A Little Ray Of Sunshine

by Lani Diane Rich

  More noise, and then Jess stepped into the dim shaft of light coming through the curtains and sat at the dinette table. “We’re less than fifty miles from Colorado Springs. Tomorrow, you’re going to be rushing to get me on a plane. Now’s your last chance. You have to read it now.”

  “I don’t want to read it now.”

  “You have to. I’m thinking about it so much I can’t sleep, which means the Universe thinks it’s important. You have to read it now.”

  I sighed and sat up in bed. “We need to discuss your deluded relationship with the Universe.”

  “Do you really want to point fingers about delusions?” she asked.

  I glanced up at her. She stood with her arms crossed over her stomach looking fairly threatening, the pink camisole and blue capri sweatpants notwithstanding.

  “You know, for an angel, you can be kind of mean sometimes.”

  “I’m just trying to communicate with you in a way you’ll appreciate. Now get off your ass and read the damn letter.”

  “Wow.” I sat up, stretched to the far edge of the bed where I’d thrown my jeans, and whipped the letter out of the back pocket. “You’re a mean angel.”

  Jess flicked on the lamp by the dinette table and sat down. I unfolded the letter in my hands and stared at it.

  It’s just a joke, I thought. Just read the damn joke and get some sleep.

  Still, my fingers wouldn’t move. A joke from Luke was never just a joke. Once I opened it, I knew I’d spend the entire night tossing and turning, looking for the hidden meaning. Shaggy dogs meant he was angry, and elephants were forgiveness and “two men walk into a bar” meant we needed to talk and... hell. I’d forgotten what the priest and rabbi ones meant.

  “Do you want me to read it for you?”

  I glanced up to see Jess looking down at me, kindness in her eyes. I handed her the letter and rested my head in my hands, listening as she tore the envelope open and unfolded the paper inside.

  “Dear Eejie,” she read. “Enclosed please find a check for two hundred and thirty-three dollars and eighty-two cents, which is your pro-rated rent refund for that last month. I wanted to be sure you got it just in case you decide not to come to the wedding. Best, Luke.”

  I raised my head to find Jess turning a check over in her hands. She looked mortified, but it was mortification on my behalf, which made it a thousand times worse. Her face cleared as she looked up and realized I was watching her, and she smiled as she tucked the check back into the envelope.

  “Well,” she said. “That was very thoughtful of him.”

  I stood up and took the envelope from her, pulling out the check and the letter.

  “‘Best’?” I said. “What the hell does ‘best’ mean?”

  Jess smiled. “It means he sends you his best regards. It’s affectionate... kind of. And it’s better than being all angry and bitter, right?”

  “‘Best’ isn’t affectionate. ‘Best’ is what you write when you don’t care enough to say ‘drop dead.’ ‘Best’ is”—I swallowed—“ambivalent.”

  Jess clasped her hands together. “You know what? Why don’t I make us some tea? We can sit and talk.”

  I stuffed the check and the letter into the envelope. “‘Best.’ He can bite my ass for his ‘best.’ Thinks I need his stupid two hundred and thirty-three dollars after six years? And pro-rated, no less. Jesus. I’m surprised he didn’t calculate interest. What kind of guy, after six years, sends a pro-rated rent refund check?”

  Not Luke, I thought. Luke would never, ever...

  Except he did.

  “So...,” Jess said, motioning vaguely toward the stove, “tea?”

  “No,” I said. “Thank you. We’ve got a long day tomorrow. I’m gonna—” I interrupted myself with a forced yawn. “I’m tired.”

  “Okay.” There was a long moment of awkward silence, and then Jess shut off the lamp by the dinette and scurried back to her bunk. I clutched the envelope in my fist, crawled back into bed, and stared at the ceiling of the Airstream until the sun rose.

  “This looks like a nice place,” Jess said as I hopped back into the cab of the truck, which was parked in the lot of an RV park off Route 24, just outside of Colorado Springs. “Do you think you’ll be here long?”

  I held up the receipt in my hand. “Just paid for a month in advance.”

  She paused. “Is that a long time for you?”

  I sighed, staring at the hanging wooden sign by the road that read golden acres campground, the letters carved out in that faux-burned-in style that many RV parks out west were fond of.

  “It’s nice here,” she said in sunny tones. “I think you’ll like it here. It has a nice country atmosphere. Do you know where you’ll be working?”

  “I keep reading ‘Golden Arches,’” I said, pointing to RV park sign.

  She leaned forward to look at it. “Oh. Yeah.”

  “Doesn’t help that the letters are painted yellow.”

  She sat back. “It looks like a pretty place, though. I like the log cabin lodge thing they’ve got going on with the rec center—”

  I twiddled my fingers on the steering wheel for a few seconds, then twisted in my seat to face her. “So, you fix people, right? I mean, that’s what you do?”

  “Well, not really.” She cocked her head to the side. “What exactly are you asking me?”

  “I just want to know what you do. I mean, when we met you said you help people, right? You fix them. That’s part of the whole angel thing, isn’t it?”

  “No.” Jess cleared her throat. “I don’t really fix people. It’s not like a surgery. I just do what the Universe tells me. I help the way I’m guided to help. I don’t—”

  “But if you went there,” I said, frustrated, “and someone was obviously broken, then that could be the reason why you went. Like, to fix him.”

  “I’m not sure you’re hearing me. I don’t fix people. I can’t change who they are, or interfere with their free will. It doesn’t work that way. I just...” Jess watched me in silence for a while, then shook her head. “What are we talking about?”

  “When we met, you said everything happens for a reason, right? You met me, and that’s why you’re going to Fletcher now.” I leaned my head back and stared at the ceiling of my truck cab. For someone who tagged herself as insightful, Jess was being particularly obtuse at the moment. “I mean, maybe you’re meant to help someone there. Someone who writes weird letters and sends them with his brother. Someone like that.”

  She shrugged. “I know you’re bothered by that, but it was just a rent refund. It was thoughtful of him to remember after all these years.”

  “Thoughtful, sure. But not funny. Not warm. I know I haven’t exactly earned funny and warm, but if Luke were stuck in a waiting room with Hitler, he couldn’t not be funny and warm. It’s just who he is.” I sighed. “Or who he was. Trust me, the Luke I know is not the same guy who wrote that letter.”

  Jess nibbled one edge of her lip. “Has it occurred to you that maybe it’s not my destiny to help Luke?”

  I huffed and threw my hands up in frustration.

  “Well if it’s not yours, then who—?” I broke off, and she raised an eyebrow at me. I shook my head. “No. Trust me. I’m not a fixer. I—” I sighed, my mind pushing against the memory of stupid things my mother has said to me. “I’m a breaker.”

  There was a long moment of silence. “You really believe that?”

  I shrugged. I had believed it enough, once, to make the biggest mistake of my life, so... “Yeah. Sure.”

  “Do you think you broke Luke?”

  A sharp pain shot through my ribs at her words, and I realized I’d hit my limit on this conversation.

  “You know what?” I said, reaching for the gear shift. “Let me get this thing parked and set up, and we’ll get you to the airport.”

  “He’s not broken,” she said, her voice soft.

  I sat back, leaving the car in park, as the core of my being roiled with
emotion I struggled to keep below the surface. “I really don’t want to talk about this.”

  “I know you don’t. But I think it’s important for you to know that Luke isn’t broken.”

  “How would you know? You’ve never even met him.”

  Jess stared straight ahead at the lodge, but I could tell by the misty look in her eyes that her head was somewhere else. “If he was really broken, he wouldn’t have been able to send you any letter at all.” Her voice was strange and distant, and her eyes blinked slowly as though she could hardly bear to look at whatever pictures her mind was putting in front of her. Then, she blinked hard, and turned her focus to me. “Whatever it is, it’s reparable. It’s not too late. He can be who he was again, and he probably will be, if it’s his natural inclination. But he’s not lost.”

  For the first moment since I’d met Jess, the thick fog of my self-absorption lifted, and I could see that she wasn’t talking about me, or Luke. Not entirely, anyway. I was suddenly overtaken with curiosity about her past, but I didn’t ask any questions, mostly because she hadn’t asked me any, and she seemed like a “do unto others” kind of girl.

  I cleared my throat. “I’m just gonna get the Airstream set up in my lot, and then we can get you to the airport.”

  She flashed a smile. “Sounds great.”

  I put the truck in gear and started down the path to my section of the park. “Or, you know, I could drive you to Denver. It’s only another seventy miles, and it’s a bigger airport up there. You can get a direct flight to Portland and it’ll be cheaper.”

  “Well, sure,” she said. “That’d be nice. Thank you.”

  We drove in silence for a short while.

  “Or,” I said, “I could just drive you all the way to Fletcher.”

  I kept my eyes on the dirt path ahead of us, but even not looking at her, I could hear the smile in her voice.

  “That you could.”

  “I mean, I’ve paid for the full month. I could just park the damn trailer here and get over myself and go to my stupid mother’s stupid wedding. I mean, I owe Danny that much, right? The few good qualities I have are because of him. I can just think of it as Danny’s wedding, and put up with her for his sake.”

  “That’s an interesting perspective.”

  “Okay. So we’ll just park this thing and pack up and be on our way.”

  A wooden sign nailed to a tree marked my lot and I pulled easily into it. I shut the engine off and turned to face her. She glanced at me, not working too hard to hide her victorious grin.

  “Stop smiling,” I said, reaching for my door handle. “Nobody likes a cocky angel.”

  The so-called “feud” between Shelley Fabares and myself, like many Hollywood stories, has been wildly over-reported, and never accurately portrayed. I would like to take this opportunity to clear up some points:

  1. She did not win the part of Mary Stone on The Donna Reed Show over me. Obviously, given that Shelley is somewhere between ten and fourteen years my senior (no one has ever been able to pin down her actual birthdate with any precision) this would be impossible. I will say that the producers were, at one point, thinking about adding a younger sister to the cast, and my name was bandied about.

  2. I have no proof that Shelley requested that there only be one Stone daughter, and threatened to quit should I have been added to the cast. That is hearsay. And my source, while reliable, will remain anonymous.

  3. It is patently untrue that I snuck onto the set of Girl Happy and put hot pepper flakes in Shelley’s bikini bottom. That could have been any number of girls on the long, long list of people who didn’t like her, of which I am only one.

  4. As to the rumors that I named my daughter Emmy just so I could say I got an Emmy before Shelley ever did... well. She still doesn’t have one, now does she?

  —from Twinkie and Me: The Real Life Confessions of Lilly Lorraine

  Six

  As we hit the first stoplight on the outside of Fletcher, I gripped the steering wheel so tight my fingers went numb. We’d driven almost non-stop for two days, and I was exhausted. While the driving was easier and faster without the trailer hitched up, I found myself in an elevated emotional state for most of the drive. If I was scared of going home, I was terrified; if I was happy about seeing the people I loved again, I was giddy. I couldn’t maintain a level state of mind, and found myself spiking into hyperactivity whenever I wasn’t fighting to keep from bursting into tears. Jess, for her part, had handled me well, distracting me with crossword puzzles and reading aloud from her Agatha Christie novel.

  Now, less than five minutes away from Danny’s house, I was beyond even her powers to calm.

  “Okay,” I said, my chatter matching the pace of my racing heart, “here’s the thing. Danny’s a sweetheart. He’s big and cuddly like a teddy bear, and he’ll make you feel at home instantly.”

  The light turned green and I hit the gas. “He’s got a big, soft heart and at some point during the visit, I almost guarantee he’ll adopt a three-legged stray or save a whale or something. It’s just Danny. He’s an architect, and he does pretty well for himself, so the house might be a little intimidating at first, but he’s got a great, warm style and—”

  I paused as we passed by the old second-run movie theater where Luke and I used to go every year for the Humphrey Bogart festival. At the top of the marquee, in all caps, was PETE’S FEED AND HARDWARE, with, “Sweet Crimped Oats and all hammers 20% off til June 25,” in smaller, mismatched letters underneath. The knowledge that the Lyceum had sold out to become a feed store shot a weird panic through me, and I stopped breathing for a second.

  “EJ?”

  I snapped out of it and glanced back at the road, my heart still hammering. I took a left onto Wingdale Road.

  “Right? Where was I? Oh, yeah. You need to be prepared for my mother. She’s probably already living there. I mean, she’s getting married for the eighth time in a week for the eighth time, why be precious about it, right? So. My mother.” I heaved out a long breath. “I don’t want to say she’s evil, but I find myself at a loss for a more fitting word. First of all, she wears pearls and diamonds and dresses all day long, even at breakfast. Her hair styling habits alone have probably contributed to half the hole in the ozone. The second we get there, she’s gonna start in on my hair, then my clothes, then my shoes, then my weight.”

  “Your weight?” Jess said. “You’re kidding. What are you, a size eight?”

  I shot her a look. “In Hollywood, the fat girls are a size six. But that’s okay; the physical critique will only last an hour, tops. By then, she will have moved on to my disappointing character traits, such as how I have no appreciation for making a good first impression, and how my unwillingness to participate in the latest gossip about her fading Hollywood D-list starlet friends constitutes an ignorant disdain for current events and popular culture. She won’t even notice you until probably day two or three, at which point she will quote-unquote ‘kindly’ offer to take you to the salon to fix either your hair or your nails or your skin, whatever feature she feels is less than acceptable. Whatever you do, don’t buy into her bullshit. You’re fine the way you are.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Oh!” I snapped my fingers in the air. “Also, whatever you do, do not mention Shelley Fabares.” I swallowed hard as we took a right onto Kotter Drive.

  “Shelley Fabares?” Jess asked. “The lady from Coach?”

  “Oh, crap. You know who she is. Yes, it’s the lady from Coach and also she was on The Donna Reed Show and she starred in a movie with Elvis and my mother is completely obsessed with her for reasons that are way beyond my comprehension.”

  “Didn’t she also have a hit song in, like, the fifties?”

  “‘Johnny Angel.’ Nineteen sixty-two. You hum one bar of that song, my mother’s head will twirl around, she’ll start speaking in tongues. It’s crazy. Just to be safe, don’t mention Shelley. Not that you would, I mean you’re smarter than that, but
...”

  I released a long breath as the road wound its way toward Danny’s house, which sat at the end. I pulled my foot up from the accelerator and let the truck slow down to twenty miles per hour.

  “Um... EJ?” Jess’s voice was thick with worry, but I couldn’t take my eyes off the road. “Are you okay? You look kind of pale.”

  “I’m fine,” I said, on a weak and I’m sure thoroughly unconvincing laugh. We wound around a curve and I could see the edge of Danny’s roof through the huge firs that flanked the edge of the property. I slowed down to a crawl and turned into the long paved stone drive.

  “Whoa,” Jess breathed as we closed in on the house, a four thousand square foot craftsman Danny designed himself back in the seventies. The exterior was the same familiar smooth stone, the overhung roof made of the same natural wood. The interior used to be simple and understated, white walls with natural blond wood trim over hardwood floors, everything natural, simple, comfortable, just like Danny, but I shuddered to think what my mother had done to it. She had the decorating tastes of Zsa-Zsa Gabor on methamphetamines. She was probably having the back deck laminated in gold at the very moment we pulled up.

  I edged the truck over to the side of the circular driveway and parked it, then leaned forward and stared at the house through the windshield.

  “I wonder if they’re even home,” I said, but before I could finish, Jess said, “Is that Digs?”

  It was. He stepped out from the porch and then paused when he saw us. Our eyes met, and very slowly, he smiled. I smiled back and he approached, walking around to Jess’s side of the truck first and opening the door for her.

  “I have to apologize,” he said, holding his hand out to help Jess out. “I didn’t think you’d be able to do it. I have obviously underestimated your divine powers.”

  “It wasn’t easy,” Jess said. “I had to kidnap her.”