Kate Sweeney - Catch the Light

We drive into Cumberland, New York, late on a Wednesday afternoon and

Oh my god.

Its beautiful.

Its the time of day when the light is just starting to turn gold and were driving through thick forest and the sun is dappling down through the leaves everywhere. There are layers and layers of shifting light. Hundreds of shades of green. Magic.

Its almost enough to make me forget why were here. Its almost enough to make me forget my grandparents in the front seat and the tedious, awkward, ten-day road trip and the hours of NPR and the slow driving and the musty motel rooms and the subtle humiliation of my grandmother herding us together at every single state park and viewing station, wielding her ancient iPad like a Leica M10 and chirping, Smile like you mean it.

Its almost enough to make me forget. Almost.

My sister Bea is sitting on the other side of the back seat with her earbuds in, staring out the window. She looks lost in thought and the leafy sunlight is moving across her pale, freckled face in little flickers and flashes. Shes fourteen, old enough to be pissed about the whole thing, but young enough that its not ruining her entire life.

To be clear: this whole thing is ruining my life. Not that it really matters. The grand scheme of things is much bigger than that. I get it.

But in California, I had friends. I had a boyfriend, sort of. I had a job at the photography store downtown. I had parties, hanging under the giant palm tree on the lawn after school, laying out in the hot sand at the beach on the weekends. A whole senior year shimmering off in the distance. Some days it was still hard to do anythinggrief pressing down like a weighted blanketbut things were getting better.

And then, six weeks ago, a month before my older sister Hannah left for her freshman year of college in Connecticut, I overheard Mom on the phone.

Im drowning, El. I dont think I can do this.

My dad died nine months ago. If I try, I can say it now without really feeling anything. But my mom still disappears every time it comes up. Shell be standing right there in front of you, but the self inside of her is gone.

When I heard her say this, Im drowning, in a voice that crackled with sadness, I was surprised. The first few weeks after Dad died, she was blown wide open, leveled by a hurricane, splinters of her former self littering the front lawn. But then about three weeks in, she just got dressed and went to work. And that was the end of it.

I take out my camera, adjusting the shutter speed and focusing in on the tiny pieces of dust glowing gold on my window. I twist the lens and the dust blurs; leaves and sunlight emerge and sharpen.

Then the world in my viewfinder lurches and we pull into a long, bumpy driveway that winds through a tunnel of overgrown shrubs and briars. Its darker in here, too dark for photographs, the heavy greenery making it feel as though the suns already gone down.

The car lumbers along, branches scratching across the windshield.

Jesus, my grandpa whispers.

Dont curse, Jack, Grandma whispers back.

Are we really leaving them here?

He must think that my music is on because Im wearing my earbuds, but I turned it off a while ago. Sometimes I like to listen without anyone knowing.

If it was up to my grandfather, we would all be moving to Ohio. Hes my dads dad, not my moms, so all of this is really hard for him. Hes also been ingrained with generations of Irish Catholic stoicism, which makes emoting difficult. He likes college football and church and reading the newspaper quietly in his chair. He doesnt like New York or California, preferring the flat expanse of the Midwest, where hes lived his entire life. The thought of us moving here, with our mother and recently divorced aunt, seems like it might be more than he can handle.

He shakes his head and adjusts his glasses, swiping at his sweaty forehead and smoothing the thin piece of white hair that stretches across his bald spot.

This place is like a tropical rainforest, he says. As if he or any of us have ever seen one.

Eight months ago, when Grandpa was in LA for the funeral, he spent half an hour wandering around Whole Foods looking for Keebler sandwich crackers. He circled the store twice, his black dress shoes squeaking as he wove through the aisles squinting at the artfully packaged items and fuming silently. I finally convinced him to ask for help, and a bewildered teen employee led us to the organic snack aisle hed already searched four times.

Grandpa stood there, shaking his head and holding a box of Late July mini peanut butter sandwich crackers in his hands, muttering, $6.59 a box, again and again like he was trying to make himself believe that any of itthe organic snack aisle; the ridiculous, fancy grocery store with the landscaped parking lot; the fact that his oldest son was dead and gonewas real. I thought he might be broken, for good, but then he just sighed and put the box back onto the shelf.

Cmon, Mary, hed said. Were going to 7-Eleven.

Now in the stuffy front seat of our old Toyota, Grandma lays her small, knobby hand on Grandpas arm. Its going to be fine, Jack, she says. I can tell its hard for her too, but she does a better job of hiding it. Shes raised ten kids and grandmothered twenty-nine grandchildren. Shes basically an emotional fortress.

Finally, the driveway ends in a clearing so big Im shocked that there could be so much open space in the middle of this forest. The house itself is medium sized and covered in gray-brown shingles. It has two and a half stories, the kind where the bottom floor is dug into a slope in the ground. On one side an outrageous garden bursts with a jumble of vegetables and late-summer flowers. On the other side a sea of green grass stretches all the way to the distant tree line, fresh cut close to the house and long and wild farther off.