How the Light Gets In

by Jolina Petersheim

  He stopped walking, and she did too. “You act as if there’s only one purpose for your life. One destination. One end goal. And you will miss it if you marry the wrong man.” Sighing, he glanced at the distant, white-tipped waves curling forward before being sucked back out by a never-ending pull nobody could perceive. “The older I get, the more I see my life—as simple as it’s been—has had many purposes: a son, friend, educator, husband . . . father.” Smiling fondly, he touched Ruth’s back. “All these things came together to make me who I was, who I am.” He paused. “If I’d married someone other than your mother, would I have been happier? Probably.”

  Ruth’s eyes widened, shocked to hear him admit what she’d always known, but the truth was softened by the smile in his voice. “But am I glad I did? Yes. I would’ve been bored out of my mind, married to someone who just smiled at me and said yes and no. So what’s my point? My point is this.” Her father held out his hand. Ruth could see the jagged scar below his thumb, which he’d sliced into while cutting an orange, and the stains on his fingers from pinching tobacco for his pipe. “God’s will is like this hand. The five fingers represent the five different routes your life could take—and yet, regardless of what you choose, are you still not contained in the palm of his hand?” Ruth nodded at her father. Despite her education and life experience, his confidence in her made her shy, like she was five years old again. Chucking her chin with those tobacco-stained fingers, her father whistled for Zeus, who had gamboled up ahead.

  Even now, was Ruth in God’s will, though she’d inadvertently married the wrong man? And if she had married the wrong man, which one shouldn’t she have wed? Ruth couldn’t answer; she felt adrift from everything except for the tether of her husband’s hand in hers. And for the first time in a long time, she thought of Chandler like that—her husband. And it wasn’t with any romantic attachment, but with the attachment of having experienced so much heartache and joy with a single person who knew her life history and her daughters’ life histories better than anyone. For better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health: these counterparts unified them, as was intended, and it was difficult—if not impossible—to try to separate the love she felt for this person from the memory of his having also inflicted so much pain.

  After a while, after Sofie had stopped squirming and Vi’s breathing had evened with that contented snuffling sound, which was a two-year-old’s version of a snore, Ruth and Chandler carefully and quietly got to their feet. Ruth’s heart beat hard, and her mouth was dry—reactions similar to those she’d experienced before their wedding night—as she extinguished the lamp.

  But this experience wasn’t like that at all.

  Ruth pulled the door closed when they’d left the room, but Chandler pushed it back open so the oil lamp in the hallway shone in. Ruth whispered, “Sofie’s no longer scared of the dark.”

  Chandler looked at her, and though it was hard to perceive his expression, she could tell it hurt to hear how his daughter had grown up since he’d been gone.

  Ruth and Chandler walked silently down the steps. The entire house was dark except for the fire, burning in the grate. Mabel had retired shortly after supper, and Ruth now wished she hadn’t. They needed someone who could act like a buffer, preventing Ruth and Chandler from discussing all that needed said.

  But it was just them.

  Ruth asked, “Would you like tea?”

  Chandler had never been a tea drinker. He preferred coffee: hot, black, and as strong as cast iron. But he smiled and said, “Tea sounds great.”

  Ruth went into the kitchen. The kettle on the stove was warm from supper. Still, she took her time preparing the beverage and hoped that when she returned to the living room, the simple gestures would serve to quell her shaking hands.

  “Thank you,” Chandler said, taking the mug from her.

  She sat down beside him on the couch but far enough away that anyone observing from the outside would think they were simply friends. Growing up, Ruth’s mother had believed physical touch had to be earned, like an allowance, and therefore Ruth always found herself striving, in adulthood, to replenish what she’d lacked as a child. But then she’d had children of her own, who touched her all the time, and rather than filling that need, it made her realize what she needed was to be given focused time and attention. And how could she receive focused time when her first husband was always gone?

  Chandler looked at her. He set the tea down on the worn leather trunk that served as a coffee table. “I’m sorry for how I reacted earlier,” he said. “It all just came as a shock.”

  Chandler’s anger at the diner had validated hers, but now Ruth didn’t know what to do since he was approaching her in the opposite spirit. She turned away. “That’s understandable,” she said. “We’ve all had our bit of shock in the past few months.”

  Chandler didn’t say anything. Ruth set her own tea on the trunk and folded her arms.

  The silence between them hadn’t been comfortable in years, but now it was nearly unbearable. Chandler cleared his throat. “What do we do now?” he asked.

  Chandler had always left the hard things up to her: discipline, budgeting, meal prep, household chores. She snapped, “This situation doesn’t exactly come with a manual.”

  “I know that, Ruth. I’m just concerned how this is going to affect the girls.”

  “You should’ve thought how this was ‘going to affect the girls’ before you left.”

  Chandler yelled, “Stop it!” Standing, he strode over to the mantel. His back to Ruth, he said in a softer voice, “Just stop, okay? I know you’re hurting. I’m sorry for that. I’m hurting too. But it doesn’t help either of us to try to make the other person hurt even more.”

  Shame burned Ruth’s face as she stared at Chandler’s stooped back. Why did she reflexively spew such venom? Chandler had done her wrong, but if their wrongs were tallied, she knew she would see she had the same amount as him. At the same time, she hated Chandler for rebuking her, for making it seem like she and Elam had orchestrated this. Her shame was replaced with a searing flash of anger, of defensiveness, and she knew it was because she’d remembered that Chandler was getting what he deserved. “Do you have any idea how bad it was before you were even declared dead? I was a single mom, Chandler. A single mom who was also trying to care for her dying father. You left me with this. You left. You went overseas to save the world at the expense of your own family.”

  He didn’t look at her. He stayed at the mantel and covered his face with one hand. She heard him curse beneath his breath. He turned, and Ruth saw, by the firelight, that there were tears in his eyes. The mantel, the fire, the pain of communication was reminiscent of Ruth’s recent conversation with Elam, but in this setting, the source of the pain was reversed. Chandler pinched the bridge of his nose and breathed hard.

  “Do you have any idea how bad it was over there—any idea what I went through to get back to you and the girls?”

  “I’m sure it was terrible. It’s a miracle you’re alive. I know that. But you’re acting like I cheated on you, Chandler. I didn’t. I buried you.” She gestured to the blank window, in the direction of the church. “I watched your plain casket get lowered into the ground. I had to keep hold of Vi’s hand because she kept trying to get close to the hole to peek.”

  Chandler shook his head. “I should’ve never left. I realized that when I was sitting in a bombed apartment, trying to write you a letter from the paper and pen I found in the rubble. I thought of you, of all you’d been through, and felt sick.” Stepping closer, he said, “I’m sorry, Ruth. I’m sorry I left you and the girls. I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you even before I left.”

  The construction of Ruth’s anger collapsed into grief. She got up from the couch and rested her hand on Chandler’s arm. Seeing the tears coursing down her face, Chandler leaned close and wrapped her in a hug. The unfamiliarity of his words combined with the familiarity of his body resurrected something in Ruth she
hadn’t known had died. She allowed her husband to hold her. Allowed herself to fall completely into the moment. She wound her arms around his neck and felt the heat of the fire against the side of her jeans. They said nothing—just stood there, embracing each other, and cried.

  Neither of them heard the door open. Neither of them noticed Elam had entered until the puppy, who’d just come down the steps from the girls’ room, began to bark. Ruth looked toward the door, toward the intruder, and saw Elam standing there, observing her holding another man when he was her husband too. Chandler moved back from Ruth. He looked toward the door and said, “Good to see you, Cousin.” Elam said nothing as Chandler strode across the room and stood in front of him. The men were silent. Chandler’s fists clenched. He stared hard at Elam and then gestured back to Ruth. “Thanks for taking care of my wife while I was gone,” he said.

  Chandler opened the door and walked out, not bothering to close it behind him.

  “What was Chandler like?” Ruth asked. “When the two of you were young?”

  Elam did not answer right away, and the firelight did little to reveal the enigma of his thoughts. The puppy twirled around his feet: a white fluff ball that, at this point, appeared more like a duster than a pet. The dog rolled over, pedaled his paws, and yipped, as if this would encourage Elam to pet him. Which Elam did. Kneeling to scratch the pup’s soft belly, Elam stayed down, averting his gaze, and Ruth could see he preferred animals to people, the same as her father had, for dogs exhibit the kind of loyalty few people can boast. Watching Elam’s gentleness with an animal that could offer little in return, Ruth’s throat tightened. She walked over and put a hand on his arm, unconsciously mimicking how she’d touched Chandler a quarter of an hour ago. Elam looked up and smiled, but the guarded expression in his eyes stung.

  “When we were young, Chandler was brave . . . the life of the party.” Elam paused. “I wanted to be like him, but I couldn’t. I could barely talk.”

  “But look at you now,” Ruth said. “You communicate far better than he ever could.”

  Elam stood. “There can be no life,” he said, “in comparison. If you do that, Ruth, one of us will always be found wanting. One of us will never be a whole man.”

  Elam walked out the open door, and Ruth picked the puppy up and crossed the room to peer through the window beside it. The darkness had transformed Chandler and Elam from living, breathing, broken men into two-dimensional figures. At the moment, Ruth wondered if it would’ve been easier that way . . . for her. If Chandler and Elam had never existed, she could’ve never known them intimately, but she, in turn, would have never been known.

  Elam and Chandler sat on the stoop of the farmhouse where they’d sat many times before. But they did not speak. Chandler because, after so much solitude, he was out of the habit, and Elam because silence was what he knew best. They just stared out at Driftless Valley Farm—the barn and the outbuildings, the weather vane’s pointed silhouette, the mirrorlike reflection of the channels and lake, the distant pump house where Elam and Ruth had first truly talked. Each man was lost in a maze of his own thoughts; neither wanted to find his way out.

  Even more than betrayal, which Chandler acutely felt, he experienced a vivid sense of loss. He was not naive enough to blame the entire situation on Elam and Ruth. He had emotionally abandoned his wife before he’d physically left her, and she had come here, to the cranberry farm in Wisconsin, to lay him to rest in more ways than one. His head hurt as he imagined his wife and daughters at his funeral. He pictured them garbed in stereotypical black: Ruth in sunglasses with her red-gold hair falling in waves around her face; Vi’s hand knuckle-clenched in Ruth’s as his youngest tried to peer over the hole to see why the box was being lowered into it. He pictured Sofie—with her adult eyes and childlike curls—understanding more than her younger sister, and yet not understanding enough to feel the full weight of the grief. Or maybe she had understood, and he was only telling himself she hadn’t to make it easier.

  Elam cleared his throat.

  At the sound, a muscle twitched in Chandler’s jaw. He couldn’t look at his cousin. Even sitting this close to Elam made Chandler think of Elam being with Ruth.

  Elam said, “Would you like to see where Uncle Chandler’s buried?”

  Chandler Junior stared out at the darkness. “I would.”

  Elam stood and Chandler did as well. They walked together up the lane. In the distance, on another farm, they could hear an old dog baying against the dusk and the echo of the coyotes that had startled it. The stars were clear overhead; it was cold enough to wear hats and coats but neither man felt the need. They didn’t feel anything but their own disconnect.

  The wooden teeter-totter in the church playground moved up and down in the wind.

  Elam said, “I’m glad . . . you’re back.”

  Chandler made a derisive sound.

  “I mean . . . it. You’re my cousin. We had a lot of good memories here . . . didn’t we?” Elam paused, forcing a smile. “Remember when—?”

  Chandler said, “I’m in no mood for a walk down memory lane.”

  Elam fell quiet.

  They entered the churchyard, which never fully recuperated from the ruts made by horse hooves and wagon wheels each fellowship Sunday. The hard ground sparkled with frost. The men walked around the church, toward the back, where the small graveyard was.

  Most of the graves belonged to the farmers who’d died here long before the Albrecht cranberry farm and those surrounding it became a far-flung Mennonite community. Quartets of young birch trees divided the churchyard from the adjacent field, their bark curling like shaved silver in the moonlight. Chandler’s father’s grave was easy to find. The ground was grassless and sunken, as was the grave beside it. Chandler stared down at this second grave, which upset him even more than the first. Chandler was almost buried here. His wife and children were almost separated from him for the rest of their temporal lives. He didn’t understand why he’d been given a second chance.

  He knelt and pressed his fingertips to the dirt. It was winter-hard, nothing like the soft, cocoa-like matter Chandler used to sift when he and Elam would search beneath rocks and fallen logs for worms to fish the Kickapoo River. Chandler spread his hands over the dirt anyway and wondered who had died in his stead. Another doctor? A nurse? A patient? A man with a family . . . a life?

  Chandler had no idea who it was, but he vowed the man’s death would not be wasted. He then began to weep. He wept like he hadn’t wept since he sat in that bombed apartment complex where a family had once lived. He wept as he thought of his wife being remarried and of his baby girls having changed in even small—nearly imperceptible—ways. He wept because he was angry; he wept because he was sad. He wept because he was powerless to do anything but cry.

  All the while, Elam stood beside him, and in that silence, Chandler felt comfort. They could never go back to what they’d been long before Ruth came here as a widow and, a few months later, became his bachelor cousin’s bride. But the fact that they were family might keep whatever relationship they had from completely disintegrating. Chandler wiped his face with the bottom of the button-down flannel shirt he’d borrowed from Elam. Elam rested his hand on Chandler’s shoulder. Chandler stiffened at first, and then he stood.

  He said, “I know what happened is not your fault.”

  Elam said, “Thank you . . . for that.”

  Chandler paused and thought of his wife back at the farmhouse, wearing a sweater he’d never seen, her curly hair darker than he remembered. He wouldn’t give up on their marriage; he wouldn’t give up on being the father to his children just because his cousin had fallen in love with his wife. He looked at Elam now, and though there was no malice in his voice, both men could hear the warning as Chandler said, “Don’t thank me just yet.”

  Elam and Ruth stood on the porch. Elam held a pillowcase stuffed with toiletries and a few extra sets of clothes. They were painfully aware Chandler was feigning sleep on the couch in the liv
ing room, which was separated from the porch by a single-pane window; the glass so thin, condensation gathered on the sills whenever the temperature fluctuated outside.

  Ruth looked up at Elam. In one glance, she had to convey what she felt since she could not tell him what he meant to her, and words, anyway, could not be enough.

  He said, “I guess I should be heading that way.”

  Ruth turned toward the woods. The cabin would be cold when Elam entered it; the fire out, the drafty crawl space skittering with mice. “You sure you can’t stay?” she asked.

  “I’m sure.” Smiling, he touched her face. “Circumstances are awkward enough.”

  Hugging her body against the cold, Ruth remained on the porch. She watched Elam walk down the lane until she couldn’t distinguish him from the trees. She didn’t want to enter the house. She didn’t want to pull open that door and step into the place where she’d imagined living as Elam’s wife. But even without entering, Ruth couldn’t see a way out, and she couldn’t see a way through. It was as though she were inhabiting some kind of stasis, which prevented her from doing anything but breathing in and breathing out, surviving in the way she’d lived for so long.

  Ruth would’ve stayed there, on the porch, until her lips turned blue and her body shivered in a poor effort to warm itself, but then a scream split the silence. Ruth knew that scream. Since Sofie’s infancy, she had learned every emotional range of her older daughter’s voice. She was inside and up the stairs in seconds, but Chandler had already beat her there and was cradling Sofie on the bed. Despite her daughter’s sobs, Ruth found herself consumed by the tension snapped like high-tensile wire between herself and her first husband. She walked into the room anyway. She’d been the one to care for Sofie all these years: who’d woken when she screamed, who’d made such an effort to keep her life secure and free from nightmares, and who’d then comforted Sofie when her worst nightmare came true. Ruth wasn’t about to stop mothering simply because Chandler now believed he had the right to judge her abilities as a wife.