The Clouds Aren't White

by Rachael Wright

  "Mommy," a small hand pulls on the sleeve of my shirt.

  "Mmmhmm," I mumble.

  "Show me where Scotland is again Mommy."

  "Ah...um..." I stammer, we don't have a world map anywhere in the house and I gaze around in a stupor.

  "How about on the computer?" she says helpfully.

  With Sophie ensconced on my lap, and the computer set before us, we pull up a large world map first and mark our points between Colorado and Scotland. Sophie leans so far forward that she's perched precariously on my leg, which starts to go numb. It's her face however that stops me from any remonstrance. Her face is alight with wonder as we navigate maps, exclaiming with every click of the mouse how pretty the country is.

  I'm not sure how it happens, I doubt even hindsight will afford me any more knowledge than now, but I decide. I decide to risk our relationships and comfort and all we've ever known. I'd been there only once; on our honeymoon, and even through the pixelated images on the screen I can feel the land calling to me again. Sophie's face, alight with pleasure, secures our fate.

  We decide to celebrate our decision by taking apple juice and cookies out to the back yard and set up an impromptu picnic. It’s probably one of the last warm days of the year so we sit and bask in the fall sun. Sophie isn't one to lie on the grass for more than a minute or so and I am, therefore, quickly cajoled into being goalie while she practices her soccer skills. The air comes easier into both our lungs and in this moment grief lies a little lighter on our hearts.

  Perhaps its because, if I look close enough at Sophie, he seems to be there. I can make him out in her quick smile, her bark-like laugh, and her purposeful stride. It’s such a peaceful moment, a rare one nowadays, watching the bees drift lazily over the flowers and the grass flickering in the soft cool breeze. The world might have stopped for us, for a moment, as if it too is reveling in the change of our lives...in the hope of a new beginning.

  As it turns out there's only a four-hour period of time when I can make the call to Scotland while Maggie MacLeod is still at the office.

  "Are you calling Mommy? Are you?"

  I've barely had the chance to rub the sleep out of my eyes before Sophie bounds out of her room with a maniacal smile on her face.

  "Let me get some coffee first, Soph," I say and I shuffle down the hallway into the kitchen. She's still right on my heels bouncing up and down in anticipation.

  "Come on Mommy, call!" she repeats at least three times.

  "Sophie!" I shout, cutting over her chanting, "Stop. That's enough."

  "Sorry..." she says, hanging her head, then scrambles up a chair at the kitchen counter.

  "Alright," I say, picking up the phone but point it at her instead of dialing, "now, this is an important call and you need to stay quiet alright? Do you promise?"

  "Yes Mommy!" she trills and settles down, eyebrows raised, a huge smile on her face, and hands clasped in front.

  If nothing else goes right, at least I made her happy in this moment.

  "Alright...here goes nothing."

  It's over in a matter of minutes. Quick in the way life changing moments go I suppose. Maggie MacLeod is surprised by my call, thinking I'd need time to get my affairs in order and to weigh my options.

  I don't say it. I don't say this is our only option and if we don't make a change, Sophie and I will waste away in this house, in this life, and never be anything more than a widow and fatherless child. We either make the jump now or decay. Its all anyone can talk about when they speak to us. The incident at church, press asking for comment on the on going case, friends only dropping by to see the 'widow in action.' It all repulses me.

  I hang up the phone and hold my breath. The cloud of shadow hasn't lifted over our lives. There isn't the proverbial rainbow shining. There is, however, a small gleam, a flicker of light, hanging just out of sight and enticing us forward. Hope, purpose, the next step. My mind reels with dates and I mentally write lists of what must be done. Momentum pulls me forward.

  I keep Sophie from her grandparents for a few days so I can work out how best to approach them. If I'm somehow able to find the right words, they'll be more than supportive. I try to imagine their faces when I tell them I'm leaving them all behind. I try to imagine Sophie and I, well and truly alone.

  "Maria..." I say breathlessly into the phone.

  The evening seems to have come earlier than usual. I sit at the table, hunched over a glass of merlot. Sophie is asleep and my right foot aches from stepping on a small hill of legos.

  "You rang, my dear?"

  "I've got some crazy news."

  "Shoot," she says with a laugh.

  I can almost see her smiling into her own phone, standing in her kitchen waving her hands around exasperatedly.

  "I just accepted a job at a museum in Scotland."

  "W...what?"

  "A museum. The Isle of Skye," there's a short silence on the other end.

  "Well when are you moving?"

  "You want to get rid of me already?" I say, faking a sniffle.

  "I want you to go so I can come and visit!" she says and we erupt into teenage girl quality giggles.

  I double over, my free hand clutching my stomach.

  "You don't want to hear more about the job?" I say, hiccupping myself back into seriousness.

  "The important part is knowing when you're leaving so I can prepare for the moment of your departure," she says it clinically but I know Maria, I know how much we mean to each other.

  "I have two months to get everything completed."

  "You're moving to Scotland...in January...?"

  "I don't have much choice.”

  "Scotland in January," she laughs at the thought of it. "I have to do it Maria," I say, whispering it, convincing myself.

  "Of course you do. This is the perfect position for you. Beyond that though, I've seen you these past two months and there's nothing here for you in Colorado anymore. Yes, your parents are here but at the end of the day, you're alone and clinging to memories and to the past. Go out and build a future for Sophie but most importantly for yourself. If you don't have one, Sophie won't either."

  "You're right."

  "Of course I'm right. So...when are you making this 'crazy news' public?"

  "This week. I can't trust Sophie not to say anything for much longer."

  "I wish you luck."

  I tisk into the phone at her comment.

  "It'll be fine. They'll understand," I wave off the comment with my hand.

  "Let me know if you need a traveling buddy to Scotland. I could use a break," she says and we dissolve into laughter again and spend the rest of the call in companionable chatter.

  Maria is my sole confidant concerning my worries about Sophie. She's in raptures about Sophie's handling of the boy at school and 'mmmhmms' during my recital of when I asked Sophie if she wanted to move. It buoys me up to hear her quiet approval of my parenting. Not the first time I feel jealous of the women of ages past who spent their whole lives in constant orbit around each other. Theirs was a shared experience. Children, work, parenting, cleaning, cooking...all done in the company of women. A community. Sharing grief, heartbreak, new life, and joy. Our modern and 'civilized' approach to life is rather lonely and oppressive in comparison.

  "Come in," I say, opening the door to my parents two days later. "We brought wine," my mom says, presenting the bottle she's carrying.

  She smiles but her eyes shift around the room, trying to sense what's out of place. For the first time in weeks I look at her, really look at her, studying the red eyes, the pallor of the skin, the way her jeans sag slightly around her waist. Her hand twitches in my direction. It’s a small betrayal. Her eyes are filled with sorrow and as she gathers herself together to play with Sophie I can feel her eyes on me. She can sense the change. It’s as if she can see through to my soul, watching the words tumble through my head-organizing themselves into lines.

  "You colored your hair," my father says coming up be
hind me as I pull out the wine cork.

  "I did," I say thumbing a lock of my brown hair.

  "You look...happier. Well maybe happy isn't the word. Alive, maybe," he says it slowly, picking his words carefully.

  Trying to find the right ones.

  "Alive..." I say, rolling the word around in my mouth, tasting it, "I suppose. Sometimes rather unfortunately."

  The words spill out before my thoughts can curl around them, forcing them into submission. I glance shiftily at my father, ashamed of what I've said.

  "You don't need to hide from me. There's no need.”

  "I caught a whiff of his cologne yesterday, standing in the grocery store and everything left. My breath. My ability to move or think. I was standing in that room again, the morgue. Feeling him leaving me," I say.

  "Oh Emmeline," he whispers, he grabs at my hand, wrapping it in his clammy ones.

  Though his grip is vice-like, it’s his eyes boring into mine, which root me to the spot. The room has gone cold with grief; it seeps through the doorways and the cracks, through the ventilation.

  "Sorry. It tumbles out sometimes," I mumble, breaking eye contact.

  "Are we cracking it open?" a falsely cheery voice says from the doorway, we spring apart as though burned and turn towards my mother.

  "Just waiting on my in-laws.”

  "Oh?" my mom says.

  I can almost see her sniffing around, catching again, and the scent of something amiss. I'm spared having to explain because the doorbell rings again. She flounces out of the kitchen to open the door. For all her emotional distance, my mother has made an effort with Hugh's parents. She greets them kindly, in a low murmuring honeylike voice.

  "Having a party?" my dad says conspiratorially into my ear.

  "I guess we'll find out.”

  He cocks an eyebrow but doesn't say anything. As he walks away I find myself wondering whether he suspects. My mother certainly does.

  The five of us settle ourselves in the living room, glasses of an intoxicating Burgundy wine set on coasters, and talk about everything and nothing. Sophie chatters away about school, leaving everyone enraptured. Its beautiful the way she whips her head around to us all in turn, pulling us in with every little hand gesture and tilting laugh. The room collapses into fits of laughter as Sophie ends her final story. An awkward silence fills the room as Sophie sits quietly in contentment. As soon as I start considering my words my heart starts thumping wildly, the wild careening of a frightened mind.

  "I wanted to tell you all something," I say, barely hearing my own words through the roaring in my ears.

  Four pairs of eyes turn on me. Tension and fear seep into the room like noxious gas. Gasping for breath, I rush on.

  "I was offered a job at a museum...I start in two months.”

  What I meant to convey was not at all what came out of my mouth. I hastily add on, "Hugh turned in the application."

  "Why?" Hugh's mother speaks first.

  Her face full of confusion, suspicion, and anger...anger beneath it all. She leans forward, hands clenched at her sides, the front of her blouse revealing the black lace of a bra beneath.

  "Uh..." I say, my mind blank.

  "Why? You have his life insurance. There's absolutely no reason for you to be going to work. Sophie needs you at home," she says as though there's something foul out of her mouth and she's trying to spit it out.

  Sophie leans into me, making her-self small.

  "Sophie goes to school, nine to three. As for the life insurance, I'd rather invest than blow it in a couple years and then have to figure out to support us. I do want a job. All I do is sit around this house and try not to spend all day in bed. Isn't it enough reason? For my health?"

  Hot salty tears run down my face, but a flame of anger dances in my chest. The heat creeps up the back of my neck, flushing my cheeks.

  "So its the museum here?" my mother says trying to inject a little calmness.

  She smiles, her eyes are kind and sweet and full of hope and I hate myself for what I have to say.

  "Actually...well...no..."

  "Scotland on the Isle of Skye!" Sophie says with childlike joy of remembering, her eyes full of hope.

  Her declaration is met with gaping mouths and sharp intakes of breath, everyone has gone white. I search my father's face but it’s entirely inscrutable.

  "What?" both women say, sounding like parrots, breathless parrots.

  "You can't possibly be serious," my father-in-law says, his eyes glinting with anger.

  "I am."

  "You can't move to Scotland," Hugh's mother says.

  Her hands, now claws on the edge of the sofa, have already snapped a thread under the pressure of her fingernails.

  "We are going," I didn't mean to be so callous.

  I try to corral my emotions back towards something resembling empathy.

  "This is a shock. I can see that. But...I'm booking flights tomorrow to look at houses."

  "A house?" my mother screeches, "You're buying a house in Scotland?"

  There's hardly time to draw breath before another round starts.

  "You can't possibly move to Scotland, right after Hugh."

  "Think of Sophie!"

  "It's halfway around the world."

  "What if you need help?"

  Under the barrage, I glance over at Hugh's father and I want to quail under the look he gives me. I want to cry and beg for forgiveness. But I don't. I don't feel empathy anymore, there's not a drop is left in me. I've been bled dry in this house...bled of everything which gave me depth and kindness. Even less than an empty shell.

  "Its because of him I'm going.”

  I want to say more. I want to say I need a way to not feel so barren, to be able to connect with more people than just Sophie. To feel human. To want to live.

  "This is absolutely ludicrous. Say something...back me up," my mother demands, rounding on my father, who, impressively, does not recoil from the livid look on her face.

  "What do you want me to say? She's 30 years old. She's lost her husband and her future. Unless you've all been too blind to see it, she's wasting away here in this town," he says and then turns toward me with an interested face, "So tell us about the museum."

  "I don't give a damn about a museum. She won't take my grandchild halfway across the world because it’s too hard for her to be here. I lost my son and Sophie is all I have left of him," Hugh's mother says, her eyes wild.

  She catapults herself out of her chair, digging her nails into the palms of her hands now.

  "I'm sorry you lost your son, but this is what's best for Sophie and I. This is what he wanted for us.”

  "You can't know that..."

  "He sent in the application himself and didn't tell me till the day he...died. I do know what he wanted," I say exercising a large amount of self-control to stay seated.

  "That was before. I think he'd be against you taking Sophie away from everything for your own..." she clamps her mouth shut, still standing in the middle of the room.

  "My own what, exactly?" I say, coolly.

  "She didn't mean anything, Emmeline," my mother says, stretching out a placating hand.

  "No, I think she did. What exactly do you think of me? I'm doing this for my career or my own dreams and aspirations? You'd be partly right, actually. I'm doing this so I can be a mother to my daughter, so I can have a chance at being happy one day, and so Sophie has a future. So what is it you want from me? How should I behave? What's the proper way to mourn your husband with a young child? I'd love to know."

  I'm surprised to find myself standing up with Sophie in my arms. Everyone has recoiled from my little speech except for my father who surveys the situation as though it’s no more interesting than a monthly board meeting. Slightly embarrassed at my speech, I sit back down.

  "Moving halfway across the world isn't right."

  It is my mother who speaks this time and my mouth drops open in the shock of betrayal.

  "I'm so
rry. I've already decided. I can't stand this godforsaken town anymore," I say standing in the odd semicircle of mostly angry faces.

  My body starts to shake and the heat of anger is being fed into a frenzy. What is it that's stopping them from understanding? I am out of options?

  "I have no problem with it," my father says, slowly leaning back against the couch with one leg carelessly crossed over the other, "not that I have any say in your decision. I do believe this could be good, healthy even, for the both of you. You have my support...for what its worth," he adds, shrugging his shoulders, giving me a faint smile.

  "You don't care?" my mother in law says, tears running in deep grooves down her face, creating tracks in the thick makeup, "You don't care you're taking away the last link we have to Hugh?"

  I might have been swayed by this argument a month ago but I'm too angry at being treated as a child again to let it affect me at all.

  "I am sorry you lost your son, but you have another son and daughter and your husband with you as well. You have links to Hugh. I am a 30-year-old woman and Sophie is my child. I'm under no one's authority and more to the point my first priority is Sophie. This is a shock to all of you," I say.

  Silence breaks over the room; except for the shuffling sounds Sophie makes squirming in her chair. The very air brims with anger and pain. Its maddening waiting for someone to say something. Blood still pounds in my ears. I blink back tears. Blink again. Something takes shape just beyond the room, the outline of a man, coming more and more into focus. I forget to breathe. Hugh smiles and looks at me as though I'm the one come back to him. Quite suddenly it's the room that's gone out of focus and Hugh the only reality.

  "I've had enough," Hugh's mother says as she and her husband rise from their chairs.

  I lose track of Hugh as she shouts. She fixes her purse solidly on her arm, a fierce look upon her face.

  "You're being selfish and I'll never forgive you for this," she says.

  The door shuts behind them with a resounding crash and I foolishly look around for glass objects to catch.