A Jar Full of Light

by Rae Walsh

  Faith was twelve years younger than her brother, Zion. When Zion was killed in a police shooting at a mall, the family had packed their things, moving to Aveline. At the time, Mercy was traumatized and not functioning. She had professor friends who lived in Aveline, and suggested that it would be a good change for the family— a place to live out of the city but continue their practice in L.A., as well as opening up for work in Billers and Aveline. Mercy had been unable to make a decision, but George, scared by the effects of PTSD on his wife, made the decision for them. They moved.

  The people of Aveline did their best to come around the family and welcome them. Dorothy especially had kicked into overdrive. She and Mercy had started the women’s group that continued to this day. The group that had made Francisco jealous enough, when he eventually moved to Aveline, that he started backyard night. Theresa had become Faith’s babysitter as the new law firm got off the ground. And Sheldon had watched it all, still feeling like an outsider—a kid who grew up in shelters and lost his mom to an undignified death in a mental institution.

  Sheldon was eighteen when he first met Mercy. He hired her as his lawyer when he came into a sudden inheritance from a grandfather he had never met.

  “You don’t know how to deal with this,” she had told him.

  “It’s not a bad thing to deal with,” he told her. “But I can’t help wishing he had used his money to help my mother before she died. He disowned her and then gave it all to me. If he had helped her, maybe I would have actually had a mother.” His throat hurt like he was going to cry. He cleared it and dabbed at his eyes.

  Mercy had given him a moment, looking over the paperwork. After a while, she looked up, folding her hands carefully in front of her. “Sheldon, we don’t get to pick. But don’t think of this as an easy thing. You have some thinking to do. What do you want? What do you see around you? You need to find a place to put this money- somewhere to invest, or it will disappear. I’ve seen it again and again during my career. A kid who never had anything and suddenly comes into money needs a plan.”

  “Did this happen to you?” he asked her.

  “No,” she said, her voice clipped. “I grew up with plenty of money. George too. But that didn’t save us. There are no guarantees. All you get is now, what you have in front of you. And even that can be taken. What can never be taken is invisible, you know that, right, Sheldon? You are a child of God, and that can never be taken, even if your son gets taken, and the man who kills him goes free.”

  She sat back and pressed her hands to her face, then sat up and looked at him with a fierce, determined expression.

  “So, what will you do?”

  Mercy had the same look on her face as she looked at Sheldon in the church. He sat straighter and shook the self-pity away. All you get is now, what you have in front of you. No feeling sorry for yourself because the town of your dreams isn’t as perfect as you believed it to be.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  “Go with your strength, Reesey,” Theresa whispered to herself. She was scrambling a mess of eggs, tomatoes, and kale.

  The morning had started out quietly enough, but Theresa’s thoughts were racing. Maddie and Sam had filled her in on the contents of the meeting, and Theresa’s heart broke as she thought of how courageous George had been. Not that it was strange for him. George had always been brave. He had never, ever ceased to be brave.

  Theresa didn’t even have enough courage to go to a town meeting. She felt a brief pang of self-loathing, then shook her head and turned off the burner. She scooped the vegetable scramble onto two plates, then poured green smoothie from the blender into two glasses. Theresa had been letting Maddie make breakfast for herself, but she’d noticed lately that Maddie rarely ate more than a piece of toast with jam. Not enough for a teenage girl.

  What were Theresa’s strengths? When she was living in her weakness, she often forgot. What use was it to the world if Theresa could make pottery? There were amazing people out there like George and Mercy who overcame incredible odds to be strong, and there was tiny, fragile Theresa who made sculptures. Ugh.

  But she knew that comparison would kill her. She thought of how God was the one who formed her, including all the unusual things about her. He made you to be you, strange mind and all. He made you to throw pots. Okay. Theresa would throw pots. She would sculpt and be a good mother to Maddie, and being a good mother to Maddie included staying away from town meetings because Theresa would be a basket case for a week after a town meeting. It didn’t matter if people—including her own brother—judged her for not going. None of that mattered. No one else knew what it was like to be Theresa. She needed to figure out her own strengths and work from them, not from the expectations of others.

  “Maddie!” she called. No answer. She went to Maddie’s door and knocked.

  “Yeah?” she heard. She opened the door.

  “Are you not up yet? You’re going to be late.”

  It appeared that there was no one in the room, but a lump stirred under the covers. The lump groaned. Theresa smiled and went to talk to it.

  “Come on, Little,” she said. “I made you breakfast. Did you stay up too late again?”

  Maddie took the covers off her head and squinted at Theresa. Theresa felt a jolt of love so strong it rocked her backward. Her daughter’s little ears poking out of her black hair, her fierce squint.

  “Biology exam,” she said, yawning. “I was studying. I’ll come, just give me a minute.”

  Theresa bent and kissed her daughter’s forehead.

  “Okay,” she said. “Come quick, though—it will get cold.”

  She went back out to the kitchen and sat down with her scramble and smoothie. She lifted her mug hopefully, but the coffee was long gone. Theresa had been up for hours, thinking about strength and fragility, sketching ideas. She took a gulp of green smoothie and put her pencil back on the page.

  Maddie came out of the room, finally, rubbing her eyes. She was dressed but looked sleepy.

  “You made breakfast?” she asked. “Cool.”

  “No problem,” Theresa said. “But eat quickly, you’ll be late.”

  “I’ll take my bicycle.”

  “Did you get the brakes fixed?” Theresa asked, looking up from her work.

  “Yes,” Maddie answered. “Sam helped me.”

  Theresa looked back down at her sketchbook and drew line after line. The panic had been so intense the other day. Would her new sculpture series be about panic? That could be good. But Theresa was already mostly recovered from the fear. She was more resilient than she had believed. No, that wasn’t entirely true. Theresa was more resilient than she had been ten years ago, and the memory of how she was then and how she was now was always a paradox in her mind. This town carried the physical imprint of her terror, the rapid beat of her heart when she saw the oak tree on the corner, or the way she had run, her heart pounding, pounding, straight down the middle of the street.

  “Mom!”

  Theresa looked up. Maddie was staring at her.

  “What?”

  “I’ve been calling you!”

  “Oh, sorry, kiddo. I was far away.”

  “I can see that,” Maddie said, pointing at the paper in front of Theresa. Whoops. Theresa saw that her drawing had left the sheet of paper entirely, wandering around the table. Shapes, lots of them. Some angular, some curved. All hollow in the middle, as though you could use them to hold water or something like it. Oil?

  “Mom, I was saying that I have rehearsal tomorrow night. Is that okay?”

  Theresa put her pencil down and looked straight into Maddie’s eyes. “It is okay if you are very, very careful,” she said. “You have to understand that there is a monster on the loose. The person who would write words of hatred on George and Mercy’s walls is a person incapable of feeling compassion. If he had compassion, he would know that they are the last people on earth who should be seeing a message like that. Those are hateful, evil words, and that person is in our t
own.”

  “Mom, do you know who it is?”

  Theresa stood and accidentally knocked her green smoothie over, causing it to cascade across her papers, ruining her sketches. Maddie yelped and jumped up to get a towel, but Theresa just stood and stared at the goo obliterating everything she had done.

  Later, when Maddie was gone, Theresa threw some easy pots and thought about ice fishing. When she had first started ice fishing, she thought she could never ever get used to the cold. But there were so many things you could get used to. You could get used to fear or not being able to breathe very well. You could get used to kindness. You could get used to knowing things no one should know.

  She should tell Francisco what she knew. There was no guarantee that Theresa was right, she was only guessing, but she felt it, the same way she felt the physical imprint of hands on her when she turned certain corners. She was terrified to tell anyone her thoughts, but she was also terrified that if she didn’t, someone would get hurt. There was nothing for it. She would have to go to the church. The tall reverend with the kind eyes was the right person to tell.

  Theresa put a warm coat and scarf on and called Remus. He came quickly, and she touched his gray nose and put her face very close to his. He whined a little and licked her face.

  “It’s okay,” she told him, “we’re just taking a walk to the church.”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  The air outside was brisk with a stinging wind. The unseasonably warm days had come and gone. Some winters in Aveline barely got cold enough to qualify as winter, but this one was shaping up to be frigid. Theresa swung her arms to keep warm. Remus sniffed at trees and occasionally lifted a leg to pee. Oak leaves crunched under Theresa’s feet, and the clouds in the blue sky looked like popcorn.

  There wasn’t enough distance between her house and the church, and when Theresa got there, she felt utterly unprepared. She looked up at the old stone building, admiring its shape against the sky, feeling sick to her stomach, trying to bring herself back to the present. She tied Remus to the bike rack and told him to sit. He did. He was a remarkably well-behaved dog, Theresa thought, and her stomachache eased a little.

  She walked up the stairs, through the dark foyer, and into the sanctuary. At the front of the church, she saw the shape of the pulpit with a few lit prayer candles to one side. Theresa knew that Francisco had taken some flack for introducing prayer candles, but he insisted that they were helpful. A small ritual like lighting a candle, he said, was a good reminder that in prayer, a real interaction had occurred. Something has happened. You have spoken to God, and he has listened well because that is what he does.

  Theresa walked to the front of the church. She looked at the candles in their glasses, thinking about containers. Every person was some kind of vessel, made to hold what he or she could offer. Theresa’s vessel seemed so damaged, sometimes. She picked up a candle, bringing it to her nose to inhale its scent. It didn’t smell like anything but wax. She picked up the lighter and bent her head.

  I’m so lost, she told God. And I think I know too much, and I don’t know what to do with what I know.

  She lit the candle and waited. She knelt and smelled warm wax and the fragrance of old wood. She, as a vessel, held a complex mix of things. Confusion, cowardice, hurt, misunderstanding. But she also held other things, like creativity, some bravery, and so much love. What was God asking her to pour out? Had she come back to settle this score, finally, after all these years? Or was it something else? What did she really know? By telling what she thought she knew, she might be ruining an innocent person’s life.

  And then there was the danger. To herself, yes, but again, Theresa thought of Maddie, of the threats they had received without Maddie’s knowledge, all these years, and Theresa realized she couldn’t do it. Her vessel simply wasn’t big enough.

  God, she prayed. Help me know what is next. I can’t. I can’t.

  As she sat there with her head bowed, she felt peace flow into the hurt places in her heart. After a while, she could take an easy breath again. She saw her own cracked cup, and she saw the pottery she made. It was all she could really do. She would never be some spectacular mother, some great world-changer. But she could make pottery. She thought of her friend, Faith. Faith was a magnificent vessel. Francisco, too. And then she smiled. She knew what her next sculpture series would be.

  She stood, feeling stiff. Thank you, she said. When she turned to go, she nearly bumped into Francisco at the end of the aisle. He was so tall, she had to tip her head back to look at him. She pressed a hand to her heart.

  “Sorry,” he said. “I was trying to figure out a way to announce my presence without scaring you. It’s the average reverend’s biggest problem. We’re always walking around quietly, trying not to startle people while they’re praying.”

  She smiled at him.

  “Did you have something you wanted to talk about?” he asked.

  “No,” she said. “Well. I did. But I don’t think I can. But I have answers I didn’t think I would find in a church, so that’s good.”

  “It happens more than you’d think. But Theresa, if there’s anything—well, you know I’m here, right?”

  “I do,” Theresa said. “I know.” She couldn’t hold eye contact, so she spoke to his left shoulder. “But anyway, I have to go. I’ll see you later!”

  Francisco patted her on the shoulder, and she made her escape, bursting out into the cold fresh air, untying her dog and running with him down the street. Now that Theresa knew her next steps, she couldn’t bear to wait any longer.

  At home, Theresa fed Remus and put her coveralls on. She tied her hair up in a scarf and turned a Feist album way, way up. Theresa would start with Faith. Faith was the sculpture Reesey imagined, not how she really looked, but how her vessel looked—what she could hold and what she could do. Faith’s sculpture would be tall, with strong, curved sides. Big enough to hold all the strength and love she had poured out since she was a twelve-year-old helping her grieving parents.

  Theresa rolled large slabs and used slip clay to mold the edges together. She would build layer by layer, knowing this sculpture would be large, but that she would shape it in segments, so that the first part was partially dry before she added the next.

  Bent over her table, engrossed in the smells of clay and sounds of loud music, Theresa almost didn’t hear Sheldon at all. Eventually, he stepped on a creaky floorboard, and Theresa straightened to look at him. She was flushed with the brilliance of a new idea, the exhilaration of knowing exactly what she was meant to do. The hope of a new project always hit her like a few glasses of wine, and in that state, seeing Sheldon was like missing a step walking down the stairs.

  He wore a fitted black shirt, with suspenders and funky tan pants, brown boots laced up. He walked to Theresa quickly, and she saw that he was wearing the glasses she loved. He hadn’t shaved. She stared at his face, thinking that maybe he was starting to grow a beard. A beard! Her Tazzy!

  He spoke before she could say a word.

  “Don’t go far off, not even for a day, because --

  because -- I don’t know how to say it: a day is long

  and I will be waiting for you, as in an empty station

  when the trains are parked off somewhere else, asleep.”

  She stared at him. “Did you write that?”

  He laughed a little. “No, that’s Neruda.”

  “Are you growing a beard, Tazzy?” she asked finally. His eyes were burning into hers. To distract herself, she reached up toward his face and ran her hand over his cheek. Stubbly. She touched the beautiful line of his jaw, the dimple in his cheek, the top of his cheekbone. He grabbed her hand, and she looked up at his eyes again. His eyelashes, so dark. There were nebulas in his blue eyes, like the posters in Daniel’s post office. She was drunk on creativity and sculpture. Theresa knew she needed to move away, but Sheldon turned her hand over and kissed her palm. His breath and lips on her skin startled her. What was she doing? Sheldo
n was not a sculpture that she could touch at whim, though he was so very beautiful, and the dark hairs on his forearms made her feel slightly weak. She pulled her hand away gently and stepped back, feeling her heart racing away, heat rising to her cheeks.

  He let her go, his eyes never leaving her face.

  “I’m not sure how I feel about a beard,” she said, putting her hands under her arms so she couldn’t touch him again.

  Sheldon smiled, those new lines spreading from his eyes, creases forming deep in his cheeks.

  “We’ll just have to see then, Reesey, won’t we?” he asked.

  And Theresa nodded, feeling dazed.

  Chapter Thirty

  Sheldon watched from the front pew as his actors clustered on the stage for a rehearsal. They ran through the first scenes once while he watched, making notes for feedback.

  “Maddie!” he called, cupping his hands around his mouth. “Give yourself more room! You shouldn’t be hiding behind Lewis! Make your circle.”

  Maddie flashed Sheldon a look, but stepped away from the other actors and did as he told her, spreading her arms out and turning in a circle. He gave her an exaggerated thumbs-up, and Maddie turned away so he wouldn’t see her smile. He still saw it.

  Sheldon was ecstatic that Theresa had agreed to let Maddie be in the play. Maddie was the perfect teenaged Maria—a little freaked out by the idea of pregnancy, clinging to her older husband, slightly bewildered as they were turned away by shelters and seedy hotels.

  And Sheldon was proud of the play he had written. Imagining the holy family as flotsam drifting in the chaos of modern times helped Sheldon to think about his own past. Unwanted, wandering, looking for a place to make a nest.

  Sheldon’s mother had contracted an infection and died not long after she entered a minimum-security prison. A judge convicted her of arson, with the caveat that she was mentally unwell, so she spent her last days living in the psychiatric ward, where her burns apparently weren’t treated with appropriate care. Sheldon’s mother’s slide into instability had seemed instantaneous to him, as though one day she had been making him sandwiches and reading with him on the sofa, and the next, she was being arrested for purposely setting several houses on fire. It wasn’t until many years later, when Sheldon was a teenager, that his dad told him about the drugs.