The Awakening of Dr. Brown

then stood back to let his “date” go ahead of him.

“Well, here we are,” he said-or some such thing. He really didn’t know what he said just then, because as he followed Phoenix, rock-and-roll legend, into his apartment his heart was sinking into a slough of dismay.

Chapter 9

“It’s a bit of a mess,” Ethan said with grand understatement, lunging forward to snatch at the several pairs of sweats draped over the couch, and the socks, running shoes and three days worth of newspapers on the floor beside it. “I, uh…didn’t know when I left here this afternoon that I was…having company.”

He heaved the gathered armload through the nearest doorway and pulled the door firmly shut upon the disasters lurking within. Then, in a heated and breathless state he could not recall having experienced since adolescence, he turned back to Phoenix.

The world-renowned legend of rock and roll was wandering through the clutter in his living room, gazing with undisguised curiosity-even fascination-at the overflowing bookshelves, the tower of CDs that had recently fallen over, strewing plastic cases like toppled dominoes across the floor beside the stereo…his old acoustic guitar propped against the wall. The untidy piles of medical journals that covered every flat surface-except for the top of the television and stereo system, which were unavailable due to the jumble of framed photographs already there- snapshots, mostly, except for Lauren’s professional wedding portrait. They were all there, his whole family: his dad and Dixie-a snapshot of the two of them laughing together, taken while his dad was still governor of Iowa. A photo of Lauren and John and their two boys on horses, with the Arizona scenery spread out behind them. A series of several beautifully composed pictures of Aunt Lucy and Uncle Mike Lanagan and their daughter, Ethan’s cousin Rose Ellen, taken on their Iowa farm by their son, Eric, who was on his way to becoming a photojournalist. One stunningly beautiful portrait done in black-and-white-also by Eric-of Great-great-aunt Gwen, who’d died peacefully the year before at the age of one hundred and five. There were others-Uncle Wood and Aunt Chris, their daughter, Kaitlin. Even a snapshot of Ethan’s mother, Elaine, with her husband, taken during a vacation somewhere in the South Seas.

Watching Phoenix as she studied the photographs one by one, Ethan was struck suddenly by a memory of her loft…its elegance, its emptiness…its loneliness. He felt his sense of dismay and embarrassment leave him, like sand running out of a sack.

Relaxed, now, quiet inside, he walked to the couch and placed the bags of Chinese food on the cushions while he cleared the coffee table of medical journals, books, newspapers and the remnants of this morning’s breakfast.

“I thought we’d eat out here, if that’s okay,” he said, setting out white cartons, paper napkins and paper- wrapped chopsticks. “The kitchen’s pretty small.” He did not add, “And very messy,” which he figured by this time she’d know was a given.

Phoenix nodded, but went on looking at the arrangement of photographs. Then, in an impulsive, uncharacteristically awkward motion, she picked one up and tilted it to show him. “This your mother?” Her voice was gruff, almost harsh.

Ethan straightened, looked and said, “Yup.” He walked toward her, breathing suspended, moving carefully and slowly, the way he might have approached an unexpectedly tame fawn in the woods.

She watched him come, her eyes never leaving his face. When he was within touching distance she turned back to the snapshot in her hands. “You look like her.”

“Well, I have her coloring, anyway. Both my sister and I got the blond hair.”

She said nothing for a while, though he sensed she wanted to; he could almost see the unasked questions hovering on the tip of her tongue. Then, abruptly, she put the snapshot back on the stereo. “Big family,” she remarked, lightly touching several of the photos as if setting them to rights.

“I guess.” Though it had never seemed so to him. Still with that feeling that he was about to attempt to pet a wild creature, he murmured, “What about you?”

“No family.” She said it lightly, blowing it away like dandelion fluff in a summer wind. She pivoted and moved away from him, a moment later pouncing on his guitar with a pleased cry, as if she’d only just discovered it.

“You did tell me you play.” She settled herself on the arm of the couch with her ankle propped on her knee, cradling his guitar across her lap. Her fingers moved on the strings, playing seemingly random chords as she looked up at him. “You said Dixie taught you, right?”

“Right.” It occurred to him as he looked at her that he ought to be feeling wonderment of some sort-this was Phoenix, sitting in his living room, playing his guitar. Instead, he felt an indefinable tenderness that was intertwined somehow with sorrow, and a frustrating sense that he was close…so close to understanding something of profound importance about this woman named Joanna Dunn.

She smiled to herself as she played; her eyes, shielded from him by the heavy fall of her lashes, were only an elusive twinkle, like stars glimpsed through a canopy of trees. No longer just random wanderings, the melody she was playing was familiar to him-a lullaby, if he wasn’t mistaken, something about a mockingbird. An odd and unexpected song for Phoenix to choose, he thought. Out of all the songs in the world, an old folk lullaby.

He hummed along, then sang a few bars very softly, and felt the quiver of a powerful but nameless emotion deep inside his chest when after a moment she joined him.

“Did your mother sing that to you when you were small?” he asked when the words he could remember ran out. Reaching…reaching with a gentle and reassuring hand toward the fawn in the forest.

Still softly playing, she said without looking up, “I don’t remember my mother.”

“No photographs?”

She shook her head. There was silence…the fawn trembled. A lump formed in Ethan’s throat. Then, with a final thump of her hand on the chords to still their vibrations, she set the guitar aside…and the fawn scampered away into leafy shadows. “Nope,” she said lightly, “not a one.”

She slipped off the arm of the couch onto the cushions and reached for a carton. “Mmm…this must be the kung pow chicken.”

“Who did you learn that song from?” he persisted as he sat on the couch beside her, careful to match her casual tone. Still searching hopefully in the shadows for the vanished fawn, unwilling yet to concede the moment lost.

She shrugged. “Who knows?” She handed him one of the sets of chopsticks and tore the paper wrapping off hers. “Could have been anywhere-once I hear a song I usually don’t forget it.” She bit her lip, concentrating on breaking the chopsticks apart.

Mission accomplished. Her eyes flashed silver, the first time she’d looked directly at him since she’d held his mother’s picture in her hands. “What about you? Dixie, I suppose.”

“Probably.” Suddenly short on breath, he snapped apart his chopsticks and dug into the nearest carton.

Watching him, eyes gleaming, she speared something that trailed long strands of vegetables and lifted it to her mouth. Her lips parted…her tongue came out to snare the stragglers…the bite disappeared. She chewed with her eyes closed, making soft pleasure sounds…

“How old were you when your folks split?”

“Beg pardon?” Ethan mumbled through a mouthful of something he absolutely could not taste.

Her eyes were studying him, glowing with the intensity of her curiosity and a purpose he couldn’t begin to understand. The question had caught him by surprise in more ways than one. For one thing, he was only just adjusting to the loss of his fawn; he hadn’t expected her to turn back into a tiger. And then, at that moment his parents in any context were the farthest thing from his mind.

Asking her to repeat the question at least gave him time to find his way out of the sensual quagmire he’d wandered into. He was moderately pleased when he was able to swallow without choking and say calmly, “My mother left when I was five.”

“Did you miss her?”