When Light Breaks

by Patti Callahan Henry

  “You were so young,” Daddy said. “Her wish was so . . . abstract.” He stumbled on his words, and his eyes wandered as though he were lost. “Follow the hints of your heart. It only seemed to confuse the real issue—her death.”

  “But my God, Daddy, those were her last words,” Deirdre cried. “She asked you to tell us that, she asked you to tell us, and you never did.”

  “What did she want from us?” Brian asked.

  Daddy closed his eyes. “It’s not that she wanted anything from you, just for you. She wanted you to both give and receive love—those were her words.”

  “Does it really matter what she wanted for us?” Deirdre spoke low now, as if her scream had left her with remnants of her voice. “She hasn’t been here to make sure it happened. Does it really matter at all?” She spun on her heels, took her wineglass and stomped from the room. The sound of her childhood bedroom door slamming made us all jump, then stare at each other.

  “I think I’ve had quite enough for tonight,” Daddy said, then turned away from us and walked across the hall and into his library.

  Brian came to my side and put his arm around me. “Mama’s last words? All right then. What do you think that was all about?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, and leaned against my brother’s shoulder. A lifetime of misunderstanding wove its way through my thoughts. “Maybe it just means we need to be careful what we believe.” I quoted Maeve and released a long, withheld breath.

  After Brian and I finished the dishes and he went home, I stared across the lawn to the street. Night surrounded me, loneliness its companion. The desperate ache for Mama rose and I was nine years old, and abandoned. Brian had found solace among his friends and sports. Deirdre had disappeared into her cliques and never came home until the moon was high in the night sky. Daddy was so far gone into himself that his eyes had not focused on me in months. I was alone save for the Sullivans, save for Jack and our haven among the roots of the live oaks.

  I squinted into the night, adjusting my eyesight to where the trees would be, although I could not see them. But I couldn’t find the feeling—that one feeling of unfailing love. All this time, all this damn time, I’d believed that Mama left of her own free will, that she’d given up and left us.

  I stood and ran back into the house, grabbed my keys and drove to Peyton’s house.

  His home, which would soon be our home, sat behind the eighteenth green of the Palmetto Pointe Golf Club. It had been the most coveted lot on the course, overlooking the river, live oaks with Spanish moss spread like custom-made draperies along the backyard toward the green, then to the gray-blue water beyond.

  Peyton’s front door was crafted of solid cherry. An intricate design of a golf club and ball were carved along the left side. I twisted the handle; it was unlocked. I entered the two-story foyer with the curved staircase and called his name.

  He came to the top of the stairs and looked down at me, a smile on his face. “Hey, darling. Come on up, I’m watching films from the BellSouth Classic in Duluth last year.”

  I climbed the stairs, kissed him. “When you made that miraculous chip from the sand trap on the fifth?”

  “Exactly . . . but I’m watching how I kept slicing my drive . . . analyzing . . . oh, forget it. I’m so glad you came.” He picked me up, kissed me for a long time, then unbuttoned the top two buttons of my silk blouse and ran his finger over the front of my shirt. “You still have gravy on you.”

  I looked down. “I’m so sorry you had to witness that family meltdown.”

  “I want to hear all about what happened after I left . . . but not until I show you how glad I am that you came over tonight, just when I thought I wouldn’t see you for at least three days.” He picked me up and carried me to his bedroom at the far end of the hall.

  I kicked lightly at him. “Put me down, you goofball. You’re not supposed to carry me over the threshold until after the wedding.”

  “I’m not supposed to do this until after the wedding, either,” he said, pulling me into his bedroom.

  I closed my eyes and let myself absorb how much I loved this man I would marry.

  Peyton’s ceiling fan whipped around in circles, making a rhythmic clicking noise. We stared at it; he pulled me closer on his king-size bed. “I cannot wait until you are here every single night.”

  I snuggled up against his side, ran my hand over his bare chest. “Do we have to do this big wedding thing? Can’t we just run away this weekend, get married and I’ll move in?”

  “Who knows where we’ll live,” he said.

  “What do you mean? We’ll live here, right?” And it came to me—we had never discussed where we’d live.

  “I don’t know. I was thinking, maybe we could talk about moving to Ponte Vedra. That’s where most of the players live.”

  “Yeah, but that’s not where your mom lives, or Daddy or Brian or . . . Charlotte.”

  He put his hands on both sides of my face, kissed me. “You can’t live in your hometown forever.”

  “Oh,” I said. “But you’ll be gone so often and I’ll be there . . . alone.” The word “alone” haunted me tonight.

  “You’ll get to know all the other players’ wives and make tons of friends.” He pulled me closer. “And we do not have to talk about this now. Those are decisions we can make later. Don’t get upset—right now let’s focus on the wedding, on us.”

  “Let’s elope,” I said. I sat up and drew my knees to my chest.

  “You know we have to have the wedding. Could you imagine canceling it now?” He rolled over and propped his head on his palm, with his elbow denting the mattress. “The magazine crews and photographers that are coming . . . the planning. At this point it would be harder to cancel than just have it. All that hard work we’ve done.”

  I pushed at his elbow; he fell back on the pillow. “We’ve done? Who’s done, mister?”

  “All the work you’ve done, my sweet. You. You. You.” He pulled me toward him again. “But you can move in now, I’ve already told you that.”

  “I couldn’t . . . it would break Daddy’s heart.” I lay flat on my back, then glanced at the far wall, where a signed picture of Payne Stewart hung. “Did you ask your other fiancées to move in?”

  Peyton sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed. “Okay, let’s talk about this and get it over with.”

  I sat up, pulling the bedspread up to my chin. “Go ahead. I’m listening.”

  “I love you. That should be enough. I didn’t love them—I just thought I did. I said this before—they were the mistakes I had to make to get to you. I didn’t understand what love was . . . is, until I met you.” He turned to me and held his right hand in the air. “I swear to God.”

  “But why didn’t you tell me about them?”

  “I was so afraid of losing you . . . of making you upset enough to leave me. That is the one thing I couldn’t take—you leaving.”

  “You didn’t tell me because you didn’t want me to leave?” I pulled a pillow tight to my chest, repeating the words to see if they tasted true.

  “Yes.” He leaned toward me, and there were tears in his eyes. “Exactly.”

  “You shouldn’t hide things from me because you think they’ll upset me. We can’t have a life like that. Do you believe I am that damn fragile?”

  “No, baby. No.”

  I slid down on the bed, curled into the pillows. “I just don’t want secrets between us.”

  “No secrets,” he said. “Just hurry up and live with me, take care of me. . . .” He lay down next to me and wrapped his arms around me.

  “Take care of you?”

  “Hmmm . . . ,” he said. “I can’t wait until I can come home to you every day, every night. When we can cook our own family dinners and decide where to live, where to go, when and how. When it’s just . . . us.”

  In moments, his slow, even breaths let me know he’d fallen asleep. I twisted quietly from the bed, dressed, and drove home with his l
ast words resonating in my mind: when it’s just . . . us.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The gerbera daisies I’d brought couldn’t mask the antiseptic smell in Maeve’s room, which caused the knot in my stomach to tighten. I sat in the large club chair in the corner and stared at her. She sat in bed fully dressed, her hair twisted into a braided knot on top of her head. Her eyes were closed, but she didn’t appear to be asleep.

  Something curled and asleep, cold and stable, within the middle of me—somewhere near my heart—stretched and awakened every time Maeve told more of her story. I wanted this arousal, this open feeling, yet it brought with it an ache, as if the awakening and the aching were bound together and I must accept them as one. If I wanted to hear her story, feel these pangs and stretches of sleeping yearning, then I must accept the companionable hurt, which told me, in the quietest whisper, “Things are not as they should be.”

  A piece—a sad, hardened piece—of me stared at Maeve and did not want more of her story, more of this awakening, and more of the ache that hinted at a life gone amiss, of an unmet craving for unfailing love.

  The one-winged angel was still on her dresser, next to her silver hairbrush. She opened her eyes, turned to me, and tilted her head. “Well, well now, you’ve come back, haven’t you? I’d thought you’d forgotten me altogether.”

  “Never.” My hands flew in the air; I placed them in my lap. “I’ve come a couple times and you haven’t . . .”

  “Aye, did you find him?” She grinned.

  “Who?”

  “Him. Jack. Now tell me.”

  I stood. “It was not the smartest thing for me to do.” I picked up the angel, ran my hand over the place where the wing had broken off.

  “I never did say it was smart. But the heart has reasons . . .”

  “That reason knows nothing of.” I finished the Blaise Pascal quote, and set the angel back on the dresser.

  “You know the quote?”

  “It has nothing to do with daily life.” My foot tapped against the linoleum floor. “They are nice words written by a man hundreds of years ago who was not engaged and running after his first love for no apparent reason. I shouldn’t have gone.”

  Maeve giggled like a young girl. “You shouldn’t have gone? Ha, that means you did go. Tell me all about it.”

  I returned to the chair, sat with my hands still, my heart in a frenzied beating. “No, I want to hear what happened to Richard. Where did he go? Did you find him?” I leaned forward. “I really want to know if he is the man you married.”

  I wanted her to tell me this was a legend before she disappeared again into that place where I could not reach her; where her eyes were cloudy and her mouth moved with words I could not understand.

  “No, tell me about this Jack.”

  “Okay.” I released a breath that wanted to catch in the back of my throat. “I went to Savannah, saw his band play, talked to him, had a nice time of catch-up, got in a fight with my fiancé. The end.”

  “No, Kara, those are the facts. It’s easy to believe in facts, my dear. To believe in the story you need faith. Tell me the story as you experienced it.”

  I did, and found I wanted to tell her. I explained how my wet shirt clung against my skin, how my heart paused in my chest when I recognized him, and how I was afraid it wouldn’t start again before I had to speak. I told her how everything seemed to screech to a stop, how time spun out as if it had changed or moved or maybe just waited.

  I attempted, as best words could, to explain the concert and how the music made me feel wider, larger, as if my heart had expanded, as if the aches of aloneness could be filled. Then I told her of my Mama’s last wish that I’d never known about.

  “It is unfolding now,” she said, and tapped the braids on top of her head.

  “What is?”

  “Your story, your life and journey, Kara, which involves what came before you and what comes after you. The hints of who you are.”

  “What do you mean by that?” My chest constricted in an understanding I couldn’t yet fully grasp.

  “You are listening and feeling and seeking, all the while keeping a tight, very tight hold on your life’s circumstances. Let go.”

  “What?”

  She sat up straighter than I had ever seen her, swung her legs around the bed, and touched my fist curled in my lap. “Look at your hands, tight and closed. What are you holding on to? You are not allowing something even better to happen in you and to you because you’re holding so hard to what you already have.”

  “No, I’m not.” I looked down, then opened the fingers that I didn’t even realize I’d made into a knot.

  “I dressed myself this morning. Will you be getting me my shoes now?” she asked in an accent as beautiful as a song.

  I nodded, shook my hand out. Holding on? To what? I opened the door to the right of her bed. Inside the closet hung a thin, tattered afghan with Verandah House embroidered on it in script letters. I grabbed her white Keds from the bottom of the closet. I waited while she fit them on her feet. She grabbed the handrails and stood, waited a moment, then reached for my arm.

  I held out my elbow, let her place her hand on my forearm, and dropped my other hand on top of hers. “Would you like to take a walk?” I asked.

  “Of course.”

  “It’s beautiful today,” I said. “The kind of day that fools the tourists into believing we don’t have no-see-ums or mosquitoes.”

  She laughed. “Now that would be fooling them, for sure. There are enough of them here in South Carolina to eat a small woman alive.”

  “Well, not today. Would you like to go out to the fountain?”

  “Yes, why yes, I would.”

  I slipped her tattered afghan over her shoulders and we headed toward the French doors at the back of the recreation room. Her weight against my elbow was insubstantial.

  Residents greeted Maeve as she walked through the room. “You’re looking good today, Maeve,” “Nice to see you up, Maeve.” Several groups sat at tables. A man snored in his wheelchair, his head back and his mouth open. A group of school-children in pressed plaid uniforms stood in straight lines in the lobby, where a chalkboard announced that children from the Pointe Elementary School would be singing at ten a.m. in the recreation room. I pushed open the French doors to the outside. The air was as clean as a crystal glass, sparkling against the azure sky, as if the day could be poured into this vessel, drunk and enjoyed. The fountain gurgled in the side garden in an offbeat sound. We took our seats on a bench in front of it.

  The gardens at Verandah House were lush and well tended: azaleas and dogwood were in bloom, a fulfillment of the promise of spring . . . and my wedding. I’d always wanted a spring wedding, since I was a little girl. The invitations were in the backseat of my car—four hundred envelopes addressed in calligraphy by hand. Soon they would go in the mail.

  Maeve’s voice startled me. “It takes me three months to find him, it does.”

  I turned my attention from the garden, from the invitations.

  “I go to the police station and the Industrial Schools. I knock on the door of every state home I can reach by foot. I ask and beg for information, but can find none.”

  I held my breath, my fist knotted again. Maeve reached down, uncurled my fingers before she resumed speaking. “Then one day in early spring, I knock on the door of still another school.”

  “An Industrial School?” My chest expanded in the hope, in the need to know she had found him, that this motherless boy was found and loved, even if he wasn’t real.

  “In that time there are more children in Industrial Schools in Ireland than in all of the United Kingdom put together.” Then she nodded, descended into her story. “A young boy in a torn T-shirt and tattered tweed pants answers the door. It is a wooden door, taller than any I’ve ever seen, except in ancient castles. The knockers are iron and larger than me. I tell the boy who I am looking for. He glances around the foyer like a trapped animal expecting t
o be hit at any moment. His eyes are wild and full of tears. He says, ‘Can you take me out of here, now, right now?’ I am confused. Then a nun appears from the side.

  “At this time in my life, my experiences with the nuns and priests is all positive. I live below St. Mary’s on the Hill—the Dominican church. I live with a God of the water and earth, of love. Nuns mean comfort and beauty and an explanation of a God I cannot understand: the wild Irish God of St. Patrick and the Celtic language that is unexplainable. So when I see this nun appear, my instinct is not one of fear, but one of relief. I step inside the door.”

  Maeve closed her eyes, and I thought she was gone, but then she continued and I was there with her, in the Industrial School.

  “The stone walls are cold to the touch, but high and grand. The furniture in the hall is dark and polished until you can see your face. Celtic hymns being sung come from the back of the hall, in a harmony so haunting I think my heart will burst. I feel no fear; there is no understanding of what I’ve stepped into, until the boy who answered the door begins to cry harder. Then the realization comes to me in a slow crawl of dread: this place is not one of refuge.”

  Maeve stopped, looking directly at me. “Now, Kara. Here is where you must be careful. Not all things are as they appear to be. You must understand that this was the first time I had ever come to a place and time that appeared to be something it was not. I did not understand my visceral instinct. I was a thirteen-year-old child who had grown up in the Claddagh village.” Tears filled her eyes. “Not all things are as they appear.”

  I shook my head to let her know I heard her, but I was afraid to speak, afraid to stop the flow of words. The sun sat warm on our shoulders, and tears threatened at the back of my eyes for this poor motherless boy, and this child-Maeve looking for him. Even if, as Caitlin had told me, this was not a true story, my heart ached for Maeve as she believed and remembered a pain that was real to her.

  She brushed at a tear. “I look up at the nun—her habit so tightly wound around her head that her wrinkles are smooth. I tell her who I’m looking for, that he was taken when his parents died three months ago. The nun’s face registers nothing and my pain deepens.”