A Little Ray Of Sunshine

by Lani Diane Rich

  In my defense, all I really did was take an opportunity that presented itself to me. Jess asked me to take her to the library, because she wanted to learn more about the history of Fletcher. Danny made Mom take a day off from the joined-at-the-hip, thing, I’m pretty sure because he thought we would kill each other, and he had a point. He dangled a trip to the Leach Botanical Garden in front of her, and she reluctantly took the bait. Jess and I got in the truck and went to the library, where I casually glanced through the white pages to find Luke listed, with an address. I knew the area; it was one of the oldest neighborhoods in town. As a matter of fact, Luke and I used to dream about buying a house in that area and renovating it ourselves, back in our naive and romantic days.

  I stared at the page for a long time until the letters burned themselves into my retinas, then found Jess, told her I’d be back to get her in a little while and got in the truck.

  There was no car in the drive when I got there, so I just parked on the street and stared at the place. It was a classic craftsman, not all sprawling and funky like Danny’s place, but compact and charming. The siding was natural-toned cedar shingles; the landscaping simple and elegant; the front door painted a sophisticated sage green. It was exactly the house we had talked about, exactly what we’d planned. I closed my eyes and imagined the inside. Blond hardwood, to make the small spaces seem bigger. White walls. Overstuffed furniture built for comfort on which we would curl up by the fire during rainstorms. A finished attic where I could run a home-based business while taking care of the kids.

  Rain started to fall in little plinks on my windshield, and I opened my eyes. Sometime during my daydream, Luke had pulled into the driveway, gotten out of his car and seen me. The driver’s-side door was still open, and he stood there watching me while the rain ruined his suit. I sat frozen where I was, thinking that maybe he didn’t recognize me, maybe it wasn’t me he was looking at, maybe there was something behind the truck that held his attention...

  The rain started coming down harder, and still he stood there, staring at me. I slowly raised my hand and placed my palm flat against the window. I don’t know if it was a wave, a white flag, or a wish, but the instant I did it, Luke turned away, shut his car door and went inside. I sat in my truck for a while, the sound of the rain echoing through my bones until finally, I started the truck up and drove off to collect Jess.

  I miss Rex. I know that sounds strange, but I do, I miss the dog. He would jump on me and lick my face between takes, and then Alice the makeup lady would get so mad, but it was worth it. Rex made me feel like a kid. I don’t know if I ever would have known what being a kid felt like without him.

  — Lilly Lorraine, The Merv Griffin Show, 1985

  Ten

  I knocked on Jess’s door about five times, and was ready to go back to bed when I heard a groggy, “Come in.”

  I poked my head in. She’d flicked the nightstand lamp on, but one eye was still closed. She didn’t seem surprised to see me.

  “What time is it?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. Three-ish. I’m sorry. I couldn’t sleep.”

  “Mmmm,” she said, waving for me to come in. I shut the door quietly behind me and sat on the corner of the bed, envying her the queen-bed guest room, which even came with its own bathroom, while I was stuck with the community loo off the main hall. I picked at the quilt for a while, then turned to look at Jess, who had both eyes open now.

  “How do you do it?” I asked.

  She yawned. “Do what?”

  “Fix people. You know, people who are broken.”

  She pulled her knees up and hugged them to her chest. “EJ, I told you, that’s not what I do. And I don’t think Luke is broken—”

  “Did I say Luke?” I jumped in. “No. I just want to know how you do it. How did you end up in angeling? Did you answer an ad? Take a class? Are there certifications?”

  She smiled and shook her head. “No. Although those are very creative guesses.” Her smile faded, and she stared at a spot on the wall just over my left shoulder. She was abnormally quiet, and I was beginning to wonder if she’d fallen asleep with her eyes open when she finally spoke.

  “You know how I’m always telling you that the Universe has a plan? That’s really hard to believe sometimes. Things happen that don’t make any sense. Something happened to me that didn’t make any sense. So, I got in my car, and I drove. I didn’t know what I was looking for, or what exactly I needed, I just knew that I couldn’t be in my skin anymore. I wanted to escape. And one night, I pulled into a diner in, like, Oklahoma to get some coffee and I started talking to the waitress. She hadn’t spoken to her sister in eleven years, and her sister was sick with breast cancer, and it was really tearing her up. I ended up staying with her for a while, and was able to help them mend that relationship. The sister got better, and before I moved on, she told me I was an angel and I guess that... I don’t know. I guess it made sense.”

  I stared at her in silence, questions chasing each other around my head. What had happened to her? How long had she been roaming like this? Where was her family? Who had she been before? Where did she come from? And how bad could her life have been that hanging out with me and my crazy family was actually the preferable choice?

  But I didn’t ask any of it, because I could see in her eyes that she was close to something she didn’t want to touch. I knew that feeling well, so I pulled her back from the ledge by making it all about me, which was my default setting anyway.

  “So... Luke,” I said. “I may not have broken him, but I think I dented him a little. And now he’s so weird and strange and...”

  “Grown up?” she said, the light smile returning to her lips.

  “Exactly!” I pointed my index finger at her. “And it’s not right. He’s got this hard, all-business-no-play shell around him. He used to be warm, and he’d laugh all the time. All the years I knew him, I never once saw him get mad. And we were seriously dating for over two years. Trust me, there were a million times my crap should have pissed him off but good, but nothing ever got to him. And now he’s all uptight and... with the hair and...” I forced myself to meet her eye. “He’s not Luke.”

  She nodded. “You mean, he’s not the Luke you wanted to see.”

  I bristled at this. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  She shrugged. “It means that he seems fine to me. He’s a grown-up, capable man with a business to run, and he’s running it. I think you need to admit that your big desire to fix him is about what you need from him, not necessarily about him. Maybe you should think about what it is you need, and why.”

  I opened my mouth to respond and she held up her hand.

  “Thinking requires at least a minute of silence.” She reached to the nightstand and grabbed her watch. “Okay. The minute starts... now.”

  I inhaled deeply and thought about what I needed from Luke, why I’d come rushing back to Fletcher after reading his letter, what it was that I’d expected, and how it differed from what I got. Finally, Jess put the watch down, crossed her arms over her stomach and stared at me expectantly.

  I raised my eyebrows back at her. “What?”

  “Do you have an answer?”

  “Yes,” I said, “and it’s the same as before. He’s broken and he needs fixing and I think you should hop to it.”

  She laughed. “You know what I really want to do?”

  “Fix Luke?”

  “I want to make a bookshelf for your mom. As a wedding gift. And I’d like you to help me. I think it would mean a lot to her if you made her something with your own hands.”

  “And in what way does that fix Luke?”

  To her credit, Jess refrained from throttling me. “I don’t know. I had this idea in my head earlier today, and it just popped in there again, which means it’s what we’re supposed to do. And if it’s supposed to fix Luke, it will.”

  I stared at her. “Really? Seriously? Luke’s going to get his sense of humor back if we build a book
shelf?”

  She thought for a moment, then spoke. “It’s possible the bookshelf thing isn’t about Luke. I’m just going to ask you to trust me on this. My internal guide says ‘build a bookshelf,’ so I think that’s what we should do. We’ll just have to see what happens from there. Okay?”

  I sighed, then pushed myself up from the bed. “Aren’t you guys supposed to just wink or wave your hand or sprinkle some fairy dust and everything just magically falls into place?”

  “I think you’re mixing your mythology,” she said. “Goodnight, EJ.”

  “’Night.” I pulled the door shut behind me and traipsed back down the hall to my room, where I tossed and turned until the sun came up.

  “Danny and I had a talk last night,” Mom said at breakfast the next morning, “and we were thinking that, Emmy, it might be fun for you and Danny to have a day together, and I can take Jess out for a girls’ day on the town.” She reached out and patted Jess on the arm. “It’s the least I can do for my new bridesmaid.”

  She grinned at Jess and giggled in excitement. I sat up straighter.

  “What do you need a bridesmaid for? I thought you guys were getting married at the courthouse.”

  Mom squeezed Jess’s hand, then released it and looked at me, her smile tightening. “It’s my wedding, if I want a bridesmaid and a maid of honor, I’ll have them.”

  I glanced around the table, feeling a fist of doom squeezing down on my heart. “I assume Digs is the maid of honor?”

  Mom lifted her cup of coffee. “We’ll talk about that tomorrow, darling.”

  I opened my mouth to respond when Danny patted me on the back. “I have to make a trip to the Home Depot, but then I thought we could go get ice cream and pretend you’re still that little girl who used to smile all the time.” He winked at me and grinned. “You still a fan of mint chocolate chip?”

  “Always.” I smiled sadly. Such a nice man, such a tragic fate.

  “Oooh!” Jess hopped up from the table and grabbed a pen and a pad of paper off the kitchen counter. “If you guys are going to Home Depot, then you can pick up the stuff for the bookshelf!”

  Mom perked up. “Bookshelf?”

  “Yes. EJ and I want to make you guys a bookshelf for your wedding gift.”

  Mom looked at me, her face slack with shock. “You’re going to make a bookshelf?”

  “What?” I said, bristling. “I have skills.”

  Jess adopted a mixed look of happiness and regret. “We would have liked for it to have been a surprise, but it’s kind of a hard thing to hide, and there just isn’t time for subterfuge.”

  “It’s a great idea,” Danny said. “You can use my shop, if you’d like. I should have all the tools you need in there.”

  “And then some,” Mom muttered, and they shared a smile.

  Jess clapped her hands in excitement. “That’s so great, Danny, thank you.” She shot a friendly warning look at Mom. “Can we trust that you won’t come into the shop to look before the wedding?”

  “Of course,” Mom said. “Thank you. That’s just a wonderful thing for you”—she looked at me—“girls to do for us.”

  Jess scribbled on the pad, ripped the page off and handed it to me. “Just get everything on that list and we can start work tonight.”

  Danny put one hand on my shoulder, and I turned to find him smiling at me with something like pride on his face. Then kissed me on the cheek and said, “You’re a good girl, EJ.”

  I turned my head and said under my breath, “That all depends on who you talk to.”

  Mom cleared her throat loudly and gave me a look of reproach. For a moment, I was confused, and then I remembered our conversation at the café about taking compliments gracefully.

  “Right.” I turned to Danny, smiling brightly. “Thank you, Danny. I’m glad you think so.”

  Mom cleared her throat again.

  I shifted my eyes to meet hers. “Can I get you a lozenge?”

  She raised her eyebrows at me. I inhaled deep through my nose, out through my mouth, and turned to Danny again.

  “Thank you, Danny. I am sugar and spice, and all things nice.”

  Another eruption from Mom. I flashed my hands into the air in frustration. “What, Lilly?”

  “Just say ‘thank you,’” she said, her jaw tight. “Just ‘thank you.’ No qualifiers, no sarcastic side comments. Just ‘thank you.’ Is that so hard?”

  I looked at Danny, who smiled at me with that sweet face, the same face that got me through so many hard times in my childhood, and I realized that Mom was right. I owed Danny so much, the least I could do was take his compliment with a little grace. But then I thought about what he’d actually said to me. That I was good. That I had value. And I could see in his face that he’d missed me, that he was proud of me despite how badly I’d screwed up, and suddenly my throat was tightening and my eyes were filling and I could barely choke out, “Thank you.”

  He grinned and squeezed my hand, discreetly grabbing a fresh napkin from the pile on the table and putting it by my plate so I could dab my wet eyes. mom started up a conversation about bridesmaid dresses, and Jess chimed in, creating a happy distraction to help me pull myself together.

  We finished the meal in relative civility, and an hour later, Danny and I headed off to the Home Depot.

  The closest Home Depot was in Troutdale, about twenty minutes away, and Danny and I made easy chitchat all along the way, never getting within a country mile of any sticky subjects. So I was a little surprised when we were in the lumber section picking out the wood that would become their bookshelf, and he said, “You haven’t said anything to me about my marrying your mother.”

  I looked at him, and he eyed me sideways, a half smile on his face.

  “Go ahead,” he said. “Say your piece. I know it’s in there, just struggling to get out. I’d rather you say it here than at the wedding.”

  I let out a little laugh. “Oh, come on. You know I wouldn’t ruin your wedding, Danny.”

  “It’s hard to predict what you’re going to do sometimes, EJ.” The smile was still on his face, but it had left his voice. “I just want you to say anything you have to say now rather than later.”

  I was a little stunned by this. Danny was easygoing, rarely this direct, so I knew it mattered that I was direct back.

  “Okay,” I said. “I’ll admit, when I first heard that you two were getting married, I was a little worried about you. I mean, Mom’s... Mom. And you’re Danny. It’s like hearing that Mother Teresa is going to marry Pol Pot. It’s a little worrisome.”

  I laughed at my joke. Danny smiled politely.

  “But,” I went on, “she seems to have changed a lot. And I’ve never seen you so happy. So, I guess all I have to say is congratulations. I really hope you’ll be happy.”

  “Thank you,” he said. “I think we will be.” He pointed at some plants of wood to our left. “That oak’s nice.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “It is.” I paused while he stepped closer to inspect the oak, the smile creases around his eyes deepening as he squinted at the wood.

  “Danny, why aren’t you mad at me?”

  He glanced up at me, looking as surprised by what I’d said as I was. “What are you talking about?”

  “Well, Mom’s getting in her passive-aggressive shots, and Digs has told me he’s pissed off. Luke won’t look me in the eye, although that is obviously a more complicated situation. But you... you don’t seem mad at all.”

  He smiled. “Do you want me to be mad?”

  “No,” I said quickly. “No, as a matter of fact, I really appreciate that you’re not. But you have every right to be. I took off without so much as a good-bye. I hurt your son. I’m driving the woman you’re going to marry crazy. I mean, I’ve earned a good ass-kicking from you, but you’re being so nice to me.”

  Danny thought about that for a second. “You’re right. You do deserve a good ass-kicking. And I was upset with you for a while, EJ. Things were hard for a
long time after you left. Your mother, Luke... they took a lot of looking after.”

  I lowered my head, staring down at my scuffed Keds, which looked all the more pathetic against the dull cement floor of the warehouse store.

  “But,” Danny went on, “look at it this way. If it had been Luke or David, and they had done exactly what you did, what do you think I’d do if they came back?”

  “You’d forgive them,” I said, without having to think about it. “Instantly. No questions asked.”

  He nodded. “Right.”

  “Yeah, but... they’re your kids. I mean, it’s different—”

  “No,” he said, running one hand over the top of my head the way he used to when I was little. “That’s what I don’t think you’ve ever understood, honey. It’s not different at all.” He smiled at me, then glanced back at the wood and unfolded the paper in his hands. “So, I think the four one-by-tens oughta do it. You two can use the power saw to cut them down to size. Maybe we get five just in case. I can always find a use for anything left over.”

  A guy in an orange smock walked into the aisle, and Danny waved him over. Together they loaded all the wood onto the big platform cart, and I just stood there, staring and useless. After the guy left, Danny walked over to me and put his hand on my arm.

  “EJ? You ready?”

  “Yeah,” I said, pulling on a smile. “I just hope you don’t think you’re paying for any of that stuff.”

  He angled himself behind the cart and pushed it. “I need to get some Teflon tape for the fittings in the guest bathroom anyway, so we’ll just ring it all up together. Make it easier on the poor cashier.”

  “Oh, hell, no,” I said, keeping pace beside him. “You’re not paying for your wedding gift. I’ll get the tape.”

  He shook his head. “Stubborn as a goat, just like your mother.”

  “Why does everyone keep saying that?” I asked. “It’s really mean, you know.”