In the Distance There Is Light (17 page)

And yes, Ian, I can hear you think it. Am I a lesbian now? Have I gone gay for your mother? Though, please allow me to point out, which I’ve been doing to myself a lot, that she’s not your biological mother. Not even your stepmother. I know how much it would have hurt you—and Dolores—if I’d said those things while you were alive. But you not being alive is what set this whole thing in motion in the first place. And yes, I use it as an excuse. Every single time. Every single day.

You’re dead and I’m sleeping with your mother. How fucked up is that? It actually makes me chuckle as I write this. It’s ridiculous. Maybe I should do some research on the subject. There must be some literature on this, some study conducted by an obscure university. And, oh my god, Ian, imagine my mother’s face if she were to find out. Imagine the shock. No boardroom experience can prepare you for your daughter sleeping with her (non-biological!) mother-in-law.

But you have to understand. As perverted or depraved or sick as this may be, I need to get my comfort where I can now. My smile in the morning, that miracle, that little glimmer of being glad I’m alive because I’m waking up next to her, even if it lasts only a split second, it’s all I have. It’s what keeps me going. It’s what stops me wishing I was buried with you. Dolores is my lifeline. Nobody may ever understand, but we do.

I may never read this letter again, but there… Now you know. The ink has dried on the page.

This is what your dying has done to me.

Fuck, I love you. I miss you. Our friends will be here soon. I’m supposed to get all dolled up for this party. I went back to the apartment—into our bedroom—especially to get that teal dress you liked so much on me. And for what? Are you looking down on me from your comfortable spot in heaven? I sometimes wish I was gullible enough to be religious, but I’m not. Not one little bit. My loss, really.

So much is my loss these days.

I miss you.

Sophie

Chapter Twenty-Four

At the party, I just drink. I drink and I feel like a cliché—except when I look at Dolores. Then I feel like anything but.

Everyone we invited has come, because how can you possibly turn down an invitation for a dead man’s birthday? It’s not an option. All selfishness, all other plans, are trumped by death.

As I sit in a chair and drink more, totally neglecting my duties as hostess—Dolores and Jeremy are picking up the slack—I also feel mightily sorry for myself. I shouldn’t have written that letter to Ian just before people started arriving. What was supposed to be an activity that brought me some sort of solace, some closure, has begun to make me feel like a freak. A freak wallowing in self-pity. The absolute opposite of what Ian would want me to be.

Everyone keeps repeating what a great guy he was. If I have to hear that particular phrase one more time, I’m not sure what I will do. Everything is just so fucked. As if I actually want to snuggle up to Dolores each and every night. No. What I want is for Ian to have left the apartment one minute later that morning, for him to have taken an alternative route, for me to have kissed him profusely before he left, making him late, making him miss the reversing truck. Keeping him alive.
 

I could have kept him alive.

Instead, I’m sitting here, surrounded by people but feeling more alone than ever. Dolores is chatting with her friends. She must have quite a few things to say to them, the way she’s gesticulating. Perhaps she’s just happy to have a conversation with people her age for a change.
 

“Come on, you.” Jeremy tugs at my elbow. “Mingle. Turn that frown upside down. You can’t just sit here with that scowl on your face all afternoon.”

“Excuse me?” I shake him off me.

“Sweetie, I know exactly what’s going on in that head of yours. And while I understand, you invited all these people here. They came here for you—”

“They came for Ian’s irrelevant birthday,” I protest.

“No, Soph. They came for you. Can’t you see that?” He grabs me by the arm again, gentle but insistent. “I came for you.”

“I just… want to talk about something else than what a wonderful, lovely guy Ian was. Just for five minutes,” I whisper. “Does that make me a horrible person?”

“No, darling that makes you human. Come on, Bo and Cindy have been asking about you, but have been too timid to approach you. Anyone would be with the way you’re sitting here. You have so much in common with them now. Maybe you can ask for some tips.”

“Don’t push it, Jeremy.”

“Apologies, but I’m pushing
you
. You need it.”

“Then pour me another drink first.”

Jeremy shrugs, grabs a bottle of red wine from the table and refills my glass.

I follow his advice—or command, more like—and mix with the small crowd. There are about twenty people in Dolores’ house. Michael, Ian’s boss, is here. And Tommy. There’s no one here who didn’t love him to bits, yet they all get to go home after this
party
, relieved that that ordeal has passed, and get on with their lives. Whereas me, I’ll be climbing into Dolores’ bed again, trying to forget, trying to forgive myself for not pushing him more to wear a helmet when he rode his bike. “Nobody wears a helmet in Chicago, babe,” Ian would say. “This isn’t Southern California.”

“Hey.” Dolores suddenly stands beside me and puts her arm on my shoulder. “Are you okay?” I can’t help it. I flinch a little at her touch. Fearing that my friends will somehow be able to read from my face what we’ve been doing.

“I’m drunk and I think this party was a bad idea,” I mumble, no longer able to keep up appearances in front of Dolores. Having had a dozen orgasms at someone’s fingers will do that to you.

“Come on.” She places a hand on the small of my back. “Let’s get you some coffee.” She coaxes me toward the kitchen and closes the door behind us. She sits me down on a chair and pours me a steaming cup.

“The last party I was at, it was different, you know?” I slur my words.

“Drink this.” Dolores crouches next to me, her hand on my thigh. “Do you want to go upstairs for a bit? People will understand.”

“They will understand what? That we go upstairs together?” The amount of pure rage I’m feeling toward everything and everyone is new. “That we sleep together?”

“Sophie, please.” Dolores’ nails dig through the flimsy fabric of my dress.

“Why don’t we just go into the pantry and fuck while all our friends are out there?” I wave my hand toward the door and knock over a glass of water in the process.

“Please calm down.” Dolores pushes herself up and picks up the glass I knocked over. The water I spilled drips onto the kitchen floor.

“I’m sorry.” I bury my head in my hands. “My turn for a party breakdown,” I mutter into my hands. All the energy I had left, escapes me. I feel as empty as I’ve ever done. What was supposed to be a celebration of Ian’s life has just become a massive reminder of his death, more so than on any regular day. “I’m in a funny mood today,” I say when I look back up.

A tear runs down Dolores’ cheek.

“It’s okay. Come here.” She pulls me out of the chair and wraps her arms around me. “It’s okay.” With Dolores’ hands in my hair and her breath on my neck, and her love and support on display, I can’t keep it dry. I cry on her shoulder, wishing I could just disappear, like Ian did, leaving everyone to sort out their subsequent misery without me.

“I know very well it was a stupid accident, but sometimes it just feels like he deserted me. And fuck if I know how to deal with all this… shit.” I don’t care that I’m swearing in front of Dolores. “Sometimes, I just think he’s such an asshole for dying like that. So in vain. So uselessly. Nothing good will ever come of his death. All there is, is pain and grief and loss and endless days of agony and drinking too much and missing him, while the world just keeps on turning. I bet he’s been replaced at work. I bet there’s nothing where he died to show that anyone lost their life at that spot. The paramedics who were first on the scene have responded to a hundred more calls since then. The bloody truck driver is probably driving along happily, feeling lucky because the police didn’t find fault with him. Well, I do. I find him guilty, because the simple fact is that if he hadn’t been backing up his truck, Ian would still be alive. He would be celebrating his birthday today. We’d be singing ‘Happy Birthday’ to him, out of tune, and he would have that goofy grin on his face, and kiss you on the cheek and me on the lips and thank us for our performance, and we would all be so very, stupidly, recklessly happy, not knowing that it can all just end in a split second.”

“Oh, Sophie.” Dolores kisses me on the cheek first, then she cups my jaw with her hands, and kisses me full on the lips. In her kitchen. While, behind the door, twenty of the people we know best are drinking and chatting and reminiscing.

When she does it again, her lips lingering this time, I’m the one—me, the woman who just drunkenly knocked over a glass of water and yelled at her—who suggests she stop what she’s doing.

“Let’s go into the pantry,” she says. Her eyes are intense.

“What?” I figure I must be too tipsy to have heard her correctly.

“I need you,” Dolores says, and takes me by the hand. “Come.”

I let myself be dragged into the pantry. When Dolores closes the door behind us, it’s pitch black inside. She doesn’t switch on the light. Instead, she locks her lips on mine, her hands already traveling underneath my dress.

“Dolores, come on. Are you sure about this?” I try, but hell, I need this too. I need this to snap me out of my funk, out of my stupor of unflattering self-pity. I need Dolores to bring me back to myself again, at least to the version of me who can face her friends in the living room, and toast her dead boyfriend’s birthday.

“I am if you are,” Dolores says in between moans. She’s clearly not waiting for my reply. Her hands have reached my belly already. My dress is pulled all the way over my behind. “I want you,” she says, as though she hasn’t made that loud and clear yet.

And I want her, too. I need her
and
I want her because, thus far, what we’re about to do, is the only thing that cuts through the pain. Alcohol makes me too maudlin. Talking to my friends makes me miss Ian so much more than when I’m alone. Only this, being here with Dolores, brings relief.

So I let her slip her fingers inside my panties while her lips kiss my mouth, my cheeks, my neck. I let Dolores find her own comfort, with me. Because like this, she’s not alone and I’m not alone. We are us. Together we can take more.

When two of her fingers delve deep inside of me, and I have one hand in her short blonde hair, the other disappearing into Dolores’ panties, I know it’s not this physical act that will soothe the worst of my pain. It’s not the orgasm, nor how, no matter how deliciously, Dolores already knows how to expertly make me approach it in no time—so much has changed since Ian died. It’s how she’ll look at me afterwards, how she’ll wrap her arms around me, and, her voice all low and tender, she will say a few vapid words that will hold so much meaning nonetheless, just because she said them to me after the fact, and they will connect us so invisibly but indisputably.

When we’re done fumbling, our climaxes quick but satisfying in that frenetic, I-must-have-you-now manner, Dolores stands in front of me, her hand in mine. “I don’t even care what anyone thinks, Sophie,” she says. “Why would I? How could anyone’s judgement of me make me feel any worse than how I feel already?”

That sums it up so well.

We are two women with absolutely nothing to lose.

* * *

“Have you lost your mind completely?” Jeremy hisses after Dolores and I have made it back to the living room.

“I was about to, until Dolores set me straight,” I reply, not caring how that makes me sound.

“Straight? Funny choice of word.” He bumps his shoulder into mine. “Sometimes I wish I didn’t know. Why can’t I ever be the innocent one?” He actually draws his lips onto a pout.

“Because you’re Jeremy Rath. You lost your innocence the day you learned how to speak.”

“Wow, it’s good to have you back, Soph. That rumble in the kitchen must have done you a world of good.”

I square my shoulders and look at him. “Do I need to give a speech?”

“Only if you’ve sobered up enough.” He quirks up his eyebrows. One always goes higher than the other.

“Dolores poured me some strong coffee.”

“I’m sure she did, darling.” He huffs out a chuckle. “You should do what you want. If you don’t feel like it, then don’t do it. It’s not expected of you. If it will make you feel better, then by all means…”

“Have I thanked you enough for your unwavering support?” I look Jeremy straight in the eyes.

“The only gratitude I want is to see you smile again.”

“Christ, when even the notorious Jeremy Rath becomes corny, there’s no hope left.”

Jeremy’s face breaks out into a smile. He leans into me and whispers, “If this is the effect Dolores has on you, then long may it continue.”

I play-punch him in the arm. I guess it’s as close to his blessing Dolores and I will ever get.