Phantom of Riverside Park (40 page)

Elizabeth’s hand flew to her throat. Had
Nicky heard the song from David? Could it be possible? She thought
back to the first time he’d used the song. It had been shortly
after he returned from the hospital.

“Are you sure that’s the only song he
sings?”

“Yes. I sound awful, but he actually sounded
great. He had a wonderful voice. Still does, I suppose. I don’t
ever hear him singing anymore. And did I tell you how beautiful he
was? David was one of the most gorgeous human beings who ever
walked the face of the earth. People used to stop and stare at him.
Perfect strangers. Just stopped dead in their tracks to gawk at my
beautiful, flawless brother.”

The power of loss to bring us to our knees is
scary. Elizabeth passed her empty glass to McKenzie to soften the
edges of the sharp pain she felt, not only for David but for
herself as well. For the whole human race. That’s how big her
social conscience expanded. Too big for a small lonely woman to
bear.

“What happened to the engagement?” Elizabeth
had to ask, although she thought she already knew.

“He was in the hospital. They’d fixed part of
the damage. He was feeling pretty good about it all, about the
future, looking forward to seeing Kelly Lynn again. And then she
came, bearing roses.” McKenzie stopped talking and took a long
swig. “She took one look at my brother and ran from the room
screaming.”

“Oh...” Elizabeth hurt for him. Tears ran
down her cheeks and plopped into her drink. Her third. And the pain
still wouldn’t go away.

“David didn’t tell me. The nurses did. I told
them if she ever showed her painted face again to throw the shallow
witch out. They said they looked forward to it, but they never got
the pleasure. Of course, Kelly Lynn never came back.”

Elizabeth held out her empty glass, and
Mckenzie fixed them both a refill.

“Love.” McKenzie clinked her glass to
Elizabeth’s. “Ain’t it grand?”

“Not from where I’m sitting.” Elizabeth was
slurring her words, and McKenzie was turning fuzzy around the
edges.

“Me neither.” McKenzie pressed her glass to
her cheek. “Oh, God, why does everything have to be so confusing?
Why can’t we all be born with life maps and extra-sensory
perception?”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“I guess you’re drunk enough now that I can
tell you.”

“Who? Me?” Elizabeth hiccupped, then lifted
her glass. “Down the hole.”

“I think the word is hatch.”

“How would you know? You’ve had too much to
drink. How come?”

“I went down to the river to talk to David,
and all of a sudden I looked at Peter, really looked, and I got
this little twinge. The kind you get when you’ve stuck your finger
in the electric socket, you know.”

How well Elizabeth knew. Except with David it
was more like sticking her whole self into the path of a lightning
bolt.

“I don’t believe it.”

“I didn’t believe it, either. He’s younger
than my tennis shoes, and nothing like Paul.”

Elizabeth thought of the age gap between her
and David and wondered if that was what was keeping him away. Or
could it be something else? Maybe she’d been terrible last night,
inadequate somehow, and he couldn’t bear to tell her to her
face.

A thousand maybes raced through her mind. She
could rationalize till she was blue in the face, and still she
wouldn’t know the truth.

She wondered what Mae Mae would do in a
situation like this. Probably slam a few pots and pans around,
maybe play a lively tune on the piano, pounding the keys so hard
you could hear her clear out to the front porch. Then she’d get up
and march straight up to the person who was confusing her and say,
spit it out, and I want the truth, too, not some silly made-up
story
.

Elizabeth probably wouldn’t march up and
confront David even if she knew where he was. She was scared of
what he might tell her. What if he said,
I made a mistake last
night, I just didn’t feel any sparks
, and then left her to
pick up the pieces. There’s only so much of that a woman can
do.

Over the last few years she’d picked up so
many pieces of herself and patched them back together there soon
wouldn’t be anything left of her to pick up.

“Feelings can be scary,” Elizabeth said.

McKenzie put her hand over her face. “I’m so
scared I don’t know what to do. I don’t want to feel again. It
hurts too much.”

Elizabeth started crying, crying for herself
and David, crying for McKenzie, crying for unrequited love
everywhere.

She downed the rest of her glass. “What you
need is sheering up.”

They stared at each other, and McKenzie began
to laugh. “You look like you could use a little sheering up
yourself.” She put the lampshade on her head, stood on the chair
and held the vodka bottle aloft. “Give me your tired, your poor,
your wretched masses yearning to be free...”

o0o

It was nearly midnight when David got back to
the farm. Everybody would be in bed, meaning Elizabeth, of course.
He could slip into his bedroom unnoticed and spend one more
sleepless night, then he could leave. After the party tomorrow he
could go back to Memphis and spare himself the pain of being in the
company of a woman he couldn’t have.

He let himself into the front door expecting
to be greeted with the peace and quiet of a sleeping household.
Instead he was greeted by the statue of liberty. He could see
McKenzie through the open door of the library, standing on her
chair holding forth.

“Get down from there before you break your
neck.”

“Home is the hunter, home from the hill.” She
grinned at him. “Hi, big brother.” She stepped down and plopped the
bottle on the table. “I was just trying to cheer her up.”

That’s when he saw Elizabeth, slumped into
the wingchair, fast asleep. Or was she? She had the too-flushed
look of a woman who should never have more than one drink.

“Did you get her drunk, McKenzie?”

“She did it all by herself. Poor little
thing. She dressed for you, and you never showed up. She was
broken-hearted.”

For a wild heart-thumping moment, David
believed her. He squatted beside Elizabeth’s chair to check her
pulse. Once he’d touched her, he couldn’t seem to get enough. He
smoothed back her damp hair, wiped a smudge of mascara off her
cheek.

“Why don’t you tell her you love her,
David?”

He moved toward the French windows like
somebody who had been shot from a cannon. Desperate to get away
from temptation. Desperate to change the subject.

Not to be daunted, McKenzie followed him.
“What happened between the two of you last night?”

“Did she say anything?”

“She said the two of you talked.”

“We talked.”

“And what else?”

“That comes under the category of none of
your business.”

“Aha!” His sister gave him a look of wicked
glee while the clock in the hallway bonged half-past midnight. “I
need some beauty sleep, I need a total body makeover, I need a
miracle.” She stood on tiptoe and kissed him goodnight. “I’m going
to bed, big brother. Sweet dreams.”

As his sister floated past Elizabeth sleeping
in her chair, David realized he was being left alone with her.

“Hey, wait a minute.”

McKenzie only laughed at him. “She’s your
wife, David. You take care of her.”

He couldn’t leave Elizabeth wadded into a
chair all night. There was only one thing to do. She was as light
as a child in his arms, but there was nothing childlike about the
way she felt.

As David climbed the stairs with his sleeping
wife, he thought of the staircase scene in “Gone with the Wind,”
the scene where Rhett Butler carries Scarlett into her bedroom, and
then the scene the following morning where Scarlett wakes up
humming. He fantasized himself as Rhett, fantasized being in
Elizabeth’s bed once more, fantasized about being the kind of man
who could make a woman wake up smiling and singing to herself.

That sort of thing only happened in the
movies, of course. This was real life, and David would never be a
leading man. With Elizabeth in his arms it was easy to dream of the
impossible, especially late at night with the shroud of darkness to
hide him.

He shouldered open her door and laid her
gently on the big canopied bed. She looked like a fallen flower. So
fragile, so vulnerable, and so very beautiful.

The mattress sank under his weight. Careful
not to wake her, he lifted one of her soft hands and kissed each
pink fingertip, each small knuckle. Then he turned her hand over
and pressed his lips into her warm moist palm.

So this is what it’s like to love a
woman.

The moon laid a path from the window to the
bed, and Elizabeth lay in its center, luminous. And deeply
sleeping. He could kiss her, touch her, and she would never know.
But that would make him little more than a thief, stealing
something whose true worth lay in the freedom with which it was
given.

David covered her with a blanket. “Sweet
dreams, Elizabeth,” he whispered, then he went into his own room
and closed the connecting door.

He didn’t think he would sleep, but he must
have, for when the door eased open, he jerked awake. Elizabeth was
coming to him. He held his breath, waiting.

“David?” It was a small voice, followed by
Nicky’s small form. “Can I sleep wif’ you? Bear’s scared.”

“Sure, pal.” He turned back the covers, and
the little boy climbed in beside him and curved close like a tiny
question mark. David’s heart grew two sizes.

“Mommy won’t wake up. Can you sing a song
so’s me’n Bear’ll feel all better?”

David sang the only song he knew, and beside
him, Nicky sighed.

“That’s my fabewrit song.”

“Mine, too.”

When Elizabeth woke up at six o’clock in the
morning and discovered she was sleeping with her dress on she knew
darned well she hadn’t climbed up the stairs and tucked herself in.
David had done it. It had to be him. Last night McKenzie hadn’t
been in much better condition than she was.

Elizabeth pictured how it had been: he had
picked her up without any effort at all because he was a big man
and big men had no trouble hefting small packages, and then he just
walked up the stairs and dumped her like a sack of potatoes and
went his merry way. As if they’d never spent the night in each
other’s arms while the moon shone through the bedroom window.

She got out of bed and her head started
spinning the minute her feet hit the floor. Half-stumbling,
half-running she got to the bathroom then leaned over the toilet.
When she was finally able to stand up she’d emptied herself of
everything except rage.

How dare David Lassiter hug her and kiss her
as if he were presenting his heart and soul, then walk away as if
nothing had happened? How dare he come into her bed of his own free
will and make love to her as if he planned to cherish her forever,
then act as if nothing important had taken place between them? How
dare he reel her son in with race cars and songs about Blueberry
Hill, then pull a vanishing act? How dare he be Papa’s hero?

Elizabeth was so mad she kicked the
footstool, then ran howling to her closet and slammed the door
twice. Hard. She’d didn’t care who heard. She’d like to do the same
thing to David Lassiter. Slap some sense into him. Hard.

Her rage lasted all of five minutes, then she
crumpled to her bed and buried her face in the pillow and cried
until she was faint.

Betrayed. That’s how she felt.

David had given her the moon, then taken it
away. He’d made promises he didn’t keep because isn’t that what it
means when you take a woman to her bed and share your body heart
and soul with her, that the two of you are joined in some magical
way that lights up all your insides and makes the universe more
beautiful?

She knew she was a throwback to a more
innocent era, probably because of Papa and Mae Mae’s influence, but
her night with David had not been a casual thing. She’d entrusted
herself to his care. She’d breathed a deep sigh of relief for here,
at last, she’d recaptured her dream.

How could he be so callous? How could he take
something that momentous lightly?

She could rationalize and give him just
motives from now till the cows came home but the bottom line was
this: he dropped her and she broke.

And so, broken, she lay in her bed mourning
until the connecting door creaked open. “David?” She sat up with
hope reborn for that’s how hope is. No matter how hard you try, you
can’t stomp it out, kick it out, scream it out, cry it out. It just
keeps coming back.

“Mommy!” Nicky launched himself at her, then
cuddled close with Bear and confided in a whisper, “Me an’ Bear
sleeped wif’ David ‘cause Bear got scared.”

Elizabeth wrapped her arms around her son and
held on, giving comfort but receiving it, too. “Mae Mae used to
sing to me when I got scared.”

“Sing that song ‘bout bringin’ in the
sheeps,” he said, and she began to sing the old familiar hymn,
“Bringing in the Sheaves.”

o0o

Elizabeth’s song drifting through the door
exerted a force like gravity, and David had to go all the way to
the barn to escape its pull. He stayed away from the house all day,
stayed away until he had a crowd to use as a buffer.

Nicky’s birthday party was in full swing when
he returned. Elizabeth was across the room. The smile that started
in her eyes when she saw him died before it ever got to her
lips.

She knew. David was relieved that she did,
relieved that he didn’t have to say anything to her, didn’t have to
point out the obvious, and if she thought him a coward because of
it that was mild to what he thought of himself.

David was spared the pain of saying to her,
I can’t do this. I can’t be your hero.