The Awakening of Dr. Brown Read online

  After a while he said softly, “This isn’t the first time you’ve been here, though, is it? I think I talked to you the other day, out front-what was it, about a week ago? I was cutting the grass, and you asked me for directions.” There was a pause, and then he asked in an even quieter voice, “Tell me…did you find what you were looking for?”

  She shook her head. To her dismay, a tear slipped onto her cold cheek, warming it only briefly before she brushed it away. A vast, aching emptiness filled her, along with an appalling urge to hurl herself into the arms of this man with the kind eyes and quiet voice and burst into a child’s noisy sobs.

  Denying it, she whispered angrily, “Find what I was looking for? I can’t even find myself. I mean, I used to know exactly who I was. I thought I did. I’m Phoenix, dammit. Phoenix! Now, all of a sudden it’s like I’m losing my grip. Losing myself. I don’t think I know who I am anymore…”

  Tears were hot rivers on her face. Humiliated, she tried to hide them with her fingers, but found her chilled hands imprisoned instead between two nice warm ones. That reminded her so much of the doc, and the way he’d held her hands in his and kissed her fingertips… The ache inside her grew intolerable.

  “Crying’s nothing to be ashamed of.” The priest’s voice was matter-of-fact.

  She blinked him into focus and found his kind brown eyes resting gently on her face. The eyes reminded her of the doc’s eyes.

  It came to her all at once and as an absolute certainty that she could trust this man.

  Then it came to her, but gradually, like a tiny seed sprouting through winter-frozen ground, that maybe…just maybe…she could trust Ethan Brown, too.

  She sniffed rather desperately, and the priest relinquished her hands. He took a large cotton handkerchief from his pants pocket and handed it to her as he said cheerfully, “You know it’s not an uncommon thing, to try to find oneself. Maybe you’re looking at this all wrong…”

  Phoenix blew her nose and said damply, “Oh, yeah, how?”

  “Well, there’s more than two letters’ difference between losing and looking, you know. One’s a negative, the other’s a positive.” He paused. “You shouldn’t ever be afraid of looking.”

  “But what if-” her voice broke and she caught a quick breath “-I look for myself, and I don’t like what I find? What if the person I find…if she’s…not…” She searched for the words, but the priest didn’t wait.

  “Worth loving?” he supplied, and smiled. “If that’s what you’re worried about, forget it. I’ve got a flash for you-there’s no such thing. Everybody deserves to be loved.” He squeezed her shoulder gently as he left her.

  Phoenix blew her nose on the soft handkerchief, then sat for a long time, gazing at the Mother and Child and the flickering candles. Strangely, she didn’t feel cold anymore.

  Too unsettled, his mind too restless to face his empty apartment, Ethan spent the rest of the afternoon at the clinic, trying to focus on his perennial backlog of paperwork. It was late-past ten-when he finally said good-night to Tom and climbed the stairs to his apartment, so it was somewhat startling to him to hear a knock on his front door just as he peeled off his shirt, preparatory to stepping into the shower.

  He hurriedly shut off the water and went to answer it, heart thumping, knowing that without an advance phone call it could only be the Service. And, given the hour, something of major importance. Chilled, emotionally braced for the worst of possibilities, he opened the door.

  It was Tom, impassive as always, his face giving nothing away. “Sorry to bother you, sir,” he said as he handed Ethan a manila envelope. “This fax came for you this afternoon. I thought you’d want to see it right away.”

  Ethan opened the envelope and drew out several sheets of paper. The top one bore the White House letterhead. And below that, in his stepmother’s blunt, distinctive scrawl: Hi, Darlin’-Could this be your Joanna? Love, Dixie.

  What followed appeared to be several pages covered with copies of newspaper articles.

  “Yeah…” His heart was racing in earnest now. Unable to tear his eyes from the papers, he mumbled his thanks.

  “No problem. Good night, sir.” The Secret Service man gently closed the door.

  Ethan carried the envelope over to the couch and sat tensely on the edge of the cushions while he dumped its contents onto the coffee table. Headlines leaped at him, but he forced himself to arrange the articles methodically by date before beginning to read.

  The first was dated March 7, twenty-five years earlier.

  Mother, Two Children Die In Row House Apartment

  Fire

  A mother and her two young children died when a fire apparently caused by faulty wiring swept through their third-floor apartment Thursday afternoon. Firefighters arriving on the scene found the upper floors of the substandard structure fully engulfed in flames. Despite heroic efforts, they were unable to reach the victims. A spokesman for the South Church Street Station, which was the first company to respond to the fire, said rescuers found fire escapes rusted away and windows painted shut. Investigators were still on the scene late Thursday evening, but preliminary reports indicate that substandard conditions in the row house apartment building may have contributed to both the cause of the blaze and the fatalities.

  The victims, who have been identified as Rachel Evans Dunn, 27, and her two children, Jonathan, 9, and Christina, 3, were trapped in their apartment by the flames and apparently died from smoke inhalation. A third child, Joanna, 9, who neighbors said was a twin to one of the victims, was not at home at the time of the fire. She is the only surviving member of the family.

  Four others, including a firefighter, were treated for smoke inhalation and minor burns and released.

  Ethan sat for a long time, staring at the pages spread across the coffee table. He felt cold-cold clear through to his bones-and there was a brassy taste at the back of his throat that he couldn’t get rid of no matter how many times he swallowed.

  Could this be your Joanna?

  Frustratingly, he still didn’t know that-not for certain. The follow-up articles were mostly about the investigation into the cause of the fire and the case against the landlord, who was subsequently prosecuted for various code violations and involuntary manslaughter. The child Joanna was mentioned again in all of the articles as background, and always identified as her family’s only survivor. But as to what had become of her after that, there was nothing. Nothing at all.

  My name is Joanna…Joanna Dunn.

  Was it possible? Could this little girl, who had escaped a terrible death along with her entire family only by a matter of luck-or the grace of God-have somehow become the rock-and-roll legend known to the entire world as Phoenix?

  Phoenix. The truth came to Ethan in blinding, white-hot revelation. Heart pounding, he tore through his bookshelves until he found his dictionary, but even before he looked it up, he knew that he was right. Phoenix…the legendary bird, Egyptian symbol of immortality…said to perish by flames every five hundred years, only to rise reborn from its own ashes…

  Ethan had no idea how long it was before he rose from the couch and walked into the bathroom, peeled off his clothes and climbed stiffly into the shower. He turned on the water as hot as he could stand it, but even though his skin turned lobster red, he could not make the cold deep inside him go away.

  “So, what would have become of her?”

  Ethan put the question to Father Frank the next afternoon. Sunday’s masses were long since concluded, and he’d found his old friend relaxing in the rectory kitchen over iced tea and a plateful of Ruthie’s homemade cookies. Still feeling sick inside, Ethan had declined the cookies. Instead he toyed restlessly with the film of moisture on his iced tea glass. “I assume the father was long gone. If she was her family’s only survivor, where would she go?”

  Father Frank picked up a cookie, put it down and leaned back in his chair, rubbing a regretful hand over his rounded belly. “Into foster care, probably.”
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  “Is there any way to find out?”

  The priest shook his head. “I doubt it. Those records are confidential. It would take a court order, and even then…I don’t know.”

  “Six years…” Ethan said softly, watching himself make interlocking figure eights on the tabletop with the bottom of his glass. “That’s what’s missing. At nine she loses her family and vanishes into the black hole known as child services. Six years later, at fifteen, she explodes onto the world stage when she sings Rupert Dove’s Oscar-nominated song at the Academy Awards.” He smiled wryly at his hands. “I’ve seen tapes of that performance. Man, she almost caused a riot.” He shook his head, then let out a slow, defeated breath. “What happened to her during those missing years, Franco? How will I ever know?”

  “Is it so important for you to know?” His eyes were quiet and dark-priest’s eyes. Ethan could almost hear the unspoken “My son…”

  For that reason, he was careful with his answer. “I think it is important…but not for me.” And he was surprised, as he heard himself say the words, to find that they were true. “I mean, I believe it’s important that I know, so I can…let her know…” He stopped, frustrated. Stymied.

  His old friend Frank, however, smiled in perfect understanding. “So you can let her know it’s okay-whatever it is.”

  “Right…” Ethan sat back with a grateful sigh, then, with restored confidence amended, “That she’s okay. And that I-” He caught himself just in time.

  “That you…love her anyway?” Ethan made a faint sound, a denial, and Frank gently persisted, “You do, don’t you?”

  “I don’t know.” Ethan frowned at his hands. It had become hard to talk. There seemed to be some sort of strange vibration deep inside his chest that was interfering with his voice, his breathing, even his heartbeat. “I think…” he had to concentrate on unclenching his jaws “…I may be…starting to.” He frowned even harder. “It’s just been happening so fast.”

  Father Frank laughed and reached defiantly for a cookie after all. “I’m no expert, you understand, but I hear it does that way sometimes.” He studied the cookie intently, then said, “You want my advice?”

  Ethan threw up his hands. “Yeah, I want your advice. Why do you think I’m here? You’re my best friend-and a priest, for God’s sake.”

  Father Frank’s smile was beatific. “Exactly…” He popped the cookie into his mouth with an air of getting down to business. “Okay, so here it is. Ta-dah… Ask the one who knows.”

  Ethan snorted. “Easy for you to say. She won’t talk about it. In fact, after yesterday, she may never talk to me again.”

  Still chewing, Father Frank shook his head. “Mmm-um-not Phoenix. You want to know about those missing years? If it were me, I’d ask Rupert Dove.”

  Phoenix stood behind her old piano man, watching him make notes on the sheet of music propped up in front of him. His head was cocked back so he could see through the glasses perched on the end of his nose. She focused on the oval patch of shiny walnut-brown skin on his crown. “Doveman, can I ask you a question?”

  He cackled thinly but didn’t look around. “Since when you ask my permission?”

  Newly discovered nerves jumped and skittered in her belly. She had an overpowering desire to throw her arms around his neck and lay her cheek alongside his stubbly jaw the way she had when she was a child, and inhale his familiar and comforting scent of Old Spice, whiskey and cigarettes. To curb the urge, she folded her arms across her middle and went to lean against the piano box.

  “No-this isn’t about music. I want to know something-” she took a breath “-about…when you found me.”

  Doveman stopped writing. He took off his glasses, drew a handkerchief from his pocket and began to wipe them with it. Not looking at her, he said slowly, “What you wantin’ to know?”

  “Why’d you do it?” She made her voice hard. “When I tried to hustle you, why didn’t you just turn me over to the cops? Why’d you take me in?”

  It seemed a long time before he answered…just sat there wiping methodically at his glasses with the handkerchief, as if he hadn’t heard her. Then he looked up, and his eyes had that sad, filmy look that made her heart lurch and her chest turn cold and fearful with the thought, Doveman’s old…

  “Why didn’t I turn you in? Child, it never once entered my mind to do that.”

  “But why? I was a street kid-a hustler. I stole from you.”

  “Well…maybe I never saw that street kid…that hustler. All I saw was a little lost bird, got blown out of her nest by a storm. Nothin’ to do with a bird like that, you know, but take her in, give her shelter, make her feel safe an’ warm…”

  “But,” Phoenix whispered, “how did you know?” Her throat felt raw, as if all the tears she hadn’t shed back then were burning there now, saltwater on her wounded spirit. “For all you knew I could’ve just…ripped you off and split.”

  The piano man smiled. “Oh…I knew you wasn’t gonna do that. Not once you found out ol’ Doveman had something you needed more than a baby need’s her momma’s milk.” Phoenix made a small, frustrated sound, but Doveman shook his head. He held up his hands with their fingers gnarled and bent, the palms pale and lined like fine old parchment. “I had these, baby-girl. They was the keys…”

  “Keys?” She cried it out, frustrated…aching.

  “That’s right.” Doveman touched his own chest, just over the spot where she hurt so. “These old hands was the keys that let loose all that music you had shut up inside here. That music was born in you, child. You came into this world with that music in your soul. Just didn’t know how to let it out. You was a lost and angry child until ol’ Doveman came along with these hands and showed you how.”

  “Then why,” she whispered, dashing away tears, “do I feel so lost now? I have you, I have the music…”

  Doveman shook his head. He swiveled on the bench, his eyes going past her and far, far away. “Because things change,” he said in his soft, ruined voice. “Everything has its time. Everything has its season. Time comes when ol’ Doveman and the music aren’t enough anymore. Time comes when you be wantin’ somebody to love. Somebody to love you, maybe make some fat pretty babies with you. That’s the way it’s meant to be…”

  Phoenix caught and held her breath. I want something more from you.

  What scares me is…maybe you want something from me that I can’t give you.

  She cried out, with the harshness of fear, “What if I can’t?”

  The piano man’s gaze jerked back to her, eyebrows raised as if in amazement. “Can’t what? Can’t find anybody, or can’t love?”

  “Both!”

  “Well,” he shot back, exasperated, “I know for a certainty you ain’t gonna be able to do either one ’less you love y’self first!”

  Phoenix gave a snort of hopeless laughter. “Love myself? How am I supposed to do that when I don’t even know who the hell I am?”

  Doveman just shook his head and didn’t say anything. Unable to withstand his gaze any longer, she pushed away from the piano and walked, as she so often did, to the windows. From there, with her back to him she said softly, rubbing at the goose bumps on her arms, “Yesterday a priest told me I wasn’t lost at all…just looking. As in, searching for? Trying to find something, i.e., me.” She gave another of those high, hurting laughs. “He might be right, but what I didn’t tell him is that I have no clue at all where to look. None…”

  Feeling so desolate, it came as a shock to her to hear the rusty wheeze of Doveman’s laughter. She turned with the hurt of betrayal in her eyes and an angry reproach on her lips, to find him regarding her the way she imagined a doting father might look upon his slightly foolish child.

  “Well, now,” he said with an exaggerated lifting of his shoulders, “I don’t know about you, but the first thing I generally do when I want to find something is, I go back and look in the place I was when I lost it.”

  Stepping from the dark sedan while T
om Applegate held the door for him, Ethan looked up at the squatty redbrick building silhouetted against a fading sunset as if it were a holy place, a sacred shrine to which he’d come seeking answers…or at the very least a soothing balm to quiet his uneasy soul. The shadowed and dusty windows gave him little hope of, either.

  “You don’t have to come in, do you?” he said to Tom as he slammed the car door. “I don’t think this is going to take long.”

  The Secret Service agent regarded him for a long, tense moment, no doubt assessing his duties and weighing the likelihood that Ethan might give him the slip out the back way again. Apparently concluding the risk was minimal and his protectee’s intentions pure, at least this time, he gave in, but on a soft exhalation of long-suffering. “All right, sir. I’ll wait here.”

  The front door was locked. Ethan pushed on a button unobtrusively located to the left of the door and heard a bell’s strident shriek echo and resound behind the solid brick walls. He waited, fidgeting, and had just turned to go back down the steps, thinking he’d try the loading dock entrance, when the door clanked open behind him.

  “Hey, Doc, how y’doing?” Rupert Dove greeted him in his cracked voice. “Saw you on the monitor…sorry I couldn’t get here any quicker. These ol’ legs don’t go like they used to.” He cackled, then turned somber, though his eyes still held a certain brightness. “What can I do for you, Doc? Sorry to tell you, but if you’re wantin’ Phoenix, she ain’t here.”

  Ethan smiled, even as he wondered what those sharp old eyes would make of it. There was, he thought, something almost birdlike about their intensity. “That’s okay,” he said, “it’s you I came to see.”

  “Me!” The old man reared back as he said it, but Ethan had the feeling he wasn’t really all that surprised. “Well now. You’d best come in, then. Come on in, son.”

  He closed the heavy door, than led Ethan past other doors, also closed, past the empty recording studio and control room, into the rehearsal hall. As before, the huge room was dimly lit, the only illumination coming from the bandstand, music stands and sound equipment softly backlit like the chancel of a church. Ethan would have been glad to stop there, glad to have this conversation in the camouflaging darkness, but Rupert Dove led him on, straight through the hall.