Once More With Feeling (10 page)

"Don't worry about that now."

"But. . . I want to know."

He hesitated, as if trying to decide what to
tell her. "No one was killed, if that's what's worrying you. And no
one's blaming you for what happened--although nobody can understand
why you took off in the limo like that."

She felt suddenly cold. "Limo?"

"You don't remember that part?"

She reminded herself that this was her
dream. Casey knew about the limo because she did, and Casey was a
figment of her imagination. At least this Casey was. The real
reporter was probably off somewhere interviewing child molesters or
ransacking celebrity garbage cans.

"I remember." She paused, trying to get up
her courage, although why she needed courage in a dream was hard to
say. "Was another woman . . . hurt?"

"I've been worrying about you. I can't tell
you what happened to anyone else, Gyps. Just concern yourself with
getting well. That's what counts right now."

She knew he was lying. And why would anyone
lie in a dream?

He straightened. She turned her head to
follow his movements. "Casey?"

"Yeah?"

"You're better in person."

He laughed the same rich laugh. "Is that
so?"

"The cameras don't. . . do you justice."

"Your brain must have been rattled pretty
good. You'd never say anything that flattering if you were thinking
straight."

"No?"

"And give me an advantage?"

"Maybe it's not. . . an advantage. . . if a
television reporter. . . doesn't photograph. . . well."

"That's more like it. You're getting better
fast. Nan's not going to be pleased."

"Nan?"

"Now I'm sure you're kidding."

She tried to remember a Nan. This Nan had to
have something to do with
The Whole Truth
. This entire dream
had to do with the show and her own peculiar fascination with it.
From somewhere she tugged out a memory of fluffy blond hair and
round blue eyes. "Nan." She struggled for a last name.
"Simmonds."

"Too bad. It would have been fun to tell Nan
you couldn't remember her name."

"She seems . . . nice."

"Jeez, Gypsy. That's one memory you'd better
work on."

"Oh. The anchor substitute. . . from
hell?"

"Got it. Remember it."

"I'll . . . file it away."

He paused at the door. "File this away, too.
The minute you're well enough, I'm coming over to that den of vice
you call your apartment, and I'm going to make love to you every
which way except inside out. So don't take too long getting better.
Because I'm not a patient man."

The door hissed shut behind him.

Charles Casey had been in her hospital room.
A sexier Charles Casey than Elisabeth's perfectly healthy body had
ever imagined. A man with whom her fantasy self was having a torrid
affair--the likes of which Owen and Anna probably couldn't even
conceive of.

She smiled softly and shut her eyes. She
wasn't sure she wanted to recover.

"We're going to crank you up a little today,
so you can see where you are. And there's a physical therapist
coming this morning to start a new program. They got you set up for
every kind of therapy they got in this place. Girl, you must have
one heck of an insurance policy."

Elisabeth recognized Perry's voice. Perry
was the one true constant in her life now, although she wasn't
absolutely sure she wasn't imagining Perry, too.

She'd had no visitors so far. Owen might as
well live on another planet; Grant seemed to have deserted her,
too. And where were Marguerite and all the women with whom she had
lunched and played tennis, shopped and gossiped and chaired
committees? She couldn't believe that none of them were interested
in visiting her.

Her only visitor had been a sexy figment of
her imagination.

The room came into view as Perry cranked.
She'd had a glimpse of her surroundings when the light was dim. But
this morning Perry had drawn drapes and sunlight poured through a
surprisingly large window. The room was more attractive than she'd
realized, with peach-colored walls and floral drapes. There was a
dark wooden cabinet across the room topped with a trio of flower
arrangements.

Her eyes drifted down to what she could see
of her body. The chorus girl legs had to be a trick of the eye
caused by her odd position. The missing birthmark was another thing
entirely, but there had to be an explanation. Perhaps she'd had it
removed some time ago, and just couldn't remember. She was aching
for a better look at herself, but Perry, the master of the sponge
bath, religiously protected her modesty. She had yet to see herself
completely unclothed, not even when Perry changed her gown.

"I don't suppose you'd bring a mirror over
here. . . so I can see what I look like?" It was Gypsy Dugan's
voice that emerged. She recognized it, now. It no longer even
surprised her.

"Nope. No point at all in looking right now.
You wouldn't like what you see, you'd get upset, and that would
make you worse. We're going to wait until more of the swelling goes
down. Then you'll believe us when we tell you you're going to look
exactly like your old self again."

Elisabeth fervently hoped that was true.
"Who's sending. . . all the flowers?"

"Admirers, sweet pea. You must have some
kind of life. There've been more than a hundred. Lots more. I
should know, 'cause I'm the one that's had to get rid of them.
Pediatrics was grateful at first, now when they see me coming, they
bar the door."

"Admirers?"

"I'll read you some of the cards later, if
you're still awake. You're staying awake longer and longer these
days, though. Might just get a real conversation out of you
yet."

"I'd like to . . . talk." But even as she
said the words, Elisabeth wondered if they were true. Did she
really want to know what was happening to her? What if Perry told
her she was Gypsy Dugan? Perry seemed remarkably real. If she was
part of Elisabeth's dream, was there any hope she would ever come
out of this?

"First a sponge bath. Then I'm going to get
you out of that gown into something of your own. Some of your
friends brought clothes for you, and I've just been waiting till
you were clearheaded enough to stand a little fussing."

"Friends?"

"We've been turning folks away like this was
opening day at Yankee Stadium."

"Nobody's been allowed to visit?"

"Just that special somebody of yours."

So Owen had been here. Elisabeth closed her
eyes and savored the sweetness of relief. Owen had been here, and
either she hadn't been awake or she just didn't remember. "I
wondered."

"He's been haunting these halls like the
ghost of Christmas past. I tell you, that man was mine, I'd tie him
to a bedpost and never let him out of my sight. That's one
fine-looking human male."

"I always thought so."

"Better in person than he is on TV."

The room began to spin. "Oh, no."

"I hurt you? I didn't mean to. Had to have
been a man who designed the ties on these gowns."

Elisabeth bit her lip. "TV?" The word
sneaked past her teeth.

"Yeah. I always watch your show if I get off
on time. Don't believe a word I hear, but I like it just the same.
Never knew there were so many ways to tell a story and never tell
it exactly like it happened."

"I'm not Gypsy Dugan."

Perry laughed. "Then you're sure fooling a
lot of people, gumdrop."

"My name is Elisabeth . . . Whitfield."

Perry was silent.

"Did you hear me?"

"I did."

Elisabeth opened her eyes and saw that Perry
was staring down at her. Her lovely brown eyes were troubled.
"You've heard that name. . . haven't you?" Elisabeth asked.

"You're getting better fast. So fast I think
you'll be all recovered in no time. But the brain's a funny thing.
Gets rattled too much and it sends scrambled-up messages, kind of
like that telephone game we all played as kids. I whisper something
to you, you whisper it to someone, pretty soon it's not the same
thing at all. Your brain's having some of those problems right now.
But they aren't going to last."

Elisabeth hung on to her question throughout
Perry's explanation. "You've heard that name," she repeated. "Tell
me the truth."

"You must have heard it sometime when you
were off in that coma. Signals got mixed. That's all."

Elisabeth tried to piece this together. "Why
. . . would I have heard it?"

Perry sighed. "I shouldn't be getting into
all this."

"Perry!"

"Elisabeth Whitfield's the name of the lady
in that other car. The one you hit. She's got a room on this floor,
too. "

The next time Elisabeth opened her eyes,
there was a woman sitting beside her bed saying the rosary.
Elisabeth had plenty of time to examine her because the woman never
looked up once.

"Hail Mary full of grace. . ."

Elisabeth was a Unitarian. She had a strong
feeling this woman was not. Unitarianism was a religion that
adorned its churches with sculpture and works of art, rarely with
crosses. When prayers were said, they were most often meditations
on the meaning of life or Fulghumesque anecdotes. She recognized
the rosary but couldn't have chanted along with the woman if her
life had depended on it.

She guessed the woman was in her
mid-fifties, with silver-streaked black hair and a bulldog jaw. Her
dress was steel gray with no relieving touches of color. Her only
sop to vanity was a gold cross around her neck and a plain gold
band on her left hand.

The woman made a complete circle of the
beads before she looked up. Her eyes narrowed slightly. "How long
have you been watching me?"

"A little while."

"Don't you think you could have said
something?"

"I didn't . . . want to interrupt."

"That would be a first."

"Do I know you?"

The woman bit off a laugh. "Not very well.
Knowing me was never much of a priority, was it Maggie?"

So now she was Maggie, not Gypsy. Elisabeth
wondered who else she would become before the day ended. Had her
personality shattered into a thousand pieces at the crash site?

The woman cocked her head. "Are you lying
again, or don't you really remember me?"

"I'm not. . . thinking clearly."

"Well, to my mind you never did. You were
always off doing exactly what you wanted, never thinking about what
it might do to the rest of us."

"The rest?"

"Your father, your brothers and sisters. You
probably don't remember them at all. You've never paid them much
mind."

"How many?"

The woman gave a harsh sigh. "Six."

"I guess . . .the population explosion
wasn't an issue. . ."

"I had the children God intended me to
have!"

Since this was just part of a dream,
Elisabeth decided she could say exactly what she wanted. "And
apparently, you didn't like. . . at least one of them."

"You mean you?"

"Yes."

"You're right. I don't like you. You're rude
and profane, and the only reason you learned the Ten Commandments
was to see how fast you could break each and every one of
them."

"Did I?"

"A million times."

"Then, why are . . . you here?"

"Because I'm your mother. And you're my
child."

Elisabeth fell silent. The woman's voice had
cracked just the tiniest bit on her final word. Obviously there was
more to her than the hard shell she presented to the world.

Was everyone in this dream some part of
herself? Elisabeth knew that some psychologists believed that the
purpose of dreams was to understand and integrate all the many
pieces of the psyche. Was this woman some part of her? And was the
mysterious Maggie a part of her, as well?

Was this her "critical parent," the sliver
of her soul that would never let her feel true pride in herself? If
so, then she ought to make a stab at understanding it . . .
her.

She stretched out her hand. "I'm glad . . .
you came."

The woman's eyes narrowed farther. "You
really did get a good crack on the head, didn't you?"

"Mama. . ." The title came easily to her
tongue, even though she had always called her own mother the more
formal Mother. "Come on, Mama. Tell me how everyone's . . .
doing."

"You've never cared before."

"Mama. . ."

The rosary dropped to the woman's lap. She
took Elisabeth's hand in an uncompromising grip. "If this is some
sort of con job, I'll know it. You can't fool me. Never could and
never will."

"I'll . . . remember that."

"You may be a big television star now, Mary
Agnes Dugan, but don't think that just because I'm a working class
nobody, I'm not every bit as smart as you."

Elisabeth drifted in and out of sleep for
the rest of the day, but even when she thought she was awake she
pretended she wasn't. She didn't want to talk to anyone until she
was one hundred percent sure she was Elisabeth Whitfield once
again.

But dear Lord, until that moment, what new
revelations awaited in the next conversation? All roads led to
Gypsy Dugan and Elisabeth's own obsession with the anchorwoman's
life. She had been no different than the millions of bored
housewives who settled for second-hand adventure and romance on
afternoon television. She should have taken her life in her own
hands and done something about it. Perhaps if she hadn't spent so
many hours just comparing her choices to those Gypsy had made, she
wouldn't be in this predicament. But now that she was, she had no
idea how to pry herself loose.

She was living Gypsy Dugan's days, one by
one. Her dream world was so intricate that she had invented a nurse
and a mother. She had brought Charles Casey right to her bed side
and decorated the pediatrics wing with hundreds of flower
arrangements from her admirers. She had erased a birthmark,
lengthened her legs, shortened her hair, and imagined specific
injuries to a body that was only slightly to the left of
magnificent.