Light the Lamp

by Catherine Gayle

  It was while I was standing outside, waiting for the dog to do his business, that my phone beeped again. It was the middle of the night—almost three a.m.—so I immediately panicked, thinking something horrible had happened to Noelle.

  The text wasn’t from her. It was from my credit card company, telling me that she’d used the card—a purchase of $6.48 at some place called Shari’s. I immediately googled Shari’s. They were a twenty-four-hour restaurant. That meant Noelle had eaten something, at least this once.

  By the time I put my phone away, the puppy was racing as far as the leash would allow, running in circles, genuinely happy. I let him bounce around for a few minutes before heading back upstairs.

  “Do you have a name for him yet?” I asked Babs when we returned to the apartment.

  “I thought I’d let Ellie name him. Tuck thinks we should call him Godzilla.”

  Only a little boy would come up with a name like that for a tiny puppy. If Noelle never returned, though, this little guy might end up being Godzilla.

  I took my phone out one more time and snapped a shot of the puppy. It came out as a blur because Godzilla wouldn’t hold still for even half a second, but even if you couldn’t see his face you could tell he was just a pup. I put it in a text to send to Noelle along with a message.

  He needs a name. Can you give him one?

  Then I hit “send” and said good night to Babs. Tomorrow was going to be a big day with the silent auction. I needed to at least attempt to sleep.

  I went into Noelle’s room again to curl up in her bed, but she’d been gone so long that the sheets no longer smelled like her.

  “It looks great, Noelle,” said Molly O’Brien, my new boss at Willamette Events and Party Planning. She took a few steps back from the table I’d been setting up for tonight’s dinner. “I love what you’ve done. Now I need you to repeat that on every table in the dining section.”

  I glanced at the rows upon rows of tables, taking a quick count in my head. There were twenty-five tables in total, each seating twelve people. I not only had to take care of the centerpieces but also set out each place setting. Molly was a perfectionist, too, and I had no intention of letting her down.

  “Got it. How much time do I have left?” I still hadn’t gotten used to wearing a watch. It was in my tote bag, stored in one of the back rooms near the hotel’s ballroom, where I was working.

  “They’ll start to arrive in about two and a half hours.”

  I nodded. It had taken me fifteen minutes to set up the first table, but now that I had something to replicate I should be able to cut that time down significantly for each one that remained. I didn’t have any time to waste, though.

  “I’ll be setting up the auction tables if you need me.” She walked over to the other side of the big ballroom and got to work, and I buried my head in my own task.

  The big event tonight was an auction of some sort, raising money for a charity that assisted addicts who’d broken laws during the course of their addictions to turn their lives around and become upstanding members of the community.

  I couldn’t remember what the organization hosting the event tonight was called. They were new to the area, and this was their first event in Portland. It didn’t matter what they were called. I was just glad I could be part of such a good cause.

  The whole time I’d been working on the centerpiece for this table, I’d been thinking about the man who had killed my parents. In the course of his trial, we’d learned that he was high that night. He held up the convenience store because he needed money for his next hit. As far as I knew, he was still in prison. But maybe someday, when he was released…maybe then he could get help from an organization like this.

  I liked the idea of that.

  When I was just finishing up with the last of my tables, Molly came over to help me put the finishing touches on it.

  “All right,” she said once we were done. “Why don’t you go back and get changed, then go into the kitchen? The caterer wants to give you a few instructions about how she wants things done. I’ll get all the candles lit and take care of the last-minute details.”

  “On my way.” I grinned and then scurried off to do what she’d asked.

  Tonight’s event was much dressier than the other events I’d worked so far, so I had to wear a tuxedo vest and bow tie with a pressed and starched white shirt, knee-length black skirt, and black pumps. I could hear the guests starting to arrive by the time I’d finished getting myself properly attired, so I hurried off to the kitchen to be briefed by the caterer alongside the other members of the night’s staff. She was incredibly specific with everything she wanted: serve guests from the right not the left, pay attention to the placement of the plates, don’t lean over the guests to fill their glasses, never speak above a whisper when someone was on stage talking to the room, and on and on.

  I soaked it all in, committing it all to memory so I wouldn’t screw anything up. Not only did I need this job but I truly believed in what this organization was doing. I wanted everything to be as perfect as Molly did, as perfect as the caterer did.

  The kitchen staff had been busy loading carts full of individually plated appetizers while she gave us our instructions. Molly had a worker like me for every table, and each of us got a cart. As we pushed them out into the hall to take them to the ballroom, the caterer stopped us individually to be certain we knew how the plates should be placed in front of the guests. I was near the back of the line, one of the last to head out.

  “Just like so,” she said, “with this streak of balsamic reduction pointing toward two o’clock if the plate was a clock face.”

  “Perfect,” I murmured, pushing my cart out into the hall. “Two o’clock.” I followed the line of workers pretty much all dressed exactly like me, turning the corner into the darkened ballroom.

  A few sconces with red coverings along the outer walls added a bit more light to the red tapers and pillars and votive candles adorning each of the centerpieces, but it was still dim enough that my eyes took a few moments to adjust. The person behind me bumped her cart into me, and so I hurried to make my way to my table, one of the ones closest to the slightly raised stage area.

  Up on the stage, a woman I’d met briefly when Molly and I first arrived this afternoon was welcoming everyone in at the microphone. Jessica Lynch, if I remembered correctly. She was the person in charge, the one who’d put the whole thing together and hired Willamette Events to do all the work.

  I pulled my cart up alongside my table and took a breath, then set to work. Streak of balsamic points to two o’clock. Serve from the right. Fill glasses away from the table instead of leaning over. In only a few minutes, I’d served appetizers and filled water glasses for seven of the twelve people at my table without incident while the woman on stage got through her welcome speech. I wasn’t really paying any attention to her. My focus was on making sure I did my job exactly as I was supposed to do it.

  But then her tone changed a bit, just as I picked up the small plate for the eighth person at my table.

  “Without any further delay,” Ms. Lynch said, “let me turn it over to the founder and head of the Light the Lamp Foundation, none other than Liam Kallen, one of the newest additions to our very own Portland Storm!”

  My head shot up, and my pulse thundered through my veins. Two tables over from me, Liam was rising from his seat and straightening his tuxedo jacket before climbing the steps and joining her. He’d shaved, probably today. It was the first time I had ever seen him with a smooth jaw. I choked on my tongue, but no one could hear me over the mixture of polite applause and raucous whooping.

  I couldn’t make a scene. I couldn’t do anything that would draw his attention to me, which meant I had to get myself back to work and make sure I was meticulous about it. Thank goodness the lighting was dim. Maybe he wouldn’t notice me.

  “Thank you all so much for coming tonight,” he started, the rich timbre of his voice wrapping around me and squeezing s
o hard it hurt to breathe. I couldn’t focus on him. I’d never get through the night if I did, and then I’d lose this job, too.

  I swallowed, steeled my spine, and set the plate in my hand down in front of the next gentleman. “Water, sir?” I said, making sure I kept my voice down. I reached for his glass.

  “Noelle?”

  The man’s hand closed over my wrist, gentle but firm, and I suddenly couldn’t breathe at all. My head shot up so I could see him. Dark eyes, made darker in the dim lighting. Dark hair buzzed short like a military cut. It was one of Liam’s teammates. Jonny? I couldn’t remember which one it was for sure, but I knew without a doubt that I was right in my assumption.

  I shook my head, hoping he would know that meant not now or I can’t talk to you or please don’t let Liam know I’m here.

  “It is you,” he said.

  I tugged my hand free and gave him a pleading look. “Let me do my job. Please.”

  He ground his jaw, but he nodded.

  I hurried through serving the rest of my table and pushed my cart back out into the hall. I’d made it halfway to the kitchen when my chest hurt so bad I couldn’t tell if I was having a heart attack or just struggling to breathe.

  I leaned back against the wall, trying to get myself under control again. Now what?

  The appetizers had all been cleared away, and the workers were coming back in, carts laden with plates bearing the main course. In the time I’d been on stage, I’d explained what the Light the Lamp Foundation was, how we used the money we raised, what we did for the community in generic terms. Everyone in the audience seemed to still be with me, not dozing off or zoning out.

  Now came the hard part, though. Now I had to talk about why Light the Lamp mattered so much to me. Now I had to give it a human element.

  I took a moment to try to calm myself, to focus on making sure every word that came out of my mouth was exactly what I wanted to say. It was easy to get lost during this part, to get so caught up in the rawness of emotion that came over me that I would go off on a tangent. I didn’t want that to happen. Not tonight. Almost all of my new teammates were here, along with hundreds of people from the community. This was my first chance to show them who I really was. Not the hockey player, but the man.

  I had to get it right.

  The audience was getting restless, so I had to keep going before I lost them. I picked up the remote control for the slideshow and pressed the button that would move it to the next slide.

  “Now I want to tell you a little about how Light the Lamp came to be. This is Liv,” I said. My voice cracked a little but not too badly. I had to keep going, though, or it was going to get worse. “She was my wife. Well—” I paused and looked back at the image of her on the screen, chuckling because this picture had been taken when she was only five years old. “—technically, at this point, she wasn’t my wife. Not yet. That was around the time we met, though, and she was beautiful to me even then.”

  The audience laughed with me. I could do this. I’d done it before, so tonight shouldn’t be any different.

  “I still remember the first time I saw her. She had a big grin and an infectious laugh. Her hair was neat and tidy in braids, but she was wearing these huge rubber galoshes that had to have been her father’s. They were easily three times the size of her feet, and she kept tripping over them and almost falling down. The two of them had gone out fishing, and I was doing the same with my dad. Liv caught the first fish of the day, and after her father helped her take it off the hook, she brought it over and held it up to me to show off, but she tripped over those galoshes at the last second and her fish slapped me in the face. I might have fallen in love with her that day even though I’d thought it was maybe the grossest thing I’d ever experienced in my life.”

  The audience laughed and sighed and said, “Aww,” and I knew they were as hooked on the story I was weaving as that fish had been on Liv’s line. I flipped to the next slide, a picture of the two of us when we were teenagers, a couple of years before Alzheimer’s stole her father away from her.

  A flash of blond hair out of the corner of my eye distracted me, off to my right. My mind immediately turned to Noelle, but it wasn’t her. It was just one of the workers running the event. I couldn’t think that every blonde I saw was Noelle. I forced the thought out of my mind and kept going.

  “Liv and I were around each other a lot as we grew up. We went to school together. Her family moved into a house just down the street from mine, and we spent our summers running off to get into one adventure after another. She was always trying to catch frogs and other creatures and then make me kiss them—probably because of the fish-face incident—but before long it was me trying to catch her. And kiss her, of course. She was a lot nicer to kiss than a frog, I can promise you that.”

  I caught a few smiles and nods in the crowd before I flipped to the next slide. It was an image Liv’s dad carrying her piggy-back style, both of them smiling bright enough to light up a room, just like Noelle’s smile did.

  I had to stop thinking about Noelle. I’d never get through tonight if I kept thinking about her, wondering where she was and what she was doing and if she’d had enough to eat. There hadn’t been any more charges on my card since that first one.

  Fuck. I was still thinking about her. I looked back at the screen behind me again so I could remind myself what tonight was all about.

  “The only person in the world she was closer to than me was her father. The pair of them were inseparable. They didn’t just go fishing together—he took her to dance classes and was at all her recitals, he taught her how to skate and to ski. Anything she wanted to learn or try, he was right by her side, even with things like changing tires on a car and replacing the oil filter. She always loved her mother, too, but there was a special bond between Liv and her father. And he never made me feel like I was coming between them, even when I was.”

  I didn’t miss Webs shaking his head and crossing his arms over his chest to my left.

  The next slide was me in in a suit with an Islanders jersey and ball cap, lifting Liv off her feet so I could kiss her. We’d been at the NHL draft, and I’d just been selected in the first round.

  “My hockey career started to pull me away from her at right around the same time her father’s health started to take him away, as well. A week after I got drafted by the NHL’s New York Islanders, he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. Luckily, for the first few years of my pro career, we didn’t have to be separated. I was able to play for Frölunda in Gothenburg, the town where we’d grown up and where her parents still lived. That meant Liv could be with her parents and with me. We always knew there would come a point where I would have to go, even though I hated the thought of leaving her behind. But I knew she wouldn’t leave him. She wanted to help her mother take care of him. Liv spent much of her time making wind chimes because the music calmed him if he woke up in a night terror. It started as a hobby and grew into a business.”

  I flipped the slide again, this one showing Liv with her parents, a forest of wind chimes blowing on the porch behind her. I’d been the one behind the lens taking the picture. It had been a lucid day for her father, and he’d wanted another family portrait, one where he knew who his wife and daughter were.

  “That day eventually came, the day when I had to leave, and so I went to New York by myself. For several years it was always the same. I would leave Sweden in September and come home to Liv and her wind chimes in the summer, once my hockey season was done. She came to visit me a few times, but as her father’s health got worse, her visits grew shorter and less frequent. I begged her to marry me more times than I could tell you. I loved her, and I hated being without her. One day, she finally agreed.”

  The best of our wedding photos came up, with my parents by my side and hers by her side, despite the fact that her father didn’t understand what was going on during the wedding or the photo session. He didn’t know she was his little girl that day. He had this loop
y grin on his face, one anyone who knew him would recognize as part of his confusion from the disease.

  “She still wouldn’t come to the States with me, though. Her father needed her too much, and so did her mother, for that matter. Liv didn’t leave until—”

  I cut myself off, shocked at what I’d almost spoken aloud. But maybe I needed to. Maybe I needed to give it a voice. Maybe that was what Noelle kept telling me I was holding back from her, keeping hidden behind a wall. She wasn’t here, but if I could tell all of these people—my teammates and complete strangers alike—maybe then I could tell her.

  If I could find her. If I could make her listen.

  I swallowed hard, willing my voice to cooperate. “She didn’t leave Sweden until she found out she was pregnant. Liv believed that a family should be together, that a child needs both a mother and a father in order to thrive. Looking at the closeness of her family and the bond she had with her father, it’s easy to understand why she would feel so strongly about that. So, she came to Long Island to spend the NHL season with me. She missed her parents like you wouldn’t believe, but she stayed and kept making her wind chimes, until one night when I was gone on a road trip with the team. She had a flat tire on the highway, and because it was icy out, roadside assistance said they couldn’t get to her for hours. Liv had learned how to change a tire from her father, though, and while he might have forgotten those days, she hadn’t. So she decided to get out and do it herself instead of waiting for help. The sooner she could get home, the sooner she would be off the roads and safe. That was when a drunk driver in an eighteen-wheeler lost control on a patch of ice and killed both her and our unborn baby.”

  It was so quiet in that ballroom you could hear every sniffle and every drawn breath—especially mine. I was breathing heavier than normal, and my heart was pounding like it did during the most intense hockey games I’d ever played, but I still had to keep talking. Because this wasn’t about death. This wasn’t about destruction. This was about finding a way to live again.