The Sparrow (7 page)

She was alone at the house that night, doing a literature search on clubfoot for one of her patients, when Emilio called and asked her to meet him at the clinic. His speech was slurred, and she could not believe him drunk. "Emilio, what's happened? What's wrong?" she asked, startled by how frightened she was.

"Splain when you get here. Hard to talk."

George was up at the Arecibo telescope for some kind of late-night shoot he was interested in. Anne phoned to let him know what was going on, not that she knew much herself, and asked him to come home right away. Then she hurried down the eighty stairs to the clinic. The office looked deserted when she got there, and she wondered if she'd misunderstood what Emilio had wanted her to do. But she found to her relief that the door was unlocked and Emilio was waiting inside, sitting alone in the dark.

Anne touched on the light, drew one breath at the sight of him and in the next, drew on clinical detachment as deliberately as she did her gown and gloves. "Well, Father," she commented dryly, taking his chin in her hand and inspecting his face from side to side, gentleness belying her tone, "I see you turned the other cheek. Repeatedly. Don't laugh. You'll split the lip open again."

She'd seen enough of this kind of thing to stoop down and check his knuckles for abrasions and broken bones. His hands were unmarked. She frowned up at him, still holding his hands, but his eyes slid away. Sighing, she stood and unlocked the supply room, where she opened a cabinet, getting out what she needed. His pupils had reacted properly and he had been able to call her; the slurred speech was not neurological in origin; there was no concussion, but his face was a mess. As she assembled the supplies, he spoke quietly from the next room.

"I think a rib broke. I heard something crack."

She hesitated a moment and then returned to him, loading the pressure-injection gun with a dose of an immune-system booster. "Because of the cuts," she told him, holding the gun up for him to see. "Can you unbutton your shirt or do you need help?"

He managed the buttons but couldn't pull the bloodied shirt out of his jeans. Maybe whoever beat him up didn't know he was a priest, she thought, wondering if it would have made a difference. She helped him with the shirt, pulling it down off his arms, careful not to touch him unnecessarily. He was the color of maple syrup, she decided, but she said merely, "You're right about the rib." She could see the bruise on his back where the blow had landed and popped the bone outward. Kicked him when he was down, whoever it was. Aiming for a kidney but a little high. The lungs sounded clear, but she helped him move to the portable imager and did a torso scan to check for internals. While she waited for the image, she used the injection gun on him and then sprayed anesthetic on the cut over his eye. "This is going to need stitches but I can do the rest with bioadhesive."

The scan looked okay. Greenstick fracture in the right sixth rib, hairline in the seventh. Painful, not dangerous. The anesthetic took hold quickly. He sat there silently, letting her clean his face up and pull the cuts together.

"Okay, here's the hard part. Put your arms up and let me get the ribs wrapped. Yeah, I know," she said softly, when he gasped. "This is going to be wicked for the next week or so. I don't recommend sneezing anytime soon."

She was honestly surprised at how difficult she found it, being so close to him. Until that moment, she'd have sworn that she had long ago come to terms with getting old, and being childless. This beautiful man made her reassess both assumptions. He kept going in and out of focus: son, lover. It was completely inappropriate. But Anne Edwards was not given to self-deception and she knew what she was feeling.

She finished taping him up and let him catch his breath while she reloaded the gun. Without asking permission, she pressed the nozzle against his arm for the second time and told him, "You can offer up your suffering tomorrow. Tonight, you're going to sleep. We've got about twenty minutes to get you into a bed." He didn't argue; it was too late, in any case. She put the gun back and helped him into his shirt, letting him button it himself while she put things away.

"Want to tell me about it?" she asked finally, perching on the edge of her desk. He looked up at her through the hair falling over his forehead, black against the bandages. The bruise on his cheek is going to be spectacular, Anne thought.

"No. I don't think so."

"Well," she said quietly, steadying him as he got to his feet, "I'll assume you didn't get into a fight over a girl in a bar, but I can come up with more lurid explanations if you don't want to indulge my vulgar curiosity."

"I went to see my brother," he said, glancing into her eyes.

So he has a brother, she thought. "And he said, Welcome back, Emilio, and beat the shit out of you?"

"Something like that." There was a silence. "I tried, Anne. I gave it an honest try."

"I'm sure you did, sweetheart. Come on, let's go home."

They left the clinic and started up the stairs, the priest already too dopey to be aware of the stares and questions that Anne shook her head at. George met them about halfway. Light as Emilio was, it took both the Edwardses to get him up the last flight of stairs and into the house. He stood swaying as Anne turned down the guest bed while George got him undressed. "Sheets?" he asked blurrily, apparently worried about getting blood on the linens.

"Nobody gives a damn about the sheets," George told him. "Just get into bed." He was asleep before the covers settled over him.

A
NNE CLOSED THE
guest-room door and, in the dark hallway, she reached out for George's familiar arms. Neither of them was entirely surprised that she cried. He held her for a long time and then they went into the kitchen. While she heated up their supper, Anne told him about some of it, and he guessed more than she might have given him credit for.

They moved into the dining room, pushing the clutter on the table off to one side, and ate in silence for a while.

"Do you know what made me fall in love with you?" George asked suddenly. Anne shook her head, puzzled that he should ask her this now. "I heard you laugh, down the hall, just before I got to Spanish class that first day. I couldn't see you. I just heard this fabulous laugh, like a whole octave, top to bottom. And I had to hear it again."

She put her fork down gently and came around the table to stand by his chair. His hands went around her hips and she pulled his head to her belly, cradling it against her body. "Let's live forever, old man," she said, smoothing the silver hair away from his face and bending to kiss him. He grinned up at her.

"Okay," he agreed amiably, "but only because it'll really piss off that insurance guy you bought the annuities from."

And she laughed, a full octave, descending from high C like chimes.

T
HE NEXT MORNING,
Anne got up early after a bad night, pulled on a white terry robe and went to look in on Emilio. He was still sleeping heavily, in almost the same position they'd left him in. She could hear George in the kitchen making coffee, but she wasn't ready to face him yet. Instead, she went into the bathroom and closed the door. Dropping the robe off her shoulders, Anne turned to a full-length mirror.

There she inspected the results of a lifetime of disciplined diet and decades of rigorous ballet classes. Her body had never been thickened by childbearing. At menopause, she'd begun hormone replacement, ostensibly because she was at risk for heart trouble and osteoporosis—a small-boned blue-eyed blonde who'd smoked for twenty years before giving it up in med school. In reality, without the compensation of children, she'd clung to the illusion of relative youth with the artificial extension of middle age. It was okay to be old, as long as she didn't look it. All in all, she was pleased with what she saw.

And so she forced herself to imagine Emilio's eyes on her, to work through in thought any conceivable scenario in which he could come to her as she was now. She did not look away from the mirror: an act of will.

At last she turned from her image, done with the exercise, and ran the shower. A son-in-law, she thought as the water beat down on her shoulders. A Sagadese son-in-law, with whom an old woman could flirt and joke outrageously across a clear generational distance. That came close to the need she felt. Anthropology to the rescue, after all these years.

Then she stopped moving and wondered what Emilio needed. Son, then, she thought. Like a son.

She turned off the water and stepped out onto the rug, dried herself, and dressed in jeans and a T-shirt. Occupied with morning rituals, she nearly forgot the night's distress. But before Anne left the bathroom, she took one last look at herself in the mirror. Not bad for an old bat, she thought briskly, and startled George by grabbing his ass when she passed him in the hallway.

T
HE HOUSE WAS
empty when Emilio awoke. He lay quietly for a long while, getting his bearings, remembering how he came to be in this bed. Finally, the dull pounding in his head convinced him he'd feel better upright. Using his arms and stomach muscles, trying to keep his chest still, he sat. And then stood, holding on to the headboard.

There was a bathrobe on the chair next to his bed, with a new toothbrush stuck prominently in the pocket, where he'd be sure to see it. His clothes had been cleaned and were stacked, folded, on a bureau. There was a bottle of tablets sitting on the nightstand with a note from Anne. "Two when you wake up. Two before bed. They won't make you groggy. There's coffee in the kitchen." He wondered briefly what groggy meant. Nauseous, he guessed from context, but made a mental note to look it up.

Standing in the bathroom, he decided against a shower, not sure what to do about the tape holding his rib in. He cleaned up as best he could and stared blankly at his reflection, noting the flamboyant colors and the swelling. A sudden wave of panic overcame him as he wondered what day and time it was, afraid it was Sunday and that his small congregation had been let down by his failure to appear. No, he remembered. It must be Saturday. Young Felipe Reyes would have been the only one at the chapel, ready to serve. He laughed, anticipating the fantastic Latin dressing down he was in for from Felipe, but the pain in his chest stopped him cold and he realized that raising the Host was going to be a real struggle the next day. He remembered Anne's voice the night before. "You can offer up your suffering tomorrow." She was being sarcastic, but she understood.

He dressed slowly. In the kitchen, Anne and George had left fresh bread and oranges for him. He was still a little sick to his stomach, so he took only a cup of black coffee, which helped the headache.

It was about two in the afternoon when he was ready to leave. Emilio permitted himself one heartfelt obscenity and steeled himself for a very public walk back to his little apartment, down near the beach.

He gave a different story to each person who stopped him, the explanations becoming funnier and more extravagantly improbable as he worked his way home. People who'd never spoken to him before now laughed at his replies and shyly offered help. The kids rallied and ran errands for him, bringing offers of food from their mothers. Felipe was jealous.