A Little Ray Of Sunshine

by Lani Diane Rich

  “Dr. Travers never told me not to apologize. That was a lie.”

  I blinked. That wasn’t what I’d been expecting. Once again, Lilly Lorraine had surprised me. “Okay, look, maybe now isn’t the time for—”

  “I was scared. It was all I had left, the only thing I had that you still needed. If I gave it to you, and you didn’t forgive me, I’d have nothing left. It would be over.”

  She paused and I tried to think of something to say, but I couldn’t. She grabbed a tissue from the box on the counter and went on.

  “And then I sit in that room with that sweet girl, and I think, ‘What would her mother want to say if she knew her baby was here like this?’” She turned her face to me, her eyes red-rimmed and weepy, but her mouth was set in firm resolve. “I’m sorry.”

  “Mom, it’s—”

  She leaned forward, reaching one hand out toward me on the counter. “No. Emmy, I’m sorry. I’m truly, truly sorry.”

  I patted her hand and pushed up off my stool. I grabbed a plate from the cupboard and filled it, then walked around the breakfast bar, set it down next to mine, and pulled out the stool next to me.

  “You’re forgiven,” I said. “Now sit down and eat something. You’re too damn skinny.”

  She laughed, snatched another tissue from the box on the counter and swiped at her face, then sat down next to me and took a bite of eggs.

  “So, these are supposed to be my fat and happy years, huh?” she asked.

  “Yep.” I grabbed a cinnamon roll off the platter in front of us and put it on the edge of her plate. “Get cracking, Lilly. You’re behind the curve.”

  It was about ten o’clock that morning when Luke came back from the private detective’s office with the information about Jess. I knew that whatever the news was, it was bad. I could tell by the tone of the muffled voices, and the sound of Mom’s sniffling that drifted up to the guest room from the foyer. I pulled my legs up to my chest, waiting for the news to come to me. A few minutes later, there was a knock on the door. I got up to find Luke and Danny standing in the hallway, their faces grim. Danny put his hand on my shoulder and guided me out, stepping wordlessly into the room and shutting the door behind him. Luke’s face was tight and he stared down at the folded piece of paper in his hands. He finally raised his eyes to meet mine and then handed me the sheet.

  I unfolded it to find a photocopy of a newspaper clipping from the Forster County News in eastern Michigan, with the headline, MISSING WOMAN FOUND:

  A woman reported missing last week has been located, authorities report.

  Jessica Marinello Szyzynski, 25, failed to show up for work at the Dorr Public Library in Dorr Township last week, causing a panic among her co-workers. Szyzynski had been suffering from a depression since her husband and baby son were killed in the pileup on I-196 last summer, and there had been fears of a possible suicide attempt.

  “She was a foster child,” her supervisor, Elizabeth Masters, said. “She had no family. Tim and little Matty were her whole life. When they died, something in her just shut down.”

  Workers and patrons from the library pooled their money to hire a private detective to locate the woman.

  “She was always such a sweet and happy girl,” said library patron Sandra Coolidge, 83. “We all loved her dearly.”

  The private detective found Szyzynski staying with a friend in Two Trees, Oklahoma. She sent the following message to the Forster County News and requested we print it for her:

  “Dear Friends,

  “I am so deeply sorry for any worry I might have caused you, and I am sorry I couldn’t say goodbye to you all. Thank you for everything. I’m safe; please don’t worry about me.”

  “At least we know she’s safe,” said Masters. “We’re just glad that nothing terrible has happened to her. Well, nothing else.”

  I checked the date on the article; it had been written three years earlier. I folded the paper up and handed it to Luke. I looked up at him, but couldn’t say anything. I mean, what could I say? It was worse than I could have imagined, and I wasn’t prepared for it. I had thought she was like me, that she had done something dumb and abandoned people who loved her, people we could fly in to see her, people who would save her through their sheer loving presence. But there was no one. I felt numb and anxious about what was coming, like the moments between when you hit your thumb with the hammer and when you actually feel it.

  “Thanks,” I said, and turned toward the door to Jess’s room.

  “Eejie,” I heard Luke say, but I continued on into the room. Danny opened his mouth to say something, but if he did, I didn’t hear him. A moment later, as I sat in the big chair staring at Jess’s face, I heard the door click shut behind them, and it was then that I started to cry.

  Much of that day blends together in my memory. I remember refusing lunch and dinner until I was sitting in the dark, but I don’t think I had any reliable consciousness of time passing. It felt like seconds, and it felt like days. All I could see was Jess’s face, and all I could think was, What if it were me? What if Luke and I had stayed together, and had a baby, and what if...? My stomach turned just thinking about it. I couldn’t even wrap my mind around what she had been through and I wanted to reach her wherever she was now, but I couldn’t. All I could do was sit there with her and make sure that she wasn’t alone, so I was determined to do that. On occasion, Mom or Danny would come in and ask to relieve me, but I refused. I’m not sure if at that point I was much more responsive than Jess. I knew that by the time they sent Luke in, the room had been dark for a while.

  He came in and turned on the small desk lamp, which didn’t add much light to the room, but still made me squint. He shut the door behind him and stood next to it for a while. I kept my eyes on Jess, who had rolled over in the bed so her back was to me, but I watched her body carefully to be sure she was still breathing. She was. Shallowly, but there was movement.

  “Eejie,” he said, his voice registering just above a whisper, “you’ve been in here for ten hours.”

  I shrugged, keeping my eyes on Jess. Luke leaned over, trying to get into my eyeline, but I just closed my eyes.

  “Hey.” He touched my face and I opened my eyes and looked at him. He looked tired and worried and his hair was its old, beautiful mess and I didn’t even care.

  “Lilly made some food. It would really mean a lot to her if you would go down and eat something. I’ll stay with Jess, okay?”

  “No,” I said. “She’s going to come out of it soon, and I need to be here when she does.”

  Luke glanced behind him at the bed, where Jess lay motionless except for the slight movements of breathing. He turned back to me.

  “Babe, look. Dad and Lilly need to talk to you about that.”

  Alarm shot through me. “What do you mean?”

  “It’s been two days, Eej. She hasn’t eaten. She...” He shook his head. “You need to go down and talk to Dad and your mom. I will come and get you the second she moves, I swear.”

  I started at him as the cold realization washed over me: They wanted to put her in a hospital. She didn’t have any family to make the call, so it was down to me. I was going to have to convince them not to do it, and I didn’t know how to do that, especially because all the logic stated that we should have called the hospital that first morning. But my gut was screaming no, and Jess believed in that, so I had to believe in it, too.

  I slowly pushed myself up from the chair. Luke put his hand on the small of my back and guided me to the door. I glanced back at him and he gave me a small, encouraging smile.

  “I’ll be here,” he said.

  I felt weak, my muscles shaking, as I walked down the stairs. The lights in the house seemed uncomfortably bright, and when I came into the kitchen, Danny, Digs and Mom descended upon me. Danny walked me to the breakfast bar and sat me down on the stool, Digs put a blanket around my shoulders, and Mom poured some broth into a mug and slid it in front of me. I got a few sips in before Mom said,
“Emmy—,” and I said, “No.”

  “EJ,” Danny said. “There are doctors there that can help her.”

  “I know.” I took a sip of the broth, then set the mug down. “I know. There’s not an argument you can make that I don’t agree with.”

  Mom reached across the breakfast bar and touched my hand. “Honey, she could die.”

  “She will die, if I send her to a hospital. I don’t know how I know that, but I just know. Jess, she... she follows her gut on everything. And I’m all she has right now, I have to do that for her. And my gut just says no. No hospital.”

  “Okay,” Danny said, his voice strong and soothing and fatherly. “Okay, then. No hospital tonight.” Mom opened her mouth and Danny held up one hand. “Tonight. But, EJ, sweetheart, if she’s not eating by tomorrow morning...”

  I raised my eyes to Mom’s. She held them for a long moment, then slowly nodded. I couldn’t nod back. I just knew she couldn’t go to a hospital. I felt that the only thing keeping her here was all of us, and how much we’d all grown to love her in such a short time. It didn’t make any sense. I knew she needed food, I knew she needed care, I just couldn’t agree to it.

  Except I had no choice. At a certain point, she was sure to die at home, too. Didn’t matter where you were if you weren’t eating.

  “Okay,” I said finally. Mom’s shoulders slumped in relief. “I’ll just get her to eat, then.”

  I picked up my mug of broth and started for the stairs. I had no idea how I was going to get Jess to drink it. As a matter of fact, I was pretty sure I’d fail, but trying was the only thing I had left in my arsenal, so I was going to try. I could hear footsteps behind me, but whether it was just Mom or all three of them, my brain was too addled to distinguish. I opened the door to Jess’s room and walked in. Luke hopped up from the chair and walked over to us. I could hear him and Danny talking in low tones behind me as I knelt by the bed, but I couldn’t hear what they were saying.

  “Jess?” I said, my voice wavering. “Jess, honey, I need you to wake up now. You need to eat something, okay? Just a few sips of broth, that’s all, and then you can sleep again. Can you do that?”

  She didn’t respond. I stared at her waist, looking for the movement of breath, and it was a while before I saw it. It was so shallow, as if at any minute, it would be time to just stop. I glanced up to see Danny, Mom, Digs and Luke standing in a line, looking at me. I had to do something, I just didn’t know what. And if I didn’t figure it out soon, she would die.

  “What do I do?” I asked. My eyes locked with my mother’s. “I don’t know what to do. She has no one but me, and I don’t know what to do. She always knows what to do, and I...”

  It was then that my mother stepped forward, her movements forceful and confident. She put her hands on my shoulders and pulled me up, walking me over to stand with Danny, who put his arm around me. I leaned my head on his shoulder and watched as my mother crawled into bed with Jess. She snuck one arm under Jess’s head, and nudged her up until her face was resting on Mom’s shoulder. The dirty satin of Jess’s dress shifted on the bed as my mother pulled her into her arms like a life-size rag doll.

  “Mom...” I said, but I trailed off when I saw Jess’s eyes open suddenly, as if she’d been slapped awake. She howled as though my mother had lit her on fire, but Mom didn’t move, just tightened her hold. Jess kicked and struggled, but was so weakened by the days of not eating that ninety-eight pounds of determined Lilly Lorraine were just too much for her. As suddenly as she’d come to, she just went slack.

  For a second, I thought maybe she’d passed out or died, and I stopped breathing myself. Then a sound came from her throat, a hard knot of a sob, the kind of sound you expect to hear when someone’s been punched in the gut. I took in a breath and Danny tightened his hold on me. Then Jess began to wail like nothing I’d ever heard. She wept with long, racking sobs that shook her body, my mother, the bed. My mother smoothed her hands over Jess’s ratty hair and made comforting mom noises, but still Jess cried and writhed like she’d been cracked wide open. I cried with her, and Danny held on to me, stroking my back and my hair, telling me it would be okay. He motioned for Luke and Digs to go, and they silently did as instructed.

  Mom cuddled Jess as though she were a small child, holding on to her, whispering words of encouragement and pride into her ear, selflessly giving every bit of strength she had to this motherless girl. She didn’t cry a single tear, just held on to Jess and was a mom. The mom I never had. But still, there she was, fixing the unfixable, saving Jess’s life, saving me. I leaned against Danny, felt him strong and solid next to me, and a bone-deep relief flowed through me. This was what it was like, I marveled, to have parents who would catch you, no matter what. This was what it was like to be loved so powerfully that it even transferred to the stray little angels you brought home with you.

  This is what it was like.

  After a while, Jess’s wails quieted into soft weeping, and still my mother held on to her. A little while later, Jess fell asleep again, but her breathing wasn’t as shallow as before. Her chest rose and fell like someone who had a hold on life, and I felt hopeful again. Mom extricated herself from under Jess, wrapping the blankets around her. Jess took a deep, grief-stuttered breath, and then sighed and rolled over, still passed out. Danny and I stepped into the hallway and waited. A few seconds later, Mom clicked the door gently shut behind her and led us all downstairs to the kitchen, where she started to toss out orders like a drill sergeant.

  “Danny, I want you to gather some fresh queen-sized bedding from the linen closet. Digs, I need you to go out and get chocolate - ice cream, cookies, truffles, whatever you can find.”

  Digs opened his mouth to protest but she held up her hand.

  “Don’t argue. You want to help Jess, you’ll get ice cream.” She turned to Luke. “Luke, we need something clean and fresh for her to wear. She’s a size six petite. Go out and get some basic t-shirts, sweatshirts, jeans. Shop for comfort, not fashion.”

  Luke shot me a look. Fashion? I offered him my strongest smile, which was still pretty weak.

  “You can go to the Target in Troutdale,” Mom said, misinterpreting Luke’s look of puzzled amusement as not knowing where to shop.

  “Mom,” I said, “she has clean laundry here.”

  “Clean, yes,” Mom said. “But not new. She needs things that are new, fresh. When she comes out of this, she’s going to need to start over again.”

  Her eyes locked with Danny’s, and I could see by his face that he’d been through this before, with Mom. About five years ago, I guessed. She clapped her hands.

  “Hop to it, boys,” she said. “The Queen has spoken. Shuffle off.”

  They dispersed, and Mom headed to the pantry. “I don’t have any homemade stock on hand, so we’ll have to use store-bought, but I’ve got everything we need for a hearty vegetable soup. Let’s see. Macaroni and cheese, mashed potatoes... Good. Good. We’ll need some protein, though.” She came back from the pantry, arms full and dropped her cache on the counter, then opened the freezer. “Oooh, roast chicken. By the time this is thawed and cooked, she’ll be ready for it. Perfect.”

  She pulled out a big frozen bird and moved it to the refrigerator to thaw. She grabbed two aprons off the hooks on the wall and handed me one.

  “You can start with the carrots. Wash ‘em, peel ‘em and chop ‘em, and then I’ll tell you what you can do next.”

  I grabbed the bag of carrots. “Mom, how do you know she’ll come out of it? I mean, I think maybe she’s better, but how do you know.”

  “I’m a mom,” she said, smiling. “We know these things.” She grabbed a peeler from the counter and plunked it into my hand. “Now get to work. She’ll be down soon.”

  Luke and Digs returned with the goods, and Mom immediately sent them away.

  “Too many people are going to overwhelm her,” she said. “When she wakes up, it should be just me and EJ.” She squeezed Digs’s hand. “I’ll h
ave Danny call you with updates, and we’ll let you know as soon as you can come back and see her. Okay?”

  Digs nodded, then pulled Lilly in for a hug. I leaned against the wall in the hallway and watched, amazed at how small Digs seemed in that moment. It was funny; I’d always been conscious of being a fatherless girl, but I’d never thought much about what it had been like for the boys to grow up without a mother. I’d had Danny at least, but as Digs held onto my tiny mother for strength, I realized how much she had to offer them, even as adults.

  I glanced at Luke to find him watching me as intently as I’d been watching Digs and Mom. I smiled lightly and he smiled back and gave a little wave. Then Mom hustled them both out the door and we went back into the kitchen, where we played Scrabble at the table with Danny, pausing the game only to fold Jess’s new laundry. At nine o’clock I was just about ready to throw in the towel and head to bed when I heard a small voice from the hall behind us.

  “Hi.”

  I turned and there was Jess, a total mess in her bridesmaid’s dress, but walking and focusing on her own power. Mom hopped up off from the kitchen table and wordlessly pulled out a chair at for Jess. Danny smiled, but didn’t say anything, then beelined for the linens that were laying in wait on the couch in the den, quietly doing as he’d been told by the Queen. He disappeared upstairs to clean out Jess’s room, and Jess dutifully sat where instructed. Mom put a small bowl of soup in front of her with a handful of saltines and a glass of water.

  “Eat slowly, sweetheart,” she said as she sat down next to her. “But eat.”

  Jess allowed a small smile, then dipped her spoon into the broth and sipped delicately, staring down at the Scrabble board.

  “Who played ‘qaid’ on the triple word score?” she asked.

  Mom huffed. “That was Danny. I didn’t think it was a real word, either.”

  “No, it’s a word,” Jess said, clearing her throat. “I, um... I used to work at a library, and we would play when it got slow. That was one of my standby words.”