Emerald Windows

by Terri Blackstock

  “Why?” Nick’s face reddened as he brought his eyes to hers, and she could hear the anger in his voice. “Why should we hold onto them?”

  His hand whipped across the pages, ripping the heart out of the drawing. “We might as well just rip them all up!”

  “No!” Brooke grabbed both his hands and held them. “Don’t, Nick,” she cried. “They’re ours. The church can stop us from designing them for this building, but they can’t keep us from creating them somewhere else. Don’t tear them up, Nick. Please.”

  He looked at her then, his eyes softening. Nick regarded the torn drawing in his hands helplessly and dropped down onto a stool. “We can’t do this anyplace else,” he said in a metallic voice. “It wouldn’t be the same. This building is perfect for them.”

  Brooke wouldn’t give up. “It would work if we tried hard enough to make it work,” she whispered. “If God was with us.”

  If God was with us.

  The significance of her words struck him full force. Was this the first seed of her faith? Had it been planted? Was it taking root? Was she beginning to believe?

  If God was with us.

  He swallowed and tried to find the words to voice his thoughts. “You know, a few years ago when I became a Christian, it all came together for me. My art…my gift…I knew God planned for me to use it to His glory. It never occurred to me that any part of it could be about money. I knew the Bible said the workman is worthy of his wages, so I didn’t have any guilt about taking payment for my work, but that wasn’t the force behind it, you know?” He raked a rough hand through his hair and shook his head. “Now, I’ve made so much money on my work that I expect to make money on it. It’s almost like I can’t conceive of doing it just for the love of it. And when it starts to be about money, somebody who knows nothing about my calling can always come along and take it away.”

  “I know,” she said, leaning her back wearily against the table and gazing off into the distance as memories gave an extra clarity to her life. “Looking back, I see that my deepest expression, my most intense work, was on the sculpture of the hands. I haven’t been that absorbed in my work since then, but I’ve made a lot of money. And I never dreamed, while I was working on it, that that sculpture would ever be worth a cent.”

  Nick set his palms down on the tabletop. “My family was so down on my being an artist that I always felt I could prove my worth by putting a big dollar sign on it. But these windows meant so much to me.” He looked at her with sad eyes. “I would have done them for free, Brooke.”

  Brooke inclined her head and inhaled a breath that seemed weighted with the tragedy in Nick’s eyes. “So would I,” she admitted. “But our salaries were only half of it. It costs thousands to construct windows like these.”

  Nick’s eyes lit up like lanterns that had suddenly been turned on to flood the night. “Do you mean it, Brooke?” he asked. “Or are you just saying it because you know it’s moot now?”

  “Saying what?” she asked. “That I would have done it for free? Of course, but…”

  Nick’s heart leapt as an idea came to him. He grabbed her shoulders and sat her down on the couch, then stooped in front of her. “I have no right to ask this,” he whispered, breathless with brimming excitement, “but I’m going to. Would you consider— even consider—staying here and finishing this project without pay…if we could come up with the money somehow to finance the windows?”

  “How?” Brooke asked. “We can’t get our hands on that kind of money.”

  “If we could, would you stay?” he asked again. “If somehow the money just appeared for the supplies, would you help me finish the job?”

  Something in the intensity of his voice told her that the money would appear from somewhere. Her eyes slowly widened with excitement. “Yes, I’ll stay,” she whispered. “I’ll help you finish the windows.”

  “We’ll get the money,” he promised. “Horace said that we weren’t fired. Our budget just wasn’t approved. If we got the money, we could stay. Would you do it?”

  “Yes,” Brooke said, almost inaudibly. “Count me in.”

  CHAPTER

  BROOKE’S MOTHER WAS WAITING up when she came home that night. Brooke stepped into the dimly lit living room and set her things on the telephone table. “Mom, you didn’t have to wait up for me,” she said quietly.

  “I heard about the decision of the church Finance Committee tonight,” her mother said apprehensively. Along with that apprehension was an unmistakable, if subtle, note of relief. “I wanted to see how you took it.”

  Brooke sat down next to her mother. “Well, we’ve decided not to roll over and play dead. As a matter of fact, Nick and I are going to try to get the money on our own and do the project without pay. So I won’t be leaving just yet.”

  “Oh?” Her mother brought her hand to the collar of her robe, idly stroking the velour. “Brooke, won’t that be a lot of money? You aren’t going to borrow it, I hope.”

  Brooke almost laughed, but the subject was far from funny. “Borrow it? Not a bank in this country would loan money for something like this, especially when the Finance Committee isn’t behind it. It isn’t like there’s any kind of return on our investment. No, whatever we put into it, we have no hope of getting back. At least, not monetarily.”

  Brooke could see her mother bristling as she stood up and paced across the room, struggling to keep her mouth shut despite her reservations. “Then how?” she finally asked. “You don’t have that kind of money, do you?”

  “No,” Brooke said. “But we’ll get it from somewhere. I know we will.”

  Her mother turned around slowly, regarding Brooke as if she’d lost all good sense. But for the first time in her life, Brooke realized that it didn’t matter whether her mother understood or not. “I know I said that I wouldn’t nag,” her mother said, trying to keep her tone even. “But I don’t want to see you do something stupid in the name of…of…”

  “In the name of God, I think,” Brooke provided quietly.

  The word seemed to bring her mother’s spirits down further. “Oh, Brooke,” she said. “I didn’t know you even believed in God.”

  Brooke looked up at her. “You never taught me to believe in much of anything, Mom. Least of all, myself.” She sighed, got up, and met her mother face to face. “I’m not real sure I believe now. But what if He does exist? What if we’re all wrong? And what if He’s been in control of my life all along, watching over me and taking care of me even when I don’t give Him a thought? What if He’s the one who brought me back here, so I could put my past behind me? So I could finally move on?”

  “Brooke, I think your coming back here had more to do with Nick Marcello than God.”

  The comment didn’t even make Brooke angry. “You know, Mom, the thing about not believing in God is that, when things go wrong, they’re hopeless. There’s no place to turn. I wouldn’t think you and Dad would want that for me…or for Roxy.”

  “Believing in something that doesn’t exist doesn’t change your life, Brooke. And it won’t regenerate your bank account after you’ve poured everything into those windows.”

  “It’s not coming out of my bank account. I don’t have nearly enough. My car isn’t worth much, and I rent my apartment, so there’s nothing to mortgage. Even if I sold everything I owned, it wouldn’t begin to get us started.”

  “But Brooke, if you don’t have the money, how can you—?”

  “The money will come from somewhere,” she cut in before her mother’s negative words could weaken her fledgling faith. “And if it does…I think I have no choice but to believe.”

  With a sigh, her mother dropped into a chair across the room. Her face was as strained as if she carried the weight of the galaxy on her shoulders.

  “Has Roxy heard about the church’s decision?” Brooke asked quietly to change the subject.

  Her mother shook her head. “No. Roxy had gone out before I got the call. She had a date.”

  “A date?”
Brooke asked, her face burning in sudden anger. Had Roxy actually gone out with Bill tonight, after Brooke had confronted her? Had he actually had the nerve to see her, knowing that Brooke knew?

  “Yes,” her mother said absently. “With a boy named Sonny. I met him when he picked her up. I was a little worried about the motorcycle, but he brought her a helmet. He seemed like a nice boy.”

  Relief stole the fury from Brooke’s eyes. “I know Sonny,” she said. “He is a nice boy. Very nice.”

  Brooke’s mother just looked at her, and she knew that she yearned to ask more questions about her work with Nick. Finally, knowing that more conversation would only wind up in argument, Brooke kissed her distraught mother goodnight and went to her room.

  Her room was already aglow with the little lamp in the corner, lighting Infinity like a halo. Brooke stepped in and closed the door behind her. She picked up the hands, held them against her heart and lay down on her bed. She had sculpted it selflessly, out of love and not for recognition, and Nick had helped her, with no thought of payment or reward. The competition for the scholarship had seemed secondary. The hands had been a labor of love, and had given her a reason to go on day after day…

  And they could do it again, she suddenly realized.

  Helena at the gallery offered me twenty-five thousand for it. Nick’s words came back to her, reminding her that there was something she could sell. Something worth far more to her than mere dollars.

  Why didn’t you sell it?

  Because it wasn’t mine…

  Now, holding the sculpture in her hands, Brooke wondered if Infinity was really hers to sell. Wasn’t it really theirs? Hadn’t she created it, if only unconsciously, as a symbol for that nameless bond between them seven years ago that had changed the course of their lives and, now, had led them right back to where they’d started?

  No, she couldn’t sell it. There must be another way.

  But if there wasn’t, what would happen? Would she be able to put the windows off long enough, perhaps, to do some expensive panels for her best clients in Columbia, long enough to save that impossible sum of money?

  Brooke set the sculpture down and heaved a great sigh, realizing that since she’d been here, she hadn’t even called her machine at home once to see if anything pressing had come up. Since she might have to get her job back sooner than she’d thought, she strolled barefoot into Roxy’s dark room, picked up her extension, and dialed her home phone number in Columbia.

  Her own voice greeted her, the voice of someone she hardly remembered, someone empty, someone lonely, running as fast as her memories could chase her. She pressed out her code on the push-button dial, and heard the beep that followed.

  A shiver coursed through her as she recognized the gravelly voice. “Uh…it’s Nick. I called the motel and you’d checked out.” She sat up straighter, listening to the message that must have been recorded the night she’d checked into the Bluejay Inn. “I hope you haven’t gone home, Brooke. It’s too important to give up on that easily…the windows, I mean. Don’t give up, Brooke. It’s worth whatever it takes to see it through.” There was an eloquent pause, and finally he said again. “I really hope you haven’t gone home.”

  She hung up the phone without even listening for the rest of her messages and sat in the dark, letting the warmth of Nick’s voice envelope her, making her decision more clear.

  Slowly she went back into her room and looked down at the sculpture, knowing finally that Nick had given her the strength to do what was necessary.

  It’s worth whatever it takes to see it through, he had said. And he was right. It was worth it. She and Nick had had two beginnings. Tomorrow she would sell the sculpture to buy her chance at an ending…an ending that both of them could live with.

  CHAPTER

  SONNY AND ROXY WALKED ALONG the courtyard outside the little strip of restaurants where they’d eaten. A fountain played in the center, spraying up, then cascading down, frivolous and frothy. “I tried to hide it from them,” he was saying, “but when they found what I’d been working on, I realized that it was stupid, pretending that I don’t care about it.”

  “Why don’t they want you to paint?” Roxy asked. She had been disinterestedly quiet when Sonny first picked her up, but over the course of the evening she had found him so comfortable to be with that he had coaxed her out of her shell. Now she found herself able to talk to him freely. And even more surprisingly, she found herself actually interested in what he was saying.

  “They think it’ll keep me from working with my pop. It’s what I’m supposed to do, see? Be an electrician and work in Pop’s business.” He paused and looked toward the fountain. “My great-grandfather was the only one in the family who ever thought art was worthwhile. I never knew him— he died right after I was born—but he’s the one who left Nick that car. The way Nick treats it, you’d think Grandpa’s spirit was sewn into the upholstery or something.” He shrugged, picked up a pebble from the side of the fountain and tossed it in. “I guess, in a way, Nick is doing for me what Grandpa did for him.”

  “Nick?” Roxy asked. “What’s he doing?”

  Sonny shrugged. “He believes in me,” he said. “He’s the only one who thinks I’ve got something.”

  Roxy sat on the fountain’s edge, looking down at her feet with listless eyes. “Sometimes maybe it’s best not to encourage talent, if it’s only going to wind up defeating you.”

  “Hey.” Sonny leaned over her, touching her nose with a fingertip. “It can’t defeat you if you don’t let it.”

  “Sometimes people don’t have a choice,” Roxy said. “Sometimes life has a way of just dragging you along by the throat.”

  Sonny chuckled, making her despair seem thinner and less significant. “I don’t know who you’ve been hanging out with, Rox, but it doesn’t have to be that way.” He took her hand and pulled her to her feet. She couldn’t help looking at him.

  “Have you ever had a dream?” he asked. “Or a talent that you just had to go after, no matter what anybody else said?”

  Roxy’s smile was almost too subtle to see. “I’m no artist, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Something else, then,” he said. “Hey, I’ll bet you can sing. Go ahead, hum a few bars.”

  Roxy laughed for the second time in months. “No, I can’t sing. And I can’t play an instrument. And I can’t act.” She smiled up at him, saw that he wasn’t relenting and, almost embarrassed, lowered her gaze to study her feet. “But…I used to like to dance. Once, I wanted to be a ballerina.”

  “A ballerina?” he said, inclining his head in awe. “Have you studied ballet?”

  “Until about a year ago,” Roxy said. “But my teacher kept making me dance solo in the recitals…” Her smile faded as the memory came back to her of one particular man sitting in the audience. “I was always really self-conscious about all those people looking at me…so I quit.”

  “You quit?” Sonny asked, astounded. “Just because of that?”

  She shrugged. “It was a big thing to me.”

  Sonny leaned against the brick wall, a poignant smile on his lips. “Do you ever dance anymore? When you’re by yourself, I mean?”

  Roxy grinned at him self-consciously, wondering how he’d managed to make the awkwardness pass. “You’ll laugh.”

  “No, I won’t. Scout’s honor,” Sonny said. “‘Course, I’m not a scout, but…if you do, we have more in common than I thought. I paint alone in my room. Because, you know, you don’t have to have someone’s approval to be good. All you need is your own judgment.” He pushed away from the wall, and took her hands out of her pockets, held one over her head in a crude ballerina pose. “Dance for me, Roxy,” he entreated softly, not making fun of her, and not diminishing the art she loved. “I’ll bet you’re a beautiful dancer.”

  Roxy laughed nervously and shook her head. “I can’t…really. It’s been a long time.”

  “Come on, just a few steps,” he coaxed. “I’ll show you my p
ainting if you do.”

  Roxy wet her lips, looked up at him, and realized that the balls and chains she had felt weighing her down before she’d come out with Sonny tonight didn’t seem to be dragging her down just then. She felt light with him, and for a moment she was able to forget her fear and shame and guilt and heartache. For the moment, she just wanted to dance.

  Roxy stepped back, stood on her toes, and did a soft pirouette, lowered into a plié, then ended in a delicate curtsy.

  Sonny threw both hands over his heart and stepped back, grinning with delight. “Oh, Rox, you’ve got to start dancing again. That’s too nice to waste.”

  Roxy bit her lip, wondering why she wasn’t embarrassed. “Thank you,” she whispered. “Now you have to keep your part of the bargain and show me your painting.”

  “Okay,” Sonny said. “But my moves aren’t nearly as graceful as yours.”

  They rode his motorcycle back to Sonny’s garage apartment, and Roxy knew he could feel her hand shaking as he held it and led her in. Something in her head warned her that she could be walking into trouble…that men could not be trusted…that they were all ruled by rampant hormones instead of the heart. But somewhere deep inside, instinct told her that Sonny was indeed different and that he could be trusted.

  He turned on the light, robbing the room of its mystery, and closed the door behind him. “Ain’t much,” he said, “but it’s mine. At least, until my folks kick me out.”

  Roxy smiled. “So, where’s the painting?”

  Sonny lifted the spread on his bed, slid out the canvas lying face up on the floor beneath it. He held it up, its back to her, and assessed it himself one last time. Finally, reluctantly, he turned it around to show her.

  Roxy stepped closer, surveying the detail of the house depicted there. There was a Norman Rockwell poignancy to the faces of the people around it, emotion in every stroke. “It’s got so much,” she whispered. “So many stories in this one little canvas. So many feelings.” She looked up at him, surprise in her eyes as she regarded him in a new light. “Sonny, have your parents seen this? I mean, really looked at it?”