The Light Between Us Box Set

by Thomas Grant Bruso

She turned, startled. “Aunt Betty? Goodness, Chris, that was decades ago. What made you think of Aunt Betty?”

  We sat in our usual spots, me in Dad’s chair, Mom on the sofa, miles apart from each other. “I had a dream about her before I came here,” I said.

  She reached for a half dollar-sized cookie. “Why?”

  I shrugged. “Not sure. It was almost as if our life was starting all over. I saw you and Dad, and a bunch of Dad’s friends. Uncle Willy was there.”

  My mother smiled, looked away, as if something I said was amusing.

  “What’s funny?” I asked.

  “Now that you mention it, I remember the incident like it was yesterday.”

  “I remember Dad telling me how different Uncle Willy was at the time. But I didn’t understand until years later what Dad was saying.”

  “That your uncle was gay?”

  I nodded. “Why didn’t Dad tell me about Uncle Willy?”

  “You were just a kid. You didn’t understand what it meant.”

  “I was seven. I think I would’ve known what gay meant.”

  “What difference did it make?”

  “Looking back, probably nothing. But I think I knew I was gay.”

  “At seven?”

  I nodded. “I felt differently when I was around other guys, even at seven.”

  She sighed. “Your uncle was a free spirit. He said what was on his mind, never held back.”

  “Is that why people didn’t like him?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I remember Dad felt differently towards him.”

  “Being gay wasn’t talked about in the family back then.”

  “I think Dad still struggled with my being gay.”

  “He loved you.”

  “I know he loved me. But I also think he had some issues with my sexuality. I think he wanted me to be like anyone other than Uncle Willy.”

  She shook her head. “What makes you think that?”

  “I don’t know. I have a suspicion that maybe that’s what the dream was about. It was trying to tell me something about Dad and me.”

  “That’s outrageous, Chris. Your father loved you regardless of your sexuality.”

  “I thought he felt differently about gay people, especially when he used words like ‘flamboyant’ and ‘different’ to describe Uncle Willy. It was almost like Dad was degrading people like Uncle Willy. Like me.”

  “Life was different back then. Nobody in the family talked about being gay.”

  “Even though I was.”

  “Nobody knew, Chris.”

  “I did. Somehow, I knew I was gay and Dad wanted to ignore it.”

  “That’s preposterous. Your father and I loved you then and always have. If you would’ve come to us with that information we wouldn’t have been upset.”

  “Did you suspect that I might’ve been gay?”

  “You were just a kid.”

  “I watched wrestling for a reason, Mom.”

  She laughed. “I’d glad you’re home,” she said, stirring a dollop of milk into her tea and reaching for another cookie.

  “I’m sorry I wasn’t here sooner.” I brought the teacup to my mouth, and blew on the hot swirling steam.

  “You’re here now.”

  “I mean, before the wedding.”

  She waved at me again, this time dismissively, her eyes buggy, haughty. “I told you not to blame yourself for that. You and Philip were busy with work. Dad was…comfortable.”

  “I wanted to be here for him.”

  “You were.”

  “Not long enough.”

  “Christopher Jacob Rivers.”

  I stopped chewing at the sound of mother calling me by my full name. She was growing impatient with me.

  I’m in trouble.

  I set the mug down in front of me and looked up at her.

  “Don’t ever have any regrets about anything,” she said.

  “I had so many things I wanted to tell Dad.”

  “He knew you loved him and cared for him.”

  It’s so much more complicated than that, I wanted to tell her.

  I stared off into the corner of the room, hearing my mother talking but not comprehending a word. I caught a whiff of my father’s woodsy smell around the living room, clinging to the drapes and furniture and carpet.

  I had so many things I wanted to tell him, I thought, turning to Mom, shaking off the unpleasant feeling of hopelessness.

  She stared at me, her small mouth halfcocked, slanting to the side.

  My eyes filled up. “I wanted more time with him.”

  She started to get up, but I stopped her, shaking my head. I let out a deep breath.

  “What’s wrong, Chris?”

  “Dad is no longer here.”

  As she held her cookie, her hand trembled.

  “Are you feeling all right?” I asked her.

  “Fine. I’m fine.” She bit into the chewy homemade cookie. “What are you going on about?”

  I leaned forward. “I wanted to be here for Dad.”

  “You were getting married. That was important.”

  “Dad was important, too.”

  Silence.

  I heard my bedroom door creak open, the floorboards moaning beneath the movement of Philip’s weight down the hall.

  Minutes later, I heard the bedroom door close.

  My mother exhaled, setting her mug down hard on the coffee table. She looked towards the hall. “You have a generous husband who loves you. You had a lot to think about these last few months.”

  “I love Philip.”

  “Philip loves you, too.”

  “I’ve been driving him crazy.”

  “Go to him,” my mother urged. “He’ll understand.”

  “I want him to get some sleep. It’s been a tough time for him, too.”

  “Chris, dear.” She sighed, leaned back. “Your father loved you.”

  “I’m angry with myself for not being here when he needed me the most.”

  “The nurses kept him comfortable. He slipped in and out of consciousness. He was heavily medicated. Lost in another world.”

  I leaned back in the chair, tears falling down my face.

  My mother came to my side, pulled my head to her chest, something she did when I was a boy to help keep me calm. I listened to her heartbeat.

  “When you were here last month, it was difficult for me to see you with Dad,” she said. “It wasn’t him anymore. He was just a body of bones.”

  Chapter 11

  When I saw my father last month, his skin was pulled tight against the bony structure of his face. Gaunt, sunken eyes, like dark holes in the earth. His mouth was shaped straight as a knife, lips parched, cracked, and flaky.

  His skin was fleshy, almost translucent; his hands felt spongy from retaining fluid from the drugs pumping through his veins.

  I had spent days massaging his legs with lotion, the skin springy like on his hands, the indentations of my fingertips white on the surface.

  The bottoms of his feet were bruised, eggplant purple, a combination from lying in bed, immobile, unable to exercise, and the progression of the disease.

  What was left of his hair clung to pillowcases and bed sheets. I watched him, day and night, not straying too far from his side. Hurt darkened his eyes and spooked me, and I knew he wanted to scream, say something. But he was nearly incoherent and confused from all the medicine he was being fed to fight the pain.

  I helped him drink from a straw when he was able to sit up in bed. He’d make unintelligible gestures, his fingers curling around the edge of the blanket, thinking it was a straw, and sucking on it.

  It was torture for me to see my father the last time I was in Arizona, sitting by his bedside, praying, crying, and hoping for a miracle. But the doctor had been honest with all of us, even though some of us were in denial. “This is the comforting stage,” Dr. Freeman had told the family. “All we can do is keep your father comfortable.”


  My father had refused hospice, so the palliative care people had taken over my father’s last days. Medicine kept him at ease, pain free. He wanted to die in the hospital with his family at his side.

  Chapter 12

  “I didn’t want to leave his side,” I said to my mother in the living room, shaking off the memory, and leaving me numb and hurt.

  “He knew you were by his side.”

  The sound of a clock chimed somewhere in the house.

  “Was he in any pain?” I asked.

  “He was comfortable.”

  I shook my head. “Being here without Dad is strange.”

  I haven’t seen his urn anywhere in the house since I arrived.

  “It’s going to be a difficult period for all of us,” my mother said.

  “How are you coping?” I asked.

  “Better than expected.”

  Better than expected.

  I was surprised at my mother’s controlled composure. “I was anticipating—”

  “A crazy mother, wailing and carrying on?” There was humor in her voice.

  “I was worried about coming home, Mom.”

  She sighed. “Honestly, Chris, I’ve had a lot of overwhelming moments, too.”

  “It hurt me to see the sadness on your face when you and Paula picked us up at the airport.”

  “These last two months have been the hardest. It’s been strange without your father in the house.” She turned to me. “I have no one to talk to, or scream at, or confide in.” She reached for my hand. “But seeing you made everything better.”

  I grabbed her hand. “Whatever I can do.”

  We sat quietly, listening to an occasional car passing the house, and the next-door neighbors packing more of their life into the back of the truck.

  “How’s your writing?” my mother asked.

  “I haven’t written a word in six months.”

  “Don’t waste your talent. Writing was always your therapy.”

  “There are more important things right now than writing.”

  “Dad would want you to continue with it. He knew how much your writing made you happy.”

  “Where’s Dad?” I finally asked, changing the issue.

  “At the crematory. I have to pick up his ashes tomorrow morning.”

  “Philip and I will go.”

  She stood and strolled over to me. “Thank you.”

  “It’s not a problem.”

  “Go talk to him,” my mother said, noticing the grief on my face.

  “He’s probably asleep.”

  “May I give you some motherly advice?”

  “When have I ever declined advice from you?” I asked. I bent my head at an angle to look up at her.

  “Don’t let the small things come between you and Philip. Life’s too damn short.”

  I nodded.

  “Philip loves you a great deal,” she said.

  “I say things that I don’t mean in the heat of the moment.”

  “We all do. It’s a tough time right now. You’re grieving. Philip will understand.”

  “I’m an idiot.”

  “Everybody makes mistakes.”

  I grunted and stood, reaching over to hug my mother. We held each other for a few minutes, my face brushing the top of her bushy white hair. She smelled of peppermint tea and peanut butter cookies.

  “Are you hungry?” she asked.

  “No. But I’d like another cup of tea.”

  “I’ll make it.”

  “Let me. Sit down.”

  We moved from the living room to the kitchen and sat at the butcher-block island over two cups of decaf green tea and I asked my mother, “How’s Paula doing?”

  She stirred cream and sugar into her mug. “Busy. I haven’t seen much of her. She doesn’t come around every day.”

  “Does she seem…different?”

  “Different?” She shrugged. “What do you mean?”

  I reached for a broken edge of a peanut butter cookie, rolled it between my fingers. “She’s lost a lot of weight.”

  “She told me she hasn’t been feeling well.”

  I bit into the soft dough, chewed it, and washed it down with tea. “She looks gaunt. Worse since I saw her last month.”

  She sipped her tea.

  I fell silent.

  “What’s wrong, Chris?” she asked.

  I shrugged. “It may be nothing, but I’m concerned about her.”

  “What do you think it is?”

  I waved it off. “It’s probably nothing.”

  “No. No. What do you think’s wrong?”

  “I shouldn’t have said anything. I don’t want to worry you.”

  “Paula’s my daughter. I’ve got a right to know if something’s wrong with her.”

  “That’s just it. I might be overreacting.”

  My mother looked at me the way she did when she wanted my attention.

  I sat up straighter in the high back chair. “I’ve noticed that she’s lost a significant amount of weight. She’s moody. Argumentative.”

  “She told me she hadn’t been feeling well after Dad’s death.”

  I sipped my tea. “Like I said, it could be nothing.”

  She turned back to her tea, staring into the dark, thick sludge as if her next words were settled on the bottom. “I was never scared to die until I watched your father slip away from me.” She went quiet.

  I watched my mother sitting disconcertingly still, flashes of her in the front seat of Paula’s Chevrolet, her stony expression miles away. Her mouth was downturned, and a nerve twitched under her right eye. She opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out. She gripped her mug.

  “Mom?”

  “Hmm?” She looked up, her gaze distant and bewildered.

  “Were you about to say something?”

  She shook her head. Sipped her tea. Shook her head again. “It’s nothing. You should go back to bed. It’s been a long day.”

  Chapter 13

  After kissing her on the cheek, my mother and I slow danced to the delicate clinking of wind chimes on the front porch. Then we both went to bed.

  Sliding between the cool sheets next to Philip’s snoring body, I stirred him awake, his arm coiling around me in a snug embrace. He licked his lips, pulling me into him. “I love you very much.”

  I lay awake until the first light of morning sneaked into the room from the slats in the curtains. The room was draped in semi-darkness, but I could make out the silhouette of our bodies pressing against one another.

  I didn’t want to leave the safety of Philip’s arms, or the comfort of the bed. But I had to pick up my father’s remains today. I looked over at the clock—5:35 A.M. I closed my eyes, falling back into a dreamy state of unconsciousness, thinking about my father.

  Chapter 14

  We were out on his fishing boat; I was nine years old, or ten. He was teaching me how to hook a fish and reel it in. When I caught a ten-pound bass, standing up in the boat to help balance my leverage with the squirming fish, fighting for its life, my father made me sit down. He reached for the fishing pole to take control of the situation, and to prevent me from falling into the lake as he reeled in the large, writhing fish.

  I watched my father wedge the pole under our seats, fitting it in place, as he leaned over the edge of the boat for the fish splashing and struggling at the other end of the line, wiggling in my father’s hand, fighting to be let go.

  As my father disengaged the hook from inside the fish’s mouth, I shook my head, turning away, but the fishy smell in the heat of the afternoon wafted across my face, making me turn to the stinging odors.

  I looked at my father. He saw sadness in my eyes.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  “Throw it back.”

  I remembered the surprised look on his face as if I had just cussed in front of him for the first time.

  “I thought you wanted to learn how to fish, son?” My father held up the wriggling fish in his hand, his daily
prize.

  I shook my head and turned and looked out at the other fishing boats lolling around us. “Throw it back in,” I said again.

  “Why?” my father asked.

  “I want to give it a second chance.”

  My father looked at me, smiling, light in his eyes. He reached over the edge of the boat and released the fish back into the waters.

  Chapter 15

  I was startled out of a bad dream and awoke to the sound of silence. Philip wasn’t snoring in my ear. I wiped my heavy, groggy eyes, pushed myself up on an elbow, my arm trembling from the numbness of sleep, and squinted over at Philip’s side of the bed.

  I nudged what I thought was Philip’s body to my right. But my hand grazed the lumpy pillows balled up in the twisted sheets beside me.

  “Philip.” My voice was barely a whisper.

  I yawned and reached for the lamp switch to my left, filling the room in dim light. I sat upright, groaning against the pain and stiffness in my limbs.

  I looked to the dark, unoccupied bathroom across the room. My gaze drifted to the half-open bedroom door, a tiny pocket of light spreading across the hallway.

  Then I heard movement. Footsteps? Scratching? Was someone talking?

  I uncovered the blanket from around my legs and crawled out of bed, walking across the hardwood floor to the door, wiping thick crust from my eyes.

  My feet prickled against the cold, drafty floor. I opened the door and ambled along the night-lighted hall to the living room.

  I poked my head into the darkly lit room.

  Empty.

  My mother had left the small light on over the oven. “In case you get up in the middle of the night and want a snack,” she told me.

  I smiled at the memory. I sighed and strolled over to the refrigerator. I opened the door and stared into the white light, scanning the shelves for a snack, something light to settle my grumbling stomach.

  “The cheese will go bad if you don’t close it,” a thick manly voice whispered behind me.

  Startled, I swung around to an uninhabited room. My heart pounding hard, gaze darting around the room, I froze and slammed up against the fridge.

  “Chris—”

  My body tensed. “Dad?”

  Crazy, I knew, but it sounded like my father, reprimanding me in his gravelly disciplinarian tone.