Soon the Light Will Be Perfect

by Dave Patterson

  * * *

  But the next afternoon she comes back. My brother is on the phone with his girlfriend. He’s been whispering into the receiver for the past hour. I can’t make out his conversation, but he sounds upset. He’s lying on the linoleum floor in the space where the new kitchen table will go when it’s finished. I’m watching television on low to keep from waking my mother, but also to try to hear what my brother is saying. On the news there are reports of a man who went into a Planned Parenthood and shot a doctor, killing him. I’m contemplating what I’m supposed to think about this when there’s a soft knocking sound on the screen door. Taylor peeks into the living room through the mesh screen.

  When she sees me sitting on the couch, she says, “Can I come in?”

  “We’re not allowed to have people over while my dad’s at work,” I say, going to the door. Taylor frowns. But I get an idea.

  The garage door makes its banging noise as it opens. I reason that having Taylor in the garage doesn’t break my father’s rule that we can’t have friends in the house while he’s at work. The newest coat of lacquer is almost dry on the table, making the finish look duller than yesterday. When my father sands it and adds another layer, it will shine again.

  “It looks different today,” she says, stepping back.

  I explain the process to her, but she doesn’t seem to be listening. I move close to her, hoping she’ll place her hand on my shoulder.

  After a moment, she says, “Do you like your dad?”

  “Yes,” I say without giving it thought. In the silence that follows, I consider my father. I’ve never thought about whether or not I like him. He works a lot and when he’s not at work, he’s taking my mother to the hospital or he’s in the garage working on the table or at church helping with the food pantry that my mom ran before she had cancer. The image of my father reading from his Bible while he works an electric razor over his face appears in my head.

  “Yes,” I repeat. “I do like him.”

  “He must be a good man,” Taylor says. “Look at this table he’s building. And he didn’t leave when your mother got cancer.”

  It never occurred to me that leaving us was an option.

  “My mom’s boyfriend is nice enough. Most of her boyfriends have been assholes,” Taylor says. She pauses and bites her lower lips. Without turning to me she says, “Some of them get—obsessed with me.”

  Even at twelve I understand what Taylor’s saying. For years after I’ll wonder why I didn’t do or say more as we stared at the tabletop in my garage.

  “I wish it glowed like it did yesterday,” Taylor says after a moment. “The table,” she adds. Neither of us speaks. The muffled sound of my brother’s voice comes from the kitchen. He sounds desperate.

  “We should get out of here,” I say. “We’re not supposed to be near the table.”

  But Taylor’s not listening. Before I can stop her, she reaches out and touches the table with the tip of her index finger. The lacquer is still wet enough that I can see the rounded imprint of her fingertip in the finish. She pulls her finger away and turns to me. “Sorry,” she says, and she looks like she might cry.

  I smile at her. She says she has to go, and before I can close the garage door she’s already down my driveway and headed toward the path at the end of the street that leads to her trailer.

  That night my father is in the garage preparing the table for another layer of polyurethane while my brother and I eat frozen fish sticks in front of the television. I sneak to the garage door off the kitchen to see if he notices the delicate fingerprint as he slowly works two hundred grit sandpaper over the surface. When he gets to the spot, he pauses. Nearsighted, he lowers his glasses to inspect the surface, but he seems to be thinking of something else. After a moment, he presses the sandpaper against the finish and continues. He still hasn’t spoken to me about what I overheard him confess the other night as he knelt next to our mother, desperate about losing his job. He avoids looking at me now when he comes home from work before heading out to the garage.

  * * *

  Taylor appears at the screen door the next day at four. She doesn’t knock or say anything, as if she knows I’ll be waiting for her. I shut off the television and walk out onto the front steps.

  She looks sad, though she’s trying to smile. “Something’s going on with the loan for the double-wide,” she says.

  “Your trailer?”

  “Steve said he had to go to the bank to straighten it all out.” She forces her fingers through her thick hair then crosses her arms against her chest. Without saying anything she begins to walk across the front lawn to the road.

  “Is everything going to be okay?” I ask as I follow her.

  She lifts her shoulders in a frantic shrug. She moves with quick steps on the road toward the wooded path that leads to her trailer—I have to rush to keep up.

  “He’s such an asshole,” she says.

  When we reach the dirt path in the woods, I wonder if she’s going to walk home, but she stops at a spot where the road disappears from view. She stares into the forest, her arms still folded against her body. Not knowing what else to do, I place my arm around her like I’ve seen my father do when my mother is upset. Taylor lays her head on my shoulder. After a few moments, she turns to look at me. Our mouths are only inches apart; I can feel the heat from her lips on mine. Neither of us moves, until finally Taylor leans in and kisses me with her mouth closed.

  She pulls back. “Here,” she says, and she takes my hand and places it on her breast. She presses her lips against mine again. Beneath her T-shirt, I feel the pad of her bra. I’ve thought about a moment like this since I discovered that moments like this happen in the course of one’s life. I try to push away the image of the eggshell bra under my bed. There’s something about the rigid feel of Taylor’s body, a body usually loose and assured, that tells me she’s frightened. But I don’t pull away, unable to release myself, despite the way my own shame simmers in my veins.

  Taylor pulls back from my mouth. She looks down at the dirt path. I have this feeling that I should apologize, but I’m not sure what I did.

  Taylor breaks our silence, asking, “Can I see your mother?”

  “She’s sleeping,” I say, confused at the request.

  “I need to look at her.”

  “She’s sick,” I say. “She just looks like a sick person with cancer.”

  “Please,” Taylor pleads.

  I know I shouldn’t, but I want to make her happy. My brother is at his girlfriend’s house. She got home last night from Maine, and I heard him tell her he was coming over and that she needed to talk with him. My father is at work. He’ll be gone until six, maybe later. He’s been staying at work later since I overheard him the other night.

  Taylor tilts her head and smiles at me. “Please,” she says again.

  Outside my parents’ bedroom I press my ear against the door. Taylor is behind me. I’ve never brought a girl into our house before. In the room, I can only hear the whir of a fan.

  “Wait here,” I say.

  Taylor nods, and I open the door a crack, slip into the room and ease the door shut. My mother lies on her back on top of the covers in shorts and a tank top. Her thinning hair is disheveled from sleep; her arms are down at her sides. Soft light emits through the closed curtains. I feel like I’m betraying her, but I can’t stop myself.

  “Mom,” I say softly. She doesn’t answer. I hear her quick breaths. Her chemo sleep is deep. “Mom,” I say again a little louder, checking that the sleeping pills are working. When she doesn’t move, I slip out of the room. The hallway is empty.

  I find Taylor lying on my unmade bed, staring at the ceiling. She sits up when she sees me. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I wanted to see what your life feels like.” This comment surprises me, but before I can ask how it feels, Taylor gets off my bed and says, “Can I
see her now?”

  I go into the room first and pull Taylor in by the arm when I’m sure my mother is asleep, clasping the door without a sound. Taylor squeezes my arm when she sees my mother. We listen to my mother’s low breathing. After a moment, I notice that Taylor’s shoulders shake. She wipes at her cheeks. I place my arm around her and smell her strawberry shampoo. She steps closer to the bed and places her hand on the mattress close to my mother’s leg. Nervous she’ll wake my mother, I grab Taylor’s hand and lead her out into the hallway.

  She wipes at her eyes with the back of her hand. “I’m sorry,” she says.

  I’m confused by the entire afternoon. We sit on my front steps in silence until my father’s car pulls into our driveway.

  I stand, not sure if he’ll be mad that I’m with a girl. Taylor straightens next me. When my father gets out of his car, he gives me a concerned look. I search his face for any signs that he’s been let go at work, but see only disapproval that I’m sitting alone with a girl on our front steps.

  Taylor stands and says, “Your table is beautiful.”

  My father looks at me. “Who is this?”

  “I’m Taylor,” she says. “Your son’s friend.”

  “You saw the table?” my father asks.

  Taylor turns to me and I give her a wide-eyed look.

  “No,” she says, “your son told me about it. I’m new around here.”

  That night it rains. My father stands in the garage, staring out at the driveway. The garage door is open—rainwater splashes at the edge of the concrete floor. The humidity means the polyurethane will take longer to dry. In his hand he holds the sander with a new sheet of fine grit sandpaper, but he won’t be able to work on the table tonight. If it keeps raining, it could take days before the surface is dry enough for another layer. Even if it wasn’t raining, I’m not sure he would be able to sand the table with his hand in so much pain from the infected cut. He can’t hold anything in his bandaged hand, though he refuses to go to the doctor.

  My father turns to look at the table and catches me standing at the kitchen door. “Come out here,” he says.

  I step into the garage and stand next to him, looking out at the neighborhood.

  “Who is this girl?” he asks.

  “She moved into the double-wide through the woods,” I say. “She just showed up one day.”

  “You don’t have her in the house, do you?” he says. “You know the rules. The Bible is very clear about girls and boys.”

  “I don’t let her inside.” I’ll confess this lie later, though I wonder when we’ll get a new priest who will say confession after mass on Sundays.

  “It’s all right,” he says. “Just be careful with girls. She looks troubled.”

  “We’re friends,” I say.

  My father nods. Raindrops click against the gravel driveway. Some younger kids a few houses down scream as they chase each other barefoot, streaking across a lawn.

  “The other night,” my father begins in the stilted tone he uses when entering conversations he’d rather not have, “I’m sorry you overheard me speaking about work to your mother.” He turns the sander over in his hands, careful not to let it touch his wound.

  “I’m glad I heard it,” I say. We don’t look at each other; I keep my eyes on the neighborhood kids running through the rain.

  “I should have done more to stop those guns before they went out, but I didn’t.”

  “Why?”

  “Fear, I guess. Of getting let go like the other men who’ve been laid off. Fear will make you do stupid things,” he says. “I’m not sure what we’ll do if I lose this job. But I won’t write those fake reports.” He runs his fingertip over the sandpaper’s rough surface.

  “Why stand up now?” I ask.

  He tightens his face in pain as he adjusts his bandaged hand. A thin layer of sweat glows on his forehead. He clears his throat. “It’s like in the Bible when—” he begins, but stops. He thinks for a moment, taking a deep breath. “Sometimes you don’t need the Bible to know that something’s wrong. Writing those reports—it would just be wrong.”

  I want to plead with him to do whatever they ask of him at work—no matter how depraved—so he can keep his job, but with his neck bowed and shoulders sunken as he stares out at the rain, it’s clear no one is more crushed by this than him. So I say nothing.

  Down the street a woman leans out the front door of a house and yells for the laughing kids to come inside. They circle the wet grass a few more times before disappearing into the house.

  After a moment, my father says, “Hopefully the humidity will pass and I can get the final coats on this table.” His voice has returned to its normal register. He squints out at the driveway where rainwater has begun to collect into pools.

  * * *

  The next morning while he should be at work, my father walks into the house. He gives me a tight-lipped nod as I sit on the couch in front of the television. His eyes are bloodshot behind his glasses. It has happened.

  Without a word, he moves down the hall and disappears into the bedroom where my mother is deep in the chemo dreams that have started to torment her more lately.

  I stare at the television and try not to think about the trailer park or Larry Anderson’s bloated face.

  * * *

  After he’s fired my father spends the first two days lying in bed next to my mother, only coming out for meals. He doesn’t look my brother or me in the eye when he sees us. He doesn’t even work on the table in the garage, though the humidity has broken, and it’s ready for more coats. He eats in silence then vanishes into his bedroom. The silence in the house threatens to smother us.

  Then comes the call from a man at church who works at the plant saying that there’s contracting work in Tennessee. It’s only a weeklong job, but it could get extended. The man has gone out of his way to set this up for my father. I hear my father tell my mother that if Mr. Whittaker finds out about this, the man could lose his job—everyone has been told not to associate with my father. But the war is still raging in the desert. There are plenty of war machines to build and defense contracts that must be fulfilled, so my father packs a suitcase and we take him to the airport. There’s a silent optimism in the car as we drive, but we all know it’s just a temporary solution. At the airport, he is only able to carry his suitcase with his good hand.

  “Go to a hospital to get that infection looked at when you land in Tennessee. You’ll need an antibiotic,” my mother says.

  “I know,” my father replies, “but that will cost money.”

  “You can’t work if you’re missing a hand,” my mother says. My brother and I laugh at this remark, but my mother and father don’t.

  From the parking garage, we watch my father’s plane disappear over the horizon. When it’s gone, we drive home.

  That night the war is on TV again. My mother prepares fish sticks in the microwave. We eat in front of the television, turning up the volume to drown out my mother’s labored breaths. When we’re finished eating, she takes our empty plates. On the television, fighter jets drop missiles. “You know,” she says, “there are some people who believe that the Garden of Eden was in Iraq.”

  The camera pans over the rubble of a bombed-out house on the screen. Hands and feet of dead bodies stick out of the debris. She leaves the room to call my father, and I look back at the television. The newscaster talks of peace agreements. Soldiers move over the desert sand in tanks. More bombs explode on the screen. I lean forward and watch Eden burn.

  * * *

  Taylor appears at my front door the next morning. I haven’t showered or combed my hair—with my mother sick and my father in Tennessee, there’s no one to make me do it. Outside it’s overcast, but not raining. It’s one of those hot days where your clothes stick to your skin. The sky feels charged as if any minute lightning will streak across the sky.
While we sit on the front steps, I hope Taylor will kiss me and place my hand on her again, but I think of the comment she made about her mom’s boyfriends.

  “He lied,” she says.

  “Who?”

  “Steve. He doesn’t own that trailer. He knew it would be empty. It belongs to one of his friends in the army. The guy’s leg was blown off in the war, and he came home last night and found us there.”

  “You’re moving?”

  Taylor doesn’t answer. She leans close to my face, but instead of kissing me, she places her hand on my cheek.

  “I worry about you,” she says.

  This surprises me. I’m silent for a moment, then I say, “I worry about you.”

  “I know.”

  We stare at each other. Her eyes are the color of unfinished wood.

  “I know I’m not supposed to go in your house,” she says, “but I need to use the bathroom.”

  Under the spell of this moment, I say, “Down the hall next to my parents’ room.”

  Taylor walks into the house. I sit on the front steps and try to remember the feel of her lips against mine.

  When Taylor doesn’t return after a few minutes, I go in to check on her. The bathroom door is open. The room is empty. I go to my room. She’s not on my bed. I know where she is. I turn the knob to my parents’ bedroom door and slip into the room, closing the door behind me.

  It’s dark in the room; it takes a moment for my eyes to adjust. In the dim light of the room, I don’t make out Taylor’s form. Then I look at the bed. There, huddled against my sleeping mother’s body, is Taylor, her face buried into my mother’s shoulder, her hands wrapped around my mother’s arm. Smothered by her chemo and sleeping pills, my mother doesn’t wake up.

  Taylor pulls her face away from my mother and looks up at me. I motion with my hand for her to come to me. She shakes her head. I walk to the bed and grab her by the arm.

  “No!” she screams.