The Light of the World, page 4
Ten minutes later, Eva was staring up at the brick building where her grandmother lived for close to thirty years. They parked in the tiny and absurdly expensive lot across the street, and her mother argued with the lot attendant that they should be allowed a cheaper rate because they were technically residents.
“No resident parking pass, no deal,” the attendant said in a thick Brooklyn accent. “Take it up with the super.”
There was drool on the window and Eva rubbed at it with her sleeve. She didn’t want her parents to have to wash the car before returning it to the rental lot. It was just one more thing to remember to do, and they already had their work cut out for them.
After a few seconds, Eva was satisfied that the smear was gone. Already the memory of the dream was fading. She grabbed her purse and slung it over her shoulder. Her mother was gathering things from the back seat opposite her, a few notepads and a camera. She had a harassed look on her face, and the crow’s-feet at the corners of her eyes seemed like deep lines cut in by years of worry. Her hair, nearly the same shade as Eva’s, was frizzing in the morning humidity.
“Do we have a game plan for this?” Eva asked. Her voice was still thick with sleep. She knew that she must look like hell because she was sweaty from her nap in the too-hot car. She was sun-and-sleep-warmed, and in a good mood despite the smell of hot garbage that assaulted her nose as soon as she opened the car door.
“I figured we’d make one once we got up there,” her mother replied. She held up a notepad with a triumphant smile. Eva bit back a groan. Lists were her mother’s favorite thing, and Eva hated that level of meticulous planning. “Nate and Lisa have both said that aside from what was already left to them in your grandmother’s will, they’re not really interested in anything up there. It’s all ours to process.”
Eva sighed. The absolute last thing she felt like doing was spending days and days working in close proximity with her mother processing her grandmother’s things. They were sure to come to blows before it was over. Eva couldn’t imagine that her mother would be particularly compassionate about some of the things her grandmother had kept over the years.
“Goody. Processing.”
“Yup, processing. There’s close to four decades of junk crammed into that apartment. It’s gonna be an undertaking,” her mother said. “Maybe we should have ordered a Dumpster…”
The thought of throwing away her grandmother’s things was horrifying to Eva. She knew it was inevitable, because they couldn’t save everything, but Eva had hoped that they could say goodbye first. She tried to put on a brave face. Put your best foot forward. Don’t let her get to you.
Eva stood in the middle of the parking lot and stared up at the six-story brick building that Eva’s grandmother had called home for so many years. Crumbling at the corners, it was a former sweatshop turned into apartments during the first period of gentrification of this area some twenty years ago. Apartments were selling and renting for obscene amounts of money these days. A great deal of her father’s inheritance was wrapped up in this apartment, but she didn’t want him to sell it.
Eva loved this neighborhood. The apartment was bought and paid for long before the property values had skyrocketed in recent years. Her grandmother had been an institution in the neighborhood for so long that Eva felt that they couldn’t have just anyone fill the void she’d left behind.
Looking up at the building, Eva felt the sharp sting of loss at her chest. Nothing was ever going to be the same again. The sense of finality in this moment threatened to overwhelm her, and it filled her with a with a strange sense of foreboding, that she couldn’t shake.
“Come on,” her father said when there was a gap in the traffic.
Still, Eva reasoned as they dashed across the street in the wake of a speeding cab, Gran was a bit of a hoarder. There’s a lot of work that has to go into this place before we can even consider putting it on the market.
Eva hoped that it would take a little while to get the apartment all sorted out. She didn’t want to say goodbye to this neighborhood just yet. She had so many good, positive memories associated with this place. They were the sort that she thought back to when she found herself wallowing in the melancholy that she sometimes could not shake. To leave her grandmother’s home for good seemed like a final farewell, and Eva certainly wasn’t ready for that yet.
They climbed the stairs to the fourth floor slowly, pausing to greet the new first-floor residents who were kids fresh out of college, and Mrs. Sandley on the second floor. She was a shut-in and was very sad that she did not have the means to bring herself to Mary’s funeral. Eva’s father lingered to speak to the old woman and help her back into her apartment with his usual politeness and distant charm.
“We should keep going,” Eva’s mother said. “He’ll be along after he gets her settled.” She nudged Eva on the shoulder as she rose on her tiptoes to peer curiously into Mrs. Sandley’s apartment. The room was as much of a time capsule as Eva’s grandmother’s apartment upstairs was, overflowing with antiques and full of reminders of days long past. Her father was settling Mrs. Sandley back on her couch and offering to make her some tea to tide her over until the Meals on Wheels “boy” delivered her lunch at eleven-thirty.
Eva wasn’t even sure that her father had ever met Mrs. Sandley before. He came here so infrequently that it seemed impossible that he would know her. He preferred to keep his distance from his mother’s home, and instead would invite her to lunch in Manhattan or to come up to Connecticut on the weekends if she was willing to take the train. Both her parents said the apartment was full of bad memories. Her mother went so far as to say that there was a black feeling in the place, as if it were an inescapable pit.
Eva wasn’t like her parents. This building had the sort of charm Eva adored about some of the older buildings in the city, all narrow staircases and windows that didn’t open properly. The staircase was like something out of a Hitchcock movie, and she could just picture some beautiful silver-screen actress descending the stairs with ominous music in her wake. How anyone could find it unsettling was beyond Eva, but even she could not shake the uncomfortable feeling that had come over her since they’d arrived.
The door to her grandmother’s apartment swung open silently. The breath left Eva’s body, and her stomach twisted with an ache unlike anything she had ever felt before. The oppressive, flowery smell of her grandmother’s favorite perfume was everywhere. It leaked into Eva’s senses and threatened to overwhelm her. She raised shaking fingers to cover her lips and swallowed down tears and the desperate feeling of loss. She was a trespasser in a tomb, someone who should not dare take a step forward, and then another, until she was standing in the middle of her grandmother’s cluttered living room.
Her mother had no such qualms. No reverence or respect for the dead. Upon entering the room, she went straight to the window and threw open the drapes. She coughed quietly in the dust as she tied them back. The little air conditioning unit that was held up by sheer force of will whined as Eva’s mother cranked it on to its maximum setting and stepped back, surveying the room.
Eva was trapped in the middle of the floor and unsure of how to go about getting started going through everything—the entirety of her grandmother’s life—so that the apartment could be sold. It was a feeling that ate at Eva, paralyzing her and making her linger in the middle of the room where she knew that she would not disturb any memories. There used to be a rule in this apartment that you took your shoes off at the door. There was still a line of her grandmother’s shoes in the hall, which ranged from comfortable walking shoes to a pair of low heels that Eva couldn’t help but imagine her grandmother scowling at. Eva bent and unlaced one battered Converse All Star with shaky hands, resting her foot against her knee as she did so.
“What are you doing?” her mother asked. She turned, setting her notepad down on the coffee table that held a stack of old National Geographic magazines and a few newspapers. There was an odd look on her face as Eva tugged off her first shoe and moved on to the next one.
“Taking off my shoes,” Eva explained. “Gran… Gran liked it when I did that.”
Her mother’s round face, which had been pulled tight into an expression of confusion, seemed to slacken into one of understanding. She stepped forward and put a hand on Eva’s shoulder. They were the same height, and the gesture was intimate for Eva, who was unused to physical contact from her mother. It was her dad who was the affectionate one. Her mother was more distant and less overt with her affection. Eva remembered the last time her mother had touched her like this, and that had been a dark day, too.
“Oh, Eva,” her mother said. “Take them off if you must, but leave your socks on. I know that it got hard for your grandmother to move around toward the end. There’s no telling what might be growing on the floor.”
Huffing angrily, Eva stepped backward and away from her mother’s touch. Her grandmother had been dead and buried for one day. One day. She didn’t know why she expected her mother to be any better. It was a joke to think that she would be, given the way she’d spoken in the car. Eva didn’t understand how her mother could be so cruel when the memory of her grandmother lying dead in a hospital bed was still fresh in everyone’s memories.
Her mother was like that, though, so it was silly for Eva to expect any better from her. She was always making assumptions about how people lived their lives and kept their homes. Eva hated that there was even a doubt that her grandmother’s life wasn’t vibrant until the very end. She’d died peacefully in her sleep with her family around her.
Eva had been there.
“It’s fine,” she said quietly.
She glanced toward the small hallway that led to the storage closet. “Should I go get some trash bags or something?”
The apartment, her grandmother’s last sanctuary, was clean, and her mother was stupid to say otherwise. Christ, I sound like an immature teenager.
Eva shook her head and set her shoes beside her grandmother’s. She knew she had to stop letting her mother rile her up so easily, even if she was getting a lot better at not showing it.
“I figured that today we’d spend some time going through stuff, maybe collect some clothes to take to the homeless shelter and the Salvation Army…” Eva shook her head violently at the suggestion and her mother tilted her head to one side, confusion drifting across her face. “Why not them? They do good work.”
Eva shrugged, fiddling with the braid that she’d wrestled her hair into that morning. It was starting to come undone. Eva stared at it in her hand for a moment as annoyance prickled at the back of her neck. This was exactly the sort of conversation she did not want to have with her mother. Getting into something like this would only make things worse.
She remembered being very small and walking by the haggard and cold-looking men ringing bells outside of Macy’s. It was one of her first times into Manhattan with just her grandmother, and she was awed by everything. The city was alight with the magic of the coming Christmas holiday. The man rang his bell beside his little red pot and Eva begged her grandmother for change to put into the bucket.
“You shouldn’t give to them,” her grandmother said roughly, pulling Eva away from the man with his ringing bell.
“Why not?” She was five and didn’t know when to leave well enough alone. They paused before a homeless man who was hunched over a subway grate and wrapped in a blanket. Mary handed him two dollars and pressed two quarters into Eva’s hand.
“Give them to him,” her grandmother said. “He is someone who is actually in need.” The man stared up at them for a long time, smiling with bright white teeth and thanking her in a rough voice that only came after a long pause. It was as though he’d forgotten how to speak. Eva pressed the two quarters into his gloved hand. “You will seek,” he whispered. “You got the look.”
“She won’t seek,” her grandmother replied curtly. “Nor should you.”
He smiled toothily at them again as Eva’s grandmother pulled her away down the street to stare into the lavishly decorated Macy’s windows.
“Why can’t we give the money to the men with the bells? They don’t say weird things—”
“Because sometimes people aren’t as good as they say they are,” her grandmother explained. She was clutching Eva’s hand tightly in her own. Eva remembered glancing over her shoulder as the homeless man raised his dark head skyward and started to sing the saddest song that Eva had ever heard.
That was the first time that her grandmother had told her about the light of the world. The homeless man off Sixth Avenue had sung an ode to that very same light her grandmother insisted had gone out in her own life. The light she could never find again. His voice was pure and golden above the din of the city. He’d sung it for two dollars and two quarters.
Later that night they sat on the couch drinking hot cocoa and looking at her grandmother’s little fake Christmas tree. “Why did that man sing that song?” Eva asked. She tilted her mug from side to side, making absolutely sure that she got all the marshmallows to the middle so that they’d melt and add a layer of creamy, delicious foam to the top of her drink. Her grandmother had been quiet the entire train ride back to Brooklyn, lost in her own thoughts. Eva remembered being annoyed at her, and had chattered non-stop in an effort to get her to engage. “It wasn’t even a Christmas song.”
Eva’s grandmother was quiet for a long time after that, staring at the Christmas tree lights. Her face was a landscape of late eighties wrinkles and her posture was ramrod straight.
Sighing, her grandmother wiped away Eva’s cocoa mustache. “He sang that song because he is a seeker of the light. He has been touched by it, he’s seen it, he knows what it can do, and he’s sore afraid.”
“Like the shepherds when the angels told them about Jesus?” Eva asked. It was close to Christmas, after all, and even if they weren’t a very religious family, the story was on Eva’s mind.
“There’s a lot of truth in that moment in the story,” her grandmother agreed. “His light has gone out. He saw it once, it touched him, and then someone reached out and snuffed it away into blackness. It is a cruel fate, sweetie. You should never seek out the light of the world.”
Eva sipped her cocoa, her eyes wide. “Why not? What’s the light of the world?”
“I have no heart to teach it to you. That can only be the path of mourning.”
Shaking herself, Eva blinked hard and focused her attention back on her mother. She had forgotten that conversation, amid the myriad others she’d had with her grandmother since. Her mind was racing with half-remembered conversations about the light of the world. Maybe that was the key to all this.
“Sorry,” she said quietly. “When I was really little, Gran told me not to give to them because they aren’t as good as they say they are.”
“Because of how they treat the gays?” Eva winced. “Your Gran wasn’t gay, why would she care?”
She shouldn’t have said anything at all. Stupid, stupid…
The urge to fight back overwhelmed her and Eva looked her mother straight in the eye. “Maybe she was taking a stand, Mom, for something she believed in. Something that meant something to her.”
She couldn’t believe her mother sometimes. There were certain things that just weren’t said and certainly were not implied. Her grandmother had always been one of those people, a good sort of person who would stick her neck out there for something that she truly believed in. What did it matter if her grandmother was or wasn’t something? She cared enough to take a stand and to tell Eva that it wasn’t right. Why can’t Mom see that?
She stormed off down the hallway toward the supply closet to at least collect some trash bags and buy a few moments to herself to calm down. Her mother huffed quietly and reached for her notepad once more. Eva wasn’t sure who she’d put this round to, but she did not want to go another until her dad emerged from Mrs. Sandley’s apartment. It wasn’t unreasonable to want to respect her grandmother’s wishes and views in the distribution of her things, Eva thought. Her dad would see it that way.
There were times when Eva felt she was the only one who appreciated her grandmother for who she was. Eva embraced the good and the bad in her, the deep sadness and the mysterious ghosts that haunted her past. Eva knew those ghosts well because she was haunted by her own demons. Her mother didn’t get it, and she never had. Throughout Eva’s childhood, she had made no secret about how much she hated that her mother-in-law would have days where she was so sad she couldn’t get out of bed. She hated it when she saw Eva having the same sorts of days.
Eva’s dad did understand. He struggled with himself, but Eva always assumed that he stayed away because of the bad memories he had of growing up in the shadow of a woman as mercurial as his mother.
The hallway was dimly lit. A pale glow of yellow light illuminated the room, throwing everything into washed-out relief. Eva had always hated it as a child. It seemed to curl in around itself and create a dark void where there should have been bright white light. The entire apartment was off of this one corridor that dead-ended in the closet where Eva was heading.
Eva’s grandmother had stored many things in the hall closet: Christmas presents and secret snacks, door hangings and cleaning supplies. It was the cleaning supplies that Eva was after now. The last time she’d been in there was before her grandmother had gotten sick. They had gathered up a great deal of clothing to be donated to the local women’s shelter. “I have too many clothes,” Mary had explained from where she held court in the comfortable and worn easy chair by the window, “and I want you to help me give them to people who actually will wear them.”
Eva helped her without complaint, loading up the grocery cart three times and walking the trash bags full of donations down to the women’s shelter some three blocks over. It was not long after her hospitalization, when her mother wasn’t speaking to her and her father couldn’t look at her without tears in his eyes. When Eva made the decision to drop out of college after spending almost a semester away, Eva’s grandmother had not cared.
