Light from Distant Stars

by Shawn Smucker

  “These places always smell the same,” his mother says in a firm voice. Cohen’s not sure if he’s ever heard her speak so quietly. Maybe this news has struck her deeper than she’s willing to show. “You’d think they could spray something that smelled better. You’d think they could make use of those plug-in air fresheners. They charge enough for everything else. A candle wouldn’t kill anyone.”

  “Mother,” Cohen says, and he doesn’t know what to do with the taste of the word in his mouth, but he says it again. “Mother, what are you talking about?”

  She looks at him. “I’m talking about hospitals.”

  “Did you hear a word I said?”

  She stares at him with that same old look, the same old manipulating confusion, as if nothing he said would ever be worth listening to so why would she start now?

  “Dad is dying. They want us to take him off life support.”

  She stares. Unflinching. Cohen presses the heel of his hand against the center of his forehead, as if the pressure will change everything. He closes his eyes and digs in deeper, his sinuses aching. He reaches down and pinches the bridge of his nose, the pressure soothing something far beneath the surface.

  Kaye has quieted. She moves back over to the window, and he follows her, staying far back from his mother as he passes behind her.

  They both stand there, looking down at the nighttime city far below them. Kaye has one hand on the glass.

  “Where were you?” she asks, her voice pained. “How could you leave him here alone?”

  “I had to get out.”

  “Where?” Kaye asks again.

  He shrugs. “The church.”

  She reaches over and holds his arm. “You’ve always gone back. After Mom and I left, we tried to find a church. Here and there and everywhere.” She smiles. “Eventually we quit trying. But you, even after everything. You always went back.”

  Her comment seems to find some deep mark. He nods, but it’s not meant for her or anyone else, it’s simply meant as a placeholder while he tries to figure out what that says about him. He has always gone back. It’s true. Time and again. Even after his father, a pastor, betrayed his family in the sanctuary, Cohen has always gone looking for God.

  “I guess so,” he says.

  “Well,” she says, “right now? Cohen, I need you here. I need you—here.”

  He nods again. “Why did you bring her?” he asks without looking at Kaye.

  “Mother?” she asks, as if he could be talking about someone else.

  He looks at her and raises his eyebrows.

  “You want to talk about that here?” she asks, her words crossing into a different place, an area of disbelief. “Maybe because they were married once upon a time.” She’s trying to whisper, but frustration or disbelief or even anger gathers momentum behind her words, edging the volume up. “Maybe because she deserves to know what’s going on. Maybe because she’s our mother.”

  “She’s not my mother, not anymore, hasn’t been for a long time.”

  “She’ll always be your mother. You are half her. Whether you want it or not.”

  He shakes his head but doesn’t say anything. Kaye walks back toward her mother and stands at the foot of the bed beside her. Cohen looks at the object of their gaze, his father, his bald head shining, though the stubble grows. His large features. His fading.

  “We had good times, the four of us,” their mother says, almost a plea to see things differently. She has never done that before. She has never pled for Cohen to see things the way she does—she always assumed everyone would come around in time.

  “It’s true,” Kaye says. “It’s true.”

  “Remember when he brought home that kite and added string?” their mother says, her voice incredulous, and Cohen cannot separate the amazement in her voice from the insinuation of his father’s stupidity. This is the mother he remembers. “The three of you flew it and let it out until it was just a speck.”

  Kaye smiles. “I ran inside and told you to come out.”

  “I didn’t want to, but you begged and pleaded. When I came out, it fell from the sky, probably killing some far-off person or animal, and the three of you went traipsing after it, through the woods, through the fields, the mud and the muck. You didn’t come back until after dark, and you all had to shower. I had to wash your manure-covered clothes.” She shakes her head at the naivete, at the innocence of trying to find lost things that have fallen that far away.

  “We found it,” Cohen says, as if that is argument enough.

  “Yes, you did,” she says, but her voice is not an admission that Cohen is right as much as it is a statement that finding it wasn’t even remotely close to being the point.

  “Remember when Dad brought home that telescope?” Kaye says, laughing now.

  Her mother frowns. “That thing cost him a week’s pay. It took us months to recover from the expense.”

  “We could see the rings of Saturn,” Cohen says quietly, without emotion. “We could see details of the craters on the moon.”

  “He hooked up a flat white board to the eyepiece so we could watch the eclipse. Remember how the round shadow moved across the sun?” Kaye asks enthusiastically.

  “I have to use the restroom,” their mother mumbles, moving toward the door.

  “He was a good father,” Cohen says.

  “There’s a bathroom here in the room,” Kaye says. “You can use this one.”

  “These places always smell the same,” their mother says, disregarding Kaye and walking out of the room.

  thirty-nine

  Through the Veil

  “I thought that went well,” Cohen says wryly to his sister while walking over to his father’s hospital bed.

  “You didn’t give her much of a chance,” Kaye says, sitting in one of the chairs at the foot of the bed.

  “You didn’t give me much of a chance. That was quite a surprise, Kaye.”

  “True.”

  “And to think she’s as sweet as I remember.”

  Kaye gives him a playful shove, but soon the two of them are staring down at their father again. He is like a black hole in the room, and the sheer force of his presence, his dying, always brings them back around to him.

  Cohen glances over at Kaye. “You know we’re going to have to make a decision about Dad,” he says, glancing at the window, where it is still the middle of the night. He looks up at the clock. “The doctor will be back here in the morning, three or four hours. What are we going to tell him?”

  Cohen stares at her and she returns his gaze. He grows uncomfortable and looks away.

  “What happened, Cohen?” she asks.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, what happened? To Dad.”

  “It was a trocar.”

  “I know that, Cohen!” she says, suddenly animated. Loud. She stands, grips her stomach with two hands, and paces short, swaying steps. “You keep saying that, but how did it happen?”

  “I don’t know, Kaye,” he says, running his hand through his hair, shaking his head. “When I went down there with the police yesterday, they showed me where it happened. It must have been an accident. He must have fallen while he was carrying it to the sink to clean it. I don’t know. I don’t know what else to tell you, Kaye. I wish I knew.”

  Kaye glances at the door to make sure their mother isn’t coming in. “Do you think he . . . committed suicide?”

  Cohen takes a deep breath. “I hope not. I don’t mean to be crass, but if he did, we won’t see a cent of his life insurance, and without that we lose the funeral home.”

  Kaye closes her eyes and tries to take a calming breath. “Do you think that’s what happened?” she whispers. “Do you think Dad tried to kill himself?”

  “It needs to be an accident, Kaye.”

  “It needs to be?”

  He nods. “It needs to be. And maybe it was.”

  The words make Cohen even more tired. How many more things have to be said? How many more
hours of this endless watching, waiting?

  “We have to let him go, Kaye. Look at him. This isn’t Dad anymore. He’s gone. We have to let him go. He wouldn’t want to live like this.”

  Her eyes are still closed and she covers her face with her hands. “I know, Cohen. I know.”

  He puts his arm around her. “Are you still growing?” he asks, trying to lighten the mood.

  She laughs through her tears. “I think so. Feels that way.” She puts a hand on her stomach, turns her face away from him, and takes in a sharp breath.

  “Contraction?”

  She waits, exhaling slowly, a stream of air through pursed lips. “Yeah.” Her words come through a thin veil of surprised pain. “Yeah, that was a strong one.”

  “They want out?” Cohen asks, raising his eyebrows.

  “Soon,” is all she says. “Soon.”

  Their mother comes in, walking as if she herself is the doctor and she has a cure for Calvin, one that only she can bring about.

  “How cute,” she says in a monotone voice that is almost some kind of accusation, looking at Cohen still hugging Kaye. He drops his arm. He looks at Kaye and shakes his head in disbelief.

  “Hi, Mom,” Kaye says.

  Cohen drifts away from his mother, back toward the window. Kaye sits in her chair. Their mother stands vigil over Calvin. She speaks to Cohen without even looking at him.

  “Is that how you always dress when you come on visits to the hospital?”

  He thinks of ten different replies, all varying degrees of sarcasm or sincerity, but he settles on not saying anything. It feels good, as if in his silence he has somehow neutralized her ability to tear him down.

  “And neither of you brought fresh clothes for your father? What is he going to wear when they finally let him out of this smelly, disgusting place?”

  “Mother,” Kaye says before following Cohen into silence.

  They remain like that for hours, three people so far away from each other. Cohen wonders how other children and parents go on through their lives, choosing what to forgive, what to ignore, what to become embittered by. He wonders if everyone feels this way in the presence of a parent.

  At some point in those early morning hours he sits on the floor, leans against the wall, and falls asleep. Later he wakes, and a hint of morning light comes through the window. His mother hasn’t moved from where she stands at the foot of the bed, staring, waiting—for what? His sister sleeps in the chair, all belly, arms dangling down both sides, legs reaching for some unattainable comfort. He pretends to sleep. He does not want his mother to know he’s awake.

  But a face peeks in around the door. It’s Thatcher, the boy from next door, still wearing the same John Deere hat, still flaunting the same unruly teenage stubble.

  “Is Mr. Cohen in here?” he asks Cohen’s mother. She doesn’t look at him.

  “Hey!” Cohen stands, stretching the ache out of his body. “How’s it going?”

  “Can I talk to you? Out here?”

  “Sure, sure,” Cohen says, walking slowly past his sleeping sister, past his mother who doesn’t move, even though he must brush against her in order to pass by.

  forty

  The Flash of the Gun

  Their walk through the brambles took longer than Cohen thought possible. He began to imagine he could see the light gathering in the east, the sun preparing to rise, but it was a trick of his mind and the sky stayed dark, except for the moon that hung at the tree line.

  “What if it’s in there?” Cohen whispered at one point when the three of them stopped. They were at the edge of the hollow, and his eyes went from window to window to window. Even in the dark, he could see the blackened parts of the trailer, the melted playthings.

  “We need to finish this,” Hippie whispered, looking over at Cohen. He glanced at her, then at Than, and in Than’s eyes he could almost see the long dark hall, the room with the desk, the gun hidden in the air duct. Cohen swallowed hard, nodded. Than nodded back. The three crept toward the front door.

  Cohen’s heart beat in every part of his body: his chest, of course, but also in his hands, his head, his ears. Each moment, each step, sent a sharp sensation through him. At the empty front door, he reminded himself to breathe.

  Hippie crept up into the trailer on all fours. She disappeared inside. Than crouched at the steps and motioned furiously for Cohen to follow her. The burned carpet was brittle under his fingers, and a scent like burned hair came up off it where his hands crushed the fibers. He tried to move without making a sound as he followed Hippie deeper into the ash. He reached up and itched the corner of his eye, and his hands smelled charred. Behind him, he sensed Than coming inside.

  They were in the hall faster than he had hoped. Hippie was silent as a shadow. Than was so quiet he might have been behind him, or he might have been floating above him, or he might have fled, leaving them alone. Cohen was too scared to look over his shoulder, terrified that he would look back and see nothing, or see the Beast.

  As they moved through the hallway, his hands and knees grew icy cold, and he thought water had gotten into the trailer, soaking into the carpet, and they were crawling through melted ice. The cold worked its way under his skin, pumped deeper with each beat of his heart, and he realized they were crawling through shadows that had leaked from the Beast. Another surge of panic jolted him—what would it do to him if he didn’t wipe it off right away?—but it was too late for running.

  Sometimes as they crawled, his hands came down on the soles of Hippie’s shoes. The three of them were close together again, and he could hear Than’s breathing, feel the floor creaking under his weight. They were being too loud. Of that he was certain.

  The bedroom door was on their left, and they passed it without giving it a second glance. Outside, even at night, it was brighter than inside the trailer. Maybe the moon had reversed course, maybe the stars were brighter, maybe morning was approaching. Cohen felt a sharp desire to be out there, out in the lung-burning cold and the wind, running through the path that wound up the hill, blackberry brambles grabbing at his coat. But he crawled forward.

  At the door to the room with the small desk and the heat register that had swallowed the gun, Than tapped his leg and pulled on his jeans to tell him to go into that small space. Cohen grabbed Hippie’s foot. She turned. He raised a finger, telling her to wait. What he could see of her face in the dark looked confused, but she nodded. He went a few crawls into the room, a few silent movements, and there was the register. He lifted it, trying to stay silent, willing it to come up without a scrape or a bang. And it did. It slid out soundlessly, like a secret.

  He reached down, and there it was: the gun. He lifted it, and it was heavy, and it was death. Than was right there with him, taking the gun from him, taking the sock full of bullets.

  Than leaned in close, so close Cohen could feel his breath tickle the folds of his ear. “It’s loaded and ready to fire,” Than whispered, handing the gun back.

  Cohen nodded nervously. The two of them crawled back into the hallway. Than grabbed Hippie’s leg and pulled her back. He pushed Cohen forward and Cohen balked. Than put his hand on Cohen’s back and nudged him forward again.

  The door to the back bedroom had been pushed up against the frame by whoever or whatever had gone in last, but it had not been closed so that it latched. There was a narrow space of darker than dark that Cohen tried to look through to get a glimpse into the room, but he could see nothing. The windows were covered with something. The room was pitch-black.

  Cohen leaned back and stuck his head in between Than and Hippie. “I can’t see anything,” he whispered.

  The three of them stayed there for what felt like a long time, waiting. What happened next, happened fast.

  The creaking sound of steps moved from the back of the trailer to the bedroom door. The door opened. The Beast saw them, even in the darkness, and it roared, charged. There was a ferociousness to it, and Cohen knew it was coming for them. He stared into
that heart of darkness, a cold cloud of shadow, and the numbness in his hands and knees was nothing compared to the cold that emanated from the Beast and descended on all of them in that moment. Cohen didn’t think. He raised the gun. He pulled the trigger.

  He had never felt anything like it. The sound of it, the flash and the smell, the kick of the gun, and the scream of Hippie who did not know there was a gun—all of it pushed back the darkness. There was a roar, a wounded bellow, and the cloud of darkness gathered in on itself and swept away from them, crashed through one of the bedroom windows in a tangle of black curtains and glass, and was gone.

  The three of them sat there for a long time, listening, shocked, not saying a word: Cohen with his back against the hallway wall, Than lying on his back, looking up through exhausted eyes at the ceiling, and Hippie beside Cohen, her head on his shoulder. The gun was on the floor in between Cohen’s feet, his forearms resting on his knees.

  “It’s okay,” Hippie said quietly, reaching up and putting her hand on his head, the way a traveling preacher might touch someone’s head before they’re baptized. “It’s okay.”

  Cohen looked at her. He shivered violently. She took out a new, clean handkerchief, and again she cleaned the icy shadows from his hands. He put his head on his forearms and wept.

  Light came through the bedroom windows as the sun rose in the east, but there was no warmth in the light. Spring felt distant. A winter wind blew through the window, nudging pieces of glass that had broken but didn’t fall, sweeping over all three of them. They eased their way to their feet, and no one said another word as they slipped from the trailer.

  The stars were still there, barely, fading as the pale sunrise leaked through the naked trees.

  forty-one

  Missing

  Cohen walks out into the hallway and feels that sober sense of cautious hope that seems to wander hospital hallways early in the morning, when those who are still alive breathe easier. The sun will rise again soon. He wants to put his arm around the boy and say, “We have all survived another night.” Instead he asks him a question.