The Light Between Us Box Set

by Thomas Grant Bruso

  “Don’t blame yourself,” he said, pulling back and holding my stare.

  “I’m worried about Bret.”

  “You’ve got enough to worry about,” he said. “Don’t let Bret be one of your concerns. Not now.”

  “I’m actually happy for him.”

  “You’ve done all you can do for him.”

  “He’s discovering himself through his mistakes.”

  “Reality is hard for a teenage boy.”

  I shrugged. “I worry like any parent would for his child.”

  “You’d make a wonderful father someday.”

  I crumbled into his arms, feeling tears well in the corners of my eyes, stinging.

  “Is there something else on your mind?” Philip asked.

  Seconds passed. Minutes. “My father.”

  “Have you called him?”

  I unfolded myself from Philip’s muscular arms and wiped my eyes with a dry dishrag. I turned down the heat to low on the burner, picked up the ladle, and stirred our side dish slowly, staring down in the simmering bed of leafy greens.

  “I talked to Mom yesterday. Dad is not well.” I lost the grip on the spoon and leaned against the kitchen counter.

  “Do you want to fly to Arizona again to see him?”

  We had visited my parents a month after they were in Milestone for Christmas. My father was in and out of the hospital in the following months. My mother wanted him to die at the hospital, being taken care by palliative professionals, people who knew what to do in situations like these. Chemotherapy was an unlikely option.

  After I visited my father a month before he died, I recalled my mother’s voice on the phone, trying to be strong. “It’s best that you remember your father the way he looked when you last saw him.”

  “Am I selfish that I don’t want to go back home right now?” I asked Philip.

  He shook his head, firmly. “You’ve got to take care of yourself. But just in case, I’ve already packed our bags.”

  Philip held my hand at dinner, in the empty space between us, reaching around our dinner plates, a burning candle, and the opened bottle of red.

  I picked at my filet of flaky tilapia, but I was not hungry. I finished off a second glass of wine and poured another.

  “If anyone should be guilty, it’s me,” I said.

  “Why do you say that?”

  I stabbed a wedge of Philip’s seasoned garlic potatoes with my fork, but I had lost my appetite. The utensil slipped from my hand and clattered against the fine china. “I should be at my father’s side right now.”

  The melodic tunes of Bach drifted from speakers in the living room, Philip’s favorite idea of meditation.

  I closed my eyes, still grasping Philip’s hand.

  “Do you think it’s a good idea?” I asked. “To be at my father’s side right now?”

  “Only you know what’s right,” he said, staring at me through the flickering white light of the candle. “It’s a delicate time.”

  I didn’t have the strength to smile, so I nodded. Curt, firm.

  Philip rose from his chair, bypassing Darth who was chewing on a steak bone. Philip enveloped me in the protection of his arms. “Tell me what I can do.”

  I sniffed. “You’ve been so comforting these last six months. I couldn’t ask for a finer man.”

  He crouched and looked up at me, wincing against the pain in his joints. He wiped my tears with his thumb. “Losing a parent will be the hardest thing you’ll ever experience. I’ll be there for you whenever you need someone to talk to, or you can’t sleep. I’ll stay awake with you.”

  A muscle in my bottom lip quivered, and I brought a hand to my face to strangle another cry. But it came, loud and quick, as the scary thought of losing my dad left me speechless for the rest of the evening.

  Philip drew me a warm bath, and left me unattended with the bedroom door slightly open so he could keep an eye on me from across the room. He lay on the unmade bed in a muscle shirt and briefs, as Darth groomed himself at the foot, wrapped up in his favorite doggy blanket.

  I felt the coolness of the air conditioner blowing through the bathroom from the adjacent room. I submerged myself in the heat of the water, the heels of my feet brushing the coarse crystals of Epsom salt dissolving beneath me.

  Orchestral Suite No. 3 in D Major roused my senses, the melody drifting through the house, its pleasant notes stimulating.

  Over the soothing music, I heard Philip call out to me. “How’re you doing in there?”

  I heaved myself up, using the side of tub, my skin prickling from the chilly air. “I’m tired.”

  “Can I get you something to eat?”

  I splashed water in my face. “No, but a nice cup of jasmine tea would be lovely.”

  “That sounds good,” he said, throwing his legs over the side of the bed and padding out of sight, the bedroom door opening, then creaking closed. I could hear Philip rifling through cupboards, pulling out mugs, opening the refrigerator, and filling the cups with filtered water from the Brita.

  After I dried off, I crawled into bed, shaky, the gravity of the moment making it hard to stand. I propped pillows behind my head and stared out into the last light of day. Philip returned with two hot mugs of tea and a plate of pecan chocolate chip cookies. Enticing, but my appetite had not returned.

  “You’ve got to eat something,” he said, holding the plate between us.

  Darth raised his nose to the sweet scent of after-dinner treats.

  Philip handed me my tea. Closing my eyes, I leaned over the mug and inhaled the steeping aromatic jasmine.

  “More for me, then,” he said.

  I sipped the hot tea, set the mug down on the nightstand, and rested my head in the tufts of his furry chest hair.

  “I’m going to lose the man who taught me to ride a bicycle, or shoot a BB gun for the first time,” I said.

  “You’ll always have those memories.”

  “It seems surreal.”

  “Losing a loved one is never easy. You’ll get through it.”

  “How does one go on without a parent?”

  “With support.” He bent down, his lips grazing and kissing the edge of my earlobe.

  I buried my face in the brawny musk of Philip’s damp skin, inhaling. “It must be scary to know that you’re going to die.”

  “I’m sure the nurses are making sure that your father is comfortable.”

  “Meaning?”

  “I’m sure he doesn’t feel any pain with the medication. At this stage, he’s in and out sleep. Mostly out. He’s in the comfort stage.”

  “Mom is with him.” The desolate sound of my voice frightened me.

  The track list changed to the beautiful, affecting sounds of Bach’s Mass in B Minor.

  “If she thought you should be there, she’d have asked you to go,” Philip said.

  I struggled to say anything in the proceeding minutes. Then, “This guilt is eating through me.”

  Chapter 5

  In the night, I got out of bed and traipsed down the hall to the empty guest bedroom. I heard Philip approaching. Standing in the doorway, he eyed me suspiciously, rubbing his sleepy eyes, and yawning. “What are you doing up?”

  “Couldn’t sleep.” I patted the empty space beside me on the bed.

  “I want to make you smile, Chris,” he said, sitting next to me.

  “You do.”

  “I don’t feel like I can right now.”

  “It’s hard right now.”

  “All we’ve got is now.”

  “You make me happy every day.”

  “I wish I could do more.”

  We sat in silence.

  “I’m sorry if I said something that upset you,” he said.

  “It wasn’t you.”

  “Then what is it?” he asked.

  “My father and I talked in this room when he and Mom came for Christmas last year.”

  He nodded for me to continue.

  “Do you remember?” I a
sked.

  He took my hand. “I do.”

  “I told my father that I wanted him to promise me he wouldn’t leave me. That he’d be back to see me.” I turned to Philip. “It was a way to cope with my denial about his passing.”

  He nodded.

  “Not hearing my father’s promise to come back to Milestone scared the hell out of me,” I said. “I didn’t want to believe that my dad was going to die and leave us.”

  “It’s going to be a difficult transition.”

  I leaned over and rested my head on his shoulder.

  Darth had followed me into the room earlier. He snored on the bed behind me. The sound of him wrestling with his doggy dreams made me wince.

  “Do you remember when my mother told me she wanted to disown me when she learned about us living together?” Philip said.

  I nodded.

  “It frightened me. I didn’t know how my relationship with my parents would turn out. I lost full communication with them for almost a month. Until they came to their senses and noticed how you make me the happiest man on earth.”

  “Philip?”

  “Hmm?”

  “What is the point of this story?” I asked, laughing.

  “Be thankful every day. Enjoy what you have with the people you love before it’s all gone.”

  I kissed him. “Thanks for being you.”

  “You don’t have to thank me, babe. That’s what we do for each other.”

  I kissed the top of his pointed nose. “It sounds cliché, but I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

  “You’re strong. You’ll get through anything.”

  I exhaled. “No one ever tells you how to prepare for death. I don’t think I’m ready to face it.”

  “You’ll be depressed for days, maybe weeks. It’ll take time.”

  Time.

  “You’ll always think about him,” Philip said. “Wherever you go and whatever you do. Time won’t heal anything, but it’ll at least soften the blow.”

  I stared up at the ceiling, inhaled, and let out a deep, unsettled breath. “You always know what to say to make me feel better.” I glided my arm through his. “We’re married, through sickness and in health.”

  “Words to live by.”

  I smiled.

  He said, “Let’s go back to bed.”

  As the bedsprings popped when I shifted and stood, Darth was startled awake. He jumped off the bed and followed us out of the room.

  I slunk down in the bed, tucking the edges of the comforter under my arms.

  Philip drained his drink and fumbled to find a stationary position to set it among the scads of car magazines and his gun holster on the bedside table.

  I cuddled up next to him. “You’re the best thing that has happened to me.”

  He combed his fingers through the back of my hair, down my face, sliding in and out below my earlobe. I closed my eyes to his gentle petting, breathing slowly, my skin tingling against the chilly blast of the air conditioner. Beneath the blankets, the heat of my erection mounted against the thin material of my boxers.

  “Philip,” I mumbled, my voice growing into a deep moan.

  I liked the way he touched me, his hands like magical wands and the sound of his magnetic voice, piloting my body into desired terrain, eased me into his control.

  Peeling my T-shirt off over my head and teasing me with quick, strong kisses, he elicited an uninhibited longing inside me, compelling me to reciprocate the offer by fumbling under the bed sheets to undress him, stitch by stitch. I unwrapped him like a Christmas gift, pulling out my hands from under the sheets and twirling his Plain-Old-Joe briefs in my hand.

  “That’s just naughty,” he said, sticking his tongue out at me, obviously amused, milking the moment, and flashing me a wink. I flung his underwear over his head to the floor.

  Our uninhibited performance scared Darth off the bed, not at all amused, to padding slowly across the hardwood floor at the pace of his old age, slinking off to somewhere quieter.

  Philip smirked, amused, and returned his attention back to me.

  Unleashing an animalistic part of me I never knew existed, I shoved Philip back up against the pillows along the headboard, his glassy gaze flabbergasted at first by my forcefulness. His cocky smirk told me to continue, that he was pleased, starved for it.

  It’d been nearly a month since we’d been intimate.

  I had too much on the mind these days. Our lives controlled by abundant amounts of anxiety and stress, work related and private matters.

  Philip reached for the lamp’s light switch on the nightstand and plunged us into blackness. Moonlight spilled across the room, illuminating us in a ring of its white, heavenly glow. We filled the quiet, cool room with our melodic moans.

  Later, in the dark, I sighed and asked my husband, “Will you hold me?”

  Without a word, he slid an arm over my head and pulled me into his warmth. We lay in the shadows, our deep, slow breaths lulling us into a fuzzy sleep.

  Our eyes closed, we listened to the pleasant rhythm of summer rain striking the roof.

  Then suddenly, I heard the bedroom door open, and the heavy grunts of old Darth slinking across the room and climbing back into bed at our feet. I worried about boarding him at the vet and being away from him for as long as we had to.

  Shifting under the covers, trying to find restful sleep, I thought I heard Philip say something. Goodnight. I love you.

  I couldn’t be sure.

  But sometime later, stumbling between grogginess and dream state, I was awakened by the haunting sounds of a telephone ringing late into the night.

  Whenever the phone rang at an unreasonable hour, I knew it wasn’t good news.

  I didn’t like being awakened from sleep, but at the moment I wished it had been the voice of Philip waking me instead of the news on the other end of the line.

  My father had died.

  Chapter 6

  Two days shy of my thirty-eighth birthday, I flew to my childhood home in Arizona to gather my father’s ashes.

  Ninety degrees and dry: sweat pooled under my arms, my face glossy, skin hot like it was peeling, as I stepped off the plane in Glendale Municipal Airport.

  Philip and I stood at the curb, holding our one-week’s worth of luggage. Paula picked us up in her 2015 white Chevrolet. My eighty-three-year-old mother, not in the best health, sat up front. I smiled at Mom through the dusty windshield. She waved listlessly in the passenger seat. The month since I’ve seen her felt like eons. She looked as worn out as I felt, her infinite zest missing, and rightly so. A razor-thin smile crossed her lips.

  Philip grabbed my shoulder bag from me and I walked to the car. My mother rolled down the window and I bent down to kiss her cheek.

  “You look tired,” she said, staring up at me with an empty gaze. It was her voice, a frail, fractured afterthought that alarmed me.

  I reached for her tiny, birdlike hand. The gentleness of her grasp told me she knew how I felt. I heard her sniffle, and her bottom lip trembled.

  “Mom.” I fought back tears because I had to be strong for her.

  She closed her eyes and started to cry. I opened the passenger door and leaned in to hug her, wrapping my arms over her and the seatbelt.

  I heard the optimistic exchange of cordial laughter between Philip and Paula as they loaded luggage into the trunk. I turned to Mom who was blowing her nose on a wrinkled, soiled napkin.

  Other travelers wandered in different directions around us. Car horns beeped. Taxis pulled in and out of the terminal.

  My mother glanced at me, a vacant stare on her serious face. “I’m glad you’re here. I’ve missed you.”

  “It’s good to be home.”

  Chapter 7

  My mother’s one-story house was set a few feet from the street, enclosed in a fenced-in yard whose flowerbeds had seen better days. The charming landscape needed mowing and pruning and a facelift. The asphalt roof had been renovated since I last visited.


  Paula drove into the garage cluttered with years of my mother’s compulsive collecting. Ceramic dishes. Wine glasses she’d never used. Porcelain, antique dolls. Books. Magazines.

  Cardboard boxes were stacked to the ceiling, taped shut with miscellaneous possessions labeled “fragile.” Translation: Lori’s Property—Do Not Touch!

  Distressed, I stared at the heaping mess around me and cringed, closing my eyes, and wondering what I had come home to.

  I got out of the car and helped my mother from the passenger seat, as Philip and Paula gathered the luggage.

  Arm in arm, my mother and I walked to the front door. She led us across a tile floor to the grand north-facing family room with its exquisite fireplace set against a stone wall. The air-conditioning was welcome in the oppressive heat.

  My mother asked me if I’d like a cold drink.

  Something stronger. “Ice water is fine,” I said.

  “There’s homemade lemonade in the fridge,” she said, heading down the airy, sun-kissed hallway. “I got up early and made it this morning.”

  I stopped and looked around the remains of my childhood home. Late-night board games with Mom and Dad, pay-per-view cable wrestling events, weekend camp outs in the living room.

  Sentimental. A lump-in-the-throat response. I smiled at the memories of the happy old days.

  I heard Mom rustling around in a room down the hall.

  The front door opened and Philip and Paula walked through it, talking, laughing, and breaking up my thoughts.

  Philip put his hand on my shoulder, sliding up close to me, and kissing my cheek. “How are you doing?”

  I shrugged. I could hear furniture being moved, glass breaking.

  I pulled myself out of my husband’s embrace and ran to my mother.

  The last door on the right: my childhood bedroom. “Mom, are you all right?”

  “Fine, Chris. Come here. Help me move this dresser.”

  I noticed a picture frame smashed to pieces on the floor by her feet. I went to her. “Be careful, Mom.” I bent down to pick up the broken frame, sliding out a picture of my dad and me: a fishing trip eight or nine years ago when life was fun, happier, better-off. He smiled back at me, holding up a seven-inch snapper. Gorgeous fish. I wanted to throw it back because it was so beautiful. I wanted to give it another chance.