Light from Distant Stars Read online

  Calvin looked at Cohen and still didn’t speak. They stood there in the light of dawn, a father and a son. Cohen felt like he knew this man even less than he ever had before.

  His father’s gaze left his eyes and swept down over his clothes. He turned and unlocked the coffin, then came over and took Cohen’s jacket from him. He lifted Cohen’s shirt up over his head, took his shoes and his socks and his jeans, and put it all in the coffin. Cohen stood there in his underwear, cold and uncertain.

  His father took in a breath to speak, stopped, shook his head. He put his hand on Cohen’s cold shoulder, and he squeezed it once before going outside and pulling the hearse to the front of the funeral home. He propped open the glass doors, pushed the coffin onto the sidewalk, and loaded it into the hearse.

  He drove away, Cohen went upstairs, and they never spoke of that night again.

  One week later, on the front page of the local newspaper, Cohen read an article that listed the man as missing and reviewed his alleged offenses. One month later, a smaller article, embedded deep in the paper so that Cohen almost didn’t see it, asked again for any information related to his disappearance.

  After that, nothing.

  sixty-two

  “Though Vile as He”

  The police call for nurses, who sweep in and take Kaye away on a stretcher. Her skin is a gray-white color. Her mouth is the horizon, flat and empty.

  Cohen stands in the hospital hallway, still holding the baby girl, answering questions. Thatcher’s mother is beside him, and Thatcher too, holding the first baby. Minutes pass. They give their information to the police.

  Ava intervenes on their behalf, pulling them away, making assurances. “Where do you want to go?” she asks Cohen in a concerned voice.

  “C’mon,” Cohen says quietly, and they all follow him to his father’s hospital room. Thatcher doesn’t look away from the baby he is still holding. His mother walks quietly beside him, her arm situated protectively around his shoulders. Ava can’t stop staring at Cohen and the baby girl he carries.

  As the small, weary group approaches Calvin’s hospital room, the sound of his mother’s voice comes out to where they are.

  “The dying thief rejoiced to see

  That fountain in his day;

  And there have I, though vile as he,

  Washed all my sins away.

  Washed all my sins away,

  Washed all my sins away;

  And there have I, though vile as he,

  Washed all my sins away.”

  Cohen leads them all into the room. Cohen’s mother looks up, sees the twins, and stops singing.

  “Here,” Cohen says, handing her the baby girl, the one with the green eyes mixed with flecks of brown. “The nurses are going to take them down to the obstetrics ward in a minute. It’s chaos out there—when they take them, please go along and make sure everything is okay. I need to go check on Kaye.”

  His mother does not say a word. She takes the child into her arms and stares into those new eyes now closing, and Cohen wonders what she sees.

  He turns and walks into the hallway, into the chaos of police blocking off the hall and doctors and nurses evacuating patients to other floors. Ava follows him. Fear and relief are thick there in the midst of gurneys being pushed and IV carts maneuvered. The sun is shining brightly through the glass at the end of the hall.

  Cohen stops outside his father’s room. “Ava?”

  She looks at him with wide eyes.

  “I know you were there. I know you saw what happened in the funeral home when we were kids.”

  Her nod is barely perceptible. Cohen wonders if he imagined it.

  “You never told anyone, did you,” he says, and it is more a statement than a question.

  She shakes her head.

  “No one ever found out.” He says this to no one in particular before looking up at Ava again. “Do you have a minute? I’d like to tell you the story.”

  She nods, and this time he’s sure of it. She gives a barely noticeable smile, and they head for the elevator in single file, winding their way through the chaos. Through the police, the nurses, the people being escorted from the building.

  “Isn’t today the first day of spring?” Cohen asks quietly over his shoulder, but Ava doesn’t hear him. The hallway is loud and words are easily lost. The two of them walk unnoticed, one in front of the other, the crowd unconsciously clearing a path for them.

  Cohen reaches back and offers Ava his hand, and she takes it.

  sixty-three

  An End

  It’s late on Friday night, the cold front has passed, and a warm breeze blows through the chapel door, which is propped open. Cohen takes in a deep breath, smells the warmth, the wet sidewalks, the dark sky. A gust of wind sends whatever remains of the rain and snow falling from the trees. He can hear the drops pattering in waves that match the breeze.

  “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.” The words slip from his lips, soothing. There is no more anxiety as to what he must confess, what he must keep secret. If he’s learned anything this week, it’s that relief and light lie on the other side of confession.

  Father James’s warm voice comes through the screen, and it brings Cohen the same feelings as the wind outside the door, of life and fresh starts. “The Lord be in your heart and mind, Cohen, and upon your lips, that you may truly and humbly confess your sins: In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.”

  It is as if he’s hearing those words for the first time.

  In your heart and mind.

  Upon your lips.

  “Amen.”

  Cohen glances back up at the image of the crucified Christ, and there they are: those deep green eyes with brown flecks. He envisions again the eyes of his niece. How could he have seen such a different painting before?

  “I confess to the Almighty God, to his Church, and to you, that I have sinned by my own fault in thought, word, and deed, in things done and left undone, but especially in regards to this week. I have hated my mother and father. I have not been straightforward. I have not always told the truth.”

  Cohen pauses.

  “Father, the more often I come to confession, the more I have to confess. I don’t know where to begin or end.”

  Cohen can tell the priest is smiling on the other side of the screen, not because he can clearly see Father James’s face but because of the sound of his voice.

  “Then you have learned the true practice of confession and why it is a sacrament of the Church. Our recognition of our helplessness is the beginning of true dependence.”

  “I killed my father.”

  Father James remains silent, waiting.

  “I once did something that revealed a secret about him, and that ruined his life. I convinced my sister that taking him off life support was the right thing to do. I confess for that.”

  Cohen looks down at his hands, clenches his fists, and marvels at the elasticity of his skin, the structure of his bones, the visibility of his veins. He swallows hard.

  “You know, this week I spent a lot of time thinking back over all the ways my father failed me, but then I remembered something.” He looks up at the painting. “I remembered the one time in my life when my dad was there for me. I was terrified. My dad came out to where I was sitting beside the window, and he put his hand on the back of my neck and stroked my hair.”

  “That was your father,” the priest whispers.

  “What?”

  “That was your father. Of all the images he presented you with, of all the different fathers, the one who came to you in the dark and comforted you, held you up, loved you, that was your true father.”

  Cohen feels that old familiar lump in his throat, the stinging in his eyes. “For all these years, I waited for the dad of my childhood to return, the dad from before my parents’ divorce. But he never did, and I hated him for that. But I’ve finally remembered how for one day he was there for me. For one day he was the father
I wanted. The father I needed. I don’t know if what we did in those moments was right. Maybe my father should have told someone about what I had done, what had happened. Maybe he shouldn’t have hidden it away. I don’t know. But he was there for me.” He stares hard at the eyes in the painting.

  Father James speaks quietly. “Sometimes people don’t have the power to be what we need them to be for us.”

  Cohen nods, glancing back at the screen. “I know that now. I think of my dad differently now that I think about that night when he came out to the living room and stayed there with me.” He pauses, swallows. “I wish I would have remembered that before now. Why do we forget these things? Why do we forget the most important things?”

  Another burst of spring air flows through the chapel, cooler this time but still overflowing with life. The pages of an open Bible rustle, first one way, then back again.

  “I should go,” Cohen says. “Thank you for listening. Thank you for being here this week.”

  Father James does not say anything, but Cohen sees the outline of him nodding behind the screen. Cohen begins the final line of the confession, but for the first time all week the priest interrupts him.

  “Your father loved you, Cohen. I hope you know that. Your father loves you. As does God. I think you’ve been waiting for the God of your childhood to return as well, but God is not in the past. God is always here. You must only open your eyes to see.”

  Cohen sighs, takes a deep breath as if to speak, but lets it all out in another sigh. He slouches down in the chair, all the wind taken out of him. A kind of lightness fills his being, an ease and a peace that he has not felt for a long time. The words come slowly, and he means them with all of his heart.

  “It is for these and all my other sins which I cannot now remember that I am truly sorry. I pray God to have mercy on me. I firmly intend amendment of life, and I humbly beg forgiveness of God and his Church, and ask you for counsel, direction, and absolution.”

  “Our Lord Jesus Christ who has left power to his Church to absolve all sinners who truly repent and believe in him, of his great mercy forgive you all your offenses; and by his authority committed to me, I absolve you from all your sins: In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.”

  “Amen,” Cohen whispers.

  “The Lord has put away all your sins,” the priest says.

  “Thanks be to God,” Cohen says.

  “Go in peace,” the priest says, “and pray for me, a sinner.”

  sixty-four

  These Are the Same Hands

  Spring arrives finally, completely. The sycamore trees reach out into the air, and a constant breeze sweeps through the city, tickling the tiny buds that unfold like hands relieved of pain. A bright sun coats everything in a thin layer of honey-colored warmth.

  Cohen stands beside the bed of his father. Calvin is dead, his death declared accidental. Only Cohen’s mother was in the room with him when he died, and afterward she finally agreed to eat, walking to the cafeteria with Ava and Thatcher, still humming hymns to herself.

  Cohen stares down at his father’s body. A shiver of sadness passes through him, and for a moment he feels unbelievably cold. A nurse comes in, asks him to sign a few things.

  “Do you mind if I wash my father’s body?” he asks suddenly, and the words surprise him nearly as much as they surprise the nurse.

  “No,” she says. “I don’t mind.”

  “Do you have a container I can put some hot water in?”

  She returns with a small white bucket, and the water in it steams. She backs out of the room, closing the door, and everything goes quiet.

  Cohen begins with his father’s head, gently wiping the stubble that has formed during the week. It is rough and coarse, like a short-bristle brush. It springs back after the cloth passes, spraying a fine mist.

  He moves down to his father’s face, sliding the cloth in the hollows of his eyes, the dimple under his nose, the roundness of his chin. Calvin’s jaw is stiff and unyielding, and this more than anything breaks Cohen’s heart. He’s crying now, the tears washing his own cheeks, dripping from his own nose, gathering under his own chin.

  He peels back the sheets and undresses his father as if he’s a child, untying the gown and pulling it gently off his arms, stripping it away. The cloth has grown cold again, and he dips it in the hot water, the steam rising. Cohen washes his father’s body slowly, wondering what a father-and-son relationship would be like if the son would wash his father while he was still alive. Would they love each other more? Would that kind of a washing break down the usual barriers? Would a different kind of life, a different kind of knowing, push up through the rubble? Washing his father, he feels like he knows him in a way he never knew him before. He feels a kind of tenderness toward this old body.

  Cohen washes his father’s feet, remembering the stories from his childhood, stories told to him by Miss Flynne about the time Jesus washed his disciples’ feet. The flannel-board Jesus wearing only a kind of loose-fitting toga over one shoulder, bent at the knee over a stone bowl, his disciples looking on in astonishment. The shock! The impropriety!

  His mother comes into the hospital room, but Cohen doesn’t look up, doesn’t say anything, and for once he feels no judgment from her—only a kind of curiosity. She watches as he finishes, saving his father’s arms and hands for last.

  His father’s hands. The same hands that wore a baseball glove and threw the ball to him over and over, back and forth, under a blue sky. Now so old. So utterly and completely finished. Cohen gently moves the hot cloth through his father’s fingers. They, too, are already stiffening.

  Cohen puts the cloth back in the white bucket. He covers his father’s naked body with the white bedsheet and takes a step back from the bed as if to survey his work.

  This is it, he thinks.

  His mother comes around the bed and stands beside him. They remain there together like two pillars, and Cohen doesn’t want to leave. His mother reaches over, takes his hand with both of hers, and turns toward him. When he doesn’t look at her, she puts her forehead on his shoulder and cries.

  sixty-five

  A Beginning

  Cohen turns his car into the VFW parking lot later that afternoon, drives around to the back, and then follows the narrow road down the hill to the baseball field.

  “C’mon!” Johnny shouts, dashing from the car.

  Cohen smiles. “I’m coming, I’m coming.”

  He follows Johnny, holding his father’s old baseball glove. He found it buried in the back of a closet, the leather stiff and cracking. It scratches his fingers when he puts it on, and he stops and stands there for a moment under that blue sky, flexing his hand, opening and closing the glove, trying to work the leather loose.

  “I don’t know,” he says to Johnny, who is already thirty feet away and itching to throw the baseball clutched in his hand. “I don’t know. This glove is in rough shape.”

  “No excuses, Uncle.” Johnny laughs and throws the ball, its red seams twisting like strands of DNA.

  Cohen reaches up, and the feel of the ball nestling in the web of his glove is almost enough to bring up the tears. He laughs because he must do something, he must make some sound through the unexpected emotion.

  “Nice throw, Johnny!” he shouts. He throws the ball back into his own glove a few times, trying to loosen the leather. The smacking sound of the ball, the sting on his palm and index finger, the scratching of the baseball’s seams on his throwing hand—all of it is a time machine. He raises the glove to his face, closes his eyes, and takes in a deep breath. It all brings his childhood racing back, those summer ball games, before everything fell apart.

  “Uncle!” Johnny shouts. “C’mon!”

  Cohen holds the ball again, the seams like small tracks against his fingers. As he throws it, he feels the old movement, the rotation, the release. The ball sails through the air and makes that satisfying smack in his nephew’s glove.

&nb
sp; “Nice catch!” he shouts. “Nice one, Johnny. How does it feel to be a big brother?”

  Johnny throws the ball back. “Great,” he says, and his voice sinks into reflection. “Do you think Mom’s going to be okay?”

  Cohen pauses the game of catch, keeping the ball in his glove. “She’s going to be fine, Johnny. They’ve got her resting. She’ll be out of that place in no time.” He throws the ball back. “What?” he asks, pretending to be offended. “Don’t you like staying with your Uncle Cohen?”

  Johnny laughs. “I’d live with you if I could,” he says.

  “Whatever,” Cohen says, but a warmth fills his chest. “You’re a good kid. You know that?”

  Johnny laughs again.

  They throw the ball back and forth between them, back and forth. Cohen smiles at the simplicity of it, the repetition, the ease that it causes him to feel.

  “Attaboy,” he says. “You’ve got quite an arm.”

  The sun is bright in the sky above them, and the warm spring breeze sweeps through the farmers’ fields. A train whistle screams somewhere far off, so far away that it is almost unrecognizable.

  For a moment Cohen envisions himself and Johnny throwing the ball back and forth, but he is looking down at them from a great height. The two of them, he and Johnny, are two small specks in the middle of the dusty infield, which is a small brown fleck in the middle of all that green expanse of country, and there’s nothing else left in the whole wide world to be afraid of, nothing to run from.

  There are only the two of them, alive in the green and the brown.

  I was twelve years old, and because I was crouched down in left field, picking at random blades of grass and not paying attention, I didn’t notice the darkness gathering in the west. My father signed me up for baseball every year, even though I wasn’t very interested in a game that seemed to be made up mostly of standing around and waiting, and on that particular day I was feeling happy the season was almost over. I stared at a small ant pile and poked at it, spreading panic. The ants dashed here and there, trying to rebuild what I had brushed away in an instant.