How the Light Gets In

by Jolina Petersheim

  However, Ruth also wasn’t sure if she and Chandler had a choice. They had no home, no money, and Mabel wouldn’t have any to spare until someone bought her modest house in Pennsylvania. Besides, where would they all go?

  The door opened behind Ruth. She wiped her nose on the sleeve of her jacket. The person walked across the porch and sat down. Ruth looked over and saw Chandler. Compassion filled his eyes, and the divine love she’d experienced earlier melted away. If not for him, she wouldn’t need compassion. If not for him, she wouldn’t need to give anything up.

  “I wish this wasn’t so hard,” he said.

  Ruth steeled herself by folding her arms. “The girls awake yet?”

  “They woke up about thirty minutes ago. Mom’s getting them breakfast.” Chandler had changed in response to Ruth’s brusqueness; the intimacy from earlier was also gone.

  “Mabel helps out so much,” Ruth said. “I don’t know what I’d do without her.”

  Chandler wasn’t wearing shoes, and his socks didn’t match. Ruth found it strange how six years of marriage had ingrained in her the need to take care of him. “My mom only has us,” he said. “That is, I guess she only has me and the girls.”

  Ruth looked straight ahead, her gaze transfixed on the lane, and not on the woods, leading to the cabin where Elam was surely gutted by her decision. She had to gather her courage, her fortitude, before she could tell Chandler what she’d done. Part of that, she suspected, was because it would be more difficult to go back on her word once it was spoken aloud. “Mabel has me, too,” Ruth said. “Elam and I have decided to annul our marriage.”

  At first, Chandler didn’t respond. They could hear their daughters squealing in the kitchen. Sofie and Vivienne started their days either playing or fighting, and more often than not, the first led to the second before the sleepy dirt had been rubbed from their eyes.

  He murmured, finally, “Why did you do it?”

  Ruth said, “I did it for them.” She glanced over her shoulder, and they both turned toward the window, where Vivienne and Sofie were outlined by the frame. They were in the midst of fighting over the peanut butter lid, and it was clear Vi had won the first round, since her mouth was smeared with the contents. But the parents did not focus on that. They instead focused on the image of their children’s wild bedhead hair and matching princess jammies. It was astounding how such a simple sight could slay a parent’s heart with love. “I did it for our girls.”

  Chandler, again, said nothing. Ruth looked over and saw he was still staring at their children, but a muscle throbbed along the scarred line of his jaw. “It doesn’t feel too good to be with someone who thinks she’s just given up the love of her life.”

  Ruth thought, Who says I am with you? Though her heart had received healing last night, her thoughts and her tongue remained coupled with the reflex of her defenses, the predictability of them like the pull of the tide. “It didn’t feel too good,” she said, “to be married to someone who forgot that’s what I was supposed to be to him.”

  Turning from the window, Chandler looked back at her. “I never forgot that you were the love of my life; I just got too busy to show you.”

  Ruth found herself momentarily cowed. The Chandler who chose to serve with Physicians International instead of supporting his family would never have admitted to busyness or neglect. But then he ruined it by adding, “Why’d you put Sof through that last night, saying you were staying with Elam, if you were going to change your mind first thing this morning?”

  “Because I didn’t know I was going to change it until God changed my heart.”

  “How do I know you won’t change it again?”

  “I won’t, Chandler. I’ve had a breakthrough.”

  “Sounds like it.”

  The abruptly charged quiet reminded Ruth of their previous conversations, when it became so difficult to communicate without fighting, they decided it was easier not to speak. After time had passed, he asked, “So what does this ‘annulment’ mean? That we’re going to walk back into this house and pretend we’re a normal husband and wife?”

  Ruth looked over at him. “Our relationship wasn’t ‘normal’ long before this.”

  “I’m aware of that,” he said. “I’m aware of that more than you probably think.”

  Ruth’s stomach tightened. There were moments, throughout their years of rather unholy matrimony, when she really did wonder if she was the only one who seemed to understand marriage was supposed to be about more than mere survival. “How come you didn’t say anything?” she asked. “How come we never talked about how unhappy we were?”

  “I didn’t think you wanted to talk. You shut me out, Ruth. Every time you looked at me, all I could see was this anger in your eyes.”

  Ruth knew this was true, and yet it still hurt to hear it. She’d never learned how to be strong without being angry, and every morning she woke up—before changing sodden nighttime diapers, fixing breakfast, getting the girls dressed for the day—she felt she was fighting the battle of her life. “How did we get this far away from each other?” she asked, her voice wavering.

  He said, “I have no idea.” Clearing his throat, Chandler glanced over and looked at her in a way that made her drop her gaze. “Did you have dreams?” he asked. “I mean, I know you had dreams when I first met you, but did you still have them after . . . the girls?”

  Ruth hunkered forward on the steps. An icicle slipped off the roof and shattered on the ground. She nudged the pieces with her boot. “Yes,” she murmured. “I had dreams. If I hadn’t been so tied down by motherhood, my dreams could’ve been as adventurous as yours.”

  After a moment, he softly asked, “What were they?”

  She looked at Chandler. Her green eyes narrowed. She feared he would discredit her dreams and make her world, once again, feel small. “I wanted to travel to Italy with you—not to Florence or to Rome, but to the little country villages with crumbling houses and fields of flowers, their faces all turned toward the sun. I wanted to write a book. I wanted to learn to do pottery, to paint. I never meant to lose myself in the middle of trying to keep everyone alive.”

  Chandler exhaled and ran a hand over his face. He was touching his scars, she realized, and she thought about the ones she’d seen on his body.

  Ruth fixed her gaze on the barn. “I’m willing to co-parent with you,” she said. “But I’m not willing to become your wife.”

  Chandler paused. “Physically, you mean.”

  Her cheeks grew hot.

  “I can live with that,” he said. “We weren’t very physical before.” Ruth tried to decipher if this statement was laced with allegation, but Chandler just smiled and held out his hand. “If we’re not going back to husband and wife, can we at least go back to being friends?”

  Ruth almost laughed, thinking it’d be easier to go back to being brother and sister. But then she thought of Mabel’s story, of how she hadn’t liked Chandler Senior until she began putting him at the forefront of her prayer life, which had spurred Ruth to kneel in front of the window after Mabel was asleep and pray. So here, now, she tried again: God, if you really want me to do this, you’re going to have to help me forgive Chandler; you’re going to have to help me love Chandler. Which was really asking for the same thing two different ways. For how can you have forgiveness without love, and love without forgiveness?

  Ruth looked at Chandler’s hand, saw the gold wedding band glinting on his finger. It was a different ring than the one she’d given him at their wedding because he had misplaced his at the clinic in Colombia: a carelessness that wouldn’t have hurt if he hadn’t been so careless about her as well. But Ruth was different now, not as tender-skinned, and she wasn’t sure if this was an asset or a flaw. However, Chandler was different too. They weren’t the same bright-eyed newlyweds they’d been when they said their vows in an orphanage courtyard. They were older but in many ways not wiser. Mutual disappointment had tarnished their love. And yet, the tapestry of a shared life unf
urled between them, pulling on each of their hearts with tangible threads. This was why Ruth reached out her hand and clasped Chandler’s. She could feel the threads pulling her in, even more than the moment he kissed her. The attraction was still there, an attraction that had once connected them as much as the child it created. Elam’s Claddagh ring cut into her hand. Ruth knew she needed to take it off. But she couldn’t, not yet. Instead, she held Chandler’s hand tighter, and he rose, pulling her to her feet. They stood there, on the farmhouse’s front porch, and stared at each other as the winter silently thawed.

  Elam packed his clothes in the canvas duffel he used the few times a year he went out of town. Ruth had made her decision, and he wanted to respect it, but he also didn’t want to leave without telling Sofie and Vivienne good-bye. He’d been a father figure to the sisters for only a few months, and he suspected they meant more to him than he meant to them—especially now Chandler had returned—but Elam knew that, if he was ever going to look back on this heartache without regret, he had to walk the path to healing without compromise.

  So he walked.

  Unbeknownst to him, since the snow was gone, Elam’s footsteps traced those Ruth had made a few hours earlier, and though his face remained dry, his heart was just as heavy as hers had been. He walked past the lake up to the house he’d lived in since childhood, and somewhere deep inside, he suspected he wasn’t just saying good-bye to Ruth and her children, but he was also saying good-bye to a way of life. This thought didn’t grieve him nearly as much as the other.

  Elam knocked on the front door of his own house. Through the windowpane, he watched Chandler approaching. Chandler opened the door with a sheepish expression, as if he fully realized how strange it was that the two men had twice exchanged roles.

  Chandler said, “Ruth’s—”

  Elam held up his hand. “I came to say good-bye to the girls.”

  At that acknowledgment, a towhead peeked out from behind Chandler’s legs. Elam knelt, set his bag on the porch, and looked at Vivienne. The sight of her took his breath, but he supposed that was to be expected, since the sight of her mother did the same. “Hi, Vi,” he said.

  Dropping her gaze to her Hello Kitty socks, she whispered, “Hi.”

  But then Everest took the opportunity to dart outside, and Vi ran after him. In unison, Elam and Chandler called, “You’re not wearing shoes!” They glanced at each other. Elam stood, and Chandler gestured to Elam’s bag. “You going somewhere?”

  “Yeah,” Elam said, but left it at that. He wasn’t quite sure where he was going to go.

  “I’m sorry we haven’t had the chance to catch up.”

  Elam glanced at Chandler. “We haven’t had the chance to catch up in ten years.”

  “I know. I’m sorry for that, too.”

  Into this awkward impasse, Vivienne came skipping with the pup at her heels. The two left a series of foot- and paw prints on the chipped porch steps. Everest looped circles around them, barking, as Vivienne wrapped her arms around Elam’s right leg and held on tight, eyes clenched, while saying, “I give ya a li’l’ squoosh.”

  Elam was touched and reciprocated by reaching down to rest a hand on her head. But the two-year-old looked up at him, and beneath her fringe of bangs, her wide green eyes grew even wider. She glanced at Chandler and darted across the porch to hold his leg like she thought she’d been doing in the first place. As usual, the child was oblivious to the emotions her thoughtless gesture caused.

  For Chandler, it brought immense joy to know Vi found in him security and comfort.

  For Elam, it confirmed what he already knew, but the knowledge still broke his heart.

  Elam’s sister, Laurie, was on the floor of her kitchen, mopping up some milk leaking down through a leaf in the table. The rectangular table itself was edged, like picture-frame matting, with varying sizes of sticky white handprints, evidence of the homemade yogurt sweetened with maple syrup his nieces and nephews had eaten for breakfast. Elam stood in the entrance, his felt hat in his hands, surprised that his life had imploded while the lives orbiting it had stayed the same. Laurie looked up and smiled. But then she saw his face, and her smile disappeared.

  “Elam?” she said, his name lifted with concern. “Vas is letz?”

  Brother and sister had been avoiding each other over the past few days, but for entirely different reasons. Laurie and Tim had wanted to let Ruth and Elam get settled as a family, and Elam couldn’t bear to share that he, Ruth, and the girls no longer were . . . a family. However, now he knew word of Chandler’s return had not even reached Laurie’s ears. He glanced through the kitchen to the living room. Three of his nieces and nephews, too young for the Driftless Valley Community school, looked at picture books while lying on a blanket beside the woodstove. He glanced back at Laurie. “Can we talk somewhere else?”

  Laurie awkwardly reached around her pregnant belly and mopped up the rest of the spill. She entered the living room and waved the soggy tea towel at Faith, who was almost five and therefore in charge. Laurie and Elam walked into the breezeway, colder than the rest of the house by at least ten degrees. Wind rattled against the small window. Beyond it, Elam could see the gray sky, bisected by Laurie’s empty clothesline. Tim had cleaned and painted six gourds white and strung them on baling twine attached to the pole. Elam had a hard time imagining the purple martins who would return to these birdhouses in a few months, eating the bugs that would otherwise eat the garden. To him, it seemed the seasons had been replaced with a perpetual cold.

  Laurie, to her credit, was silent for a minute before she whispered, “Has someone died?”

  Elam turned from the melancholic image of that empty clothesline. In Laurie’s face, he could see the child she’d been when their mother died. Even now, Laurie viewed death as the greatest obstacle of life, which also seemed to explain why she never paused between having children, as if her offspring were balusters, conceived to impede the quick sands of time. “No,” he said. “No one’s died.”

  “Then what happened?”

  He looked away, gathering himself. “Chandler’s returned.”

  “But he’s . . .”

  “Dead? No, it was someone else. They buried the wrong man.”

  Laurie was silent for so long, Elam glanced back at her. All color had drained from her face. His sister’s inability to hide her emotions—and, furthermore, to display them for the world to see—had often frustrated Elam, because such openness was the opposite of him. But now he loved her for it. Her pain was a reminder he was not alone in how he felt.

  “Oh, Elam,” she murmured. “What does this mean for you?”

  “This means my wife’s going back to her first husband.”

  “But—but you just got married. We were just taking care of the farm because you were on your honeymoon!”

  Elam looked at his boots in shame. The mere mention of honeymoon evoked images tainted with the fact Ruth’s husband had been alive the entire time, and Elam had known for the end of it. When they were nestled in their cottage between the apple orchard and the lake, Elam had convinced himself their togetherness was not wrong if they didn’t continue to consummate their marriage. But now, he regretted having stayed there at all after he learned the truth. He wouldn’t have done that if he had known Ruth would return to Chandler. But he realized Ruth hadn’t even known how quickly everything would change.

  Elam looked at Laurie. “Chandler contacted Ruth when we were on Washington Island. We knew he was alive, but she told me—” His voice cracked. “She told me she was going to stay married to me. But that was before we came home.”

  “What happened then?”

  “Sofie couldn’t understand why her parents weren’t . . . together, like before.”

  A scream resounded from the living room; the children’s play had increased a decibel for each minute Laurie had been gone. Holding up a finger, she walked out of the breezeway into the kitchen. She called, “Sarah, sittsit unnah!” albeit more gently than norm
al, and returned. She looked up at Elam, and her eyes slowly filled. “Oh, Brother.” Laurie reached out and touched his arm. “The reason you chose Ruth—when no other woman could turn your head—is because you knew she was the kind of woman who’d give up everything to protect those she loves.”

  Elam spent most of the afternoon at his sister and brother-in-law’s kitchen table, talking over how to sell the farm to Laurie and Tim without making it a burden on their family. No surprise that Laurie had insisted on feeding him lunch, and though Elam hadn’t had an appetite in days, it soothed him to sit down and consume a meal with those who knew and loved him best.

  Once the interest-free payment plan was settled, and Laurie was reassured that Elam was not going to disappear off the face of the earth, Elam went out into the barn and called their driver.

  Thirty minutes later, Elam got out of the van and looked up at the Tomah Motel. Like so many mediocre landmarks, Elam had seen the structure all his life but had never taken the time to study it. The architecture was pure ’60s: one flat level that somehow managed an asymmetrical design. In the summer, the outside was festooned with flowers purchased from the Mennonite greenhouse down the road. But the window boxes were empty, and the lack of color accentuated that the hotel’s paint hadn’t been touched up in years. Stucco peeled away from the building’s bottom half, where dirty snow had accumulated all winter. But at least the inside was clean. There was a mini fridge, TV with cable, Wi-Fi, and a coffeemaker. Modern conveniences at the push of a button, which made Elam miss his cabin even more.

  Elam sprawled across the bed while careful to keep his boots dangled over the carpet, so he wouldn’t make the cheap coverlet dirty. He had no idea where to go from here. He’d told Laurie he needed a change, but the truth was his personality wasn’t the type to handle change well. He was forty years old and routine-oriented to a fault because routine felt safe. It was predictable. Now nothing was predictable except for the fact nothing truly was.