by Freda, Paula
Ira and Barry Krausner had resumed their seats, now that the danger was past. Indignation colored their faces. Indignation at the discomfort and fear they’d had to endure. It was evident they intended suing the Brazilian tour agency. Carole sat by her window brooding. This was the first and last time she joined a nature expedition.
When Hennessey came to, the first thing he saw was Mary Juliette’s face. Her eyes were closed. She continued to cradle him in her arms, her back resting against the seat’s understructure. Exhaustion had taken its toll and she was asleep. He remembered what had happened and wondered how long he’d been unconscious, and how long had she been holding him. "Forever," the thought came unbidden. The feel of her arms about him was warm and comforting and did not repulse him. Rather, it aroused him. The air conditioner had stopped functioning when the bus crashed. Except for the screened vents, the windows and both doors had been left closed to prevent unwanted company. It was hot in the jungle and hotter in the motor coach. Hennessey reached up and pushed back a moist tendril of soft dark brown hair that had fallen across Mary Juliette’s brow.
The touch of his fingers woke her. She mistook the admiration in his gaze for amusement. The man must think her daft to express such anxiety over a total stranger, if he was not already laughing at her. She called to Connors and released him gently to his friend’s ministrations. Hennessey felt as though a warm ray of sunlight had just been shuttered.
Connors was able to repair the air conditioning unit. The covered bodies of Enrique and the Professor were placed at the back of the bus directly under it. Connors would go on foot the rest of the way to the mission. If he did not return within 24 hours with help, then the two corpses must be buried in the jungle. To Mary Juliette, he said, "I leave my friend in your charge. Keep him quiet and do not let him move around, or the wound in his leg may reopen and the bleeding begin again."
"You are appointing me his guardian?" Mary Juliette remarked, somewhat whimsically.
Connors smiled. "Some things are decided for us." She caught the inflection in his voice that implied it was not his decision of which he spoke. "I will return as quickly as I can," he promised.
When Hennessey woke the second time, he called for Mary Juliette. She had changed her seating to be near him. "I’m right here. What can I do for you? Are you in pain?"
"The pain is expected. Has Connors returned yet?"
"No. He’s only been gone a couple of hours. There are painkillers in the First Aid kit. Can I get you some?"
Hennessey shook his head. "Not yet. If the pain gets stronger."
"What you need is a hospital—and more antibiotics to fight infection." Connors had given him a dose in tablet form earlier.
"The hospital will have to wait, but you might get me some more of the antibiotics and some water."
"Right away." MJ touched his shoulder reassuringly.
He tried to read her expression, but she was already rummaging through the First Aid Kit for the medication.
When he had swallowed two pills, he started to hoist himself off the floor.
"No way," she said. "Connors left strict instructions you were not to move."
"I’m fine; I just wanted to move to a seat."
"Absolutely not."
Call it men’s ego, but he resented being told what to do. He started up again. She pushed him down.
"Oh, for the love of—" Hennessey grumbled.
"You’re not moving." MJ insisted.
He glowered at her.
"I’m sorry," she apologized, her voice gentle. "Please," she entreated. "Connors said any movement might reopen the wound and start the bleeding again. I’m not a medic; I’ve no idea what to do if the bleeding starts again."
She was right, of course. "At least help me sit up. I’ll keep my leg as still as possible."
"Okay," she agreed.
When he was sitting on the floor with his back resting against the base of the seat, he said, "I’ve got a thermos full of hot coffee, and some sandwiches in my knapsack. We can all use some nourishment, I’m sure."
MJ found his knapsack and the food and drink. She poured the steaming coffee into the thermos cup and handed it to him, handle first.
Instead of taking the cup, Hennessey’s hand closed over hers. Mary Juliette’s stomach somersaulted.
"Please take the cup, it’s getting awfully hot!"
"Sure, thank you," he said simply. He called out to the others, "Anyone hungry." The small group shared the food and drink. Hennessey made sure to save some for later.
Afterwards, Hennessey addressed MJ. "Houston, we have a problem."
"What’s wrong?" she asked anxiously.
"I have to get up." He pointed to the bathroom in the back of the bus. "It’s working, isn’t it?" There was a note of pleading in his voice.
Mary Juliette couldn’t contain a smile or the motherly instinct that surfaced in reply to that note. Right at this moment he reminded her of a little boy in need of help. Connors had told her to keep him stationary, but common sense must prevail. She called to Barry Krausner. With his help and the use of a splint (two thick branches and leather belts) she was able to keep his leg rigid during the move to and from the lavatory.
With evening drawing close, the air outside cooled. MJ sat down next to a window and opened it a crack. A soft breeze had begun to blow. She leaned her head against the sill and thought about her mother and father and her gray clapboard house and her floppy-eared dog, Trixy. The familiar thoughts lulled her to sleep.
She woke to Hennessey’s call. His voice sounded shaky. In fact he was shaking with a chill, and burning with a high fever. She helped him lie on the floor. Fetching two blankets, she pillowed his head with one and covered him with the other, then made him swallow two more antibiotics and a glass of water.
"Wh–what’s wrong with me?" Hennessey asked in a weak voice. "Your body is probably fighting an infection from the wound. You’re not allergic to aspirin, are you?"
"No. The aspirin might lower the fever—yeah, I’ll take a couple." His body bucked, as a chill ran through him.
All during the night Hennessey raged with fever. Mary Juliette continued to give him antibiotics and aspirins every four hours. Once again she cradled his head in her lap and guarded him.
When Hennessey awoke this time, it was not Mary Juliette’s face that greeted him, but a glossy white ceiling. It took him a few moments to realize he was no longer in the motor coach, but in the mission hospital. Instinctively he called for Mary Juliette, but it was Sister Teresa, a rose quartz encased in white flowing garments, who answered him. "Bom dia, Senhor Hennessey. Welcome back."
He tried to respond but his vocal cords refused to cooperate. They felt limp as if they had been frozen solid and just now thawed.
"You have many questions, but you must not speak now. Later, when you have regained some of your strength."
"Sister," he forced the sound, and tried to raise his head.
"No, Senhor Hennessey," Sister Teresa admonished.
"Just—one question," Hennessey managed. "Please."
Sister Teresa nodded.
His voice slowly gained volume. "Did Connors and the others—arrive safely?"
"Sim, Senhor. Everyone accounted for."
"Mary Juliette—"
"You said one question, Senhor."
"Is she all right?"
"The Senhorita who took care of you?"
"Yes."
"She is fine. Tired, frightened and very worried for you. You have been unconscious for the past three days. For twelve hours in the bus the Senhorita tended to your needs while she waited for Senhor Connors to return. She feared greatly for your life. But you are a big, strong man. You do not die so easily." Sister Teresa smiled benignly.
Hennessey breathed easier. His stomach growled and he protested that he was hungry.
Sister Teresa laughed, a full-bodied laugh. She rambled something in Portuguese that Hennessey did not quite understand; then she glided
from the room like an angel treading air.
Connors came to see him daily. The Krausners came once and promptly forgot all about him. Florence visited him a few times and Hennessey noticed that there was a shy reserve about her whenever Connors was present. Carole Santini came twice. Hennessey was polite, but indifferent to her blue-eyed flirtations. On her last visit, as she prepared to leave, Carole asked bluntly, "Tell me, Hennessey, what’s she got that I don’t?" She leaned seductively against the doorjamb.
He pondered the question. What did Mary Juliette have that the buxom brunette did not?
"Nothing," he replied. "There’s no comparison. She’s plain, shy, inexperienced and on the plump side. She’s not my type, Carole."
"So why the indifference to me?"
"Because I choose my own women, and the time and place."
Carole arched a finely feathered eyebrow. "Cupid, Cupid, what hast thou done? To strike down such a man, in the morning of his youth," she quoted.
"Shakespeare said that?"
"No, Santini did." Carole winked. Then blew him a kiss, and left.
Until her departure with the other tourists, Mary Juliette visited Hennessey each day, bringing him blossoms from the jungle surrounding the mission. She arranged the flowers in a colorful vase provided by the Sisters. She stayed only a few minutes each time, talking a bit, listening avidly to whatever he said, and sharing her opinion. Then she would say a quick goodbye and leave.
She liked him, he was certain of it. If he made a pass at her now, she would melt in his arms. She would not know how to play hard to get. She was a Mary and a Juliette. The morning of her departure, she came into his room and stood at the foot of his bed. Her nails were bitten down to the cuticle. She waited for him to speak first. He knew what she wanted to hear, but he said simply, "Goodbye, Mary Juliette. Take care of yourself. I’ll never forget your kindness. I probably owe you my life."
MJ nodded her understanding of his unspoken message – Thanks, but no thanks. She looked at him then, her dark eyes misty. Her shoulders slumped as she turned to leave, and Hennessey could have kicked himself.
He was pensive and taciturn when the doctor discharged him the following week and Connors picked him up in his jeep.
"There is something in the back for you," Connors told him as he drove toward the home base.
Hennessey reached over and lifted a rectangular parcel wrapped in brown paper.
"What is it?" he inquired.
"Connors didn’t answer.
Hennessey tore the brown wrapping open and was met by Mary Juliette’s sketchbook.
He looked at Connors askance.
"She left it for you."
Later in his cabin, a three room, ground floor wooden shack with indoor plumbing, if not much else, he opened the sketchbook. He’d already seen her first sketches, in the motor coach, but the ones she’d drawn while he was in the mission hospital, told a story all their own— Her story. What she had not achieved in reality, she fantasized in charcoal gray.
There were tender moments between them, and moments of angry exchanges. There were times she cried in his arms, and times he drew comfort from her embrace. One of the drawings portrayed a hill that overlooked a small town clustered about a church and its commanding belfry. On top of the hill, a girl sat before an easel and canvas, painting, while a dog, a mixture of dachshund and beagle, lay curled on the grass with its chin perched affectionately on the girl’s sandaled foot. He paged through the remainder of the book, watching Mary Juliette strip bare her soul. One picture touched him deeply; the drawing of a girl with eyelids drawn shut from sheer exhaustion, lying beside a wounded man, her cheek resting against his chest, her arms thrown out protectively over his unconscious form. The last picture told the end of the story – a cameo of two silhouettes locked in each other’s arms. Hennessey closed the sketchbook with a decided snap.
When Connors stopped by, later that evening, Hennessey showed him the book, especially the profiles of Connors and Florence facing each other, seated on a velvet couch holding hands. Connors made no comment, but a friendly grin teased his generous mouth. "My friend, do not lose this one. She is special, and she is for you. Some things are decided for us."
"Why, because by some coincidence the picture of the man she wants to marry, resembles me?"
"No," Connors said. "Because her heart resembles yours. I believe you would find happiness with this one. She would not leave you as your first love did."
"Yes, there I tend to agree with you. But that doesn’t change anything. She doesn’t know me. I’m nothing more than an adventure shared in the jungle, a romantic fantasy. Ahh… this whole affair is ludicrous and blown out of proportion," he barked, shoving the sketchbook aside.
Before he went to bed he stuffed the sketchbook into the top drawer of his dresser. He went out and cavorted with a different female for three nights in a row. On the fourth night, he got drunk, went home, took out the sketchbook, went outside, built a small fire, and threw the book in. Seconds later, he reached into the flames, nearly barbecuing his arm, and pulled the book out. He cast the book down, and stomped the tiny flames that licked at its edges. Grabbing the sketchbook, he marched back inside, grabbed his suitcase and started to pack.
Three days and a continent later, Hennessey stepped out of a blue and white taxi in front of a gray clapboard house with an enormous leafy maple in the front yard. He approached the screened entrance and rang the doorbell. A graying woman, neatly attired in a rosebud print housedress opened the inside door. She peered at Hennessey through the screen.
"Hennessey—you’re James Hennessey," she declared.
"You know me?" he asked, non-plussed. He saw Mary Juliette all over again in the woman’s genial smile.
"I’d better know you. My daughter has a 16 x 22 oil portrait of you hung in her bedroom."
That piece of news should have struck him as ridiculous. But strangely, it didn’t. Instead, he felt a mixture of pride and awe, a feeling he had grown used to each time he thought of Mary Juliette. "Is she home?" he asked.
"No, she’s up there." Mrs. Kensington tapped on the screen indicating a spot above and beyond Hennessey’s head.
He recognized the hill as one of the scenes in the sketchbook.
"One question," Mrs. Kensington said. She opened the screen door.
"Yes ma’am," Hennessey obliged.
"Are you in love with my daughter?"
Straight to the quick, unpretentious, both mother and daughter, Hennessey noted. He did not answer immediately. It was a momentous question, requiring a momentous reply. He had pondered that question during the entire trip from South America to this quaint New England town.
Hair softly tousled by breezes that blew across the hilltop, Mary Juliette stood in front of her easel. Paint smeared the smock she wore over her flowery summer dress. She was about to dip her brush into a soft pastel blue on her palette, when Trixy, her dachshund beagle, who had lain contented all morning at her feet, jerked her head up and growled. Someone was coming. MJ turned.
His blazer slung over his right shoulder, and hooked by his thumb, James Hennessey sauntered up the hill toward her. For a moment MJ stopped breathing. The next instant she fought to keep from scampering in the opposite direction. And then the thought surfaced that he had come to humiliate her.
"The fink!" she swore under her breath. She had poured her heart and soul into her sketchbook and left it all for Hennessey, thinking she would never see him again. Now, probably just passing through, he was not about to miss the opportunity to make sport of her, like the pleasant-faced young man at the bank seven years ago. By the time he reached her, she had composed herself.
Shoulders straight, chin held high she faced him. "Well, fancy meeting you again," she said, attempting to sound indifferent, and failing miserably, as her knees threatened to buckle. "Just passing through?" she managed. How easy he was on the eyes, casual yet self-assured. She felt the blood rush to her cheeks. For certain she was blush
ing. She wished he’d never come.
As Hennessey drew closer, Trixy snarled.
He halted and rapped on his thigh. "Come on doggie, over here." He put his hand out, palm upward. Trixy padded over and he let her have her fill of sniffing. Then bending, he gently rubbed behind her floppy ears. She wagged her tail and began licking his palm.
Mary Juliette eyed her dog disdainfully. Just like a female to fall to pieces before Hennessey’s charisma. But then who was she to talk. After all, looking at the buttons on his shirt, watching them grow larger as he drew closer was making her stomach do gymnastic feats. She felt his forefinger curl under her chin and lift her face so their eyes could meet. Could he feel her body quivering or hear her heart beating furiously. The birds stopped chirping and the breezes stopped blowing, and time stood still when Hennessey took her in his arms and kissed her. Gently at first; then with increasing passion and intimacy as his emotions soared and he repeated the reply he had made to Mrs. Kensington. "Yes, ma’am. Very much so."
Mary Juliette broke from his arms. She turned her back on him. "Okay, you’ve had your little joke. You can go now to—wherever it was you were headed for." Shock and further humiliation overwhelmed her when by turning she faced her painting, a portrait of herself in a wedding dress and veil, with Hennessey, tall and debonair in a black tuxedo, standing behind her, his arms wrapped about her waist. "Oh God!" She buried her face in her hands.
"We do make a nice bride and groom," he said.
He took hold of her arms and gently turned her around to face him. Pulling her hands away from her face, he pushed her chin up so she would look at him. "I came here to tell you I’m in love with you and I want you to be my wife. In the hospital I wanted you to stay, but I was afraid of getting involved again. A long time ago I was hurt badly. A woman to whom I’d entrusted my heart and soul, strung me along, and then decided I wasn’t quite what she was looking for. I’ve kept my feelings cloistered, protecting myself from further hurt. I didn’t believe a woman existed that could love me with as strong a devotion as I was willing to. Nor one that I could trust. Then I met you. You’d already chosen me. I confess the picture you showed me of the man of your dreams, who looked incredibly like me, spooked me. And then I began learning about you, your kindness, your honesty, and your unpretentious simplicity. I never believed a girl like you existed or that she would actually go for a guy like me. Whatever do you see in me?"
