Light from Distant Stars Read online

  There’s a nice boy here who says he goes to my school. His name is Jimmy. I haven’t made any close girlfriends yet, but maybe once school starts. Girls are weird, as you know (ha ha). Mom says I don’t talk enough, I don’t ask enough questions, I don’t care enough. Maybe she’s right about that, because I don’t care much, I only wish we had our old life back. She’s constantly pushing me to make friends with other girls, telling me to go talk to them, but I’m actually happy now. I don’t need girlfriends. Not right now. I have Jimmy. And I have you, even though we’re practically 100 miles away from each other. You have always been such a good friend to me.

  I still miss you. I always miss you! And I’m sorry.

  Yours,

  K

  thirteen

  “Onward, Christian Soldiers”

  Cohen kept Miss Flynne’s sock all through the spring and into the summer of 1984, although if anyone had asked him why, he wouldn’t have been able to explain it. In his room, there was an old dresser for his clothes, a piece of furniture his parents had picked up alongside the road. It had a few deep gouges on the top and most of the drawers were missing their handles. He tucked the sock under that dresser. Occasionally, when he lay in bed long after everyone else in the house was asleep, his mind spinning back through the sanctuary where he had seen and not seen his father and Miss Flynne, sleep wouldn’t come. He would get out of bed in the middle of the night, walk blindly through the darkness, fish around under the dresser until his hand found the sock, and take it back to bed with him, lying on his back, holding it in both hands on his chest, jealousy an ember deep in the ash.

  It seemed strange to do this, even to him, and he kept the secret hidden under a persistent shame he did not understand but could not shake. Perhaps it was the dawning of preadolescent confusion at the feelings he had for Miss Flynne, or perhaps it came from not knowing how to make peace with the searing jealousy he felt for his father. Or maybe it was a secondhand shame experienced on behalf of his father, who, based on the effusive tears and exhaustion he had laid on the altar at the front of the sanctuary, had much to be ashamed of.

  As monumental a place as the sock seemed to take up in Cohen’s mental and emotional space, it was remarkable how careless he could be with it. One morning, as he was about to catch the bus, he remembered he had left the sock under his pillow. Often his mother would make his bed—she was sure to find it.

  “Cohen! Where are you going?” Kaye shouted. “The bus is here!”

  He ran up the front steps, across the porch, through the banging door, his backpack thumping side to side, all the way up to his room. His mother was already there.

  “Cohen!” she said.

  He froze in place. “Yes?”

  She turned and stared at him, shaking her head. She held his pajamas in her hand. “When will you remember to put your dirty clothes in the hamper?”

  He nearly fainted with relief. “Yes, Mother.” Not knowing any other way around it, he darted toward the bed, thrust his hand under the pillow, stuffed the sock in his jeans pocket, and raced back out of the room, his backpack colliding with the door frame and nearly twisting him off his feet.

  “Cohen!” His mother’s voice followed him down the stairs, but he didn’t stop.

  “The bus is here, Mom!”

  It was this occasional forgetfulness in regards to the sock that led to him, on an early Sunday morning in July, sitting in Miss Flynne’s Sunday school class and realizing that he had somehow, for some reason, brought her sock along with him. It bulged in his pocket like a secret that could not be kept any longer. He leaned forward in his chair and clutched his arms in front of him and to one side, trying to cover up the lump.

  “Cohen,” Miss Flynne said as she entered the small cinder-block room and passed him on her way to the chalkboard, “are you feeling okay?”

  He nodded without saying anything. She looked at him with curiosity and seemed to decide to take his word for it.

  He stared at her and an ache rose in him, an ache of sadness and anger. He wanted to take out the sock and throw it at her, shout, scream that he knew her secret, whatever it was, whatever she had been doing with his father. But Cohen never confronted anyone. He couldn’t do it. So he sat there, leaning forward, his eyes filling with tears.

  He wasn’t prepared for the next surprise: Ava walked into the classroom carrying two baseball gloves. “Hi, Cohen!”

  Ava had never come to his church before. He stared, his mouth open.

  “Surprise!” Ava said, smiling. Her straight white teeth shone like a beacon. “My mom wants me to go to church. I don’t know why. But I can walk here, at least when the weather’s nice. I’m almost ten, you know. And I knew this was your church.” Her smile merged into something bashful, and she glanced away, waiting for some kind of a response.

  “Great,” Cohen said. “Seriously. That’s great.”

  More children came in, roughhousing, bumping against the chairs, throwing things at each other, but Cohen couldn’t stop staring at Ava. It threw him off balance, seeing her anywhere but the ballfield or in passing at school. “What’s with the mitts?”

  “Oh, these? My dad says I should always take a glove with me, you know, to practice.”

  “Why two?”

  She shrugged. “Who am I going to practice with? I thought you might want to throw after church.”

  The baseball she had lodged into one of the gloves fell to the floor and rolled the short distance to the front wall. Miss Flynne was writing a Bible verse on the chalkboard, the tapping sound of chalk sliding along. She glanced down at the ball over her shoulder, placed the chalk in its tray, and reached down gracefully, picking up the ball and eyeing the group.

  “Whose is this?” she asked, trying to look stern but only managing to barely lessen the smile she always wore. She held the ball up. It seemed to weigh down her fragile wrist.

  Ava raised her hand. When Miss Flynne saw that it was a new child who bore responsibility for the rolling ball, kindness surged to the surface again. “And who might you be?” she asked, tilting her head.

  Cohen sighed. Her perfectly round head. Her long and wistful neck. He glanced down at her feet, but she had not taken off her shoes. She wore stockings without a monogram. Maybe he should simply return the sock secretly, leaving it in her Bible or in her purse or even under his chair.

  “I’m Ava. This is my first Sunday. I’m friends with Cohen Marah.”

  Some of the boys in the back laughed.

  “Welcome, Ava, friend of Cohen,” Miss Flynne said, as if Ava was a princess from some faraway land. “Welcome. Keep this safe while you’re in class, okay?”

  She handed Ava the ball, turned back to the blackboard, and finished writing the verse.

  In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness. And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.

  “Today,” Miss Flynne said, her voice hidden under the roar of still-talking children, “we’re talking about the first day of creation.”

  After Sunday school ended, Cohen and Ava walked up to the sanctuary and sat with Cohen’s mother and sister, stood when it was time to stand, and sang hymns about war.

  “Onward, Christian soldiers!

  Marching as to war,

  With the cross of Jesus

  Going on before.

  “Christ, the royal Master,

  Leads against the foe;

  Forward into battle,

  See his banners go!

  “Onward, Christian soldiers!

  Marching as to war,

  With the cross of Jesus

  Going on before.”

  They listened to Cohen’s father regurgi
tate the sermon Cohen’s mother had written about the light and the dark and how the separation between the two is in the very first verses of the Bible, which shows that God is a God of drawn battle lines and conflict always brewing. From the very first day. Cohen lost track of his father’s voice and became distracted with Ava’s presence, so close beside him that he could see individual wisps of hair floating out of her braid. He glanced over at his sister on the other side of his mother, and he wondered what stories she was making up in her head and which forest she was journeying through, and to what end.

  And there was Miss Flynne in the pew directly in front of his mother. Her breathing was slight, like a doe hiding in the undergrowth.

  After the final hymn, they filtered outside through the crowd and put on the baseball gloves Ava had brought with her. The boys who had laughed at the friendship between this boy and girl were suddenly envious, scuffing their shoes absentmindedly on the sidewalk, hungrily watching the ball sail. Ava and Cohen threw it to each other there in the soft grass in front of the church, and the baseball flew through the speckled light that fell between the leaves. Cohen always felt incredible comfort while throwing a ball, the gentle back and forth, the soft popping sound of a good catch.

  “Are you ready for the big game next Saturday?” Ava asked.

  “Sure,” Cohen said. “We haven’t lost yet.”

  Ava threw the ball, this time harder than usual, and Cohen made an imperfect catch, the ball smacking against his palm instead of settling into the pocket.

  “Yow!” he shouted, throwing his glove to the ground. The ball fell out and rolled a few feet away.

  Ava laughed. “Am I throwing it too hard for you?” she asked sarcastically.

  Cohen grimaced, shook his head, picked up the ball, and threw it back. He had an idea. He needed to put something in his glove where the palm of his hand sometimes caught the ball. Padding would soften the sting. He fished Miss Flynne’s sock from his pocket, laid it flat on the palm of his hand, and stuffed his hand into his glove.

  There. That was better.

  “What was that?”

  “Nothing. Only a little padding.”

  “I can throw the ball hard. I tell you all the time, and you never listen!”

  “C’mon, give me everything you got!”

  As the ball made its orbit through the air, as the seams spun and the dirty white leather rotated in space, and as Cohen raised his mitt to welcome it, a commanding voice spread out from the church.

  “Cohen Marah, you take that glove off this instant! We do not play baseball on Sundays!”

  Cohen’s glove absorbed the ball, and he looked over at the front of the church. His mother stood there, fire in her eyes.

  fourteen

  The Confession

  “Hello, Father James?” Cohen says into his phone, still sitting in the hospital cafeteria, staring at the doors Ava left through. An employee turns off a row of lights, throwing the back section of the large cafeteria into darkness.

  The man on the other end of the telephone line clears his throat and replies with only one word, but even that one word emerges slow and thick with sleep, like gravel ground together. “Yes?”

  “Father James, I’m sorry to bother you so late.”

  Another empty moment. Another clearing of the throat. The words emerge in reluctant scratches. “Is this Cohen Marah?”

  “Yes, Father. Yes. It’s Cohen.”

  For a moment neither one of them says anything.

  When Father James still doesn’t speak, Cohen stumbles on. “I know it’s late. I know. I’m sorry. I need to talk. To you.”

  Another pause. A sigh. Words spoken barely above a whisper, words that wish they didn’t have to be said. “Cohen, you do remember that I retired in January? That I am no longer the rector at Saint Thomas Episcopal Church?”

  “Yes, Father,” Cohen says reluctantly, as if the priest has mentioned something completely irrelevant to their conversation. The score of a minor league baseball game. The current temperature. The price of cotton in Australia. “I know. I know. I . . . I need to talk, that’s all. My father is dying.”

  He tacks that last sentence on in hopes that it will turn the tide in his favor. He had wanted to keep that information back for a bit longer like a trump card, but it slips out before he knows what he’s saying.

  Father James clears his throat again. “I am very sorry to hear about your father,” he says, moving ahead tenderly. “Father Richard or Reverend Laura would be more than happy to visit your family in the hospital. Even now, in the middle of the night. I can call them for you if you would like. Priests are used to this kind of thing.”

  Cohen sighs. “It’s not only my father. I need . . .” Here he pauses for such a long time that Father James finally speaks.

  “Cohen?”

  “Yes, well, I need to confess, Father James. I need to confess. And I miss you, and I’m not comfortable confessing to Father Richard or Reverend Laura. They are both very kind. But they’re also both very young. I’m not sure they have much life experience, as far as that goes.”

  “Cohen,” the priest says in a kind voice. He seems to have regained his composure. “I am honored that you still see me in that role. I am thankful to have served as your rector for so many years. Truly, I am. But Father Richard and Reverend Laura are your spiritual leaders now. Either one of them is quite capable of receiving your confession. Of that I am sure. Quite sure. In fact, I regularly confess to Father Richard, and I find him both gracious and understanding.”

  “But Father, you know me.”

  “Cohen . . .”

  “I never practiced confession until I came to Saint Thomas. Did I ever tell you that? I’m sure I have. You’re the only person I have ever confessed to. Not often, I know. But still. You are the only one.”

  Cohen looks away from the cafeteria doors and stares out through the glass at the quiet city, the occasional late-night car drifting past, its headlights glaring against the tinted windows. In the halo of the streetlights, he can see the snow drifting down, lazy, out of place. It’s March, Cohen thinks. None of this should be happening.

  “Please, Father,” he says, and in those two words is everything in the world he cannot say.

  Father James sighs for what feels like the tenth time. Their conversation is like a war fought in small skirmishes, battles made up of sighs and long pauses and heavy silence. Cohen can picture the priest scratching the white hair on top of his head, the way he always did when Cohen would ask him a difficult question or come back around to the same old subjects, the same old doubts and confusions and hesitations.

  “Okay, Cohen. Yes. I can meet you in the chapel in thirty minutes. But you need to consider conferring this practice from me to the new leadership at the parish. Perhaps we should sit down together with them and talk through your . . . what shall we say? Hesitations?”

  “Yes, Father, I will. I think that’s a very good idea. Thank you, Father. I will see you in thirty minutes. Thank you.”

  Cohen hangs up quickly, before Father James can change his mind. He stands and pushes his chair under the table. The employee turns off another row of lights, and the approaching darkness follows him across the room. His footsteps make a lonely sound on the hard tile. The church is five blocks away. He’ll walk.

  When he leaves, pushing his way through the doors, the employee turns off the last row of lights behind him.

  fifteen

  Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?

  Cohen drifts slowly to the church, giving the retired priest extra time to make his way there. He marvels, as he always does when out in the middle of the night, how quiet the city is, how dark, how full of shadows and passages and steaming alleys. The snow stops falling for a moment.

  Cohen can see the Saint Thomas steeple rising, a tall black tower against the night sky. He remembers the stars from his childhood, when his family lived outside the light-polluted city. It was a marvel to him when he learned how far aw
ay they were, how long it took the light to reach him. He thinks of Johnny and remembers when he was the one in awe that the light he was seeing was thousands upon thousands of years old.

  But there are no stars tonight, at least none that he can see. Small, upward-facing lights illuminate the red-brown brick of Saint Thomas, and interior evening lights push the stained-glass colors onto the street. He turns before he gets to the main entrance of the church and walks up the long, covered walkway to the chapel. Off to his right, the fountain sends its endless supply of water up to where it gathers before running over the edge of one pool, then another, and finally back into the ground from where it came. Time does not stop. He arrives at the large glass doors that go into the side of the old church. He tugs on the handle, and the door reluctantly budges.

  Inside the door, he cleans his shoes off on the mat before turning directly into the small chapel. It’s warm inside. A large red oriental rug stretches the length of the room. Chairs skirt the outside. There are small bookshelves holding rows of Bibles and copies of The Book of Common Prayer. A low altar runs along the front, and behind that a podium, and behind the podium, hanging on the blue wall, is a painting of the crucified Christ. Cohen stares at it for some time, taking in the mournful face, the crown of thorns drawing ruby-red beads of blood, the golden flecks in the background. The face has been painted with the expression of forlorn abandonment, eyes turned down.

  Cohen remembers the verse from his childhood Sunday school days. These things rise unexpectedly, like debris shaken loose from the floor of a lake during a storm. He never knows what will surface.

  Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?

  My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

  He is brought up out of his reverie by the sound of Father James clearing his throat from behind the temporary confession screen standing at the front right of the small chapel. The priest has already situated a chair for the confessor. Cohen stares for a moment at the shadowy outline of the priest, the only thing he can see of him through the screen.