The Awakening of Dr. Brown

by Kathleen Creighton

  His eyes aren’t a shaman’s eyes now. The thought gave her a sharp and angry sense of triumph, but no satisfaction. Those emotions she’d been so smugly sure of, those passions she’d sensed churning below the surface of his quietness-all that and more she’d seen just now in those dark and turbulent eyes. But those feelings were in no way hers to control. Foolish, foolish Phoenix, she thought, to ever have imagined they might be.

  Control his emotions? How, when she couldn’t even manage her own? Avidly, she watched the trio on the basketball court-which, due to the combination of the heat index, a threatening storm and the sports season, they enjoyed unchallenged-tall, imposing black man in running clothes, cute skinny black kid in clothes several sizes too big, and Dr. Ethan Brown, the president’s kid, blond, conservative and wholesome as shredded wheat in light blue jeans and a pale yellow polo shirt. It was obvious the doc wasn’t much of an athelete; in spite of his size and naturally beautiful physique, he had none of Tom Applegate’s feline grace. And yet of the three out on that court it was he who drew her gaze like filings to a magnet. His moves she followed, standing on the sidelines, clinging with both hands to the chain-link fence like a shunned child, with the ache of yearning behind her smile. She heard a little boy’s laughter, but it was the doc’s face she saw, smiling and flushed with heat and exertion as he scooped up the boy with the ball hugged tight in his arms and lifted him high, high toward the basket. She heard the childish shriek of delight as the ball clanged through the iron hoop, but it was the doc’s quiet “Way to go!” as he executed an endearingly awkward high five that made her breath catch and tears gather sizzling behind her eyes.

  What do you want from me? She’d asked him that only minutes ago, hadn’t she? Now she knew she should have asked herself the same question. What do you want from this man, Joanna?

  She was suddenly terribly afraid that what she wanted was something she’d have no earthly idea what to do with once she got it. Afraid that if she got it, and if she tried to make it work, she might harm this gentle and beautiful man irreparably. Afraid that with her selfish wanting she would try-and hurt him-anyway.

  A large raindrop splashed onto the back of her hand. She looked up, startled, as if such a thing were completely inexplicable and miraculous, and when she did, another drop landed on her cheek. She was wiping it away when the three came, laughing, through the gate.

  Tom Applegate was talking to his watch. “Carl’s gone to get the car. He’ll meet us on this side of the park,” he reported when he’d finished.

  Ethan glanced at Michael, who was looking mulish and disappointed, then said to Tom, “Why don’t you tell him to meet us over at-” he just did stop himself from saying “The Gardens,” and with a quick, guilty glance at Phoenix made it “-Michael’s place. We can walk back. That way we can stop on the way and get a hot dog-how’s that sound, Michael?”

  Michael shrugged and said, “That’s cool,” trying hard to be offhanded. But he couldn’t keep the grin from slipping through his pose of determined indifference.

  “How ’bout you?” Ethan said, turning to Phoenix. He wanted to lower his voice to a level of privacy, make a joking remark about “regular people,” maybe say something cute about Leroy and Joanna. But those were things between them, and it felt wrong, suddenly, to share them with anyone, even someone as unobtrusive as the Secret Service, or as oblivious as a child. What he offered instead was a rather stiff and formal sounding, “Would you like to join us for lunch? We can take you home, if you want to, after we drop off Michael.”

  “That’s cool,” she said with a shrug, in deliberate imitation of the child. Except that she didn’t smile, and her eyes, before she turned to walk beside him, had a curious silvery brightness, as if a hard rain was falling somewhere just behind them.

  Around them raindrops fell only sporadically, making quarter-sized dark spots on the sidewalk. Thunder growled and wind blew in fitful gusts, stirring the pea-soup air like an indifferent chef-though one inclined to carelessly throw in dashes of ozone and hot asphalt now and then for spice.

  Thinking the storm only meant to shake its fist and then pass them by, they ignored it, taking their time, walking slowly, Michael bouncing the basketball, the adults taking turns retrieving it when it got away from him. No one talked much-Tom, because it was both his nature and his job to keep his mouth shut and his eyes open, Ethan and Phoenix making the child the center of their attention the way adults do when they need an excuse not to talk to each other. And yet their awareness of each other held more electricity and tension than the storm. It arced between them, bridging the gap between glances that tried hard to avoid meeting; it hummed a background to short, breathless comments and rose to cresendo in the silences. Walking languidly along, Ethan felt a constant need to wipe away sweat, and more winded than when he’d been running in the heat on the basketball court.

  They stopped to buy hot dogs from a street vendor who was getting ready to close up shop, and surly about being forced to delay. Then a little later on from another pushcart, ices-a concoction Ethan was sure only a child could find palatable, consisting of sugar water, slush and a dye guaranteed to turn lips and tongues a goulish shade of blue.

  While Ethan was paying the vendor for the ices a gust of wind blew Phoenix’s cowboy hat off, and only Tom Applegate’s quick reflexes prevented it from flying into the street.

  As he returned the hat to its owner, with a meaningful glance at the darkening sky the agent said quietly to Ethan, “Sir, I think we need to be getting on.”

  “Right.” Ethan offered a cone of blue slush to Phoenix. She gave it-and him-a quizzical look but gamely took it.

  Knowing it was unwise, he allowed his gaze to linger on her hand as it tentatively enfolded the gaudy paper cone. It came to him as an oddly painful little revelation that it didn’t look like a rock star’s hand-at least not one that went with backless tiger-striped tops and navel rings. The nails were unmanicured but kept short and very clean. It seemed small and somehow defenseless to him, like the hand of a meticulous child.

  “Hey, where’s mine?” Michael demanded, handing the basketball off to Tom with a trusting no-look pass and grabbing at the cones Ethan still had in his hands.

  “I know your mama taught you better,” Ethan said sternly, holding the cones out of reach. Michael’s face fell. He looked so deflated Ethan had to fight to hold on to his frown. “What do you say?”

  “Can I please have my ice?” Michael mumbled, addressing his shoes.

  “Much better.” Ethan handed over the cone and gave Michael’s baseball cap a forgiving tug. He offered the last ice to Tom, who declined-with obvious relief. With no other choice left to him, Ethan took a tentative taste. The syrupy sweetness made him shudder.

  “Sir,” Tom said again, quietly urgent, “if I’m not mistaken, the sky’s about to open up on us. Unless you want to get wet, we’d best hurry.”

  “What are you, his mother?” Phoenix said, making Michael giggle.

  But they started moving again, walking quickly now, with Michael having to hop and skip to keep up. The wind scuttled trash along the gutter and pushed impatiently at their backs, molding Phoenix’s skirt to her legs and slapping the edges against Ethan’s pantlegs. Lightning flickered, and raindrops fell with a spattering sound. Moments later thunder boomed a tympany solo.

  “Hey!” Michael cried in tones of outrage.

  Tom had time to say only, “Uh-oh, here it comes.” And then the sky did open up.

  They ran, Ethan holding Michael by the hand, Phoenix with her hat clasped against her chest, Tom vigilantly bringing up the rear, though he could easily have outpaced them all.

  Phoenix ran laughing and gasping, filled with a strange sense of euphoria. They would be thoroughly soaked, there was no way to avoid it; her hat would be ruined, there was nothing she could do about it. And something about that inevitability, and her helplessness in the face of it, was unbelievably liberating. She could have no control over this. And
thus she was utterly and completely free.

  She was aware that her skirt was plastered to her legs, that her hair had come loose and was clinging in ribbons to her face, neck and back. Blindly she ran, through a veil of rain, following Ethan’s lead, trusting him to know where he was going, leaping flooded gutters, her feet splashing gloriously on the inundated streets. Dance in the rain… She’d told him, hadn’t she, that it was one of her favorite things? At the time, she’d thought she was making it up, but maybe…maybe somewhere inside her, someone- Joanna?-must have known that it was true.

  She was conscious of a feeling almost of disappointment when Ethan turned hard to the right and led them up some cracked concrete steps. Still euphoric and half-blinded by the rain and her own streaming hair, she barely noticed the peeling paint on the door frame, the broken pane of glass in the front door, the crumbling mortar. It was only when they were inside the vestibule, laughing, gasping and stamping away water, and the door was closing behind them with a sticky sound, that the first alarms began to ring in her mind. She was like an animal sensing the trap-too late.

  Somewhere beyond the accelerated thumping of her own heart she could hear Michael’s voice and Ethan’s, laughing and exclaiming over the drowned remains of their ices. She knew that Tom was starting up the stairs, and that Ethan and Michael were following. She knew that, unless she wanted to stay and wait for them where she was, she would have to climb those stairs, too.

  Claustrophobia coiled its tentacles around her, suffocating her with the smells of poverty and decay. It was hot in the vestibule, and even hotter in the stairwell, a dense and muggy heat that increased with every tread she climbed. But in spite of that, she felt chilled. Cold clear through to her bones.

  But Momma, I don’t want to go by myself. There’s somebody creepy on the stairs…he looks at me funny. Please, can’t you come with me, Momma?

  One level…then another. The smells of cooking, urine and mildew made her want to gag.

  She caught up with Michael on the third-floor landing. At the far end of a dusky hallway she could see Tom checking into recesses and doorways, cautiously alert, while Ethan moved purposefully toward him, apparently making for a door halfway down the hall. For some reason, though, Michael was dawdling behind, lingering in front of a door closer to the landing. When Phoenix reached the top of the stairs he turned his head and lifted his eyes to hers, and gazed at her for a long, silent time.

  He had strange eyes for a child, she thought-almost yellow, like a hawk’s or a tiger’s, and they seemed to shimmer in the dim gray light. And then somehow, without any idea how it had happened, she found that she was holding his hand.

  “This is where I used to live,” the little boy said in a soft, gruff voice. “Before my momma got killed. She was on the balcony and it fell down, and now she dead.”

  Phoenix felt her stomach clench as if she’d been punched there, and the air force its way through her lungs to erupt in a soft, wounded gasp. Cold swept her, stinging like an icy blast. A rushing sound filled her ears. Her world seemed to shrink, her field of vision to sharpen and narrow until it contained only Ethan, standing there in the hallway, hand raised to knock, face turned toward her, mouth forming a question, the moment frozen in time as if someone had hit the pause button on a VCR.

  “You bastard,” she said softly and distinctly. Then she turned and ran down the stairs and out into the rain.

  Chapter 11

  Ethan’s swearing brought Tom Applegate in three swift strides, one hand already going to the weapon at the small of his back.

  “What’s goin’ on?”

  “I don’t know.” But he did know. He did. He swore some more, although after a glance at Michael he was careful to keep it under his breath. On the other side of the door he could hear someone fumbling with the locks. The urge to run after Phoenix twitched through his nerves and muscles; the need to stay where he was filled his voice with a tense and edgy desperation. “Go after her.”

  “Sir, you know I can’t do that.” The Secret Service agent’s quiet voice was muffled; he had his back to Ethan, now, having automatically placed himself between his protectee and the empty stairwell.

  The door in front of Ethan opened, forcing him to bite back arguments he knew were going to be futile anyway. Michael’s aunt Tamara peered cautiously through the narrow gap, then hurriedly slipped the chain and flung the door wide.

  “Lord, you soakin’ wet!” With the fat, big-eyed baby astraddle one hip and her face haggard with maternal fatigue and worry, she rounded on Michael. “Look at you, child-you ’bout half drowned. Get yourself in here and get out of those wet clothes. You gonna catch your death-and you just gettin’ over them earaches… My lord, what is that on your tongue, boy? You all blue.” She glared accusingly at Ethan as she dragged Michael past her into the apartment.

  Then, suddenly recalling who it was she was talking to, she clapped a contrite hand to her forehead. “Oh, man. I am so sorry, Dr. Brown, I didn’t mean to yell. It’s just, I been so worried with the storm and all, and you not being back. I feel responsible for him, know what I mean?” She gave the baby a hitch, self-consciousness creeping over her now that she was assured her charge was safe and sound. Doubtfully, she said, “You…wanna come in for a minute? Dry y’selves off? Can I get you a towel, or…” Her glance flicked from Ethan to Tom and back again with something akin to panic.

  “No, thanks, that’s nice of you, but we’re kind of in a hurry,” Ethan said, and as quickly as he spoke them, the words still seemed to take forever. He reached a hand toward Michael, stopping just short of touching his baseball cap. Striving for outward calm and good manners, he felt jittery and out of breath; his mind had gone somewhere else, following Phoenix through driving curtains of rain. “We had a good time, though, didn’t we, Michael? Shot some hoops…”

  “Yeah, an’ I even made a slam dunk, just like Michael Jordan! Doc…helped me…”

  Ethan’s chest felt achy and tight, and he could feel his pulse tapping against his belt buckle. He smiled. “Yeah, you did.” To Tamara he added, “We had a hot dog and an ice, by the way-hope that was okay.”

  “That’s fine. Michael, did you say thank you? Tell Dr. Brown thank you, now.”

  “Thank you,” mumbled Michael.

  “You’re welcome. We’ll do it again sometime, okay?” Michael nodded. Ethan held out his hand for a slap, the way he was learning to do. Tamara added her thanks, breathless with relief.

  As the door was closing, Ethan heard Michael say, “You know what? That guy Tom? He’s sort of a cop, and he even knows Michael-” The locks clicked one by one into place, but by that time Ethan was halfway to the stairs.

  In the muggy vestibule, Tom had to grab him by the arm and hold him to keep him from bursting through the door ahead of him. “Dammit, sir,” the Secret Service agent said, in an uncharacteristic lapse of protocol.

  Standing in the middle of the sidewalk with rain streaming down his face and into his eyes, Ethan felt hope wash out of him-the hope, faint though it had been, that she’d be waiting for him somewhere out here, huddled on the steps like a half-drowned kitten, perhaps. Tiger kitten…

  Tom touched his arm. The back door of a dark sedan parked at the curb was standing open. Ethan bent down and looked inside, and his very last hope-the hope that she might be inside-evaporated. He got in and Tom slammed the door after him, then climbed into the front passenger seat. At the wheel, Carl nodded a courteous greeting, and the sedan pulled smoothly away from the curb.

  For the next hour they drove up and down the glistening streets, peering past thumping windshield wipers, staring through curtains of rain…then fitful showers…then sprinkles. The storm passed and the sun came out and steam rose from sidewalks, stoops and rooftops. But there was no sign at all of Phoenix.

  It was cool and quiet in the church. The storm seemed far away. In spite of the darkness outside, the interior light was a gentle golden color that made the air seem warmer than it really
was, and Phoenix let it settle over her like a blanket. She was thoroughly chilled but too numb and too exhausted, now, to shiver.

  She sat alone in a pew near the front of the sanctuary, on the side aisle so she was less likely to be noticed, gazing at a statue of the Virgin Mary holding Baby Jesus, and at the cluster of little candles flickering around her feet. It wasn’t the first time she’d been in a Catholic Church, though it had been a good many years. One of her foster families had been Catholic, and for a time she’d been dragged relentlessly to catechism and forced to confess her sins. And what a boring recitation she’d always thought that must have been, since it was before she’d acquired a very interesting assortment of major sins, and before she’d gotten cynical enough to make up some minor ones. And, of course, the Big One she’d never been able to bring herself to speak of out loud, then or since.

  Funny, though, that she could still remember some of the words. Hail Mary, full of grace…

  “Hello, may I help you?”

  Slowly, she shifted her gaze from the Madonna’s face to the man who had just slipped into the pew in front of her. He was wearing a short-sleeved black shirt with a priest’s collar, but she recognized him as the dark man in bermuda shorts and T-shirt she’d spoken to outside the church, the day she’d come to explore her old neighborhood. She narrowed her eyes and looked quickly away, as if from a too-bright light. “Sorry,” she mumbled. “I’ll go…”

  “No, no-stay as long as you like.” The priest’s voice was light and easy, and, she noticed now, just slightly accented. After a moment he chuckled. “I wasn’t sure it was you when you first came in. You look a little different than you did when we met in your manager’s office.”

  Phoenix said nothing; her lips twitched into a half smile, but she felt no amusement at all. The priest was silent, too, but she could feel his eyes on her, and for some reason that awareness made her throat ache and tears gather stinging in her sinuses.