The Passions of Emma (28 page)
He didn’t despise her. God save us all, but if she hadn’t been who she was he might have come to like her. Even so, he did feel something for her, although he couldn’t for the life of him have explained what it was. Oddly, the word that came to his mind was
admiration.
admiration.
Maybe that was what had driven him to . . . Well, he hadn’t exactly sought her out. He’d lingered with her awhile, when the opportunity had been there, and now, surely, he wished it all undone. For although his mind told him she hadn’t come to his Bria through anything he had done, still his heart insisted it was all his fault. He didn’t want her in his life, in their lives.
And yet, and yet . . . there was something about her, something that made him want to get a deeper glimpse into her heart. And in that he was behaving just as foolishly as he’d accused her—not understanding how glimpses into the human heart came at such a cost.
He watched her until a beer wagon and horse ambulance had
turned onto the street behind her, and all but the bobbing white ostrich feathers of her hat had disappeared from his view. But even after she was long gone her image stayed on his eyes like sunspots. In the air was the faintest whiff of lilac toilet water.
turned onto the street behind her, and all but the bobbing white ostrich feathers of her hat had disappeared from his view. But even after she was long gone her image stayed on his eyes like sunspots. In the air was the faintest whiff of lilac toilet water.
He walked back to the house, climbed the steep steps of the stoop, and pushed open the door. His wife stood at the slopstone with the shard of a broken tea saucer in one hand, and in the other a bloodstained handkerchief that she had pressed to her mouth to stifle the wet, chest-tearing coughs that were killing her.
He looked at her, at her bent head and her thin, heaving shoulders, and his heart broke again for the thousandth time.
“Bria,” he said.
She coughed—one last harsh, ragged cough. She looked down at the piece of broken clayware in her hand, then dropped it onto the slopstone and turned. She held out her hand, but not to him.
“Nory, come here,” she said softly.
Their daughters still sat at the table, caught up in the tension that twanged in the air, quiet in their fear. Noreen’s face washed even paler as she jerked to her feet and went to her mother. “Mam?” she said.
Bria pressed a couple of pennies into the child’s hand. “Take your sister and go up to Pardon Hardy’s and buy yourselves some peppermint sticks.”
Noreen cast a panicked look at her father, but she said nothing more. She went to the table and took Merry’s hand.
Shay waited until the door had closed behind them. “Am I in for a scolding?” he said, struggling for the smile that just wouldn’t come.
She stared at him for forever, and then her face seemed to crumble in upon itself; all of her crumbled, and she wrapped her arms around the slope of her belly, hugging herself and the babe.
“She won’t be coming here no more,” she said, and her shoulders shook so hard he thought she was coughing again, but then he realized that she was crying.
“Ah, Bria, darlin’ . . .” He went to her and gathered her to him. She tried to snuggle into him, to press her face deep into his chest, but their baby was in the way.
“I never had such a friend before,” he heard her say through her crying. “You don’t understand . . . It’s a rare thing to touch and be touched in that way.”
He did understand, and the understanding brought him such pain it was as though he’d tried to swallow a knife and it had gotten caught in his throat. He had wanted to believe that he was all she needed, all she would ever need. And once, that might have been true. But such a need had to be answered, fulfilled, and he had always known deep in some small dark corner of his heart that he had failed her in that way. That as much as he loved her, he hadn’t loved her enough.
He rubbed his hands over the bowed curve of her back, over and over. There was hardly any flesh to her anymore, only fragile, wasted bones, and he couldn’t bear it. God, God, she was dying. He was losing her, losing her . . . had lost her.
“Your Emma Tremayne is no coward,” he said around the hurt, the knife, in his throat, “so she’ll be coming back if she wants. And you’ll be knowing then, surely, how much of a true friend she means to be to you.”
She leaned back within the circle of his arms to look up at him. Her cheeks bore the roses of death and her eyes were black pools of hurt and loss. . . . Losing her, he was losing her.
“You don’t think any good’ll come of it, do you?” she said.
He smoothed the hair back from her wet face. She’d always had the most beautiful hair of any woman he’d ever known. Irish hair, fiery and temperamental, and red as the sun rising over the thatched roofs of Gortadoo.
He lowered his head and spoke into her hair, his lips brushing against its softness. “No good at all. But then maybe that’s because I’ve always seen miracles as coming from God. Whilst you, m’love, see them as coming from ourselves.”
T
he late May skies waxed bluer and the marsh grass grew thick and green, and Emma Tremayne went back to the house on Thames Street.
he late May skies waxed bluer and the marsh grass grew thick and green, and Emma Tremayne went back to the house on Thames Street.
She didn’t know whether it was pride that drove her to go there again, or a lack of pride that kept her from staying away. She went back because it seemed she had no choice, or every choice. She couldn’t decide.
Choices. The idea of choices held such a compelling interest for her now. How people led their lives and the choices they made and why. There were the things that just weren’t done, and the things one did anyway. The human heart, she was coming to understand, could not be ruled by any other. Only itself.
One night, at the Pattersons’ soiree, she said to Geoffrey, “Why do you hire mostly little children to work in your mills?”
He looked taken aback—that she would bring up an unpleasantness over champagne and brandy cocktails, she supposed—but he answered her readily enough. “Because their smaller fingers can catch the looping threads more easily. I once stood through the day’s shift at a ring spinner. It’s not as easily managed as one might think.”
She hadn’t known he’d done such a thing—taken on, if only for one day, the tasks of one of his commonest laborers. She thought
it showed that he must have a care for them, and it nearly stopped her from saying what she said next. “But you’re not obliged to pay a child as much as you would a grown man, is that not so, Geoffrey?”
it showed that he must have a care for them, and it nearly stopped her from saying what she said next. “But you’re not obliged to pay a child as much as you would a grown man, is that not so, Geoffrey?”
His smile slipped a little, the smile she thought she liked. “There are such things as profits and losses and bottom lines, dearest Emma. I have a living to make.
Our
living.”
Our
living.”
“But so do they. And—”
“Emma.” Her mama’s voice cut across the length of the drawing room. “Mrs. Patterson wishes to know if you and Mr. Alcott are planning to honeymoon in Vienna or Paris.”
Later, when they were home again at The Birches, her mama said, “You have grown too bold in your questions, Emma. How many times must I remind you that it is better not to say anything at all than to say one wrong thing?”
And the worried, haunted look that she saw lurking deep in her mother’s eyes reminded Emma that they lived in a world that discouraged questions and choices of any kind.
The next afternoon while playing whist with the Carter sisters, Miss Carter said, “We’ll not be seeing dear Mrs. Oliver out in society for a goodly while.”
“Why not?” Emma said, forgetting already how she was not to be so bold in her questions. Mrs. Oliver was a new bride, and Emma had also taken an interest lately in new brides.
“Because she is going to be indisposed,” Miss Carter said.
“For seven more months,” said Miss Liluth with a soft giggle.
“Liluth!” Miss Carter gasped. “For shame.”
“Emma,” Emma’s mama said, “have you forgotten that hearts are trump?”
When the whist game ended, Emma told her mother she was
taking the sloop out for a sail, but she went to the house on Thames Street.
taking the sloop out for a sail, but she went to the house on Thames Street.
Bria had the door open to the May sunshine, and Emma found her sitting in her rocker, darning one of her man’s big socks. Her hands rested on her round, thrusting belly while she worked.
Bria McKenna, Emma thought, had gone everywhere—although perhaps not to all the best places—with her pregnancy plainly on view. She carried the child in her womb as a burden not of shame but of glory.
Bria looked up as Emma’s shadow fell across her light. Her mouth, beginning to smile, opened wider with a shocked little squeal. She looked down at her stomach. It was, Emma could see even from where she was in the doorway, literally dancing with the force of the baby’s kicking.
“Oooh! He’ll be making his appearance in the world any day now, he’s gotten that active,” Bria said, the words coming out in bright little gasps. “And he’s his father’s son, sure as I’m sitting here and suffering his pummels.”
Emma went to her and knelt at her feet. She reached out, her hand hovering over Bria’s quivering belly. “May I?” she said.
Smiling and panting both at once, Bria took Emma’s hand and laid it on the swelling, pulsing life that was inside her. “Oh, my!” Emma exclaimed. “He’s so strong.”
“Aye, a brave, brawny Irish lad he’ll be.”
But then a cry cracked in Bria’s throat, and she fell into such a fit of weeping, Emma could barely make out what she was saying. Only that her brave, brawny Irish lad would likely never set his shamrock-green eyes on the rainswept green hills of Ireland.
“Don’t you go paying me no mind,” Bria said as she gulped down a final sob, scrubbing her face with the sleeve of her shirtwaist. “When I get scared, I get weepy.”
“Don’t be scared,” Emma said. “The baby will be fine.” She didn’t say, And you will be fine—for that was too obvious a lie.
And maybe the other was a lie as well. She wondered if a babe could catch its mother’s sickness through the womb.
And maybe the other was a lie as well. She wondered if a babe could catch its mother’s sickness through the womb.
Once, Emma had wondered if she, too, could catch the disease by coming into this house, wondered enough that she feared it even though she refused to let it keep her away. Now, she didn’t even think of it as she leaned in to Bria and wrapped her arms around her waist, and Bria bent forward in the rocker and rested her chin on Emma’s head. It was awkward this way, but somehow comforting to both of them.
“Why did you leave Ireland, if you loved it so?” she said, and she felt Bria stiffen beneath her hands.
She sat back on her heels and looked up. The sunlight pouring through the open door had set fire to Bria’s hair. “Forgive me,” Emma said. “I asked you that before. I don’t mean to pry.”
But she had very much meant to pry. She wanted to crack open the world that existed inside this kitchen, this shack on stilts, crack open Bria’s world like a walnut shell and taste the meat within.
Bria had taken the wooden darning egg out of the heel of the sock and she was rubbing it now, over and over, between her palms. “In Ireland, girls aren’t so modern as they are here, marrying where they fancy. In Ireland, we have matchmakers, and sure no one was ever going to match me up with any boy, being as how I had no dowry or hope of one.”
Bria drew in a deep, shaky breath as her gaze drifted away into the past. “But I wanted Shay McKenna, you see. I was that wild for the lad. So I set out to get him in the way every girl who’s ever wanted a boy has gotten him since time began. He was going to be a priest, and at sixteen he finds himself instead with a wife and a babe on the way, and only a curragh and a few nets to make a living with.”
A priest, Emma thought. That man, that man . . . that man had nearly been a priest, and she almost laughed. But then something caught at her chest, something that hurt and made a curious melting feeling.
“He wanted to be a priest,” Bria was saying. “And I stole him away from God, which is a mortal sin, surely. But not nearly so terrible a sin as stealing him away from himself, from what he might have been.”
“Bria . . .” Emma reached out to touch her hand, pulled back, then did it after all. Bria let go of the wooden egg and their fingers curled together, holding on. “I don’t know Mr. McKenna all that well,” Emma said. “But a blind stranger could see in an instant that he loves you desperately.”
Bria’s eyes filled with tears, and her mouth trembled into a hurting smile. “He’d always had such grand dreams, though, even as a boy. Whilst mine were small, ordinary things: a man to call my own, children to raise up bright and strong, maybe a house and a few potato fields. Whenever troubles came, I never wanted to fight them. I only wanted for them to be over.”
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