by Jane Heller
“You’re too much,” he said, then yelled at some underling without bothering to cover the mouthpiece.
“I’m not kidding,” I said, feeling all the blood drain out of me, all the joy too. “I don’t know how you got it, but you can’t run it.”
“You don’t know how I got it?” Roars of incredulous laughter flooded my eardrum. “I woke up this morning and there it was, burning up my in box, the best damn e-mail ever. I know you must be crowing—it’s not every day someone gets a pat on the back from mean old Harvey, huh?—but you did great work, Ann. Now come on home and we’ll figure out who’s next for you after Goddard.”
After Goddard. How aptly put. Once the story hit the newsstands, there would be no more Malcolm and me, only life after Goddard. He would be crushed when he learned about the article and would shun me forever, no matter how hard I pleaded with him to believe that I hadn’t sent the e-mail, that there had been an awful glitch. How could I expect him to forgive me? I wouldn’t forgive me. Lying to him about my past was one thing, but exploiting his celebrity for what he would rightfully perceive to be my own gain was quite another. Which was why I hadn’t sent the story. I could never have sent it. Not when my heart had done a complete one-eighty. Not when my resentment and bitterness toward him had turned into the kind of love I’d always dreamed of.
After Harvey hung up with his typical abruptness—he was incapable of ending a call with the universally accepted “good-bye”—I stood there in my mother’s kitchen, staring at the headset as if it were alive, listening to the discordant beep beep beep the phone makes when it’s off the hook, wondering how a magazine story I hadn’t sent had managed to find its way through cyberspace and land in his computer.
“Sweetie? Are you okay?” asked my mother. “You’re as pale as a corpse.”
“What was all that talk about ‘running it’? Running what?” my grandmother chimed in.
I recounted both sides of the conversation for them. I also revealed that Malcolm was a patient at the hospital and that it was he, not Jeanette, who’d been my dinner companion the previous evening. “I wrote the story about him before I got to know him, before I came to care about him,” I said, ignoring their gasps and other gestures of shock and awe. “I wrote it in the hope of getting my old job back, but once I realized I had feelings for him, there was no way I could send it.” I paused to catch my breath. I’d been talking very fast, I realized. “But it did get sent. Somehow. Or by someone.”
“I’m not a computer person, so what do I know,” said my mother, “but maybe you hit the wrong button or something.”
“I don’t hit wrong buttons,” I said, frantic, thinking of all the possibilities.
“Well, then maybe someone else hit it,” said my grandmother. “You carry that thing with you everywhere, Ann. Maybe somebody hit something by mistake.”
My grandmother couldn’t even work the microwave, never mind understand the logistics of operating a computer, but she had a point. I did carry my laptop everywhere.
And everywhere I carried it Richard seemed to follow.
Of course. It had to be Richard, the lousy bastard.
My temples throbbed and my hands curled into fists as I replayed Friday night at the Caffeine Scene. After I’d told him about Malcolm and me, he’d asked me to get him some coffee. I don’t trust my legs, he’d said. God, was I an idiot. Like a good little soldier, I’d trotted off to the counter, leaving him alone with my computer. I knew he had no qualms about blabbing other people’s private business, knew he thought nothing of checking out what I was writing either, knew he felt jilted and even enraged by my admission of my feelings for Malcolm, and yet I’d still handed him the opportunity to ruin my life.
“Ann, sweetie,” said my mother, who rushed to hug me and try to soothe me. “What is it? From the look on your face, I’m guessing you figured out who did this.”
“Oh, yeah,” I said, pulling away and punching the air like a mini-Harvey. “And I’m about to go find him and give him hell.”
“Him?” said my grandmother.
“Richard,” I said between gulps of air. “He had access to my computer on Friday night. And he knew about Malcolm and me, about the story I wrote, all of it. He predicted that I’d lose Malcolm once he found out the truth. I just didn’t expect him to speed up the process.”
“Richie Grossman did this?” said my mother, as stunned as I was and just as angry.
I nodded. “And he’s gonna hear about it.”
“Fancy job or no fancy job, he’s scum,” my grandmother spat out. “I’ve got a rifle in the attic if you want to borrow it, Ann.”
“No guns,” I said. “But I’m putting on some clothes and driving over to his house and by the time I’m done with him, he’ll be sorry he ever trespassed into my life.”
I started to storm out of the room, but Aunt Toni stopped me.
“Wait,” she said, literally blocking my path with her arm. “You can’t.”
“Why not?” I said. “You’ve never been a fan of his, so what do you care?”
“I’m not a fan of his, no,” she said in an uncharacteristically soft voice.
“Then what’s your problem, Toni?” said my grandmother. “Ann has a right to chew the boy out. We have to help her, support her.”
My aunt looked at me with tears in her eyes suddenly, and I was bewildered. I’d never seen her cry in my entire life. Not when my father died. Not even when Uncle Mike left her. “I thought I was helping you,” she said. “Was supporting you.”
“We have enough drama, Toni,” said Mom. “What’s your point?”
“I’m the one who sent the story to Ann’s editor,” she said.
“Don’t say crazy things,” my grandmother scolded her.
“It’s true,” said Toni. “I did it.”
Well, we all just froze, naturally. I mean, my aunt could go off the track at times and was more than a little opinionated, but I would never have thought her capable of interfering so brazenly.
“Why?” was all I could think of to say as I sank down into a kitchen chair, all the fury and rage toward Richard drained out of me.
“Linda wanted you to live here forever,” she said, her head bowed.
“I love having you around too, of course. But I didn’t want you to end up like me, a bitter divorcée with no children of her own and a good-for-nothing ex-husband who sleeps with sluts. That was your future if you stayed in Middletown. I knew how much you wanted your old job back, Ann. One night—I keep my bedroom door open because of the claustrophobia—I heard you talking to your friend Tuscany on the phone about it. You were telling her how the Malcolm story was your revenge against him and your way to get rehired at the magazine. When you said it was in your computer but you hadn’t sent it, I thought you were stalling because you didn’t want to let your mother down by leaving us. Since I know my way around a Mac, I just figured I’d move things along.”
“But you’ve destroyed my relationship with Malcolm,” I said. “Don’t you get that?”
“I had no idea you’d changed your mind about him,” she said. “I would never have meddled if I’d known how much he meant to you. I swear it.”
“Still, how could you do that to my daughter!” my mother lashed out.
“Because you were content to sit around watching her waste her life!” said Toni, regaining her old fire.
“I was not!” said my mother.
“You were so!” said my aunt.
It went on like that until Grandma Raysa stepped in and told them both to behave or she would go get that rifle in the attic.
Still reeling from her revelation but nonetheless seeing how visibly shaken she was by what she’d done, I got up and put my arms around my aunt. She meant well, I knew that. She wanted me to have a better life. But how could it be better without the man I loved?
“Would you like me to talk to Malcolm for you?” my mother offered. “I’m well enough to go to the hospital by myself, and I’
d do anything for you, sweetie. I do want what’s best for you, no matter what your aunt thinks.”
“I could talk to him too,” said my grandmother. “I’ve seen all his movies. He’s practically family. He’s not Jewish, by any chance?”
I shook my head, inconsolable. Part of me wanted to run to Malcolm and beg for mercy. The other part wanted to crawl into a hole and die. I didn’t know where to turn, what direction to take, how to make things right. It all seemed too much to handle.
Everyone watched me in silence, until my grandmother couldn’t stand it anymore and rapped on the kitchen table with her knuckles.
“Enough of this, Ann,” she said with authority. “You’ve got to show some nerve. Go and plead your case to the movie star. If there’s any justice in the world, this’ll turn out okay.”
I didn’t know if there was justice in the world, but she was right. I couldn’t just sit there sucking my thumb.
Chapter Twenty-nine
I showered and dressed and pulled myself together. I checked my cell phone, listened to Harvey’s message, and deleted it. There was also a message from an overwrought Tuscany, who was trying to warn me that the story had somehow fallen into his clutches. I deleted it too. And there was a message from Malcolm, telling me how much he enjoyed Saturday night, how optimistic about the future he was now that I was in his life, and how he couldn’t wait to see me. Choking back tears, I called him to say I felt the same way and that I’d be over as soon as I could.
“THERE YOU ARE,” he said when I finally showed up at the hospital at two-thirty. He was relaxing in a chair watching the Weather Channel when I entered his room. “They just gave tomorrow’s forecast for L.A.: sunny and eighty degrees. Wanna come with me?”
I closed the door and hurried over to him, planting myself on his lap and burrowing into his arms. I held him tightly, pressed my ear against his chest, listened to the beating of his heart. I wanted to block out everything but him, if only for a little while.
“Hey,” he said, tilting my chin up. “You’re shaking. What’s going on?”
“Just the thought of you leaving tomorrow,” I said, swallowing the lump in my throat. “I can’t imagine what it’ll be like around here without you.”
He kissed me. “You won’t have to imagine it. You can fly out to see me this weekend. I’m waiting to hear from my publicist, but I don’t think I’m expected back on the set for another two weeks. Maybe you could come Friday and stay until Monday or Tuesday.”
Monday or Tuesday. The new issue of Famous would be on sale by then and his publicist, my pal Peggy, would be seething. Yes, he and I could celebrate the issue’s publication together—right before he hurled me into oncoming traffic.
I had to tell him. I couldn’t let him amble by some newsstand and see his face on the cover of the magazine, only to open it and find my byline. I couldn’t do that to the man I loved.
And I did love him. Why kid myself? Actor or no actor, I adored him, adored the man he’d become, and would do anything if I could rewind the tape and start over again with him.
“You can talk to your supervisor about taking some time off, can’t you?” he said. “And then I’ll fly back here as soon as I can.” He nuzzled my left earlobe. “I’m sure there’s a quaint little hotel in the area, isn’t there? Some Stepfordy bed-and-breakfast where you get a free muffin in the morning and a free glass of sherry in the afternoon?”
I nodded. “With lots of lace doilies too.”
We sat together in that chair and kissed and talked and gazed out the window. He said Jonathan had given him a clean bill of health. He’d have to continue the oral antibiotics for another week and check in with his cardiologist in L.A. regularly, but he was in good shape, physically and mentally. I, on the other hand, was falling apart.
As the clock ticked and the afternoon gave way to dusk, my resolve weakened. The more I realized how deeply I cared about him and he about me, the harder it became to broach the subject of the story and my role in it. At one point, I even tried to talk us both out of our relationship.
“You actors have flings on movie sets as if it’s part of the job,” I said. “How do we know this…this…connection of ours isn’t like one of those flings? Just a matter of same place, same time?”
“Because you’re the real thing, not somebody playing a part,” he said, rocking me in his arms. “And you’ve made me into the real thing too. I’m a different man now. I know what I want, and she’s sitting right here.”
So. You see why I couldn’t tell him on Sunday, why I couldn’t break the news that I was playing a part. It was too damn hard. I couldn’t bring myself to break his heart and my own. Not yet. Instead, I decided that we should enjoy each other for one more day, just one more. He was being discharged in the morning. I would tell him then.
Yes, during our tearful good-bye, I would explain that there was something important that he needed to know, and present him with the facts. No sugar coating. There was always the chance that he might accept my apology for writing the story as well as my assurance that I wasn’t the one who’d made it public; that he would see that I was a victim just as he was; that he would acknowledge his part in the mess—that it was his own nasty game of chicken that had contributed to my getting fired in the first place. And if not, he would be leaving anyway. He could curse me throughout his entire flight back to L.A. and I wouldn’t have to hear a word of it.
“You sure you’re okay?” he asked after we’d taken a walk down the hall and returned to his room. “You seem so gloomy.”
“I am gloomy,” I said. “They’ll have to cordon off room 613 after you leave because I’ll never step in it again.”
“Is that the only reason?”
“Well, my family situation isn’t always a laugh a minute, as I’ve told you. My mother and her sister were going at it this morning, in fact.”
“About what?”
Another opportunity to tell him. Another opportunity wasted due to my cowardice. “The usual,” I said. “They love each other but they don’t see the world in the same way, especially when it comes to me and my happiness. My grandmother referees these battles and gets them to back off, but it can be pretty rowdy around our house.”
He kissed my cheek. “I’m sure they drive you nuts, but I’m still envious of you.”
“You said that once before.”
“Yeah, because they care enough about you to fight over your happiness,” he said. “Some of us aren’t so lucky.”
Lucky. Well, yes. I may have lost my father, but I still had a family who cared deeply about me. I could forgive my aunt for going behind my back—hadn’t I gone behind Malcolm’s?—because she only wanted the best for me, more than I’d ever realized. I just couldn’t figure out how to cope with what she’d done, with the consequences of what she’d done.
“Hey, you,” he said. “Perk up, please?”
He smiled and I took a mental photograph of him, a snapshot that would burn in my memory forever, a “before” picture. How he would react toward me “after” was too awful to contemplate.
MONDAY WASN’T MY volunteering day, but I arrived at the hospital that morning in my pink-and-white-striped smock. I felt as if I should be wearing black. My mood was funereal.
“Here she is. Our candidate for volunteer of the year,” said Shelley. “You just can’t stay away from us, can you?”
“There’s a patient who’s being discharged,” I said. “I’ve become kind of attached to him. I wanted to give him a nice send-off.”
Kind of attached. A nice send-off. Was I ever full of it.
Before taking the elevator up to six, I hid in the magazine storage room for a few minutes. I needed to rehearse what I planned to say to Malcolm. It was the only place where I could gather my thoughts and try out the speech I was about to make without anyone eavesdropping or passing judgment.
I intended to start at the very beginning, with the bulletin that I was an entertainment journalist, not a de
ntal hygienist, whose first and only job as an adult was with Famous. Then I would proceed with Harvey’s insistence that I interview him before the Oscars, Peggy Merchant’s refusal to grant the interview, my confrontation with him at Spago, my freak-out at the airport, my dismissal from the magazine, and my return to Middletown. I would mention but not dwell on how much I’d resented him for his divalike behavior and his preying on my phobia, on how much I’d blamed him for costing me my career. I wanted him to understand my motivation for the payback but not lay a guilt trip on him. As for the rest—how I’d viewed his stunning appearance at Heartland General as a chance to reclaim my job and then changed my mind about writing the profile—I would be honest about it, straightforward, the way he’d expect the “real” Ann to be, the Ann to whom ethics used to matter. And then, of course, I would explain about the complete turnaround in my feelings for him and the accompanying realization that I could never, would never, send the story to the magazine, even though it presented him in the most flattering light and would surely burnish his already shining star. I would take him through the shocking discovery that it was my aunt who’d hijacked my computer and e-mailed the story without my knowledge, and that I’d tried to persuade my boss not to publish it—to no avail.
“I love you,” I would say in my defense. “I wouldn’t hurt you for anything in the world. I thought there was some justification for writing the story while you were a patient, but I shouldn’t have done it. And I didn’t send it. I hope you believe me, Malcolm. And I hope you’ll forgive me.”
There. I was as ready as I’d ever be. I flipped off the light in the storage room, closed the door behind me, and, forgetting completely about the cart, went to meet my destiny.
When I got off the elevator on the sixth floor, I passed the nurse’s station. Rolanda winked at me and whispered, “Good thing you got here. You almost missed saying bye-bye to our favorite patient.”
Almost missed him? I thanked her, but her comment gave me pause. Malcolm was supposed to call me on my cell as soon as Jonathan discharged him. If he was that close to leaving, why hadn’t he called?
