How the Light Gets In Read online

  These memories, three years old today, came back to me tonight, as I saw you kneel to better hold our daughter. Our Charlie Brown Christmas tree sparkled behind you; Vivienne was army-crawling across the floor, her round eyes locked on one of the ornaments dangling from the lower branches. The music swelled. Sofie’s dimpled, almost-four-year-old fist clutched the blue material of your shirt, and you rocked back and forth, the same as you had the day we wed. I loved you so much then. I love you the most when I see you being a father to these two girls who adore you in a way that I, as their mother, can often not touch.

  It fills my heart with gratitude to see you so adored, and yet I must wonder why—if you’re so adored by every woman in your life—you remain so dissatisfied with it. Why are you seeking this adventure elsewhere? To places that will take you away from us? Why can’t you just be content? But then, am I really content with where this life has taken me? I too am surrounded by people who love me without question, but my heart still longs for something more—for a fulfillment beyond my roles as mother and wife. Perhaps you and I, dear husband, are not that far removed from one another, although lately it seems like that wall exists between us.

  Let’s tear it down, then mend whatever needs mended. Let’s go back to how the two of us felt that day we wed, when you and I didn’t have a care in this broken world because we were so wholly satisfied to have our arms around each other.

  Love,

  Your wife

  Elam sipped his morning coffee while staring out the kitchen window. He knew the rest of the household would soon awaken, and he wanted to be in the field when it did. He was running away from what he felt and from the woman who prompted those feelings. But he had no other way to cope. Elam was not a very introspective individual, and for the first half of his life, it was a predilection that had served him well. He’d always taken quiet pride in the fact he’d never gotten heart palpitations. Not heart palpitations in the sense he should lay off a second cup of coffee with that leftover slice of Aunt Mabel’s shoofly pie, but heart palpitations in the sense someone outside his body had the ability to affect it.

  However, from the moment Ruth arrived at the farm, he understood that the comfortable atmosphere of his life was about to change. The shift was so distinct and tenable, he’d lifted his gaze from the cranberry bog and looked up, expecting to see a mushrooming thunderhead, but the cloud of dust from Ruth’s vehicle rose into an otherwise cloudless sky. Elam had told himself that Ruth was his cousin’s widow, and as such, he needed to respect what they’d had by not allowing himself to see her as anything more than family. Then there were moments, like last night in the barn, or the other night, when they stood in front of the sink as he washed dishes and she took the plates from him to dry—their wet fingertips touching—that he was so consumed by Ruth’s sheer presence, he could not breathe or speak, so he was grateful she believed his stammer was inborn and had nothing to do with her. But lately, everything had to do with her, and Elam was frustrated by his inability to govern his emotions. This frustration made him realize that perhaps he’d never been in a relationship not because the opportunity hadn’t presented itself, but because he’d never wanted to lose control enough to let himself love.

  Ruth surely did not reciprocate these feelings, and therefore Elam Albrecht needed to stuff them, the same as he’d been stuffing them all his life. His thoughts drifted to when he was a child of about nine or ten, before his mamm got cancer, before he was forced to grow up when he didn’t understand what “growing up” meant. He’d spent hours in the field, trying to catch a bald eagle in a trap, unaware that there were fines for such an endeavor. He would patiently lie on his stomach, on the periphery of the cornfield’s shorn scalp, and wait for the eagle to come. It was a simple box trap which held a rabbit Elam had found dead on the road. He’d waited and waited for the bald eagle to arrive, but when it did, the bird so transfixed Elam, as it awkwardly crossed the ground over to the trap on its yellow talons—its sleek black-and-white wings catching the light—he couldn’t find it in him to pull the string that would trap the bird. All his life, it seemed, his heart got in the way of his goals.

  Loss—like anger, like love—produces reactions corresponding with personality type. When Laurie and Elam’s mother died, Laurie had made a subconscious goal to have so many people to love, she would never be lonely. Elam had made a goal to keep his heart closed, so it wouldn’t hurt if that person got taken away.

  Perhaps because of this, Elam had dreaded Ruth’s arrival with her children, but now that they were here—now that he couldn’t imagine the house without the soundtrack of little feet coming downstairs, or lying in bed in his small room off the kitchen, listening to Ruth’s flat voice singing the girls to sleep—he found himself delirious with joy that he was no longer alone or lonely. How could he bear it if they were to go; how could he bear it if they were to stay?

  Elam heard someone on the stairs, and it was no pitter-patter of little feet. He knocked his coffee back, scalding his tongue. He was striding toward the door when Mabel called out, “Hold on there, Elam.” He stopped in his tracks, like a child caught stealing whoopie pies for breakfast. His aunt came around the corner in her nightgown, her black braid unraveled from sleep. Though Mabel and his mother hadn’t looked alike, seeing his aunt now made him wonder how the sands of time would’ve changed his mother, if she were alive.

  “How was the party?” she asked.

  He couldn’t meet her eyes. “Good.”

  “I heard there was ice cream.” Mabel smiled. “That alone deserves more than ‘good.’”

  Elam lifted his shoulders in a shrug, jaw throbbing. He remembered Ruth sitting on one of the church benches in the barn, her back ramrod straight, a plate balanced in her hands. He could tell she was uncomfortable there, surrounded by another culture and couples whose very unity proved their lives hadn’t been as difficult as hers. Elam had wanted to hold her: that was the thought that made his face burn now. Even while she picked at her food, made small talk with the women, and smiled bravely—silently—while the rest of them sang, he had wanted to hold her, smooth back her hair, erase the darkness from beneath her eyes.

  This wanting was a betrayal to his cousin and to Ruth.

  Elam concluded, “We had a nice . . . time.”

  He might’ve imagined the coy tilt of Mabel’s head. “And did Ruth have a nice time?”

  He looked at his feet. His boots were by the door, a habit he’d picked up because the women of the house kept everything so clean. Nodding, he said, “Seemed like it.”

  Mabel touched his arm. “Something wrong?”

  He shook his head.

  “Elam,” she said. “If nothing’s ailing your body, then what’s ailing your mind?”

  He looked over at her, so plagued with guilt that he wanted to confess, even though her son was the man he felt he’d been disloyal to. Elam said, “I think you already know.”

  She leaned closer. “Ruth?”

  He looked back at his feet and nodded.

  “Oh, Elam.” Mabel clasped her hands. “I’ve prayed for so long that you would find a special someone.” Leaning toward him again, she glanced toward the stairs and whispered, “Does she know?”

  “No,” he said. “And I won’t tell her.” Meaning he didn’t want Aunt Mabel to tell her either. “She’s already been through so much. It’d do no good to lay it all on her now.”

  Mabel’s sleep-swollen eyes shone with tears. She reached out again, and Elam was becoming so accustomed to his aunt’s tactile nature, it no longer caught him off guard. “Don’t you think,” she said, “the love of a good-hearted man might be just what she needs?”

  Elam escaped to the barn as soon as he could. He knew, if Ruth descended those stairs, everything he and Mabel had discussed would be written across his face, and the openness of that horrified him. Would he have become as infatuated with any woman, give or take ten years, who lived in such close proximity? Was this the kind of attract
ion that happened when you spent thirty-nine years living like a monk? Elam groaned and stepped into the barn. He kept the door open to allow the morning light to sweep through the gap. He needed to be working, but he was having a difficult time concentrating, since every time he stood in the barn, he could envision Ruth’s face as she told him about her unfulfilled dreams. No, he thought, what he felt for her was not the result of some chemical backup in his blood. He didn’t understand it; he had a feeling he couldn’t understand it, but he knew he was beginning to deeply care for this woman. In truth, though, that was putting it mildly. If “caring” for someone had a spectrum, he was further from the beginning and closer to the end. He cared for her, plain and simple. He cared for her, and for her young children, in a way he’d never cared for anyone.

  But what could he do about this? Nothing. There was nothing he could do.

  Elam started stacking the wooden crates of cranberries on the sorting tables. He strode out to the well and worked the handle on the water pump. He filled four buckets and carried them back two at a time, finding satisfaction in the sense of being balanced, when it seemed it’d been a long time since he’d been anything of the sort. He distributed this water in low tubs—one at each table. Once all of this was completed, he stood back and surveyed it.

  The same angst that had distracted him, once focused, had provided a preternatural energy, allowing Elam to complete the task in half the time it usually took. He glanced over his shoulder toward the house, but nobody was standing on the porch. It was just becoming habit, the same as yesterday, when he would be working in the field and glance over to see where Ruth was. He had even told his brother-in-law, Tim, to make sure she took enough breaks, for he’d done plenty of dry picking himself, and he could remember how—by the end of the day—pain darted into his lower back. But Ruth hadn’t complained.

  Elam all but exhaled in relief when he noticed Tim walking up the lane.

  “Hey,” Tim called. He paused and studied Elam. “You feeling all right?”

  This was the second time in an hour his physical appearance made others think he was ill. Maybe lovesickness was an ailment one could catch, like the common cold. He glanced at Tim.

  “I think I might take the day off. You got this?” Elam gestured to the sorting tables. “Everything’s set up.”

  “Sure thing,” Tim said. He looked confused. Elam never took time off. He also never spoke in groups, like he did last night. But unlike Mabel or Laurie, Tim wasn’t about to pry. Sometimes, Elam appreciated the more taciturn nature of his gender. “Take all the time you need.”

  “I’ll only need today,” Elam said. His tone came out more gruffly than he intended. “There’s something I need to do.”

  Elam’s heart rate slowed in the few steps he took away from the barn. He walked past the wet-harvest bogs. The boards damming up the water had been removed, allowing the current to flow back down the canal toward the lake. A blue-winged heron took flight as Elam passed. Its wings nearly skimmed the water until it rose and flapped, heading off to a more secluded location. Elam understood the crane’s need for solitude. His own need had driven him here. The fallow field’s wide-open plane was only broken by the distant trio of silos at the neighboring dairy farm, which appeared like white-capped nesting dolls, displayed from greatest to least. The cold was setting in. Elam could always tell as his kneecaps tightened, the cartilage ground down to bone on bone from jumping in and out of the harvester for the past thirty-some years. Although he was unusually warm natured, he would’ve donned a coat if he hadn’t forgotten it. He’d been so eager to escape that house, he’d barely remembered to put on his boots.

  A fish jumped in the lake, circles ringing the spot where the body had disappeared as smoothly as a silver coin dropped in water. Elam supposed that some men in his position would like to fish or hunt coyotes or rabbits—small prizes that temporarily satiated hunters’ appetites until deer season opened and their clotheslines were strung with bright-orange garb. But Elam never took pleasure in killing. He never even took pleasure in trapping, as was proven by his letting that bald eagle eat a rabbit on that Indian summer day.

  No, Elam took pleasure in music.

  Elam climbed up the porch into the cabin, which didn’t resemble a cabin as much as a shack, but he continued to call it a cabin because that was what it had always been called. The cabin was here when Elam’s family first moved—with four other families—from Pennsylvania to the Driftless Region of Wisconsin, known for its fertile soil and rolling, unglaciered hills. Even thirty-five years ago, the cabin was such an eyesore that Elam’s father considered knocking it down and turning the surrounding woods into more farmland. But Elam’s father was also an avid hunter, and therefore it didn’t take Elam long to convince him to keep the woods as a preserve for whitetail buck; therefore, Elam’s cabin was salvaged.

  Elam didn’t have many friends growing up, because how could you develop friendships if you couldn’t speak? He had a friend when his cousin, Chandler, visited from Pennsylvania. But Chandler talked enough for the both of them, and when Elam inevitably struggled to get the words out—or not get them out as much as set them free—Chandler ran through his gamut of words until he randomly found the one Elam wanted. This drove Elam crazy because he could tell Chandler wasn’t trying to help so much as turn Elam’s impairment into a game.

  This was why the cabin—and the solitude it represented—became his haven. His family only used the cabin for hunting season, so it was a place where Elam could hide out. Be himself. A place to daydream and read the book of poetry he’d picked up from the “Free to a Good Home” box outside the library. Elam’s parents weren’t overly concerned by his stammer. They were too busy trying to get Driftless Valley Farm up and running, which was what kept Elam busy too, when he wasn’t going to school at the one-room building a mile down the road, or hiding in the cabin, reading poetry by lamplight. Elam lived like this until, one day, the librarian, Miss Romaine, caught him taking more books from the free box and laughed when he jumped.

  “Boy,” she’d said, “you could be sneaking far worse things than Lord Byron. C’mon—” she waved a hand toward the door—“I’ll show you the rest of the Romantics.”

  Miss Bridgette Romaine was an unusual woman, especially for such a rural area. She was black in a predominantly white town, neither married nor had a desire to marry, and possessed a fondness—some might say obsession—for opera music, cats, paper earrings, and knitting sweaters so thick, they didn’t look like sweaters but raw fleeces dyed flamboyant hues. Elam would bike from the farm to the library in Tomah, seven miles away. Country boys did not often check out books of poetry, and Miss Romaine had said it was the first time in her twenty-five years as a librarian that the poetry was selected by a Mennonite boy in a straw hat and suspenders, split front teeth adorning his grin. This combination apparently piqued Miss Romaine’s interest, so that she tried to make small talk while asking for the information needed to obtain his peach-colored card with the small silver chip. But Elam couldn’t tell her, or when he tried to tell her, the words got trapped in his throat. He blinked and worked until tears came to his eyes. Finally, the syllables broke loose, and he said, “E-lam.”

  Miss Romaine was not fazed. Reaching across the desk, she shook Elam’s hand and said it was an honor to meet such a well-read young man. Once a week, for over two years, Elam visited the library regularly to return and check out books. Each time, Miss Romaine made an effort to draw him out by offering suggestions or asking what he’d read. Each time, Elam found he could speak to her a little more. Finally, over her lunch breaks, Miss Romaine began teaching Elam how to speak by encouraging him to read aloud from what he’d selected.

  Elam could do this because he could focus on the pages rather than on her face. In this simple way, Miss Romaine became Elam’s speech therapist; later, she became his music therapist, for opera had given her a voice during a time in history when it was otherwise silenced. Since Elam couldn’t
hold a note, she taught him to play piano. Elam soon—as Miss Romaine had predicted—loved playing piano as much as he loved to read.

  Each medium opened a world to him not confined by his tongue.

  Elam now opened the thin, rectangular drawer of the desk he had made from reclaimed barn wood. From inside, he pulled out a matchbox. Sulfur stung his nose as he lit the wick and set the globe back on top. The space was no longer cold and damp as it had been. Even as a boy, he began remodeling until the cabin was as weathertight as his own house. The air still smelled stale except at the height of summer, when Elam wrenched up the two single-pane windows, which allowed some fresh farm air to cycle through. But it didn’t matter. His 1903 Steinway piano (which Miss Romaine had bequeathed to him in her will), desk, and books were visual balms. The cabin was more his home than the home others claimed was his. It was spare, rustic, and considered inhospitable. Perhaps this was why Elam felt such kinship; the miserly structure reminded him of himself.

  Elam sat on the piano bench and lifted the lid. The piano belonged to the cabin as much as the cabin belonged to it. Elam stroked the black-and-white keys and warmed his fingers up by doing scales. The small cabin reverberated with the sound, and it thrilled him as it had from the moment Miss Romaine first played. Because Elam’s Old Order Mennonite heritage forbade instruments, he had always created his music in solitude, and his parents—who’d died before he received the piano—never knew of his gift. The melody was a forbidden, haunting language which spoke of his longing in a way he could not. After the accident that took his finger at seventeen, Elam didn’t play for a year: the year his mother died. He knew it was foolish, and highly unrealistic for a farmer’s son—not to mention a Mennonite farmer’s son—but Elam dreamed of studying music.

  By seventeen, Elam still had a mild speech impediment but no longer feared speaking like he had in early adolescence, and yet he couldn’t imagine a better fit for him than a school where language was communicated through keys and strings instead of words. But then that dream was taken when the ring finger on his left hand got caught in the power take-off—a powerful implement that nearly scalped the neighbor girl, Esther, when her pigtail got caught.