How the Light Gets In

by Jolina Petersheim

  Elam took the jars and upended them in the sink, where they were sucked down into the warm, soapy pool. He looked at Ruth and saw the sorrow rewriting the laugh lines around her mouth. He wanted to make her laugh again, but he wasn’t sure that was his place, or that Ruth would let him close enough to try. It was a miracle she’d allowed him close that once.

  So, instead of making her laugh, Elam pulled open the drawer beneath the sink. He took out a clean dishtowel and handed it to Ruth. She smiled and dabbed beneath her eyes. “You’re such a good man, Elam,” she said. “Really. It’s just that I—I don’t know what I’m doing.”

  Elam smiled gently, took back the dishcloth she was holding out. He folded it and folded it until the soft cotton became a hard little square. “You don’t need to know,” he said. “I just want to get to know you. To be your . . . friend.”

  Ruth looked up at him. “I could sure use a friend these days,” she said.

  CHAPTER 8

  THE INTENSITY OF CHANDLER’S BURNS required sedation to take the edge off his pain, but it took the edge off his memory as well—making it difficult to recall the kind of details he should’ve never been able to forget: the color of Ruth’s eyes, for example, or the dates when his daughters were born. Ruth had loved making a grand production out of their daughters’ birthdays. She’d baked cakes from scratch, hung pink and purple streamers and balloons from the basket light in the dining room, and let the girls pick the menu for supper. In short, she tried to make their birthdays as magical as possible, maybe because Ruth’s childhood birthdays had been far from it.

  Chandler might not be able to remember the color of Ruth’s eyes (hazel or blue?), but he could clearly remember Vi’s second birthday—the last one they celebrated before their family moved to separate continents. The night before, Chandler came home from the clinic and found Ruth in the living room. Sparkles, multicolored tissue paper squares, and splattered acrylic paint covered an old floral sheet. Ruth wore a college T-shirt over a pair of his sweatpants, and her curly hair was a topknot that had, somehow, not escaped the paint. He stood silently in the doorway, like he had many times before. Ruth was so absorbed in her project, he knew it was more of a creative outlet than a task. She was transforming a cardboard box into a castle.

  Even with the limited art supplies she’d borrowed from the orphanage, the piñata had a tiered roof, cupolas, and a drawbridge where Ruth would later stuff candy.

  Setting down his laptop bag, he crossed the room and touched the tip of her nose.

  She dabbed it with the back of her wrist. “What? My nose has paint on it too?”

  He shook his head. “You look so happy. You should do this kind of stuff more often.”

  “When would I find the time?”

  Chandler rested his hands on Ruth’s shoulders, and she leaned back against his legs while still holding the foam brush. “I could watch the girls one evening a week for you,” he said.

  Laughter vibrated through her chest. “You don’t have to make that offer twice.”

  Now, in his hospital bed, nearly every inch of his body a regenerating graft of stolen cells, Chandler remembers this conversation with a pang of regret. He didn’t watch their daughters after that conversation, to give Ruth a break like he planned. He never even made it to the birthday party because one of the babies from the mountain became so severely dehydrated from chronic diarrhea, he didn’t feel comfortable leaving his side. Chandler believed, at the time, he was making the right choice by remaining with that child, who had no parent to care for him, while his daughters were being cared for by such a loving mom. But when he came home and saw the crumpled piñata on the dining room table, along with a piece of chocolate cake covered with a princess napkin, his chest hurt as he understood what he had missed.

  He went upstairs—the same set of stairs he and Ruth had climbed when they ate supper on the roof—and stood in the bedroom his little girls shared. He walked in and looked at Sofie, asleep with her thumb in her mouth, and then he looked at Vi, already two years old.

  She’d be twenty in a blink.

  He heard a noise, turned, and saw Ruth standing in the lit hallway, her arms folded tight over her robe. She said nothing, just watched him until he came out. They stood there, in Bethel House, with their daughters’ framed artwork on the walls.

  “You said you’d be here.”

  “I know,” Chandler said. “I’m sorry. A little boy, he—”

  Ruth held her hand up, flat. “Don’t. I don’t want to hear it.” She stopped and looked to the side. Her eyes glittered. “You know what kills me most?”

  He didn’t answer. He knew better than to answer.

  “Vi didn’t cry for you. She didn’t even realize you were gone. She’s so used to you trying to save the world, she doesn’t understand your first responsibility should be to us, your family.”

  Green, Chandler thinks, before the morphine claims him. My wife’s eyes are green.

  Elam obviously wasn’t fluent in verbal communication, and yet he understood any conversation prefaced with “I thought you should know” was probably not a good one. However, he was still surprised to find himself and Ruth the subjects of the gossip.

  In truth, it wasn’t gossip so much as it was talk.

  And the talk probably started long before there was anything to talk about. A man and woman living under the same roof, who were neither blood related nor octogenarians, were considered prime suspects for romance, and one had to doubt if being eighty or ninety years old could protect from the Driftless Valley Community’s wagging tongues.

  The talk was not malicious, or at least none of the malicious talk had reached Laurie’s ears. Women are naturally more inclined to see a match where there isn’t necessarily one, and so the community women began noticing how Ruth stayed around to help Elam with the wet harvest, and then Elam stayed around to help Ruth with the dry harvest. And that night, after the party, Amy Brunk went back to Elam’s barn—claiming she’d forgotten her great-grandmother’s relish tray—and discovered Ruth and Elam talking in that oil lamp–lit dark, the two of them standing so close, Amy said there couldn’t have been a hairbreadth between them.

  But it wasn’t until Elam and Ruth walked off toward the woods while the rest of the workers were busy sorting berries, that their suspicions were confirmed: the community’s most eligible bachelor had set his straw hat for a woman—a widowed Englisch woman, no less.

  Now, Elam looked so distraught by this news, Laurie set Tim Junior down on the floor and got up to cut her big brother a slice of bread. She slathered this with butter and cranberry preserves and put it on a plate. Elam looked at the bread like he was looking at his last meal, so Laurie got up and refreshed his coffee. “It’s really not so bad as all that,” she said and spooned some cream into his mug. “I just thought maybe it’s time to reconsider your living options.”

  Elam thanked his sister for the bread and coffee, but he didn’t bring either to his mouth. He just continued staring at the table, his jawbone throbbing against the weathered tan. “Ruth and the girls are finally settled,” he said. “I can’t make them leave.”

  Laurie reached across the table for Elam’s calloused hand. “No one’s asking you to.”

  He lifted his eyes. “Then what do I do?”

  She smiled. “Move out or marry her, I guess.”

  Chandler had to use whatever time he had until they sedated him again to communicate who he was and why he needed to get home. He must come across as merely agitated, and the tube in his throat, to extricate the smoke from his lungs, made it impossible to speak. He tried, though. Over and over, he tried. Finally, two nurses came. The first leaned over the bed and used a flashlight pen to check his pupils. Chandler stared back at her, unblinking, from the mask of gauze. Her eyes were dark; her skin the color of sand. She reminded him of his wife, but then Chandler knew this was ridiculous. Ruth was fair and freckled. Her eyes changed like weather.

  The second nurse studied th
e clear bag hanging from his IV stand, calculating how much morphine was needed to navigate his distress. The nurses believed he was a civilian from Kunduz who’d been severely injured during the hospital bombing and was then transferred here. Chandler was thunderstruck by their inability to see who he was beneath the bandages—to see the ache in his chest from missing his family, to see his brain listing beneath the weight of facts that, try as he might, he could not sort out. But then he understood this was how the civilians and soldiers felt in his care: nothing but a pulsing group of cells Chandler struggled to restore.

  Morphine entered the vein. Chandler’s eyes closed beneath the bandages. His hands grew still, his mouth slack. His burned body sank deeper into the hospital bed. His mind pulled the curtain across scarier images and instead chose to replay a classic: the wedding-day reel.

  After six years of marriage, it was strange to think of Ruth as his bride, and he wondered how long it’d been since he’d called her that, his bride; how long it’d been since he’d called her beautiful. All he knew was that Ruth had been beautiful, that day in the courtyard, when she wore a full-length cotton dress the volunteer seamstress had made in the week she had to prepare. Chandler couldn’t remember if there’d been flowers, and this time it wasn’t just the morphine. He’d been so focused on Ruth, and on not stuttering during the vows, that everything went out of his head except for her. The ceremony had no frills (Chandler’s request) but took twice as long because the interpreter translated the English into Spanish for the hundred orphans who were gathered for the wedding (Ruth’s request). Each of the children sat primly in white plastic chairs: legs crossed; chapel clothes pressed; donated shoes polished to a shine.

  Afterward, Chandler remembered the taste of Chef José’s tres leches cake: three milks, smooth as cream, with a cornucopia of fresh fruit. He remembered, mostly, because he fed a bite to Ruth, and a dab of icing lingered like a beauty mark above her mouth. Even with the kids watching, he leaned forward and kissed that sweetness. The kids broke into a dissonant chorus of squeals and catcalls, the response divided by age. Ruth swatted Chandler’s chest, the icing on her own hands staining the only white dress shirt he owned, and which he’d taken such care ironing that morning. But then he caught that hand and pulled her close. Her mirth-filled eyes changed then—grew somber and deeper—and this time she was the one who leaned forward for a kiss.

  Chandler’s scarred face creased into a smile no one could see beneath his bandages.

  He remembered leaving the orphanage that night, the two of them giddy with relief as the other Children’s Haven volunteers whooped and beat on the roof and the “Just Married!” and “We’re Hitched!”–covered windows of the old, rickety borrowed car. Chandler leaned on the horn until the volunteers dispersed and then peeled rubber outside the orphanage’s gates. Ruth laughed out loud. They intermittently kissed and teased each other as he drove them down the twisting dark streets until they traded the crowded city for the distant country and crowded Bethel House for an orange-roofed mountain cottage, built entirely from stone.

  The dwelling had recently been aired, but even from outside, you could feel the cold and smell the damp embedded in its crevices. It was enchanting, though, a storybook chalet constructed by the host—an architect—who lived in another, more practical, home in town. As Chandler carried his bride over the threshold, he felt guilty that the director had rented it for them for two whole nights, using money that surely could’ve fed the orphans in their care.

  But then Chandler set Ruth down in the darkness, and she took off her sandals and crossed the floor to a large round table with a single silver candelabra on top. Chandler heard a hiss and watched as, one by one, Ruth lit the wicks. The candles threw shadows on the stone walls, the shadows writhing upward, like flames. Centered above the table was a circular skylight. Chandler took off his dress shoes, set the candelabra aside, and climbed onto the table.

  “What’re you doing?!” Ruth laughed, and her pearled teeth gleamed.

  Chandler turned and, with a flick of his arm, extended his hand to Ruth. Clearing his throat three short times, as if to make a grand announcement, he said, “Dancing with my bride.”

  She rolled her eyes but let him take her hand. He pulled her up beside him, and the two of them—barefoot but still in their simple wedding finery—began to sway on that circular table beneath a circular piece of sky. Chandler gently twirled Ruth’s wrist and she spun, her red-gold hair catching the firelight, her new emerald ring casting prisms on the stone tunnel, so the two of them felt they were contained at the bottom of a magical well. They danced there, and held each other there, and kissed in a way that proved that, this time, no children were watching.

  Meanwhile, above them, the moon and stars turned their gazes to the clear black sky.

  Miss Romaine had understood that diversion can be one of the best teaching tactics, and therefore she gave her young pupil, Elam, piano lessons to help loosen his tongue. Sofie did not need help loosening her tongue, but she did need help learning how to process her grief.

  So Elam asked Ruth if he could possibly give Sofie piano lessons.

  “Sofie?” Ruth asked. “She’s only six.”

  Elam said, “Does she know her numbers . . . alphabet?”

  Ruth nodded. “She taught herself to read last year.”

  “Then I’ll teach her the tab method. She’ll do fine.”

  But when Ruth broached the subject, Sofie hotly declared, “I don’t like him!”

  Ruth placed a warning hand on Sofie’s head as she brushed her hair. “Lower your voice.”

  But Sofie, though not biologically connected, took after her mother. “No!” The scream echoed as Sofie jerked. The brush caught and hung from tangled strands. Vi, meanwhile, sat on the rug beside the bed, thumb corked in her mouth, looking between her mother and her sister through a screen of overlong blonde bangs. It was naptime.

  Ruth snatched the brush from Sofie’s hair. “You will not talk to me like that.”

  Sofie yelled, “I wish you’d got dead!”

  Ruth recoiled and struck Sofie’s bottom with the brush, hard. They both gasped in shock. Sofie looked up at her mother, eyes accusing, and ran out of the room and down the stairs. The front door slammed. Vivienne grunted. Ruth glanced over, vision blurred, and saw her two-year-old tugging on the quilt, trying to heave her bottom half onto the bed.

  Whiplashed by her anger, Ruth set the brush on the nightstand and hooked a finger through the belt loop of Vi’s tiny jeans. She hauled Vivienne up and lay down beside her on the narrow bed. Ruth pulled Vi against her chest and stared at her snub nose and elfin chin. Vi snuggled in, content, and Ruth tried to remember when she’d last held Sofie like this.

  When was the last time Sofie had let her? Chandler had understood his daughter more than Ruth had, or so it seemed because Sofie always preferred him to her: Ruth was the one who doled out rules, whereas Chandler was the one who often, unthinkingly, negated them.

  The past months, and years, blended into an inseparable amalgam of colds and fevers, wiping bottoms, toilets, and chins, and yet there were beautiful moments tucked in there too. Ruth knew there were; she had recorded some of them, had she not? In Bogotá, she’d started keeping a journal because there was no one with whom she could speak such thoughts aloud. But she’d lost that time, recorded or not. Amid the sleep deprivation and the survival, she couldn’t remember those beautiful moments tucked amid the mundane, and that was time she could never get back. Months Sofie had become a little more girl than toddler, and Vivienne a little more toddler than baby. She had to do better for them—and for herself—than just surviving, but she didn’t quite know how.

  Ruth stood, changed Vi into a diaper, and put her in the crib so she wouldn’t follow her downstairs. Ruth saw, with relief, that Sofie hadn’t gone far. Three minutes had passed since the incident, but it felt like an eternity, each second time-warped by guilt.

  Sophie sat on the porch, her pink-and-purp
le-sneakered feet (the same kind of sneakers Vi had because they were a buy-one-get-one deal) dangling limply over the edge. Zeus lay beside her, tail still, his huge white head lightly resting on the child’s knees. Ruth closed the front door and walked out to kneel beside her daughter. Her guilt multiplied when she viewed Sofie’s tears.

  Ruth put an arm around her back. At first, Sofie remained rigid, and Ruth knew she’d inadvertently nurtured that unyielding nature in her as well. “I’m so sorry,” Ruth said and wiped Sofie’s cheeks with her thumbs. “Mommy made a mistake. I should’ve never hit you like that.”

  Sofie didn’t say anything. Ruth continued, “Do you know that mommies don’t always know how to be mommies? That sometimes we’re still learning too?”

  Sofie’s head stayed forward. “That wasn’t nice.” She swiped a fist across her nose.

  “I know it wasn’t.” Ruth smoothed back one of Sofie’s curls. “I know. But you weren’t very nice either. Let’s try to be nice to each other, okay?”

  Being nice seemed so simple, so little to ask of a child, and yet it had been more than Chandler and Ruth could manage as adults, trapped in a union that was no longer unified.

  Sofie looked up, and her bottomless eyes were filled with such loss that Ruth wondered if she was clairvoyant and had somehow anticipated what was going to happen to Chandler while the rest of them had remained unaware. Sofie leaned toward Ruth, rested her tear-soaked temple against her shoulder. “I don’t want you dead.”

  “I know you don’t,” Ruth murmured and hugged Sofie tight.

  Sofie worried a bloodied cuticle with her teeth. Ruth gently took that hand and cupped it between hers. She had forgotten how Sofie used to do that. Or how she’d thrust her tongue between her teeth until it grew too sore to eat, made clicking sounds, and never interacted with a stranger unless she was being held by Chandler or Ruth. Parenting Sofie felt like an endless game of whack-a-mole; you surmounted one obstacle, one nervous tic, only to find that another had taken its place.