plopped down on the edge of the bed and fell backward with her arms spread wide, her hand brushing the purse she’d stumbled into bed with earlier. Turning her head, she looked at it mindlessly for several minutes, then picked it up, holding it over her head as she unzipped it.

The teal blue silk spilled out like so much water from a glass and pooled on her bare chest, cool and soft. Untangling the tissue and tossing it aside, she held the gown up in front of her. So beautiful, and such a waste. She sighed. Some seductress she was. She wore T-shirts to bed, flannel in the winter—she was no seductress. She could barely manipulate sheets onto a bed, much less Jonah.

This was going to be another huge disappointment to him, she thought, sitting up and slipping the silk on over her head—standing and feeling it slither down the curves of her body like a lover’s caress. She looked at herself in the mirror, turned from side to side, smiled. Then she laughed at the thought of having it dry-cleaned every time she wore it. It was beautiful, but it wasn’t her. She wasn’t some tightly wrapped, sophisticated, self-confident vamp who took what she wanted from the world. She was ... Ellen.

Not a bad person. Not a hurtful person. Not a perfect person. Just Ellen—who liked seeing other people happy, who enjoyed feeling needed, who felt satisfied in knowing she could assert herself when she had to, who didn’t—

She picked up her head and listened to what she thought was a cat crying somewhere. Bubba crying outside her door? He never did that, she thought, frowning as she, in her teal blue nightgown, went to the door barefoot. He was too lazy to cry when he wanted in or out—he usually just lay there sleeping until someone came along to accommodate him.

“What’s the matter, baby, are you sick?” she asked him when she opened the door and found him sitting there in no obvious distress. She stooped down. “You hurt? Or just lonely?” He stared at her, making no attempt to scoot by her into the apartment. Another victim of her crusade for change? It was hard to tell with Bubba. “You fiddled around in the doorway too long and she closed it on you, didn’t she?” She sighed, thinking of her own situation. If she fiddled around much longer, Jonah would never get to know the real Ellen. He’d be leaving town eventually, going back to his life. She didn’t want that door to close on her. “Well, it happens sometimes. Want me to go down and get her to open it back up for you?” She wasn’t above making amends to a cat. She frowned on a new thought: maybe he was acting strange because something had happened to Mrs. Phipps. “Let’s go check on her.”

They walked to the top of the stairs and saw Jonah at the bottom, his foot on the first step. He stood there looking up at her, the concern in his expression almost obliterated by the desire that sprang into his eyes. She felt feverish, going hot and then cold, chills running in waves across her skin. He was so handsome. So tall and strong and sweet and gentle. Her heart felt overly full, the pressure in her chest building until she thought it might rip her apart. She raised her hand to her breast to control it, felt warm skin and silk and suddenly recalled what she was wearing.

“I ... I wasn’t expecting to see you,” she said, feeling self-conscious. Making a sincere confession in a seductive negligee seemed a little contradictory.

“You should have been,” he said, moving up to the first step. “I’ve been trying to get you all day.”

She took a step down, saying, “I forgot to look at my machine. I was tired.”

He nodded, taking another step up, his eyes riveted. He could barely breathe, she was so beautiful, her skin so pale against the gray-blue silk, her glorious red hair soft and curly, a little damp yet on the ends from her shower. He didn’t know how he continued to speak. “I know. I finally called Mrs. Phipps to see if you’d shown up here. I was surprised you went to work today, and then worried when you went home early.”

“I’m sorry. I should have called you,” she said, taking another step toward him.

He shook his head and took another step. “It doesn’t matter. As long as you’re all right.
Are
you all right?”

She’d taken one more step down before she started to shake her head at him. “No. I’m not all right. I’m all wrong.”

He took the rest of the steps two at a time until there was only one between them, and Bubba was sitting on it. On closer inspection Jonah could see that whatever was all wrong about her, it wasn’t physical. There was a sadness in her eyes, but they were clear and bright; and though she was pale, her skin had a warm, healthy glow to it. He couldn’t stop himself from reaching out and touching a flyaway curl near her cheek, nor did he pull his hand away when she inclined her head to meet his touch.

“You don’t look all wrong,” he said. “You look beautiful.”

“Appearances can be deceiving,” she said, unwilling to look at him, sure that she couldn’t bear to watch whatever he found beautiful in her fade in his eyes. “And I’ve been deceiving you.”

His heart stopped and his knees grew weak with foreboding. He felt his world slipping away from him and lowered himself to the step below hers. Deceiving him? Ellen? His heart sputtered and pumped a little blood to his head. That didn’t make sense. His pulse took on a steadier rhythm. Though their relationship was less than a week old, he knew her. Knew her so well, his soul felt every breath she took as if it were his own. Knew her so well that for the first time in his life he hadn’t needed to second-guess himself. Knew her so well, he’d invested every drop of his faith and trust in her. He knew her that well.

“Deceiving me how?” he asked, convinced now that this was more about her than him, and he was dying to hear it. He wanted her more than any woman he’d ever known. Body and soul. In good times and bad.

When she looked at him, her expression was so forlorn that had it been another time and place, he would have stood up and fought off dragons and dark knights with his sword for her—but as it was, he had to sit and wait for her to reveal what evil demons were after her.

“Some people ...” she said, looking away briefly and then back at him, not knowing how to start. She was simply going have to say it. “I’m too nice.” His brows lifted in surprised agreement, but before he could speak, she stopped him. “No, you don’t understand. I’m too nice for my own good sometimes—at least I thought I was. Now I’m not so sure. No, I am. I know I am. So I tried to change. But being someone I’m not didn’t work out very well either—except for my pay raise and this thing with Eugene—unless his feelings are hurt and to tell you the truth I’m not sure if I care about that either, which leads me to believe more of this person that I’m
not
has rubbed off on me and I’m not at all sure I want that because I’ve hurt just about every person I care about and ...”

“Ellen. Ellen,” he said hastily when she paused briefly to take in air. “Ellen. Maybe you should start at the beginning.”

She frowned. The beginning? Where was that? Her birth? Early childhood? She’d been too nice for as long as she could remember. She sighed, then took in a deep breath and started over.

“I’m a nice person.”

“I know you are.”

“But not
just
a nice person. I’m too nice.” She’d lost him again, she could tell. He’d reached out to finger her hair while she talked, looking at it as if it were spun gold. She took his hand in hers and held it in her lap. “I don’t honk my horn and flip people off when they pull into a parking space I’ve been waiting five minutes for, and I don’t scream or curse at people who don’t stop to say thank you after I’ve helped them pick up the mountain of cracker boxes their kid knocked over. I didn’t even get mad when I found out Lisa Lee was making more money than me—hurt and disappointed, sure—but not mad. Never mad and never ...” She shook her fist, looking for the right word. “Never ... what?”