Drenched in Light

by Lisa Wingate

  Mom looked shocked, then sad. “Oh, honey, I never intended for you to feel that way. Your dad loved you from the first moment he saw you. He couldn’t have loved you more if you were his own. I think he was more taken with you than with me the day we met.”

  I knew the story of the day my parents met, only there had never been any mention of me in it. She was reenrolling in college after having dropped out at the end of her second year. He was a graduate student working in the admissions office. He helped her with some complicated paperwork, and then he asked her to share lunch on the lawn outside the student union.

  “I was there?” The picture rushed to repaint itself in my mind—my mother, my father, me on a picnic blanket near the reflecting pool. “How old was I?” A car horn honked somewhere behind us, and I realized we were sitting in the intersection, not moving. My ankle quivered, the muscles tense as I moved from the brake to the gas. The world outside the car seemed far away and unreal.

  “You were about six months old when we met”—it was startlingly matter-of-fact, as if the story were nothing out of the ordinary—“and about a year old when we married.” I glanced over, and she was smiling slightly, looking out the window, her gaze far away. “Of course, back in those days, people thought differently about things. Everyone felt that, with you being so young … well … we should just go on and make a normal family life, without … issues.”

  I pictured Mom in Bett’s wedding dress, me hidden somewhere in the wings, or with a babysitter, because it wasn’t proper for me to be there. “Where was my father … my biological father?” Behind that, there was the other question—the one that bit and burned. Didn’t he ever want to know me?

  Smile fading, Mom shifted uncomfortably. “We had … problems. We were married less than a year—long enough to create you, of course, but we divorced just before you were born.”

  “Divorced?” I repeated. I’d never imagined that my mother and my biological father were married. By virtue of the fact that I didn’t have his name, I’d always assumed I was the result of an unwed pregnancy. “You were married to my biological father?”

  Mom craned to look for the emergency parking entrance as we reached St. Francis Hospital. “There’s so much to the story, Julia, and it was so long ago. He was young, and I was young. I was going to school and working part-time for the wardrobe mistress at the Kansas City Ballet. Your father was a wonderful dancer. He came with a touring company that was doing a guest production of The Nutcracker.” Her eyes fell closed, and she sighed, as if she could see him there in front of her. I pulled the car into a parking space, but she didn’t move. “He was beautiful to see—tall, with deep blue eyes and blond hair like yours. And his smile, oh, when he smiled …” Her lips curved upward, and she laughed in her throat. “I fell so in love, and when the production moved on, we eloped, and I went with him. It never occurred to me that we wouldn’t have much of a life. I thought we’d live on love, I guess.” Turning her head, she faced me. “Your father wasn’t a bad man, Julia. He was just a dreamer, and it’s a hard world for dreamers.”

  Pulling the keys from the ignition, I tucked them into my purse, knowing we needed to go inside and see about Bett. “Where is he now?” Behind that, there was the unspoken question again. Didn’t he wonder about me at all? Ever?

  Mom reached for her door handle, lifting it slowly, so that only a faint click disturbed the silence. “He died when you were three. I never really knew the details, but it was a car accident. He didn’t have any family to speak of, so I heard the news from a mutual friend.” Frowning sadly, she reached across the space between us and smoothed a hand over my hair. “He came to see you once before that. He was at your third-birthday party, and he brought you a jewelry box with a little ballerina that twirled when you lifted the lid. You know—the white one I’ve always kept on your dresser? That was from him. He would have been so proud of you, Julia. If he could be here to see, he would be so proud. He loved you enough to want you to have a normal life.” Her tears glittered in the dim light, tracing the fine wrinkles around her eyes. Without bothering to wipe them, she turned away and pushed open the door. “We’d better go inside.”

  I followed her into the hospital, thinking of the past, my father, my mother, and the choices she had made for me. A stable life, a solid family, a father who soothed my broken heart and chased away the boogey men at night. He was a poor dancer, but a good man, and he loved me from the moment he saw me. My dad.

  He was sitting near the emergency room door, wringing his hands in his lap when we walked in. Crossing the hallway, I sat down beside him, slipped an arm around him, and laid my head on his shoulder. Mom sat on the other side of him, looking anxiously around the waiting room.

  “They took Bett right in,” Dad explained. “Jason’s with her. That’s all I know so far.”

  Mom slipped her hand into Dad’s, and we sat there waiting, chained together by a thread of desperate hope. Fifteen minutes ticked by, and then thirty.

  Dad got up and paced the room, then sat down again. Mom inquired at the emergency desk, but there was no news.

  I closed my eyes and prayed until finally Jason appeared in the emergency room doorway. One look at his face told me everything was all right.

  “False alarm.” His lips parted into a jubilant smile, as he held up a strip of ultrasound images. “The baby’s fine. Here are baby’s first pictures.”

  The four of us gathered around the misty photographs, trying to decipher body parts, discussing the possibilities of a niece or nephew, granddaughter or grandson.

  Caught in the beauty and mystery of the moment, we were swept from horrible fear to awe-inspiring joy.

  Chapter 25

  In the rush of getting Bett out of the hospital and ready for her wedding, I was almost able to forget the controversy at Harrington. Stafford fired me via voice mail on my cell phone, expressing his regret and assuring me he’d done everything he could to prevent it. Keiler filled me in on the details of the board meeting. After I’d left, the audience had several times erupted into questions about the drug issue and accusations of a cover-up. The board president had repeatedly tried to redirect the meeting, and had reminded the audience that the board would not respond to comments made during the public forum, or to impromptu questions. Any inquiries or concerns would have to be submitted in writing before the next board meeting. Finally he’d threatened to have disrupters ejected, reminding them that only those signed up for the agenda were allowed to speak.

  On Thursday after school, Keiler brought a box of personal items from my office. I hadn’t had the heart to go back. I knew when I did it would really hit me that this was the end. With Bett’s scare and the wedding details, I’d felt as if I were on a long weekend or on leave for a family emergency, and I’d be going back to work in a few days. I knew that next week, with the wedding over and Bett gone, Monday morning would be hard.

  Reality struck as I opened the box from my office. Sitting on my parents’ front steps with Keiler, I started to cry. The top of the box was filled with notes from students. Most of them said Free Ms. C, and had pictures of hands in handcuffs or cartoon characters with tape across their mouths. One had Mr. Stafford as Hitler and me as the Statue of Liberty, stuffed in a trash bag up to the neck.

  “They’ve started a protest campaign,” Keiler explained as I wiped my eyes. “ ‘Free Ms. C.’ They sneak by and stick the notes on your office door, like Stafford has you locked in there. It drives him nuts. He keeps pulling the notes down, and every time he turns around, more appear. When there’s a crowd in the hall, someone will yell, ‘Free Ms. C!’ and Stafford goes crazy trying to figure out who said it.” Sitting beside me on the step, he motioned to the notes. “I got these from the trash can. I thought you’d like to see.” His eyes twinkled, and I found myself staring into them, the bits of paper limp in my hands. I wondered how much he had to do with fueling this protest. “So, you may not be there, but you’ve started a movement. There are ple
nty of kids at Harrington who are serious about pursuing their talents, and you’ve finally helped them find a voice. It doesn’t hurt that, as a whole, the kids hate Stafford. Protesting him has become the thing to do. My classroom is a long way from the office, but I’ve seen parents going in and out of administration every time I’ve been by this week. People are asking questions.”

  I felt a twinge of satisfaction, a hope that my time at Harrington wouldn’t be in vain. “How is Dell doing?” There was a voice-mail message from Karen on my cell phone, but I hadn’t had the heart to return it. “Tell Karen I’m sorry I haven’t called her back yet. Things have been busy with Bett.”

  “Dell misses you.” He squinted pensively, his face catching that late-afternoon sunshine. “But, you know, this has been good for her in a way. She’s angry—not at you, but in a righteous kind of way. With all the things that have happened in her life, that’s the one thing that has always been missing. She quietly tolerates injustice, like she deserves it. She’s never raged against the machine, against the things that are wrong and unfair, and now she’s finally doing that. She’s learning what it feels like to stand up and be counted.”

  A sense of pride swelled within me as I set the Free Ms. C notes in the box. I thought of Dell sitting in my office just a few weeks ago, trying to disappear into the chair as I read the essay about the girl in the river. There’s nothing to me that anyone would want to read about, she’d said. “I’m glad she’s finally finding herself.” Rubbing away the lingering emotions, I tried to gather my thoughts. “But tell her not to get in trouble for me, all right? Tell all the kids that. I’ll be all right. I don’t want them getting in trouble, especially not Dell. She’s on the borderline at Harrington already, and she’s worked hard to stay.”

  “I think at this point you have to let her make her own decisions.” He glanced sideways with a slight, knowing smile. “She’s doing what she needs to do. Yesterday, she read an essay out loud in English class—Ada requires them to do that at least once per semester. Last time Dell flunked the requirement, but this time she signed up on her own. She even invited me in to listen—shook Mrs. Morris up a bit, but she let me sit in while Dell did her reading.”

  A sense of amazement drifted through my black mood like a pinch of misplaced glitter. I couldn’t imagine Dell volunteering to read in front of the class, or inviting Keiler to come. “What did she read?”

  “An essay about her mother’s drug use and Just Say No.” Picking a fluffy seed head off his sneakers, he tossed it into the breeze, sending it on its way to someplace it could root. “She said you helped her write it.”

  A new rush of tears prickled in my throat. Happy tears, the kind that come from knowing some things work out the way they’re supposed to. “I can’t believe she did that.” I imagined how she must have felt, standing in front of everyone, finally telling her story.

  “She did.” He punctuated the sentence with a definitive nod. “She said she wanted the other kids to understand what it’s like to live with somebody who’s messed up on drugs. After she finished reading, the kids asked her questions for ten minutes until the bell rang. There wasn’t a dry eye in the house, I’ll tell you. Even Ada looked emotional.

  I tried to imagine Mrs. Morris getting emotional. My mind couldn’t form the picture. “That must have been something to see.”

  “It was quite a moment,” Keiler admitted. “It wouldn’t have happened without you.”

  “I wish I could have been there.”

  “I know.” Nudging me, he took my hand in his and looked at my fingers. “But you were. You were in that room more than anybody else. You and Dell.”

  “Thanks for coming, Keiler,” I whispered, and rested my head on his shoulder. We sat like that for a long time, until finally the afternoon light grew dim and the air cold. Shivering, I slipped my other hand into my sweatshirt sleeve, and Keiler smiled.

  “Guess I’d better go,” he said, standing up, then pulling me to my feet. “See you at the wedding rehearsal tomorrow. Dell’s had me playing the guitar track over and over until I could do it in my sleep. She doesn’t want to let you down. She and Karen went out shopping tonight for a dress to match the wedding colors.”

  “They didn’t have to do that,” I said as we walked to his motorcycle.

  Putting on his helmet, he straddled the metal-and-leather beast and raised the kickstand. “It’s good for them. Mother-daughter bonding and all that stuff, you know.”

  The thought gave me a warm sense of satisfaction. In some small way, I’d helped to bring them together as a family. Wherever I landed next in my career, I hoped I would have the opportunity to do that again, but Dell would always be the first. “How is Cameron doing, by the way?”

  “Still having a rough go, right now. Hard to say how that will turn out. He’s in a tough spot.”

  I didn’t trust myself to answer. It was difficult to know how to feel about Cameron. On the one hand, he had cost me my job. On the other hand, he was a kid with a load of problems he didn’t have the maturity and life experience to fully understand.

  Starting the Harley, Keiler said good-bye, then turned around in the driveway and drove off. I watched man and motorcycle get smaller and smaller until both disappeared. Then I wished he would circle the block and come back. I waited until the rumble had faded completely before I walked inside, set the box on the guest bed, and sorted through it. I’d forgotten to pack some of my personal items—nothing critical, but tomorrow when I went downtown to pick up Bett’s bouquets at the cleaners, I’d stop by Harrington, remove the last few things from my office, and see the Free Ms. C campaign for myself. There would be at least some satisfaction in walking into that building with my head held high.

  All night, I tried to convince myself that was how I would feel, returning to Harrington—triumphant, indignant, righteous. Securely on the moral high ground.

  But when I drove into the Harrington parking lot on Friday morning, even though I was determined not to be, I was filled with a sense of failure. Sitting in the car with my hands sweating and my heart racing, I waited until the lot was clear and the kids would be in Friday-morning assembly, before I walked up the steps. It was far from the triumphant reentry I had envisioned. Breath caught in my throat as I peeked into the administration area. Fortunately, it was empty, so I hurried toward my office. The hallway felt surreal, and as I turned the corner, I stood looking at a half dozen Free Ms. C notes taped to my door. They fluttered in silent fanfare as I went inside, leaving the door cracked behind me, so that if anyone came by, I couldn’t be accused of doing something covert.

  Sitting on the edge of my desk with my arms resting on an empty file box, I gazed around the room, wondering who would fill it next. The question was too painful to consider, so I packed my books from the bookshelf, the wall clock I’d brought from home, the “Daily Inspirations” calendar Bett had given me when I started the job. Taking one last look in the desk drawers, I hoisted the box onto my hip and walked out. A line of ladybugs, marching single file along the ceiling, led me to the front entrance. Pushing open the door, I paused to look back at the corridor, to consider that this was the last time.

  When I turned back, Cameron was hurrying up the steps with his backpack and his saxophone. We stood on the landing, staring at each other, neither of us knowing what to say.

  Ducking his head, he scrubbed a toe through the coating of silt atop the cement. “I’m, ummm … I’m sorry, Ms. C,” he muttered, shrugging to hike his backpack higher onto his shoulder.

  “Me too, Cameron.” I let the door close behind me.

  Shifting his weight to balance the instrument, he cast a hopeful glance at me. “I didn’t mean for all this to happen … like this, I mean. My mom’s a witch sometimes.”

  The counselor in me reared her head at the comment. Avoidance, denial, shifting of blame. “Cameron, what happened has little to do with your mom and everything to do with you. Your mom wasn’t the one out of control in the
hall last week.”

  Eyes widening indignantly, he drew back, fidgeting with the tail of his backpack strap, wrapping it around his finger, then unwrapping it. “I went to the doctor yesterday, and he changed my medication, so that shouldn’t happen again.” Blinking innocently, he nodded as he spoke, hoping, I supposed, that I would nod along.

  “Cameron, you know and I know that what happened last Thursday had nothing to do with ADD medications.” He opened his mouth to protest, but I held a hand up between us. “Don’t bother giving me whatever line worked at home. I’m not buying it.” He looked young and vulnerable and terrified. I laid a hand on his arm, imagining myself at fourteen, all my carefully hidden secrets revealed. “Cameron, you’ve got a problem, and the longer you continue deny it, the worse it’s going to get. When you spend this kind of energy maintaining a lie, everything else in your life suffers. Think about what you’re giving up—your music, your grades, your self-respect, maybe eventually your life? Come on, Cam, you’re a smart kid. I know you’ve got problems at home, but you aren’t going to solve them with weed or huffing, or whatever you’ve been doing. When you come down, you’re still the same kid, in the same place, with the same problems. You need to tell your parents the truth.” I didn’t wait for an answer, just let go of his arm and left. He stood looking after me until I was almost to the bottom of the steps, then finally turned and went into the building.

  The picture of him standing alone on the steps haunted me as I drove to the cleaners’. When I arrived, Mim and Granmae were playing dominoes at a corner table. Bett’s flowers were waiting, carefully packaged in three boxes from the grocery store. Mim pulled off the lids, and breath caught in my throat.

  “They’re beautiful,” I gasped, and even though I knew Mim’s roses were outstanding, I was amazed anew by the delicate bouquets of butter-cream colored roses with soft pink tips, nestled in fresh greenery and laced with white baby’s breath and tiny clusters of periwinkle blue flowers that looked like miniature wine cups. The scent of old-fashioned roses wafted up and reminded me of trellises at Grandma Rice’s house, covered each spring with fragrant, red blooms.