The Passions of Emma (30 page)
Both men were stripped to the waist, and their flesh bore the marks of their violence. Chests and shoulders were blistered and crisscrossed with red welts raised by the bare-knuckle blows. Blood oozed from a cut above Shay’s eye. His opponent’s nose had swelled up purple as an overripe plum.
Emma stifled a gasp with her hands, but Bria didn’t make a sound. She was looking at her man, and her face, as always, showed her love for him. But her eyes had clouded with fearful memories. There could be, Emma had come to understand earlier that day, a terrible cost you paid for loving.
Shay must have felt his wife’s sudden presence, for his gaze flashed to her. His guard dropped for an instant, and the
hedge-browed man unleashed a terrific blow to his jaw. Shay’s head snapped back with a crack you could hear as he reeled and staggered down onto one knee.
hedge-browed man unleashed a terrific blow to his jaw. Shay’s head snapped back with a crack you could hear as he reeled and staggered down onto one knee.
Emma gave a little cry and started forward, as if she could help him. It was Bria who stopped her, by grabbing her arm. But Emma could feel a fine trembling going on inside the other woman. She remembered the pain in Bria’s voice and on her face as she’d spoken of watching him be beaten bloody every summer Sunday, and she thought again how loving a man, loving some men, could be so very hard.
A man who appeared to be serving as a referee stepped between the fighting men, ringing a cowbell. The hedge-browed man backed into a corner of the ring and squatted down on a barrel. Shay stayed kneeling a moment, one arm resting on his thigh, his chest shuddering as he shook his head and gulped in air. Then he pushed to his feet and went to his own corner.
Bria’s brother was there to hand him a wet towel. The priest worked his hands into Shay’s powerful shoulder muscles while he whispered encouragement into his ear. Shay’s nostrils flared and his chest rose and fell with his labored breathing. His skin was slick with sweat and smeared with blood. He stared across the ring at his opponent, his eyes burning.
It seemed less than a minute had passed before the referee stepped up and rang the bell again, pointing to a line of chalk drawn down the center of the ring.
For a moment it was quiet enough to hear the squeak of the men’s shoes on the rosin-coated floor as they closed, grappling, each getting in quick shots to the ribs and stomach. Then a great roar erupted as Shay threw a smoking, smashing punch to the mouth that sent the hedge-browed man flying against the rope.
The man bounced back fast, though, onto his feet, shaking his head, spittle and blood splattering. His mashed lips pulled back in a snarl as he rushed at Shay, fists flailing. But Shay dodged and weaved, easily avoiding the man’s wild swings.
Shay delivered a solid shot to the mouth again. Blood spurted, and the crowd screamed. The muscles in his back and shoulders flexed and bulged as he sank a flurry of punches into his opponent’s stomach. Another punch, hard and smacking, to the ear this time, and the man swayed, his arms weakening, lowering, his knees sagging. Shay’s fists were hammering now, like a blacksmith forging a piece of iron. Hammering, hammering, hammering, muscles thrusting, punching, chest grunting, breathing out his open mouth in quick, hard pants.
Slowly, as if all his strength had run out of his legs like water, the man sank to his knees. His eyes rolled back in his head and he keeled over sideways to lie on the floor as if he were sleeping. He even began to snore. And standing over him, standing over this man he had beaten bloody, Shay McKenna seemed suddenly to go quiet all over.
He tossed his head, flicking the hair and sweat out of his eyes. His gaze searched out Bria, and he cast a brash, white grin her way, and then his face softened. And his eyes, as he looked at his wife, seemed to be glowing with an inner fire that was all wanting and need, and love.
Emma stood still, waiting for him to notice her, to look at her, and then he did, and there was nothing on his face at all, nothing, but it didn’t matter, it didn’t matter, because . . .
I love him.
One moment the world had been too bright and sharp, full of shouts and screams and the stench of sweat and blood. Then everything turned thick and queer and soundless.
Emma stood with her back pressed hard into the rough pine wall in the rear room of the Crow’s Nest Saloon, and she couldn’t take her eyes off him. Bria, crying, was kissing his bloody, shredded, swollen hands. Father O’Reilly was rubbing his hair with a towel.
The eye below the cut was beginning to swell shut. A bruise purpled the bridge of his nose.
The eye below the cut was beginning to swell shut. A bruise purpled the bridge of his nose.
The man in the leather apron stood up on one of the barrels and proclaimed that the drinks were on Seamus McKenna, the great Irish fisticuffs champion. The back room began to empty, but Emma couldn’t move away from the wall. Her legs and arms were heavy and weak. Her throat felt frayed and bloodied, as if she’d been screaming, only she hadn’t made a sound.
She laid her hands flat on the wall as if she would push herself away, push herself out of her body. She wanted to be away from here, away from herself, away from the thought that kept circling through her, through every part of her.
I love him.
She looked through the swaying, glass-beaded curtain into the barroom. A man played the hornpipes. Another danced a jig while balancing a glass of beer on his head.
At last she took a step and then another, and it was a tremendous relief to her that she could do this.
She pushed through the curtain, beads clacking, and into the crowded barroom. An elbow jabbed her in the belly, and someone stepped on her foot with his hobnailed boot. A jetted stream of tobacco juice barely missed her cheek on its way to the floor. She became vaguely irritated that it was so hard to get where she wanted to be. But she stopped when she did get there—to the swinging, louvered doors that opened onto Thames Street.
She didn’t mean to look around for him. She was looking for Bria instead, but Bria was with him. Of course they would be together.
He sat on a stool in the middle of the barroom, and Father O’Reilly sat on an upturned barrel across from him, laughing, excited, punching the air with his fists and reliving the fight. Merry straddled her father’s knee and Noreen leaned against his side, within the circle of his right arm. And Bria . . .
Bria, Bria, I am so sorry. I didn’t know it was going to happen, I never meant
for it to happen. But I’ll make it stop, don’t worry. In a minute I can make it stop.
for it to happen. But I’ll make it stop, don’t worry. In a minute I can make it stop.
Bria was standing behind him. He was leaning back against her, rubbing his head against the swell of her belly, and her hands were in his hair.
Emma looked away from them, out at a twilight sky strafed with deep purple clouds, and she was shocked to discover that time hadn’t lost its way, the world hadn’t come to an end.
Leaving, she thought, would simply require going out these doors. But leaving the Crow’s Nest, leaving town, leaving the world, had nothing to do with the kind of leaving she had to do.
I love him.
I
n her dreams, Maddie Tremayne was always running.
n her dreams, Maddie Tremayne was always running.
It was always summer in her dreams. Summer on a beach of white sand and foam-stippled waves. And oh how she’d run, run flat out, stretching her legs, straining her lungs. Running, running, running with the wind blowing in her hair, knees pumping high, the sand oozing around her toes and the waves slapping at her heels. Running until she thought that maybe she wasn’t touching the beach at all but flying above it.
But no matter how long and sweet the dreams, they always ended. And when she awakened, no matter what the season, it was always winter.
It had been winter the day the accident happened. An ice storm had blown through the night before, sheathing the birches with millions of icicle droplets, so that their branches clicked together like beads when the wind blew. The harbor had frozen into thick yellow curls.
And Willie had offered to take her sledding.
They were always competing for his attention, she and Emma. Their adorable and adoring big brother, with his laughing blue eyes and teasing ways. So that winter’s day, when he had snubbed Emma because they’d been squabbling over a chess game and he’d said to Maddie instead, “Come on, sport. Grab your sled and I’ll give you
a push down the hill,” Maddie thought she’d been offered the world.
a push down the hill,” Maddie thought she’d been offered the world.
The harness bells jangled as the sleigh crunched and squeaked over the snow on the way to Fort Hill. Once, Lafayette had fought the British troops there. Now the children of Bristol slid down its smooth, steep slopes, fast as the wind on waxed ash runners, the tassels of their stocking caps flying behind them.
But that day the snow on the hill was slick and ice crusted and sculpted into windblown drifts in places. Blue and purple shadows lay in the hollows. Watery winter sunlight glinted off the rime-whitened oak trees and rocks that lined the sled run.
Maddie looked down the long, steep run and felt a shudder of fear. Willie had thought he was giving her a treat, and now she didn’t want it. But she didn’t know how to tell him that. Words had never come easily, not among any of them.
Her knees cracked as she sat down on her sled. Her fingers, stuffed deep into her wool mittens, still felt stiff and frozen. The wind suddenly gusted. Ice crystals swirled and sparkled and flashed in the air.
She craned her head around to look up at her brother. His breath trailed across his face in thin clouds, and his gaze was on a place only he could see. It was a thing Willie often did—he would go away from wherever he was and into a place where no one could find him.
She had to say his name twice, had to shout it, before he blinked and looked down at her. “What?” he said, impatient with her now.
Her teeth were chattering so, and her lips were so blue-cold she could barely talk. “I—I don’t want to d-do it, after all. The snow’s t-too packed and icy.”
“Oh, don’t be such a little scaredy-cat,” he said, curling his lip at her, acting a little mean as he sometimes could. He bent over and gripped the side rails. “Come on—I’ll give you a good push, and see if you don’t fly.”
“Noooo!” she wailed, but he had already pushed.
The ash runners shot out over the glazed snow. Maddie screamed and groped for the steering rope but couldn’t find it. The wind drove stinging icy needles into her face and eyes. The sled dipped and rocked over the ruts and crests, veering off the run. She leaned over, trying to grab the steering bar, but her mittens slid off the slick wood.
She looked up and saw trees and rocks flying at her from out of a coiling swirl of whiteness. But she never saw the rock she hit. One instant she was flying through the world on a sled, and in the next the bumper hit something hard. The sled shot straight up on its end, flipping her as if off the end of a seesaw.
She spun end over end through the air and landed on her back among the rocks. She lay there, looking up at a blue, ice-spangled sky, feeling nothing. The wind blew, ringing the icicles in the trees. She watched one break into pieces and fall like shattered teardrops into the snow. Then the trees blurred into the gauzy white haze of a dream.
And in her dreams she was always running.
Maddie saw his shadow first, stretching long and lean on the glossy parquet floor.
She was in the library, she and her chair tucked into the large, oval bay window that looked out on the garden. Warm early-summer evening as it was now, she could almost imagine herself truly out there on the wide rolling lawns, running like a wild deer among the Greek statues and stone geranium urns.
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