Light from a Distant Star

by Morris, Mary Mcgarry

  With almost another week of rain, they’d been pretty much stuck inside, she and Henry, that is. Ruth was back and forth to work, though most days she got out early. The ice-cream business slowed way down in bad weather. Maybe if Ruth had come home instead of lying and going to Patrick Dellastrando’s house that day, then she might have gotten the letter herself. And it wasn’t as if Nellie’d been looking for it. Bringing in the mail was about it for excitement. That and listening to the drama that was Dolly’s life with her television droning in the background. It was hard to untangle the soap operas and reality shows from her own misery, sobbing in bed, sobbing into her phone, pleading, demanding to be taken seriously. She was sick of waiting around, doing nothing while he did exactly as he pleased. It was way more than money and if he dared say that again, ever, then she was just going to call the bitch, that’s what she’d do, call the bitch and tell her exactly what was going on here. After all, she had a life to live, too, and he better get used to the idea because she wasn’t going to be treated like this anymore. And there wasn’t a thing he could say or do that was going to make her change her mind. Had he ever once said that to the bitch? Timing! What the hell’s that supposed to mean? Silence. And this time, a thud. Something hitting the wall.

  “I’m a good person,” she began to wail. “Doesn’t he know that?”

  Nellie couldn’t tell whether she was talking on the phone again or to someone in the apartment. She pressed closer. Her ear so often at the damp bathroom wall had made a grease mark on the wallpaper.

  “Why’s he doing this? It’s not fair! It’s so fucking not fair! Why? Why?” she moaned, then fell into hysterical sobbing, and no one answered or spoke a soothing word back.

  Ruth’s letter must have come during that same rainy week. The ink on the damp envelope was smeared. She remembers standing on the porch, staring at the blurry postmark. Australia. She ran to put the letter in her bottom drawer, under her shorts. Ruth was in trouble again for missing her curfew two nights in a row. She’d been grounded, and with her resentment so deep it seemed simpler to hide the letter than have her on the next plane to Brisbane. The following day Nellie took it out and held it up to a lightbulb, but she couldn’t see through the envelope. Next she tried slipping a knife under the seal. All that did was rip a ragged tear in the flap. That left her little choice. She ripped it open the rest of the way. She would read it and then decide what to do next.

  Dear Ruth,

  What a surprise, hearing from you. And thank you for the picture. I see more of a resemblance to your mother than me. Actually, I don’t ever get to the states anymore. My work and family keep me firmly anchored here. I’m glad that you’re such a good student. Lord knows, I wasn’t, so there again you take after your mother more than me. No, I don’t surf or ride a motorcycle anymore. I work for a supermarket here. I’m a manager. Not very exciting but secure. I know you’d like to come for a visit, but this wouldn’t be a good time. The trip’s a long one and quite expensive. I haven’t told my wife or children about you, so that would be a problem. Oftentimes the past is best left buried. I know that sounds cold, but I only mean it in a practical way. I’m sure you can work out your problems with your family if you try. I know one thing, I’d never want to go through being a teenager again. If you do write again, please use the address below. Be sure and write PERSONAL on it because it’s where I work.

  I’m sorry I don’t have a picture to send. Just as well, I’m not much to look at.

  Sincerely,

  Daniel Brigham

  And not much of a pen pal, Nellie decided, relieved. She peeled back the brittle flap of linoleum on her dusty closet floor and slipped the letter underneath the loose board, then piled her shoes and junk back on top. Daniel Brigham’s lack of interest would only hurt Ruth’s already frazzled feelings, so really, what was the point? He had tried to be polite, but he might as well have been writing to a perfect stranger, which, in a way, he was. He didn’t know her, didn’t care to, so that was that. Why make things any more tense around here? And they certainly were tense. Mr. Cooper still hadn’t called, and Dolly had been right on the verge of being evicted when she’d somehow come up with two months’ rent, both pleasing and frustrating her mother, who only wanted to be rid of her.

  And at the store the motor on the ancient key-cutting machine had finally burned out. Her father had tried fixing it but couldn’t, and this morning he had stunned her mother when he said he guessed he’d just have to get a new one. Why in God’s name would he do that? she’d asked, rushing out the door for her nine A.M. Lazlo Larouche, a trim and highlights—and a big tipper. Her father merely stared at the closing door. He knew better than admit that he’d already inquired about a new machine. He’d pretty much given up on Mr. Cooper’s saving the day but couldn’t bear to burst her mother’s bubble the way his had been. The publishing company he’d sent six hundred dollars to wasn’t returning his calls. Nellie’d heard him on the phone telling Uncle Phil, who was going to send them a threatening letter.

  THE RAIN FINALLY stopped, only to be followed by hours of howling wind trying to dry out their soggy world. All through the night Henry tramped back and forth past her door to the hallway window. He kept checking to see how his tree house was holding up. Early in the storm the tarp had blown off, over into Humboldt’s yard, but that was all. One gust had ripped down a huge limb from the oak tree near the barn. Amazingly, there wasn’t any damage, but the driveway was blocked, pinning their car in. Their parents had to get to work. Benjamin had been out since dawn with his chain saw, but it was slow going. Two blades had already broken and he needed help moving the little he’d cut. Her mother called Charlie and asked if Max could lend a hand. He arrived within minutes. By then other neighbors had ventured out. They stood around, coffee mugs in hand, some of the women in bathrobes, catching up on neighborhood news. A few men pitched in, dragging wet leafy branches out of the way. Old Mr. Fuller shuffled over from across the street with his own chain saw and started cutting the smaller branches, which made everyone nervous because he could barely see. He still drove, so staying out of his way had become a kind of game. The minute kids saw his old white Pontiac coming down the middle of the street, they’d ride their bikes up over the curb or dive into bushes. “Be respectful,” her mother would say, whenever she caught them doing it, but Nellie was sure he never noticed.

  Anyway, in the midst of sawdust flying and the buzz of dueling chain saws, Dolly appeared on her little porch, shading her eyes as she squinted toward the hubbub. She was wearing gray sweat pants and a skimpy T-shirt, with nothing on under, it was plain to see. Miss Humboldt had also trudged over. The bright blue tarp had landed on Tenley’s antique roses, not that she was complaining, because it was, after all, an act of God, she said, a concept that delighted Henry—God lifting the tarp and dropping it into the next yard. But in any event, she wondered if one of them could come by later for it. Tenley had it all folded on their front steps. If it wasn’t so heavy, she would have carried it over herself, she said.

  With the enormous limb finally cut up, Max, to everyone’s amazement, effortlessly heaved the sections into the back of his truck. It would take two and a half truckloads for him to move it from the driveway into the junkyard, where he would chop it all up into firewood, then stack it to dry for burning next winter in Charlie’s stove in the barn. Nellie wasn’t sure if he noticed Dolly that day, watching the excitement. Probably not, the way he was working, a man possessed—no, more machine than man, all smoothly turning gears and moving parts. What she would remember, though, was their interaction days later when Max returned with some of the split wood.

  It was late afternoon and Henry was up in the tree house, reading. She’d spent a good part of the day in a search of Ruth’s room. She was looking for her journal, which she hadn’t read in months. Sweat trickled down her sides, but she was afraid to turn on the air conditioning because then she wouldn’t hear anyone coming up the stairs. Deep in a bin of wool sweat
ers, she found a book about sex positions, but she’d seen that before in other raids. Her next discovery was Ruth’s school backpack, stuffed behind her bureau. In it was a bag of makeup. She didn’t understand until she saw the price tags. One lipstick alone cost twenty-nine dollars. There was a tiny jar of blush that cost thirty-five dollars and an eyeliner pencil for fifteen dollars. Nellie didn’t know whether she’d hidden it because she’d stolen it or because it was so expensive. Both, she guessed, remembering Ruth’s seventh-grade shoplifting bust. To get past Walgreens’ security alarm, she had taken a curling iron from its box and slipped it up her sleeve. The only problem was that a clerk saw the whole thing and waited until Ruth got outside before stopping her. It was awful. Her mother and father had to go to the police station, where they found Ruth curled in a ball, sobbing hysterically. Her father called Uncle Phil, who was a Grand Knight with the police chief, who, at Benjamin’s request, gave her a stern talking to before sending her home. For a long time after that Ruth left the house only to go to school. She’d learned a most humiliating lesson. But her mother had been even more deeply affected. She cried a lot, wouldn’t eat, and couldn’t sleep. Benjamin finally got her to see some doctor in Boston. She went every Tuesday morning at ten until her coverage ran out. Benjamin wanted her to keep going—the money was well worth it—but she insisted she was better. In fact, she said, it was the best thing she’d ever done. She’d learned a lot about who she was and how she had to live her life. And for a long time she did seem a lot happier. That is, until lately, and all their money problems.

  Anyway, Nellie’s most shocking find came next, three thong underpants in the pocket of Ruth’s bathrobe, two red and one black. She felt dirty just for having touched them. Her sister was some kind of deviant. She couldn’t stop thinking of that strip of cloth lodged—stuck—between her bum cheeks. Disgusting. Why? What was the point? The way it felt? Or for someone to see it on her?

  She finally found Ruth’s journal in the most obvious place, right under her mattress. It wasn’t at all what she expected. Instead of juicy details about Patrick and his wild friends, she mostly wrote about how sad it made her that “aside from those times, he hardly even talks to me.” She said her old friends had dropped her, “and all these new ones do is make fun of me because I’m so into Patrick, and I know it’s because they’re so jealous of him caring about someone younger than them.” She wrote about how ugly she felt and how the first thing she was going to have done as soon as she was out on her own with a real job was get a nose job and implants. Her boobs were smaller than anyone he knew, Patrick had told her, which she knew for a fact wasn’t true, but then when she got mad, he’d just laughed and assured her that she more than made up for it in other ways. She couldn’t understand why her real father hadn’t written back. If only she had his e-mail address, then they could be in touch every day, writing back and forth and it could be like a normal conversation almost “instead of all this phony shit me and Benjamin have to have all the time. Like he really cares about me, when we both know it’s to make my mother happy, that’s the only reason. He’s so annoying. All he does is talk about the most boring things. Sometimes I think we’d all be better off if my mother divorced him. It’d be like a movie, just me and her flying to Australia. Imagine meeting my real father after all this time. The problem is she can’t afford a lawyer. Maybe she can, when they sell the building to Mr. Cooper. She thinks I don’t know what’s going on, but I’ve heard them enough times now to know …”

  Just then, a car door slammed shut down in the driveway. Nellie’s limp, sweaty hands shoved the journal back under the mattress. Divorce. Her world was falling apart. She couldn’t think straight. On top of all her other fears, now there was her parents’ marriage to hold together. She raced down to the kitchen. She still hadn’t done any of the chores on her mother’s list. Nellie could hear her up in her room changing out of her smock. She had just jammed the last of the breakfast and lunch dishes into the dishwasher as her mother came into the kitchen. Through the window she saw Max’s truck backing slowly into the driveway. He pulled close to the barn, then jumped out and took the back steps in a bound. The bell was still ringing as her mother opened the door. She seemed as startled to see him there as Nellie was pleased. A familiar face to pull her back to reality.

  “Gotcher wood,” he announced, grinning and covering his teeth. He gestured back over his shoulder. “Good half cord, anyway.” He must have rushed over soon as he’d split the last log. Wood chips and bits of bark flecked his hair and sweaty shirt back.

  “But we don’t need it,” her mother said.

  “Just doing what Charlie said, that’s all.”

  “Well, it’s … it’s not a very good time,” she stammered through the screen. Now she gestured back. “I’m trying to start dinner.”

  “Sure.” He nodded, his eyes hardened to stone. “I only rung it so you’d know. That’s all. I mean, you’re cooking,” he said, backing down the steps. “I’ll just get to it.”

  She stared after him. Her unsmiling mother, not only kind to everyone but kind to a fault, could not hide her dislike of Max, a dislike bordering on revulsion. Nellie figured it was her difficult childhood growing up in the town junkyard with a father like Charlie, who didn’t give a damn what anyone thought of him or his dealings. So to her, Max’s unsavory past was probably a reminder, another embarrassment, maybe even a threat to the orderly and respectable life she finally had.

  “A small pile, that’s all then,” she called after him. “By the barn. Just dump it, that’s all.”

  As soon as her mother went back upstairs, Nellie slipped outside and found him muttering as he tossed logs from the truck, so heedlessly she knew to stand back. “Hi!” she said, but he didn’t even look up. She could tell he was riled and trying to work past it. “We don’t burn too much! Just every once in a while! In the family room fireplace!” she called, hoping to make up for her mother’s coolness.

  “Usually just those fake ones, the kind you buy!” she hollered over the clunk of falling wood. “We can’t use the other two fireplaces. The chimneys, they’re not safe. Fact, we even had a fire one time a couple years ago. A chimney fire. That was wicked scary. Thanksgiving morning. Yeah, the firemen said we were lucky it wasn’t the middle of the night.” Her voice quavered with the strain of needing to pierce his dark intensity.

  “So then we had to go eat at my aunt Betsy and uncle Phil’s. They were supposed to come here, but the whole house was, well, you know, full of smoke. Course they didn’t have a turkey, so we brought ours. My mother finished cooking it there, but, I don’t know, it just didn’t taste right. ‘Our first smoked turkey,’ my father said. His idea of a joke, but my mother, well, she didn’t think it was too funny.”

  “No surprise there,” he grunted with a look she didn’t like, a sneer almost, a sneer he seemed to expect her to share.

  “Well, you can’t blame her.” She was annoyed he’d think she would criticize her mother, especially to him, someone she barely knew. “I mean, all that work, and then the house, it could’ve burned down, you know. It almost did. That’s what the fire chief said, and now she’s, like, got this thing about fires. A phobia, almost.”

  “Chimneys probably need a good cleanout, that’s all.” He jumped down and picked up a log. She could tell he knew he’d said the wrong thing. “Gotta be careful what you burn,” he said, sniffing the cut end. “This here oak’s never gonna leave pitch—harder the wood, hotter the fire.” He began stacking the wood next to the barn, but not close enough to touch, he pointed out. She picked up a log and laid it on his first row.

  “Okay for you to be out here?” he paused to ask.

  “Well, yeah,” she said, laying down another log. “It’s my yard, after all.”

  “I mean with her.” He gestured toward the house. “Your mother.”

  “She likes me doing stuff like this.” Log after log, she was picking up speed. “Idle hands’re the devil’s workshop, r
ight?”

  “Whyn’t you go ask, just to be on the safe side.” He was turning some of the logs she’d placed.

  “Why? Am I bothering you?” she blurted, wishing she hadn’t, but her feelings were hurt.

  He continued working. His silence made her feel worse.

  “Or am I just doing it wrong?” she asked to give him a way out, he looked so troubled with his head down and shoulders hunched.

  “The point’s a tight stack,” he said. “Space enough for drying, but no gaps. Too many and the whole thing’ll fall down. Wind, frost heaves,” he grunted, hands a blur of motion. “Animals even. Burrow in, building nests, next thing you know it’s all collapsed.”

  “You know what you told me, that story about your brother? I keep thinking about that—”

  “Well, don’t.”

  “No, I don’t mean that way. I mean, some things’re just important to know. That’s what my father says, anyway. He—”

  “Oh, my God!” her mother screamed, and Max jumped back. She ran toward them carrying a laundry basket. “The basement!” she was shrieking. “It’s all flooded!”

  The bottom had rusted out of the hot-water tank for Dolly’s apartment. Her mother had started down cellar to do a wash when she discovered the water, inches high in some places, and still rising. Nellie and Max followed her back to the house, but she stopped them at the cellar door. Afraid he’d be electrocuted, she wouldn’t let Max go down. The fuse box was almost within reach of the stairs, so with a broom handle he was able to throw the switch. Her mother called Benjamin at the store. Benjamin called the fire department, who apparently thought they had another blazing chimney because two trucks, the hook and ladder, and an ambulance arrived, all sirens wailing, lights spinning.