The Light We Lost

by Jill Santopolo

  I waited until after dinner. Until the kids were in bed. Until Annie was walked and fed.

  “Want a drink?” I asked him.

  “Drinking on a Wednesday,” he said. “Look at you!”

  I gave him a wan smile.

  “That rough at the office?” he asked. “Sure, pour me in.”

  We’d discovered raki on our honeymoon and both loved it, so I poured us some, a subtle reminder of the fact that we were a couple, together, married. I thought he might need that.

  “So, which show’s giving you trouble?” he asked, when I handed him his glass and sat down on the couch.

  He’d made peace with my work, finally started asking about it after I had Liam, when I made it clear that even with two kids, I wouldn’t stay home. And once in a while, when we passed by a store that had a Rocket Through Time lunchbox in the window, or a bus stop with a Sparkle On! poster—my girl-empowerment show, a nod to having a daughter—I could detect a note of pride in his smile that made me smile too.

  Instead of answering him, though, I said, “I went to a photography exhibit with Julia today during lunch.”

  “Oh, yeah?” He turned to look at me, already, I’m sure, trying to figure out where I was going with this. “How is she?”

  “Good,” I said, carefully. “The show was Gabe’s. My ex, Gabe’s. She read about it in Time Out New York this morning, so we went.”

  Darren’s body went still. “I see,” he said.

  I took the magazine from the coffee table and opened it, then handed it to him. “There were pictures of me in it, Darren. I swear I didn’t know.”

  “This is for real,” he said, quickly reading the words in front of him.

  “It is,” I said. “I was shocked. I . . .” I felt guilty, like I should apologize, like it was my fault, but it wasn’t. It was your fault, Gabe.

  Darren looked up from your interview, stricken. His face had gone pale. “Is this your way of telling me that you and he—”

  “No!” I said. “No! There’s nothing between us. I haven’t seen him since that time Violet and I met up with him for coffee. Before I was even pregnant with Liam. And I exchanged one Twitter message with him the night bin Laden was killed. That’s it! Really. I swear.”

  The color was returning to Darren’s face. “You really haven’t seen him. He really didn’t ask you.”

  “I swear on the lives of both of our children,” I said.

  Darren started getting angry then. He crumpled the magazine. “What a prick. What a self-important prick. Let’s call the gallery. We can ask them to take it down.”

  “It’s okay,” I said. “We don’t have to do that. We don’t need to start anything.” My emotions were unknotting, and as angry as I was with you, I didn’t want the exhibit to come down. A part of me liked being up there. A part of me felt special. Chosen. Important.

  He took a deep breath. “You’re right. I wasn’t thinking. We don’t need to make this bigger than it is.”

  I took a sip of raki. Darren did too. Then he drained his glass. I followed suit, relieved that this wasn’t worse. I don’t know what I expected would happen, what I thought he would do, but this was okay. Darren and I were okay.

  He rattled the ice in his glass. “Tomorrow night we’re going out for dinner after work,” he said. “I’ll get us reservations somewhere fantastic. And then we’re going to see the exhibit. If there are pictures of my wife in an art gallery, I want to see them.”

  I nodded. “Of course,” I said. “Whatever you want.”

  • • •

  THE NEXT MORNING I put on a tight black dress and heels to go to work. It was an outfit I knew Darren liked on me. One that had once made him whisper, after a couple of glasses of wine at a dinner party, “I have the hottest wife in this whole damn place.”

  After the promised fantastic dinner at Del Posto we took a cab straight to the gallery. When we walked in, I moved to the end of the line of people so we could go from country to country, following your journey of hope and light back in time. But Darren grabbed my hand and said, “Where are you?”

  “At the end,” I answered, indicating the corner at the other side of the gallery.

  Darren pulled me through the crowd—and there really was a crowd that night, so many more people than when Julia and I were there—until we turned the corner. And then he stopped. His hand went slack and dropped mine. He stared. And stared. And didn’t say a word.

  I looked at myself on the wall. I tried to put myself in his shoes. I was someone he thought he knew better than anyone in the world, and he was seeing a different version of me. He was seeing Lucy-before-Darren, Lucy who loved someone else, Lucy who shared someone else’s secrets and dreams. Who inspired them. I don’t think I ever inspired Darren. And it couldn’t have been easy for him, seeing me through your eyes. I took a step closer to him, but he didn’t reach out to me.

  When he finally looked over, I could see the anger simmering in his eyes. The jealousy. The hurt.

  We fought about you for the first and only time that night. Darren wanted me to promise never to be in touch with you again, but despite understanding how he felt, I couldn’t agree to it. Eventually my reasonable, chess-playing Darren returned and he took back his request. But it was the most insecure, the neediest I’d ever seen him.

  “Do you love me?” he asked.

  “I love you,” I told him. “I do.”

  Then his voice cracked. “Do you love him?”

  “No,” I said. “Just you.” And it was true then, or I thought it was. I promised him that I loved him more than I’d ever loved you, that there’s no way you could compete, when he and I had a family together. By the end of the night, he and I were okay again. We had sex. We slept with our arms wrapped around each other.

  • • •

  I FORCIBLY PUT YOU out of my mind for a while after that. I focused on my anger at the position you put me in, my anger that you hadn’t asked first. I was doing it for Darren, for Violet and Liam, for our family. But I couldn’t stay angry with you. Because I really was flattered that you wanted me in your retrospective. Flattered that I meant so much to you, to your work. In that knot of emotions, a piece of me thrilled at being called your muse.

  lxi

  Sometimes life seems to chug along, moving forward at a near-glacial pace day to day, until something happens that makes you stop and take notice and realize that a ton of time has passed while you weren’t looking. An anniversary, a birthday, a holiday. On September 11th, 2011, Violet was almost four. Liam had just turned eight months old. I was a producer on three different kids’ shows and developing pitches for two more. And Darren and I had been married for almost five years. It was more than seven years since you left New York. And a decade, exactly, since the first time you and I met. A decade since the attacks that set both of our adult lives in motion and caused our individual journeys to intertwine and separate.

  At Violet’s preschool, September 11th was Heroes Day. There was a special gathering in Prospect Park where the kids learned about firefighters and police officers and EMTs. After that, whenever Violet saw a fire truck or a police car or an ambulance, she stopped and chanted, “Go, heroes, go! Go, heroes, go!” She still does. Liam, too. It always makes me smile.

  Memorial events took place across the city. Services at St. Pat’s and Trinity Church, and a photography exhibit at the Historical Society. There were two blue columns of light, beaming up from Ground Zero, shining even taller than the towers, visible for miles. And you called. I’d actually been contemplating calling you, even though I knew I shouldn’t.

  I’m sure you remember this.

  You were in Kabul. “I’ve been thinking about you all day,” you said, when I picked up the phone.

  “Me too,” I confessed, ducking into Violet’s bedroom and shutting the door.

  “I didn’
t know if you would pick up,” you said.

  I thought back to all of the times you’d reached out to me. “Have I ever not picked up?” I asked.

  “Never,” you said softly.

  I sat down on Violet’s bed and told you about Heroes Day, about what was happening in New York. You said you wished you were here.

  “It feels like you should be,” I said. “It feels like we should go to the roof of Wien and take stock of the city.”

  “I wish,” you said.

  Neither of us knew what to say after that, but neither of us wanted to get off the phone. We sat there in silence, receivers pressed to our ears.

  “Let’s imagine we’re there right now,” I said.

  “And there’s no smoke, just a beautiful skyline,” you said.

  I closed my eyes. “And birds, and a blue, cloudless sky, and people walking up and down the streets,” I added. “And you can hear children’s laughter wafting up from a playground below. And no one’s afraid that the next breath they take might be their last.”

  “What else?” you asked.

  “The Empire State Building,” I told you. “We can see that too.”

  “Standing strong and proud,” you said.

  “Yes, strong and proud.” I opened my eyes.

  “I like that,” you said. “Thank you, Lucy.”

  “You’re welcome,” I answered, though I wasn’t quite sure what you were thanking me for.

  “I should go to bed now, it’s late over here.” You yawned through your words.

  “Okay,” I said. “Good night. Sleep well.”

  You yawned again. “I’m glad you answered,” you said.

  “I’m glad you called,” I responded.

  Then we hung up, and I realized how much it meant to talk to you that day. How I would have felt incomplete otherwise.

  Did you feel the same way?

  lxii

  Sometimes it seems like words, phrases, or people’s names get stuck in my brain, and then I hear them everywhere. I don’t know if they actually are everywhere, or if I’m just on high alert for them so I notice them more.

  After you called, Kabul was one of those words. Afghanistan was another.

  And three days later I heard those words on NPR. The U.S. embassy was bombed in Kabul. My thoughts went to you. I grabbed my phone before I could even think straight.

  Are you okay? I texted.

  I stared at the screen until I saw those three dots that meant you were writing.

  I’m alive. I’m unharmed. I wasn’t there. But my friends were, you wrote.

  Then more dots.

  I’m not okay.

  I didn’t know how to respond. So I didn’t.

  I’m sorry.

  lxiii

  I often think about how throughout life, we acquire people. More like People, with a capital P. The ones we go to in an emergency—the ones we know we can count on. If we’re lucky, our parents are our first People. Then our siblings. A childhood best friend. A spouse.

  Maybe it was because you moved around so much, or maybe it was just because of who you were, but you didn’t seem to collect People like the rest of us. You had your mom. I knew from the pictures on Facebook that you went to see her often. And I guess you had me. But otherwise, you had a web of acquaintances and friends, like your college roommates, whom you visited from time to time, but didn’t seem to feel comfortable leaning on. At least, not while we were together, and I assume not afterward, because I was the one you called.

  It was a Saturday afternoon, and your number popped onto my phone. I was pushing Violet on a swing in Coxsackie Park. That’s not actually the name of the park, but it’s what this woman Viviana started calling the park the summer before, when her son, Mateo, and four other kids came down with the Coxsackie virus after playing on the playground there. Word spread through the neighborhood parents like the virus spread through our kids, and no one went there for months. But common wisdom was that the virus must’ve died over the winter, and that day I wasn’t the only parent at the swings.

  Darren was with Liam at a father-child swim class.

  I gave Violet a big push, and then hit the green accept button on my phone. All I could hear was you sobbing. I watched Violet flying back toward me and pushed her again.

  “Gabe?” I said. “What’s wrong? Are you hurt? Where are you?”

  You took a deep breath. “JFK,” you said. “My mom’s gone, Lucy. She’s gone.”

  And then I heard your ragged breaths and gulping sobs. My heart twinged, the same way it did when I heard Violet or Liam or Darren cry. When I heard Jason cry.

  “What terminal are you at?” I asked. “How long are you there?”

  “United,” you said, when you were able to speak again. “I have a four-hour layover.”

  “I’m coming,” I told you. “I’ll be there in forty minutes.”

  I hung up my phone and stopped Violet’s swing, functioning in the crisis-averting mode I used at work. Act now, plan on the fly, make things better. At least show up.

  “No more swinging?” Violet asked, pumping her legs in an attempt to get the swing to move again.

  “Vi,” I said, “we have an important job to do: we have to go to the airport to see Mommy’s friend. He’s a little sad right now because his mom had to go away for a long time, so he might be crying. But we’re going to try to make him feel better.”

  She raised her arms so I could take her out of the swing. “Sometimes I’m sad and I cry.”

  “Yeah,” I told her, lifting her up. “Me too.”

  After Violet was settled into her stroller, I checked the time. Darren’s swim class was over, but he usually hung out with the dads and babies at a coffee shop near the pool for a while afterward. I steeled myself and called him. This wasn’t going to be easy.

  “I have to take a trip to JFK,” I told Darren, when he picked up. I could hear Liam babbling in the background.

  “What?” Darren said, clearly distracted. “Why?”

  We hadn’t talked about you since the night of your exhibit. I knew he wasn’t going to take this well. But I couldn’t leave you, sobbing, alone at Terminal 7. It was those pomegranate seeds again. I was stuck, like Persephone.

  “I just got a call from Gabe—Gabe Samson,” I said. “His mother died and he’s at JFK. He’s falling apart.”

  Darren was silent on the other end. I heard Liam saying “bagel” over and over again in the background. “And you have to put him back together?” Darren asked. “No.”

  “He doesn’t have anyone else,” I said.

  “He doesn’t have you, either,” Darren said to me. “I’ll get you a bagel in one minute,” he told Liam.

  “Of course not,” I answered. “You have me. Liam has me. Violet has me. But his mother died, and he called. He shouldn’t be alone right now. You wouldn’t want to be alone, if it were you.”

  “But I wouldn’t call someone else’s wife,” Darren said; I could hear the tightness in his voice.

  “To him I’m not someone else’s wife, just an old friend, someone to call when he’s hurting.”

  “He called you his fucking light,” Darren said.

  “And I call you my husband. It doesn’t matter what he called me. Please, let’s not do this on the phone. In front of your friends. In front of the kids.”

  I imagined his jaw clenching. His eyes closing and slowly opening again. “You’re taking Violet?” he asked. “You know I don’t trust him.”

  “I’m taking Violet,” I said. Mostly because I didn’t know who I could drop her with last minute, and Darren was clear on the other side of Brooklyn.

  “Fine,” he said. “But I don’t like it.”

  I knew I’d have to smooth this over later, I’d have to do a lot of smoothing, but in the meantime, I was going to the air
port. I was going to see you.

  • • •

  AFTER A QUICK STOP to leave the stroller just inside our gate, the taxi dropped us off at Terminal 7 and we walked inside. You’d come out of the secure area, since we couldn’t get in without a ticket, and you were waiting by the doors, slumped on a bench, broken. Your elbows were on your knees, and your chin was resting in your hands. The moment you saw me, you started to cry again. I ran toward you with Violet in my arms, and sat down, leaving her on my lap. I wonder now what was going through her head—and what was going through yours. In hindsight, I think that was a parenting fail on my end. There was no reason Violet should have had to process that, to see someone so distraught. If I were thinking more clearly, I would’ve called some of the moms who lived on our block, and I would’ve told Darren I wasn’t bringing her with me, even if it made him madder. And that might have changed so much.

  You reached over Violet’s head to put your arms around me. I hugged you back, and so did Violet, her little arms wrapping as far as they could around your rib cage.

  “You’re okay,” Violet said to you. “There’s no blood or anything.”

  • • •

  AFTER YOU CALMED DOWN a bit, and after I found a pen and a pad of paper in my bag for Violet to play with on the floor, you told me about your mom’s brain aneurysm. About how gutted you were that you hadn’t been to Arizona to see her in almost a year. About how you felt unmoored, like no one was connecting you to the earth anymore, like you could float away and no one would notice.