The Sparrow - Mary Doria Russell [44]
She had a grainy contralto and the voices were gorgeous together, despite or perhaps because of the oddity of a male taking the higher notes, and for a little while there was no other sound in the world than the song Emilio Sandoz and Sofia Mendes sang.
Jimmy looked sick with envy. Anne moved behind him, bending over the sofa to put her thin, strong arms around his big shoulders and rest her head next to his. When she felt the rigidity give way, she tightened her embrace briefly and let him go, straightening up and standing quietly as the song went on. Ladino, she thought, recognizing elements of Spanish and Hebrew. Sofia’s song was a Sephardic variation on the Spanish tune, perhaps.
Anne looked at George and saw him come to his own conclusion, suspecting the outcome, but not from the music, only from a feeling of inevitability about these two people. And then her silent analysis fell away and she listened, trying not to shiver, as the two songs diverged and interwove until, at the very end, the harmony and counterpoint resolved : lyrics and melodies and voices coming together, across the centuries, to a single word and note.
Tearing her eyes away from Emilio’s face, Anne led the chorus of praise, restoring a fragile equilibrium. Jimmy did his best, but ten minutes later he made excuses about having work to catch up on and, calling out his good-byes, headed for the door. This was the cue for a general exodus, as though all of them needed to put space between themselves and a kind of intimacy no one had planned or anticipated. Anne hesitated, feeling that as hostess she should wait until Emilio and Sofia left as well. But it was taking them a few minutes to get organized, so she covered herself with a plausible excuse and followed Jimmy out the door.
He was more than halfway to the plaza when Anne caught up with him in the dark. The neighborhood was quiet, although there were snatches of music coming in with the sea breeze from La Perla, where things went on later. Hearing her footsteps, he turned, and she stopped two stairs upward of him, so she could look him in the eye. It wasn’t cold but Jimmy was shaking, a gigantic Raggedy Andy doll with his spiraling yarnlike hair, mouth drawn up in his silly crescent smile.
"Do you suppose suicide is a viable option?" he joked lamely. Anne didn’t dignify that with a reply, but her eyes were compassionate. "Why didn’t you stop me sooner when I was playing? I don’t know if I can stand to be in the same time zone with her after tonight," he moaned. "God, she must think I’m a complete idiot. But, Jesus, Anne," he cried out quietly, "he’s a priest! Okay, okay, he’s a really good-looking priest, not a big ugly Mick with shit for brains—"
Anne stopped him with a finger on his lips. She could think of dozens of things to say: that nobody can make anyone else love them, that half the world’s misery was wanting someone who didn’t want you, that unavailability was a powerful aphrodisiac, that Jimmy was a sweet, intelligent, dear man— None of it would help. She joined him on his step, laid her head against his chest and put her arms around him, marveling again at the sheer size of the boy.
"Jesus, Anne," he whispered above her. "He’s a priest. It isn’t fair."
"No, my darling, it never is," she assured him. "It never, ever is."
THAT TIME OF night, it was less than an hour’s drive back to Arecibo. By the time he pulled into the apartment parking lot, Jimmy was done crying and almost past the desire to get drunk, which he’d rejected as too dramatic a response to the situation. Sofia had never given him any encouragement. The whole thing had been a fantasy, and that was that. And really, what did he know about Emilio? Priests were just men, Eileen Quinn had always reminded him when he’d come home from school full of hero worship and awe. Ordination doesn’t make you a saint. And anyway, in other religions, priests married and had children.
Shit, he thought. It