Light from a Distant Star

by Morris, Mary Mcgarry

  But then came the incident at work—you’ll see what I mean in the clipping. Anyway, it was one of those breakthrough moments. It has taught me a great lesson. It’s made me realize that what’s most important in life is confronting difficulty straight on instead of looking the other way or running away. The Brigham family may not have a lot, but we have each other and that is the most important thing. I hope you will forgive me for not being more welcoming when you first wrote. Even though I always knew this might happen, I guess I was still too afraid of the unknown. But now I’m not. In fact, I would like to get to know you. I have your picture, and I plan to show it to my daughters and tell them that they have an American sister.

  Your father,

  Daniel Brigham

  With the pillow over her head, Nellie sobbed until her chest ached with loss. Their family was coming undone. Ruth would surely leave, her only sister, now with her pick of Aussie sisters and accents she’d be only too eager to imitate. Of course, she would prefer her own heroic blood father over her disappointing stepfather. And after Ruth, who then? Her mother, who’d been so nervous lately, so beaten down, who now, in addition to weekdays, was working Saturdays and two nights a week.

  She threw open the closet door, swept out the shoes, and laid to perpetual rest this deadly letter with the others. A few days passed. Life went on.

  HALFWAY THROUGH DINNER there was an urgent tapping on the door glass. Agitated, short of breath, Mr. Cooper rushed in, clutching a peat pot of burgundy mums to his chest. With his quick desperate glance, Nellie’s legs locked around the chair rungs. At last. Tormented by guilt, he’d surely come to confess. A devout churchgoer, he couldn’t let an innocent man be tried for his sin. She was already dredging her heart for forgiveness. She’d known him all her life. He must have been provoked, maybe even trying to protect himself. Though she didn’t deserve to die for them, Dolly’s explosive rages were no secret to Nellie. She would tell everything she’d heard and seen, all the while respecting Dolly’s memory and the tragedy of Mr. Cooper’s helpless infatuation. Knowing he was married with a bunch of kids, she’d gone after him anyway. She was good at getting what she wanted, flirting with Max so he’d get her car started, flattering her landlady instead of paying her rent on time. Promising ice cream, she’d even lured Nellie and Henry into her ploy for meeting Mrs. Cooper. Nellie’d been her easy victim, too.

  Mr. Cooper apologized for barging in, but he’d just left Ray Mikellian. After weeks of excuses and unreturned calls, he’d finally marched into the bank president’s office, demanding answers. He stood by the table, peering over the mums. Her father had pulled out the extra chair, but Mr. Cooper didn’t seem to notice.

  “ ‘Shouldn’t be a problem, shouldn’t be a problem,’ that’s what he kept saying, which, coming from Mikellian’s good as gold, and you know that, right, Ben? There’s never been a time, not one single time, in all my dealings with the man when he’s gone back on his word, so I just wanted you both to know so you’d feel better about this whole thing. Especially now, and you’re right, you’re right to hold my feet to the fire. It’s the economy. Money’s tight everywhere, but I made you folks a sincere offer and I don’t want you thinking for a minute I’m backing down, because I’m not. Of course I wouldn’t. So just be patient a little while longer, that’s—”

  “But every day that goes by, Andy, it’s—” her father tried to say.

  “I know. Believe me, my friend, I know. The press of time, I know it well.” Mr. Cooper finally slipped into the chair across from Nellie. Her mother’s eyes followed the streak of dirt from the pot he was pushing to the center of the table. “But things’re bad everywhere. Right now I’ve got three deals just barely holding together. It’s not just me. Everyone’s got the jitters. Everyone.”

  Her mother got up and carried the mums to the counter. She wet the sponge then wiped the table clean. Mr. Cooper’s pale blue shirtfront was smudged with dirt. The two men were discussing the art supply shop on Main Street, which was going out of business after twenty-three years in the same location. Sign of the times, Mr. Cooper said. So much of their merchandise was easily available online.

  “Or Target,” Ruth interjected. “That’s where we went, right, Mom?”

  Her mother didn’t reply. She tapped the rim of Henry’s plate. He hadn’t touched his peas. He hunched over, gripping his belly.

  “Last year, the dance posters, remember?” Ruth persisted. “It was, like, so much cheaper.” The new mature Ruth was struggling to be part of the conversation. Little did she know the strange forces driving it.

  “There’s no competing,” Mr. Cooper agreed, as Nellie stared, boldly, accusingly. She was prepared to give him every ounce of understanding and support. But he had to confess.

  “America’s gone off course, that’s what Mr. Barnes told us in Gov. One,” Ruth continued. “We’ve, like, lost our way. This whole immigration thing, it’s like thrown everything off-kilter. They take all the jobs and suck up all the benefits.”

  “That’s not only an inaccurate statement, Ruth, but it ignores the fact that we’re all descended from immigrants. Unless we’re American Indians,” her father added.

  “Native Americans. Careful, Ben,” Mr. Cooper warned with a sly smile.

  “I was talking about illegal immigrants. That’s what I meant!” Ruth was miffed.

  Henry was eating his peas, gulping each one whole, no chewing. Ruth sulked through her father’s often told story of his maternal great-grandmother coming alone as a sixteen-year-old from Galway to Boston. Peg O’Riordan had been hired right off the boat as a housemaid for a wealthy family. She’d only been working a few days when she was accused of breaking the hand off a prized porcelain statue. More benevolently, instead of firing her, the lady of the house withheld the pittance that would have been Peg’s first month’s wages. To Jesus, Joseph, and the chaste Virgin Mary, she swore her innocence, but had no defenders. The statue had actually been knocked over by the oldest son’s climb through a window after a late night of drinking. Rather than betray their dissolute brother, his teenage sisters let poor Peg slave for weeks, unpaid.

  “Imagine,” Mr. Cooper sighed, clasping his hands while Nellie glared at the slender fingers, imagining their lethal squeeze around Dolly’s thin neck. “All that our ancestors had to put up with. The indignities, the injustice. But look at this fine family,” he said with a sweep of his hand. “I’d say you’ve done old Peg proud.”

  Old Peg? Nellie could see father bristling.

  “Same thing in Australia,” Ruth was saying. “Only most of them were criminals. Not my relatives, though. They immigrated from here.”

  “Emigrated,” her father corrected, jaw still tight.

  “My grandfather’s company, he got, like, transferred,” she continued.

  “That’s right,” Mr. Cooper said. “Arnie Brigham. Salvo Systems. Actually, they moved the whole company there, didn’t they?”

  “Yeah, Danny, my father, he was, like, in high school and he couldn’t even finish the year,” Ruth said, grinning, with the joy of being able to have this conversation. Her mother was looking her way, but with a kind of desolation.

  Mr. Cooper remembered Danny. “Pretty good football player. I think he made varsity his freshman year. And all-state his sophomore … no, maybe junior year. He looked at her mother. “Is that right?”

  She nodded. “Both years. Danny was a good athlete.”

  “Not much of a student, though, right, Mom?” Ruth said so happily and easily that Nellie flared with jealousy. Ruth and her mother shared another existence, a connection beyond this family.

  “He was very intelligent,” her mother said. “Just not too interested in school, that’s all.”

  “Tell me about it, I got a few of those at home,” Mr. Cooper laughed and stood up.

  Nellie’s eyes smoldered. So that was it? And now he would leave? Not a remorseful bone in his body?

  “Which reminds me, we never see you anymore, N
ellie. How come?” he said.

  “I’ve been busy. Getting ready for the trial. The murder trial.”

  “Shame you have to go through all that. You and your family,” Mr. Cooper sighed, shaking his head.

  “Nellie’ll be fine,” her father said. “She’ll be okay.”

  “All I have to do is tell the truth,” she said, her gaze hard on Mr. Cooper, but he was looking at her father not at her. “Everything that happened that day. Everything I saw.”

  “Andy,” her mother said quickly. “We can’t wait much longer. We really can’t.”

  He held the door open. “I know that. And, believe me, I’m trying. I’m doing my best,” he said, a sting in his voice.

  “Maybe you should try another bank,” she said, but the door had already closed.

  The kitchen seemed smaller, the light bleaker. Her father began clearing the table. “At least he’s trying—gotta hand him that,” he called over the rinse water, but her mother had gone upstairs with Henry. Claiming “a ton” of homework, Ruth followed, leaving Nellie to load the dishwasher.

  A little while later Lazlo came over. Grateful for the company, her father poured them both red wine. They sat at the table while her father did most of the talking. Lazlo kept glancing toward the hallway. Would Sandy be coming down soon, he asked. With her father’s worried look Nellie knew they were fearing the same thing: Lazlo’s moving out again. She might have dozed off, her father said. She did that sometimes: lie down on Henry’s bed and just fall asleep. A few more minutes passed. No, he said, when her father went to pour more into his glass. He must have nodded then or made some gesture, because her father told her to go finish her homework. He’d wash the pans. Instead, he went upstairs and got her mother.

  Lazlo told them that he had seen Ruth coming into the house this morning at nine. Soon after that her girlfriend had arrived. At two o’clock, he’d been in the yard working on another sketch of the tree house when they came outside. Seeing him there, Ruth was quick to say they’d had early dismissal and had just gotten home, which he knew wasn’t true. Lazlo felt terrible. The last thing he wanted was to get Ruth in trouble, but he’d seen her slip into the house midmorning more than once in the last few weeks. Later, when confronted by her parents, Ruth swore that was the only day she’d skipped; Lazlo didn’t know what he was talking about.

  The next morning her mother canceled her first two appointments so she could meet with the principal. Since September, Ruth had missed school four times. She had signed her mother’s name on every absentee note in her file. Stunned, her mother called the salon and took the rest of the day off. When Nellie and Henry came home from school they found her in the dim front parlor, staring out at the leaf-blown street.

  “Did you quit?” Henry asked, delighted to find her there. No one had felt her absence more in this last year than he had.

  She didn’t answer.

  “No.” Nellie elbowed him. “Mom has to work. We need the money.”

  Her mother burst into tears, much of her lament lost in sobs. Things didn’t matter, new cars, fancy clothes, new furniture. No. All she’d ever wanted was a happy family and now everything was crazy, just one big mess, and it was all her fault, every bit of it. No, it wasn’t, Nellie insisted, but her mother shrank from her touch and cried even more. Now Henry was crying. Nellie called her father at the store. He hurried home, his usual abstracted air giving way to panic. There was nothing he could say or do. Every assurance made her feel worse. He sent them outside. They climbed into the leaf-filled tree house, their fragile world shakier with every gust of wind through the swaying limbs. “Like Ronnie-Don Rufus!” Nellie hollered to make her brother laugh, as the wall boards rattled and branches creaked. Henry said he was going in before the whole stupid thing came crashing down.

  Ruth had come home. Up on the third floor, she sobbed in her mother’s arms. She was sorry, but she hated school, and she hated her life. Dolly had been the one person she could talk to, the one person who knew what she was going through. Nobody else understood or even cared. Her friends were sick of hearing how alone she felt. They’d never been abandoned the way she had. Not once, but eight times, eight letters begging her father to please write back. And nothing, not one letter, not one single word back.

  “What’s wrong with me?” Ruth wept.

  “There’s nothing wrong with you. I couldn’t ask for a better daughter,” her mother cried, and something broke in Nellie’s heart.

  “But I’m his daughter, too. Doesn’t he care what happens to me?”

  Nellie crept into her room and closed the door. The house was still. She lifted the floorboard, scattering the shoes to the side of the closet.

  SATURDAY. TODAY WAS the day. It’s what she should have done in the first place. She’d barely slept last night. Her mother was down in the kitchen. She’d be going to work soon. Better to tell her right before she left. Less time for the misery Nellie knew she deserved. The smell of sizzling bacon drifted up the back stairs. She was starving. A tap came at her door.

  “Breakfast,” Ruth called. “Mom said to tell you.” She opened the door and looked in. “Are you coming?” Her eyes were red and puffy.

  “I don’t feel good,” Nellie said, holding her stomach.

  “Nellie? What’s wrong?” Ruth sat on the edge of her bed. “Poor kid, you look awful.” She leaned closer. “Have you been crying? You have, haven’t you.” She tried lifting Nellie’s chin. “What is it? Come on, you can tell me. I won’t say anything. I promise.”

  Nothing was wrong, Nellie said, but Ruth wouldn’t believe her. She said she could tell. Basking in the glow of her own redemption, Ruth knew only love and sympathy. Her little sister was hurting, and no one knew better than she did the loneliness of keeping it all pent up inside.

  “I mean, you were the first person I told about writing to my father.” She pressed her forehead against Nellie’s.

  “No, you told Brenda first.”

  “Well, the first person in the family, then.”

  “You told Dolly,” Nellie said, guessing.

  “That was different. Dolly was like that. You could just tell her things. And that’s how it should be for us. You can tell me anything, Nellie. Anything at all. Whatever it is. And believe me, I won’t tell anyone. Not a soul. I swear.” Her clear blue eyes held Nellie’s with such warmth that there was no way she could confess so callously, so easily hurting her. “So tell me. Tell me what’s wrong.”

  Nellie couldn’t even shake her head.

  “Okay, how’s this then—let’s trade secrets.” Her grin made it worse. Oh, how Nellie hated this game. Ruth was always so much better at it because she had all the secrets and Nellie had to make up hers to get any back.

  “Look.” She lifted her nightgown and pulled down the side of her panties. There, just above the tan line on her lower hip was a small blue star, its tails of light ending in even smaller stars. “My first tattoo. I got it last summer. I went with Patrick.”

  “Dellastrando?” All Nellie could utter. Her sister had done that? Lowered, maimed herself for Patrick Dellastrando, the hairy thug around the corner who wouldn’t even speak to her anymore. Viewing her defiled maidenhead would not have been as shocking.

  “Like Dolly’s, remember? Okay, your turn,” Ruth said. “Go ahead, just get it out.” She squeezed Nellie’s hand until it hurt.

  “I don’t have periods,” Nellie blurted surprising herself. She’d thrown out the first box of sanitary napkins, but her mother had quietly replaced them in her closet.

  “Oh, my God. What do you mean? Why not?”

  “I just don’t, that’s all.”

  “You’re probably just late. Irregular. That happens, especially when you’re just starting.”

  “No, I’m not having any. I just don’t, I didn’t, that’s what I’m talking about.”

  “Are you worried?” She kept taking deep breaths and looking around.

  “No! I haven’t started yet. But Mom thinks I
did, because you told her, and it’s embarrassing.”

  “Oh!” Ruth sighed. “But why did you say you did if you weren’t? I mean, that’s kinda weird, don’t you think?”

  SO THEN IT was Sunday. Nellie’d been next door interviewing Lazlo for her history paper. She needed to talk to a veteran and he’d served in the Gulf War. He told her a lot of interesting stories, but she was very distracted. Not only was it the first time she’d been in the apartment since Dolly’s murder, but she kept hearing strange thumps from next door. She left, promising Lazlo she’d show him the paper when she got it back from the teacher.

  Apparently, there was more trouble in the house. Angry stomping up to the third floor. Ruth’s door slamming. Her mother and father barely speaking to each other. Henry said Ruth had used the new credit card to buy designer jeans at the mall. She’d signed their mother’s name. The bill had sat in the dreadfully growing pile, unopened until this morning. Her mother demanded Ruth hand over the jeans so she could return them. But they’d already been worn, Ruth said. Didn’t matter, with a forged signature the sale was invalid, her mother said. When a ransacking of Ruth’s room didn’t turn them up, Ruth admitted she’d given them to Ashley Dellastrando. They hadn’t really fit her very well and it was Ashley’s birthday. Henry said her mother trembled all over, like she was trying not to throw up. Ruth was a wonderful girl, her father kept telling her. She was going through a difficult time, that was all. And some day they’d look back and laugh about it all.

  “That’s when she got really mad.” Henry had to whisper because her father was in the next room, reading the Sunday papers. “She said, maybe he could laugh, but she was done.”

  In Nellie’s estimation, Ruth had gone too far this time. Truancy and thievery, not to mention the secret tattoo. She’d pushed their mother over the edge.

  Nellie lifted the letters from their gritty tomb. She wasn’t sure whether she wanted to save Ruth or just be rid of her, but somebody had to do something. She knocked on her mother’s bedroom door. She didn’t answer. Calling in, Nellie said she had to show her something. It was very important. Her mother said she’d be down later.