In the Distance There Is Light (7 page)

“High five,” I say to Tilda and hold up my hand. She totters over to me, always running more than walking, and slaps the palm of her tiny hand against mine. I look at her, at this child who doesn’t know anything yet about the awful surprises life can spring on you, and I just want to hold her, press her against my chest, as if that will protect her for the rest of her days.

“Can your auntie have a hug, Tilda?” I ask her in a silly, high-pitched voice.

She looks at me as solemnly as a three-year-old can, her clear gaze piercing my heart, and throws her little arms around me. They must have told her something, because my youngest niece is usually not very generous with dispensing hugs. They must have instructed her to give auntie Sophie a hug whenever she asks for it. They must all have been talking about me for weeks. Now it all hangs unsaid in the air between us. I can almost see my dad straining to say something, but unable to find that magic string of words to break the ice with.

So we do what we’ve grown accustomed to. We use the children as a buffer—I’m just as guilty of this as anyone else. “What did you get your mommy for Mother’s Day?” I ask Tilda.

This is Emma’s cue to chime in. “I made her flowers,” she shouts.

Tilda just mumbles something, but it’s enough to rouse a chuckle from the room.

After the laughter has subsided, my mother says, “Thanks for coming. It means a lot.” She’s like a subdued version of herself today. At least she doesn’t ask me how I’m holding up. I know that me being so absent from her life hurts her, makes her question her self-worth in a way she’s not accustomed to, and though I’m sorry about the state of our non-relationship, this is the only way it can be. Because I’ve witnessed the change in myself. The more I removed myself from my family, the more confident and happy I became.
 

But now,
happy
is a word so obsolete, so ludicrous, so far-fetched that, for an instant, I think it doesn’t matter anymore. At least I still have a mother to visit on Mother’s Day. Then I think of Dolores, who is all alone today and no longer has a son to shower her with outrageous gifts. All I want to do is flee this scene and go be with her. After spending so much time with Dolores, a comfortable easiness has slipped in. We have a rhythm going that suits us both. When we have dinner, the silences are no longer awkward, but we find solace in them, because they are shared. Every night, I sleep in her bed, like it’s the most normal way of sleeping in the world.

* * *

After an hour of talking about nothing in particular and avoiding the subject of Ian’s death, I’ve had enough. Though I haven’t said much, and done even less, my energy has been depleted. I’m emotionally empty, but I already know that the drive back to Chicago, back to Dolores, will make me feel a little more alive again.

“I’d better go,” I say.

“You can stay the night,” Mom says, as she always does, even though I haven’t slept in this house in more than a decade. It’s just another one of those habits of hers that are hard to shake—and another opportunity for me to reject her and highlight the fact that I’m the sole reason for this distance between us.

I say my goodbyes, giving Emma and Tilda an extra-long hug, and take a deep breath before starting my car. On the way back to Chicago, I think of all the things that were left unsaid, about the unease in the air, only pierced when one of the kids said something funny, followed by an overly hilarious bout of laughter.
 

As I approach the city limit, I almost, out of habit, turn left to drive to where Ian and I used to live, but I quickly correct myself, banning every thought of the apartment from my mind, and head over to Dolores’ house. My home now.

Chapter Twelve

Dolores is not home when I arrive at the house. She’s left a Post-it on the counter saying she’ll be back late and not to wait up. But I always wait up. I’d rather sit on the couch flicking through channels until after midnight than go to bed on my own. Going to bed together is what we do now. It’s the pinnacle of the comfort rituals we have created. She goes into her bathroom, the ensuite to her bedroom, and I go into what I now consider as mine but is actually the guest bathroom. We go in fully clothed, and come out ready for bed. When I hop in next to her, the sense of relief that washes over me is indescribable.

It’s not late yet and instead of plonking myself down in front of the TV, I go up to the make-shift office I’ve set up in the guest bedroom. It’s just a desk with a monitor on it, my laptop and some chargers and pens and a notebook. Turns out that of all the things I acquired over the course of my life, these are the essentials. I don’t need the fancy lamp I bought to cast its expensive light on me when I write. I don’t need the colorful mug I drank coffee from every morning to start my day—one of Dolores’ well-used ones will do. I don’t need the noise-canceling headphones I used to wear while working, because up here, on Dolores’ second floor it’s always quiet.

I sit at the desk and start composing another letter to Ian. I write it by hand, which I’m not used to anymore, but that way no one but me can ever read it—because my handwriting has become terrible due to lack of use.

Ian,

There’s something I haven’t told you yet. Something that will make you arch up those full eyebrows of yours the way you did when you made fun of something I said.

Dolores and I have been sleeping in the same bed.

I know it sounds ridiculous, especially written down on a piece of paper like this. I’m snickering as I read it myself. But you have to understand that sleeping in your mother’s bed is the only thing that makes this loneliness bearable. Because together, Dolores and I are not alone. We have each other.

She is so strong, Ian. I can’t believe it. Sometimes I think that having lost Angela all those years ago inoculated her against future loss. I’m not claiming she’s not grieving for you, because she is, but the way she carries herself through this pain and grief is so admirable. I don’t know where she gets the wherewithal to do it, but I’m hoping to find out. Because I need me some of that, babe. Any other person would succumb under the accumulation of loss, but not Dolores. Her spine is cast in iron. She doesn’t allow her head to hang low. In that respect, she’s also an inspiration.

Maybe I’m paying extra attention to it because today is Mother’s Day—Dolores’ first one without you, though she seemed unbothered by it at breakfast, but perhaps only for my sake—and I went to see my own mother. Which made me miss you extra hard. I have no one to talk to about this stuff now. You were the only one who got it, or at least the only one I could confide in and who wouldn’t declare me mental. I know, I know, I’m doing it again. I’m feeling very sorry for myself, indeed.

I didn’t tell my mother I’m staying at Dolores’. I don’t tell her so many things and I figured she wouldn’t like it, what with me never wanting to spend the night at theirs. The tension is just too much for me. Being in that house automatically strips away a layer of my defense and I get so instantly gloomy. It’s like stepping into a time-machine and being transported back to when I was twelve and Tyler and I had just been introduced to yet another nanny.
 

Isn’t it funny that even now, after your death, you’re still my only means of therapy—

“You’re writing again.” Dolores stands in the doorframe.

“Oh.” I didn’t hear her come home, nor climb the stairs.

“I didn’t mean to startle you. I saw the light was on in here.”

“It’s okay. I was just… scribbling.” I’m not telling Dolores I’m writing a letter to her dead son.

“That’s good. That’s something.”

“You’re home early.” I turn my chair toward her.

Dolores leans her shoulder against the doorframe and nods. “I fled the dinner party. This woman I’ve never met, and who obviously didn’t know about Ian, was telling us all about how her son had taken her on a hot air balloon ride for Mother’s Day early this morning, to see the sunrise over Chicago, and I just had to get out of there. I just couldn’t sit there and pretend that every single word of her story didn’t cut me like a knife. You know how Ian liked to go completely overboard on Mother’s Day, to ‘un-un-commercialize’ it, as he called it. The year after Angela died, he took me on a helicopter ride, because, as he said, ‘I had to get a double dose of Mother’s Day attention now.’ When this woman was talking about her sunrise flight over Chicago, I couldn’t stop thinking about that. Although I do hate that it’s Mother’s Day that is making me fall apart like this.”

I get up, walk over to her and throw my arms around her. The entire action happens on instinct. I embrace Dolores and hold her tightly against me, and she breaks down on my shoulder. Loud, heaving sobs escape her and though it’s perhaps ironic that I was just describing in my letter to Ian how strong Dolores has been, I don’t perceive her breakdown as weakness. I know how hard it is for her to show all this emotion in front of me, to show her naked, true self to me. It’s only because I’ve been staying here and we’ve built this fort around us, in her house, that she can do this. I’m honored to have her fall apart in my arms.

“Come on.” Gently, I coax her to her bedroom. She sits on the edge of the bed for a few minutes with her head buried in her hands. I sit next to her and pull her close, put my hand in her hair, massage her scalp, the way she has done for me so many times.

When she lifts her head out of her hands, she wipes away some of her tears, and doesn’t say she’s sorry. And that’s what I meant when I wrote that she was strong. Dolores doesn’t needlessly apologize for her grief. It’s in her; there will be a missing piece in her heart forever, but she’s not afraid to own up to it. But to get to the other side of this pain, we have to go through it. There’s no way around, over or under it. We need to let it consume us for as long as it takes to put ourselves together and start living with it, as a permanent part of us.

“Can I get you anything?” I whisper, my arm curved around her neck now.

“No.” Dolores shakes her head. “Just sit here with me for a while longer.”

And I do.

* * *

When we’re both in bed, lying on our backs, with the TV off, Dolores asks, “How was your Mother’s Day?”

When I just shrug, she pushes herself up on her elbows and gives me a look that does something funny to those knots in my stomach—I can’t decipher whether they uncoil or grow tighter.

“You still don’t want to talk about it?” Dolores asks.

“It’s Mother’s Day, Dolores.” When I bought the flowers for my mother I wondered whether I should get a bouquet for Dolores as well, but I concluded it would be too weird. Now I regret not having given her something.

“So?” She shifts onto her side, supporting her head on an upturned palm. When she exhales, her breath tickles my cheek.

“It’s hard to say things about my mother to someone who is also a mother. It seems so disrespectful.”

“Like it’s a you versus us-mothers situation? I’m not naive, Sophie. And I don’t even know your mother, though she did send me a friend request on Facebook a couple of days ago.”

“Please don’t accept it.” At the thought of the string of grief-stricken messages my mother has posted since Ian’s death, trying to garner empty, social media sympathy, a cold shiver runs down my spine.

“I won’t if you don’t want me to.” Dolores puts her free hand on my shoulder.

“I know it’s not… conventional for you and my parents to not be better acquainted, but I’ve always wanted to keep Ian’s family separate from mine.”

“Good thing I’m not big on conventions then.” Dolores smiles and pats my shoulder.

Her touch has a relaxing effect on me. “It’s just so hard sometimes to dislike someone you’re meant to love without question. Or maybe dislike is the wrong word.” This is beginning to feel like a conversation Ian and I used to have. One of those talks where he just let me go on and on, get it all off my chest after festering for too long, and just listened patiently. His dark glance calmed me, his hand often on my shoulder the way Dolores’ is now.

Dolores nods thoughtfully.

“My mother likes to pretend we have a close relationship, while I think we don’t have that much of a relationship at all. She was never there. When Tyler and I were growing up, she
always
had something better to do than spend time with us. Her company always seemed so much more important than anything we ever did. Then, when she was fifty, she had this big moment of enlightenment, after she crashed from too much stress and work and not treating her body right. Her body shut down and we were meant to feel very sorry for her, and I did, a little, but it wasn’t suddenly going to change our relationship. As far as I’m concerned, she’s still the same woman who left the house before I woke up in the morning and came home long after I’d gone to bed at night. I barely know her. And now she acts all hurt about us not being close, while she was the one who was always absent.”

“What did Ian say when you told him about this?” Dolores’ question surprises me.

“I didn’t so much tell him as take him to my parents’ house a few times, after which he got the picture.” I don’t tell Dolores that it took me years to fully disclose the relationship with my parents to Ian because I didn’t want to be the brat with two parents who whined to her boyfriend about them when he’d just lost his own mother. “Though, of course, the topic came up after every visit. Every birthday or anniversary party we were invited to, or rather, meant to attend. I always gave him the option to stay home. They’re
my
family, after all. But he always came with me, which made it a lot easier for me.”