Sky Lights by Melissa Dyrdahl

Ella wished she could sit here in her car, parked in the driveway of her parents’ house, for the rest of this slowly dissolving afternoon, into the lulling dusk, all through the gray owls echoing at midnight, to the quietly fading stars at dawn, and then just leave. Never entering the house at all. She would just sit here, letting the silence seep into her skin, sheltered by the insulated interior of her SUV.

Leaning her head back on the leather headrest, Ella stared at the sky through the tinted glass roof, sunlight filtering across her face. In the low grass next to the house, a family of speckled quail pecked the earth, where, in the spring, her mom’s Dutch iris would be knee-high. She watched two chicks the size and color of walnut shells closely follow their mother while the father stood guard a few feet away. She sighed. Last week there were three babies.

Ella closed her eyes and concentrated on her breath while she counted to ten, and then got out of the car and let herself in through the back door.

She was immediately enveloped in familiarity – the slight creak of the floor when she stepped into the kitchen, the smell of Lemon Pledge on polished surfaces. And it was apparent her mom wasn’t wearing her hearing aids because the TV was blasting from the living room. Ella found her exactly where she expected her to be, snuggled into the plush Lazy Boy, the blue quilt on her lap and a half-eaten box of See’s Candy on the side table next to her. She was holding the TV remote up to her ear and talking loudly into it.

Ella waved at her, trying to get her attention. “Hi Mom!”

She looked up, annoyed. “Shhh!” she said, “I’m talking to Eric.”

Ella sank down on the couch. The view of the wide front yard was softened with grayish light. A windstorm last week had stripped most of the leaves off the hickory trees. Long branches silhouetted against the sky looked like skeletal fingers pointing into the clouds.

Wheel of Fortune was blaring, but Ella couldn’t turn the volume down until her mom was ready to hand over the remote. Why Eric? Ella thought. She hadn’t mentioned Eric in a long time.

 “Mom, shall we watch Wheel of Fortune? Do you want a piece of candy?” Ella said.

“What??”

Ella tried again, shouting this time – “DO YOU WANT A PIECE OF CANDY?” – and handed her the striped box so she would put down the remote.

She never said no to candy. She dropped the remote in her lap and grabbed the box, smiling as she looked down at the dark chocolates, all filled with something soft and delicious.

Ella was relieved to hear Cassie’s footsteps coming down the hall. Sweet Cassie, patient and kind, had moved in last year as a full-time caregiver. She and Ella’s mom were distant cousins, and they had grown up living close to each other in Chicago. Ella was grateful to have someone here she could trust.  

“Hi, El!” Cassie said, her pink-framed glasses balanced on top of her head, holding her thick blonde and silver hair away from her face. “I didn’t hear you come in.”

Ella clicked the Volume Down arrow on the remote several times. “I thought you might want to get an early start,” she said. “No hearing aids today?”

Cassie raised her eyebrows and looked up at the ceiling “I couldn’t convince her to get out of bed until almost noon. I barely got her hair brushed, and that” – she pointed to the See’s – “is all she will eat.”

Cassie glanced over at the TV, where the letters H, O, L, A, and R and were visible in the puzzle.

“Hotel California!” she said, guessing the correct answer. 

“You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave!” Cassie and Ella sang in unison, which made them both laugh.

Ella didn’t know what she would do without Cassie’s help and as much as she wished she could be somewhere else right now, she didn’t begrudge Cassie having a night off.

Cassie brought her mom’s walker over to the front of the chair, ready to help her up once she finished her candy. Even on a good day, walking to the kitchen was slow going.

“Are you and Dr. Handsome ready for your trip? Cassie asked. She always referred to Scott as “Dr. Handsome,” having fallen for his showstopping green eyes the same way most of his patients did.

 “Dr. Hanson and I finally booked our flights.”  Ella said, smiling. Scott had to plan his vacations months in advance to make sure his shifts at the hospital were covered. His job in the ER was intense, and they were both looking forward to having some time away to relax.

“How’s Dad doing?”

“The hospice nurse came by around 3:30.” Cassie replied. “No change, she said. She’ll be back in the morning to check on him.”

Ella stared at the front door, imagining the nurse walking out and taking all their sadness with her.

“Can we see if we can get her to wear her hearing aids now?” Ella asked, knowing that Cassie would have the best chance of persuading her mom into complying. She couldn’t bear the prospect of getting her mom ready for bed while also having to shout at her. CAN YOU BRUSH YOUR TEETH? LET’S PUT ON YOUR NIGHTGOWN. Raising her voice made Ella feel like she was losing control, and she was afraid her shouting would turn into terrible screams before she could stop herself.

***

Ella’s heels echoed faintly on the hardwood floor as she headed down the long hallway, long enough that when they were kids, she and Eric and Emma used to set up white plastic bowling pins at one end to see how many strikes they could get with a tennis ball.

Ella paused at the doorway of her old bedroom. It was Cassie’s now, the desktop covered with her sewing machine and the bookshelves filled with rescued remnants of fabric. In her free time, Cassie stitched together intricate patterns and designs, her quilts a beautiful new wholeness made from the discarded fragments of other people’s lives.

She continued past the next door, where her mom still slept in what had been her parent’s room. A king-sized bed – now with safety rails – and nightstands stacked with the historical fiction books her mom loved but hadn’t opened in months. An antique dresser filled up the wall by the window, meds arranged at one end, framed family photos at the other.

Across the hall, the door to Eric’s room was always closed.

Ella turned and walked into Emma’s old room, exhaling when she suddenly noticed she’d been holding her breath. Her parents used it as an office after Em had moved out, but it was now dominated by a hospital bed, a depressing presence with a cold chrome frame. The mattress moaned and sighed almost as much as Ella’s dad did.

She sat uneasily in her dad’s wheelchair next to the bed, trying to ignore everything she hated about being here. The smell of Lysol and urine, the annoying sound of the oxygen machine, the way he looked shrunken and lonely, his skin the color of feeble old men.

She reached for his hand, so thin after months of illness. His eyes were always closed now.

“Hi Daddy, it’s me, Echo Lima.” 

He was a retired Navy officer with a twangy Texas accent and a Silver Star from Vietnam who thought it would be fun to teach Ella the ABCs two different ways – the standard way, and the military alphabet of code words used for communicating letters. He wasn’t deployed on a ship during her childhood, the way he’d been during Emma and Eric’s.

E-L-L-A. Echo Lima Lima Alpha.

“Daddy, how are you feeling? Are you in any pain? Can you squeeze my hand?” Even people close to death can hear, the hospice nurse told her.

A pale blue vein pulsed on his temple.

“Daddy, I spoke to Emma. She sends her love; she’ll try to visit next week.”

Ella was never sure what to say. She tried to make him feel better, whispered soothing words, but Emma had not specifically sent her love, and it wasn’t likely she’d be arriving any time soon.  “Really, El. He won’t even know I’m there,” she had said when Ella had called her yesterday. “You’re there. You and Cassie. I just can’t get away right now.”

Sometimes Ella envied the way Emma compartmentalized her life. When she’d told Em that their dad had just a few weeks left to live, Em reminded Ella that she was in the middle of a 45-day shoot, and the studio was “not about to allow the production to be effing delayed.”  Daddy had been sick for over a year and Ella wasn’t sure what had diminished faster, his health or Emma’s interest in coping with it.

The inescapable drone of the oxygen machine made Ella edgy. She should be using this time with him to say goodbye, she thought. But what does that even mean? Can she sit next to him and think about goodbye, goodbye forever Daddy, do you know it’s me Echo Lima saying goodbye Daddy?

Or does she have to actually say the words out loud?

Through the window, the dusk deepened. A half dozen bats flew out from under the eaves, careening across the sky, navigating their way through the darkness using sounds no one could hear.

***

Ella walked back to the kitchen. Cassie had put in her mom’s hearing aids and settled her at the kitchen table, where two steaming plates of chicken and mashed potatoes waited. Ella focused on the clock over the sink. Her gut felt sour and heavy.

“Cass, you should get going before it gets too late. I can take it from here.”

“Thanks, El.” She smiled. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

Ella gave her a hug. “You’re the best, Cass. Have fun tonight.”

Leaning against the tile counter, Ella watched her mother stare vacantly at the red and white checked pattern of the tablecloth and wondered if it was possible to have a conversation with her.   

“Momma, how are you doing?”

 She glared at Ella. “I want to go home now!” she said.

Trying again to connect with her, Ella said “Do you like my sweater? I just bought it last week.” 

She had worn the sweater especially for her mom. It was a light blue and green floral print, something her mom would have chosen on one of the weekly lunch and shopping dates she and Ella enjoyed so much.

Her mom scrunched up her nose. “It’s ugly. It looks like a bedspread,” she said, and turned her head away.

Ella sighed. This woman still looked like her mom, albeit with uncombed hair and no lipstick. Definitely not the elegant lawyer who handled tax cases for big corporate clients, but still recognizable. The voice sounded like her mom’s too, just less vibrant. But the words and emotions did not resemble her mother at all. It was like listening to a familiar song with a melody you knew but with lyrics that were unexpected and disturbing.

Ella watched the reflections in the sliding glass door by the kitchen:  her mom at the table, slowly chewing her food, Ella’s hands pulling her own hair back into a momentary ponytail and twisting it tightly around her fingers, the ceiling lights making their eyes seem sunken and dark.

As Ella started to clear the dishes away her mom looked up suddenly in recognition.

“Ella!” she said, as if Ella had just arrived. And in that moment, she sounded exactly like the person she used to be, the person who was never not happy to see Ella.

“Yes, Mom, it’s me, Ella.”

“You’re here.” She looked around. “Where are Emma and Eric? We need Emma and Eric here.”

“Yes, Mom.” Ella crossed her arms, protection against the sharp pain of having her mom back, and then losing her again seconds later. She hated being pushed off balance by an unexpected step in the lonely dance she did with her mom’s dementia. “You’re right. We need Emma and Eric here.”

***

After helping her mom through the slow process of getting ready for bed, Ella was exhausted, her emotions as tangled and brittle as her mom’s memories. She went into Eric’s room and closed the door behind her. She didn’t need to turn on the light. She knew this space by heart:  his framed college baseball jersey, the Green Day poster, the stack of VHS tapes on the desk.

Ella was secretly glad that one of the ways her parents coped with Eric’s death was to leave his room untouched. When she closed her eyes, this is where she could still hear his smiling voice calling her “Echo, Echo, Echo…,” each successive word sounding further away.

The moon shining through the windows and skylight threw slanted bars of shadows on the wall. Ella laid back on the bed, pulling up each side of the thick down comforter around herself like a cocoon, clenching the fabric in her hands.

She replayed the last few hours in her mind, feeling as if she had stepped onto an escalator that was moving too fast, taking her downward at an alarming speed. Her father’s death was imminent, maybe not tomorrow, but soon. And her mom’s fragile grip on reality was increasingly tenuous . Arranging her life around a weekly visit was no longer enough, Ella realized. As much as she didn’t want to take a leave of absence from work, she knew there was no other way. Her boss wouldn’t be happy about it, but they could manage without her for a while. She would move in here to Eric’s room, wake up in this house every morning, confront it all each day. Her parents needed her, and Cassie needed her too.

She thought about Scott, picturing his strong arms hugging her. She didn’t want to disappoint him, but Ella felt certain he would understand. He was the one who suggested they not plan an international trip this year, but to go somewhere closer to home instead. He already knew what she had not been able to face.

“You’re there, El,” Em had said.

Yes, she was here. She was the one who was here.

Ella looked up at the ceiling above her. Flickering stars were visible through the skylight pane, spinning silently through the night, the distance between them vast and unchanging.

Melissa Dyrdahl

Image by Sabine van Erp from Pixabay – old hands in a lap with a wine coloured cardingana and grey slacks.