How the Light Gets In

by Jolina Petersheim

  Ruth opened the front door carefully and pulled her coat and hat down from the tree stand. Her boots were lined up beneath; Elam’s beside hers. The sight of his shoes brought tears to her eyes. She stood on the porch as she pulled on her boots. She put her coat over her bathrobe and fished the green knit hat and gloves set from her pockets—the hat and gloves Mabel had made.

  Mabel.

  Ruth wanted to tell her, but she couldn’t. She couldn’t for so many reasons. How would it be if Ruth thought one of her daughters, heaven forbid, was dead, only to discover—months later—that she was alive? This news would devastate her and heal her at once.

  Ruth had to tell Mabel in person, so she could catch her in every possible way.

  Ruth walked off the porch into the tundra. She walked toward the orchard, looking to the left, where Ruth’s and Elam’s boots had made a pattern in the snow. The two of them in tandem, as if that were the way it should always be. Ruth walked among the frozen branches. The flat land glittered, each blade of grass encapsulated in ice, so that to stand and stare through the tip of one blade would be to magnify a thousand. Ruth took off her gloves to touch the blades and the branches. The cold felt good to her, shocked her system, and helped her think.

  She was torn apart by this. Any woman who has ever loved a man and conceived his child would be callous not to be glad he was still alive. But Ruth was only glad for the children’s sakes. She was not glad for her own. In Elam, Ruth had found a refuge when she hadn’t realized she was in need of shelter. She thought of the way he’d rested his hands on her shoulders that first time, or how he placed his hand on the small of her back whenever they were out together, simply letting her know she was loved and he was around.

  It was beautiful and priceless, their union, and Ruth began to cry—and then to sob—as she understood, with mounting clarity, that Chandler would return to this haven, which would cause her to lose this refuge, where she could rest in the security of Elam’s arms.

  Ruth wiped her face and her nose and looked at one of the apple trees. It was a smaller tree, perhaps a dwarf, and she could see a nest from a previous summer tucked into one of the corners where the branches formed a V. The nest was sheathed in ice, the collision of seasons so exquisite and sad that it took her breath. Ruth reached out and touched the nest. Then she wedged her fingers beneath the nest and broke it free, so that slivers of ice rained down onto the snow, studded with grass. She looked at the nest up close, seeing its unbearable perfection, and slipped it into the pocket of her coat.

  She knew it would thaw and turn wet, the delicate nest wafting of decay, but she did not care. She wanted to seize beauty where she found it. She wanted to hold it close before life crashed into this crystalline world and made her surrender what she’d built.

  Ruth knocked her boots on the porch step to clean off the snow and opened the door, peeling off the boots to keep the remaining ice, embedded in the treads, from melting inside.

  She didn’t want to tell Elam. She didn’t want to destroy what they shared, even if sharing this intimacy with him meant she was taking from someone else. The only slight relief she felt had to do with their daughters, and yet she was aware Chandler’s return would upset the careful equilibrium of their lives, which she had worked so hard to reclaim.

  How could he do this to her? The stages of grief were marching backward. Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance all jockeying for a position inside her heart and yet finding none. Ruth entered the cottage. Elam was seated at the kitchen table, drinking coffee.

  He looked up when she closed the door. “Have a nice walk?” he asked.

  She hadn’t told him she was taking a walk; she hadn’t told him anything, really, and she loved that he hadn’t worried about her being gone. Perhaps this is what happened when people married when they were older. They were more secure in who they were and therefore didn’t need the reassurance of the young. Ruth wasn’t sure she could speak—if she could pull off that everything in their lives was the same—but she knew she had to try.

  “Very nice walk,” she said. “But cold.” Ruth added a shiver to help convince him—and maybe herself—that she was being sincere.

  Elam watched her, though; she could sense that. He could detect some minute change in her voice she hadn’t even heard. “Yes. It is cold,” he said.

  Ruth came inside and sat on the couch between the kitchen and the fireplace. She cupped her hands between her knees. Her body started shaking. Her teeth rattled together the same as when she was a kid and had walked home from school while carrying a piece of ice shaped like a clear glass paperweight, which nearly froze to her bare hands by the time she came in the door.

  Now, the same as then, Ruth bit down hard on her lips, trying to keep her discomfort from being obvious. But Elam was nothing if not observant, especially of his new bride, and he got up from the table and came over. He sat on the coffee table, placed his socked feet on either side of hers, and, leaning forward, rested his hands on hers.

  “You’re trembling,” he said. “Were you out there without a coat?”

  Ruth shook her head.

  “What happened? Honey . . . ?” he said. “What’s wrong?”

  Again, Ruth shook her head. She closed her eyes to hide the tears rising behind them. She couldn’t keep this from Elam, as much as she wanted to try. “I checked my voice mail,” she said. “To see if Mabel had called—”

  “Are the girls all right?”

  She opened her eyes. Looked at Elam’s pale face. She could see such paternal panic in his gaze, the welling tears spilled down. He deserved this, didn’t he? He deserved a family, even if it wasn’t one he had helped create. “The girls are fine,” she said. “Mabel said they’re fine. But I received another voice mail. It—it was from Chandler.”

  Elam’s hands remained on hers, his feet bracketing her own. “Chandler,” he said. That was all. And yet she could tell this single name had the ability to rewrite their story.

  “Yes,” Ruth said. Her trembling had stopped. “Yes. It was Chandler. He didn’t speak much, but it appears there’s been some kind of . . . mistake.”

  “Mistake?” Elam’s eyes widened. “You mean . . . he’s alive?”

  She nodded. His hands tightened on hers as he said, “How do you know it was him, and . . . and not somebody’s idea of a . . . sick joke?”

  Ruth shook her head. “I don’t, I guess. But the way he said my name, Elam. The way he cried. It made me think this must be real.”

  Elam released her hands. He shifted on the coffee table. “Did you . . . call him back?”

  “No,” Ruth said. “I couldn’t.”

  He looked at her face again, studied it like he could understand more if he could just keep himself from looking away. She knew he didn’t mean to—that he might not even be aware he was—but she could see a hint of accusation in that open stare.

  “He’s your . . . husband,” Elam said.

  Ruth couldn’t breathe. Behind Elam, on the floor, was the nest of blankets where the two of them had spent the night—his arms around her, the firelight glistening on their skin as they spoke. “But you’re my husband too.”

  Elam stood and moved around the coffee table. He leaned against the mantel like its sole purpose was to hold him up. He stood there for a long time. The cottage brightened as the sun filtered through low-lying clouds. The faucet dripped in the bathroom, or maybe it was the showerhead. It seemed that neither of them breathed or blinked.

  How could they possibly move on from this? How could anyone?

  Finally, Elam said, “I don’t know . . . if I am.” He swallowed. “Your husband.”

  Ruth got up from the couch. The belted robe came undone; her pajamas beneath felt too cold for the sudden chill enveloping her. She reached up and touched Elam’s shoulder until he looked at her, his eyes wet. She cupped his face in her hands, his two-day beard rough against her fingertips. Oh, how she loved this man. The awareness poured through her with
a nearly maternal tenderness. She would do anything she could to protect him. To protect them, even if that union seemed a betrayal to the ones who knew them well.

  “You are,” she said. “You are, Elam. We did nothing wrong. Do you understand me? Chandler was dead. We buried him. Whatever happened between us was innocent.”

  Elam looked down at her, his wife, his bride, who was also someone else’s. He reached down and wrapped his arms around her, feeling the formidable set of her spine even through the soft robe. “I love you,” he said. “I love you so . . . incredibly much.”

  “I love you too,” she said. They’d whispered, in the protected dark, sweet nothings to each other, but these words now meant everything, and each of them knew that. “We’ll get through it,” she said. “No matter what happens when we return to the farm, we’ll get through it.”

  We’ll get through it. An echo of what Chandler had once said to her.

  Elam nodded and bent forward to wipe the sadness from Ruth’s face. “I couldn’t bear to lose you,” he said.

  Ruth thought of all the times Chandler had seemed determined to leave her and the children, even if he would’ve never admitted it to anyone, much less himself. And now, here was a man, her husband, who was not only determined not to lose her, but who was determined to fight to keep what they had. I love him, she thought.

  She loved Elam Albrecht so much, loving him felt like dying.

  Elam and Ruth remained on Washington Island for the final day of their honeymoon, and yet their time together didn’t feel the same—that this was their oasis, their retreat from the world. Rather, their togetherness felt sullied, somehow; as if this physical trip were the culmination of Ruth and Elam’s emotional affair.

  And yet, the beauty in their last day together was that they knew their time together could very well end. As much as she wanted to, Ruth couldn’t ignore that Sofie and Vivienne’s father was very much alive. It was, she knew, selfishness that propelled her yearning for seclusion; selfishness that made her want to remain in Elam’s arms. So the night before they were to return to Tomah, Ruth and Elam sat on their nest of blankets in front of the fire. They’d prepared another wintry picnic supper but hadn’t touched a bite. Instead, Ruth sat before Elam, and he wrapped her in his arms tightly, as though it were up to him, alone, to keep her there.

  They stared at the flames, oddly comforted by their predictable, undulating glow. They didn’t speak for a long time. They breathed, and they thought separate thoughts with the same underlying theme: What is life going to look like when we get home?

  They didn’t know if Chandler would be there, on the porch steps, waiting for them. They didn’t know if Mabel even knew her son was alive, and this made Ruth feel a liquid-hot flash of guilt. But that is tomorrow, she thought. Tomorrow, everything would change, but in this moment—tonight—she was safe and secure in her husband’s arms.

  Chandler was not waiting on the front porch when Ruth and Elam arrived. The farm looked much the same as it had when they left, except for the cold, which had cast its spell here as well: unfurling a blanket of snow over the bogs and fields and fringing the lake and channels with ice. Elam paid the driver who’d picked them up after they returned the rental car. Then they stared up at the farmhouse, Elam’s arm around her, as the bottoms of their suitcases soaked up the slush. They stared up at the farmhouse and felt like something should appear changed, but it wasn’t. Ruth trembled. She trembled with fear, and she hadn’t even trembled with fear on the morning she learned Chandler had died.

  Elam murmured, “You all right?”

  Ruth looked over at him. His face was a blank canvas, but his eyes were shaded with all that remained unknown. “I have to be,” she said. He nodded and picked up their two bags in one hand. He took her hand with his other, and they walked up the porch into the house. Snow blew off the roofline and dusted them as they entered. Ruth automatically braced, expecting to get bowled over by Zeus. But he was not here. Instead, Everest, the pup, slept on an old pillow near the fire, looking no worse for the wear despite her daughters, who were probably loving him within an inch of his life. “Hello?” Ruth called.

  Ruth heard the mingled singsong of her daughters’ voices resonating from the bedroom they shared. Grabbing the banister, she mounted the steps two at a time. The girls squealed, “Mom-my!” as Ruth came into the room. Mabel was seated on the bed with Vivienne, who had the warm, soft glow of someone who’d recently been asleep. Sofie’s curls were a braided tangle over one shoulder, and Ruth wondered if Mabel had had the courage to brush the tender-headed, dramatic child the entire time she’d been gone. Ruth herself could barely work up the courage.

  Having never been away from her children for more than a few hours, she hadn’t had the opportunity to really miss them, to really see them as someone who had never been around them before might view her children, and the beauty of them took her breath.

  “Did you miss me?” she asked, pressing a daughter against each leg. Sofie’s head rested against her abdomen while Vi’s rested against her knee. When had they gotten so tall? When had they morphed from babies to children, from tiny sparks in the womb’s darkness to these fully fleshed girls? This awareness brought such panic, Ruth knelt and clutched them against her, as though she might never get the chance again. Tears leaked from the corners of her eyes.

  Vi asked, “Did you bwing us a tweat?”

  Ruth laughed, the sound like a sob caught in her throat. “Elam has your treats downstairs.” The girls looked at each other, their mouths and eyes O’s of joy.

  Ruth waited until they had safely descended the steps, and then she turned back to Mabel, who smiled and asked, “So, how was it?” She has no clue, Ruth thought, and experienced this urgent, overwhelming sense to protect her the same as she had wanted to protect her girls. None of it made sense. Ruth knew she should be bursting at the chance to tell Mabel the news. She remained silent.

  Ruth exhaled. “We had a lovely time. Thank you for watching the girls.”

  “You’re welcome. They were good as gold.”

  “But I’m sure you’re worn out.”

  “Well.” Mabel smiled. “It’s a good thing the Lord gives us children when we’re young.”

  More silence followed. But Ruth supposed this silence came simply because everything was deafened by the sound of her heartbeat roaring in her ears. “Mabel,” she said. The tone of Ruth’s voice made Mabel turn toward her daughter-in-law, for this is who Ruth would always be to her. Ruth said, “First, I think you should probably sit down.”

  Mabel, the same as Ruth, had experienced enough heartache to assume the absolute worst when someone tells you to sit down, to essentially brace yourself for something that could otherwise knock you off your feet. So they entered Mabel’s bedroom, and Mabel sat, suddenly appearing very old: her veined hands knotted in her lap, her mouth like a gray, scarred wound.

  Ruth, gathering her courage, or perhaps stalling, glanced around the room. She noted Sofie’s blankie on the bed, along with Vi’s stuffed, bright-pink flamingo, Mango, and realized the girls had probably been sleeping on either side of their grandma the entire time she and Elam had been gone. Ruth walked toward Mabel and sat down beside her. The double mattress wasn’t as new as the one in her room, and the springs protested beneath their combined weight. Ruth reached for her mother-in-law’s hand. She held it tightly; she held on to it for dear life, for life and death was what this was. “He’s alive, Mabel,” Ruth said. “Chandler, your son, is alive.”

  Mabel looked over at her in disbelief, and Ruth saw mirrored in those familiar eyes the same confusion, and even fear, she had felt. “What . . . ? How?”

  Ruth shook her head. “I never got to talk to him.”

  “Then how do you know it’s true?”

  Ruth kept her hand in Mabel’s. She could feel how her mother-in-law shook and was glad she had insisted she sit down. “Chandler left a voice mail on my phone. When I called the number back, I found out he was a
t the embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, when he called.”

  Mabel gripped Ruth’s hand tighter, so her short nails bit into her flesh. Ruth let her hold on. The pain kept her from growing numb. “But he’s not there now?” she asked.

  Ruth shook her head. “They weren’t at liberty to tell me anything about him, even though I told them that he—he—” She stumbled over the word now, the same as she had when she’d said it on her honeymoon with Elam, hunkered in the bathroom with the door locked and the shower running to cover her voice. “I told them that Chandler’s my husband.”

  Mabel’s face looked more stricken than relieved. “Oh, Ruth,” she said. “My son’s alive.”

  And then she began to weep, withdrawing her hand from Ruth’s to cover her face, her small, rounded shoulders shaking with the swelling violence of her sobs. But in between them, Ruth could hear the question she herself had been unable to voice: “How is Elam going to bear it?”

  Without much formal discussion, they decided the children and the rest of the community—even, at this juncture, Tim and Laurie—would not be told Chandler was alive until they heard from him again. At Mabel’s and Elam’s insistence, Ruth kept her cell phone charged, the volume pushed up high, and carried it with her throughout the day.

  Two days passed, and she heard nary a word. Ruth began to wonder if she’d imagined it all. But when she looked at her phone for the hundredth time and saw Kabul, AF beneath the strange number, she knew she hadn’t imagined anything.

  At night, after Ruth had read three books and sung two bedtime songs—always ending with “Edelweiss”—she waited until she was sure Sofie was asleep and would then perform a gymnastics-worthy roll out of bed, landing soundlessly in her socked feet on the floor.

  She would creep downstairs, where Elam, her husband, was waiting for her to return to their room. The second night, Elam was sitting up in bed, reading, the glow of the lamp casting light on the whitewashed walls, the room paneled with wooden siding, interspersed with pine knots like miniature portholes, so Ruth felt she was sleeping in the hold of a ship.