The Four Corners of the Sky_ A Novel - Michael Malone [73]
Above the store, her restored condo became a small theatre called Sam’s Place, where friends and neighbors came to “Play It, Sam,” the free double and triple features she showed on rainy weekends. “Bite Night” featured meal movies like Big Night, Babette’s Feast, and Eat Drink Man Woman, and at intermission served a fusion buffet. On “Phys Films” night she screened films like Magnificent Obsession and Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and had Dr. Clark Goode speak (to a chorus of “Louder!”) on “Doctors in American Movies.” “Phys Films” started the town rumor that Sam and Clark were a couple, secretly in love. (Though why their love should be kept a secret stumped the theorizers.)
Then one day in July the seven-year-old Annie showed up in their yard, abandoned by her father. Within days of the child’s arrival, they were sitting together on the couch, watching Shirley Temple in Bright Eyes sing about wanting to be an airplane pilot on the Good Ship Lollipop. Within a week, the imperious puppy Teddy, moving from lap to lap, joined them. The couple became a family.
It was Clark who figured out the recurring dream that was awakening Annie nightly in those early months. He brought home some paints and suggested she draw her dream on the barn wall behind the airplane parked there. It was something he asked his child patients to do, draw their dreams. She painted a picture of a girl in a little red airplane that chased after another red airplane on a straight blue line of horizon. Between the sky and the ocean, she painted a brown ship on which a woman in a yellow cape stood, her arms in air.
After Annie finished her picture and carefully cleaned the colors from the brushes, she reached up and put her hand in Clark’s. Clark told Sam that when he felt the life in Annie’s small hot hand race up his veins to his heart, he knew it would stay there the rest of his life.
The next morning, Annie asked Sam if Clark was her in-law. Sam explained that he was not an in-law, but he was an in-love. She said that sometimes in the end an in-love could be more counted on than a “real” relative. “You can always count on Clark,” Sam told the child.
Annie agreed with a quiet solemn nod. “He’s not going anywhere. He promised.” She was predisposed to believe that if Jack Peregrine were any example of a “real” relative, she could do without them.
A year later, Sam and Clark officially adopted Annie at the Emerald courthouse. The judge, a married woman with children, questioned Annie carefully about whether she wanted to live at Pilgrim’s Rest with Sam and Clark. Annie said she did. “You can always count on them.”
As they left the courthouse after the hearing, Annie heard a woman say she’d just been awarded damages because a department store’s elevator cable had snapped and plunged her down two floors, breaking her leg. Annie found this notion of legal retribution for suffering so comforting that the following day, forging an excuse from Clark about a doctor’s appointment, she left school and found her way back to the courthouse. Judge Susan Patterson answered her office door in Bermuda shorts and with her peppery hair held up by a big paper clamp. When Annie said she’d come to ask a question, Judge Patterson told her to take a seat and ask away. Annie said she wanted to find out how she could sue her father for leaving her.
“That’s a tough one,” admitted Judge Patterson, nodding. “You could maybe sue him for support. For money.”
Annie struggled to sit maturely in the large leather chair. “No.” She gave her head a fierce shake. “I don’t want money.”
“What would you like?” asked Judge Patterson.
The child thought. Finally she sighed. “I don’t know.”
“I told you it was a tough one. Well, think it over and let me know. It’s an interesting question.”
Judge Patterson located Sam and sat with Annie in the lobby to wait for