The Light Through the Leaves

by Vanderah, Glendy

  “She’s only saying that to justify calling 911. She shouldn’t have done that!”

  “You fault her for that?” he said, an incredulous tone seeping through.

  “Yes! Don’t you see? She’s trying to make it seem like I can’t handle my house and kids. You need to make her leave!”

  “The boys told me everything that happened. You yelled at River. You made my mother cry. You threw the lunch she’d made into the garbage. Who’s the villain in this story, Ell? You or her?”

  “Oh my god! Did you call me a ‘villain’?”

  And he’d just come from Irene’s bed. Ellis was sometimes certain she could smell his lover on him, a scent that hung over him like a cloying cloud.

  His expression softened when he saw her tears brimming. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have used such a strong word.”

  “What word would you use?”

  “I’m just saying, she had every right to call 911. You were acting irrational, you passed out, and your head was gushing blood. The boys were terrified.”

  “She scared them more by calling the paramedics.”

  His blue eyes went cold again.

  “She’s making everything worse. Did you know she’s taking the boys to her church tomorrow?”

  “So what? Maybe they need the comfort of church right now.”

  “They have a church! I decide what my children need. I’m their mother. Do you remember that, Jonah? I’m their mother!”

  The coldness remained in his expression, and it froze her down deep. She understood what it meant. She couldn’t be trusted. He thought the boys were better off with Mary Carol.

  “I’m begging you to make her leave, Jonah.”

  “I need her help while I’m at work. She’ll leave when you’re able to care for the boys alone.”

  “I am!”

  “I’m not seeing it, Ell.”

  “It’s only been two weeks! They’ve just told us finding her is almost impossible now. Give me a chance to work through it.”

  “That’s what this medication is for. To help you recover.”

  She looked at the little pill that would “help her recover.” Two weeks ago, she’d been certain she and her children would never recover from Jonah’s betrayal. Now all of that was submerged beneath much deeper grief. She was being consumed by it, sinking too fast. She was trying to grab on to something, anything—even on to him, the one who had opened the abyss in the first place.

  “Take it,” he said, pushing the pill into her lips.

  So this was all he had to offer. Why did he not take her in his arms? Hold her, give her real security when she was so obviously going under?

  She tasted salty tears with the drug’s bitterness. But if it could dull the pain of his treachery, she would welcome it.

  He pressed the water glass to her lips. She drank, swallowing the medication.

  “Good,” he said, patting her cheek like she was a child. “Now, get some sleep. We’ve got dinner covered. The boys are making pizzas with my mother.”

  “No meat! Don’t let her put meat on them,” Ellis said.

  He sighed and closed the door.

  4

  Taking the pills got easier and easier. The medication didn’t so much counteract her anguish as smear it. The brutally sharp photographs of her days became impressionist paintings. Pills, plural, because when she couldn’t sleep again, they gave her another one.

  The combination of the two drugs worked. After little more than a week, Ellis believed in them without question. The pain of existence was not something a person should have to feel.

  Of course, she wasn’t allowed to drive when she was taking the drugs. Mary Carol and Jonah took charge of the house. Sometimes the eminent senator Jonah Bauhammer II visited, spouting his intolerant opinions in front of the children, stoking the tension igniting in the house. Ellis frequently lost control of her temper with him, even when the boys looked on.

  Jonah III would make her go upstairs to stop the fight. He’d been doing that for years, acting as a human barrier between her and his parents. He didn’t support her or contest his parents’ bigotry.

  What a coward Jonah was. He’d often told Ellis it was a relief to be with someone who shared his deepest beliefs, yet his parents still didn’t know he opposed their views. But even if they did find out, they’d blame Ellis for corrupting him.

  Weeks passed. Mary Carol took the boys to her church every Sunday. Gave them meat. The cleaning ladies came every week.

  Ellis wasn’t getting better. She knew she wasn’t because Jonah and Mary Carol no longer trusted her alone with her children. River and Jasper perceived the shift in control. More and more, they sought out their grandmother for their needs. The pain and fury were too much. Ellis took more medication, adding doses of the opioids she’d been prescribed for her back pain. She did have back pain—probably from staying in bed too much—but she’d made it sound worse than it was to get a refill.

  Eventually, her five prescriptions weren’t enough. She was secretive when she drank early in the day. But once the clock hit five, she felt no need to hide the martinis and old-fashioneds from her family. That was when she was in her best mood and at her finest with her boys. Joking with them, sometimes playing a board game. Though usually she was too stoned to play the game right.

  Ellis learned how to vacate her past. Dissociate from her fears of the future. She could even slip away from the present. She was a ghost drifting around a prison that smelled of floor wax and dusting spray. Sometimes she swore her hands went right through the furniture when she tried to touch it.

  Jonah stopped sleeping in the bedroom with her. Ellis understood. She disliked trying to sleep with the person she’d become as much as he did. And her bitterness toward him had grown almost as strong as her self-hatred. When he was in bed with her, keeping to the far side of the king mattress, his presence felt intrusive, as if she were sleeping with a stranger, some shitty guy who was cheating on his wife with his tennis instructor.

  Almost six months after Ellis left her baby in the parking lot, the case of Viola Abbey Bauhammer’s abduction was essentially closed. Her recovery was deemed very unlikely by the detective supervising the case.

  After Jonah gave Ellis that news, she took an extra dose of her back medication. She didn’t wait until five o’clock to pour a whiskey on ice while her husband aimed his usual reproachful glare at her.

  “Do you want some?” she asked. “You look like you need it.”

  “That is not what I need, Ellis,” he said bitterly.

  He went to the kitchen, told his mother he had to go to work and wouldn’t be home for dinner.

  Apparently, what he needed was Irene.

  “Go ahead, honey,” Mary Carol said. “I have everything under control here.”

  Ellis drowned her shrinking ice cubes in more whiskey and watched Jonah pull his car out of the driveway. She didn’t recall much more of that evening. She remembered hearing River and Jasper fight over the TV. She looked out her bedroom window, watching a raven flap its darkness across the ashen sky. She had a bottle of pills in her hand.

  She woke in the emergency room. They told her she’d overdosed.

  The same psychiatrist who’d prescribed the pills told her she had to stop taking them. She said she needed them. She begged. She cried. But they wouldn’t let her have anything.

  It hurt. God, it hurt.

  Two days later, her first day back home, Jonah came to her in the living room. When Ellis saw the look on his face, she understood why Mary Carol had taken the boys out of the house. She was grateful for the drink in her hand. Jonah hadn’t found the bottle she’d hidden in the laundry room when he’d cleared the house of alcohol and pills.

  He glanced bitterly at the drink as he approached. “I’m not going to draw this out,” he said. “I think we both know this isn’t working.”

  “I agree,” she said. “Your mother has to go. She’s wrecking our family. Your father, too. L
et’s tell them they can never come here again.”

  His bold stance crumbled into perplexity.

  She wanted to laugh at his dismay, but if she had, she’d have ruined the humor. Jonah was such an ass. He truly didn’t know she was jesting.

  “I’m talking about us,” he said.

  “I know,” she said. “They’ve come between us. It’s time we take a stand.”

  “Ellis . . .”

  “What?”

  “I’m trying to say I want to leave you.”

  She let herself laugh. And laugh and laugh. She was aware of how out of control she looked. She didn’t care.

  “Stop it.”

  “Stop what?” she said, wiping at the tears.

  “Laughing. This isn’t funny.”

  “What’s funny is you don’t know why it’s funny. You don’t know the half of it—as they say.”

  “What don’t I know?”

  “You don’t know I took the kids to have lunch with you the day Viola was taken. You don’t know we were going to surprise you with a picnic in the park like we used to do. You don’t know I saw you get in Irene’s car and kiss her. You don’t know I said something to distract the boys and drove away fast so they wouldn’t see you. You don’t know how I felt at that moment, to know you’d been with another woman all that time, even while I was screaming and pushing your baby out.”

  Jonah stood in jaw-dropped silence.

  “You don’t know that was why I had to go to the woods that day. But you know that’s what I do, go to the woods when I’m upset. To try to figure out what to do.”

  “Ell, I’m—”

  “Quiet! I’m not done.”

  He clamped his mouth shut.

  “You don’t know I told the boys they could catch tadpoles so they’d want to go to the woods with me. You don’t know I decided I had to divorce you, and it was the hardest decision of my life. You don’t know River spilled his tadpoles in the car and both boys were screaming, and I was so crazy about what you’d done to all of us that I forgot about the baby.”

  Ellis stood, suddenly strong.

  “You don’t know jack shit, Jonah! You don’t know what it was like when I realized I’d left Viola. You don’t know how I wanted to die when I saw someone had taken her.”

  Jonah pressed his palms to his temples, as if trying to squeeze everything he’d heard out of his brain.

  “I’m leaving you!” she shouted. “Tell that to your lawyer! I’m leaving you because you’ve betrayed our marriage vows! I’m leaving you because you’re at least half-responsible for Viola’s abduction! I’m not taking this on by myself anymore! You’re as guilty as I am!”

  Jonah started crying. Ellis had never seen him do that, not even the day Viola was taken.

  He was sobbing, all red in the face, his nose running, and she was struck by how much she had loved him. Or was it only his beauty that she’d loved? His thick nut-brown hair, eyes the color of clear sky, cheekbones as sculpted as smooth stones.

  She hoped his looks weren’t all that had drawn her in. But what was it; what had she loved about him? His gentleness? His calmness? Was it only that he’d said he loved her, and she thought she had to love him back? She once thought she loved his goodness, but now she knew he wasn’t good. That hurt the most.

  “Ell . . . Ell . . . ,” he said at last, “I can’t explain. I can’t tell you. You don’t understand . . . you don’t know why . . .”

  “I know what I saw. Do you deny it?”

  “No.”

  “Are you still with her?”

  He didn’t reply, but she saw the answer. Guilt hung over him like a haze. Of course he was still with Irene. He was rarely home. He’d let his mother take over, just as he had when he was a boy.

  Ellis slid down to the couch, sapped of her momentary strength. “I’m leaving you, Jonah. I want half of everything. But not the boys. I have to leave them.”

  He quit crying, his eyes wide. “You won’t contest my custody?”

  “Do you know what I see in the boys’ eyes when they look at me? I see my eyes looking at my mother. I’m damaging them. I can’t do them any good like this.”

  “That’s not true! We’re all still grieving Viola. But someday we’ll recover. And when you’re better, I hope we can share custody of the boys. They need you, Ellis.”

  “When will I be better? A month? A year? Three years? I don’t know how long it will take me to get over this. All I know is I’ve become my mother, and it’s the worst nightmare I can imagine. I have to leave them to stop hurting them. I’m begging you to be who you truly are with our children. If you can do that, I know they’ll grow into good men.”

  5

  They signed the papers within the week. Jonah gave her things he never would have if she’d fought. He wouldn’t make her pay child support for the boys. He gave her money for her half of their belongings. He would deposit a monthly stipend into her bank account in lieu of giving her half the house. He wanted to live there. With Irene.

  Ellis liked to imagine Mary Carol meeting Irene. The Bauhammers would probably judge a tennis instructor as they had Ellis: beneath their standards. Sparks certainly would fly when The Hammer met the steel-bodied tennis lady.

  When Jonah heard Ellis planned to travel with a tent rather than rent or buy a home, he insisted she at least take the new SUV he’d traded for the van. He let Ellis take all the camping supplies. She’d bought most of them long before they married.

  There was only one condition Jonah fought. He wanted contact with Ellis, and she wanted none. She had to cut off her life in New York like an umbilical cord. She’d either survive without Jonah, River, and Jasper, or she would not. In between was not possible.

  Knowing Jonah would be tempted to find her, Ellis had to route her bank statements somewhere unknown to him. To someone she fully trusted.

  Ellis stalled calling Dani to the last possible day. She’d last seen Danielle Yoon, her best friend from college, a week after Viola was abducted. Dani had found out about the abduction through mutual friends, and she’d immediately hopped on a plane to come help.

  Dani was working with one of the most prestigious plant geneticists in the country, and Ellis knew she must have gone to extreme measures to leave behind her doctoral studies at the University of Florida. Ellis hated that her shameful mistake was making a mess of someone else’s life. And Dani’s hugs, tears, and repeated offers to assist with the boys had only made Ellis feel worse.

  Dani was all those memories from before Jonah: botany labs and field trips, late-night dorm chats, study evenings, camping, cheap beer, and laughter—always laughter because Dani was one of the funniest people she knew. She didn’t belong in Ellis’s housewife life. She wasn’t supposed to be sitting in her big suburban house weeping for Viola. Having her there—bringing all those memories with her—only cleaved open Ellis’s pain. Ellis had found herself submerging her grief in stoicism to get her friend to leave. Dani stayed for two days, and after she left, Ellis retreated to her bed, wholly exhausted from pretending she had the strength to handle losing her daughter.

  Calling Dani would be difficult. Ellis had stopped answering her texts long ago, and Dani surely had been hurt by that.

  But the bank needed an address before she left town. She called next to the packed SUV.

  Dani picked up on the second ring. “Ellis! How are you?”

  “I’m okay. How are you?”

  “I got so worried when you stopped answering my texts and calls. Have there been any new leads with finding Viola?”

  “No,” Ellis said. “How’s your research going?”

  “Really well.” After a pause, she said, “What’s going on? There’s something wrong. I can tell.”

  “There is. I’m leaving Jonah . . . or I guess we’re leaving each other.”

  “What? Divorce?”

  “Yes.”

  “Ellis, no! You guys are still grieving Viola. Have you tried counseling?”

&n
bsp; Neither Jonah nor Ellis had taken their friends’ advice and seen a therapist. Ellis didn’t see the point when Jonah had been cheating on her long before the abduction. And Jonah apparently had no intention of giving up his lover. There was nothing left in their marriage to salvage.

  But Dani knew nothing about Jonah’s affair, and Ellis wanted it to stay that way. She couldn’t bear more of Dani’s sympathy. It simply made the pain worse.

  “Yes, we went to a therapist,” Ellis lied. “It didn’t work.”

  “But this is a terrible time to make a decision like this. Just half a year after your baby was abducted—”

  “I really can’t talk about this, Dani. I called because I have a huge favor to ask.”

  “Sure, anything!”

  “Can I have my mail sent to your address for a little while?”

  “Why do you need to do that?”

  “I’m going on a road trip. To clear my head.”

  “Where? For how long?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You’re leaving the boys behind?”

  “I have to. It’s a mess.”

  “Did he get custody?”

  “Yes.”

  “Full custody?”

  “Yes,” Ellis said. “I need to get on the road. Can I give your address to the bank?”

  “Ell, you’re freaking me out. If you’re leaving your kids, something really bad happened. Does Jonah blame you for what happened? He better not, or I’ll—”

  “No, it’s nothing like that.”

  Another lie. Obviously Jonah—and everyone else—blamed her. She deserved the blame.

  “Please just answer,” Ellis said. “All you have to do is throw my mail into a box. There won’t be much. Just a few bank statements.”

  “Of course I’ll keep your mail. But when will you come get it?”

  “I don’t know. Are you at the same address I sent the baby announcement to?”

  “Yes.”

  “Thank you. I have to go—”

  “Wait!” Dani said. “Will I still be able to call you at this number?”

  Tears streamed down Ellis’s cheeks. Getting rid of the phone would be cutting the last cord that connected her to Jonah and the boys. And Viola. “No, I won’t have a phone for a while.”