Love In Darkness

by E. M. Tippetts

  The sight of her like this cuts deep. “Yeah,” I say, “though I’ll understand if you decide to hate me.”

  “I don’t want to hate you.”

  “And I don’t want to hurt you. That’s the last thing I ever wanted, but what’s going on in my life… I gotta deal with on my own.”

  “There’s a movie night this week.” An abrupt change of subject.

  A movie night? Like the one where I hit on her and stole her away from Carson, no doubt. “Yeah?”

  “Will you come?”

  “I shouldn’t.”

  “It’s for all the singles.” She looks away for a moment, then says, “I’m the YSA activities coordinator.”

  That’s Mormon code for: I’m the person in charge of planning activities for singles aged eighteen to thirty, so I planned this movie night.

  It occurs to me to tell her to let Carson take her as a date, and this time pay attention to him, but that’s far too arrogant of me. I can’t dictate whom she dates.

  “Um, so… anyway… It’s at seven. Now you know.” She turns and heads back to the front of the chapel. Carson turns and notices her distress immediately, but she waves him away, sits down on a pew, and gets out her scriptures. People who don’t know what to look for would never guess she’s upset, but this time, it’s definitely not paranoia when I sense Carson, John, and several other people glare at me.

  I sink back down in my seat and resolve to just get through the rest of the meetings, and then go home and hide. I’ve got an hour of Sunday school here in the chapel, and then for the third hour, Madison and the other women will all go meet in the Relief Society room and it’ll be just the men. I can handle this. I feel just awful.

  Even with all my therapy appointments and the rest of my time filled with exercise and re-sealing the wood trim on the outside of the house, I’m stir crazy by the time Tuesday morning rolls around and Kailie Beale rings my doorbell. “I’m still mad at you,” is the first thing she says, her hair whipping in that blasted wind off the sea. “But you shouldn’t be alone and I need to go clothes shopping, so you’re coming.”

  “Clothes shopping?”

  “You need new clothes too.”

  “I’m not gonna take fashion advice from someone who just admitted she hates me.”

  “You got anyone else to give it to you? And I said I was mad at you, not that I hate you. Just come, all right? Don’t be even more of a jerk. I don’t want to drive that far on my own, and I don’t want to shop by myself. Consider it a good deed, because you owe the universe about eighty million of those after the way you stiff-armed Madison the other day. Way to treat the one person who is nice to you no matter what.”

  “Look-”

  “And you shouldn’t be alone. You need socialization. Just come, idiot.” She folds her arms and sets her jaw.

  “Why can’t you take Madison?”

  “Because I’m embarrassed. My condition or my meds or something has messed me all up when it comes to fashion and I don’t want her to see me like this. So, okay, you’d be doing me a favor too.”

  “Fine,” I say. This, I know, will be interesting.

  Kailie’s had the same sports car since high school, and to me it’s another weirdness of the Beale family, that they’d buy a teenager a high end car and not pay enough attention to her to see that she was losing her mind. But, I never got that family and I don’t really want to.

  As we climb into her car, I ask, “Where are we going?”

  “Old Navy.”

  “Okay.”

  “Don’t laugh.”

  “I’m not laughing.” My mom ordered my clothing from catalogues when I was a kid, and then as a teenager I’d get rides with Ryan and his mom to shop for new clothes every year before school started. It wasn’t the sort of thing that I ever thought about, but now with Ryan gone and my mother no longer lucid, I’ve had no backup plan to keep myself dressed decently. More than once I’ve noted that if I had Madison in my life, she’d help me.

  “Can I ask you something?” says Kailie. “Promise you won’t laugh?”

  “What is it?”

  “What are my odds, do you think, of getting John to date me if I don’t go to your church?”

  “Does he even like you?”

  “Fine. Be like that.”

  “No, I’m actually asking. Do you even like him?”

  She keeps her gaze fixed on the view out the windshield. “He and I kind of made out, a few times… more than a few times while Madison was gone. I think we were both lonely and we had her in common and… Okay, never mind. I can’t believe I just told you that.”

  “He’s going to want to date another Mormon.”

  “That’s prejudiced.”

  “Well, you’re allowed to be prejudiced about who you date. I’m a total sexist, myself.”

  “He wants me to read the Book of Mormon.”

  “Well, yeah.”

  “And I expected Madison to be a little more understanding about it all. I mean, you dated her before she was Mormon.”

  I shrug. I hadn’t been baptized when Madison and I first got together, and she was well on her way to baptism just a short time later. John hadn’t been real pushy with the religion with her, but he’s the kind of guy who lives every law to the very letter and is very open about his beliefs. Between him and me, Madison was pretty well surrounded by Mormons, and it seemed to come naturally to her. Later, while we were on our missions, we wrote to each other about our conversion experiences. For me, it just seemed like common sense. Join up with people who’d steer me right and my life got better and better with each passing day. For her, she had to read and pray a lot until she decided that the intense love she felt every time she reached out to deity was something more than just her imagination.

  “I really think your religion is stupid,” says Kailie.

  “So why would you care about doing anything more than hooking up with John?”

  “I think he should get over it.”

  “You gonna get over your… whatever your beliefs are?”

  “See, that’s the thing. I don’t have any beliefs. I’m open to whatever. I’m tolerant.”

  I prop my elbow against the window of the car and, since there’s no handle in the ceiling to grip, I tuck my fingertips into the soft rubber of the door seal. “You just called my religion stupid. That’s not tolerant.”

  “Fine. Not stupid, narrow minded.”

  “You realize that you’re doing the exact thing you’re condemning, calling people who don’t agree with you names. Tolerance means letting religious people be religious.”

  “Don’t preach at me.”

  “I wasn’t planning to.”

  “I don’t have to join your religion.”

  “Get over yourself. What makes you think I’d try to get you to join? You really think I want to spend three more hours a week with you?”

  “Very funny.”

  “I’m not really joking.”

  She shoots me a baleful look. “Reverse psychology is lame.”

  “I wasn’t using it.”

  That, at least, shuts her up the rest of the way. The most surprising thing about this drive is that Kailie sticks to the speed limit and doesn’t even listen to music. When her phone beeps, she ignores it and doesn’t check until we’re parked and the engine’s off.

  “Okay,” she says, after tapping out a couple of texts and then slipping the phone into her pocket. She turns and grabs her bag, which she had tucked behind her seat. “I need to get some new clothes so that I can work the front desk of the Inn, so come with me and let’s find stuff for you while we’re at it.”

  “You’re buying bargain clothes to work at an upscale Inn-”

  She pulls some catalogues out of her purse. “These stores are supposed to be on trend, so I’m trying an experiment, but I don’t want to go broke with this experiment, so yeah, Old Navy.”

  I watch her flip through a catalogue, not understanding what she’s doi
ng.

  “Lately Old Navy hasn’t been dressing their store mannequins like what you see in catalogues from the more upscale places, so I won’t be buying the outfits exactly off the mannequins,” she explains.

  “Huh?”

  She glances at me and flips another page. “Clothing companies pay stylists good money to put together those outfits. I can’t afford a stylist or a personal shopper, so I use theirs.”

  “That sounds like cheating.”

  She looks up at me again. “You get that trends are about conforming, right? Going along with what’s hot means you wear clothes that are just like all the fashionable people. You want to do that, collect images of fashionable people and copy them.”

  “I thought fashion required individual flair.”

  “Well, like I said, mine’s all gone. That’s the thing about being mental. It messes with your head.” She flips open another magazine and peruses the page before showing it to me. It’s men’s fashion. “The kind of jeans that are in have these pockets, apparently. Notice all the models have exactly this configuration of pockets. Here, you take that one.” She pushes it at me until I take it.

  “You really think people notice stuff like that?”

  “I have no idea, all right? I have no native talent for this anymore. If I’m gonna copy, I’m gonna copy everything or else I might miss out on whatever it is that makes the piece of clothing fashionable. See, now look, these are the colors of guys’ jeans that are in. Right? See? Dark colors, no black… mostly blue, so if I were you I’d get three pairs of those jeans in slightly different colors, and then find shirts.”

  She’s making this appear too easy, kind of like in school when we had open book tests. It felt like cheating and Madison had to explain to me that education wasn’t about stuffing your head full of facts, but learning how to find the facts we’d need for any given situation. Now, holding this catalogue, I realize this is the sort of situation she was referring to. Basically, any situation can be cracked provided you know where to look for the answer.

  “Guys are lucky.” She flips open another magazine. “Your trends don’t change as fast. Women’s… yeah.” She peruses the pages and says, “I’ve been watching people around town who work in the restaurants and stuff, but there’s not a whole lot of consistency, except among the people who work in the most visible positions, like the host of a restaurant. Maybe they learn to dress for the job, but my guess is they get the job because they know how to dress. The thing is, it isn’t just how to dress. It’s haircuts and manicures and stuff too, and I can do my own nails, but it’s really hard to get a cheap haircut that fits the bill. Women’s haircuts are so expensive.”

  I buzz my hair once a month, with the longer attachment for the top and the shorter one for the sides and back. I’ve got a mirrored medicine cabinet in my bathroom that, if I open to just the right angle, will show me the back of my neck in the main bathroom mirror, and that’s how I shave the nape of my neck. It takes about ten minutes.

  “Yeah okay, I guess this is the look I want.” Kailie folds the catalogue back on itself. “This might be hard. I don’t think Old Navy and J. Crew share a lot of design. You ready?”

  “You walk into a clothing store with a catalogue from another place?”

  “Mmm-hmm. It’s allowed.” She opens her door and lets in the fresh, warm air from outside.

  I get out and follow her into the store.

  She stops just inside the door and scrutinizes her catalogue again, but I notice immediately a display of jeans with the pocket arrangement she pointed out. Suddenly, this task seems pretty straightforward. Get the pieces that mimic the catalog, note down which goes with what, and I can pre-plan how I dress for the whole week. Not that I ever really agonized about my wardrobe, but this will make it even easier.

  “Hey, Dmitri,” says Kailie.

  I look up to see Dmitri Ruskin, a kid I’ve seen around town before, only now he’s in a wheelchair, his expression more than a little surly. He’d probably been hot stuff before his accident, given he’s got chiseled features and well-defined chest muscles, but his lower body has already atrophied considerably. Which isn’t to say he looks bad, but rather that he used to look really, really good in that department. I nod and wave and hope his father isn’t around to make awkward comments about my disability. I wonder if Kailie knows that this is one of the families I tried to get to hire Kirsten.

  “Meet you at the registers in thirty,” says Kailie as she marches off into the store.

  The actual choosing and trying on clothes is remarkably painless. I don’t leave the changing room to show my outfits to Kailie, because that’s just too strange. She spent all of ten minutes looking at women’s clothing before deciding she wanted to come look at men’s with me instead, and I have the sinking feeling that this means I’ll have to tag around with her while she tries on women’s clothing after this.

  When I exit the fitting rooms, though, it isn’t Kailie who’s waiting for me. It’s Mrs. Ruskin.

  I don’t know Mrs. Ruskin’s first name. She’s a petite woman with ebony skin and her hair in neat cornrows. “Alex, hi. Um, hello.”

  I step over to her, cock an eyebrow, and wait for her to continue.

  “My husband told me what happened, when you called about Dmitri. I wanted to apologize.”

  “It’s fine.”

  “It’s not fine. I’m really embarrassed, actually. I can’t believe Wendy blabbed about it in public, and I can’t believe Dave didn’t say anything against it. You’d think if anyone would understand your situation, it’d be the disabled community.”

  “Well, thanks.”

  “So how are you?”

  I shrug. “Fine. Really.” I look past her to see Dmitri negotiating his way between the racks of clothing to join us. He’s awkward in his chair, which means he’s still getting used to it. I wonder how long ago he was injured. His atrophied leg muscles tell one story and his awkwardness another. Despite his mother’s African descent, Dmitri’s hair is almost blond. People often look twice when they find out how these two are related. Genetics is a fascinating process.

  His mother glances at him, then turns to face me completely so that he won’t see her face. “Dmitri’s attempted suicide three times.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “Last time he lied about where he was, went out into the woods, and took a whole bottle of pills. I just had a sense that something was wrong and it’s a miracle I found him. This isn’t a cry for help kind of situation, you know what I mean?”

  I do. Dmitri really does want to end his life, is what she’s saying, and this isn’t all that uncommon among the newly disabled. People look ahead to a life with new curtailments and limitations and despair.

  “I’m doing all I can to be supportive, but I’m out of my depth here. We’ve been to Dr. Maliki. He’s been on anti-depressants.”

  “But his problem isn’t biochemical,” I say.

  “Right. What can we do? If there were any procedure, at all, that would make him walk again, no matter how expensive, I would pay for it. I would fly him anywhere in the world to get it. And don’t think that this means I was a mother who always spoiled him before this happened. This is different.” She dabs tears from her eyes.

  “Yeah, I know it is.” She’s here in Old Navy. Clearly she’s not a throw-money-everywhere kind of person.

  “And I’m sorry to bother you, especially considering how you can’t possibly have a very high opinion of us, but do you have any ideas?”

  Dmitri manages to clear the last of the clothing racks and wheels on over to us. His scowl shows me that he’s able to guess what his mom’s been talking about and he propels his wheelchair forward with angry, overpowered movements. He isn’t awkward in his chair because he’s not used to it. He’s fighting with it because he doesn’t want to need it.

  “You into sports?” I ask him.

  “Very funny.” He sneers.

  “He was the quarterb
ack of the varsity football team. Honey, really, not everyone in town knows or cares about high school football.”

  He rolls his eyes, though, convinced that I asked him just to have the chance to mock him or give false sympathy.

  I look him over again. The break in his spine appears to be pretty high up, as best as I can tell from the way he moves. I don’t remember all the classifications of paraplegia, but I know several exist, and the most severe ones are what a certain sport was designed for. “Wheelchair rugby,” I say. “Ever heard of it?”

  “No.”

  I raise my eyebrow. “Got a smartphone? Check it out.”

  His mother turns to give him an encouraging look and he scowls at her before getting out his phone and tapping the screen. He scans some text with his eyes, and then I hear the tinny sound of a video being played. His expression changes from disgust to wonderment.

  What he’s watching, assuming he was able to find the right sport on Youtube, is guys in reinforced, ruggedized metal wheelchairs knocking the crap out of each other as they try to score goals on a flat court. The sport is so extreme that teams have welders and spare wheels on the sidelines. People – men and women playing together – knock each other over and slam into each other so hard that it has the nickname, “Murderball.”

  He looks up at me. “I gotta try out for this. Where?”

  “There are a couple of guys in Dalton who have the equipment for it and will train people who are interested. To play games, though, you’ve got to travel a ways, and to get to the big leagues, you have to travel even farther.”

  “How big do the leagues get?”

  “It’s a Paralympic sport.”

  He sits up straighter, which again lets me glimpse that his break is pretty high up his spine. He looks at his mother. “What do I gotta do?”

  “I’ve never heard of this, Alex,” says his mother.

  “Look up Dalton Murderball,” I say. “It’s two guys who used to be on the Paralympic team who can do private lessons and get you an idea of how to get on a team and stuff.”