Once More With Feeling (33 page)

"I'm sorry." She looked away. "I have no
right. I'm sorry."

He stepped away from the door. She rested
her hand on the knob. "I won't come back," she said. "And I have no
plans to do a follow-up story on the accident."

The door was heavy enough to protect
Elisabeth from tornados, fires, and floods. Gypsy hauled it open
and stepped through the doorway. The door was closing slowly behind
her when Owen spoke. "Forgive me."

The door hissed its final six inches and
clicked into place. She was standing in the hall listening to
Johnny Mathis sing "Chances Are." Owen was standing in the deathly
silence of Elisabeth's room.

The biggest part of her wanted to turn and
leave. That was the part that was now Gypsy Dugan, a woman who went
after what she wanted. She wanted to leave. She wanted to let Owen
suffer in his own private hell, whatever its origins.

There was another part of her. A part that
was still Elisabeth and still loved this man. No matter what he had
done to her. No matter with whom he had done it.

She was weighing the parts, dissecting them,
analyzing them, sorrowing over them, when he opened the door.

"For what?" She folded her arms over her
chest in primitive protection. "For reacting like a human being
under stress? Don't worry, I understand."

"None of this is your fault. But I want to
blame somebody." He ran his hand through his hair in a gesture that
was so familiar she could almost feel him do it. Had she still been
his wife, she would have reached over and smoothed his hair back
into place. But she wasn't his wife.

Not anymore.

She looked away to compose herself. "That's
natural."

"I keep thinking it's going to get better.
That I'll wake up one morning and accept what's happened. That the
anger will disappear. But it doesn't."

She swallowed. "Are you angry at her?"

"Damn it, yes! I'm furious. And I'm furious
at you and at the man in the car that you swerved to avoid and at
God and the world in general. I want things the way they were, so I
guess I'm furious at time, too. And most of all, I'm furious at
myself."

Her gaze stole back to his. "Why?"

This time he looked away. "Because there
were things I never said. Things I kept waiting for the right
moment to say. And now it's too late. I say them every day, of
course. I sit by that bed and say them, but she's not there to
hear. They say people in comas can hear you. The doctors say they
can still hear. But I know she doesn't. She's not there anymore.
She was my wife for twenty-five years! I know she's not there."

She wanted to beg him to tell her what he
said in those dark hours. She wanted to tell him that she was here
now, and he could say whatever he had to. It would be best for them
both if he did. They could get on with their lives. Perhaps she
could finally let go of this sham of a marriage. Perhaps she could
go to Casey and ask for another chance.

But as far as Owen knew, she was Gypsy Dugan
born and bred.

"I don't know what to say." It was only a
little bit better than nothing.

"Of course you don't. I'm making a fool of
myself."

She put her hand on his. She wanted to cry.
She wanted to slap him. "No."

"I haven't said any of this to anyone, and
now I'm standing in the hallway pouring out my heart to a
stranger."

"I'm not exactly a stranger."

"Fate thrust you right in the middle, didn't
she?"

"That's a good way of putting it."

Her brain insisted she drop his hand, but
her fingertips resisted. Touching Owen was so familiar, even if
this wasn't exactly the hand that she had touched him with so many
times before. Her flesh warmed, and she felt an instant
connection.

"You're not who you appear to be, are
you?"

Her eyes widened. Her hand fell to her side.
"What?"

"You're not who you pretend to be."

For a moment, one stunned moment, she
thought he knew the truth. Then she realized he was talking about
her celebrity persona. "You mean the person I pretend to be on
television?"

"I've watched the show. You're very
different in person."

"Most people have a public and a private
side."

"Why did you really come here tonight?"

"I told you, I have things to say to her,
too."

"We're quite a pair, aren't we?"

She tried to smile, but tears filled her
eyes. Once they had been quite a pair. "I suppose."

"Look, it's dinnertime and there's a decent
café a couple of blocks away. I think we both need a drink and
something in our stomachs."

"You haven't had any time with her by
yourself."

"Oh, I'll come back. I usually spend at
least an hour here in the evenings. I read poetry out loud. Her
favorites."

She remembered evenings at the beginning of
their marriage, evenings in front of a roaring fire when she could
feel their baby moving inside her. Owen had held her in his arms,
one hand across her abdomen, and read poetry in his musical
baritone. He had alternated between her favorites and his. His were
in Polish, but it hadn't mattered that he'd had to translate. It
had only made perfect evenings longer and more perfect.

"Please?" He wasn't a man who let his
emotions show. They were showing now. He was as close to losing
control as she had ever seen him.

There were things they needed to say to each
other. She wondered if they could say them anyway, even if Owen
didn't know exactly who she was. . . or wasn't.

She looked at her watch, although it was
just an excuse to look away. "All right. Then I've got to get back
to the city."

"I don't want to keep you if--"

"No, it's fine. It will be good for both of
us."

"Let me tell someone I'm coming back
later."

She waited for him in the reception area.
The old man in the maroon robe was now conversing enthusiastically
with a visitor. Gypsy wondered if he could tell the difference
between the sad-eyed young woman holding his hand and the
schefflera.

Owen joined her. "I'm surprised they let you
in to see Elisabeth without authorization."

"I'm rarely stopped no matter where I go. I
suppose if you look like you know what you're doing, people just
assume that you really do."

He opened the door for her, and she passed
in front of him, holding herself carefully so that she didn't brush
against him. His voice rumbled in her ear. "Well, you obviously
don't need my help, but I just asked that you be put on her visitor
list anyway."

"Thank you."

"I can't imagine Elisabeth doing that."

"Doing what?"

"Just walking in that way and expecting to
get what she was after. A long time ago she was a television
reporter, too, but she was scrupulous about going through the
correct channels."

Gypsy had often wondered what Owen thought
about Elisabeth's ability to do her job. "How good a reporter was
she, then? Because sometimes you have to brazen your way into a
situation to get the information you need."

"She was wonderful. There's nothing brazen
about Elisabeth. But she charmed her way into people's hearts and
lives. And she was absolutely genuine. People fascinated her. She
wanted to know about them, to feel what they were feeling. They
knew that, and they talked to her as if she was a close
friend."

His words gave her a warm glow. She probed a
little more. "Was she working . . . at the time of the
accident?"

"Not in television. She wrote articles for
our local weekly. She was going to interview you for the paper on
the day of the accident."

"I'm sorry. My memory of that day is still
cloudy. Did she miss television?"

"I don't know."

"No?"

"You'd have to know her to understand. She
never complained. Never. Not about anything. I had to read between
the lines, and I'm not very good at that. Maybe it was just one of
the ways I failed her as a husband."

Gypsy was surprised she was instinctively
reacting with sympathy. Owen had failed Elisabeth in many more
important ways, and apparently, he realized it. "Was she one of
those women who gave up everything for her family?"

"We're talking about her in the past
tense."

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be. It's impossible to know what
tense to use. Even if a miracle occurs and she regains
consciousness, the woman I was married to probably won't ever exist
again." He pointed to his car, a dove gray BMW still sporting a
dent on the fender from the night of Grant's college graduation
party.

He helped her into the passenger seat and
went around to his own door. She fastened her seat belt while she
waited. The car was nearly as familiar to her as the one she had
totaled in the accident, but the seat didn't fit her body in the
same snug way. The seat was the same, but she was not.

"This place isn't fancy, a dive by Great
Neck standards." He pulled out of the parking lot. "I hope you
don't mind, but it's easy to get to and quick."

"And you want to get back to your wife."

"I doubt that it matters to her. But,
yes."

"Any place will be fine."

The café was small and dimly lit, as if the
owners wanted to save money on electricity or health department law
suits. Plate glass windows looked over a blacktop parking lot.
There were crumbs on the dark green tablecloth and the menu had
coffee stains.

She closed her eyes and remembered another
dimly lit café, the first they had ever eaten in together. The two
were almost interchangeable.

Owen put his hand on her arm. "Are you all
right?"

What could she say? That she was having
flashbacks? "I'm fine, but maybe I do need something to eat."

"Would you like a drink first?"

"Jameson's. Straight."

He ordered two.

She wanted to tell him he never drank
whiskey, much less straight. She looked away and bit back the
words.

"The veal's good here," he said.

"I don't eat it."

"Elisabeth wouldn't, either. I always felt
guilty if I ordered it when she was at the table."

"Feeling any guilt now?"

He smiled, and the smile launched itself,
arrow-straight to her heart. "The chicken's good, too. And the pork
and sauerkraut is almost as good as my mother's."

"That's what I'll have."

"I pictured you as more trendy than that.
Tapas. Sushi. A nibbler."

"Looks can be deceiving."

His smile faded, as if he just didn't have
the strength to maintain it. "I keep trying to put you in a box,
and you just won't let me, will you?"

"Which box? Vicious witch? Bloodthirsty
reporter? Airhead anchorwoman?"

"Some combination. Does projecting that
image on the air protect you?"

"Protect me from what?"

"Men who are trying to get too close."

She smiled her best vicious bombshell smile.
"Can men get too close?"

"You're amazing. You can turn that on and
off on cue."

"You'd be surprised how much pretending I'm
called on to do." He would be particularly surprised if he knew
why.

They ordered dinner and started on their
drinks. Owen asked her about herself and her job. Small talk with
tidy, easy answers. "I suppose I should tell you that I've met your
son," she said when the subject turned to stories she was involved
in. "We've decided to do a piece on a day in an inner city high
school, and we chose Norman Carroll. Your son recognized me while I
was investigating the school as a possible story site, and he
introduced himself."

"That seems like quite a coincidence."

"Doesn't it?" She took a particularly large
swallow of her whiskey.

"What did you think of Grant?"

"I like him a lot. You should be proud."

"I like him, too. It's funny. He and his
mother are especially close. I always felt a little left out. Now
that she's . . ."

She picked up the conversational ball.
"You've gotten closer?"

"I don't know. I want to be there to help
him, but I'm not always sure how. Sometimes I think he'd rather
just help me instead. He's like Elisabeth in that way. When
something went wrong in her life, I'd try to step in and help her,
and she'd turn the tables and make it my problem so that she could
help me."

She stared at him. Had she really done that?
Had she cut off his attempts to offer solace? "I'm not sure what
you mean. How could she do that?"

"Well, I remember after her mother died, I
tried to comfort her. She talked about how sad I must be because
her mother and I had become good friends. The next thing I knew,
she was consoling me. Sometimes when I go into the nursing home to
see her, I almost expect her to start talking about my feelings.
What the accident has done to me. How it's affected my work or my
schedule." He shrugged. "If she could, she probably would."

Her hands were trembling. She clenched them
in her lap. "You don't sound as if you admire that about her."

"I admire it immensely. Who doesn't want to
be the center of someone else's world? I just don't admire the way
I took advantage of it. I let that happen. Eventually I began to
expect it. At the end I even made a fuss when she tried to assert
herself."

"Did you?" Her voice was huskier than it had
ever been.

"The night before the accident I asked her
to give up going to Stony Brook to hear your speech. I needed her
to entertain the wife of one of my clients. She told me how
important it was to do the interview with you, but the only thing I
could see was that she wasn't putting my needs first. So she
compromised. And that's why she's lying in that bed right now."

"What on earth do you mean?"

"She was driving too fast because she'd
spent the morning helping me, and she was running late. She was
probably afraid she was going to miss seeing you entirely. She
never drove over the speed limit. Elisabeth followed all the rules.
Always. Just that once she didn't, and it was my fault."