In the Distance There Is Light (6 page)

Dolores narrows her eyes, examining the beers on tap. “I’m not having any of those.” She cuts her glance to the bartender. “I’ll have a double Maker’s Mark, neat.”

“The same,” I say, though I’m not a bourbon drinker, but I’m betting on it being the sort of liquor that will numb the pain the most. “Is Tommy not in?” The bartender has no reason to recognize me.

“He’s visiting his family. He should be back next week,” the barkeep says, then starts fixing our drinks.
 

We wait for our bourbons in silence and I imagine Tommy, who came to the funeral, having to leave Chicago for a while because his good friend died so suddenly in an accident. Maybe that’s what I should do. Skip town. Go on a road trip. Find myself again. Get away from everything that reminds me of him. Or go to Thailand on a meditation retreat and not speak for five days, only cry. But the fact of the matter is that I don’t know what I’m going to do. An apartment in my name and a load of money in the bank don’t change that. Either way, if I left, I’d miss Dolores too much. Her strong presence, her arm lightly slung over my torso before I go to sleep.

The other night, I woke and she still had her arm around me. She was fast asleep and I didn’t want to wake her by moving, so I just lay there, trying to analyze what it is about her that calms me so much, that makes me feel that, possibly, this won’t be the end of me too.

“Here you go, ladies.” The bartender presents our drinks.

We pick up our glasses and Dolores raises hers toward me in a toast. “To Ian, for taking care of his lady. I’m so proud of him for doing that.”

I clink my glass against Dolores’ and while I’m grateful to Ian for sorting out his affairs, it also makes me feel inadequate. Like I’m someone who needs taking care of. By his mother for my emotional needs and by him, for my financial ones after his untimely death.

“I know it’s a silly question, but what’s wrong?” Dolores asks.

I take a sip of bourbon, which burns in my throat and all the way down to my stomach. “I’m well aware I’m a freelancer who hasn’t been working, but that doesn’t mean I can’t take care of myself.”

“I wasn’t insinuating that, Sophie. Not at all. I merely meant that I’m glad Ian did right by you and that the money will make things a little easier for you during this difficult time. I’ve read your articles in
The Post
. I know how capable and intelligent you are.”

Dolores’ kind words make my eyes fill with tears. But I’m so sick of crying—and my eyes feel as though they really can’t take another bout of waterworks—that I ignore the onset of tears, and continue. “I also don’t want you to think I’m voluntarily taking something that belongs to you. You’re his mother. You have rights, too.”

“Angela wanted him to have an apartment and a nest egg. I think she envisioned the grandchild she would never meet using it for college.” Dolores puts a hand on my knee. “I don’t need my son’s money. Imagine how crass it would be, how vulgar, for us to fight over Ian’s inheritance.” Dolores clicks her tongue. “But if it’s any consolation, I know how you feel. I’ve been in your position. Angela was always the one with the money in our relationship. When we met, I had nothing, only my pride. I was fiercely independent, but there comes a point, when you become a family, at which you need to let that go. And you, Ian, and I, we’re family.”

I nod, thinking about what a class act Dolores is, how gracefully she moves through this world that can be so ugly and vile. “I’ve always regretted not having had the chance to meet Angela.”

Dolores gives an unexpected chuckle. “She was quite something. Irresistible is the best word that comes to mind. She was short but fiery, as though her words had to make up for what she lacked in height. That woman had quite the mouth on her.” She goes quiet, stares into her drink. “Most of all, she was an amazing mother. She would have gone to hell and back for that boy. Even when times were difficult at home. When he was a sulky teenager and said the most hurtful things to us, she was always patient with him, she always listened, made sure he was being heard.”

“He felt so bad about that. It was one of the first things he told me when we met. ‘There was a time when I didn’t treat my mother the way she deserved to be treated,’ he said, ‘and I’ll never be able to take back the things I said to her.’”

“He was completely heart-broken when she died. She’d been sick for such a long time. She’d had two relapses. Whereas I could feel at least some relief for her, that she wouldn’t be in constant pain anymore, Ian didn’t see it that way. He always asked for more opinions, tried to find other doctors who treated cancer patients with experimental drugs. He couldn’t let her go, which I understand, but, in the end, that’s all she wanted. She was ready for it. As prepared as she could be. She’d had ample time to say all her goodbyes. This… thing with Ian is so different. So out of the blue. There’s just no comfort to be found in any of it. It doesn’t make the slightest bit of sense. He promised Angela that he would do great things. She asked me, just before she died, when it was just the two of us in the room, to take care of our boy, and now he’s dead.” A tear drops from Dolores’ eyelash into her bourbon. “We need another round of these.” She knocks back her drink and bangs the glass hard onto the counter, getting the bartender’s attention and raising two fingers to him.

I finish my own by taking a few sips and, with every drop I swallow, the burning sensation in my throat lessens.

The bartender is quick with the drinks and just as he plants the new round in front of us, my phone beeps in my bag. I’ve had it on silent on and off for weeks, the constant pinging driving me near-crazy, because every last one of the messages, no matter how nice in intention, is a reminder of the dreadful thing that has happened. I ignore it and reach for my drink.

“You’re not going to see who that is?” Dolores asks.

I shrug. “It’s just a message.” The only message I want to get is one telling me there’s been a terrible mix-up and Ian is somehow still alive.

“You never know. It could be important.”

I purse my lips together and nod, staring at Dolores.

“It’s true,” she says. Maybe she nurses the same vain hope as I do.

“You’re just like Ian. He was
always
on his phone, couldn’t let a message or email go unanswered for a single minute.”

“Nu-uh. That drove me crazy about him. We’d be having a conversation and his phone would light up and he’d be all over it in a split second. I scolded him for that, told him it was very rude to not give his mother his full attention when we were together. That’s why it struck me that you’re ignoring your phone. It’s not of your generation to do so.” She pulls her lips into a small smile.

“Now see what you made me do.” I reach in my bag for my phone, playing along. “Don’t you dare start complaining when I don’t give you my full attention for the next five minutes.”

Dolores laughs and the sound of it loosens something in my belly. It feels so good to have a silly little chuckle. Then I read the message on my phone and expel a deep sigh.

“What is it?” Dolores asks.

“Nothing. Just my mother.” I put my phone away, unwilling to deal with my mother right now.

“
Just
your mother?” Dolores has already downed her second whiskey.

“Yes, just my mother,” I repeat, then focus my attention on my drink.

“You don’t have a good relationship with her?” she insists.

“That’s one way of putting it.”

“How would you put it?” she asks, while signaling the bartender for another round.

“I’m sorry, Dolores, but you’re not someone I can discuss my mother with.”

“Why not?”

“Because you’re Ian’s mother and, I don’t know, I don’t think you would get it. You and Ian had this great relationship, but children having amazing, supportive, understanding relationships with their parents isn’t always a given. If anything, Ian was so lucky to have you and Angela for his parents. Let’s just say I didn’t have the same luck.”
 

“I happen to be a firm believer in the fact that all parents screw up their children to a certain degree. Mine certainly did.”

“I don’t really want to talk about this. I don’t have the energy for it.”

She puts her hand on my arm. “Ian and I were very close, Sophie. He told me things. I know more than you might think.”

I widen my eyes. “What did he tell you?”

The bartender brings over the next round. If we keep knocking them back like this, we’ll be crawling out of this bar on hands and knees.

“When I asked if I was ever going to meet your parents, he told me it wasn’t that simple. That you had a very complicated relationship with them and didn’t see them very often. And that there was a big chance I might never get to meet them. Admittedly, it was a bit daunting to see them for the first time at Ian’s funeral, though it’s all a bit of a blur.”

“I’m sorry for not introducing you sooner. I could always think of a very good reason not to.”

“Why? They raised a beautiful daughter?”

I hold up my hand. “Please, Dolores, don’t say it. I don’t want to talk about it. I can’t have that conversation right now. I really can’t.” I remember how, after a visit to Evanston where my parents live, once we were back in the car, Ian had been so appalled by my mother’s self-involved behavior that he’d just said, “Fuck them, Soph. Just fuck them.” And how liberating that had felt.

Who’s going to say that to me now?

Dolores’ hand is still on my arm and I don’t want her to remove it.

She nods. “Okay. But please know that you can talk to me about anything you want.”

“You are so kind, Dolores. So generous with your time and affection. I really appreciate that.” After three whiskeys and touching on my mommy issues just a tad, Dolores appears to me as the perfect mother, the one I always wanted.

“My heart is broken too. I’m grateful to have you in my life right now.” With that, she takes a big gulp of whiskey, makes a face while it goes down, and orders another.

Chapter Eleven

Although the entire drive to Evanston is depressing, as always, I can’t help the nostalgia rushing over me. It harks back to a time before I knew better, when life was still filled with play and innocence. Back then, I easily shrugged off as normal my mother’s minimal affection and maximum narcissism.
 

Today is Mother’s Day and even though I could have easily cited my grief as a valid reason not to show up at my parents’ house for the occasion, I didn’t. Without Ian around to say “Fuck them”, the guilt for ignoring them grew too big. Though I know very well this is just for show. We’ll pretend to be a family that gets along for as long as we can, until the tension rises too high and I’ll leave. I have the best excuse these days.

I bought my mom a bunch of flowers and when I give them to her she feels the need to give me a long hug—as though a hug from her will make it all better. All it does is make me cringe.

My brother and his wife are here as well with their two young children. Emma is five and Tilda three. The girls are shouting something at each other that I can’t make out.

This visit, of course, everything is different, because Ian is dead, and my mother can’t direct the spotlight solely unto herself. She has to compete with me for attention and sympathy, though my family’s sympathy is the last thing I want.

On my way over here, I made one promise to myself and to Ian’s ghost: that I would never give them the satisfaction of needing them. Dolores is my family now. And Jeremy. Alex and her husband Bart, and our other friends. My small circle in Chicago.

While I love my brother—we were always in this together after all—I feel estranged from him, too. Our lives are so different, even though we only live half an hour’s drive from one another. But he lives in the same suburb as my parents, and it makes for a world of difference. I also never understood why he is so keen on having my parents so involved in Tilda and Emma’s lives. He told me once that the shittiest parents often make the best grandparents, because it gives them a chance to redeem themselves for their past mistakes. I believe my response was, “Good for you, but too little too late for me.”

My dad just sits there, mostly saying nothing, in his default mode.

“Tilda can already count to ten,” Sandra, my brother’s wife, says.

At the mention of her name, Tilda turns her attention away from her sister. She waddles over to the couch, holds on to her mother’s knees, and starts counting on her fingers. Her big blue eyes shine brightly with innocence and being so alive, so young and unspoiled and at the beginning of everything. I suddenly realize that the last time I saw the girls was before Ian died. Do they even know their uncle is dead? If so, who told them and how?

Not having any nieces or nephews in his own family, Ian loved spending time with the kids. He was always making plans for them, saying that we’d go pick them up at their mom and dad’s and drive them into the city, show them what life was really about—that there was so much more to it than the suburb where they lived. But then, as so many of life’s big plans, they got pushed away by other things to do, by work, and the way life can just consume you, eat away time without you realizing it, until it’s too late.