The Cinderella Deal

by Jennifer Crusie

  Eighteen years alone. Linc shuddered at the coldness of it.

  “I did not love you enough.” Gertrude’s tears were coming faster. “Later, I was better. I was better with Wil and Ken. But I did not love you enough then. I am sorry.”

  “No.” His embarrassment was agony, but much worse was how helpless he was to stop her pain. “No, it’s all right. You were a good mother.”

  She shook her head weakly on the pillow. “No. But now it is all right. You have Daisy. Now you will get all the love I could not give you.” She was openly crying now, the tears rolling down her cheeks, and Linc felt the room begin to swoop. This couldn’t be happening. He had to stop it.

  “Listen.” He grabbed her hand and held on tightly. “You took care of me. I had plenty to eat, and my clothes were always clean, and you never interfered or pushed me or made me feel like I wasn’t a good son. You gave me space to grow up and you took care of me. And I was fine. Really.”

  “You deserved more,” Gertrude insisted, her eyes bright with tears.

  He ran his hand through his hair, unsure of what to say next. “I’m just glad you didn’t die.” He stopped when he realized that was true. And he didn’t want her alone and cold either. “Listen, I don’t like this stuff about you being lonely. Why don’t you move down here? We’ll take care of you.”

  She cried even harder, and he couldn’t understand why, and he sat frozen until Daisy walked in and took the Bible out of his hands.

  “Go away,” she said. “Crying is women’s stuff.” When he didn’t move she looked at him more closely and said, “Breathe, Blaise,” and he sucked in a deep breath. “Now go away.”

  He stood up and she took his place on the bed. She pulled out a tissue and gently blotted Gertrude’s tears away. “I know he’s awful,” she teased, “but you shouldn’t cry like this. You need all the liquid you’ve got; the doctor said so.”

  Gertrude kept crying silently, the tears sliding down her cheeks faster now, and Linc felt like hell.

  “What did you say?” Daisy asked Linc, but she wasn’t accusing him, thank God. “What were you talking about?”

  “My dad.” Linc took another deliberate breath. “And I told her I thought she should move down here so we could take care of her.”

  He watched Daisy’s eyebrows go up in surprise, and then she said, “Of course. That’s a good idea. Go away now. Make some tea.”

  He didn’t understand, but he went downstairs and made tea for all of them and found cookies that Daisy had made that day, and when he went back upstairs half an hour later, he met her coming out of her room.

  “She’s sleeping.” She put her hand on his cheek. “You poor baby. Are you all right?”

  Linc slumped against the wall. “She’s never said things like that before.”

  She let her hand fall from his cheek to his shoulder, and he missed the comfort of her palm on his face. “She’s sick,” Daisy told him. “It makes people feel vulnerable. They say things they keep hidden when they’re feeling strong. Let’s have the tea downstairs.” She took the tray from him and led him back downstairs, and he watched her and remembered his mother’s loneliness, and thought, What am I going to do when she leaves? The thought was so bleak that he even drank tea with her although he hated the stuff.

  Linc’s mother got steadily stronger and never referred to that evening again. But they finished Job, and Linc felt as though a knotted place inside had been freed. It shouldn’t matter now, after all these years, that his mother loved him, had loved him then, and was sorry that she hadn’t loved him more, but it did. For the first time he saw her as a real person with regrets instead of just a demanding shadow in his life, and when he let himself care about her, the world around him became an easier place.

  The last thing she said to him before she left at the end of the week was “Take care of Daisy. She is so good for you.”

  “I will.” He kissed her good-bye gently. “Take care of yourself. If you feel sick again, we’ll come up and get you. Are you sure you don’t want to move down here?”

  “I am sure.” She put her hand on his cheek as she must have seen Daisy do half a dozen times that week. Another surprise. “You must take care of yourself too. You are very pale.”

  “I’m always pale.” He kissed her cheek. “Be careful on the drive home.”

  Daisy heaved a sigh of relief when Gertrude was gone. She liked her, but sleeping with Linc for a week had been too difficult. It wasn’t just that he had a nice, large, hard body, the kind of body a woman could hold on to during great, cataclysmic sex. She’d never actually had great, cataclysmic sex, but she was sure that was what she’d have with Linc. No, it wasn’t just his body, it was more that he was Linc, stubborn, brilliant, kind, rude, fascinating Linc, who scratched Jupiter’s tummy while he watched the game on TV and crooned dumb dog songs to him during the commercials. She’d heard him once singing, “Daisy Blaise had a real dumb dog, and Jupiter was his name/Oh, Ju-Ju-Ju-pi-ter/Ju-Ju-Ju-pi-ter/Ju-Ju-Ju-pi-ter/And Jupiter was his name, oh.” When she’d looked in, Jupiter was on his back in Linc’s lap, waving his legs languidly in all directions while Linc scratched his stomach. They both looked ridiculous and she loved them both so much, she felt tears start in her eyes.

  There were so many layers to Linc, and they were all inside that great body. She definitely had to get out of his bed. And she wasn’t sleeping well. Between her concern for Gertrude and her lust for Linc, it had been a rough week. Well, at least it was all over and they could get back to normal living. She went into the dining room and found Linc sitting at the table.

  “What are you doing? Are you hungry?” she asked, and he turned his pale face to her, and she saw his eyes were dulled. She felt his forehead. It was burning.

  Terrific. “You have the flu. Get into bed. I’ll call Evan. He can proctor your finals.”

  “I’m all right,” he said, and she said, “No, this is contagious. You stay home. Go upstairs.”

  Daisy couldn’t decide whether Linc was sicker than Gertrude, or if it was just that he hated being sick so much that he seemed sicker. She brought him books and tea and soup and the radio and the TV, and he still thrashed around feverishly unless she was in the room with him. She read to him from his history books, and her voice seemed to calm him, the words keeping his mind off his aches until he got so sick, he didn’t care anymore.

  His fever went up, and one night she woke up and found him standing dazed in the hallway.

  “What are you doing?” she scolded him. “Back into bed.”

  “I thought it was midnight.”

  “It’s three-thirty, and even if it was midnight, you’re still not supposed to be wandering around.”

  “I thought you’d gone,” he said, and she realized he’d thought it was Cinderella’s midnight.

  “No. I won’t leave you. Get back into bed.”

  She tucked him back in and he said, “Come in here with me. I’m cold,” and she slipped into bed beside him and held him next to her warmth until he was quiet again.

  In the morning his fever had broken, and hers began.

  Linc still felt like hell the next day, but he knew just by looking at Daisy that she was worse.

  “I can get up.” She pulled weakly at his arm. “You’re still sick.”

  “I’m not that sick.” Linc put his hand on her cheek. “I’m all right. Get back in bed.”

  “No.” She had crawled out of bed and staggered past him out onto the landing. When she turned to go down the stairs, she put out her hand for the rail and missed, and as she fell forward, Linc caught her and picked her up, his heart pounding from the adrenaline rush he’d gotten when she’d started to topple. He carried her into her room and pulled back the covers and made her crawl into bed, and then he popped the thermometer into her mouth.

  “Stay there.” He tucked in the covers tightly around her. “I’ll put water on for tea.”

  He could tell Daisy wanted to argue, but she was too sick.
Linc sympathized; he’d never felt as bad in his life as he had the past week. No wonder his mother had cried. He brought a tray of tea and crackers up and put it on the table. Then he checked her temperature. “One hundred and one.” He shook the thermometer down and put it in his own mouth and crawled in bed beside her.

  “That’s got my germs on it,” Daisy said, and he looked at her with disdain over the thermometer. “Oh, right. We’ve got the same thing.”

  A minute later he took the thermometer out and looked at it. “Just under one hundred. That’s lower than yesterday, right?”

  “Right.” She closed her eyes. “You were one-oh-two yesterday.”

  “Good. I’m the one getting better, so I’m the boss.”

  “Ha.”

  “Shut up. We’re going to be smart about this. We’re going to sleep and drink juice and tea until we float, and we are not going to go charging around like we’re healthy when we know we’re not.”

  “Does we mean you too?”

  “Of course it means me too. What did you think it was, the royal we?”

  “I thought maybe it was one of those nurse things. I feel awful; do you feel awful?”

  “Yes.” He put his arm around her. “Where does it hurt?”

  “I just ache all over, like somebody’s been beating up on me.”

  “That’s the fever. Go to sleep.”

  “Yes, Linc.” She rolled over closer to him, to snuggle against his side.

  He kissed her forehead. It felt as if it were on fire. “I’m sorry, poor baby,” he said.

  By the next day Linc’s temperature was back to normal. Daisy’s rose to 102 and stayed there, and Linc called the doctor, frantic with worry.

  “If it goes higher, we’ll hospitalize her,” Dr. Banks said. “But she should be able to ride this out.”

  Hospitalize her.

  He went upstairs and looked at her sweating in her sleep. Daisy in a hospital. He crawled in bed beside her and held her, and she sighed and snuggled closer, still asleep, and he put his cheek on her hair and was afraid.

  People called for Daisy.

  Chickie was distraught, but Linc absolutely refused to let her in the house. “It’s really contagious. She’d be frantic if she thought you might get it. You know how she feels about you.”

  “Oh, Linc.” Chickie started to cry.

  “I’ll call you when the fever’s gone,” he promised. “You can come over and try to keep her in bed then.” Chickie had to be content with that.

  The kids were equally unhappy.

  “Can’t we just stand in the yard and wave to her through the window?” Andrew asked.

  “She wouldn’t recognize you. This is a bad fever. But I’ll tell her you’re all concerned. And I’ll call you as soon as the fever’s gone so you can all come back.”

  “That’s really nice of you,” Andrew said. “I know you’re not crazy about having us all over there.”

  Linc felt as if he’d been hit. He searched for something to say. “Actually, I miss having you around. There are no cookies, and you’ve all spoiled Jupiter so rotten that he expects attention all the time. I’ll call you the minute her fever breaks, trust me.”

  Bill called. “I heard about Daisy. This is rotten timing. I just found out that the little jerk I’d saved the January show for has decided painting is no longer his life. When she wakes up, tell her she’s got that show if she wants it. Even if she doesn’t want it, actually. I’m in a bind here.”

  “She wants it,” Linc said. “Go ahead, set it up. I’ll tell her as soon as she’s lucid again.”

  Art came to the door, and Linc refused to let him in.

  “Just let me see she’s all right.” Art’s face was drawn with worry.

  Linc felt a spurt of anger and then Art’s obviously real concern got to him. At least he got to see her; Art wasn’t even going to get that. “Look, I can’t let you in. The doctor is worried about this getting out. I swear he comes to see her every day.”

  “Take care of her.” Art looked at him with distrust.

  “I am,” Linc said. “Believe me, I am.”

  He’d tried to sleep in his own room the first night, but he was too worried about her, and when he finally crawled into her bed and held her close, she slept better, without moaning or tossing, so he convinced himself that it was better that he stay with her and hold her. In the few moments that she was lucid, she worried about him.

  “You’re so pale,” she said weakly. “Are you eating?”

  “Yes. Vegetable soup. Do you want some?”

  But she’d eat only a little and then fall back into feverish dreams. Sometimes she’d cry out and then he’d hold her, wishing he knew what she was so afraid of so he could fix it. For the first time in his life, his schedule was completely disrupted and he was getting no work done, and he didn’t care. When at the end of the week her temperature finally dropped, he was so relieved he walked around the house smacking his hand against the doorframes.

  Midway through the week of her flu, Daisy got up in the middle of the night and went into the studio to paint. She’d been dreaming of Linc and of painting, dreaming of how much she loved him and wanted him, and of how much she wanted to paint in big, passionate strokes, of all the things she couldn’t think about too much when she was healthy because she was afraid. The fever made her dizzy, but it also made her forget her fear, and she dragged one of the big canvases she’d stretched out of the corner and began to lay in charcoal lines for a portrait of Linc, blocking in his shoulders and his brow and jawline and his arms and hands. The next night she began to paint him, not in her usual meticulously detailed strokes, but in huge slashes of yellow and orange and red, full of strength and menace and passion and heat. She knew exactly what she was doing, and the fever drove her on. She painted for three nights straight while Linc slept exhausted from caring for her, and on the fourth night her fever broke.

  She went into the studio and stared at the canvas. The portrait was huge and glowing and more sexual than she could ever have imagined herself painting; it was everything she’d thought about Linc and repressed, and if it felt good to have it all out, it was terrifying to look at it. She took the painting down from her easel and turned it against the wall, and put the other large canvas in its place.

  You did it once sick, you can do it again healthy, she told herself, and began to draw on the canvas in charcoal, tentatively at first and then gradually using the same large, sweeping lines that she’d used to draw the first portrait. She loaded a four-inch brush with paint and laid on big patches of black and blue and gray and white, blocking in mass and light. When the dawn broke, she wiped the paint from her fingers and crawled back into bed.

  “How are you?” Linc asked her when she woke at noon that day. He sat down beside her on the bed, holding a tray on his lap.

  “I’m fine.” Daisy leaned her head forward. “Feel.”

  He put his hand on her forehead, and all the tension went out of him when it was cool under his hand. He put the thermometer in her mouth. “If you’re normal, you’re well,” he said, and then he laughed. Daisy was never normal.

  When he took the thermometer out a minute later, she said, “That’s not soup, is it?”

  “Chicken noodle. Excellent for invalids. Ninety-eight point six. Good girl, Magnolia.”

  Daisy looked mulish. “I want a hamburger with onions and pickle and mustard and tomato.”

  “A hamburger? Daize, I don’t think—”

  Daisy set her jaw. “I want french fries. I want onion rings. I want a large, large Coke. I want a chocolate milk shake. I want a hot fudge sundae.”

  Linc started to laugh. “No. You’ll get sick again. Start small. I’ll go get you a hamburger and a Coke, and while I’m gone, you eat the soup.”

  “I don’t want the soup.” Daisy scowled.

  When he was gone, she poured half the bowl of soup into the toilet and flushed away the evidence of her rebellion. Then she went into the studio.


  The portrait of Linc stared back at her, roughed in on the canvas, massive and brooding in gray and white and black. He looked powerful and cold and confident, the Linc she saw every day. The portrait was going to be terrific, she knew that just from the beginnings, and she couldn’t decide why it depressed her so much. You’re just weak from the fever, she told herself, and went back to bed to wait for her hamburger.

  “Did you eat your soup?” Linc asked her when he got back, and she said, “No, I poured it in the john.” She wolfed the hamburger, washing it down with the bubbly Coke with visible pleasure. When she handed him the empty paper cup, she said, “Now I feel like a real person again.”

  “You were always a real person. Don’t get out of bed for a while. You were sicker than Mom and I, so it’s going to take you longer. Sleep, so you don’t have a relapse.”

  He waited until she’d obediently closed her eyes and he could hear her breathing slowly and steadily. Then he went downstairs to deal with the chaos left by their illnesses. They had bills, and yard work, and cleaning, and people coming to stay for Christmas in four days.

  But when he looked into things, there was no chaos. Daisy had made a note of all the things she’d done while he was sick. She’d paid all the bills ahead of time. She’d sent the dry cleaning out, so all he had to do was pick it up. She’d made Christmas tree ornaments and left them in a box on the buffet. She’d hired Andrew to do the yard work, but when Linc called to ask him how much they owed him, Andrew refused to be paid.

  “We all came over and did it together so it was done in a flash. Besides, we wouldn’t take money from you. You’re like family. When can we come back?”

  “Come tomorrow,” Linc said, touched. “I’ll get a tree. We’ll put Daisy on the couch to supervise and you all can decorate.”

  “Great,” Andrew shouted. “Christmas cookies. Eggnog. There are still three of us here. We’re not going home until Friday. Thank you. Oh, boy.”

  “Great,” Linc said, not sure it was. “I’ll get the tree.”

  But he didn’t have to. Daisy had ordered a tree and evergreen swags and several bunches of mistletoe from a farmer who called to say he’d be delivering them that afternoon.