The Sparrow - Mary Doria Russell [29]
"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.
ANNE 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.
THE 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