Catch the Light, page 22
“Are you okay?” says Mom, who somehow is completely ignorant to the many transgressions of her daughters in the past twenty-four hours.
“I think I’m getting sick,” Bea moans, and she lumbers back up to bed.
I know I should lecture her, as is my big-sisterly duty, but I can’t bring myself to do it and kill this high I’m riding. I made out with Jesse Keller last night. In my bed, which still smells like a forest at Christmastime.
I almost text Nora about a hundred times before I remember that we aren’t speaking. It’s still strange that things like this can happen to me without her knowing.
So I settle for Hannah instead. When I text her the news, she does not disappoint, sending an entire screen full of emojis and about a hundred gifs of people freaking out.
I mean of course he wanted to kiss you, she says. You’re the best person I know.
At this, the guilt threatens to bubble up again, and I scroll over to Bennett’s name. But then another text comes in.
Hannah: Don’t overthink it.
Hannah: I can practically hear your brain melting down
So I put it off for an hour. And then a few more.
* * *
• • •
El’s beat-up Subaru pulls into our driveway at noon, and she honks the horn.
“Let’s go, Sullivan girls!” she yells.
She’s been in and out, dropping off pots of soup and bouquets of cedar boughs, but it’s been weird not having her around more. I feel like she was the anchor, keeping us all from floating out to sea.
“I hope you’ve got your long underwear on,” she says to a sulking Bea as we all pile into the car.
El’s got this plan to “really do the holidays” this year. I think it’s because last year was the most depressing Christmas ever. Mom was working all the time, so Hannah and I drove Bea to get a tree. The three of us decorated the house and bought each other presents. We baked and frosted hundreds of cookies that dried up, stale and crumbling on the counter because nobody felt like eating.
El flew out the day before Christmas Eve and she tried to lift our spirits, but it was her first Christmas since the divorce, and under the thin layer of cheer, we were all just too sad. We put on the movies and listened to the music and pretended we weren’t dead inside. But everything was just a replica of itself. Nothing felt like anything.
Apparently the first step in really doing Christmas is getting a tree. El drives us out to a tree farm that looks a lot like a regular forest, and we hike through a foot of snow with a bow saw and toboggan. El says that this is the authentic way to get your tree, rather than driving to some lot in downtown LA with hot tree farmers who carry your Douglas fir to the register, but I’m not sure I agree.
We hike for what feels like forever, Mom and El leading the way, arguing over the trees. Bea and I struggle along behind them, whining like puppies.
“How about this one?” Mom points to an enormous tree that’s got to be at least six feet tall.
“It’s too big,” El says. “It’ll take up half the living room.”
“That’s the point of living in a house with twelve-foot ceilings!” Mom argues, and in their exchange I catch a glimmer of what they must have been like growing up.
Mom turns to us and says, “What do you think, girls?”
I shrug.
“I’m freezing.” Bea says. “And I don’t really care.”
Mom looks at us, frowning. “Come on, girls, just have an opinion.”
“Fine,” I whisper under my breath. Then I paste a smile across my face, even though I can’t feel my toes. “I think it’s perfect,” I say.
“All right!” Mom says, beaming.
El insists that we all have a turn sawing at the tree trunk. When it’s mine and I’m lying down there, in the cave of sharp needles, my cheek pressed to the snow, I’m surprised at how good it feels: the sound of the saw against the trunk, the feeling of sweating in the freezing cold under a tree that smells like Jesse.
We finally get the tree back to the checkout area, and the man at the counter eyes our crooked cut and gives us a condescending smile. He’s young, maybe twenty. He’s wearing a bright orange hunting jacket and he’s got a cigarette dangling between his lips.
“Let me straighten that out for you, ladies.”
El bristles.
Mom rolls her eyes and says, “No thanks, we’re happy with it.”
And then she walks right on over to the car without looking back.
* * *
• • •
That’s how we end up, an hour later, wrestling in the living room with a tree that badly wants to topple over and kill us all. It takes all four of us to hold it up, even once we’ve gotten it into the stand. El rummages around the garage for some gardening wire, which we wind around the top of the tree and then around the curtain rods for stability. But it’s still crooked, and now a couple of the upper boughs have broken off, leaving a hole.
Mom brings out the Christmas box, and Bea and I work at the obnoxious amount of tape at the edges to pry it open. It’s stuffed with ornaments and tangled lights and littered with tinsel, and there’s something about the feel of the cardboard, the smell of the dust, the messy way the word Christmas is scrawled on the side in Dad’s handwriting.
For one shimmering second, the ineffable feeling of home hangs in the air: lounging on the green couch, surrounded by crumpled wrapping paper, eating peanut butter cups and watching Dad curse over assembly instructions. And then the heat clicks on and it’s gone.
I close my eyes, trying to stretch it out for one more second. I want to say, Bea, did you feel that? But the memory is already back in the void, if it was even a memory at all.
We decorate the tree and drink hot chocolate and play the original Very Special Christmas, the red one with the Keith Haring drawing on the front and the Bruce Springsteen song, Dad’s favorite.
Bea invents another game: What do you think Dad would say about this fucked-up Christmas tree?
Maybe it’s just hungover.
We should have left it out on the lawn.
I always wanted to be that guy who died in a freak Christmas-tree accident.
* * *
• • •
Later, I text Nora: Can we talk again?
I don’t even know what I would say, but I miss her. I hate myself for doing what I did. And the worst part is that I don’t even know why I lied. I think of all of the applications that I haven’t started, am never going to start. I imagine Nora at UCSB orientation, without me. It makes my stomach hurt.
* * *
• • •
That night, I can’t find my brass charm bracelet, the one that Bea is always stealing. When I poke my head into her room, I catch her sneaking back in from the roof, one pajama-pant-covered leg slung over the windowsill. She smells like cigarettes and the cold.
“What are you doing?” I ask, my arms folded across my chest, shivering a little.
“None of your business,” she says, jumping to the ground.
“Seriously?” I ask. “It’s been less than twenty-four hours since I rescued your wasted ass, and you’re, what? Sneaking out again? Smoking on the roof? How stupid can you get?”
Anger swirls through my bloodstream, into my cheeks.
“What are you, Mom?” She slams the window shut behind her but a chill lingers, fighting the warmth of the lamplight. She laughs. “She’s probably not even home right now. It’s Sunday night, right? She’s probably working.”
“What does that even mean?” I ask, feeling like I’m missing the thread somehow.
“Nothing,” Bea says, throwing the cigarettes into the back of her desk drawer.
“I just don’t get why you’re always pushing it, Bea,” I say, shaking my head.
“Yeah, I know.” She sits down on her bed, pulls off her jacket. Her voice sounds tired. Old. “You don’t get me. You probably never will.”
I walk to the door, feeling like I might explode if I stay in here a second longer. “Whatever it is that you’re trying to fix, you’re just making it worse.”
She shrugs. “Yeah, maybe that’s the point.”
* * *
• • •
Later, in my room, I’m trying to tackle the first thirty pages of Swann’s Way for English, but really I’m thinking about Jesse. The paragraphs are thick and the sentences are long and circular, and my thoughts keep pulling back to the feeling of his hands on my skin.
And then, as soon as I sink down into that feeling, the thought of Bea climbing through the window breaks in, like a bucket of ice water over my head. It feels like she’s one spin away from something big, and Mom thinks that coming home for dinner three times a week and getting a giant Christmas tree is somehow going to fix it. I want to grab her shoulders and shake as hard as I can. I want to say, Snap out of it.
I pick up the book again, I plod on, past swirling thoughts of Jesse and Bennett and Nora and Bea and Mom, as Proust perseverates on his childhood bedtime for almost all of the section. And it’s exhausting, but after a while I think somehow I actually get what he means. I think I understand the way he’s clutching at his past. It reminds me of how my fingers get sometimes, tight and shaking on the lens of my camera.
When I was younger, ten or so, I used to have these dreams about my father. He’d be in his study, working like he did, only one day he’d stop coming out completely. I would climb into the orange tree in our backyard to try to peek into the window, past the hanging fuchsia plants and the hovering hummingbirds, past the old, wavy glass in its teeny panes. I could see that he was building some hulking thing out of metal and wires.
I’d carefully climb down the trunk and tiptoe through the dry grass, over to the door, knocking quietly.
He’d crack the door and peer out, with glazed eyes and a dreamy smile.
“What are you building, Dad?” I’d ask.
“A rocket ship,” he’d say.
“Why?”
“I think I’m just ready to fly away.”
The rest of the dream would change every time. He’d stay in his study and I’d sit among the roses in the garden, devising a plan to ruin the ship, or I’d sneak in through the window and steal all of his wrenches, or I’d run into the house and search every room for my mother. And then he’d lock the doors, cover the windows, buy new wrenches. Every dream was a race, him versus me. I’d always wake up before I knew who’d won.
25
I’m pretty sure Mom and Dad were in love, but lately I’ve been rethinking the bedtime story.
There was this one time, on a road trip to Montana when I was ten, when they were fighting so badly that she told him to leave her by the side of the road in the middle of Reno, Nevada, and he actually did it. Really, there were a lot of times like that.
There were good times too. Matching Halloween costumes and kissing in the kitchen while Bea shouted, “Disgusting!” Even if I can’t remember them, I think there were times when Dad was really there.
But happily-ever-after just seems so definite. In real life, maybe they would have made it and maybe they wouldn’t. The thing about the ending that we got is that we’ll never really know. On some level, they’re just suspended in time forever, stuck in 1995, lunging toward each other over a birthday cake that says Happy Birthday James but never really getting to the kiss.
* * *
• • •
Monday at school, I still have hearts in my eyes but I’m trying to be cool. I wear my wool skirt and black tights like I did that night in Jesse’s room, and I count the minutes until English class.
When I get there, Jesse is as perfectly long limbed and nonchalant as ever, and halfway through the discussion he passes me a note that says, You’re beautiful.
On the way to lunch he holds my hand, and just before we get to the doors he pushes me into a tiny alcove and kisses me full on the mouth. His tongue tastes like honey. I forget where I am.
Until I get to the table and my phone vibrates with a text from Bennett: Have I told you how much I love Unicycles? I jam it down to the bottom of my bag. Jesse looks at me and frowns.
All through lunch, Sam seems just as lost as we are. It’s like we’re three little clouds floating around the table.
“There’s something different about you,” I say.
“There’s something different about you,” she replies.
Under the table, Jesse squeezes my hand.
* * *
• • •
Bea and I walk home after school and Mom is there, already making a big dinner. She’s got a chicken tied up, ready to go into the oven, and she’s peeling potatoes, humming along to the radio. Even though it’s weird, the feeling of her in the kitchen, with the heat on and Christmas music playing, hits some deep and long-forgotten part of me.
I think, This is why we moved here.
Beside me Bea rolls her eyes as if she can read my mind. Devil child.
“Need any help?” I ask.
“Nah,” Mom says, opening the oven. “Why don’t you girls go get your homework done so that we can just relax at dinnertime?”
“Sure thing, Mommy dearest,” Bea says, in a voice that’s full of stinging nettles.
* * *
• • •
Back upstairs I’m struggling to focus on Proust again, and my brain is once more wandering into memories of Jesse’s eyelashes and teeth and earth-brown eyes, how he kissed me at his car this afternoon, my back against the cold metal door. But I feel like there’s some vital truth about my life to be uncovered in this book.
I think about the way my old life is disappearing. There’s this big, dark void at the edge of my mind where California used to be. The more I try to remember, the bigger the void becomes. I know that the empty space is where my father would go, where cracked sidewalks and skinned knees and lemonade stands would go. I’ve been trying to hold on to that space for the memories, willing them to come back.
But my new life keeps filling it in. Every day it fills up with fresh snow, hot baths, kissing, creaky hardwood floors, giant windows edged in ice crystals. Every day there’s less and less room for him.
I’m almost at the end of the chapter when I find the passage:
And so it is with our own past. It is a labour in vain to attempt to recapture it: all the efforts of our intellect must prove futile. The past is hidden somewhere outside the realm, beyond the reach of intellect, in some material object (in the sensation which that material object will give us) of which we have no inkling. And it depends on chance whether or not we come upon this object before we ourselves must die.
I read the paragraph again and again. And something about it crushes me. I think it’s the thought that all of my efforts have been for nothing, that my dad will continue to disappear whether I try to remember him or not. That it’s out of my control. That maybe, by sheer luck, I will someday find some forgotten object, some forgotten taste or smell that will conjure him back, multidimensional, fully intact. And maybe I won’t.
I sit back in my chair and try to rub the stars out of my eyes. I’m so sick of crying. Then I shut the book and shove it into my desk drawer.
* * *
• • •
Mom calls us down at exactly six. Bea and I thump down the stairs, our footsteps in time, and I wonder if she’s feeling as heavy as I am.
Mom’s set the table with yellow placemats and lemon-printed napkins, and she’s filled our plates with chicken, mashed potatoes, and roasted green beans. Outside the snow is brown and half melted, but inside the kitchen glows.
I sit down and try to ignore the Proust-shaped hole in my heart. I pick up my fork and knife. I cut little bites, chew, swallow. I try.
The eating part of dinner is mostly quiet. Mom tries to ask us a few mom questions like:
How was your day?
How is school going anyway?
What are you up to this weekend?
And we give teenage answers like fine and okay and nothing.
But the conversation keeps stalling. There’s this tension in the air and I can’t place it.
Finally, my mom puts down her fork, and just as it clatters against her plate she says, “I need to talk to you girls about something.”
Everything stops. My heart, lungs, brain, fingers holding on to my knife. The last time she said these words was the beginning of the end of everything.
I look at Bea, who is stirring her fork around her mashed potatoes, looking down at her plate and shaking her head, not at all surprised.
“It’s not bad,” Mom says, playing with her napkin. I notice that her hair is down today and it’s almost grown past her shoulders. “It’s—”
There’s a long pause. A forever-long pause. A Grand Canyon–sized pause that fills me up with dread.
“I met someone,” she finally says, so quietly it’s like she’s whispering.
Immediately, the mashed potatoes turn to concrete in my stomach. A block of ground-up, hardened sand.
“What?” I say.
“I met someone,” she says, as if I really didn’t hear her. “I met a—guy.” She sounds like she’s literally choking the last word out.
In her seat, Bea smiles a weird smile. “I knew it,” she says. She sounds vindicated and sarcastic, but underneath it I can tell she’s disappointed.
Then my mom just starts rambling through the entire thing in these short little sentences.
“He works at my firm. His name is Jake. He’s really amazing. He has a daughter who goes to Sarah Lawrence, Mary.”
