In the Distance There Is Light (22 page)

Chapter Thirty-Two

“I would really like to talk to you about something else. Not here. In private. We can go to my place, if you like.”

“Your place?” Dolores turns to me.

“I’ve moved back home. I’m no longer at Jeremy’s.”

She nods, remains silent for a couple of long seconds, then says, “I’d feel more comfortable going to my house.”

Five minutes later, we’re in her car. She turns on the radio. I’m guessing she needs some time without conversation to process the meeting with Albert. As for me, I’m frantically trying to arrange the jumble of words in my head. I’ve not planned for this. I know
what
I want to say but I have no idea how to make it plausible, how to translate what’s in my heart into acceptable sentences.

“When did you move back?” she asks after a while.

“Last week. I love Jeremy dearly but staying at his apartment is not, er, the same. And I had to go back at some point.”

“Is it not too hard?”

I glance at Dolores’ profile. She has her eyes firmly fixed on the road. I can’t gauge how she’s feeling, as though a week and a half apart has already put an impenetrable distance between us and what we had together was very much based on proximity and opportunity. I do sense that Dolores is close to falling apart, that the meeting with the driver has unsettled her more than she’s letting on.

Or maybe I’m the one having an unnerving effect on her.

“It has its hard moments.” I want to talk about this but I have other, more pressing things I want to tell her first. “Returning home was never going to be a walk in the park.”

Dolores parks shoddily in front of her house. My suspicion that she is very upset is confirmed. A drizzle is falling and we hurry inside. She takes my coat as though I didn’t live there for months and have suddenly forgotten where the coat rack is.

I follow her into the kitchen. She’s the least composed I’ve ever seen her. She clatters coffee cups about, tries to refill the machine with water but her hands tremble too much.

“Hey.” I put a hand on her elbow. “Please, sit. Let me take care of making coffee.” I want to take her in my arms and help her get through this moment, but I’m sure she wouldn’t let me. Not yet.

We sit around the kitchen table, its surface a safe barrier between us.

“What did you want to talk about?” Dolores rests her glance on me for a split second before it skitters away again.

I think she knows why I’m here. But before I tell her in my own words, I need to know how she’s holding up. To see her like this, her glance flitting about, like she doesn’t know where to look—like she can barely look me in the eye.

“Let’s talk about you first.” I try to find her eyes.

Dolores shakes her head. “Not now. I want to hear what you have to say.”

“Okay.” I clear my throat. Pause. Try to gather my thoughts, which have become even more scattered at the sight of Dolores crumbling. But I have to say this now. This is my chance. “The past week has been one of the hardest since Ian died,” I begin. “You can probably guess why.” This is no time to be coy, I admonish myself inwardly. Just tell it like it is. “But I’ve tried to… remedy some of the things you, er, said I should. Just tiny steps. I moved back into the apartment. I slept in our bed, though sleep is perhaps too big a word for the tossing and turning I’ve been doing. I watched television from the spot on the couch where we used to lay curled up together. I drank coffee from his mug. I made my own breakfast. Just cereal, by the way. Nothing fancy like you used to make for me and… I sat down with the editor-in-chief of
The Post
. I’ll be working for the weekend cultural supplement. Part-time, but it means I’ll have a work place to go to on a regular basis, people to see, responsibilities. I want to go back to investigative journalism as well. Jackie begged me to not give that up, and when Jackie O. begs…” I chuckle uncomfortably. “The point is that I’m starting to pull myself together. I’m beginning to reconstruct a life. A life I can imagine living, except for one thing.”

Dolores has her eyes on me now. I continue. “At first I didn’t allow myself to. I told myself I was crazy, that this was for the best and all that bullshit, but damn it, Dolores, I have missed you so much. Seeing you again today… I just knew. I’ve known it all along. Otherwise why would I have even done it? Why would I have gone to bed with you if I didn’t really want you? Because I do. I want you. I want to… I don’t know. Try.” My palms have gone clammy and a trickle of sweat drips down my spine, resting in the hollow at the small of my back. Now it’s my turn to look away. “If that’s what you want as well, of course.”

I can hear Dolores expel a deep breath. “You want to try what exactly?”

“I want us to try, Dolores. Date. Whatever you want to call it.”

“You want to date me?” There’s a note of incredulity in Dolores’ voice but also a tiny smile breaking on her lips.

“Yes, but, you know, properly. I don’t want to live in your house. I don’t want you to take care of me. I don’t want you to hide me away from the real world.” I try to loosen my limbs a little, not wring my hands so frantically.

“You want to be my
girlfriend
?” She really laughs now. It’s not an accepting sort of laugh; it’s definitely a sneering one.
 

“When you put it like that, it sounds ridiculous. But what we had was never ridiculous to me. It was beautiful and exhilarating and comforting. It was many things, but never ridiculous or… deserving of that derisive snort you just gave.”

“Sophie, honey, I’m not mocking you. Not at all. Please don’t for a second think I haven’t entertained the notion myself, but you must see that it’s not feasible.”

“How can we know if we don’t try?” Dolores’ reluctance doesn’t deter me. Being so close to her—I can grab her hand any time, feel her skin against mine any second—renews the fervor inside of me. “I know it’s unorthodox, but I, at least, feel like we owe it to ourselves to try. I’m very much aware of all the arguments against us doing so and I will happily give you my reasons why we should try regardless. I haven’t lost my mind. On the contrary. I want you. I don’t mean I want what you gave me when I was at my lowest. I want what you can give me now that I’ve re-entered life. Because that’s what it’s all about for me now. We have one life. We
still
have
it, unlike the people we love. I want you, it’s as simple as that. I’m alive and I want you. Fuck all the rest. It’s not important, at least too unimportant not to try.” I pause to take a much-needed breath. “I truly hope that I’m not imagining things, that what we had between us was something you wanted too. Us being together. The companionship. The simple fact of no longer being alone.”

“You make a compelling case.” Dolores sucks her bottom lip into her mouth.

I don’t want to give her too much time to think. I want to overwhelm her with reasons to do this, to choose me, no matter how much her common sense is rallying against it.

“I know what you’re thinking and I’m thinking the same.” I hold up my fingers, just as I did when I tried to explain my feelings to Jeremy, glad that I had the practice. “I’m not a lesbian, the age difference is too big, and you’re Ian’s mother. Those are the three big ones. I’m well aware. I won’t claim I can reason them all away, but this is not about reason in the first place. This is about how I feel for you, Dolores. Yes, you’re Ian’s mother, but that’s what brought us together. And it’s true that I’ve never before been attracted to a woman, but I am now. You know that. You’ve witnessed it. I’ve fallen for you, big time. No, I haven’t just fallen for you. I love you. Not only because of how good you’ve been to me, how kind and generous, but because of who you are. Because of everything you stand for. And the age difference, well, you’re fifty-six and gorgeous. I don’t really have anything else for that. Do I have a crystal ball with which I can predict the future? No, I do not. All I know is that it can be all over just like that.” I snap my fingers. “Just like it was for Ian. Or we could get sick, like Angela. In either case, before we draw our final breath, don’t you want to have tried? To have afforded yourself this flimsy chance at happiness? A happiness so sudden, so unexpected, but happiness nonetheless. We know life is not a fairy-tale. We know it can really, really suck. Ian and Angela died. We’re alive. And I want to be with you and I truly don’t give a fuck what anyone else thinks about that.”

“You’ve clearly thought this through.”

I shake my head. “No, I haven’t. I haven’t dared to think about it. Not since I left here. But this is what’s in my heart. This is what I felt when I saw you again today. I knew I had to try. I didn’t prepare for this, but this is how it is.”

“You’re very passionate, Sophie. But, as you said earlier, I am much older than you and I can so easily predict how this will play out.”

“Oh, so you do have a crystal ball?”

“No, I don’t, but—”

“What have you truly got to lose?” I should probably give Dolores a chance to express her thoughts, but I’m so wrapped up in my speech, I need to get all the words out now, before they desert me again. I need to know I did my utmost. That I gave it all when I tried to win Dolores’ heart. “Please know I’m not suggesting we run off and get married somewhere. One date, that’s all I ask for. One simple date. We’ll meet at a restaurant. We’ll have dinner, some drinks. It’ll all be very normal and civilized. Then we’ll see how we feel.”

“How can I say no to that?” Dolores cocks her head to the left. “It would just be a date, right?”

“Yes.” It appears I’m all out of words now.

“When do you propose we go on this date?”

“Tonight.”

Dolores chuckles. ”Tonight? That doesn’t leave me much time to get ready.”

“You look perfect the way you are right now.” Did Dolores just agree to go on a date with me? I want to jump out of my chair and kiss her, but I’d better not. It’s not part of our new protocol.

“So do you. You look good. Better. Different.”

“All of that on hardly any sleep.” I dare to inch my fingers a little closer to hers across the table. “Imagine how I will look after a good night’s rest.”

She puts her palm on my fingers and I feel her touch shoot to the tiniest nerve endings in the furthest extremities of my body. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” she says.

* * *

Ian,

I shouldn’t be falling in love. I know that. And I certainly shouldn’t be falling in love with your mother. What does it say about me that I’m about to go on a date with someone a mere four months after we buried you? But here’s how I see it: I could choose to feel bad about it, to not enjoy it, to analyze it to death—because what’s a little bit more of feeling bad in my life right now, anyway? Just throw it on the pile. I’ll deal with it through too much alcohol and sleepless nights and looking at my worn-out face in the mirror, although Dolores said I looked good earlier today. “Better. Different.” Those were her exact words. Another option is for us to wait for this to become appropriate, but the thing is that, between your mother and me, things will never be ‘appropriate’ all of a sudden. I admit that it’s part of the appeal. But, and this is really what it’s all about: I don’t want to wait or feel bad about it. I consider myself lucky that I have her in my life. I don’t want to censor myself and have long discussions about what’s wrong or right. Wrong was you dying. Wrong was Angela getting lung cancer. Categorically. But is me going on a date—a real, proper date—with Dolores wrong? If it is, I don’t see why. You might say that I can’t see things clearly, but the thing is that I do. I really do. Because for the longest time, I didn’t. I know the difference between the two. I feel it, too. Despite the odds stacked against us, I choose her. I’m wooing her—I’m actually wooing your mother, Ian—and she agreed to go on this date with me. I may claim it’s just a date, but it’s much more than that because how can it not be? We lived together for more than three months. I slept in her bed night after night. This date is not about getting to know each other better. The sole purpose of this date is to check for viability, though that sounds a bit clinical. A bit cold. While Dolores makes me feel the opposite of cold. Isn’t that what it’s all about? Being with someone who lifts you up? Who makes you feel like you can do so much more than you ever thought yourself capable of? That’s how it was with you, Ian. Then you died. You died and all the rules changed. In a world where you can die in a matter of seconds, there are no rules I need to abide by. That’s what I have learned. So, I’m going on this date. I’m wearing the teal dress. Yes, I’m going all out. I’m going to seduce your mother and I’m not going to apologize for it.

Sophie

Chapter Thirty-Three