How the Light Gets In

by Jolina Petersheim

  Elam knew he probably didn’t smell much better than he had before he baptized himself beneath the pump, but at least most of the day’s dirt and sweat was gone. Using his dirty shirt to towel off, he glanced at the house and saw the candles made his own windows stand out against the backdrop of night. Despite everything, seeing that touched him, knowing someone lovely and kind was inside. He began buttoning his new shirt, fingers shaking, as he understood what bothered him the most about this impromptu setup from his sister and his aunt: that getting to know Ruth in a deeper way was quickly becoming a subject at the forefront of his mind.

  CHAPTER 5

  RUTH STOOD AT THE WINDOW and watched Elam as he doused himself by the well pump. She no longer believed people were good for the sake of being good. They were good because they had ulterior motives: the hippie Peace Corps volunteer who just wanted to defer his student loans; the college-age “missions team” who flew down over spring break to repaint the girls’ floor of the orphanage and instead acted like they were indeed on spring break: pairing off with each other, smoking in the alley behind Bethel House, blasting music at all hours, so that the baby, Vi, cried. Only half the floor got painted before they had to leave, and the old and new paint combination was such an eyesore, Chandler offered to paint the rest, so that Pepto-Bismol pink seemed wedged beneath his nails for years. And then there was the youngish doctor who wanted to patch lives back together overseas because that was easier than to watch his own life unraveling. Yes, Ruth had been skeptical about humanity long before she found herself a penniless widow with two small children underfoot.

  When she came here, to Driftless Valley Community, two weeks ago, she was too shell-shocked to maintain her guard. Now, though, she wondered if her mother-in-law had been adamant about having the funeral in Wisconsin because she had her own ulterior motives.

  Ruth seethed. How could her mother-in-law be so insensitive? And yet Ruth had to admit that Elam had nothing to do with Mabel’s plan. That had been apparent when she came into the kitchen and saw him standing there: his large limbs ungainly and cumbersome, as if they had grown in the past hour, and he no longer knew how to maintain his own space. His soft eyes had cut up to hers after she read the note for herself. She saw his face redden, so his already ruddy complexion became accentuated with two darker-red strips. A man who blushed.

  For some reason, his innocence infuriated her. Elam was almost ten years her senior, whereas there had only been seven years between her and Chandler, but Elam seemed a decade younger, at least. She knew he had lost his mom as a teenager and seemed rather lonely; however, these were the only glitches on his life’s plodding timeline.

  But maybe the plodding timeline itself was an additional glitch.

  Chandler would’ve believed that, at any rate.

  Chandler had never been content just living a normal life. He wanted adventure, which he said in such a way that Ruth knew it was meant to be italicized. But after they adopted Sofie, and Ruth got pregnant, her appetite for adventure waned. Chandler’s appetite, if anything, only grew as domesticity clamped down, and at times she wondered if he would show up at Bethel House with a moped and an earring: an early midlife crisis because he’d found—with more than a little disappointment—that, italicized or not, any grand adventure became routine over time.

  Ruth pulled the curtain back a little more. The light from the downstairs window played across Elam’s torso as he toweled off while facing the yard. He was built so differently from her husband: broad shoulders, muscular back and arms, whereas Chandler was lean as a runner. This comparison made Ruth feel guilty, as if she were being unfaithful in her mind, but then she remembered her vows to Chandler lasted until “death do you part.”

  With his death, she was freed from such constraints. The realization didn’t bring the comfort she would’ve anticipated when she and Chandler were at their worst, and the only way she thought she could escape from such a lifeless marriage was to have one of them die.

  How had the two of them transformed from lovers to rivals, who—even in bed—stayed on opposite sides? How had they lost each other, and themselves, in just a few years while their parents had been married for forty-plus years before their spouses died? Ruth didn’t pretend to have the answers, and considering how things had ended between her and Chandler, she probably would never learn. Ruth let the curtain drop. She didn’t even know she was crying until she touched the dampness on her cheeks. Wiping her face on her shirt, she went downstairs.

  Elam walked in the front door, catching the screen so it wouldn’t slam behind him.

  As if he didn’t want to disturb her.

  “Hi,” she said.

  He looked at her. His silver hair curled over his shoulders, longer since it was wet. “Hi.” His smile appeared self-conscious, but then Ruth really didn’t know him well enough to decipher what kind of smile that was. “Should we . . . eat?” he asked.

  Ruth nodded and walked in front of him into the kitchen. Most of the candles had burned down to warm puddles of wax pooled around the fake gold stands. Elam went over to the oven and grabbed a mitt from the right-hand drawer. He slid it on and opened the oven door. Ruth was surprised to see the pie wasn’t burned to a crisp, considering the time it had taken her to clean up, but Elam must’ve had the forethought to turn the oven off.

  “Smells delicious,” Ruth said.

  Elam nodded. “It’s going to be . . . hard, going back to eggs . . . once Mabel leaves.”

  Ruth appreciated the safer topic. “Oh?” Her eyebrows rose. “Is that going to be soon?”

  Elam walked back across the kitchen to fetch the china plates. It made his breath catch, to see his mother’s English tea rose design, though he had no idea that’s what kind of rose it was. He just knew the plates were pretty and delicate, like she had been. The china set hadn’t been taken from the cupboard since her death. Their family wasn’t fine china–eating kind of people. It went to show how his mother had softened the edges of their stark and demanding life.

  “I don’t know,” Elam said, scooping a steaming wedge of chicken and vegetables onto each of their plates. “Aunt Mabel hasn’t . . . talked about it.” Pieces of crust fell from the server and scattered across the top of the stove. He still felt clumsy in the kitchen, even after so many years on his own. For some reason, he felt even clumsier when Ruth was standing on the opposite side of the counter, arms folded, watching him juggle plates and a server and a quilted oven mitt, covered in buttercups. “That enough?” he said.

  She nodded and took the plate. Together, they went back to the table. He quickly sat down, allowing Ruth to dictate her proximity. She took the end. As far away from him as possible. Shaking out a napkin, Elam draped it across his lap. He picked up a fork and started eating. He was ravenous, but, considering the fine china and candlesticks, didn’t want to shovel it in like he usually did. Ruth, on the other hand, took massive bites. No doubt, after all that work, she was as ravenous as he. The guttering candle spoke into the silence. Elam didn’t want to look at Ruth, in case that made her uncomfortable, but he was aware of her like he’d never been aware of anyone in his life. Damp hair framed her bare face. Her skin was luminous, her lashes nearly white without the mascara she typically used.

  “Thank you for . . . all you did . . . today,” he managed.

  Ruth looked up from her plate and a wave of hair slid over one eye. Brushing it away, she smiled. “No problem. It was enjoyable, actually. Good for me to stay occupied.”

  “You’ll have another . . . opportunity. We’re starting the dry beds . . . tomorrow,” he said.

  “Which do you prefer?”

  “Dry.” He took a sip of water. “But wet harvest is . . . faster. If the berries are used for sauce and juice, which most . . . are, wet makes more sense. The dry berries are perfect for the . . . the local markets.” He paused and used his fork to gesture to the cranberry bread and cranberry crisp on the counter. “I see Aunt Mabel’s already making use of . . . t
he harvest.”

  “Do you like it?”

  “Cranberry bread?”

  She smiled. “No, your job.”

  He took another bite of pie. “For the most part. There are good days and . . . bad, like any occupation.” He glanced up. “You caught me on a bad day, when I was fixing the . . . pump.”

  “I would’ve never known you were having a bad day.”

  Elam poked at a green bean. “I’m not very good at showing . . . emotion.”

  “I’m not either,” she admitted. “The people around here probably wonder why I’m helping you with the cranberry harvest when my husband just died.”

  “I don’t think they . . . wonder that,” he said. “Besides—” he paused, smiling—“Germans are known more for their . . . work ethic than for their demonstrative behavior.”

  “Well,” Ruth said, “we Irish are known for our ‘demonstrative behavior,’ as you call it. But it seems to have skipped my genes.” She looked down, frowning slightly, and broke off a piece of crust. “Actually, that’s not really true. I used to be very demonstrative, if that’s the right word. My mom often complained that I wore my heart on my sleeve. But I guess, as I grew older, I learned how to hide it.”

  “Are you glad you . . . did?”

  Ruth looked at Elam and he wondered what she was thinking. “Honestly, I’m not sure I really like who I am at the moment.”

  Elam looked back down at his plate. “For what it’s . . . worth,” he said, “I do.”

  JUNE 2, 2016

  Chandler,

  I know you didn’t hear me tonight, when I told you how empty I am, or you would not be sleeping. I could feel you dismissing me even as I stood before you, holding the shampoo bottle, with the front of my pajama shirt damp with the milk my body had let down as the baby cried and you and I screamed. Is screamed the right word? I’m never sure what to call it when we fight.

  I am the one who raises my voice, and you always remind me not to yell in the same imperious tone you use with Sofie. You are no longer a safe place, Chandler—a vessel I can pour my thoughts into—“I am not even thirty, Chandler, and I’m as used up, as empty as this!”—so I am writing them down here because I don’t want you to read them, and you would never dream of reading my journal. I would like to believe this is because you respect my privacy, but it’s really because you’re not interested enough in my thoughts to take the time to read them.

  How have I become so cynical? So needy? How have we so quickly grown apart? Did it start in the earliest days of our marriage as we struggled to become an instant family of three? There were times when I felt this wall building between us: each sharp word, a brick; each time we did not take the time to connect, the mortar that held those bricks together. Days would pass like that, but I would wait them out, knowing that eventually a breakthrough would come. But now the breakthroughs are fewer and farther apart, and that wall between us is growing higher—word by word, brick by brick.

  If I had been kinder to you—if I had hugged you more, from behind, as you brushed your teeth at the sink, my face against your warm back, my eyes still swollen with sleep—would it have made a difference? If I had cooked more meals, so you would’ve come home from the clinic and seen me there—in my apron and pearls with your children all fresh-scrubbed and smiling, Sofie sitting at the table with folded hands—would you want to come home more? Would your home be more of a solace than that sterile clinic full of children whose needs also can never be met? If I had never turned you away, would you now return to me? I don’t know, and so here I sit in our bed, wishing I could do things over, but too angry to begin.

  I want us back, Chandler. I want the us back, who we were back then, but a part of me realizes we cannot go back. To go back would be to give up our girls and the life we’ve made together. So I suppose I wish I could go back to what we were while maintaining what we have.

  And what we have is great—I know this, deep down. I just miss you. I miss you, and I miss the love that we shared in the beginning. I miss you, and you’re sleeping right here.

  Your Ruth

  Ruth was sitting on the front porch when Mabel and the kids came home in the horse-drawn buggy. Ruth had been outside, waiting for over an hour, because the kitchen was suddenly too intimate once they’d finished the meal and Elam said he’d do the washing up. So Ruth had donned one of the thick wool sweaters she’d purchased from a vendor in Bogotá years ago and sat on the front porch. She felt like a teenager, sitting there with her knees drawn up and her air-dried hair flared around her shoulders. It was a cold night, and getting colder with every passing day, but the damp cold and persistent wind reminded Ruth of home . . . of Ireland.

  Ruth had enjoyed her time with Elam tonight. She’d enjoyed it possibly even more than she cared to admit, which was why she escaped to the porch under the pretense of waiting for her daughters. But then she saw the horse and buggy coming up the lane—the single, tired-looking mare’s plodding steps, as if she could follow the path in her sleep—and a tightening took place within Ruth. A tightening she hadn’t known was loosed until that unseen depth of her grew taut.

  The horse and buggy pulled up in front of the house. Ruth got up from the porch and walked down the steps. Her daughters peeked out from inside the buggy and waved, appearing like they’d been trapped in a time warp since they were wearing their regular, Englischer clothes.

  “Mommy!” Sofie squealed, and like a little parrot, Vi squealed, “Mommy!” Both girls extended their arms to her, utterly delighted with their adventure, and Ruth lifted them out.

  Vi, wide-eyed and breathless, pointed at the lane. “We wide in the sleigh the whole way down the woad!” Ruth didn’t correct her and just leaned down to kiss the crown of her head. It was past their bedtime. It seemed like hours past Ruth’s, but she enjoyed seeing her children so happy, so exuberant, almost as if they’d forgotten what had taken place only two months before.

  Mabel said, “Driving a buggy’s a whole lot like riding a bike. Impossible to forget no matter how long it’s been.”

  Ruth didn’t respond.

  “Were you worried?” Mabel asked. “Did you see my note?”

  “I saw the note.” Ruth patted Mabel’s arm. “We’ll talk after I tuck the girls in.”

  Thirty minutes later, Ruth stood at the threshold of Elam’s guest room, watching her beautiful daughters sleep, and wondered what memories they would have of the year their daddy died. Would theirs be sorrowful memories, or would they only remember the big family meals, the cranberry harvest, the moonlit rides with their Mennonite grandmother holding the reins?

  Downstairs, Mabel sat on the couch centered before the fire. Zeus was stretched out beneath her feet like a stuffed polar bear rug. Mabel wore a pair of crocheted slippers, which looked like they’d fit Sofie. Mabel said, “Did you and Elam have a good night?”

  Her question was innocent enough, but her dark eyes held a certain mischievous shine.

  “Yes,” Ruth said carefully. “That’s what I want to talk to you about.”

  Ruth wanted to stand but instead took a seat beside Mabel. She breathed deeply while counting to ten, a tactic she’d started implementing whenever she needed to broach a difficult topic with Chandler, this woman’s son. Toward the end of their marriage, however, Ruth had never reached five before words exploded like shrapnel from her mouth.

  Clearing her throat, Ruth looked at her mother-in-law. “Thank you for supper,” she said. “That was delicious.” Even she could hear the crispness in her voice, which meant she was opening with a compliment, but something far less complimentary was bound to come. “However,” she added, “I found it interesting you only set the table for two.”

  Mabel glanced over. Her small fingers gripped the crochet hook. She’d known full well what she was doing. “You and Elam were the only ones left in the field,” Mabel said. “I had already fed the other workers and sent them home. And then Laurie . . .” She trailed off.

  “Laurie
invited you and the girls for supper?” Ruth smiled slightly. “How convenient.”

  “I didn’t mean to upset you.” Mabel set the hook in her lap and stared at her hands. Unlike Ruth, she no longer wore a wedding band, but Ruth didn’t remember seeing a wedding band on any of the women in the Driftless Valley Community, married or not.

  Ruth said, “You know how I interpreted it, right?”

  Mabel shook her head.

  Ruth sighed, not wanting to spell it out. “Elam and I came in the house, and there were candles and a fire and food. It felt like a date.”

  “I was just trying to be kind.”

  “So, you had no ulterior motives?”

  Trembling lips betrayed Mabel’s stoic profile. “Yes. I want you and Elam to be happy.”

  Ruth groaned. Zeus lifted his massive head and rolled his eyes in her direction. Seeing nothing out of the ordinary, he lay back down on his paws and resumed his canine snore.

  Ruth said, “My happiness should not at all be correlated with his.”

  “It’s not!” Mabel insisted. “I don’t know—” Her voice broke, and guilt flooded Ruth. Her mother-in-law’s behavior might be offensive, but she was dealing with her grief too. Neither of them was thinking clearly. “Today, I was upstairs, rocking Vi before her nap, and I was looking around Elam’s big house, with no one living in it besides him, and I thought of you and your girls with nowhere really to go, and the idea just—” her defense grew smaller as she stared down at her lap— “came to me.”

  Ruth softened her tone. “You thought that since Elam and I are both lonely that we should find refuge in each other?”

  Nodding, Mabel looked up and whispered, “You’re too young to be lonely, Ruth. My heart breaks even more to think of your life ending when it’s half the length of mine.”