A Different Light

by Mariah Stewart

  Her attention drifted back to the here and now, where the contractor’s assistant was removing debris from the garage.

  “Hey!” she yelled when she saw what was in his hands.” Don’t throw those out!”

  The startled young man looked over his shoulder as she flew off the porch.

  “The insurance company will pay for new ones,” he told her.

  “We don’t want new ones. We want these. They’re not damaged.”

  “Where do you want them?”

  “I’ll take them.” She held out her arms and he passed her the assortment of garden implements. “Are there any more undamaged?”

  He disappeared into the shell of the garage and brought out a hoe, a short-handled shovel, a smashed bucket from which poked the shiny green handles of a transplanting trowel, and a long, thin dandelion digger.

  “You find any more of this stuff, you bring it to me, okay?”

  “Sure.”

  She carried John’s gardening tools onto the porch and inspected them, surprising herself with the delight she felt at having found them all intact. She couldn’t wait to show Callie.

  Athen spread the tools on the wooden deck like newly found treasure. John had been passionate about his gardens, devoting hours to plot plans and soil improvement, nurturing the new plants he brought home from Ms. Evelyn’s little nursery up on the hill. Every January, he would eagerly await the arrival of the newest nursery and seed catalogs. Then he and Callie would sit for hours, poring over the offerings until they made their selections, carefully planning what they’d plant and where. When the weather warmed, he and Callie would set out for Ms. Evelyn’s nursery to make their purchases. Athen rarely accompanied them, having little interest in gardening beyond the dishes she could create with the fresh produce, and the spectacular bouquets that would fill the house later in the summer. From May through October, their yard would be ablaze with color from every angle, and passersby would ring the doorbell to express their admiration.

  Athen stared down at the tools of John’s leisure hours, the solid hardwood handles tipped in dark green enamel. They were imported from England and made to last a lifetime; she’d ordered them from one of his catalogs seven years ago as a special surprise. She’d first found the catalog on the kitchen counter, open to the page upon which the tools were displayed. Several days later, the catalog—open to the same page—had been left on the dining room table. The following week, when she found it in the living room, open on a table next to John’s favorite chair, she’d taken the hint and ordered the lot of it for his birthday. He’d been more pleased with his garden tools than with any gift she’d ever given him.

  She’d give them to Callie as soon as she arrived home from school. It had been Callie who’d worked by his side—digging, planting, and weeding. She would be thrilled to have these precious reminders of her father and the special times they’d shared.

  At noon Athen went into the house and poked through the day’s mail. She straightened the kitchen for what seemed like the fifth time. She looked around for some small task with which to occupy herself. Laundry? Done on Saturday; there weren’t enough clothes in the hamper to justify the effort. She’d paid the household bills on Thursday, shopped for groceries on Friday.

  She sat at the kitchen table and looked out the window at the view, so stark with the absence of the tree, and wondered what to do with the rest of the day. With the rest of her life. When the tears began, she made no effort to wipe them away.

  How had she spent the hours before he had left her? She could not remember the days being so long. She still had the same errands to run, the same number of meals to cook, the same house to clean, the same activities with Callie. Since John’s passing, her life seemed to be nothing but huge chunks of time waiting to be filled.

  Even the leisure activities of her old life were no longer of any consequence. Biking tired her. Her painting required too much concentration. The Greek Community Center, where for years she had tutored older residents as well as the recent arrivals in English, was an unwelcome reminder of happier times.

  When Callie was little, Athen’s world had been defined by the needs of her child. She had loved those days, before Callie had started school, when the weather was the only restriction on how they spent the hours. Looking back now, time seemed to have passed in little more than the blink of an eye. How much faster would the years ahead pass, years filled with nothing but watching Callie grow up? Had John so filled her life that there was nothing of her that he had not taken with him?

  When John had twenty-five years in the force, they’d planned on buying a house in the country where they’d live out their days. They’d find an old farm where John could have his own nursery, stocked with plants he’d grown in his own greenhouse, just like Ms. Evelyn. Athen would keep the books for John’s nursery business and entertain their grandchildren when they came to spend their summers.

  Funny how she had never counted on this.

  A police officer’s wife should know what can happen, she chided herself. We all think it could happen only to someone else, that someday we might be called upon to consol. We never want to believe that we might be the one to be consoled.

  Athen rose and poured a glass of water, the silence closing in on her. Callie had two more weeks of school, then day camp for the summer, then school would begin and the new year would follow, then yet another and another. She forced the image of an endless succession of empty days from her mind.

  Maybe next year …

  “Maybe next year what?” Angry with herself, she slammed the glass on the counter, splashing water onto the tiled floor. “Maybe next year what?”

  Nothing is going to magically appear and make things better. There will be no sign to point the way to the rest of my life. This is the rest of my life. I will not move from this spot unless I take the first step. And there will never be a better time to take that step than now.

  “So what’s it going to be?” She stood in the center of the kitchen. “Big girl who wants to see what else life has in store or poor pitiful me who will sit on the sidelines, watching the world go by, for the next, oh, thirty or forty years?”

  She inhaled deeply, let the air out in a long, hushed whoosh.

  “I’m thinking big girl.”

  Tired of feeling pathetic, tired of feeling like a victim, tired of facing every day with a knot in her chest, of feeling sorry for herself, Athen reached for the phone. Afraid she’d change her mind if she gave herself time to second-guess her decision, she lifted the receiver and punched in the number she’d known by heart since she was a child.

  “Good morning,” she told the unfamiliar voice that answered the main switchboard. “This is Athena Moran. I’d like to speak with Mayor Rossi, please.”

  ATHEN’S TRANSITION FROM HER SELF-IMPOSED hibernation to the demands of her new status as a working mother had gone much more smoothly than she had dared hope. Callie, rather than accusing her mother of abandoning her as Athen feared, barely raised her eyes from the newest addition to the Twilight saga to pronounce the news as “cool.”

  Meg, John’s sister, had been delighted with Athen’s news.

  “I can’t wait to call Mom and Dad and give them the good news. It’s about time you joined the living again,” she’d happily told Athen.

  Athen’s first-day jitters had been unwarranted. The entire staff at City Hall seemed to comprise old friends of hers from high school, old friends of her father’s, and parents of old friends. Everyone greeted her with the warmest of welcomes. If anyone had been disappointed to have been passed over for the job on Athen’s behalf, no one let on.

  Mayor Rossi himself had been all business as he succinctly explained what he expected of his new right hand.

  “Read the paper,” he instructed.

  “Read the paper?” she repeated.

  “The newspaper. The Woodside Herald. Tells you just about everything you’ll need to know for the day. Who’s bickering with whom.
What cars are out of commission because some bozo ran his city wheels into a fence. Which group of activists or malcontents will most likely be knocking on my door that day.”

  He leaned back in his huge black leather chair and lit a cigar.

  “It’ll all be right there, the whole day spread out in front of you. The most important thing you’ll do for me is read the paper and circle the articles I’ll need to read. Leave it on my desk.

  “Next, you go to the city’s website. You check for emails and you print them out. I’ll want to see them so we can talk about how you’re going to respond. You’ll put those in a file and leave them on my desk with the newspaper.”

  “How about your personal email?”

  “I don’t do that. I just get what comes through the city’s website.” He waved a hand as if he couldn’t be bothered. “Anyone has something to say to me, they can call me or they can go to the website. Oh, and that reminds me.” He snapped his fingers. “I want you to keep an eye on the Herald’s website as well. Watch for comments that people post after articles about the city. Oh, and editorials. Letters to the editor in the hard copy of the paper, follow-up comments from the website. Those pages need to be checked, too. You’ll print out anything relevant.”

  “Why don’t you just read the articles online?”

  “I like the feel of the paper. I don’t like the computer. I need anything done on the computer, you’ll do it for me.”

  “All right.”

  “I get in at nine sharp, come hell or high water. Unless there’s an emergency, I never schedule a meeting before ten thirty and until that hour I only make phone calls, I never take them. Anyone calls before ten thirty, you take a message and bring it in to me, unless they’re returning a call from me. You don’t discuss anything—not who calls or who walks through that door—with anyone. Not anyone—except me. And you will tell me everything you hear and everything you see. Period.”

  She stared blankly at him from across the desk.

  “Any questions?” He tapped the ash from the end of the cigar.

  “Not so far.” She smoothed the skirt of her new gray linen suit, purchased in anticipation of her first day and selected by Callie the previous weekend (“You have to buy it, Mommy, it matches your eyes”).

  “You’ll start at eight. Gives you enough time to scan the paper, the website, and get my coffee ready. I take it black. The cups are on the middle shelf of the armoire behind you. I expect the coffee and the paper on my desk at nine. I have meetings with Council every day at three p.m. Starting today you will sit in on the meeting to listen and observe. You will not speak or voice an opinion unless I ask you for one. You will take notes that you will type up and print out for me. No other hard copies.” He paused. “I didn’t ask if you know how to type.”

  “Well, sure.”

  “Edie—you know Edie, right? She can type any letters that you don’t have time to do. God knows she has only about an hour and a half’s worth of her own work to do on any given day, but that’s why she’s support staff. She’s supposed to support you as well as me. Which reminds me. You’ll keep my personal files locked. I have the only key. Ask for it when you need it and return it as soon as you’re done. It’s not that I don’t trust you, Athen.” He softened slightly. “If I didn’t trust you, you wouldn’t be sitting in that chair. I’m more afraid someone would lift the key from your desk, maybe even have a copy made, who knows? Confidential stuff, a lot of what goes on inside this room. Can’t take too many chances, you know? And also, you’re going to …”

  The buzz of the intercom interrupted whatever he was about to say.

  “What is it, Edie?” He lifted the receiver. “Okay, sure. Put him on. Jimmy, thanks for getting right back to me. Yes, of course I did …”

  Athen used the interruption to covertly survey Rossi’s office. If she hadn’t known better, she’d have sworn she was in the paneled library of an English lord’s manor house. The carpet was a huge red, black, and cream oriental. The paintings were landscapes done in muted oils. Crimson drapes narrowly striped in black—custom-made, from all appearances—hung from four large windows, effectively blocking out any view of the city beyond the room. The desk had a mahogany top large enough to play billiards on. The left side of the room featured black leather furniture: oversized sofa, love seat, and two deep chairs. At the center of the grouping was a large round mahogany coffee table. She twisted slightly in her seat to inspect the tall armoire that dominated the wall behind her. It, too, was mahogany, nine feet tall and nearly as wide. It was obvious that no expense had been spared in His Honor’s honor.

  “Okay, then, are we straight here?” Dan turned his attention back to Athen as he hung up the phone. Without waiting for an answer, he nodded and said, “Good. Let’s get started.”

  He raised himself from the chair and walked around the desk, gallantly offering his hand to assist Athen from her seat, much as an old-world patron might do. He guided her to the door with one hand on her back and walked her to her desk.

  “Edie here will give you a hand with things.” He nodded at the diminutive silver-haired mouse of a woman who appeared to have been waiting all morning for the moment when Rossi’s door opened. “Show Athen where the coffeepot is, the ladies’ room, the supply closet, whatever you think she needs to know. Introduce her to anyone she doesn’t already know.”

  He turned to Athen. “I have a meeting with the city’s union reps in twenty minutes. Should run through lunch. I’ll be back in time for my three o’clock. I’ll expect you to have coffee ready.”

  He strolled to the elevator, punched the down button, and was immediately rewarded with opening doors. He stepped inside and was gone.

  “Well,” Athen said uncertainly. She turned to Edie, trying hard not to focus on the purple, red, and black scarf that rode in an untidy heap around the neck of the older woman’s lavender knit dress. “Well, then.”

  He’d left her no work. No letters. No filing. No instructions. She looked at Edie expectantly, hoping she might make some suggestions. When she did not, Athen sat at her desk outside Rossi’s door and booted up her computer, musing that more than once during her conversation with her new boss, she’d felt her eyebrows rise. Coming from anyone other than Dan, his expectation that she keep his coffeepot filled might have been seen as somewhat chauvinistic. But even if he hadn’t been the mayor, or many years older than she, the fact that he was an old friend of her father’s guaranteed she’d be deferential. Besides, he was of another generation. And it wasn’t a big deal. Dan was just a little old-fashioned in his expectations.

  More like a feudal lord, she mused. But she had been raised in an old-fashioned home, where old-world customs and traditions had been honored, none more so than respect for one’s elders. She’d been around men like Dan Rossi all her life. Her family was full of them.

  “Edie, how do I set up my password on my computer?” Athen frowned.

  “No point in starting with that right now.” Edie glanced at her watch. “It’s almost eleven fifteen. I go to lunch at eleven thirty. Be glad to help you when I get back. Of course, by then you’ll probably want lunch.”

  “No, no, that’ll be fine,” Athen assured her. “Twelve-thirty will be fine.”

  “Well, it may not be right at twelve thirty. I have a little shopping to do,” Edie explained unapologetically. “But as soon as I get back.”

  “Sure. That’ll be fine.” Athen smiled wanly as Edie returned to her desk on the other side of the hallway, just beyond the elevator.

  Athen sighed, and began to search the desk drawers, looking for the manual. After ten unsuccessful minutes, she closed the bottom drawer and sighed again.

  “I’m going for lunch now, Athen,” Edie called from the elevator. “Can I bring you anything?”

  “No, that’s okay. Thanks.”

  “See you later.”

  “Right. Later.” Athen wiggled the fingers of one hand in Edie’s direction as the elevator doors close
d. “I’ll be right here when you get back. Right here, just me and the newspaper …”

  4

  The Fourth of July holiday fell during Athen’s second full week of work. She was surprised at how much she looked forward to a weekday that did not begin with the insistent whine of the 6:00 a.m. alarm. Callie, however, not wanting to miss a minute of the festivities of the day, dragged her mother’s reluctant body downstairs for breakfast at six thirty, reminding Athen that the early worm got the best viewing spot on the street. To that end, they’d set out for the center of town around eight, Athen on foot, Callie on her bike.

  “‘I … love a parade,’” Callie sang gaily as she marched in time to the beat of the drums as the high school band passed before them

  This year, as every year, the folks in Woodside Heights were treated to an Independence Day spectacle guaranteed to be “the best ever.” The lineup included a string band from Philadelphia, bagpipers from Virginia, Revolutionary War–style drum and bugle corps from Connecticut, and, of course, the Woodside Heights High School marching band. The parade proceeded for a full twenty-five minutes, the local children filling in at the end on bicycles patriotically decorated with red, white, and blue crepe paper.

  Athen kept in step with the crowd as it followed the parade to the park where speeches would be given by the city fathers, and everyone would join in the Pledge of Allegiance and National Anthem, after which the children’s activities—races and a softball game—would continue throughout the afternoon. The long, hot day would end with a fireworks display over Woodside Park.