"And then she smiled
Just for a fraction of a little while
And everything was warm again inside
She’s got a sunshine smile
The kind that warms up the corners of my cold room
She’s got a sunshine smile
The kind that makes you forget again..."

***

The first time Michael Guerin *really* saw Maria DeLuca’s smile was the morning after his best friend Max Evans had spent the night in the desert with her best friend Liz Parker. In a way, their errant best friends had catalyzed the events that had led up to his "seeing" her smile for the first time.

Michael wasn’t one to wax poetic. He never had been. Words like "catalyzed" suited him in a way that words like "soulmate" didn’t. Romantic fluff wasn’t his thing. Usually, Michael gave fluff a wide berth, leaving it to Max to carry that torch for all Czechoslovakian-kind.

That was why when Maria showed up on his doorstep that morning, he didn’t think about how beautiful she looked with her snug-fitting jeans and her cute top. He didn’t think about how pretty her hair looked. He didn’t think about how her eyes looked a little vulnerable or maybe even a little scared. No, he thought about how messy his apartment was and whether or not he had bad breath.

Then when she sat beside him on his lumpy sofa, he didn’t think about how good she looked in his apartment. No, he tried to think about why she was there.

She was there, she explained, because Max and Liz were missing. She was worried about Liz, so he tried to comfort her.

They talked, *really* talked for the first time. He told her the truth about his visions. He told her that he really *had* seen her red sneakers with the Kermit the Frog patch on them, that he really *had* seen her Dalmatian puppy.

And she smiled, a warm, sunshine smile that lit up his shabby living room.

He didn’t tell her then that he had also seen another vision, one of them now, married and trying to get pregnant.

Michael Guerin had always envied Max Evans. Everything had always come easier for Max. Max had had the sense to hold on to Isabel’s hand when they saw the Evanses’ car that night long ago, which had ensured that Max and Isabel had been raised by two loving parents. Max had found love walking off the bus in third grade. Seven years later, he had found out that his true love loved him back. Max had been able to avoid most of the bumps that had hit Michael and Isabel. Although Max had wrestled with similar bumps, they had never had the same consequences for him ... he had been able to contain the consequences better, and he had been able to forget.

All that was in the past, though. Most recently, Michael envied Max because Max and Liz had been able to conceive and give birth to their baby girl without even trying.

Michael and Maria had been trying without success for the past two years. Part of Michael wasn’t sorry that they hadn’t gotten pregnant immediately. That was the scared part. The other part of Michael -- the not-scared part -- felt Maria’s pain and longing as if it were his own. He wanted them to get pregnant because he wanted her to be happy.

When she was happy, her sunshine smile broke through whatever remained of his stone walls and sneaked into the last undefended corners of his soul. Whenever he saw her smile, he remembered that long-ago day ... sitting beside her on the sofa, brushing his lips against her forehead, and seeing a flash of their future together.

Maria had always been his future, no matter what else had happened in his past. She was the one person he wanted to comfort, the one person who he allowed to comfort him. She had always understood who he was, why he was afraid, why he was angry, why he was hurt. He saw himself in her.

And in his vision of their future, he had seen himself *with* her.

Specifically, he had seen himself giving her a Dalmatian puppy just like the one he saw in her memories.

That was why today he found himself outside their door, holding a cardboard box with six holes punched in the top, which contained a squirming, black and white bundle just for her. So that she would never again feel alone or lonely. So that she could practice being a mother. And he a father.

When she lifted the puppy out of the box, she squealed in excitement and did one of her patented happy-Maria dances around their living room. She named the puppy Jeebie, although she couldn’t explain why she liked that name.

And when he saw her warm, sunshine smile light up the room again, he realized that he lived to see her smile.

And he hoped that their baby had her sunshine smile.

Author’s Note: The verse that prefaces this story was excerpted from a song by the now-defunct British band, Adorable. "Sunshine Smile" may be found on Adorable’s 1993 album, "Against Perfection." The song is copyrighted to Adorable. No infringement intended.

These are the complete lyrics to "Sunshine Smile":

And then she smiled
Just for a fraction of a little while
And everything was warm again inside
She’s got a sunshine smile
The kind that warms up the corners of my cold room
She’s got a sunshine smile
The kind that makes you forget again

And then she said
"If I’m going to be someone else
I’d rather be somebody else with you"
That’s exactly how I felt to her
How does it feel?

The way I feel
Doesn’t feel quite real
How does it feel to feel?
She’s got a sunshine smile
The kind that warms up the corners of my cold room
She’s got a sunshine smile
The kind that makes you forget again

How does it feel to feel?
And for that one short while
It was as if she’d only just learned how to smile

© Adorable, "Against Perfection," 1993

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