The Clouds Aren't White

by Rachael Wright

  I suffer a moment of madness and almost drop the towel to get her to look away.

  "Can we talk about this when I'm dressed, please?" I say, collecting my faculties.

  She heaves a sigh my direction but exits the bathroom just as silently as she entered it. In a fit of hysteria I laugh, my sides shaking with mirth, I gather random clothes and pull them on. I have no idea what I'll do all day and ruminate whether I should demand to come alone. By the time I've dressed I've come to the realization that beginning hostilities this early could be quite dangerous.

  They are all sitting around the kitchen table when I come down. Sophie launches herself at me, her teeth clamped down on her bottom lip, which is turning white.

  "Well?" my mother-in-law says.

  She's perched on the edge of her chair, taking in the week's worth of dust accumulated on the table and the dirty dishes in the sink, her top lip curled.

  "Have you asked Sophie?" I say, glancing between the adults so obviously ill at ease in my home.

  Hugh's mother bites the inside of her cheek, I watch the gouge it makes on her face, keeping back all those biting comments, I imagine.

  "Sophie, would you like to go to Loch Ness with us for the day? We can go get lunch and take a boat on the lake and search for a nice birthday present," she wheedles, hitching a grin onto her face.

  "Its a LOCH, Grandma, not a lake," Sophie says, her voice rumbles with anger.

  "Sophie!" I say, reprimanding her.

  "Its true, Mommy."

  "You need to be respectful to your Grandmother, Sophie."

  After a moment, Sophie mumbles an apology.

  "Are you coming?" my father-in-law asks from his place by the window.

  "Is Mommy coming?" Sophie asks, hoping down from her perch in my arms and grabbing a banana from the counter.

  "We thought it could be just the three of us," my mother-in-law says sweetly.

  Sophie regards them for a moment. The furrows of her frown growing deeper by the second.

  "But Mommy doesn't work today. We always do something fun on Saturdays."

  "Yes, but won't Loch Ness be fun!"

  "We already went to Loch Ness. Right after by birthday."

  The tension in the room builds exponentially.

  "Let's do something else then. We could drive to Edinburgh," my father-in-law says boisterously.

  His face is as red as an apple.

  "I won't go without Mommy and I'm sick," Sophie says stomping her foot in anger.

  "Emmeline..." She says, her voice shaking with anger, her livid face turned upon me.

  "What do you want me to do?" I say as Sophie throws herself into my arms. "She doesn't want to go without me. Can you respect that?"

  "I want..." she begins before being interrupted by her husband.

  "We wanted to spend some time alone with Sophie," he says.

  "That's fine. I'm happy you're here but if Sophie doesn't want to go alone then she doesn't have to."

  My hands are shaking, my vision clouds over. I'm losing it.

  "Let's go," he says, rising in one quick movement.

  In a moment they are out of the house, the gravel of the driveway sent spinning into chaos.

  "I'm...sorry, Mommy," Sophie says, clinging to my hand.

  We stand motionless in the kitchen, staring out of the window. Clouds are rolling in; the color of the loch is slowly fading to a murky grey.

  "Its not your fault sweetheart."

  "I just wanted to go with you."

  "I know. I know," I croon, sitting down on the floor and pulling her onto my lap.

  We sit like this, curled up into each other's arms. My gaze comes to rest a portrait of the three of us, hanging on the opposite wall. We used to be so strong, our family, with a center of gravity rooted in Hugh. And here we are, flung out to the elements. Battling everything and everyone.

  They don't come back for the rest of the day. After making sure she has taken her antibiotics, Sophie and I take our lunch out to the garden and I listen while she tells me all about what trips her friends have planned for the summer holidays. We become entrenched in a discussion as to why we aren't taking our own vacation. I'm forced to explain, ad nauseam, why the museum is so busy during the summer.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  "They just left?" Maria says, her voice dripping with incredulity. Sophie's gone to bed for the evening and I am laying curled on the grey couch, in front of the empty fireplace, a glass of red wine in one hand and my phone in the other.

  "Just left. They weren't here for more than ten minutes." I can't believe it myself; the slam of the front door still rings in my head. I pick up Sophie's medication, trying to remember if I gave it to her this morning.

  "What brought it on?"

  "They were set against me coming with them, but Sophie hasn't been out of my sight, since September, except for school and I'm a mile away at the museum," I say, setting the bottle back down.

  "They are still angry then."

  "Am I a bad mother?"

  It's bothered me for months, hovering on the edge of my consciousness, the question of whether my in-laws were, in fact, right all along and taking Sophie away was a heartless selfish act. "What? No!" Maria says, practically shouting into the phone.

  "What if they were right? Maybe I've ruined a lot more than I realize."

  I pick the bottle back up, count the pills, then thumb them pills back into the container and tighten the lid. My mind reels with emotions, as though my ability to process them has been shut off.

  "Ruined?"

  I contemplate the fireplace a moment before letting my mind drift over all eventualities.

  "I've ruined their relationship with Sophie," I say, convinced it’s the truth.

  "The relationship isn't ruined and even if it is, it’s their fault. Your parents chose not to lose their heads over the move."

  "She's doing well here but I worry constantly about a relapse. She didn't even want me to leave the room tonight, she let me go because I told her I had to go to the bathroom."

  "Ah the 'bathroom' excuses. I've used that one plenty of times," Maria says, chortling.

  I love the sound of her laugh.

  "So I'm guessing the advice is going to be to just let them be?" I say.

  "Is there anything else?"

  "I wish there was..." I say, trailing off.

  "How's your fisherman friend," Maria says airily.

  I sense she has wanted to ask this since I answered the phone.

  "Still fishing."

  I take a deep breath and take the plunge. Maria sputters on the phone for almost a minute after I tell her about Sophie's birthday and the consequences of bringing him the leftover cherry pie.

  "The man has guts," Maria says in awe.

  "He's a widower. And divorced."

  "So its the baggage which is turning you off."

  "I wasn't turned on to begin with."

  "Still dreaming about Hugh?"

  The art of subtlety was lost on us a long time ago.

  "Yes.”

  "So you're against dating Mr Fisherman because you can't get Hugh off your mind."

  "No. Ok, a little. But its more the fact he's all I think about besides Sophie. I'll always love him. He'll always be the person I cry out for. How could I be fair to another man? How would I live with myself? Entering into a relationship just because I'm lonely? I'm not that woman. I want to love my husband in peace."

  Crickets. Crickets are all I hear in response.

  "I still can't believe he asked you out on a date on Sophie's birthday. How's she feeling?" Maria says, skillfully skating over my monologue.

  I assure Maria that Sophie's doing much better.

  "What's on the agenda for tomorrow?" Maria says after we've exhausted the subject of Ian Campbell, for now at least.

  "Laundry and cleaning. Sophie will be thrilled," I say, remembering our earlier conversation about the summer holidays.

  "Unless your in-laws deci
de to crash it."

  "Or they might just go home."

  It slips out of my mouth before I've even processed the thought, "I didn't mean that," I say, more to myself than Maria.

  "What's the part in the Bible about feeding and helping your enemies and you'll be heaping burning coals upon their heads?"

  "Love," I whisper.

  "Right. Love and patience," She says.

  I can almost see her vigorously nodding her approval.

  "I don't know why I call you.”

  "Its for all the free psychological advice. I give it out all day to my kids, why shouldn't you benefit?" Maria says with mirth.

  "I'm so sorry, all we've been talking about is me. How are they? How are you?"

  I'm wracked with guilt but Maria laughs on the other end.

  "Oh honey, you make me laugh. We're fine. The kids are all enjoying summer. We've had one broken arm this year but that's about the extent of our drama. Its too hot in Colorado in the summer to work myself up to anything else," She says.

  Maria describes the endless parade of days at the pool, hikes in the mountains, camping trips, and a special Disneyland expedition to be taken later in the summer.

  I smile and laugh at all the appropriate moments. It strikes me, in one fell swoop, how much Sophie and I miss out on. I can take her to the pool, we can go camping, we can hike all day, and still there's no daddy to swing her around over the tops of the heather or dunk her in the swimming pool nor siblings to run around with-getting each other into trouble and sharing secrets.

  "Mommy, can I have some water?" Sophie's voice rasps from the bottom of the stairs.

  "Maria," I say, interrupting her, "I'll call you back tomorrow." I hang up the phone and rush over to Sophie.

  She's flushed and groggy with sleep.

  "Are you alright sweetheart?" I say, feeling her cheek.

  "I just coughed," Sophie says, inching towards the refrigerator.

  "Ok," I say and hand her the glass, she gulps it down and then trudges off to bed without another word.

  I stand at the base of the stairs and watch her go. It’s a long while before I move. A long while before I can make the trudge up the stairs and collapse into bed, trying to shut off the whirring of my brain.

  We are sitting, once again, at the kitchen table the next morning when the doorbell rings. I've taken the precaution of waking early and going downstairs dressed. Once again Hugh's parents present themselves without so much as a preemptory phone call. Sophie takes them on a tour of the house, pointing out every picture that Hugh is in and discusses, at length, the reasons behind why a certain picture resides in a certain place.

  "This was the last picture of all of us, so Mommy said it had to be over the fireplace."

  I travel around them like a moon, knocked out of orbit. They are cold, domineering, and take no notice of me. Sophie feels the tension as well, lapsing into long stretches of silence. It’s the same pattern for four days. We drive to different castles and direct them towards good picnic spots on the coast. We don't speak about Hugh or about my job. They are disdainful of Scots in general and the laid back lifestyle of Skye's residents. It spirals into the tensest week of my life. I ache to have our home back again, free of 8 AM visitors.

  On the fifth day, Sophie and her grandfather row out onto the loch in the small boat we inherited with the property. Sophie has even named it. Hessie. Hugh, Emmeline, and Sophie. Sophie believes our loch is also home to a sea monster.

  Hugh's mother sits on the sofa staring up at the large framed photograph of Hugh and I with our arms around Sophie. I watch her for a moment before I turn back to preparing our lunch. As I'm closing the oven door I hear a soft tread on the threshold of the kitchen.

  "Can I get you anything? Water, maybe?" I ask, straightening up and placing a hand on the tense muscles at the small of my back.

  She stands, her shoulders hunched, looking towards the photo she was staring at earlier, a severe amount of pain in her eyes. I wonder what it has cost her to be out here, but also what its cost to have Sophie so far away. She doesn't look at me but her mouth opens and closes like a fish gasping for oxygen. I don't know what to say, or do. Every phrase I can come up with seems feeble and wrong.

  "Did Hugh..." she says with a caress in her voice, "did he want this?"

  For a moment I stare at her. Did she think I was lying all those months ago?

  "He did."

  "All he ever talked about was you," she says, turning her steeleyed gaze towards me, like a malediction.

  "Oh?" I say.

  My mind is blank, standing in the wake of her anger and pain.

  "Ever since he met you. It is all we could ever get out of him, how much he was in love with you. He did everything for you, everything, down to the tiniest decision-it was all for you," She says, crossing to the far side of the kitchen, putting as much distance between us as possible.

  "I hated you for a long time," she says, surveying the loch with a look of deep disgust on her face. Her top lip curls. "I hated you for taking him away. He was my oldest son and from the moment you stepped in front of him, he had eyes for no one but you. I hated it. Who said you were good enough for him, or that you knew him well enough, or that you could love him as completely as I did?" she rages at me, spit flies from her mouth and hits the window; her hands clench and unclench at her sides.

  "I'm so sorry," I say in a half whisper, wishing I was anywhere but this room.

  "I thought it was the worst day of my life when you married...it wasn't. It was the day he died. You had already taken my son away from me and then you took my granddaughter." She says, continuing on in her tirade as though I'd never even spoken. "Why here? Why? You could have moved anywhere in the United States and yet you had to come to the boonies of Scotland!"

  She turns on me, leaning forward, her hands looking as though they are itching to put themselves around my neck.

  "Its what he wanted," I say. "And I'm sorry you hate me so much."

  "I don't hate you," she says with disdain, as though I've missed a large part of her 'speech.'

  "I'm sorry..." I say, yet again, thoroughly confused.

  "I said I hated you for taking him away from me. I don't hate you anymore."

  "What, because Hugh's gone now? Because the object of your imagined competition is gone?"

  Blood pounds in my ears and I have taken a step towards her.

  "Yes...yes...because he's gone. Because my son is gone,” she says choking out the words and letting them fall from her.

  Before my eyes she collapses onto the hardwood floor and sobs wrack her body, leaving her howling, convulsing in pain. For a long moment I consider letting her lay there in her own grief and making my escape to the yard.

  "I'm so sorry."

  And though it feels as safe as petting a viper, I lay a hesitant hand on her back. I expect her to swat me away. She doesn't. The tears and sobs work their way out and after a while she comes back to herself.

  "Please don't tell him," she says into her hands, I assume she means her husband.

  "I won't breathe a word."

  "I believed you...when you told us Hugh had sent in your application. He used to say you should be in Scotland, using your degree. He wanted to make you happy."

  "Why did you have to make it so hard?" I say, settling myself down on the floor next to her.

  "I was mourning my son. I became someone I didn't recognize. Losing your child destroys something inside of you. Thirty-six years of life and love I gave to that boy,” she says, her tone softens and her eyes glaze over.

  I wonder whether she sees a toddler or a grown man.

  "I don't think I made things any easier."

  "No you didn't," she says bluntly, and then continues, "But you couldn't have done it any other way. Sophie had to be given the chance to have a happy childhood. I would have hated you more if you'd stayed in your bed, refusing to get up, refusing to be a mother."

  "I've come close, once or twice."


  "I would be worried if you hadn't," she says looking at me.

  Her brown eyes meet mine. Some of the hostility has left her face. Anger has given way to exhaustion.

  "Sophie is doing wonderful here. She's happy."

  "I can tell. Do you have a romantic interest?"

  I balk.

  “No.”

  “What about this Ian Campbell person?" her eyes narrow with suspicion.

  "Oh, he's our neighbor," I say dismissively, downplaying Ian as much as possible.

  "And…”

  "He is a nice man. He's also a widower and divorced. A lot of emotional and relationship baggage. And I...I'm not ready...I'll never be ready."

  "You don't have to say that."

  "I...what?" I stammer, rather confused.

  "If you want to date someone, then by all means, date them. I trust you."

  I stare back at her, wide eyed in total disbelief.

  "I don't want to date."

  "Not now. Maybe down the road."

  "I doubt it."

  We are quiet for a moment before she rises from the floor and settles into a chair with dignity. She leans against the back against it. I don't know why I stare at her, and then it hits me. She's relaxed; she's said what she came to say.

  "He would be proud," she says as I stand by the window, looking out to the loch. "He would be proud of you. You're everything he ever said you were."

  The thank you I meant to say lodges halfway up my throat. So I nod.

  "Can we meet this Ian Campbell?" she says, clearing her throat.

  "Are you sure?" I sputter, hoping she just suffered momentary madness and wasn't serious.

  "Of course. Sophie said he's taking you out on his boat next week."

  "Yes...he is."

  "I used to think I'd be the good mother-in-law."

  "You were...are."

  "Don't exaggerate. I lied to you both. Lied. Hugh deserved better from me."

  "He'd be happy now.”

  "Perhaps," she says with a wiry smile.

  "I'd like us to be friends."

  Sophie bursts into the room just then, dragging her grandfather by the hand, howling like a wild animal for her lunch. My mother-in-law rises from her chair and informs Sophie they are going to walk to Mr Campbell's house and invite him for lunch. Sophie looks incredulous but follows her grandmother out the door, casting a longing look over at the oven.