By the Book

by Mary Kay McComas

OKAY, SO SOME PEOPLE had to be hit with baseball bats. It wasn’t going to take more than one good whack on the head for Ellen to figure things out. And okay, so she’d bought a pamphlet from the grocery store and followed the advice in it. That didn’t really make her a fool. So okay! Where did she go from there? How did she go about reclaiming her peace of mind?

  She came awake at dusk feeling a little stronger but no better. She felt restless and disjointed. She sat on the edge of the bed for some time, her mind in a muddle, hating what she’d done to her life and yet easily recalling the frustrations of being too nice.

  Frustration or guilt? They tipped the scale evenly, pushed and pulled with equal force, and there she was in the middle—miserable.

  A shower made things cleaner but no clearer. She couldn’t even decide what to wear. Get dressed? Get ready for bed? Take care of herself or take care of others? Go back to the hospital to be with Felix? Stay home? With the damp towel still wrapped tight about her, she plopped down on the edge of the bed and fell backward with her arms spread wide, her hand brushing the purse she’d stumbled into bed with earlier. Turning her head, she looked at it mindlessly for several minutes, then picked it up, holding it over her head as she unzipped it.

  The teal blue silk spilled out like so much water from a glass and pooled on her bare chest, cool and soft. Untangling the tissue and tossing it aside, she held the gown up in front of her. So beautiful, and such a waste. She sighed. Some seductress she was. She wore T-shirts to bed, flannel in the winter—she was no seductress. She could barely manipulate sheets onto a bed, much less Jonah.

  This was going to be another huge disappointment to him, she thought, sitting up and slipping the silk on over her head—standing and feeling it slither down the curves of her body like a lover’s caress. She looked at herself in the mirror, turned from side to side, smiled. Then she laughed at the thought of having it dry-cleaned every time she wore it. It was beautiful, but it wasn’t her. She wasn’t some tightly wrapped, sophisticated, self-confident vamp who took what she wanted from the world. She was ... Ellen.

  Not a bad person. Not a hurtful person. Not a perfect person. Just Ellen—who liked seeing other people happy, who enjoyed feeling needed, who felt satisfied in knowing she could assert herself when she had to, who didn’t—

  She picked up her head and listened to what she thought was a cat crying somewhere. Bubba crying outside her door? He never did that, she thought, frowning as she, in her teal blue nightgown, went to the door barefoot. He was too lazy to cry when he wanted in or out—he usually just lay there sleeping until someone came along to accommodate him.

  “What’s the matter, baby, are you sick?” she asked him when she opened the door and found him sitting there in no obvious distress. She stooped down. “You hurt? Or just lonely?” He stared at her, making no attempt to scoot by her into the apartment. Another victim of her crusade for change? It was hard to tell with Bubba. “You fiddled around in the doorway too long and she closed it on you, didn’t she?” She sighed, thinking of her own situation. If she fiddled around much longer, Jonah would never get to know the real Ellen. He’d be leaving town eventually, going back to his life. She didn’t want that door to close on her. “Well, it happens sometimes. Want me to go down and get her to open it back up for you?” She wasn’t above making amends to a cat. She frowned on a new thought: maybe he was acting strange because something had happened to Mrs. Phipps. “Let’s go check on her.”

  They walked to the top of the stairs and saw Jonah at the bottom, his foot on the first step. He stood there looking up at her, the concern in his expression almost obliterated by the desire that sprang into his eyes. She felt feverish, going hot and then cold, chills running in waves across her skin. He was so handsome. So tall and strong and sweet and gentle. Her heart felt overly full, the pressure in her chest building until she thought it might rip her apart. She raised her hand to her breast to control it, felt warm skin and silk and suddenly recalled what she was wearing.

  “I ... I wasn’t expecting to see you,” she said, feeling self-conscious. Making a sincere confession in a seductive negligee seemed a little contradictory.

  “You should have been,” he said, moving up to the first step. “I’ve been trying to get you all day.”

  She took a step down, saying, “I forgot to look at my machine. I was tired.”

  He nodded, taking another step up, his eyes riveted. He could barely breathe, she was so beautiful, her skin so pale against the gray-blue silk, her glorious red hair soft and curly, a little damp yet on the ends from her shower. He didn’t know how he continued to speak. “I know. I finally called Mrs. Phipps to see if you’d shown up here. I was surprised you went to work today, and then worried when you went home early.”

  “I’m sorry. I should have called you,” she said, taking another step toward him.

  He shook his head and took another step. “It doesn’t matter. As long as you’re all right. Are you all right?”

  She’d taken one more step down before she started to shake her head at him. “No. I’m not all right. I’m all wrong.”

  He took the rest of the steps two at a time until there was only one between them, and Bubba was sitting on it. On closer inspection Jonah could see that whatever was all wrong about her, it wasn’t physical. There was a sadness in her eyes, but they were clear and bright; and though she was pale, her skin had a warm, healthy glow to it. He couldn’t stop himself from reaching out and touching a flyaway curl near her cheek, nor did he pull his hand away when she inclined her head to meet his touch.

  “You don’t look all wrong,” he said. “You look beautiful.”

  “Appearances can be deceiving,” she said, unwilling to look at him, sure that she couldn’t bear to watch whatever he found beautiful in her fade in his eyes. “And I’ve been deceiving you.”

  His heart stopped and his knees grew weak with foreboding. He felt his world slipping away from him and lowered himself to the step below hers. Deceiving him? Ellen? His heart sputtered and pumped a little blood to his head. That didn’t make sense. His pulse took on a steadier rhythm. Though their relationship was less than a week old, he knew her. Knew her so well, his soul felt every breath she took as if it were his own. Knew her so well that for the first time in his life he hadn’t needed to second-guess himself. Knew her so well, he’d invested every drop of his faith and trust in her. He knew her that well.

  “Deceiving me how?” he asked, convinced now that this was more about her than him, and he was dying to hear it. He wanted her more than any woman he’d ever known. Body and soul. In good times and bad.

  When she looked at him, her expression was so forlorn that had it been another time and place, he would have stood up and fought off dragons and dark knights with his sword for her—but as it was, he had to sit and wait for her to reveal what evil demons were after her.

  “Some people ...” she said, looking away briefly and then back at him, not knowing how to start. She was simply going have to say it. “I’m too nice.” His brows lifted in surprised agreement, but before he could speak, she stopped him. “No, you don’t understand. I’m too nice for my own good sometimes—at least I thought I was. Now I’m not so sure. No, I am. I know I am. So I tried to change. But being someone I’m not didn’t work out very well either—except for my pay raise and this thing with Eugene—unless his feelings are hurt and to tell you the truth I’m not sure if I care about that either, which leads me to believe more of this person that I’m not has rubbed off on me and I’m not at all sure I want that because I’ve hurt just about every person I care about and ...”

  “Ellen. Ellen,” he said hastily when she paused briefly to take in air. “Ellen. Maybe you should start at the beginning.”

  She frowned. The beginning? Where was that? Her birth? Early childhood? She’d been too nice for as long as she could remember. She sighed, then took in a deep breath and started over.

  “I’m a nice person.”

 
“I know you are.”

  “But not just a nice person. I’m too nice.” She’d lost him again, she could tell. He’d reached out to finger her hair while she talked, looking at it as if it were spun gold. She took his hand in hers and held it in her lap. “I don’t honk my horn and flip people off when they pull into a parking space I’ve been waiting five minutes for, and I don’t scream or curse at people who don’t stop to say thank you after I’ve helped them pick up the mountain of cracker boxes their kid knocked over. I didn’t even get mad when I found out Lisa Lee was making more money than me—hurt and disappointed, sure—but not mad. Never mad and never ...” She shook her fist, looking for the right word. “Never ... what?”

  “Irate?”

  “No.”

  “Outraged?”

  “No. Not really.”

  “Then I don’t know.”

  “I don’t either,” she said, giving him a small smile. “What is it that those people have that makes them speak up when someone cuts in line in front of them? I would assume they were in more of a hurry than I was, or had an emergency, or left their kids in the car, or something—not that they were just being rude for the heck of it or that they should be at the end of the line no matter what. You see how I am? See how my mind works?”

  He could tell she was serious about this. “But I like the way your mind works.”

  “Well, I don’t,” she said, leaning back, away from him. She didn’t want his approval. She wanted him to understand. “I’m sick of letting old men go ahead of me in line and watching them win the Anniversary Jackpot. And I’m sick of letting my brother use my apartment like a flophouse every time he gets too drunk to find his way home. I’m sick of people stealing my vacation spots and my parking spaces and my leftover food. And I’m sick of standing aside when someone else shows an interest in a man I’m interested in or a job I want or ... or anything else I want—”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa. Back up a second. What about this man you’re interested in?” Now he was leaning back, away from her and very confused. She’d said they needed to talk but ... No, he couldn’t have been that wrong about her. He just couldn’t have been.

  “That’s what started all this,” she said. She hadn’t meant to get into this can of worms, but now that it was open, why not tip it over and dump everything out? “Well, it wasn’t the only thing, it was like the fuse on the end of a stick of dynamite. You smiled at Vi from across the street and for just a few seconds I thought you were smiling at me and ...” She glared at him. “I wanted you to smile at me, Jonah. I wanted you to see me. But I knew that would never happen once you met Vi, because she’s so—What? Why are you laughing?”

  “Because I did see you. I—”

  “No, don’t. Don’t try to make me feel better. Just listen to me. Stop that,” she said when he sat there grinning at her. “I’m serious about this, but if you don’t want to hear what I have to say ...”

  “No. Sit. Please. I’m sorry. Go on,” he said, bowing his head so she couldn’t see the joy in his eyes, laboring to control his smile. “I want to hear it all.”

  Mildly miffed that he was having such a good time at her expense, she slowly started again. “I understand why men are attracted to bold, self-confident women like Vi. I do. And I don’t blame them. I like Vi. I like the way she goes after what she wants. I like that she’s not afraid to try new things and say what she thinks and do whatever crosses her mind. I’d be like that if I knew how. I just didn’t know how—until I found the little green book.”

  “The little green book?”

  “Well, it’s not even a book really,” she said, and quickly explained how and where and why she’d gotten her primer for personal growth. “You’re not laughing again, are you?”

  “No.” He said it emphatically to convince them both. “I’m not laughing.”

  “And I’m not saying it’s a Bible or anything like that,” she said defensively. “Sometimes it isn’t possible to scratch where it itches at the exact time you’re itching.”

  “What?”

  “Never mind,” she said, feeling a rush of heat in her cheeks. “Some of the steps in that little book were great. Like attitude, I love having an attitude, it’s like pretending you’re somebody else—except it’s hard to use on old ladies or cats. And thinking positive and saying no. Nothing else, just no. And being blunt with people, saying exactly what’s on your mind, even in a nice way. It made me feel so powerful. In control. Even turning left and going that way, which is really just doing the exact opposite of what you’d normally do—that was exciting.”

  “Then what’s the problem? It doesn’t matter where you learned these things, as long as you learned them. There’s nothing wrong with being assertive and self-confident.”

  She shook her head and looked down at her hands again. “That’s not what I learned though. That’s what I thought I was learning, what I wanted to learn, but ... I wasn’t using each step to improve myself. I was using them against other people. People I like. People I love, who are not always convenient to love.” She looked up to see if he knew what she meant by that. His fathomless green eyes were soft with understanding. “I went from being too nice to being not too nice at all. Look what I did to Felix.”

  “What happened to Felix wasn’t your fault,” he said firmly.

  “No. Not all of it. But my part of it was done, not out of love for my brother, but very selfishly to eliminate his problems as quickly as possible because he was being a problem to me. I used positive thinking and a whole lot of attitude to bully him into Krane’s hands. Felix tried to tell me how dangerous he was, but I wouldn’t believe him.”

  “Ellen, that whole situation was a mistake made by everyone involved. And your part in it may just be the only good thing to come of it.”

  “In what way? My brother looks like a truck backed over him. What good can come of that?”

  “Well, for one thing, Officer Ingles said Felix nearly went insane when he heard you’d been within a hundred yards of Krane. You forced him to do the right thing by calling in the cops to protect you.”

  “To protect me?”

  “Your testimony in court would be something Krane would never allow, especially if Felix happened to die as a result of his beating.”

  “You mean, he ... I ...”

  He nodded. “He would have had to kill you too.”

  “And my mom and my sister?” She covered her face with her hands. She hadn’t once considered this aspect of what she’d done, and the enormity of it was too horrible to envision.

  He gently pried her hands away, holding them in his as he said, “That’s not going to happen. It was never going to happen. Felix wouldn’t let it happen. He did the right thing. And now he’s in a safe place, drying out. This could be the best thing that ever happened to him.”

  “Or the worst.”

  “I don’t think so,” he said, and he was probably right, she conceded. If what happened with Krane wasn’t enough to set Felix on the path of the sober and righteous, then he was heading for something much, much worse. When she remained silent, contemplating what might have been, he finally tucked a finger under her chin to raise her eyes to his. They were thoughtful and wise and caring. “You made a mistake, Ellen. We all make mistakes.”

  She gave a slight nod. “I know. I just don’t think I’ve ever made quite so many in one week before. It’s ... overwhelming,” she said with a small smile. “Even little Mrs. Phipps. I told her no, over and over again. And not because I didn’t want to have tea with her, but because I was using all my lunch hours shopping for her. And she was just lonely, just using the groceries as an excuse to get me to come have tea with her. I should have guessed. I should have told her it wasn’t necessary and just had tea with her most afternoons, maybe shopped for her once a week or something. We could have worked things out if I hadn’t acted so selfishly.”

  “Mrs. Phipps loves you. She’ll understand. She’ll forgive you. It was just another mist
ake and you’ve learned from it, so it wasn’t really a mistake.” She looked at him and he grinned. “It was a learning experience.”

  “Oh,” she said, smiling, wishing she really could see more of the humor in it. He was right though, about making mistakes and learning from them. Being brave and daring enough to take what she wanted from the world was new to her; she was bound to make a few mistakes at first. Even the little green book advised aiming straight and choosing battles carefully. Maybe she just needed more practice. “And what about the mistake I made with you?”

  “Meeting me wasn’t a mistake,” he said, beaming at her.

  “No, but pretending to be something I wasn’t was. Pretending to be bolder and more self-confident than I was, so you wouldn’t know how nervous I was or how excited I was to be with you.” She looked down at the teal blue silk draped gracefully over her legs. “Carrying this thing around in my purse, planning to seduce you the first chance I got. That was ...”

  “You had this in your purse?”

  She nodded, shamefaced. “I just wanted to prove to myself that I could have someone like you in my life. I wanted you to think I was as sophisticated and capable as the other women you’ve known. That I wasn’t just some too-nice person who had a quiet little job in a quiet little bank in a quiet little town that you could forget the second you were back in Washington.”

  “You had this in your purse?” he asked, his mind stuck on the idea.

  “Yes.”

  “You were planning to seduce me?”

  “Yes.” The look on his face made her smile and released a thousand tiny butterflies in her stomach. “We had dinner with Felix instead.”

  He groaned and made a face that caused her to chuckle while he reached out to rub the silk between his fingers, his knuckles grazing the warm, soft skin above her sternum. Her heart started beating so fast, she thought she heard it whirring.

  “I love this color,” he said.

  “I know.”

  His gaze met hers, held it in an unbreakable bond that would link his soul to hers for all time. Despite the turmoil in her heart at present, below it lay the rock-solid base of love and kindness she was born with, and the peace and acceptance he’d yearned for all his life. There was no way for her to hide it, or change it, or destroy it. It would temper every step she took in life and reshape the world as he knew it.