The Light of Day

by Kristen Kehoe

  “Cora,” he says and I flick my gaze to him. “I said, I didn’t know if you’d be back.”

  “Neither did I,” I tell him and watch him nod in understanding. “I know she hates me, Dad.”

  He shakes his head, a small sigh escaping him. “She doesn’t hate you, Cora, she just doesn’t know how to deal with you. She never has,” he admits and slides his hands into his pockets. “Now, she doesn’t know how to deal with any of it.”

  I watch him handle the grief that washes over him, and I understand. We both love the same woman who can’t love us back, not like we need, but where I spent my early years revolting against her and trying to make her mad enough to show me she cared, he’s spent their entire marriage holding her up and giving her whatever she needed in order to be happy. Only now, he can’t give her what she wants, because he can’t fix what’s happened to her, and neither can I. Maybe it’s time we both start recognizing that.

  “I know you love her,” I say and his eyes find mine. “Believe it or not, I love her too, or I want to. I don’t really know how, like her I guess, but I do know I’m trying. You have to try too, Dad.” He goes to say something but I shake my head. Right now, there are words that I need to say and that he needs to hear. “You can’t just let her stay in this house, silently hating the world and everyone in it. You have to try to make her go out, talk to someone, anyone, and try to live, because this isn’t helping her and it’s not helping us. Sometimes the only way to help someone is to tell them what they don’t want to hear,” I say, thinking back to Rafe, and then to Mia, to the Scientist and now to Jake, the people who wouldn’t let me wallow in my shit and anger and resentment because they cared too much to let me.

  “I know,” he says after a second and I nod once then turn to walk to the stairs, but when I reach them, I rest my hand on the banister and turn back.

  “I’ve been here for three months and you haven’t called me once to go to dinner. I guess it’s because I haven’t called you either, and I don’t know why except that I was afraid you wouldn’t want to see me.”

  His eyes widen and his mouth opens, but it takes him a minute to form words. “Of course I want to see you, Cora. You’re my daughter.”

  “And she’s your wife. Neither of us are easy to be around, but I’m trying. I need you to try too. Stop being so scared of me, of her, of what you think might happen if you rock the boat, and stop thinking that leaving things as they are is what’s best. Things need to change, for all of us, or we should just give up now.”

  I’m halfway up the stairs when he says my name. I stop and neither of us speaks for a second. “I have to go out of town for business. Two weeks, maybe three. Can we have dinner when I get back? Maybe at Ricardos, like we used to?”

  My throat closes and I nod my head without looking at him, finishing my assent and heading toward my mother’s quarters. Sassy meets me at the door to her suite and one look at my face has her opening her arms wide and taking me in. I don’t wrap my arms around her, but I do close my eyes and rest my head on her shoulder.

  “Cara, I heard about last week. I’m sorry, I should have known it was coming. She was agitated all the day before from a phone call.”

  I shake my head back and forth and talk into her shoulder. “I guess it needed to happen. At least she finally spoke to me,” I say with an attempt at humor, but neither of us laugh.

  Instead, Sassy pulls back and cups my face. “You’re a good daughter, Cora.”

  I close my eyes again before taking a deep, cleansing breath and opening them. “I wasn’t always, Sassy, but I’m trying. And I’m going to keep trying, whether she likes it or not. I’m not ready to give up,” I say, thinking of my father.

  She raises her brow at me and then steps back to let me in. I straighten my shoulders and stride through, walking straight to the vanity where I begin to set up. I watch my mother come in wearing her robe, which lets me know that she was expecting me and, without looking up, I speak.

  “I’m going to put a toner on your hair because it doesn’t need new color. Your brows need to be done, and so do your nails. I’ll give you a facial after your brows and the mask can sit while I do your nails and toes.” I look up now and meet her hollow gaze straight on, ignoring her blank stare and hunched shoulders. “And I’m going to talk to you while I’m here, because I know you can hear me. I don’t care if you respond, but you should know I’m just going to keep talking, because I want you to get to know me and I really want to get to know you.”

  One arm moves from its clenched position at her waist so she can reach up and grip the lapels of her robe and squeeze them together. “I don’t want to talk to you. What’s the point? It’s not like I’m going to remember it anyway.”

  Irate with her for being so goddamn stubborn, sad because I understand more than she knows, I walk over to her and watch her eyes widen and flood with shock, an emotion so opposite from the blank indifference that I want to crow in triumph, but I don’t. Instead, I stop so I’m standing right in front of her, looking down and waiting until she sees exactly what I’m about to say.

  “We’re the point, Mother. Right now is the point.” Gentling my tone because I can see panic starting to sneak in with the shock, I reach out and lay my hand on her shoulder. “I’m sorry for last time, but I’m not sorry I’m here, and I’m not leaving, Mom, so let me talk to you. Let me try,” I finish and I see her eyes fill with something else.

  She swallows several times and I wait, almost missing the way her head nods lightly. And then we’re walking toward her vanity and I can see Sassy’s grin a mile wide in the mirror. I respond with a determined one of my own before throwing a cape over my mother’s robe and getting out my bottles. My hands tremble but I ignore them, determined to see this through.

  “So, Mia’s wedding. Are you ready to hear about it? Aunt Shannon, you know, the tall ginger from Uncle Thomas’s side? She fell down drunk and took a table with her. I thought Auntie Mags was going to combust she was so mad.”

  I stop talking and fussing when her hand reaches over her shoulder and grips mine, so hesitantly, but there nonetheless. I stare at it, and then into the mirror, where our eyes meet again and hers aren’t empty anymore. They’re full of things I don’t understand but things I feel.

  “I—” She clears her throat and I see her eyes twitch to Sassy, who stays where she is and nods. “I don’t like forgetting,” she finally says and I stop breathing completely. “But there are some things I don’t like remembering, either. I hate that the most — that I don’t get to pick and choose what I forget and what I don’t, like the disease is taunting me with how much power it has over me. I don’t always deal well with things,” she finishes, and her chest is moving up and down so rapidly I wonder if she’s going to hyperventilate. She doesn’t, and I don’t, we just stare at each other until I finally nod.

  “Yeah, well, don’t go to therapy, it’s all about fucking remembering.” I hope I haven’t gone too far, and feel a little rewarded when a small, almost-there-smile forms on her lips. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Sassy nod approval before settling back into her magazine.

  Taking my mother’s thin hair in my hand, I begin to brush it and continue on with my story.

  ~

  I text Mia when I’m done, just to let her know I’m doing better. I want to call her, but I know she’s getting ready to graduate and Ryan’s baseball schedule is in full swing, and regardless of what she says, I know they deserve uninterrupted time. She texts me back almost immediately and I smile, grateful that she understands why a conversation – albeit one-sided – is such a big deal. Mia’s own family suffers from silence the way mine does, though it’s gotten better in recent years thanks to Mia’s relentless pursuit to keep them together. Unlike me, Mia is the middle of five children, and instead of revolting when her parents outlined her life, she stood up and demanded they accept her as the person she wanted to be. Now, she’s living her real dream, finishing a degree for a career that
she believes in, married to a man who has never wanted anything the way he wants her, and I want nothing more than to be as happy as she is.

  When I get home, Jake’s on the couch reading. I stop to shed my heels and lay my bag and jacket on the chair, studying him while his eyes follow me instead of the words on the page in front of him. Whatever he’s reading, it’s bent and scratched, an actual paperback book that I forgot they made since the invention of the tablet. At this angle I can see the inside of his left arm, his pitching arm, and the words scrolled there in black ink that’s barely legible unless you’re close enough to study them as I have been lately. Still I Rise. It’s from a poem by a woman whose name I can’t remember, but one that spoke to him the first time he read it because it was about staying upright, always standing, no matter who tried to shove you down.

  We were laying there in bed a few nights ago, our hands sliding over each other’s skin, my head on his shoulder as it always is when we wrap together, and I traced the words with my finger, wondering if ever someone had spoken to my heart like he did. I asked him about the words and he recited the poem to me from memory, his voice pitching and lowering, steady on the words as he released them into the room to curl around me.

  Remembering that moment now, I know that no matter what happens in our futures, whether we ever get to be like that again or not, he’s held me up and helped me rise so that today I could walk into my mother’s house and have her start to forgive me.

  I don’t say anything, I just stare while he stares right back until I walk straight to him, sinking down in his lap when he opens his arms, curling into him as he wraps me up and holds me against his chest. He’s quiet for a minute, stroking his fingers through my hair, waiting for me to explain.

  “I’m going to dinner with my dad.”

  He continues stroking. “That’s good.”

  “And I told him he had to stop treating my mom like an invalid; that he had to stop letting her die and start fighting with her so she learns to fight back.”

  I feel his lips form a smile on the crown of my head. “And then I went and told my mom I was going to talk to her, whether she wanted me to or not. She didn’t respond right away, but then, there was this moment when she did, and it hit me that she feels like I do.” I have to pause and swallow to clear the emotions blocking my throat. “She’s sorry. She didn’t say it, but after today, I know it, and it’s not just for last time. She’s sorry like I am, for all of it, everything we did, what we didn’t do. She’s sorry, and I think she wants to love me.”

  That’s when I break, the thudding of my heart too much to hold in, the pressure in my chest too great to control. I sob like I haven’t since I was a little girl, everything inside of me breaking and pouring out and over. Only, Jake’s there to hold me together, scooping me closer until he’s holding me more securely, rubbing his hands up my arms and down, murmuring things in my ear so I know he’s there.

  I think of my mother and all of the time we’ve lost, and I cry and cry and cry and he never lets me go.

  ~

  We don’t talk about it, but something in our relationship has shifted again.

  For the past two weeks Jake and I have shared the same bed, spending hours each night exploring one another before falling into an exhausted sleep of slick skin and tangled limbs. In the morning, we wake and do it all over again before starting the rest of the day. Our routine hasn’t changed much, I still get up and work out and sometimes he joins me, sometimes he doesn’t, saving his energy for his own workout later in the day. I go to work or my parents’, he studies and then goes to his training session in the latter half of the day, and at some point we both meet back up at home and argue over what we’re doing for dinner. The idea that we wouldn’t have dinner together never even crosses our minds.

  There have been times over the last couple of weeks that I’ve stepped back and wondered if what I’m doing is safe, or if it’s a disaster waiting for the time and opportunity to devastate me. I never come to a conclusion on that thought, partly because I’m too happy to pick it apart for long, and partly because I’m trying not to think into the future, only of now. I know Jake feels the same.

  Both of our lives were ruled by one thing before this: the desire to make someone of ourselves. Not just something, but someone, a name people would remember when for so long the people who mattered barely knew who we were.

  Where I ruined my own life, Jake’s choice was made for him and we both ended up broken and wondering how we were going to pick up the pieces. I’d be lying if I said he didn’t make me feel more like myself than I have in a long time, that somehow who he is and who he allows me to be has shifted all of the pieces I reconstructed until I look in the mirror and actually see the girl staring back. Since that knowledge scares me, I ignore it and focus on the fact that whatever we’re doing, I’m having fun. That has to be enough for now.

  “Girl, fun can never be overrated. It’s about damn time you recognized that.”

  A.J. and I are standing in the back of the salon while I mix color and she flips through her phone while she waits for her next appointment to begin.

  “And from what I saw when I walked in on him giving you some of this fun out back the other day, I can guarantee a boy like that knows endless tricks to keep a woman entertained.”

  “Walked in? You mean, purposely sought us out after I told you I would be back in five minutes?” She grins and shrugs. “And I thought you knew how to keep women entertained,” I say with a raise of my brow.

  “I do, that’s how I recognize it in someone else. With the look you’ve been carrying around the past few days, I’d bet that boy has some moves that would make me proud.”

  They definitely make me something, though I’m not sure if it’s proud or just really grateful. I don’t say this, mostly because I know that once you give A.J. an inch, she won’t back down until you’ve given her everything. Instead, I smile smugly and put away the rest of the color tubes before stirring the mixture.

  I listen with half an ear as A.J. chatters on about her newest lady, the place they went for dinner a few nights ago and how bad the live music was. When Liam comes in to mix his own batch of color, A.J. is flipping through our newest color additions, trying to choose a new one for herself.

  “What about this?” she asks and holds out a caramel highlight next to her black and red hair.

  “Too innocent,” Liam and I say at the same time and she laughs.

  “Why are you changing?” I ask her and she shakes her head.

  “Girl, how can you even ask that? Changing hair color is what we do for a living.”

  I point to my own mahogany locks that she just updated for me. “And yet, I haven’t changed my color in months.”

  “Point made,” she says with a raise of her brow.

  “What’s that mean?”

  I look to Liam and he holds out his hands. I look back to A.J. and she smiles. “It means your hair is vanilla because you want people to think you are, too, but we,” she points back and forth between she and Liam, “know better — as I’m betting your man does now that you’re sharing a bed. You wear boring hair to hide the fact that you’re not boring. What we still don’t know is why.”

  It annoys me that she’s right, that a while ago I decided that I couldn’t be the platinum blonde that I once was because I was a different person. I chose brown because it was safe, almost sedate. I never add highlights or lowlights or an ombre, just an all-over rich color that borders on dark chocolate. Looking at A.J. and Liam, I know they understand that.

  I don’t take risks with my hair because I’m afraid to take risks with my life. Yet, hasn’t the last little bit of time with Jake proved I’m more a blend of who I once was and who I turned myself into? The fact that I can now look at that person I was and not be repulsed by her, that I can remember parts of her with some affection and understanding, shows me that Jake’s opened more doors than I thought, and that I’ve locked too many.

>   So thinking, I smile and tap the color she’s holding. “Then get ready. I need some updating, and I want you two to do it.”

  I turn and head back to my chair and I hear her laugh follow me the entire way.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Jake

  I’m at the stove cooking when Cora gets home. I don’t even turn down the music (because, really, you don’t turn down Run DMC), just shout at her over my shoulder and go back to grilling the fish I know she likes so much.

  My mood is high, higher than it’s been in a really long time and I’m riding the fucking wave. I threw today. Not hard, and definitely not up to the caliber of what I once considered throwing, but I fucking threw the ball. From the mound. At fifty percent. And I hit my target. Best of all, it was pain free.

  The fact that I wanted to call Blue the minute I did it didn’t even concern me. I’m too far in to pretend anymore, and though I’m not quite ready to express my undying love for her (mostly because I’m not sure either of us is ready), I chose to cook a celebration dinner that was about her because that’s how I feel. Everything is about her, everything is because of her. Today was only one day throwing, but this happiness inside of me has been there a lot longer, and it started with her.