Light from a Distant Star

by Morris, Mary Mcgarry

  Startled by the commotion, Dolly burst into the Pecks’ kitchen. She’d been watching television when the power died. Convinced the house was burning down, she was hysterical. Everything she owned in the whole world was in her apartment and she needed help getting it all out. Nellie and Henry had to go with her, she insisted. It wasn’t a fire, Nellie tried telling her, but she wouldn’t listen.

  “I need help! I need help! Don’t just stand there, goddammit, I need help!” she cried, pounding her fist into her palm like a crazy lady. Afraid she’d be beating on them next, Nellie and Henry stared at her from the other side of the table, relieved by the trudge of footsteps up the cellar stairs. Max came in, carrying two tall boxes of wrapping-paper rolls. He’d started retrieving what he could from one end of the cellar. His pant cuffs and boots dripped mucky puddles onto the white tiles. He set the box down and asked what she needed help with.

  “All my stuff!” Dolly cried. “I gotta get it out!”

  “No, you don’t. Just water, that’s all. Never gonna get that high. Listen. They’re down there now, shutting off the main.” Barely moving his hand, he pointed toward the underworld of voices and clanging pipes. Dolly’s wild eyes darted around. She was panting. Her hands shook in her struggle to cross her pale, bony arms. Max stood there, like them, trapped, caught in Dolly’s vision of flames and ruin.

  She sniffed the air. “I smell something,” she said in a strained voice.

  “Exhaust, that’s all,” Max said. “The trucks, they gotta keep running.”

  “I thought it was a fire,” she said weakly.

  “Just water, that’s all.” He reached out, whether to pat her shoulder or just to make a point, but she punched his hand away.

  “Keep your dirty, fucking hands off me!” she exploded, fist raised.

  “Don’t you—” he warned, glaring down at her.

  “Yeah, right,” she said, then was gone, slamming the door behind her.

  Nellie and Henry still weren’t sure what had happened, but now Max seemed short of breath. He kept nodding.

  “What’s her problem?” Nellie said, not expecting an answer, but needing to say something.

  “Crazy bitch,” he said.

  Whoa. They stared at each other as Max stomped back down the cellar stairs.

  Later, when they talked about the incident, they agreed that Dolly hated Max, but they didn’t know why. Henry scoffed when Nellie said maybe Max had a crush or something on her. Kind of like the way she felt about Bucky, though she’d never admit that to her brother. But the nasty exchange was disturbing. Not Dolly’s end of it, as much as Max’s. He might work in their grandfather’s junkyard and sleep in the barn with his dog, but he’d saved Henry’s life, which made him a real hero. So what if he’d been in jail and been blamed for his brother’s death and had a quick temper and always smelled of sweat and wet dog and could barely hold a person’s gaze when spoken to, he still had goodness in him. And courage. Those were the things you just know. Especially when you’re a kid, when the world is still pretty much black-and-white, because that’s the way she’d been raised, the way she’d been taught, the way she had to believe, with all the murk yet to come. So of course she held him to a higher standard. Max was a man of principle, however unpolished. Or primitive. Or distant.

  After the firemen pumped the water out, everything had to be hauled outside to dry, the mess spread over the yard for all the neighbors to see, throw rugs, Christmas decorations, long strips of pink fiberglass insulation covering every shrub and post, humiliating her mother. The foundation windows and the cellar door had to be left open. Benjamin rented two huge industrial fans that ran day and night to prevent mold, her mother’s other big fear. In the meantime, Dolly had no hot water and now with her rent up to date she could afford to be indignant. Actually, she was mad as hell, swearing when Nellie’s mother said she was doing her best to get another water heater. Dolly demanded rent money back for every day she was forced to go without hot water. She even complained about the fans, saying they sounded like jet engines. It was true. Like a giant hive, the walls buzzed with a powerful hum, which had cut Nellie off from the drama of Dolly’s world.

  Except for one very puzzling visitor. It was four A.M. and too hot to sleep. A skunk had sprayed somewhere down the street. With the cellar windows open the sharp night smell had easily seeped inside. Hearing a door close, Nellie peeked under the shade just as a man hurried down from Dolly’s porch. When he reached the sidewalk, she recognized him in the pinkish glow of the street lamp. Speed-walking, Mr. Andrew Cooper disappeared around the corner.

  Later, that next day, Uncle Phil stopped by the house in his new car. He was on his way home from the office. Still no word from the publishing company, he said, but he wanted Benjamin to read the draft of his letter threatening a lawsuit. Not that Uncle Phil was a lawyer, but as the office manager in a law firm, he probably knew more law than any of them, Aunt Betsy liked to say.

  Benjamin handed the letter back. “Let’s give it another couple weeks,” he said with Sandy biting her lip. “No sense alienating them.”

  They followed Uncle Phil out to the driveway, their technologically deprived family watching him shout at his silvery leather dashboard. “Home! Home!” he kept demanding. “Home! Home, goddammit,” until his address finally appeared on the GPS grid. “Not used to my voice yet,” he explained. Both red faced, Nellie and Henry were remembering Charlie’s tale of his grandfather’s late night stumblings out of the tavern into his horse-drawn wagon. “Home! Home!” he’d bellow, snapping the leads while the stubborn horse just stood there. Finally, “Home, goddammit, unless you wanna end up a goddamn pot’a glue!” Then off they’d go, with the old man soon snoring all the way.

  Her mother’s cheeks were flushed, probably remembering the same story, or so Nellie thought until the gleaming black BMW disappeared around the corner. “No sense alienating them?” she gasped. “They’ve got our money! Six hundred dollars, Ben!”

  “They’re a small house. Probably just a few employees. The editing alone’ll take some time.” With that, her father gave a brisk salute to Mr. Powell driving by. “Say what you will, but that’s independence,” he declared in a jaunty attempt to change the subject.

  “Editing?” Her mother walked alongside. Nellie knew that hard stride, the combative tilt of her head. Her father’s daughter, she would not be put off. “You haven’t heard anything from them, nothing at all?”

  “They probably haven’t gotten to it yet. I mean, I’m sure I’m not their only author.”

  “But you’re not—”

  “They probably date stamp the—.”

  “—an author, Ben. Not until you’re published, anyway.”

  Nellie knew by his somber nod and their uneasy glances away from each other that a wound had just been gouged. They both felt bad, her father for having heard the truth and her mother for having spoken it.

  They had just started dinner when Dolly arrived with her shampoo and conditioner bottles, razor, and frayed towels. Every night it was the same thing. She didn’t even bother knocking, just ran up through the cellar into the kitchen, then with a frosty hello raced upstairs to take her very long shower. She preferred using Ben and Sandy’s bathroom because she didn’t like the water pressure in Nellie and Henry’s, and it was too dark to see well enough to shave her legs.

  They ate in silence. Between the fans’ drone in the walls and the running water overhead, Nellie could feel the room shrinking around them. Thin shoulders hunched, her mother picked at her food. A pile of chicken bones barely concealed Henry’s spinach, a skirmish neither parent was up to. Upstairs the bathroom door slammed. Her father winced and ate faster. Dolly always left the room a mess, shade crookedly down, water on the vanity counter and floor and strands of her long hair in the tub. That night, though, instead of hurrying back to her apartment, Dolly lingered by the table, in her bathrobe and wet hair wrapped in a towel.

  “Is something wrong?” Her mother
pushed her plate away.

  “No. I just wanted to tell you, I mean.…” Dolly shrugged. “Just so you’ll know. What I said. It’s okay, there’s no rush. I mean about the hot water. Actually, I kinda like coming over. Makes me feel like part of the family, like, you know, don’t pay any attention, it’s just me, Dolly coming through,” she laughed, hands waving in her childish way.

  “Well, that’s awfully nice to hear,” her father said. “And you’re always welcome.” His quick smile faded. “And soon, of course,” he added, under his wife’s pained stare, “you won’t have to. You’ll be back in business over there. Hot water anytime you want it.”

  “Yeah, I know. But like I said, no fuss, no muss, no rush, that’s all. Okay? See ya guys,” she called, opening the door, then banged it shut, sending a visible shiver through Nellie’s mother.

  In the silence Henry slid his napkin over the bones and wadded it up. His mother jumped up from the table, and they all froze.

  “I just thought of something,” she said, going straight to the phone. She called her father and asked if there might be an old hot-water tank at the junkyard that still worked. Just to tide them over until they could afford a new one. As a matter of fact, Charlie said, there were two. He’d pick out the best one and send Max over in the morning and he could hook it up, too, if she wanted. She could pay him whatever she thought the tank was worth, which made her mad, but she knew better than say so.

  NELLIE WAS ANNOYED. Here it was the hottest day of summer so far and she and Henry were stuck inside, waiting for Max. As soon as he arrived with the hot-water tank, she was supposed to call her father home from work. Her mother didn’t want Max “having free roam of the house.” Actually, Ruth had been left in charge, but at 11: 35 A.M. someone from Rollie’s had called. They were really busy and needed her right away, she yelled in her giddy rush through the door. The plan had been for Nellie and Henry to take a bus to the mall, get a slice of pizza, then just walk around and hang out in the air-conditioned stores until her mother picked them up after her last appointment. They’d done that on other brutally hot days. Nellie called Charlie and asked if Max had left yet. He had, Charlie said, early in the morning, but to go fishing. As soon as he got back he’d send him right over with the tank.

  At 2:00 P.M. Max still hadn’t come, but Henry didn’t even notice. He was working on the LEGO 1,500-piece Star Wars Galactic destroyer he’d started at noon. Her mother had gotten it at one of her client’s yard sales. The lady had let her come early to have first pick. Henry finished the destroyer at 2:45—as best he could with three pieces missing. Still, no Max, so Henry went up to his room, looking for his old ant farm. That was at 3:00. Because Nellie’d been watching the clock since midmorning, she was acutely aware of the time. Afterward, it seemed odd to people that she would know the exact minute this had happened or that, but the truth is, she did. How can you be sure? they’d ask, one after another. Because she kept checking, that’s how she knew when the first noise was—3:10.

  What do you mean, noise?

  Just that, noise.

  Voices? Yelling? Screaming, what?

  No, like banging, but not even that.

  Not even what?

  Not that it was loud, just kind of, maybe—like, you know, scuffling. Like a commotion or something.

  Which? Scuffling or commotion?

  More like thuds. Like, maybe something fell.

  Like what? What fell?

  She didn’t know.

  NOT THEN, ANYWAY. Not with those big fans droning down in the cellar.

  So, when you heard the first sounds at or about 3:10—

  At 3:10. It was.

  Okay, so maybe Max Devaney was already there.

  But he wasn’t!

  But maybe he was, and you just didn’t know it.

  But I know he wasn’t. He didn’t come till after. Like, five of four, something like that.

  So, you’re not sure.

  Not of that, the exact time that he came, I mean.

  But isn’t it possible that’s what you were hearing, the noise? Mr. Devaney, down cellar, working?

  No. Because he still wasn’t there. We kept waiting.

  But you’re so sure when other things happened, so why not that?

  Because.

  Because this was the part she couldn’t tell anyone, except her mother. And then, not all of it, not right away. She still thinks it came from knowing too much, more than she understood or could accept. She needed her world to be safe, and if bad things happened, she had to work them out first in her head, then only later, inside, deep, deeper than she could ever have imagined.

  When she heard the noise, she raced into the bathroom and pressed her ear to the wall. She wasn’t sure what she was hearing but knew what she was feeling. Dread, like needles jabbing the back of her neck. Maybe Dolly’s television was on. Day and night, it usually was. Maybe that’s why the voices didn’t seem real, if there even were voices. The best way to describe it now that she’s older is that whatever it was, whatever she was hearing was human. And horrible. Horrible, as death must be when you’re fighting it, clawing, kicking, gagging for breath. And then, as suddenly, it stopped, whatever it was, whatever it had been, it was over, leaving not quiet, not stillness, just nothing. And the drone through the walls.

  Maybe Max had come, she thought, and she’d missed him. So maybe that’s what had been going on. Maybe he’d been down cellar working the whole time. But his truck wasn’t in the driveway. Maybe he’d parked on the street. Opening the front door and seeing nothing, she went outside. The heat stung like a fiery blast as she walked around the sun-beaten house. When she came to the side yard it took a moment before her eyes adjusted from the glare on her glasses to the stingy shade of the house’s shadow across the lawn. And there, close by the dusty lilac bushes, sweaty, disheveled, red faced, pressing his left hand to his neck, and his right hand in his pocket as he gauged her myopic approach, was a man. She jumped.

  “Mr. Cooper!” she gasped.

  “Yes!” he declared with almost theatrical calm. He stepped away from the branches. His fixed, glassy stare made her think he couldn’t remember her name, which happened with adults, especially one with so many kids of his own to remember. “Your dad … I don’t see his car.”

  “He’s at the store,” she said, noticing his scratched chin—from the bushes must be, a conclusion rendered not in actual thought, so much as a flash, an impression, a child’s need to impose logic on confusion.

  “Oh. Well. Just some papers. I’ll come back.”

  “I can give them to him if you want,” she offered uneasily, recalling Ruth’s journal entry linking their parents’ possible divorce with the sale of the store. At that moment she wasn’t even thinking of Mr. Cooper’s furtive trot down the street only nights before.

  “No, that’s okay. I’ll try him at the store.” And then he was gone.

  It was another half hour or more before Max finally pulled into the driveway. She called the store to say Max had come, but the line was busy. Boone was so excited he leaped out of the truck. He wiggled against her, but she ignored him. Wanting to be petted, he kept butting his snout up under her hand to lift it. She folded her arms. He, too, would pay the price of her annoyance.

  “He’s real happy to see you,” Max said, patting the dog’s head.

  “You’re late,” she said.

  “I am?” Max had arrived clean shaven with slicked down hair, which got her mad to think that after fishing, instead of coming straight over, he’d taken the time to spruce up in hopes of seeing Dolly.

  “Yeah, we’ve been waiting, Henry and me. And now we can’t go to the mall.”

  “Want me to ride you there? I can do that. If your mother says.”

  “It’s too late.”

  “Mall’s open till nine. I’ll drop you off.”

  “We were supposed to go at noon. After you got here.”

  “Well, I didn’t know that, now, did I?” Max chuckled as
he followed her to the outside cellar door. He seemed to enjoy her irritation and Boone’s goofy need for her attention. “Charlie didn’t tell me till I got back,” he said with a glance up at Dolly’s window.

  “Last night he said you’d be here first thing. He told my mother.”

  Max shrugged. “Musta forgot. Only thing he said last night was maybe I oughta stay in the house from now on. ‘Not him though,’ he goes. ‘Not that fleabag.’ And poor old Boonie, he knew. That’s why he’s so hyped today. Fraida bein’ set loose again.”

  She ran her hand along Boone’s hard bristly tail but not so Max could see. All his chatter was for Dolly’s benefit, especially since she wasn’t saying a word. Maybe, she’s looking out the window, he was probably thinking. Maybe if she sees me being nice to the kid, she’ll treat me better. Which only irritated her more, being used like that.

  As far as she was concerned, the day had been ruined and it was all his fault. He’d been off having a great old time fishing, without taking her, which she managed to be bitter about even though she knew her mother never would have allowed it.

  The hot-water tank from Charlie might look pretty beat up, Max was saying as she unlocked the cellar door, but it was in decent enough shape. Could last a couple months or a couple years, he said, then drew back, startled by the roar of the fans as they entered the cellar.

  “Can’t even hear yourself think,” he shouted, turning them off.

  Only three bulbs lit the long, dim cellar. It had dried out but with a harsh damp odor. Their stairs were at the front end, with Dolly’s at the back, near her rusty hot-water heater. In the sudden quiet Max’s voice seemed to boom—for her to hear, Nellie figured. Why else was he was telling her all that the job entailed? “Yeah, that’s what we’ll do,” he said, shining his flashlight on the cobwebby pipes above the failed tank. “Just take a look here—see how much work we got, getting this old sucker out.” So he does, she thought; he wants her to know he’s down here, at this very moment right under her feet. “I’m gonna have to shut the main off. You maybe should go tell her.” He tapped a pitted copper joint. “The young lady up there,” he said loudly.