In the Distance There Is Light (20 page)

“Of course, darling, but don’t get any ideas in your head for in the middle of the night.”

Chapter Twenty-Eight

After Jeremy has left and I’m truly alone, I rehash everything Dolores has said. I quickly realize there’s not much point, nor is there a lot of sense to me sitting in Jeremy’s living room, waiting for him to come home. I stare out of the window with its scenic view over the high rises of Chicago and I know, perhaps for the first time, that I’m going to have to find a way to make it in this life alone. I’m going to have to find another reason to smile in the morning. I’m going to have to find satisfaction from something other than Dolores’ hands all over me.

Dolores’ hands. Dolores’ lips. Dolores’ post-orgasmic grin.

I grab my purse and head out for a long walk. Summer has officially descended on Chicago, but it’s not too humid just yet. I have a vague destination in mind, even though it’s quite a few miles from Jeremy’s apartment. But it’s closer than the cemetery, which is on Dolores’ side of town. I walk and I walk, until it’s dark, until I arrive at my destination. Cooley’s.

By the time I plop down on a bar stool, I’ve exhausted not only the soles of my feet, but also whatever mechanism in my brain I’m using to keep my thoughts off Dolores. Perhaps my choice of bar has something to do with that. When we came here after meeting the lawyer about Ian’s will, it was the first time I felt really close to her. It was also when I told her about my not-so-stellar relationship with my parents and my mother in particular. Maybe I shouldn’t have told her that. There are some things certain people can’t understand.

Dolores, as Ian’s mother, can’t really understand the complicated feelings I have for my own mother, the reasons I have for ignoring her and for not respecting her the way a daughter should. Although I think of my mother often—much more than I would like. I see her face every time I look in the mirror. I hear her voice, that shrill instrument with which she used to tell me that, no matter what, we would always be family.

Am I as self-involved as my mother?
I ask myself while I dive into the beer I’ve ordered. Tommy hasn’t spotted me yet, and I’m glad to have a few more minutes to myself, because he’s sure to come over and give me a hug and say how sorry he is again. That’s all well and good and according to the rules of mourning, but if I had a nickel for every time someone expressed to me how sorry they were since Ian died, I’d be rich. But I am already rich. Ian took care of that. Though I can honestly say that money has never been a motivator for anything in my life. On the contrary. All the money my mother made while she was out running her company and missing our childhood never did a thing to make my brother and me happier. I knew from the age of six that money doesn’t bring happiness. It bought us a parade of nannies, that’s it.

I toy with my phone and it’s so hard not to text Dolores. We’d be having dinner right about this time. Who is she having dinner with? Did our affair awaken a new longing inside of her? Did it make her ready to explore relationships again? Any woman who gets her will be the luckiest woman on the planet, I conclude, but don’t text her. I have to be strong. But not so strong that I can’t knock back my beer in a few large gulps.

Then Tommy spots me. He comes over, embraces me and tells the bartender not to charge me for anything. Story of my life. Wanting to pay for every little thing and never having to. Except for the one thing that money can’t buy. Love. I’m paying for that big time. I pay for Ian’s death with loneliness. With giving up my affair with his mother.

Tommy is called back behind the bar and as soon as he leaves, I compose a text to Dolores, but I don’t send it. Not yet.

Get a grip
, I tell myself. I delete the message. A relapse so soon would be fatal. There have been enough fatalities.

By the time I’ve downed my third beer, I can almost see Ian sitting on the bar stool next to me, like some alcohol-induced hallucination—though I’ve become used to much stronger beverages than beer by now. I see him leaning his elbows on the bar, dividing his attention between a football game on the television mounted on the wall, exchanging quips with Tommy, and talking to me.

I blink a few times, until I don’t see him anymore. But no longer seeing him hasn’t stopped me from missing him. I order another beer, because I don’t want to go back to Jeremy’s. God knows what he and Vasily are up to. I blink, wanting to see Ian again. I can imagine him, of course. His pitch black hair. His dark eyes. His long limbs always spilling over all the furniture. And I want to ask him: “What should I do, Ian? Should I meet that wretched driver? Will that change anything? And what on earth am I going to do about Dolores?”

Good thing I’m drunk because I’m of half a mind to take a detour past her house, see what she’s up to. I wasn’t meant to be missing two people. One was more than enough.

I call a taxi and finish my drink. Inside the taxi, I give the driver Jeremy’s address.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

It’s 3 a.m. and I can’t sleep, so I grab my phone from the nightstand and log on to Facebook. Everyone else’s lives seem to be moving along as swiftly as ever. When I open the Mail app, my heart skips a beat. There’s an email from Dolores. Sent about an hour ago. I guess she can’t sleep either. With trembling hands I scroll through it.

Sophie,

I want you to know that I’m meeting Mr. Davis next Saturday at 2 p.m. at the Starbucks on North Michigan Avenue. You are welcome to join me. My reasons for wanting to meet with him are my own. You make your own decision. Whatever you decide is up to you and will not be subject to judgment from me.

I’m sorry you felt you had to leave so abruptly. I never wanted that.

Love,

Dolores

It’s the word
Love
that gets me the most. There’s no chance of me getting any more sleep now. But staying at Jeremy’s is different. I can’t just roam around the apartment in the middle of the night. It’s too small for that. Everything was different at Dolores’, easier. Her warm woman smell when I spooned her before falling asleep. The sweet nothings she whispered in my ear upon waking. Having slept by her side for all those weeks makes this so much more unbearable. This cold place in the bed next to me. I remember what I said to Jeremy that day when I was playing make-believe, when I was dreaming of an ideal world in which Dolores and I could be together. How I’d defended our doomed affair as I tried to put into words that she and I could be a viable couple. He was right and I was wrong.

That doesn’t mean I don’t want to see her.

I put my phone down and surrender to the darkness of the night again. Just me and my thoughts. So much has happened since I last slept alone. Time has passed, for starters. Perhaps it’s this room, because it’s the one I slept in right after Ian’s accident, but I get a clear sense that I shouldn’t be staying here anymore. That if I’m going to do this on my own, I should really be alone and not use Jeremy as my crutch to make the transition bearable. I’ve used Dolores for that purpose long enough already.

I need to go home and really face what has happened. I need to sort through his clothes and shoes and papers, through his artworks on the walls, and give away whatever I don’t want to keep as a memento. I need to make our place
my
place. I need to move on.

* * *

Ian,

I’ve decided to move back home. It’s been more than four months now. Four months… can you even believe it? The world has been without you for four entire months. I don’t even know how that is possible. Death is just so cruel and final. One second you’re there, drawing breath, the next you’re gone. It can all be over in an instant. Maybe that’s why I’ve been clinging to Dolores so hard. First, it made me feel less dead inside, like I actually wanted to continue living without you. And now, while I’m scribbling this in Jeremy’s guest room, it makes me realize that life is so precious. What if I walk out of here tomorrow and it’s my turn? My number is up and I get mowed down by one of those SUVs that don’t belong in the city center—your words. What will I have to show for my life?

Granted, I lost my way, and I surely haven’t found it yet. But I did lose myself a little in the affair with your mother, and I get what she was trying to say when we had that fight. That was another gift Dolores gave me. The gift of showing me what I was doing to myself, how I was stifling me, and us—her and me. It’s funny that
us
no longer means you and me, Ian. I belong to another
us
now. Well, not really. I guess we broke up, if that’s even a thing. I’m not sleeping with your mother anymore. If you weren’t dead, I’d say you could resume breathing normally again. (Did I just make a joke about you dying? That’s a first.)

The fact is that you’re gone and I remain. I need to pull myself together and I know how I’m going to do it. It could be that I need to stop writing you these letters, but I’ve grown quite fond of writing them. It doesn’t hurt me so much anymore that you will never read them. In fact, after some of the things I’ve written, I’m glad you never will.

I’m moving home and I’m going back to work. I’m returning to my old self. Well, I’ll never be my old self again—you changed me forever. Not only because you died. But you had already changed me so much while you were alive. Those six years we had together, though surely too short, improved my personality vastly. I’m not so bitter anymore. Not so angry all the time. I don’t feel like such a victim, anymore. Though for a while, after the accident, I did feel like the greatest martyr on the planet. ‘Why me’ is a pretty automatic thought under the circumstances, I’d like to think so, but I’m not certain because Dolores never seemed to suffer from it. That was one of the things that really drew me to her. Dolores is not a victim. Not after Angela’s death and not after yours.

I miss her. Maybe I shouldn’t write that in this letter to you, but I miss her. Her proximity gave me something extra, the edge I needed to make it through the day in the beginning, and so much more afterwards. We brought each other joy in a dark, hopeless time. For that, I will always be grateful to her. She saved me, of that I’m sure. She saved me once and then she saved me again.

I’ve been strong. I haven’t contacted her. I’ve been here for four days now and I’ve resisted the urge, because every time I picture Dolores reading a needy message from me, I imagine her rolling her eyes at a person I don’t want to be. At this moment, I don’t really know what person exactly I want to be to her. But I will start by being someone who will, with her, face the guy whose truck made you lose your balance that day. We’ve taken some big steps together already, and I feel, in my heart of hearts, though I can’t really put it into words, that I need to do this with her as well. It’s part of our journey together.

But I have no idea what I’m going to say to that man. Most certainly, in my head, it is his fault, even though my rational mind knows that it’s not. He was perfectly within his rights to back into the street—he was about to make a delivery to Origino, where you stopped sometimes after work to pick up organic kale. Can I really be angry at a man who delivers organic produce for a living?

I think my lack of sleep is making me a little delirious. Does anything that I’ve written here make sense at all, babe? I miss calling someone
babe
. It’s just a stupid word, but I miss calling you that. I can’t sleep, Ian. Not yet. I doze and have these crazy dreams about everything all together and then when I wake up I’m convinced for a second that they were real, and there’s no one in my bed to tell me that they’re not.

I miss you.

Sophie

Chapter Thirty