Pictures of Emily

by Weir, Theresa

  “I’ve never seen my own, but Greta—she’s a midwife with second sight—she told me it’s blue.”

  “Blue.”

  “Not light blue and not dark blue but somewhere in between. Blue means…” Well, she could hardly tell him that blue meant she was a loving person. “Blue is a good color, too.”

  He shook his head. “I’ve never met anybody like you.”

  “You don’t believe me, do you? About the colors?” She knew he wouldn’t. He came from a world where everything was based on reality, on things that could be seen and felt and held in one’s hands.

  “It doesn’t surprise me,” he said. “When I first saw you, I thought you were a mermaid…someone magic and mystical.”

  “I’m real.”

  “I know.” He sighed, then smiled. And the smile held a trace of the longing she’d thought she’d seen earlier, and it also seemed to hold a trace of regret.

  He looked down the hallway, past her. “You’d better run along,” he told her. “Before somebody sees you with me.”

  She suddenly realized she didn’t want to tell him goodbye. She would have liked to get to know him better. She would have liked to make him smile, maybe even make him laugh because she was sure he didn’t laugh very often.

  But they were worlds apart. She was a fisherman’s daughter who made pretty kites. He was famous, a beautiful man who made the world sigh.

  She managed to pull forth a brave smile, managed to look directly into his storm-colored eyes.

  “Goodbye, Sonny Maxwell.” She pressed the jacket into his hands. “Thank you.”

  He stood there, regarding her with a calm, world-weariness. She wished she could change things and be the person to plant a bit of hope in his fallow heart.

  Since she was the daughter of a fisherman and a child of the sea, she said, “I hope that someday you find a boat that takes you where you want to go.”

  He smiled a little at that.

  Not waiting for an answer where there was none, she turned and hurried away so he wouldn’t see her tears.

  * * *

  Sonny watched Emily go. He’d never wanted much in his life, but he suddenly wanted to stop her and ask her to stay a little longer, to talk to him about her magic colors, to lighten his darkness a little more.

  But he didn’t reach out for people.

  If you don’t reach out, your hand can’t get knocked away.

  The day his mother had taken him to the boardinghouse, he’d cried for her. A woman he’d never seen before, a woman with a harsh face and cruel eyes, had come and told him his mother didn’t want him.

  Nobody wants you.

  Nobody wants you.

  Nobody wants you.

  Sonny stared down the empty hallway—and felt something he hadn’t felt in a long time. Loss.

  * * *

  The next day, Sonny sent his luggage on ahead to the boat while he checked out of the hotel. When he stepped outside, a gust of damp sea air lifted his hair and crept down the collar of his jacket. His eyes turned to the sky above the wharfs end, searching for a glimmer of color—for Emily’s kite. For the first time since coming to St. Genevieve he could detect no bright splash against the slate gray of the sky. He strained his eyes, but the kite wasn’t there.

  Doreen stopped beside him, her gaze following his, settling on the ferryboat that waited in the harbor. “Back to civilization,” she said, satisfaction in her voice. “Back to cement sidewalks and neon lights. Traffic jams and cable TV.”

  Sonny was only half listening, his thoughts on Emily and the absent kite. He turned to Doreen. “Why don’t you go to the dock without me? I’ve got to check on something.”

  The satisfaction in Doreen’s face was replaced by irritation. “The boat leaves in an hour. If you miss it, you’ll be stuck here another week.” She shuddered, from the chill or the thought of being stuck on the island, he didn’t know. Maybe both.

  “If I don’t make it back in time, I’ll hire a boat to take me to the mainland.”

  She grumbled and drew her head lower in her coat, like a turtle drawing into its shell.

  Sonny didn’t linger. Hunching his shoulders against the wind, he turned and headed for the narrow cobblestone street that led to the village kite-maker’s shop.

  He’d been by it more than a few times. It was a bright spot of color in an otherwise drab alley.

  On the way, he passed a few people who looked as if they might be mainlanders getting an early start on the tourist season.

  The narrow shop window was full of colorful kites. Fantasies and dreams. Emily’s kites were like none he’d ever seen. He could imagine how they would capture the heart and imagination of a child.

  There were unicorns and fairies, a huge butterfly, an unfamiliar winged creature—possibly a product of Emily’s imagination. And there was a dragon, not as big as the one Emily had been flying the day she’d fallen into the ocean, but a dragon all the same, complete with bumpy tail and fiery eyes.

  If I had a child, he thought, I’d buy her one of Emily’s kites.

  He turned the ornate gold knob and pushed a shoulder against the heavy wooden door. A bell jangled above his head as he stepped inside.

  Once again he felt the strange sensation he’d felt upon entering Emily’s house—the sensation of stepping into another world, maybe even another time. But here the feeling was enhanced and made a little mysterious by the heavy scent of fabric dye and damp, ancient wood.

  It wasn’t Emily who stepped from the small back room, but Claire.

  She looked up at him, not with the hero worship this time, but worry. Her hands were twisting the hem of her shirt. “Emily’s sick, so I’m watching the shop,” she told him.

  “Sick?”

  “She’s home in bed.”

  Claire chewed her bottom lip, as if wondering if she should say more. She stared up at him with her long-lashed green eyes. “Papa doesn’t believe in doctors,” she suddenly blurted out. “Not since Mama died. And anyway, there’s no doctor on St. Genevieve.”

  Sonny’s heart thudded in his chest.

  Claire’s mouth began to tremble and her huge eyes filled with tears. “I’m worried. This morning when I went in to see why Emily wasn’t up yet she didn’t even know who I was.”

  Claire began to cry. “I-I tried to put out her kite like she always does, but the wind kept making it fold shut, and I didn’t want to lose it. Emily has always put out the kite. For years and years. And now I’m afraid if the kite’s not out something bad might happen to Emily!”

  Good Lord. Doreen had been right about these people and their superstitions.

  Sonny wanted to run to Emily’s house, but he couldn’t leave the distraught Claire alone. He helped her lock up the shop, then she followed him to the harbor, where Doreen was waiting impatiently.

  “Here—”

  He shoved the folded kite into Doreen’s hands. “Help Claire put this up.”

  “What is it?”

  “A kite.”

  “Are you crazy?”

  “Maybe. Probably. Look, I can’t explain, but make them wait. Whatever happens, don’t let the boat leave without me.”

  Then, leaving Claire with a bewildered Doreen, he hurried to Emily’s house.

  On the way there, he’d told himself that this was none of his business, that he had no claim on Emily Christian. But maybe he did. He’d pulled her from the ocean, hadn’t he? Maybe that gave him some kind of right. He didn’t know. He only knew that he’d spent his life on the outside looking in, and that now, for the first time since early childhood, he felt the need to step in and get involved.

  His knock was answered by Tilly. Babbie poked her head out from behind her. It struck him that Tilly didn’t look half as confident as she’d looked the other night. She seemed a little humble and subdued.

  Worried. Like Claire.

  “Emily’s sick,” she said. “And Daddy’s gone to get her some cough medicine.”

  “I know E
mily’s sick. I came to see her.”

  Tilly seemed relieved to have an adult on whom to relinquish responsibility. “She’s upstairs. Come on.”

  Emily’s room was the first on the right at the top of the stairs. The shades were pulled; a lamp near the bed partially illuminated the sheet-draped figure on the bed.

  It looked like a scene from a wake.

  Fear reached out to him, but he pushed it away. In the glow of the lamp he could see the slight rise and fall of her chest beneath the white cotton gown. He let out a breath in relief.

  He stepped into the room, moving to the bedside through warm, fever-laden air. Her cheeks were flushed bright red. A scruffy brown teddy bear, the fur rubbed completely away, was tucked neatly in beside her.

  He felt his heart crack a little.

  The scene saddened and frustrated him at the same time. It was like something a person might have witnessed a century ago.

  He placed a hand against her brow. Her skin was hot and dry. Dehydration.

  His touch caused her to stir.

  Her eyelids fluttered open. Her beautiful eyes were glazed with fever and he wondered if she even saw him at all.

  “Emily—” Babbie whispered, coming up beside him, touching his hand for reassurance. “Your prince came back.”

  Emily struggled to focus her attention on the child. “I see that, sweetheart,” she said through dry, barely moving lips. Then her eyes drifted shut again.

  “I gave her Bare Bear for company,” Babbie whispered up at him.

  “Emily’s really sick, isn’t she?” asked Tilly.

  “Yes,” Sonny said. “She needs a doctor.”

  “Papa says doctors don’t know what they’re doing.”

  “He says they’re ducks,” Babbie added.

  “Quacks. He says they’re quacks,” Tilly said.

  Sonny didn’t want to scare them, but the ferry was leaving and he had to be sure Emily was on it. “All doctors aren’t quacks,” he said. “Emily is very sick. She needs a doctor now.”

  He tugged the sheets and blankets free of the mattress and began bundling them around Emily.

  “What are you doing?” Tilly asked.

  “Taking her to a doctor.”

  Tilly’s grasp of the situation amazed him. She quickly dragged out a battered suitcase and started filling it with Emily’s clothes.

  Downstairs, a door slammed. A heavy footfall sounded on the stairs. “I got some cough syrup from the drugstore.” John Christian’s voice, drew closer, along with his footsteps. “Clayton said—” He stopped just inside the room. “Mr. Maxwell… What?” He looked haggard, his eyes red-rimmed. Sonny watched as the man struggled to make sense of Sonny’s presence in his sick daughter’s room.

  “Emily needs a doctor, not cough syrup,” Sonny explained. “My guess is that she has pneumonia. People die from pneumonia.”

  “Doctors!” John Christian raised a broad arm and gestured to something beyond the walls of the small bedroom. “I’ve got a wife lying in a grave on the hillside all because of doctors!”

  “Senseless things happen. That’s no reason to give up on the entire medical profession.”

  Sonny could see the indecision on John Christian’s face, the glimmer of tears in the big man’s eyes. And for the first time in his life, Sonny understood a little of the heavy burden of responsibility a parent must feel. The man’s shoulders slumped. “My God,” he said, more to himself than Sonny. “I don’t know. My Emily. Sara’s firstborn…”

  Precious minutes ticked away. Sonny prayed that Doreen could convince the ferryboat captain to delay departure.

  “I know a doctor in New York,” Sonny said. “He’s a pulmonary specialist. One of the best in the country. He’ll take good care of her.”

  John Christian closed his eyes, his face a mask of pain.

  “There isn’t much time,” Sonny reminded him.

  John Christian’s eyes flew open and he looked at Sonny with anguish. “When a man meets the girl he wants to marry, he thinks his heart can be no fuller. But then he has children.”

  He walked over to the bed and Sonny stepped back.

  “It’s hard to know what’s best,” John Christian said, looking down at Emily.

  “She has little chance here,” Sonny said quietly, kindly.

  The man nodded in uneasy defeat, then bent and lifted his daughter from the bed as if she were a small child. “Come on, Emily lass. We’re takin’ you to a doctor.”

  On the way to the village, Tilly and Babbie were left in the efficient hands of Annie McIntyre.

  In the harbor, the ferryboat was still waiting, and Sonny silently thanked Doreen and her intimidating nature. As they stepped onto the gangplank, he caught a glimpse of a purple unicorn fluttering against blue sky.

  Chapter 5

  Once Emily was at the hospital and on intravenous antibiotics, she began to improve almost immediately. By the third day she was well on her way to total recovery. She had even talked her father into returning to St. Genevieve by himself.

  Now, on the fifth day, Sonny was sitting in Dr. Martin Berlin’s office. Even though Martin had told him to quit hanging around the hospital disrupting things, Sonny hadn’t listened. He couldn’t seem to stay away. In fact, he’d just come from seeing Emily.

  The doorknob turned and the office door flew open. “This is crazy!” Martin Berlin announced. Lab coat flapping about his knees, he slammed the door shut and strode across the small room to the window, tossing a stack of folders on his desk as he passed.

  Sonny was used to Martin’s theatrics. Martin sometimes participated in Little Theater productions, and some of the sweeping stage gestures and voice projection had carried over into his real life.

  “The entire hospital is crawling with Sonny Maxwell groupies,” Martin said, gesturing wildly.

  Sonny locked his fingers over his stomach and stretched his legs out in front of him, crossing them at the ankles. “I’ve tried to keep a low profile.”

  Martin was on a roll. “And my nursing staff! They’re walking around like a bunch of lovesick zombies. Just this morning, one of the nurses got the medicine orders mixed up. A patient almost ended up swallowing a suppository instead of a vitamin!”

  Sonny had known Martin going on six years—ever since Sonny had donated enough money to add a children’s research wing on to the hospital. Most doctors looked older than they really were. Martin was fifty, but looked forty. He was divorced, content, but one of the most highly-strung characters Sonny had ever come across.

  “What the hell do you do to them?” Martin asked. “There are at least thirty women out there right now—women just begging to be your love slave.” He pointed toward the parking lot below. “From here, I can see a girl who can’t be more than fifteen. She’s holding up a sign that says I want a piece of your action. Now what is a girl of fifteen doing with a sign like that?”

  Sonny shrugged and laughed. “There’s nothing I can do about it.”

  “It isn’t funny. This is real life. “Not one of your movies or ads. I’m scheduled for surgery this afternoon, and I don’t know if there are any assistants left around here who don’t have little hearts floating in front of their eyes. And that’s not all. I can’t leave this place without a dozen reporters shoving microphones in my face, demanding to know the scoop on you and Emily. I know you’re trying to keep her name out of the tabloids, but I think you’re going about it wrong. Why don’t you just go out there and talk to them? If you don’t tell them what’s going on, they’ll make something up.”

  “Since there’s nothing tawdry to tell them, they’ll make something up anyway.”

  “Well, this chaos can’t go on any longer. This is a hospital, not your fan club headquarters.”

  “So what you’re saying is you want me to leave and take Emily with me, right?”

  “You make it sound as if I’m kicking her out.” Martin came away from the window and perched himself on the edge of the desk, hands clasped i
n front of him, all doctor now. “Four or five days is the average stay for a pneumonia case. But Emily had some pretty badly damaged lung tissue. I’d like to keep her nearby for another week, then get a fresh set of X-rays before she goes home. But with this mess outside, and my nurses…” He shook his head. “Something has to be done.”

  “Maybe she could stay in a hotel,” Sonny suggested.

  “You couldn’t keep it a secret. The press would be hounding her within an hour. I have a better idea.” Martin—normally an eye-to-eye man—rubbed the back of his neck and focused on something near the door. “What about taking her to your place?”

  “That won’t work. My address is no secret—and then they would have something to talk about. I don’t want Emily’s name splashed all over the tabloids.” “I’m not talking about your decoy apartment. I’m talking about your cabin.”

  Sonny didn’t take anybody to his cabin. Martin knew that. That’s why he’d called his apartment a decoy. It was to satisfy all those people who thought they needed to know where he lived.

  Sonny had deliberately bought his place in the woods because there was no other house in sight. Shortly after that, Martin began begging Sonny to let him fish in the stream near his cabin. Sonny had finally relented and Martin had liked the area so much he’d ended up buying the adjoining lot. Then he built a house on it. Now, on a clear night, when there weren’t any leaves on the trees, Sonny could see the lights of Martin’s property.

  No, Martin couldn’t be trusted.

  And that wasn’t the only thing that bugged Sonny about Martin. The man’s specialty was cardiology and pulmonary care, but on the side he liked to dabble in psychology. Sometimes Sonny would catch him watching him, observing him as if he were some curious specimen. One time he’d even asked Sonny what he was afraid of.

  “What do you say?” Martin asked. “Pretty decent idea, isn’t it? Emily’s off IVs. I could come and check on her every evening on my way home.”

  Sonny had always hated the thought of having his refuge invaded. He knew a time would come when the press would discover its whereabouts. When that happened, he didn’t know where he’d go, didn’t know where he’d run.

  But for some reason the thought of Emily being at his place didn’t seem so bad. And the more Sonny thought about it, the closer he came to actually liking the idea.