Light from a Distant Star (2 page)

Her mother glanced over the paper. Didn’t say anything. Just sighed. Henry was eating his pudding and didn’t catch it, but Nellie did. In her mother’s opinion her husband had let up long ago, if he’d ever really cared much in the first place. About business, that is, and making money.

Benjamin Peck was a fine man. Polite. Thoughtful. Well raised and probably the handsomest man in Springvale. For almost a hundred years Peck Hardware on Main Street had provided most of the community’s workaday needs: nuts, bolts, gadgets, hinges, keys, and every manner of tool, paint supplies, ladders, even wallpaper, though most of the rolls Benjamin had stamped
SECONDS
, they were so old, and long after they were fashionable, glossy decals to decorate your walls, furniture, and cabinets. Peck’s sold bird feeders and pails, lightbulbs and shovels, lawnmowers and rakes. Window shades were his specialty.
MEASURE TWICE, CUT ONCE
said the black-and-white tin sign over the shade-cutting machine, both sign and machine older than Benjamin, who took great pride in his shade-cutting skill, though not much else when it came to the cluttered store. For an impractical man caught in the most practical of lives, the past was sustenance enough.

Benjamin’s true calling was the history he was writing of Middleton County, most especially, the town of Springvale. His small office at the back of the store was filled with old books, some stacked higher than Nellie was tall, which at that point in her thirteen years was way taller than she wanted, though she took care to always stand straight, shoulders back, head high like her father. For Nellie it was important to never show blood or weakness. For her father it was an inborn, natural stature, as erect of torso and limb as he was of character.

It was generally agreed that no matter how bad things got, Benjamin Peck was a decent man. A dreamer, certainly, and careless maybe when it came to the business, by that point in time on its last wobbly legs. In just a five-mile drive, three ways out of town in a triangle of Peck financial doom, there was a Sears; a Target; then two years ago, the orange-and-brown death knell, a Home Depot, where you could buy everything from a hot dog and orchid plant to a utility shed complete with shutters and window boxes, as well as crystal chandeliers and French doors, even a refrigerator if you wanted. Just cart it away.

Four generations of Pecks had served the hardware store, which was her father’s problem. It had never really seemed like
his
business as much as the place he was still minding, all these years later, for his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather. From time to time people did come in and buy things, “pity purchases,” her father’s sister called them. Aunt Betsy had never wanted anything to do with the store. Even the shade business had fallen off. Maybe nobody could cut them like Benjamin, but when everyone else had gone to vinyl, all he stocked were more expensive paper shades in ivory and dark green, and of the latter only two had sold in the last five years.

But the solitude was fruitful. Without distractions he could continue his research and write for hours. An old cowbell would clang on the opening front door, and there was an etched silver school bell on the counter for customers to tap if he’d missed the first bell. Most people just went looking for him. Some helped themselves and left money on the counter. Some probably helped themselves and just left.

The history was almost finished. Only a few more chapters to go, he assured her mother. He’d finally made it to the war years, he declared one night at dinner, soon after she’d started working at the hair salon.

“Which war?” she asked.

“World War One.”

“Are you serious?”

“It’s fascinating,” he said, waving his fork, striking key notes with a conductor’s blinkered intensity. “I mean, even then, that something so very distant could have such an impact on this little part of the universe. Amazing, when you think of it, when you consider it in that light. How connected, how vital a part we are of one another, from then till now, down through the ages. And how brief it all is. I mean, here we all sit, thinking we’re so important that every mistake, every disappointment is a disaster. Cataclysmic. When all we are, all we really are, is a mote, an infinitesimal speck, a pinprick in time.”

Even Nellie could see the parallax effect: her mother thinking, perhaps for the first time realizing as she did indeed consider it in that very light, just how small, how isolatingly local and therefore remote, was the pinpoint myopia of her husband’s life’s work. But he was a
brilliant man—everyone knew that—she surely must have reminded herself as she so often did her children, and far more educated than she was, which by Benjamin’s own mother’s admission had been the family’s first mistake, sending him off to a fancy college, and then the second, when he graduated, insisting he come back home and take over the business when his father died, which had only made him a prime target for Sandy Campbell and her illegitimate baby.

T
HEY LIVED ON
O
AK
S
TREET
. T
HE OLD
P
ECK HOUSE WAS BIG
and kind of ramshackle compared to their neighbors’, but the inside was comfortable, even pretty thanks to her mother, who did all the painting and papering herself, and a lot of the repairs. She had sewn most of the curtains, duvet covers, and tablecloths. By Memorial Day weekend her flowers would be planted, the shrubs fertilized, and the shade-patchy lawn limed. There were nine rooms not counting the part of the attic that had been done over for Nellie’s sister’s sixteenth birthday.

Ruth always got special treatment. Because she’s the oldest, they’d say, but Nellie knew it was more than that. You see, Ruth was a “love child,” born when her mother was a senior in high school. Her birth father’s last name was Brigham, but she had always gone by Peck, until that particular summer.

For reasons Nellie could not fathom, Ruth had become obsessed with, in her words, “finding my real father,” a lousy thing to say considering Benjamin had raised her almost from infancy. Danny Brigham lived in Australia, and up to that point in time, had never laid eyes on Ruth. His offspring. Little more than his seed, the way Nellie figured it.

His family had moved from Springvale halfway through his junior year and Sandy’s pregnancy. She had been older and a year ahead in school, a fact that Nellie found
the
most disturbing of all. Unnatural. Danny Brigham hadn’t wanted to leave, Sandy had always been careful to tell Ruth. It wasn’t that he didn’t care, only that being so young he had no choice, his plight another of the bittersweet fairy tales that governed Ruth’s life. In the only picture she had of him, he was seventeen years old in a Hawaiian shirt, with a big honking nose, long wavy hair,
and a goofy smile. Nothing like distinguished Benjamin with his dark eyes and jet-black hair just starting to gray at the temples.

In the back of the house there was a three-room apartment that people always seemed to be moving into then out of when the young wife got pregnant or the grouchy old lady’s tumble in the tub landed her in assisted living. So far, their best tenant had been Lazlo Larouche. Lazlo was an artist, though he supported himself by waiting on tables at the Mountain House, the most expensive restaurant for miles around. Lazlo’s paintings were of prancing moonlit horses and mist-covered lakes and vague spectral images fleeing in billowy capes. He and Benjamin took to one another quickly and on Lazlo’s rare evenings off would sit on the front porch sipping wine and talking. Each man was a good listener, particularly Lazlo, who avoided personal questions and was ever eager to steer the conversation back to Benjamin and his work, the history of Springvale. It was with Sandy, though, that Lazlo was more himself; they shared confidences and easy, sometimes helpless laughter together.

Eventually, Lazlo moved across town into a bigger, more modern apartment with James, his frequent visitor at Oak Street. Lazlo had come back to visit, but only a few times, and he was always in a hurry.

After Lazlo, came the downturn. The apartment stayed empty for a month. By then any vacancy meant financial hardship. With the store income a dribble at best, Sandy had counted on the rent to buy groceries and pay bills. Her job at Frederic’s helped a lot and her client base was growing, though still small. She had worked right after Ruth was born, but quit when she married Benjamin, who shared her belief that a mother’s place was at home. Most of her clients were still walk-ins, but people liked her, and her girlfriends were supportive, recommending her and coming in for touch-ups and trims they barely needed. The other stylists were Carolyn, Kris, and Lizzie, who used to do Sandy’s hair. Frederic was a small, dramatic man with a blond goatee and a tan that was sprayed on weekly. He absolutely “adored” Sandy, and paid her minimum wage.

Warmhearted and generous, Sandy Peck was always ready with a helping hand, so what could she say when Lizzie asked if her niece could look at the empty apartment. She had just broken up with her
boyfriend and needed a place to stay. Lizzie had had it with the girl’s sleeping on her pullout couch. In spite of Sandy’s misgivings, she had agreed to show the apartment to Dolly Bedelia.

“She’s an entertainer at the Paradise,” her voice rose past the open cellar door.

“The Paradise?” Nellie’s father said.

“Out on Route Nine?”

She had called him down to remove the dead mice and reset the traps. The stiff little carcasses had been in them for days. Maybe weeks. It was his most hated chore.

“Entertainer, what’s that mean?” He spoke nasally, probably holding his breath, Nellie thought.

“Singer? I don’t know. But Lizzie’s always saying how she’s got this amazing voice.”

A bag crinkled—her father opening the paper casket.

“Not that kind of place though, is it?” he asked.

“What I’m hoping is she won’t like it, the old tub and no shower.”

“Lazlo’s works okay, the one he hooked up.”

“Except for running out of hot water all the time.”

“So, tell her that.”

“Believe me, I will.”

“Doesn’t seem right, does it?”

“I know, but the last thing I need right now is some ditzy pole dancer moving in.”

“I meant them. Look, they’re not even full grown.”

“They’re still mice, Ben. Vermin. Coming up through the walls into the cupboards and—”

“What do you mean, ditzy pole dancer?”

“Oh, God, I don’t know. How do I get myself into these messes?”

“Because you’re very kind.”

“No. I just talk too much, that’s the problem.”

“Speaking of which, guess who came in today?”

“Ben! I hate it when you do that. Just tell me.”

“Andy Cooper.”

“Oh, thank God! Did he say how much?”

“I turned him down.”

With the furious stomping up the stairs, Nellie barely made it around the corner onto the recliner.

“For now!” Her father followed her mother into the kitchen, the bag of dead mice a dry rattle with every appeasing gesture. “Just for now, that’s what I told him. I just need some time, Sandy. A little more time.”

“To do what, Ben? To do what?”

“To finish.”

And in the stark silence that pulled the walls together, she felt it once again, deeply, her mother’s disappointment and her father’s determination to overlook her desperation, no matter the cost.

A
N ENTERTAINER WAS
moving into the apartment. She couldn’t wait to tell Ruth. When she’d told Henry, all he’d said was “So?” It was Friday night and Ruth had gone out after dinner to meet her two best friends in the park. Supposedly they were going to Rollie’s for ice cream, then to hang out at Brenda Hoffman’s house afterward. The Hoffmans had an amazing playroom, with its own bar, pool table, Ping-Pong table, huge television, a conversation pit lined with leather couches, and sliding glass doors leading out to the Gunite swimming pool. Not that Nellie’d ever seen it, but at that point in life, Ruth was her Vasco da Gama, returning from her great adventures with detailed descriptions of exotic worlds, and if she was lucky and showed enough interest—but not too much—romantic relationships.

“I probably shouldn’t be telling you this,” she would begin, and Nellie’d already be getting that dull pelvic ache. Especially when it was about Patrick Dellastrando. Nellie wasn’t sure why, because she truly found him repulsive—hairy arms and legs, a man’s deep voice, and a perpetual five o’clock shadow. He was a grade ahead of Ruth, but he lived around the block, so their frequently crossed paths had long seemed a kind of cosmic destiny to both sisters.

Ruth was twenty minutes late. On weekends her curfew was eleven. School nights she couldn’t go out except to the library. It was amazing how many projects she’d recently been assigned. Anyway, at 11:20 Nellie had come down from bed, claiming hunger, a plausible excuse
because to listen to her mother tell it, all she did was eat. Constantly. Her mother was folding her work laundry on the kitchen table, mostly lavender towels and black smocks. Nellie was slowly eating toast with peanut butter, trying to drag it out, when Ruth came through the door. Even without glasses, the first thing Nellie noticed was her sister’s rashy face, then her wrinkled shirt, and the funny way she was looking at them. Like through a fog. Her pupils seemed to fill her eye sockets.