The Light We See

by J. Lynn Bailey

  “Ingrid. One year younger than me. Studied to be a nurse.” I take another bite of soup instead, chew on the noodles.

  Luke stares at me, swallowing another sip of water. I know what he’s doing. He’s tiptoeing around the wolf that’s sitting in the corner.

  Why doesn’t he ask me what happened that night? It isn’t a secret.

  I want to ask him this, ask him why, but in the same breath, it’s almost as if, just for a moment, I’m free of it and I’m not Catherine Clemens, that I’m just Cat and this is just a really long lunch meeting, and I like it this way.

  I turn the conversation back to him. “If you died tomorrow, what are three things you’d miss the most?”

  With Luke’s hand on his water bottle, his eyes narrow, and he cocks his head to the right. “What?”

  I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand—another thing that used to make Mother cringe. I repeat the question.

  This time, his eyes are deadlocked on mine. “The ocean. The smell of fall … and you.”

  Please, God, let this all be a dream, and if it is a dream, let me wake up now, so I can start the healing of the wreckage Luke McCay will do to me.

  I cough into my hand, attempting to act as though his words don’t have any effect on me and it’s the soup. “Wrong pipe,” I say through the cough. “You barely know me, Luke,” I whisper.

  He leans on the table, crossing his arms, the candle’s light reflecting in his eyes. “I know enough of you to know that, when I die, you’ll have made an impact on me. That, somehow, you’ve wedged yourself into my forever memories, the ones I keep close to me.”

  I ponder this thought for a moment as my throat begins to tighten. This is a sign that I feel something that I don’t want to feel. “But we haven’t created any memories,” I counter, trying to smile this off and take another bite of soup.

  “We still have just over two thousand miles, Cat. I’m sure we’ll find some.”

  “But you can’t possibly know that I’ll have made an impact on you.”

  “You already have.” He shoves a bite of noodles in his mouth and stares hard back at me.

  My phone vibrates in my back pocket, and I pull it out. Look at Luke. “I need to take this.”

  “By all means.” Luke pushes back from the picnic table and grabs our empty soup cups. The lull of the candlelight still pulls us back to the fire, the moment we just shared that wasn’t intimate, but intimate at the same time, if that makes sense. I just want a few more minutes in this moment to feel Luke.

  But my sister is calling. My phone is vibrating in my hand, and Luke’s already walked over to the trash can.

  “Hey,” I whisper into my phone.

  Long pause.

  “Hey.”

  I look back to make sure Luke can’t hear me. He’s in the driver’s side of his car, the dome light on; he’s looking down at something.

  I turn back to stare at the darkness and the tent we erected together.

  “Where are you?” she asks.

  “Texas. How’s Mother?” When I ask this question, I don’t expect a change in Mother’s ability to use her words. To keep house. To tend to her roses like she used to when we got older. To take care of us, but maybe a smile. Maybe.

  “The same.”

  “Did you get the money where it needed to go?” I glance back to be sure Luke is a safe distance from me, so he can’t hear the conversation.

  “Yes. Still have seven more payments.”

  I rub my forehead with my hand, asking myself if we’ll ever get out from Mother’s care bills.

  “We could sell the hou—” Ingrid starts to ask.

  “Ingrid. We aren’t selling the house. We will find a way. Look, give Mother a kiss for me. Tell her I’ll be home soon.”

  “The house doesn’t mean anything to me anymore, Cat.”

  “Love you, bye.” I abruptly hang up because I don’t want to hear what Ingrid has to say about the house.

  Deep down, I know it still means something to her even if she can’t enjoy it like she used to. Selling the house is not an option.

  I turn around to see Luke sitting at the picnic table in the candlelight. Sliding my phone back in my pocket, I casually walk over to the picnic table and sit down.

  “Everything all right?” he asks.

  Everything is better than it used to be, I want to say. “Can I ask you a question?”

  “Shoot.” He shuffles the deck of cards.

  “How do you feel about the reunion series of LA Hills?” I ask, feeling like a sellout, like a groupie, like someone who doesn’t have anything deeper to ask, yet knowing this is part of the story Mr. Jenkins wants.

  “How about this? We play War, and every time your card is the highest card, you can ask a question. But every time my card is the highest card, I get to ask you a question.”

  I bite my lip. Think for a minute. “Okay.”

  Luke hands me my cards.

  We flip.

  I get the win. Look at Luke across the table. “How do you feel about the reunion show?”

  “I think we’ve all changed, and we’ve all been through shit.” Luke runs his free hand through his hair. “Honestly, I’m not sure.”

  “Then, why are you doing it?”

  I put a card out on the table.

  Luke does, too.

  I win again.

  Luke drops his head, pulls it up, and smiles. “I’m not.”

  “But—”

  “You asked how I felt about it,” Luke says.

  “But the media is saying otherwise.”

  “Hollywood thinks that there’s a price to everything, and if you’re willing to pay the price, well, it’ll all work out.”

  “But not with you.”

  “Nah. I don’t need the money. I just don’t want to spend my time left on this earth tied to a show or Hollywood or anything like that. I just want to be free.”

  Me, too, I want to say. I feel his words in the darkest places of me, the places I store the guilt that I won’t allow to the surface. The sadness I keep hidden. I know what you mean.

  If he’s read my story in the tabloids, the magazines, just like everyone else has, he knows that, of all people, I might just understand the most. My family has never talked to the media about that night.

  Not Mother.

  Not Ingrid.

  Not me.

  Not Father.

  So, everything said is just speculation.

  The media interviewed the cleaning service Mother had hired.

  They interviewed the landscape service that manicured our lawn, trimmed our bushes into dinosaurs, swans, and Bruce Springsteen.

  I could sell the story. But I never will. Some things are so private, so guarded, so secret that they become hard to let go of.

  When I look up, Luke is staring at me, his card waiting for mine.

  I lay down a two of spades.

  He wins with a jack of hearts. “Have you ever been in love?” Luke collects our cards in the middle.

  “No.”

  We lay two more down.

  I win. “Have you ever been in love?”

  “Yes.”

  I can’t lie and say I don’t feel jealous or incompetent or less than right now. Luke is on a different playing field than me. He’s ten years older, maturer, more beautiful than any man I’ve ever met. Luke doesn’t give me this vibe that I’m somehow less; it’s something within me that tells me I don’t measure up, that I’m not good enough.

  I imagine the woman he’s in love with—or fell in love with—has long, dark hair, the length that reaches her waist and lays flat against her back. Green eyes, the color between emerald and peridot. Skin so perfect that it doesn’t seem real. And probably a soul so sweet that grace seems to be her motto.

  We lay two cards down.

  War. A seven of hearts and a seven of spades.

  At the last flip of the fourth card, I win.

  But it’s Luke’s phone that rings this time
from his shirt pocket. He pulls it out, looks down at the screen, and looks up at me. “Excuse me, Catherine.”

  I don’t say anything, but he waits expectantly for me to say something.

  “Okay.”

  He nods, stands up, and puts his phone to his ear. He walks away into the darkness, and I hear the remnants of his whispers that move closer to my heart.

  Would he whisper in my ear secrets only between two lovers?

  The closeness I’ve never felt to a man seems present here, as if I’d known Luke my whole life. Maybe it’s because he does more listening than talking. Maybe it’s because he likes ’70s music the way I like it. Slow, easy, full of pain, room for interpretation.

  The only noise I hear is the sound of my own heart thumping against my chest. The rest of the world seems quiet, unimpressed.

  I look at the night sky with the diamonds so bright. I remember when I couldn’t see the stars and the moon and the sun. I remember when the sky wasn’t itself at all, just four prison walls that protected the world from me.

  The Texas night air is warm, and it still smells hot into the evening, like the mornings in Myers Flat when the sun rose and the scent followed, warning its patrons that today would be another warm day.

  Texas heat seems somehow different from the heat in California. Maybe it’s more Republican than Liberal, perhaps more hospitable than California, Texas offers a warm hug and fried chicken, whereas California might offer an opinion on recycling and vegan sushi roll.

  Luke returns. “I’m sorry.”

  I shrug.

  He doesn’t offer an explanation, nor do I deserve one.

  “I won. My question.”

  We look down at the cards.

  What’s her name? I want to ask. But just when my head convinces me to do the service, I remember that Luke doesn’t ask about what happened. He doesn’t ask about Father or Mother. He gives me that time. That space. So, as bad as I want to know about the woman who took his heart and hopefully kept it safe, I won’t ask him about it.

  “What’s your favorite James Taylor song?”

  “ ‘Fading Away.’ ”

  But I’m not ready for his answer. I’m not prepared at all. I swallow the good and bad feelings that this song, its lyrics, its memories give me. The quiet voice of a desperate little girl eager to have what her parents had when this song is played and only when this song played, and yet pushing it away because when the song ends, the guessing game of how to live, how to breathe, how to survive becomes essential.

  I’m writing a story, and that’s what I’m being paid to do, so do it, I tell myself.

  “Why that song?” My bones, my heart crush against my own words.

  When I don’t hear Luke’s response, I look over at him. Maybe his answer is full of thoughts that he can’t fill his own words with—as if the explanation won’t justify the way the song moves him.

  And maybe all of this is my truth and not his.

  His Adam’s apple bobs, and he goes to speak. But stops. Gathers his thoughts and starts again. “When all your moves, all your cards are played, who are you then? I think the song is about vulnerability. After everything is laid out on the table, what does that leave?” Luke meets my gaze as I hang on his words. The candlelight dances against his face and mine. “It leaves a man fading away, just trying to make sense of it all, trying like hell not to lose himself, and in the same breath, I think the song is also about surrender.” He pauses. “I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my life, done a lot I’m not proud of, but what if, at the end of the day, you rectify the wrong just in time to feel some sense of right in the world?”

  A single tear attempts to slide down my cheek, but I catch it before it does.

  Yeah.

  “I think life and death are the easy parts. I think it’s all the shit in the middle that’s difficult. Are you ready to go to bed?” he asks. “We have a long drive tomorrow.” Luke cuts the conversation short.

  He coughs into his hand and then rubs it against his jeans. I like when he does this because it makes him seem more human.

  I carve out this moment right now. I take it and put it into my pocket, saving it for later, so that when I get down on myself again, I can take this moment out, savor it, and know there are people who understand, that we just need to be present to hear it.

  Luke puts the cards away, and I blow out the candle.

  The darkness surrounds us, and he lights the path with his phone to the tent where our bodies will lie and take in the world, a place where, hopefully, our minds will quiet and we can rest easy, knowing that we’re not in this alone.

  “Luke?”

  He’s ahead of me. He stops. Turns to me.

  “I know what you mean,” I try to say with clear conviction in my voice, but it comes out soft, more tender.

  “Sometimes, we just need that other person to understand.”

  I nod because I can’t speak. The knot in my throat is holding back the tears.

  He takes my hand and leads me to the tent.

  Luke wants me to take the sleeping bag, but I refuse. I suggest we share it by lying on top of it and using a small airplane blanket to cover us.

  The Texas heat is warm, even through the night.

  We both get situated. Using our sweatshirts for pillows, we stare up through the top of the tent to the starry night sky.

  “Luke?” I whisper.

  “Yeah?”

  “Will you hold my hand again?”

  “Yes.”

  And just like that, our hands fit together, and everything is all right in the world even if it’s just for tonight.

  Before

  Federal Correctional Institution, Dublin

  Dear Journal,

  There were purple flowers on the table again when I walked downstairs.

  I’d slept with headphones on and fallen asleep to mourn the loss of my virginity the night before. I loved Peter, but I wasn’t in love with Peter. I’d had hopes that once we had sex, it would allow for my heart to fall in love with him. But afterward, I’d just felt rushed and contaminated and broken into small pieces. Not heartbroken, but I felt like pieces of me were scattered, and I just needed something to gather them up and rebuild myself.

  “Morning, Cat,” Mother said from the stove. “Pancakes and eggs.”

  I sat down at the other end of the table from Father. I watched as his eyes scanned the paper and wondered to myself if he was really reading the newspaper. A successful businessman, educated, surely, he was studying the stocks or reading about the economic projected growth of 1999 or the decline we’d learned about in Economics. But it didn’t matter, and I never bothered to ask.

  Sometimes, I wanted to hate him.

  Other times, I admired him.

  But all the times, I loved him.

  That was the only thing that remained constant in our relationship.

  “I got into Brown,” I said as I took a bite of a warm pancake.

  “Cat, please, get a plate,” Mother said as she cleaned the kitchen.

  “That’s nice, Catherine,” Father said and continued to read—or not read or whatever.

  I took another bite.

  “Catherine, a plate, please,” Mother said.

  “Morning,” Ingrid said as she walked into the kitchen.

  She saw the purple flowers, too.

  I wanted to rattle off the statistics to Father about Brown—things I knew we could relate on.

  They have a nine percent acceptance rate.

  “Did you know John D. Rockefeller Jr. graduated from Brown, Father?” I said, knowing full well that would catch his attention because he had business ties with the Rockefellers and their political party.

  “I’m aware of where John Jr. went to school, Catherine,” he said.

  “Did you know that Cat also got accepted to Stanford and Yale, Father?” Ingrid grabbed a pancake, just as I had, and buried her teeth into the unbleached flour.

  Mother sighed, so I grabbed us bo
th plates from the middle of the table. Handed one to Ingrid. Looked up at Mother.

  “You did?” Father looked up only briefly from his reading. “That’s wonderful, Catherine.”

  Brown was my first choice. I wanted to say this, but I didn’t. Perhaps Father didn’t like Brown, or maybe he thought there was a better choice. I cared deeply about his opinion even if I didn’t show it.

  “Did you know I was pregnant?” Ingrid whispered.

  Mother said, “What?” over the running water from the sink.

  Father took a sip of his black coffee.

  I looked to my sister, envious and both heartbroken for her. Envious that she could speak her mind and it didn’t matter to her what others thought, and heartbroken because nobody cared, except for me.

  “That reminds me; come upstairs with me,” I said to her.

  Both Ingrid and I stood, grabbed our plates from the table, kissed Mother on the cheek, and put the plates in the dishwasher.

  But when I kissed Mother, I allowed my lips to linger longer on her cheek, willing her to know that I was sorry for not using a plate, that I was sorry for turning my headphones up last night, and that I was sorry there were purple hydrangeas on the table this morning.

  Father didn’t look up, so Ingrid and I didn’t say a word.

  When we got upstairs, I told her about Peter and last night and losing my virginity.

  She asked how I felt.

  I told her it wasn’t what I’d imagined, but what I didn’t tell her was that I might have done it for the wrong reasons.

  Ingrid and I had learned to lie early on. We learned that as long as everything was okay on the outside, the inside didn’t matter. We learned to hold a brave face because Father hated tears—and watermelon and Sundays, maybe because we went to church and he didn’t. Another thing we learned was that if you showed up for Sunday service, all the lies would be forgiven for the week, and we could start anew on Monday morning.

  I’d learned to say no, even when I wanted to say yes.

  I’d learned to say yes, even when I wanted to say no.