Once More With Feeling (30 page)

"I'm in town covering a story," Gypsy said.
"And I wanted to see you."

"Why?"

"Because you're my family."

"What happened, Maggie? Did you see the face
of God when you almost died? Did you decide it was time to
repent?"

"I decided it was time to come home and see
my family."

"You were told not to set foot across this
threshhold again."

"I suppose I'd conveniently forgotten
that."

"You broke your father's heart."

"Did I?" Gypsy tried to keep her voice
neutral. Faced with this wall of hostility, she didn't know what to
do. She only knew that she needed this reconciliation. She felt
compelled to pull it off somehow for the Gypsy who'd lived here as
a child.

"He was the one who told me to lay off of
you. He was the one who spoiled and petted you and made you what
you are. Then you turned on him."

Gypsy had learned when she'd left home, but
not what she'd done. She made a safe guess. "I was a teenager,
Mama. Teenagers make mistakes."

"Is that all it was to you? A mistake?"

"What do you think it was?"

"A sin. A terrible, black sin. And you are a
sinner."

"Let her be, Rose."

Gypsy turned and saw a man standing behind
her. She had been so riveted by Rose's accusations that she hadn't
heard him coming up the stairs. He was a pale man, thin and bent.
What hair he had was nearly all white, but his eyes were still
young. "Hello, Maggie."

"Daddy." She nodded in greeting, and knew
she'd guessed correctly.

John Dugan looked past her to his wife.
"I'll have no more of these accusations in my home, Rose. Maggie's
come back. We'll forget the past."

Rose's lips tightened, but her eyes
blazed.

"Mama, I don't expect the fatted calf,"
Gypsy said softly. "I just wanted to come home and be with all of
you for a little while. I've changed. Maybe we can start
again."

Rose didn't respond, but John did. "Will you
stay for supper?"

"I'd like that."

"We're having a chipped beef casserole. You
won't like it," Rose said.

Gypsy suspected Rose was right about that
much, at least. "I'll eat every bite. I'll even help you get it on
the table."

"You?" Rose exhaled a whoosh of disbelief.
"You couldn't find the door to the oven."

Gypsy was completely in the dark about what
lay behind her mother's anger, but she felt no need to react
defensively. She had no real emotional ties to the Dugans, although
she had compassion for their pain. She was becoming more and more
certain she could navigate her way through these troubled waters
and pour soothing oil on them to boot. For the first time since
waking up in Gypsy's body, her lack of memory--and feelings-about
Gypsy's past were a bonus.

She dimpled. "Just try me. I can open an
oven door with the best of them."

"We've missed that smile at our dinner
table," her father said.

"And I've missed both of you." She looked at
her father and saw the quick flush of color to his cheeks. His dark
eyes sparkled suspiciously with tears. Surprisingly something
clutched at her throat, and she cleared it solemnly. She was glad
that she'd come here to make amends.

She was very glad she'd come.

"When I was seventeen I got pregnant. I was
too young to want the baby, of course, and marrying the boy was out
of the question. So I had an abortion. I didn't tell my parents,
but they found out later from someone who'd seen me going into the
clinic. I was supposed to go to college. They have a college fund
for all their kids. That's why they live in that awful house. So
they can save every extra penny."

Gypsy turned her back to the Ritz-Carlton
windows and faced Casey. "When they found out about the abortion,
they wouldn't let me go away to Ohio State, like I'd planned. They
told me I had to stay at home and go to the local community college
so they could keep an eye on me. Apparently instead, I sold
everything I could get my hands on, including their only television
set, and took off for New York. I pieced together the whole sordid
story from things my sister Theresa said tonight."

"I knew an abridged version." Casey leaned
against the door and crossed his arms.

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"I didn't know enough. And I didn't know how
much of it was true."

"I suppose I lie with facility."

"I suppose you used to."

She turned back to the windows. Her room
looked over the Cuyahoga River, famous for having once caught on
fire, but there were no signs of that kind of pollution now. After
political and economic ups and downs, there were plans brewing for
an expanded mixed use development on the banks of the river, and
she wished the city well.

"My father's a sweetheart. A martyr to my
mother's fanaticism. But she has her warmer moments, too. She
softened up as the night wore on. I told her that I'd been wrong
about a great many things, and I hoped she'd give me another
chance. But I made my best impression when I changed Jason's
diapers."

"It sounds like you survived hell
tonight."

"Joanie's a sweet kid. She looks like a nun,
but I'm afraid she's got more of Theresa and me inside her than
Mama gives her credit for. She has a boyfriend. She asked me about
the abortion."

"Did she?"

"I told her it was probably the right thing
to do under the circumstances, but I regretted the necessity. I'd
have a ten- year-old son or daughter now. It makes you think,
doesn't it?"

"Gyps, you hate kids."

"Do I?" Elisabeth certainly hadn't hated
them. She had wanted more. For years after Grant became a toddler
she had yearned for the feel of a baby's soft flesh cuddled against
her own.

"You're as religious about birth control as
your mother is about attending Mass."

"I'm not the same person I was before the
accident."

"What are you trying to tell me? That you
suddenly want a tract house in Connecticut and 2.3 kids? You want
to bake apple pies and teach flag folding every Wednesday afternoon
to a denload of hyperactive Cub Scouts? Come on. You haven't
changed that much."

"There are compromises. The choice doesn't
have to come down to den leader or anchorwoman, with nothing in
between." She wished that Elisabeth had seen that more clearly. But
at least Gypsy could see it now.

"What does it come down to?"

"Maybe it comes down to not being perfect at
anything. Doing some of this and some of that. Having fewer
children than my mother did and working fewer hours than I do."

"Are you complaining about the job? Is that
what this is about?"

"No." And it wasn't. Because her situation
was thoroughly unique. She'd been a den leader. And now she was an
anchorwoman. She knew the joys and disappointments of both. "It's
about me. About what I want and what I'm willing to do to get
it."

He pushed away from the door. "What do you
want?"

She was still as unclear about that as she
had always been. She just knew that Gypsy's life, as exhilarating
as it was, wasn't turning out to be enough for her.

She shook her head. "I don't know, Casey.
Right now I just feel drained."

"Come here."

She was reluctant to comply. In the weeks
since Nan's departure from the show, she and Casey had been too
busy to explore their relationship. They had met for dinner between
his forays out of town, but he hadn't pushed, and she hadn't
suggested a deeper commitment. The other men who had scurried
around the borders of Gypsy's life had begun to drop away from a
lack of encouragement. She was frequently lonely, despite the warm
camaraderie at the studio and her strong friendships with Perry and
Kendra.

She needed love. She needed what she knew
Casey could offer her. And still, she was afraid.

"Come here, Gypsy."

She came. There was no point in pretending
she didn't want him. Despite the bizarre twist that had landed her
in this body, it was a normal body, with normal urges. She more
than liked Casey. He was intelligent and perceptive, sometimes
egotistical but always fair. His touch was as exciting as anything
she'd ever experienced.

"Sit there." He pointed to a wing chair
upholstered in soft floral hues.

She sat. "Why? Am I about to get the third
degree?"

"No. A massage. Stay there." He went into
the bathroom and returned with a bottle in his hands. "Take off
your shirt."

She hesitated.

"You can leave the bra on. If you're wearing
one."

It seemed a challenge. She stripped off the
man-tailored linen shirt and tossed it on the bed. She was wearing
a bra, a sturdier affair than anything she'd found in her lingerie
drawer after her release from the hospital. But it was provocative
enough. Peach colored lace and a cleverly engineered design that
Howard Hughes would have approved of.

"Good," he said noncommittally. "Now lean
forward a little."

She did as she was told, but she was edgy.
She could feel her muscles screaming as she forced them into stern
resistance. The afternoon had taken more out of her than she'd
realized.

She jumped when he rested his hands on her
shoulders.

He stroked his thumbs along her neck. "I
didn't even know you could be so tense. You create stress for other
people, you don't experience it."

"It was a tough afternoon."

"Is that it? Or are you all wired up because
I'm touching you?"

"Why should that make me tense?"

"Excellent question." He lifted his hands.
"Stay right there."

"Casey, I don't know if this is such a great
idea."

"Why not? You've got a problem, and I've got
a cure."

She knew what kind of cure he meant. And she
suspected he was right, at least partially. She was tired of
celibacy. She ached for the comfort of Casey's body, the delirium
of passionate, skillful sex. She yearned for boneless, drifting
reverie.

This time when he touched her his hands were
warm and slippery. She smelled heliotrope and hyacinths and felt
the lotion on his hands seeping luxuriantly into her skin. "Ahhh.
." She closed her eyes. His thumbs settled at the back of her neck
and began slow, delicious circles.

"I always wanted to do this for you, but you
never let me. You were always in too much of a hurry."

"Was I?" She could already feel the warmth
of his hands moving inside her to places he couldn't touch.

"So you said. I always wondered if that was
the real reason."

"What other reason could there be?"

"I always wondered if you felt safe with me.
Safe enough to give me this much control."

Her head fell farther forward. "Why wouldn't
I feel. . . safe?"

"Maybe when you're heading for the top, you
can't trust anybody. You can't be even a little bit
vulnerable."

"Are you vulnerable?"

He was silent, but his thumbs pressed
harder.

"Are you?" she asked again.

"Just occasionally." His hands slid to her
shoulders. He pressed with his palm as his fingers gripped and
kneaded.

She could feel her muscles giving up the
fight, one by one. She could understand why she had once been
reluctant to let Casey work this kind of magic. "What makes you
vulnerable?"

He didn't answer. He trailed his fingertips
along her collarbone, back and forth, as his palm pressed
harder.

"Do I make you vulnerable?" she asked.

"You'd love that kind of power, wouldn't
you?"

"No."

"Come on, Gyps. You'd like nothing better
than to have me at your beck and call."

"Slavery has no appeal to me. I come from a
long line of abolitionists."

He stopped working on her shoulders. "Lean
forward."

She complied.

He put his hands on her back, then lifted
them again. "This isn't working. I can't reach you. Lie down on the
bed."

Warning bells sounded inside her head.
"Casey . . ."

"Afraid of giving up control?"

She sighed. "You have no idea how little
control I have."

"Lie down on the bed."

She got to her feet. Her body felt as heavy
as a sultry summer breeze. Without looking at him she stretched
out, face down across the comforter. He joined her, straddling her
with his knees. She could feel his hands against her back. Then she
felt the clasp on her bra giving way.

"You have such beautiful skin." He stroked
his hands the length of her back. Once, then again. "Does that feel
good?"

She made a noise low in her throat. It was
all she could do. She was melting. Dissolving.

"Good." He rested his thumbs along her spine
and began to press lightly, sliding them slowly downward. "I love
touching you. I tell myself I'm going to purge you from my blood,
and then I remember what it feels like to touch you."

"Purge?"

His hands grazed her sides, feather light
and provocative. His fingertips inched toward her breasts, then
withdrew. Inched, withdrew. He had long fingers and wide, square
hands. He knew exactly what to do with them.

"You're selfish and thoughtless and
perfectly capable of sleeping with a man to get something you
want." He hesitated and his hands stilled. "Or at least, you were
before the accident."

She could hardly think about what he was
saying. Heat pooled inside her, an unpredictable, unstable geyser.
"You've stayed just because . . . "

"Because of the sex?" His hands began to
move again. With assurance and skill. "What do you think?"

"I . . don't know." If what he said was
true, her life would certainly be easier to compartmentalize.

"I guess I don't know, either. I've told
myself that's all it was for so long, it's hard to get past
it."

"But when you try?"

He slid his fingers under her rib cage, just
inches from her breasts. His thumbs rotated in lazy circles along
her back, dissolving tension everywhere they touched and creating a
different kind of tension entirely.