The Light We See

by J. Lynn Bailey

  “I’ll love you from death.”

  I smile against his chest, kiss his stomach, and say, “Okay.”

  If this is what living in the moment means, then maybe I can survive it. I just hope Luke can, too. Not that his body can because I know that would be false hope, but I hope he can remember us, the feeling that us together gives him, so when the pain gets too unbearable, he can let go of us, knowing that I’ll survive. I’ll be all right without him … eventually.

  Luke

  2001

  I took another sip of the whiskey from the glass that sat in front of me. I didn’t drink much, but this day warranted as many drinks as my body would allow. Lou, the bartender, was half-Korean and half-black, and he stared at me from across the counter.

  “Boss, you okay?”

  I took another sip of the whiskey, winced as it slid all the way down my throat, burned and then ignited in my stomach. It made my head feel a little lighter, and the weight of the world just seemed to ease only a little.

  The bar was just down the street from mine and Julie’s place in Carpinteria.

  LA Hills had finished filming, and our last episode aired on May 17, 2000. I thought I’d lost some of my purpose after giving up the character Dylan Klein. My marriage was in turmoil. Julie still wasn’t pregnant, and I felt so helpless every day I came home to her. Cold, silent, bitter. Even though she tried to pretend she was all right, I knew. I noticed when she winced every time I went to kiss her on the mouth. I noticed every time my hand brushed against her hair, she’d move away. I noticed she didn’t sleep. I noticed her smile had changed. I noticed everything. And yet, I couldn’t fix a fucking thing.

  So, Lou’s is the only place I’d thought to come when I got home and saw Julie’s note. The note that sat on the bar in front of me.

  I couldn’t answer Lou because I wasn’t sure I was okay. I wasn’t sure of fucking anything anymore. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to stay an actor. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to go back home to Kentucky.

  I took another sip of whiskey, that sip bigger than the last two.

  In my jacket pocket, my BlackBerry buzzed. I didn’t give a fuck who was on the other end. I just wanted it to stop buzzing, so I pulled it out of my pocket and stared at an unfamiliar number.

  “Hello?” I said when I answered.

  Silence.

  “Hello?” I said, more agitated.

  Still, silence.

  I went to hang up but I heard, “Wait, don’t hang up.”

  “Who is this?”

  “Candida. Candida Briggs. I-I’m not sure you remember—”

  My throat grew extremely dry. “I remember you, Candida.”

  “I shouldn’t have called,” she sighed into the phone.

  I didn’t move. I couldn’t. My stomach twisted and turned, and I couldn’t quite understand why she was calling after all this time—except for only one reason. I remained silent and waited.

  “Luke, I’m sorry. You have a daughter, and her name is Fiona. She’s seven years old. And I’m sorry I didn’t call you sooner.”

  There had been times in my life where I’d felt like I couldn’t breathe. Times in my life where I’d felt shocked, like when Ella died and Nathan died. But this was different. I couldn’t seem to find the right words. They didn’t come to me.

  “Look, I know what this seems like. I don’t want anything from you. Not a damn dime. But Fiona’s been asking about her father since the father-daughter dance at school.”

  Father-daughter dance?

  I felt like I’d just gotten punched in the gut.

  My biological father was no father at all. He’d left my mom when I was born. Said he was going to work and never came home. My mom met James three years later. Three years it had taken my mom to find the ability to breathe again, to live.

  Tears filled my eyes. I blamed it on the booze, and I brushed them away as they began to fall. “I called you. I tried to find you—” My words were broken.

  “I know,” Candida whispered into the phone. “And I’m sorry about that.”

  I’d missed Fiona’s birth. I’d missed seven birthdays because I didn’t know when her birthday is.

  I don’t know when my damn daughter’s birthday is, I thought to myself.

  “When’s her birthday?” Disbelief colored my tone.

  “July 15.”

  The math worked out. Julie and I had gotten together in 1995. Candida and I’d slept together in 1993 or so.

  “I-I’m sorry I didn’t call sooner.” Candida said that like it was on a checklist. Call the father of my child and let him know he has a child.

  Anger set in.

  “It’s a little fucking late, Candida,” I said and hung up on her.

  “Lou, can you bring me another whiskey, please?”

  Lou nodded. “Can do, boss.” He poured it and slid it down my way. Lou put the whiskey bottle back in its place and walked over to me. Threw his towel over his shoulder. Stared at me again. “You’re sure you’re okay, boss?”

  I smiled a sarcastic smile before I put my glass to my lips. “No. No, I’m not, Lou.”

  Lou didn’t say anything.

  The note from Julie stared back.

  Her wedding ring taped to the inside.

  After I downed the whiskey in full, I picked up the note again. Read it again.

  Dear Luke,

  It wasn’t supposed to be like this. And I’m not sure where we went wrong, but I know where I went wrong. I can’t be the woman you should want. The woman you deserve. I’m not the woman you met in 1995. I’m different. You are, too. Things change, and we change. Nothing ever goes as planned. With time, people grow together, I suppose. And, also with time, people grow apart.

  I’m not sure when we started our descent to this place we’ve been, but, Luke, most of it is me. I really want a baby. I know you do, too. But I found out, with testing I had done on my own, that it’s me. I can’t have your baby, our baby. I’m not quite sure how to process all this. I’m not quite sure how to live life without you, but I need to.

  Our marriage felt stifling, thick, as if the air I breathed every single minute was just us and the weight we carried. Every time you came home, you checked on me. Asked if I needed anything. Sat outside the door and listened to me cry. Watched me as I pretended to sleep. Asked if I was okay every minute of every day. It made me sick in my heart that you worried so much about me.

  The truth is, I’m not okay. But you and me apart is okay. I’m so sorry. There’s no other way to describe it. I feel like I need to be alone.

  Please know that I love you, and you will always have pieces of my heart, but in order to love others, I have to learn to love myself, and I just can’t seem to do that right now.

  Love,

  Jules

  I called her Jules. My Jules. That was my nickname for her.

  I shoved the note with the ring attached in my pocket, felt the whiskey on my breath.

  What had once been, I’d thought, a love story for the books somehow became a sad, misunderstood relationship that didn’t survive.

  And a daughter.

  I wanted to throw up.

  I’d never been a father. But I figured I could be, not by my biological father’s standards, but James’s. He’d taught me how to be a good father. To love unconditionally. To be there through all the shit and all the death—you never leave your family.

  I have a fucking daughter.

  I felt the anger build. I wanted it to go away, but it wouldn’t.

  “Lou.” I took out my wallet, threw down a hundred-dollar bill.

  “You walking home, boss?”

  “Yeah, yeah.” I blew him off and left the dark bar into the sunlight.

  I slid my sunglasses on, pulled down my hat. I didn’t want fans. I didn’t want sunshine. I didn’t want any of it.

  Made my way home, and the world felt a little lighter. The booze I knew.

  When I returned to our place again, Julie wouldn’t be
there. Her things would be gone, her scent still there, I was sure. The memories stored inside me forever. The place with four walls that held our love, our happiness for a long time now only held pictures and evidence of two people who’d once thought that love would win.

  I should call Candida back. I’d hung up on her after all.

  I should call her back and demand to see my daughter.

  Does Fiona have my eyes?

  My nose?

  Does she look like me?

  Does she like me?

  Does she think I abandoned her?

  What has her mother told her?

  The weight of the world was too heavy.

  The sunroom was the place Julie and I had liked to make love in during the early morning hours. Make love until the sun rose. Held each other until we felt satisfied.

  There wasn’t much gone from our place.

  Her clothes. Her jewelry box. The things on her nightstand. The picture of us at the bar she’d worked at the night we first met.

  Everything was the same, and yet everything was different. How could one place that had brought us so much happiness now feel like an ache in my body and create this feeling in my heart that I just wanted to go away?

  I pulled my fist back and crashed it into the wall, making myself bleed.

  I slid down to the floor, to a puddle, and just lay there until the darkness ate me alive.

  I woke up in an awkward position on the floor. It was dark outside. My head ached, and my body needed water or booze. Water would sober me up; booze wouldn’t cure anything, except the way I felt and that wouldn’t last forever. I peeled myself from the floor and staggered into the kitchen. Grabbed a glass from the cupboard—glasses we’d gotten from our wedding. I filled it with tap water. I drank it down. Filled it up again. Drank it down.

  Groggy and tired, I didn’t want to go into our bedroom, the master suite, so instead, I stripped down to my boxers, grabbed a blanket from the linen closet—the blanket Julie had made when we moved in—and went back to sleep on the couch in the living room.

  Julie had designed and decorated our home. She was good at it. After we’d started dating and things were serious, I’d told her she didn’t have to work anymore if she didn’t want to. But Julie wasn’t the type to not have a job and not be able to take care of herself. So, it wasn’t until after we got married that she stopped bartending. She opened up her own home-designing company with money she’d saved. She said she didn’t want a dime of mine. I saved a lot of money over the years. I, we, just didn’t need much. I donated a lot. We donated a lot. Still, the show had made a killing, and I’d continued to collect.

  Money couldn’t buy happiness.

  I lay on my back on the couch.

  I could invest in Fiona’s college. I could buy her a car. I could buy her whatever she wanted. Whatever her little heart desired. But it wouldn’t give us the seven years we’d lost together. Unmade memories. The first time she had ridden her bike. Learned to tie her shoes. The first day of kindergarten.

  Fuck.

  The anger built again.

  I wanted to yell at Candida. Scream at her for not allowing me to be part of Fiona’s life.

  My dad always said, “Everything happens when it’s supposed to happen, Luke. You’re right where you need to be.”

  I pulled my BlackBerry from my pocket. I should call Candida back, but instead, I called my dad.

  “Hey, son. How are you?”

  “Not … not so good, Dad. Can we talk?”

  “Always.”

  I wanted to be my father. I wanted to be the man he was to his wife, his daughter, and me.

  2014

  We cross over the state line from Oklahoma into Louisiana. Luke’s got one hand on the wheel, and his other hand in a fist where he’s casually resting his head as his arm sits on the windowsill. He looks over at me.

  “What?” I ask.

  He has something to say, but I can tell he’s perplexed about it.

  “I need to tell you something, and I’m just not sure how to tell you. I should have said something sooner. Things just happened so fast between us that I didn’t know when and how to tell you.”

  Don McLean’s “American Pie” plays over the radio.

  “Luke, I’m not sure there’s anything you can tell me that would make me run for my life. Except bodies in the trunk. That might be a game changer.” I smile at him.

  Luke laughs. “Wouldn’t that be a media shitstorm?”

  McLean hits the part in the song where it starts to slow. The calm before the storm.

  “I have a daughter named Fiona.”

  Except for Don and the light AC that blows in my face, making my throat extremely dry, nothing sounds.

  “She just turned twenty. I, uh, got a call from her mother when she was seven. Said I had a daughter. I hung up on her, too ashamed, and not in a good place to face news like this so I sat on the news for months.

  “What had kept coming to my head was, Be the father you had. I called my dad and asked for his advice. I wondered if Fiona looked like me. If she had any of my characteristics. My dad said it was in me to be a good dad; I didn’t believe it at the time. All he said was, ‘Make the call.’ ” Luke pauses and adjusts his hand on the steering wheel. “So, I did.”

  “And?” I look at Luke as I see the spark coming from his eyes, the love for his daughter.

  “I made the trip out to Louisiana.” Luke is quiet for a moment and then says, “You asked if I believed in God, and I wasn’t sure how to tell you this, but when I looked into my daughter’s eyes on that first trip out to Louisiana, her big, beautiful seven-year-old brown eyes, I knew I’d seen the eyes of God. She not only had my eyes, but also my mouth, my forehead. She had everything in me that I’d ever wanted to give a child.”

  As I watch Luke talk about a love that is so pure and so untainted by the world and pieced together by fate, I think that maybe my heart is capable of the same.

  “So, I need to tell Fiona about the cancer, and I’m not sure how to do it.”

  Mother lied to us about things to keep our hearts protected. I think she told us to lie to Father to keep our bodies protected. Her motives were pure in nature, but she made the softer choices, the easier ones.

  “You tell her the truth,” I whisper to Luke for Fiona. “You tell her the hard stuff, so she’ll know how strong you are. You tell her what’s going on because she’ll love you for it later.”

  “American Pie” comes to an end.

  Luke’s head falls in my direction, but he doesn’t say anything. Looks back to the road. “I remember when Fiona was eight, and wanted to learn how to roller skate. I got to teach her how to do that. She’d fallen and scraped up her knee, so I took her inside of the house I’d been renting for the week, got her fixed up. Some milk, cookies, and she was all better.

  “When she was thirteen, Cannon Davis broke her heart, so I took her to my parents’ house in Kentucky, and I told her that Cannon Davis wasn’t worth her brains or her beauty, that one day she’d look back on this situation and laugh about it.” He pauses. “We did.”

  Luke shakes his head. “I can’t fix this one, Cat. It’s going to break her heart, and I can’t do anything about it. And I might not live long enough to pick up the pieces.”

  The sun is setting, and I watch as it creeps below the horizon. “Grief is inevitable. Losing a father isn’t.” I slide my hand over and cup the back of his neck, feel his skin beneath my hand. “But you can tell her about all the qualities that make her strong. That it’s okay to be sad. And it’s okay to cry.” I pause. “Let her see you laugh. She’ll hang on to that memory, Luke, for a lifetime.”

  I make sure my voice is level before I say this because I feel the heartache building. “After you go, Luke, if she’ll have me, I’ll be there for her,” I offer, unsure of how I can be that person but I feel as though it’s what I need to do—not for me, but for Fiona and Luke. Maybe to help keep Luke alive in memory. “There aren
’t any promises that life is easy, but I know it’s just worth it. All the good, all the heartache, all of it.”

  Luke smiles. “You went to prison for the better half of your twenties, for something you didn’t do, to protect your mother. And you sit here and tell me that all of it is worth it.”

  He gently brushes his hand against my cheek, and I fall into it.

  “You taught me that.”

  Luke gives me a sideways glance that just about makes me come unglued. “You amaze me, Catherine Clemens.”

  “I could say the same for you, Luke McCay.”

  We drive, and let “How Deep Is Your Love” by the Bee Gees take us down the highway and let try to leave behind what stands in our way of growing into better people.

  Luke knocks on the door of a two-story French-style home in Bastrop, Louisiana. Luke called Candida and told her we were on our way.

  I’m staying in the car for several reasons. One, it’s not my story. Two, it’s not my place. And three, a daughter needs time with her father.

  So much for the story I’m writing. I smile and think about Mr. Jenkins. I’ll reimburse him for the money he paid me.

  I’m going to sell the house in Beverly Hills that I don’t need. That Ingrid doesn’t need. That Mother doesn’t need.

  Fiona comes to the door, and she’s just as beautiful as Luke. Milk-chocolate brown skin, same exact eyes as his when she smiles, the same forehead. Dark brown hair with tight curls that go on for days. My heart swells, and my eyes grow full of tears when I see Fiona’s reaction to her father. I can’t hear what they’re saying, but when she throws her arms around her father, I can read that language.

  She looks surprised that he’s here and excited.

  Luke holds out his hand, and Fiona takes his. They slowly walk down the walkway, laughing, their smiles big and bright, mirroring each other like a looking glass. And I continue to watch until they disappear.

  I think healing starts when truth is given. As much as I loved Father, I knew I couldn’t help him unless he was willing to help himself. And when he died, I cried.

  I cried for us. I cried for our family. I cried for myself. I cried tears of gratitude that Mother wouldn’t have to feel afraid anymore. I cried.