Light from a Distant Star

by Morris, Mary Mcgarry

  “He’s not a nice man,” Nellie blurted when he was gone. “He takes medicine for his temper, but Jessica said he still flips out. Once he even threw a shoe at her.”

  “Go in the other room,” her mother ordered. “Please.”

  Well, it was true, but she knew better than to protest. Jessica had sworn her to secrecy, but why should she protect someone who was trying to rip off her mother and father? Mr. Cooper was not the pleasant man people thought. He had a dark side only his family and she knew about. At home he was always screaming at Mrs. Cooper and the kids—and most especially, at Jessica. As a result, she said, her mother took everything out on her. Up until now Nellie’d thought that it was just more of Jessica’s desperate lying for attention. She stood behind the sheer curtain watching Mr. Cooper stand by his car, talking on his cell phone. A moment later Dolly came down her steps, carrying the soiled pink back pack that contained her work clothes. Her car had been dead in the driveway for a week now. She couldn’t afford the repair, so she’d been walking the mile or so downtown where she caught the six o’clock bus to the Paradise. If Mr. Cooper had been hurrying to meet his wife, he wasn’t in any rush now. He and Dolly were on the sidewalk talking and laughing. Nellie hadn’t realized Mr. Cooper could be so amusing. Or, at least, Dolly thought so anyway. She kept running her hand through her hair. Nellie wondered if they were talking about the shower water turning cold that day while she still had shampoo in her hair. Probably comparing notes about what losers Benjamin and Sandy Peck were—no money for a new hot-water heater or movies or dinner out or camp for their kids or even a new television to replace the one that had died ages ago. Nellie leaned over the windowsill as Dolly slipped into Mr. Cooper’s slick little sports car, and off they drove. She had that funny feeling again inside.

  THE HOUSE HAD been deeply quiet. For two days the only voices had been Nellie’s, her brother’s, and her sister’s. And for Ruth, make that just barely. She seemed, as Nellie’s father would say when her mother accused him of not listening, preoccupied. Now Nellie knew for sure who Ruth’s preoccupation was: Patrick Dellastrando. They were dating—but secretly. No one could know, Ruth confided. No one on earth. She hadn’t even told Allie, her best friend.

  “Why’s it have to be secret?” Nellie asked, though she was pretty sure she knew.

  “Because he still has to break up with Diane.” Diane James, his steady girlfriend forever.

  “Yeah? So why doesn’t he?” As if he’d want to. Diane James was beautiful. Even Henry had a crush on her.

  “It’s not a good time.” Ruth sighed as if Nellie wouldn’t understand. “She’s got personal problems. Stuff at home. Her parents.”

  “Same as you. I mean, Sandy and Ben aren’t even talking,” she said. As long as Ruth insisted on calling Nellie’s father Ben, she had begun referring to their mother by her first name as well. Not that it made any sense. But they were fast approaching strangeness anyway.

  “That reminds me. My letter, guess what? I mailed it,” she announced with shivery delight. She figured it would be three weeks before she heard back. “A week for the letter to get there, a week for my father to get over the shock, and a week for him to get back.”

  “What do you mean, shock?”

  “He doesn’t even know I exist! I mean, think of it.”

  Yes, he does—why do you think he and his whole family took off, leaving their mother in such a lurch, Nellie wanted to say, but her father was shouting to them from the front door.

  “Ruthie! Nellie?”

  Alarmed, they ran into the kitchen. His shirt was plastered to his sweaty back and his thick hair was wild in the humid air that had hung over the valley for days.

  “What’d Mr. Cooper want?” he panted as if he’d been running. He’d just seen Mr. Cooper’s car come around the corner. Obviously, from here. Not from here, they told him. Well, maybe Mr. Cooper had rung the doorbell and they’d been upstairs and hadn’t heard it, he said. No, because they’d been down here the whole time.

  “Maybe that’s it then. The bell,” he said. “Maybe it’s not working again.” He opened the door and pushed the button. His shoulders sagged with the sharp buzz.

  Now, why her father didn’t just keep calling Mr. Cooper or go to his office, Nellie didn’t know. Puzzling, like so much else in the world of adults. After all, it had been Mr. Cooper who had first approached her parents and gotten them all excited and hopeful, so why was he backing off now? She couldn’t help thinking of all the times she’d taken a different way home from school to avoid Jessica, or the phone calls she’d answered disguising her voice, “This is Ruth. I’m sorry, but Nellie’s not here.”

  “I know that’s you, Nellie, and don’t think I don’t!” Jessica would scream back.

  She must have told her parents of Nellie’s cruelty and this was their revenge. The chickens had come home to roost. And yet this was the third day in a row that Mr. Cooper had been in the neighborhood. She’d seen his car yesterday and the day before, parked in front of Dr. Reese’s dental office down the hill. So maybe that was it, she told her father. Maybe Mr. Cooper was having a root canal or something done.

  “Maybe,” her father murmured on his way into the kitchen to start dinner. Even the clang of pans and water running into the sink sounded thin and dispirited. And that was scary. If her father was getting worried, then things were a lot worse than she’d thought.

  SHE HAD FINALLY convinced Henry. They couldn’t wait any longer. They had to get rid of the five bikes. Their opportunity came on a hot moonless night. Their mother had finally given in. They could sleep in the tree house as long as their father covered the unfinished roof and window openings with mosquito netting. Slick with bug spray, they lay in their damp sleeping bags eating and hearing the leaves tremble as bats swooped in and out of the trees. They weren’t supposed to have any food because their mother said it would attract the band of raccoons that had been pillaging the trash barrels at night. But what was a night in the tree house without supplies, so Henry had smuggled out a box of Cheez-Its and some brownies. They each had a water bottle and a flashlight. And for protection, a baseball bat. They’d been waiting for the Humboldts’ floodlights to go out; one shone directly on the barn door. But it was getting late, so they climbed down the ladder and ran into the barn.

  With each one riding a bike, it took two trips. They hid them in the bushes between the church and the cottage. Nellie and Henry rode double on the last bike, brother behind sister, holding on to the seat, bitching about the wobbly ride, until she got mad and ordered him off. She pedaled slowly as he jogged indignantly alongside. He kept trying to get her to talk to him, but she wouldn’t. She hated it when he got all whiny and wimpy like that, so she ignored him, which only made things worse. Now he was telling her in a high, breathless voice about that day in the woods and how scared and ashamed he’d been, alone and naked, how every time he moved, the fishing line cut into his ankles and wrists, how the sweat poured down his forehead into his eyes, blinding him with the salty glare. His voice broke.

  “Are you crying again?” she asked disgustedly. He denied it, but he kept sniffing and wiping his nose with the back of his hand. She sped ahead, going as fast as she could.

  “Wait! Wait for me!” he bawled through the darkness.

  She stopped, straddling the bike as he ran toward her, sobbing, head down, fists clenched. He kicked the bike, knocking it out from under her. As it fell, the pedal scraped her ankle. With a painful yelp, she punched him in the chest and he kept trying to hit her back, but she managed to hold him at arm’s length. He was kicking the bike again.

  “Cut it out, Henry! Just cut it out! You’re acting like an idiot, like some kind of two-year-old!” He lunged for her glasses, an old countermeasure he hadn’t pulled in years, but she shoved him away. Back he came in all his fury, fists raised, and she shouldn’t have, but as she delivered Major Fairbairn’s Edge-of-the-Hand Blow, chopping hard into his bony shoulder, she really, really wanted
to hurt him and didn’t regret it one bit. Crying harder, he held on to his curled shoulder and started walking away. “Go ahead, Henry, keep wimping out. Just keep wimping out!” she called after him, but he kept going. She stood there for as long as she could, watching his skinny, pathetic figure drag down the street, farther into the shadows until she had no choice. She ran after him and said she was sorry. She shouldn’t have said what she said and she shouldn’t have hit him. But there were a lot better ways of getting back at someone than crying and trying to hurt the person who was only trying to help him. She would have said more, but she was afraid she might cry, too. And besides, it was getting late.

  By the time they got to the church, the steeple clock said five of ten. The lights were off inside the cottage. She steered the last bike into the bushes.

  “Wait,” Henry whispered. He pulled out the longest blade on his Swiss Army knife and slashed the front tire of the bike they’d just delivered. Nellie grabbed his arm before he could slash the back tire. “Let goa me!” He struggled to free himself.

  “They’re not his bikes,” she whispered, holding on with both hands. Somewhere nearby a dog started barking. “It’s vandalism. You can go to jail for that.”

  “I don’t care!” His voice cracked.

  “Henry! Stop it!” She held on tighter as he tried head butting her away.

  “He peed on me! In my face even!”

  She let go. She watched him move from bike to bike sobbing and stabbing away at the tires, the bikes sinking flat on their rims. She couldn’t see her brother’s face through the darkness, but his anguish cut deeply into her, and for the first time in her life she understood what pure hatred felt like. Bucky Saltonstall had destroyed something vital and pure in her little brother. One way or another he would pay for that. And the cost would be a lot more than ten tires.

  CHARLIE WAS ON another new medicine, which she had to pick up and deliver to him. Henry had been gone for the last three days. He’d been invited to go to the lake for a week with Kip Kruger, a boy in his class. When Mrs. Kruger called to make the arrangements, her mother had to close the door on Henry’s shouts that he wasn’t going to the lake with creepy Kip Kruger and no one could make him, and if they did, they’d be sorry.

  Nellie shivered hearing how frantic and hateful he sounded.

  “He’ll be fine,” her mother said later when she tried to tell her, actually warn her that Henry was serious. He really meant it.

  “He never wants to go off on his own, but then when he does, he always has a good time,” she declared in her forced, upbeat voice.

  “No, he doesn’t,” Nellie said under her breath.

  Her mother’s head snapped up. “What is it with you, Nellie? Why do you have to be so negative? I know things are hard for your brother, but he still has to do them. He can’t always be hiding in some dream world like—”

  Like your father, Nellie knew she’d almost said.

  Her mother took a deep breath. “Because I know what that feels like. When I was little, all I wanted was to not be scared.”

  “What were you scared of?”

  “Everything. Everyone.” She sniffed and cleared her throat.

  “Did you tell your mother?” Telling Charlie would have been useless.

  “Well,” she said, wiping her nose with the back of her hand. “She was pretty sick, so—” She shook her head and tried to smile.

  “Oh, Mom!” Nellie said, hugging her mother, who seemed to tremble in her embrace.

  “Listen to me!” she said, easing free. “I’m turning into one of those kind of mothers, dumping everything on their kids. My Lord!” She peered closely, then took off Nellie’s glasses. “How can you see through these? They’re so dirty,” she said, fogging them with her breath, then wiping each lens on her shirtfront. Nellie stood perfectly still while the glasses were slipped back over her ears. “Look at you, almost taller than me now,” her mother murmured, adjusting them, then smoothing down her hair. “And nothing ever bothers you, does it?” She patted her cheek. “You’re so lucky.”

  Nellie’s smile ached. It wasn’t that her mother didn’t know her; it was her mother not wanting to know that made her feel bad.

  APPARENTLY, DOLLY’S PHONE had been shut off. She had come over last Monday on her night off to ask if she could have a cat in the apartment. Someone had offered her a kitten, but she wanted to check first to see if it was all right. Nellie’d been making chocolate pudding, stirring it on the stove and holding her breath, praying her mother would say yes. Because of Ruth’s allergies, they’d never had pets, but a kitten next door could be a kind of step-pet. No, her mother told Dolly. She couldn’t risk cat dander in the house, not with Ruth so sensitive. That led into the long history of Ruth’s close calls; bee stings, rabbit fur, even certain laundry detergents could trigger the histamines that had more than once landed Ruth in the emergency room.

  “Yeah, right, I know how that goes,” Dolly sighed. Interesting, Nellie thought, how she could turn any subject around to herself. Such a useful skill, a kind of conversational veering through an obstacle course of dull topics. And being a kid, who wasn’t allowed to interrupt adults no matter how boring they were, Nellie was fascinated, even by Dolly’s detailed description of her pneumonia last winter: the green mucous and hacking cough, the creepy intern who kept coming in to listen to her lungs without a stethoscope, pressing his ear to her chest. At the stove Nellie mimicked her exaggerated shudder that had made her mother giggle. “Yeah, two and a half days I was in the hospital until they found out I didn’t have any insurance, so they kicked me out. Sick as a dog—they didn’t care,” Dolly said, even her pout seductive.

  Lips also pursed, Nellie turned off the burner. A face like Dolly’s made secrets impossible. Her childlikeness was surprising to Nellie, who had never known an adult like her. Later, when she thought back, she would realize how much Dolly reminded her of Jessica. They were incapable of masking their emotions. Everything showed, every feeling and nuance, like a throb of blue veins just under the skin, a pulsating glyph of vulnerability.

  Nellie poured the pudding into four sherbet bowls instead of the usual five. A package went further with Henry gone. She did miss him, though, but in the way you’d miss your shadow. Not something you needed or wanted, but not having one seemed strange. She hoped he wasn’t freaking out the Krugers with his weird moods and balky silences. Especially if they tried taking him into the woods.

  “Lately I been getting this, like, spotting, I guess you call it.” Dolly’s sunny voice drifted on the fringe of Nellie’s bitter reverie. She’d been imagining what she’d say to Bucky when she saw him. It was becoming an obsession, all the possible scenarios worked out, the brutal force of her anger reducing him to pleas for forgiveness, her cruel words so brilliantly insightful that in the end he’d turn his life around, and for that his grandparents would honor her with their gratitude. She wasn’t sure exactly what form that honor would take or even what the phrase meant, but she’d heard it on NPR yesterday. And as the middle child, honor and gratitude didn’t come easily.

  “… then, last month I wake up in the middle of the night, and the sheet’s, like, covered, soaked in blood, the mattress, everything. It’s like, nothing for two months, then next thing I know, some kinda geyser’s going off.”

  She had Nellie’s rapt attention. So sweet and pretty and not even caring that she could hear every word of her most intimate details. Ruth was big into menstrual details, because it was another way of feeling superior to Nellie, so she wasn’t shocked. But there was an innocence about Dolly’s confidences that drew you into her life. Or maybe her into yours. She needed something, someone, anyone.

  “You should see a doctor,” her mother was telling her, and Dolly agreed. Yeah, she should. Like, she knew that, and she was going to. She really, really was. Because the worst part of all were the clots, she said as Nellie scraped the last lumps from the bottom of the pan. Ruth could have her bowl. In fact, she was pretty
sure she’d never eat pudding again. Dolly jumped up and said she’d better get going. A friend was taking her out to dinner tonight. She wasn’t sure where, though. It was supposed to be a surprise.

  “Who’s your friend?” Nellie’s mother asked, and Dolly answered with a wink.

  “Oh, that smells so good.” Dolly paused to look over Nellie’s shoulder. “And it’s from scratch.”

  “No.” She showed her the box.

  “Same thing. Kinda, sorta. Cooking it, I mean,” she said, with a quick look as if Nellie’d hurt her feelings.

  “Here, have some.” She held out one of the warm bowls.

  “Oh jeez.” Dolly seemed disappointed. “If I do, it’ll fill me up and I’m gonna have dinner.”

  “Take it with you,” her mother said from the table. “You can have it later.”

  “Yeah! That’s a great idea.” Dolly left, bearing the bowl in two hands, like a rare potion.

  “Poor kid,” her mother sighed on the closing door.

  “Why? What’s wrong with her?” Nellie asked.

  “She’s …” Her mother paused to reconsider, which Nellie resented. Now if she were Ruth she would have come straight out with it. Her mother and Ruth were soul sisters, Sandy liked to say, two peas from the same pod, which always left Nellie wondering what pod she’d come from. “She’s had a hard life, that’s all.”

  “Is that why she sounds so … well … kinda dumb sometimes?” she asked, and was stung by her mother’s reaction.

  “Why’re you so judgmental all the time, Nellie? You make people feel very uncomfortable. You sound like your aunt Betsy when you say those things.”

  Whoa! How many times had she heard that? She used to think it was a compliment. She thought Aunt Betsy was a very important person the way people always seemed to have an opinion about her. Now that she was older, though, she realized what a knife in the back the comparison was.

  “It’s not a very nice trait,” her mother said, getting up when she heard Ruth race down the stairs. If her mother didn’t give her a ride, she’d be late for work again.