Grace
Why, who makes much of a miracle? -Walt Whitman
Gazing out the window into her backyard, Abby stood at her sink washing dishes. A kind of blurry light ball emerged, pulsing in the corner of her patch of garden. It slowly grew in size, intensity. Abby dropped her sponge and went out to investigate.
***
“What’s with you?” Sadie, Abby’s sister, asked, panting the words out while walking on the treadmill.
“Nothing. Tired.”
“Tell me about it,” Sadie said, sharp bobbed hair moving in tandem with her body. “So, I said to him, ‘Why are you even here?’ I mean why do these guys even go on dates? Are you going out with anyone this week? Did Mom get that guy to call you, Ben or something?”
“Uh, no,” Abby said. Ben, the son of one of Mom’s bridge students, came through her brain fog.
“What’s with you anyway?” Sadie shut down her treadmill and headed to the locker room.
***
The light appeared weekly, sometimes daily, rain or shine, morning, noon, or night. Abby kept her glasses on, checked and rechecked, searching in the back garden for that gorgeous glow ball. When it was there, she drifted outside, got close, basked. Time passed, Abby had no idea how much.
Abby, you are enough, the light said, a woman’s voice.
Abby could not respond with words. She could only stare into it and allow hot tears run down her cheeks. She would awake from the spell shivering in the darkness, yearning for more.
***
“Everyone has baggage. First wives. Children. A drinking problem,” Sadie said, flicking her yellow Splenda bag to loosen up the sugar substance inside. “Remember the dieter?” She rolled her eyes.
Oh yeah, I know about baggage. I have a mystical visitor in my backyard, a soothing orb, Abby thought.
“The dieter?” Sadie asked.
“That guy Jon without an h. He told me I couldn’t have a waffle with ice cream on it once. That was it.”
“Seriously,” Abby sipped her coffee, noting the fading autumnal splendor, the increasing chill.
***
Google searches:
Synonyms for light: illumination, brightness, luminescence, shining, gleam, gleaming, brilliance, radiance, luster, glow, blaze, glare
Light appearing in back yard
Apparition
***
Mom had been talking about Ben for months.
“I can’t believe I’ve got a cute doctor waiting to go out with you and you haven’t called him, or texted or whatever you guys do these days.” Mom made great sweeping motions as she raked dead leaves from the beds. “Abby, are you listening? What are you dreaming about?”
***
Abby thought she was having a hot flash. Her face burned red and her armpits soaked with perspiration. Despite the cool night and even though she had a date, a first date (Ben), she could not control her desire to be with the light. Pulsing and warm, addictive.
You are loved ,it said.
Who needed Ben?
***
Ben had freckles across his nose, laughed easily, and was proficient with chopsticks, three things Abby considered good traits in a man.
“You shine,” she told him three dates in, a little tipsy from too much red wine, “like a big ball of light.”
***
“Don’t talk about me like I’m not here!” Sadie said, using her best fake southern drawl, dramatic sobbing, mimicking Julia Roberts. She and Abby were watching Steel Magnolias for the twentieth time. When Sadie returned from a bathroom trip, she found Abby sobbing.
“What the--? What is it?”
Abby swung her head back and forth, back and forth.
“It won’t stop. It won’t stop. I can’t get it to stop,” she said.
Sadie’s voice lowered, “What honey? Get what to stop?”
Abby kept crying.
“Her. She keeps coming. And I love it. But I hate it, too.”
“What is it? You’re scaring me.” Sadie faced her, held onto Abby’s forearms.
***
Accustomed to Abby’s usual low self-esteem issues, Mom issues, her body confidence and self-absorption issues, Beth the therapist, legs always crossed, face serious and concerned, said she was surprised by these new apparition issues.
“Well, you said you went to see the rabbi. What did he say?”
“He said it was grace. Grace raining down on me,” Abby noticed the light in the room, how it filtered through the curtain, how it shone on the fine hairs on her wrist.
“What the hell does that mean?” Sadie, who insisted on coming, said.
“Are you having any other loss of reality?” Beth asked.
“No. I’m just worried about what it means. What people-what Ben-would think.” Abby glanced at Sadie. “I love her, the light. I don’t want her, or I guess it, to go away.”
***
Of course, Ben kept calling, kept texting. Having said the L word on their last date, without reciprocation from Abby, he obviously wanted a response.
Hey, missing you, what’s up?
Abby wondered why he liked her so much. She wasn’t a doctor or a professor type. She had an undergraduate degree in marketing but didn’t finish her MBA. She worked in the admissions office at a small college. She thought of herself as not that skinny, not that pretty, not that funny. And, she was in love with that ball of light talking to her in her backyard.
***
The next time the light appeared, Abby stopped folding laundry and opened her back door, instantly warmed by its presence. With the setting sun changing the sky orange, the gold globe appeared in all its splendor, exuding its strange peace and energy.
Do you love me?
“Yes, Yes,” Abby found words, at last, fell to her knees, muddied her jeans.
***
Ben gobbled up the carbonara and salad Abby made him, then he gobbled up her.
“So what took you so long?” he said, running a finger along the side of her face.
“With what?” she asked.
His face reddened. “With reconnecting? Were you mad at me?”
“No. I love you,“ Abby said.
Ben’s hazel eyes stared, shards of gold shot through brown.
“So why’d you disappear?” he asked.
“Do you know anything about apparitions?” Abby asked.
His eyebrows went up, clearly not what he was expecting.
She described the light, how it made her feel, how she loved it, how it frightened her. His lips made a crooked half smile.
“Show me,” he said.
Abby led him out the backdoor to the garden where she had marked the apparition site with a white stone.
***
May was the last time. Abby saw the light from the window and moved toward it with a fearless urgency. It vibrated and swirled this time, turning different shades of yellow, orange, red.
Do you believe?
Abby knelt down, forgot everything else, melted into the experience.
***
Abby and Ben sat in half darkness, drinking red wine.
“She asked me if I believed,” Abby said.
“What did you say?”
“I said I do. Absolutely. But then- I -I said goodbye.” She glanced at Ben, expecting to see relief.
He pulled her in, held her close.
She leaned in, to him, this - the love, loss, grace, all of it, whatever it was.
She let go.
