I felt my mother’s eyes on me. “I’ll have to get a new frame,” she said, her voice sounding emotional, taut.
Philip and Paula stood in the doorway, silent as mourners.
I opened the top drawer of the dresser and slid the frame on top of Dad’s ties and socks. He always stored his belongings in selective places. Wherever there’s room, I heard his voice in my head.
“Where are we moving it?” I asked Mom.
“In the corner.” She grabbed the top corners, breathless, agitated, staring out into the backyard bristling with daylilies, dahlias, and poppies, lost in thought, her expression keen on a recent memory.
“Lori, let me help.” Philip walked to my mother’s side and stood next to her, placing a hand on her back. “I’ve got it.”
“Would you like a glass of lemonade, Phil?” she asked, her eyes lighting up, delighted.
Philip looked at me, smiled fleetingly, and turned to my mother. “I could use something cold. Thanks.”
“Be right back.” She left the room, brushing past Paula as if she were invisible, and meandered down the hall to the kitchen. Cupboard doors opened, closed; glasses clinked. The sound of the refrigerator alarm blared, notifying us that the door was ajar.
Philip and I wedged the heavy dresser against the back wall, kitty-corner.
“She’s gone out of her way to make the room look like it did when you were home,” Paula said from the doorway.
I turned to her. “It didn’t look like this when I came to see Dad last month.”
“She wants you to feel at home,” Paula said, leaning against the doorframe, arms folded across her skeletal chest.
I noticed that my sister’s appearance looked different since the last time we’d seen each other. Her dark hair was cut short, almost buzzed. Her ear piercings had grown in numbers. Her bottom lip was punctured with two pinky-sized rings on either side of her mouth. The outline of her drug-thin body was worrisome.
“How are you doing, sis?” I asked.
“Fine.” Blunt, tense, as if I hit a nerve. She pushed herself off the doorframe. “Why?”
I looked at Philip. My stern grimace told him I needed a moment with my sister.
He bowed his head and nodded, turning and walking out of the room. “If you need anything,” he said from the door, “I’ll be in the kitchen.”
I nodded and jammed my hands in my back pants pockets. I caught Paula’s troubled stare follow Philip out of the room. She turned to me and asked, “What’s going on?”
“According to you, nothing. But I know something’s wrong.”
“Dad’s gone. Of course something’s wrong.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
She shrugged. “What do you mean?”
“You?”
“Me?” She shook her head, looked down at the floor, eyes shifty. “I don’t understand.”
I exhaled. “How are you feeling?”
She moved, seemed nervous, her feet shifting back and forth, left to right, as if she were learning a new dance. “Why do you keep asking me that?”
“I’m worried about you.”
She chewed her nails, avoided eye contact, and then slid down the wall to the floor. She pulled her legs up to her chest, rocking back and forth.
The final light of day trickled into the room, warming our faces.
I walked across the room, crouched down beside my sister, and grabbed her hand. “We’ll get through this. But you’ve got to be honest with me.”
“About what?”
“You look significantly different from the last time I’ve seen you.”
She let go of my hand and sighed, gasping, a hand flying to her chest. “What’s that supposed to mean?” Melodramatic.
I closed my eyes, sucked in a breath.
“I’ve been through a lot,” she said, “in case you haven’t noticed.”
I nodded. “We all have.”
Closing my eyes, I listened to my sister clicking her tongue against the roof of her mouth.
That went on for another minute. Then I asked, raising my head, opening my eyes, staring at her, my voice calm but candid. “Are you ill?”
Her eyes got wide, her mouth agape, shocked. “What? No. Why?” She stood and hovered over me, arms crossed, defiant, scowling like a petulant adolescent.
I was familiar with the significant changes. Dark circles under the eyes, weight loss, mood swings. I’d seen it with Bret when he struggled to stop using drugs. I didn’t know if the same thing was true for my sister.
I gripped the edge of an end table and pulled myself up. “Your reaction speaks volumes.”
“What are you implying?”
“Sis, I’m asking you because I’m worried. I’m not trying to start a fight or get you upset. This is not an intervention.”
She shifted in her hooker high heels. Ruby red, six inches. Uncomfortable looking. Why do women fit themselves into shoes too small for them? Aesthetically pleasing?
I turned to the more urgent dilemma at hand: My sister.
She threw her hand in the air and started for the door, insulted, seething, restless. I grabbed her wrist. She whirled around, her face pulled back in a fiendishly frightened expression, as if my touch sent volts of electricity through her. Her heel caught the frayed end of the carpet and she nearly fell forward, face first to the floor.
I caught her.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” she screamed. “Don’t touch me. Do you hear me?”
Her violent outburst led Mom and Philip scurrying down the hall to the bedroom, their faces lit up, wide-eyed, curious. Mom’s face looked frightened and dazed. “What’s going on in here?”
Paula shot a hand in the air, exhaled nosily, and clipped across the room, slipping between the gap of Philip and Mom standing in the doorway.
Mom turned to me. “What’s going on in here?”
Paula raced out of the room, past everyone, her heels clinking angrily against the hardwood floor down the hall. A door slammed.
I sat down on the edge of my bed, my head in my hands.
“Chris?” my mother asked.
I shook my head, felt Philip at my side, his hand comforting me, sliding up and down my back. “I miss Dad,” I said.
Chapter 8
That night, I told Philip about my problem with Paula and my constant state of anxiety.
We lay in my childhood bedroom, side by side, in a bed too small for two grown adults. Philip slipped an arm under my head, making room for more closeness.
“Maybe your father’s death has affected Paula differently.”
“In what way?”
He was quiet.
I listened to his uneven breaths, shallow, anxious. I turned sideways and placed a hand on his chest, my fingers curling around the clusters of white hair.
“Maybe it isn’t drugs,” he said, after I questioned the possibility.
“What do you think it is?”
“Rebellion.”
“At Paula’s age?”
“Why not?”
“Her appearance has changed. It’s scary. She looks too thin.”
“She’s grieving.”
“While looking like a hooker?”
“Chris.” He drew out my name.
“I’ve never seen my sister wearing that type of clothing before—high heels and short skirts. That isn’t Paula. She’s always looked like a Tom Boy. No. This is different.”
“Give it time. Be patient. She’s heartbroken.”
I sighed. “I hope that’s all it is.”
Chapter 9
I woke to strange sounds in the night. I was tangled in Philip’s arms and legs, his heavy, sour warm breath lingering close to my mouth. I turned away, to the window, to the place where the persistent noise—a door opening and closing, and a muffled male voice—echoed in staccato sounds of the night.
I raised my head to look at the clock radio—3:43 A.M.
Falling back against the bulky, stiff
pillow behind my head, I closed my eyes, listening.
Philip’s grating snores murmured in the back of his throat. Unable to go back to sleep, I gently grabbed Philip’s arm and moved it across his bare chest, clumps of his hair glistening with perspiration, my hands slick with his sweat.
The air was stuffy and thick as I pulled myself up into bed, slowly, so as not to wake the snoring giant. My legs fell over the side. I closed my eyes against the grogginess, listening.
Suddenly a loud crash shook me and my eyes popped open. I looked around the dark room, my heart skipping like an overplayed record. I gripped the mattress, my fingers digging into the edges.
Bang. Crash. Clank.
I turned to Philip who shifted under the sheets, mumbling, scrubbing his face with a knuckle in his sleep, and turning over on his side, away from me. The room filled with more of his harsh snoring.
I heaved myself up and walked to the window, parting the curtains, and staring out into pitch darkness, my heavy eyes tired and unfocused.
Clang. Boom.
I whispered, “Jesus,” and slid open the window to get a better view. Leaning my head outside, I looked left and right but it was too dark to see anything between the shadows of the houses. Then I saw movement from next door. My mother’s neighbors, The Bellingham’s, were carrying furniture out of their garage to a truck.
I didn’t want to yell and wake up Philip. I closed the window gently and reached for my bathrobe hanging over the arm of a chair by the bed. I wrapped myself up in it and headed to the kitchen for a glass of cold milk.
The air was chilly in the house and I felt goose bumps break out along my arms and legs. Grabbing the milk from the fridge, I scoured the other shelves for a late-night snack. I was too frazzled to eat anything at dinner and had gone to bed on an empty stomach.
As I poured a tall glass of milk and plated a dish of my mother’s homemade peanut butter cookies, I turned to the eerie stillness of the house.
I sat at the mini bar in the kitchen and looked out into the empty area of the living room where my father used to sit in his old favorite reclining chair watching TV.
Death changes everything, I thought, sliding my fingers across the moist edge of the glass.
The Bellingham’s raucous banging interrupted my reverie.
I flicked on the porch light and stepped out onto the porch. I wasn’t surprised to see the entire neighborhood still asleep, windows dark, porch lights unlit.
Adam Bellingham noticed me standing under the stark porch light and whispered, the urgency in his voice carrying across the neighboring yards, “As I live and breathe. Is that you, Christian?”
I fingered sleep from my eyes and nodded. “It’s me. What are you doing at this time of night?”
“Carly and I are moving some of our things to her mother’s. Clearing out the clutter.”
“Do you know what time it is?”
“I’m sorry, man. Are we making too much noise?”
A crossed my arms over my chest. “A little.”
“Sorry.” The second apology didn’t sound as sincere as the first.
I turned to the front of the large three-story house where Carly’s large frame filled out the doorway. She waved, and her genuine smile was warm. I waved back.
“How’s Lori?” Adam asked, dragging a heavy box across the driveway to the opened trunk of his mini white SUV. “I’m sorry about your father. He was a good man.”
I tightened my arms across my chest. “She’s…um, she’s coping. As best she can right now, given the circumstances.”
Adam stopped, wiped sweat from his high forehead, and looked up at me, adjusting the bill on his Red Sox cap. “I’ll miss him. Did he tell you that we’d spend hours on his porch, drinking beers and shooting the shit?” he said, heaving a grunt, a far-off memory lighting up his egg-shaped face.
Shaking my head I exhaled and turned, staring out into the empty street where my dad and I threw a football many years ago. I felt a shiver in the warm air. I was saturated with sweat under my terrycloth bathrobe.
I was about to head inside when I heard Adam say, “If there’s anything Carly and I can do, don’t hesitate to call or come over.”
I nodded, and turned around, the glaring white porch light blinding my eyes. “Thanks, Adam. Give my best to Carly.”
“Will do. I’m sorry again about the noise. I’ll be quieter. This is the only time I can move this junk. I’m never home, you know. We’re always working.”
I leaned against the door. “Don’t work too hard.”
“Yeah. Right.” A head nod. “Night, man.”
Chapter 10
I finished off the peanut butter cookies with a second glass of milk. I sat in my father’s favored chair by the TV, leaning back in reclining mode, staring up at the shadows dancing across the ceiling every time a set of headlights passed the house, remembering a moment between my father and me, years ago.
Watching pay-per-view wrestling and eating TV dinners, my dad and I had camped out in the living for three hours, eight to eleven, consuming every head butt, body slam, and clothesline.
Recollecting my father’s unbridled enthusiasm while spending time with me, watching our favorite “sport,” yelling back at the TV, rooting for our favorite wrestling personality, conveyed a sense of inseparability for me. Family was the most important thing. My dad was my mentor, my best friend. I confided in him when life was at its lowest and I needed guidance or someone to talk to.
I couldn’t call him anymore. I wouldn’t see him, or talk to him, or spend time with him watching TV, talking about life, ever again.
I’d miss his frankness, his candid smile, which made me feel like I was doing the right thing. I’d miss the way he’d slapped me on the leg after he finished lecturing me on the rights and wrongs of this complicated, crazy thing called life.
I remembered correcting him when he misspoke and called Philip a different name, either forgetting my husband’s name out of forgetfulness, or simply to get a reaction out of me. “What’s his face? Pete? Paul?” he’d ask, laughing, tapping my leg and grinning.
My father was a genuine, all-around kind man. I wouldn’t have the chance to tell him I loved him ever again. I was lucky to have had a caring father who would help shape the rest of my life, past, present, and future.
But then reality set in: I knew when I grew up, my parents would die and I’d have the responsibility to bury them and say goodbye.
I’d often wondered what would have happened if I died before my parents. How would they cope and go on living without their child? My eighty-year-old parents would grieve the rest of their lives, living in despair, depressed.
A slideshow of death and dying played out in my head like a Technicolor film. I forced it to stop when I heard footsteps approaching from behind, yanking me out of my trance.
It was my mother, asking me if I was all right. She came around the chair and placed her cold, light hand on my shoulder. I nodded, staying quiet. She must’ve seen the dark clouds rushing across my vacant stare.
“Can’t sleep?” she asked.
I shook my head. “How could I sleep with all that racket?”
“What is it?”
“Adam and his wife.”
“Moving again?”
I looked up. “How long has he been moving things out of his house?”
“A few days.” She grunted. “Kept me awake most nights, too.” She waved at the ridiculous duo. “I know why Adam likes that woman so much.”
My silence required her to continue. She looked down at me and gestured with her hands, cupping them in front of her chest. “The size of her jiggling jugs.”
I laughed out loud. “I talked to him earlier.”
She threw her hands up, questioning. “What did he have to say?”
“It was the only time he could move his things. He told me he worked too much.”
“Figures.”
I closed my eyes.
“I’ll make us a
cup of tea,” my mother said, heading to the kitchen.
“Decaf for me,” I said. “I need to get some sleep.”
I noticed her struggling to walk.
I pulled myself out my father’s chair. “Let me get it, Mom. Sit down.”
“No. No.” She waved at me like she did when I was a child, not reprimanding me, but telling me she had it under control. “I’ve got to keep moving.”
I looked over my shoulder at my mother waddling towards the stove, reaching out for the teakettle on the back burner. She switched on the burner, uncapped the kettle, and turned on the facet, filling the kettle with cold water.
I smiled at the thought of my younger days when Mom would boil water in the kettle to make hot chocolate for the four of us. We’d all sit in front of the TV with our hot cocoa and watch movies.
I got up, grunted, and ambled over to the stove, draping my arms around my mother, holding on to long ago memories of us cooking, laughing, and enjoying many joyous times together.
She shut the cupboard doors, set two large rose-imprinted mugs on the counter, and touched my hand. We stood in the stillness of early morning, saying nothing, our closeness from over the years saying everything.
Finally, the whistle of the teakettle pulled us apart, my mom asking me to get the tea bags from the top shelf. “Grab the rest of the cookies, too,” she said. “I didn’t eat dinner.”
“Would you like me to fix you something more substantial to eat?”
“Cookies will be fine. I’m not that hungry.”
“You’ve got to eat, Mom.”
She tossed me a stony look, harmless, but to tell me not to push it.
“I’m only trying to help,” I told her.
“I know. I know.” She filled the two mugs, dunked the tea bags in the hot water, and headed for the living room.
I reached across the kitchen island for the plate of cookies. “Mom, do you remember Aunt Betty’s wake?” I asked, the image of my dreams resurfacing.
The Light Between Us Box Set Page 17
