Splinters of Light (27 page)

EXCERPT,
WHEN ELLIE WAS LITTLE:
OUR LIFE IN HOLIDAYS,
PUBLISHED 2011 BY NORA GLASS

Ellie’s Birthday

When Ellie was little—no, when she was still in utero—I wanted her to have her own day. She was due to be born on my birthday, but since I’d had to share mine my whole life, I didn’t want her to have to share it, too. She deserved her own.

I’d been in labor for two days by the time I was finally fully dilated. Two full days of exertion, two full days of off-again-on-again pain that made me feel like I was going to split into violent atoms, two full days of the strong conviction that I would have her before our birthday, September seventh.

Mariana, of course, didn’t see it that way. From India, after her missed flight, she’d sent more and more frantic texts from a borrowed cell phone.
Wait. Hold on a little longer. If you just wait three more hours, we’ll all have the same birthday forever.

Like I could possibly slow down. I pushed harder, even though the doctor said I wasn’t supposed to. It increased stress on the baby, she said. Birth, I figured, was a big enough stress, and my pushing couldn’t possibly hurt that much. Besides, how were they going to stop me? By saying “No”? Good luck to them.

Paul said, “I’m here.”

I looked deeply into his eyes and pretended I cared.

I’m here,
texted Mariana, even though she wasn’t.

The truth was, I didn’t care. It was the first and only moment in my life I didn’t need her. I didn’t need my husband. I could only hear what was inside me, the roaring ocean kicked into tsunami mode by the tiny person earthquaking inside me.

She would have her own day, I swore.

Her
own
day.

At eight p.m., the midwife thought she was finally coming. I agreed—I knew she was. I was wheeled into the delivery room. At nine p.m., I pushed more. I gave every ounce my body had to give, and as a mother giving birth, that was a lot. Two hours later, the epidural had worn off, and they couldn’t give me another one. They put a heating pad on my belly and I couldn’t find the words to scream that it was hurting me until I had second-degree burns. That pain didn’t matter, compared to what was happening inside me. At a quarter till midnight, the doctor talked in low tones to the nurse, and then the midwife told me that my baby was in distress.

The guilt that landed on top of me with that accusation was like nothing I’d ever felt before. My first failure as a mother, and my daughter wasn’t even breathing air outside
my body yet. I didn’t want to fail her again, so quickly, by taking away the chance for her to have her very own birthday.

I grabbed the midwife’s hand—it was hard and calloused, as if in her off time she gardened without gloves. “Do it now.” I looked at the clock on the wall. Twelve more minutes. “Pull her out now. Use those forceps things.”

“We tried that, Nora.”

“If it’s surgery, can it wait? Till the day after?”

She thought I was joking, so she laughed.

Thirteen minutes later, as they prepped me for a cesarean, Ellie speeded up her entrance. Given the very last-chance go-ahead from the midwife, I pushed with my brain and heart and liver. I pushed with the strength I wouldn’t find for years, borrowing from it like it was a bank. There was nothing, no one in the whole world but me and my little girl. Mariana on my phone, Paul on my left—they both disappeared into a red twilight of background pain and noise, leaving me with no one but my Ellie, who was born one minute before midnight on September sixth, securing her very own day, all to herself.

As they caught her, suctioned her nose, made sure she had all her parts, I panted like a racehorse pushed past its limit. I wanted to say
Happy birthday
to my new little girl, but just like that, sixty seconds later, my daughter’s birthday was over and it was ours, mine and Mariana’s.

Paul couldn’t say anything. Not one word. He just squeezed my hand and his tears rained onto my forearm. He went up on his toes, bobbing up and down, looking for a glimpse of our daughter, who was already unhappy about her ordeal, screaming like an injured kitten.

There would be time to examine her, to check every little part, to kiss every toe, to count every whisper of birth-black hair. I wasn’t worried anymore.

“Ellie,” I said. We hadn’t decided on a name, hadn’t been able to narrow our list down. We’d hoped that when we met
her, we would know. I hadn’t even properly held her yet, but I’d known her name while giving my final roar.
Ellie
. Strong, intelligent, willful. It hadn’t even been on our short list. I don’t think we’d ever spoken the name aloud before to each other.

“Ellie,” said Mariana, her hiccups clear even from India. “It’s perfect.”

“Ellie,” said Paul.

Then the nurse handed her to me and I was finally who I was supposed to be.

F
or her birthday dinner, Ellie always got to choose where they ate. It was part of the fun of it. This year she’d chosen Forbes Island. She’d rattled off her reasons to Nora as if ticking off a list. “Some rich old geezer built it a long time ago and it floats, and it’s an island with a lighthouse, and he lived on it in the San Francisco Bay for years and years, and he had huge parties on it, and now it’s anchored and turned into a restaurant facing Alcatraz, and I
really
want to go.”

Nora was surprised. She’d heard of it, of course—they’d seen it when they’d gone to see the sea lions at Pier 39. It looked like a standard tourist trap, like a five-and-dime version of Hearst Castle—glitz with all the glitter rubbed off. “Are you sure?”

“Yes. And I want Dylan to come.”

“Anything you want. It’s your party.” Easy to say. Harder to believe. Nora still fluctuated between hating Dylan for what he represented—an attack on her child’s very innocence—and what
he was—a nice, sweet boy, a bit too old for Ellie but not by much, honestly. “Who else do you want?”

“It’s your birthdays the next day, too. Invite whoever you want.” Ellie had stuck her earbuds back in and gone on killing dragons or whatever she did in
Queendom
. Then she pulled one out. “Harrison. Is he coming?”

Nora’s brain cycled slowly once. “Yes. Is that okay?”

Ellie rolled her eyes. “
God
. It’s Harrison.”

Nora said, “What does that mean?”

Her daughter only said, “Sheesh,” and went to her room.

Nora had no idea how to interpret that word. Was it good, a “sheesh” of acceptance? Or was it a “sheesh” of irritation? Shouldn’t she be able to tell the difference between the two? Harrison and Ellie had been fine on the camping trip, fishing and laughing together like the old days, but since school had started again (her senior year! how could that be possible?), Ellie had been spending all her time either studying with Vani and Samantha or playing her game with Dylan. She’d refused to continue with water polo (she’d made varsity the year before), but to pad her application she’d been volunteering with a food bank on the weekends. She hadn’t allowed Nora to volunteer with her, pitching an honest-to-god fit when she’d suggested it. And whenever Nora and Harrison asked if she wanted to have dinner with them on Harrison’s porch, she did that “sheesh” noise that was a cross between a word and a curse. Nora had been choosing to ignore it, but she needed to figure it out sooner rather than later, especially since the week before, Harrison had said, “I want to move in.”

“Salt,” she’d said. “I think that’s what I forgot to put in.” She’d poked at the lasagna she’d made and pretended he hadn’t spoken.

“Here,” he’d said. “I want to move into your house.”

Nora had been noting the dates they had sex on her day planner. There were plenty of them, little blue
H
s, circled at the top of the square that held the day. She didn’t want to forget a single
time. But if she did, how would she know? It used to be that they’d drink a glass of wine and watch the lawn grow. Now they had sex and laughed and then gazed up at the long crack in his ceiling. Then they laughed more. Nakedness did that to old friends. Once Harrison had choked sobs into her hair, and once, after what had been possibly the biggest orgasm of her life, she had cried against his chest until the pillow had been as wet as the sheets below them. But mostly they laughed. That was the best part of it, even better than the actual sex. Naked, uproarious laughter.

“Did you hear me?” Harrison asked.

She shook her head. “No.”

“I want to—”

“I
heard
you. I just don’t want you to say that.”

“Why not?”

“Because.” There were so many reasons, the primary one being Ellie. Not that Ellie didn’t love Harrison like a . . . She still hadn’t admitted (out loud) to Ellie that she and Harrison were . . . were doing whatever it was they were doing. She was still hiding him in plain sight. “Just no. I’m fine.”

“But you won’t be.”

There were grooves at the corners of his eyes, fine lines she’d never noticed before. “I know.
Then
you can help.” Even that hurt to say. “Not before.”

“Let me help now.”

“When it’s time,” she said.

“How will we know when it is?”

She’d watched a video of a forty-eight-year-old man who’d been diagnosed four years prior to the filming. His voice shook when he spoke, and his words trailed off before the end of his sentences. “It’s hell,” the man had said, “knowing that I’m leaving them. Knowing I can’t . . . What is it I’m saying?”

“Knowing he can’t stay.” His pretty wife, a grim look belying her bright smile, filled in the gaps.

In the kitchen, Nora had said to Harrison, “We’ll know.”

Now the bargelike party boat ferried them the short distance from Pier 39 to the fake island. Ellie sat with Dylan, snapping selfies with no flash. Harrison sat on his own bench and sneaked peeks into the storage area. “Empty wine-cooler bottles,” he whispered at Nora. “People still drink those?” Luke stood next to Captain Mac, a hungover-looking young man who wore a captain’s costume that looked two sizes too big for his narrow shoulders. Mariana sat next to Nora on the flat bench seat.

“This should be fun,” said Mariana brightly. “How are you feeling?”

Nora took her knitting out of her purse. “If you’re asking about the functionality of my brain, it’s working. Firing on most of its cylinders.”

“Most? How was yesterday? At the doctor’s office?”

It was funny that she forgot random things—like the fact that she’d been making toast until she went to put the bread in the toaster and found cold, hard bread inside the slots—but she remembered every bit of that office visit. “Fine.”

“Really?” Mariana looked so happy to hear it. “Really fine?”

Nora couldn’t bring herself to tell her the truth: that she’d failed more tests than she’d passed. She’d screwed up the NYU story recall test and barely passed the Boston Naming Test. And that wasn’t even the worst of it. “Yep,” she said, patting her sister on the knee. She knitted another round.

“God, that’s getting long. Is it a kneesock?”

Nora decided right then. “Yes, it is.” It was easier to keep going than to decide to stop.

The island itself rocked more than Nora thought it would. Given that it was really just a huge floating pad, it made sense, but the roll and sway underneath her was unnerving. Nora liked to keep the ground steady underneath her. Lately it was her full-time job. This island seemed treacherous. Islands should be moored with long earthen limbs dug deep into dirt below—they shouldn’t sway like a hula dancer.

Before they were seated inside, the six of them trooped up the stairs of the lighthouse. Up top, a small beacon rotated and four or five other tourists snapped pictures of Ghirardelli Square. “If this is a real lighthouse, no wonder people crashed on the rocks around here,” said an old woman in a loud voice. “Imagine! I couldn’t put on my makeup in this light.”

Well, maybe that was the explanation for the wandering eyeliner and the lipstick on the tip of the woman’s nose.

“Let me get a picture of the birthday girl and the almost-birthday-girls.” Harrison, who always remembered to take photos of important moments, held up his iPhone.

With her back to the lights of San Francisco, Nora wrapped one arm around Mariana’s waist, the other around Ellie’s. They felt too thin to her. She, on the other hand, had been putting on weight—thanks to the meds—and felt like the solid one. She smiled at the camera and felt her roots grow down, down, down, through the lighthouse, through the wooden floor of the barge, through the water, past the plants in the murk, and into the mud far below. Somehow, she’d hold them all in place, safely through the storm.

M
ariana loved the dining room of Forbes Island. “We should have come here years ago,” she whispered to Luke. It was straight-up kitsch, but the best part was that it was completely un-ironic. The lighting was dim; the tables stood askew. None of the plates or silverware matched except in era (late fifties?), and the chairs creaked as they moved in them. Small hurricane lanterns flickered below the portholes over their heads. The waiter pointed out that down here they were actually below the waterline. When Mariana had walked to the strange ladies’ room earlier (located in a tiny room that used to be a berth, it still had a small bed, a fireplace, and an enormous stone bathtub), she could smell mildew. Imagine fighting wood rot on an island that was actually a boat. Mariana admired the chutzpah of the owner, who apparently still dropped by now and then, still treated like the captain he was.

Now she clapped her hands. “Presents!” She’d been looking forward to this for weeks. It was the best idea she’d ever had for
a birthday present, and the fact that Ellie was in on it made it that much better.

She flagged down the waiter to clear their plates. The waiter clucked his disapproval at the basket of unfinished bread and clucked harder as he swept dropped salad off the tablecloth. “Thank you so much. It’s a celebration, you know. It’s all three of our birthdays! Well, it’s hers”—she pointed at Ellie—“and it’ll be ours in a few hours.”

The waiter made a face that looked like he didn’t believe a word of that kind of coincidence and took the plates away, still grumbling.

Nora, who’d been so quiet over the meal, so worryingly darkened like a shuttered room, brightened. “Presents! Oh, good!” She pulled out two envelopes and handed one to Mariana, one to Ellie.

Opera tickets. Season passes, two each.

Mariana looked at them blankly, turning them over and then staring at the front again. Ellie was doing the same thing with hers.

“The four of you can go,” said Nora excitedly. “Together. Double dates.”

“I don’t get it,” said Ellie.

“It’s your new thing!”

“What?”

“You know how when someone gets really into something and has to drag everyone else along? I figure at least one of you will get really into opera because of this, and then you’ll get to spend the time together. It was that or seasons passes to Six Flags in Vallejo . . .”

Ellie’s face fell. “Oh.”

Nora slipped two more envelopes out of her purse. “Yeah, I got you season tickets for that, too.”

Laughing, Ellie waved them in the air. “I
love
Six Flags.”

“I know.”

Mariana felt a sideways lurch in her belly. Luke tried to take
her hand, but she pulled away from him. “You got tickets for yourself, too, right?” she asked. “For you and Harrison?”

Ellie laughed. “Of course she did.”

Nora’s wriggled her nose and then rubbed it. “They’re for
you
. And your dates.”

Mariana watched Ellie realize what it meant. Her face fell below the waterline. “No way,” said Ellie.

“What?” Nora looked honestly surprised.

“I’m not doing
shit
without you.”

“Honey, I’m not saying—”

Ellie threw the envelope back onto the table so fast she knocked over her water glass. “I
know
what you’re saying and I hate it.”

“I’m sorry, but—”

None of them moved to right the glass, to stop the waterfall. The opera tickets were soaked.

“Seriously? You’re playing the sick card again?”

“Again?” said Nora in an aghast voice.

Mariana wanted to put her hands over Nora’s ears. “Ellie. Stop it.”

“She does it all the time.”

Nora’s face was white except for two brilliant red spots shining at the tops of her cheekbones. “I would never play that card.”

Ellie shook out her hands in front of her as if she’d been typing too long. “But you
do
. The other day you said, ‘Clean your bathroom because . . .’ and then you just walked away from me.”

Mariana felt a wild rush of relief. “That’s not the same thing at all!”

“Honey,” said Nora, leaning forward, “I didn’t mean . . . I don’t even remember that. I think I must have just wandered away, maybe I just forgot what I was—”

“Whatever. You
forgot
. How much worse is this going to get? I know it’s rough on you, I know, I know, but how much of
my
life is going to be affected by this?” Ellie glanced sideways at Dylan as if she was embarrassed.

Embarrassed? Maybe Ellie thought they should keep from being real in front of her boyfriend, but that was bullshit. Mariana would show her embarrassment. She stood, knocking over her chair, which crashed into a wicker loveseat behind them. “Your life?”

“Mariana,” warned Nora.

“
Your
life, little girl? This disease is taking
everything
from her, and you
know
that. You think it’s affecting
you
?”

Ellie’s chin went up in exactly the same way it used to when she was learning how to be defiant, when she’d been learning exactly how far she could push either of them. “Yeah. I know it’s the wrong thing to say. We’re all supposed to be thinking about her. All Nora, all the time. And when they’re not thinking of her, they’re thinking of
you
. The twin. How can this affect one and not the other? Oh, how does the
twin
feel?” Huge tears welled in Ellie’s eyes, and Mariana felt her heart break in two, split right down the middle. The fake island pitched under her feet, and she felt like she might throw up.

Ellie went on. “And I’ve been so quiet, trying to do everything right, trying to take care of everything. You know what? Every single night, I go through the house and shut things off.”

“Oh.” Nora put her hand over her mouth. Her voice was muffled as she said, “Oh, chipmunk. You said it was okay.”

“She leaves lights on all over the house, even though she’s always nagging me to turn them off. She never does. She opens the freezer door and walks away from it and when I get there, all the meat has defrosted. I check to make sure she leaves her keys on the hook when she gets home.”

Mariana and Nora spoke at the same time:

“I always leave them on the hook.”

“She always leaves them on the hook.”

It was a thing her sister did, like Windexing when she was
stressed, like always having a craft of some sort in every room to work on when she had downtime. Nora never lost her keys, ever.

“She doesn’t. Not anymore. I couldn’t find her keys when I was going to bed, so I looked around the house, but they weren’t there. I finally found them outside. In the car.”

Mariana’s body physically hurt, as if she’d suddenly contracted a high fever. Her eyes burned.

Nora, still with her hand over her mouth, said, “I left them in the car?”

“With the door open. It was running. In the driveway. Almost out of gas. You seriously don’t remember me telling you that?”

Nora shook her head.

Ellie echoed the motion. “I can’t believe you don’t remember me telling you that.”

“Don’t get angry with her!” Mariana wanted to haul Ellie out by her ear, pull her up the steps past the stupid, foul-smelling waterfall, and leave her out in the cold to bark with the angry sea lions. “You don’t get to get mad at her. It’s a disease.”

Ellie grimaced. “That’s the worst part. I can’t get mad. I’m not allowed to. I can’t get mad at anyone but myself for being such a terrible person that I wish this had never happened because it’s ruining my life.” Oh, the
sound
of the disapproval that dripped from Ellie’s voice. It was viscous, a toxic yellow tinge to the words.

“Don’t you dare
talk to her like that.” Mariana, still standing, touched Luke’s shoulder. He said nothing but raised his hand to touch her fingers.
Open hands cling to nothing.

Nora kept her eyes on Ellie as if she’d never seen her before. Pain swam in her eyes, and Mariana felt like she could drown the child. Happily. If Nora cried, she
would
drown Ellie like a kitten in a sack.

Tell her, Nora. Tell your daughter she doesn’t get to act like a child even though she is one, tell her she doesn’t get the luxury of being an insolent teenager with an attitude, tell her that she lost that right with your diagnosis.

Tell her.

Mariana remembered suddenly the fort they’d built in second grade out of three pallets they’d found behind the diner their mother was working at. It had been so simple to lean the pallets together against the wooden fence near the Dumpster, and just like that, a tiny place with walls, just for the two of them. There had been nothing comfy about the space, the ground just dead grass, no roof over their heads, but that made it easy to watch the clouds sail overhead. They’d read books out loud to each other, taking turns one chapter at a time—
Freckle Juice
and
The Giving Tree
. It had felt like home, that tiny fort. Safe.

Mariana’s heart ached.

Ellie scowled.

Then Nora said, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry you’re scared. I’ll buy a ticket for myself to the opera and to Six Flags.”

“I’m not going without you,” said Ellie with a catch in her voice. “You can’t make me.”

“I won’t try.”

“I’ll probably hate the opera anyway. In case you’re wondering, which apparently you’re not.”

Dylan, in his first non-mumbled sentence of the evening, said, “I love it.
Rigoletto
is great. And
The Barber of Seville
is hilarious.”

They all stared at him. He raised and then dropped his shoulders. “My sister’s a professional singer.”

It was the first thing Mariana had heard about the kid’s family, and she liked it. “Good. That’s great.”

“I want to get tested,” said Ellie.

“No,” said Nora. “I won’t have you possibly ruin your whole life before it’s even started. No way.”

“For my birthday gift.”

Mariana clapped her hands. “Jesus Christ, not
now
, Ellie.” She tried a smile, and it didn’t wobble overly much, so she continued. “Can we just try to have a nice time?”

She could almost see her niece contemplate the question.
She could almost see her need to say “no” wriggle under her skin. Then Ellie inhaled sharply and said, “Okay. Yes.”

She didn’t apologize, but Mariana didn’t want to, either. So she said, “Now my present for Nora.”

“
Our
present,” corrected Ellie, and she was right. This present was from both of them. Ellie had done an amazing job, actually, collecting the names and e-mail addresses, sneaking into Nora’s computer when she was in the bathroom or drinking tea in the garden, copying and pasting them into one long list. But it had been Mariana’s idea. A good one, for once. Something she could give her sister that she needed, that wasn’t wrong or inappropriate.

Luke righted Mariana’s chair and held it for her as she sat. The waiter poured more water and offered desserts. “One of everything,” said Mariana.

“Ma’am?”

Hearing it made her want to push nonexistent reading glasses down her nose to look at him. “We’ll take one of every dessert you have. This is a celebration, and we’re going to goddamn well celebrate. Put a candle in each one of those suckers, too. Do you sing here?”

“Sing?”

“The birthday song?”

The waiter just blinked.

“Never mind,” said Mariana, sighing. “We’ll do our own singing.”

As the waiter trundled away, Ellie said, “Dang. That was fun to watch.” There was a pause. “I’m sorry.” It was a real apology. Mariana could hear it.

She felt her own anger deflate like a balloon. “I know. Me, too.” She pulled the bag up from underneath the table. “You have your half?”

Ellie nodded.

Nora, who had just been watching them, leaned forward. “What’s going on?”

“Remember when you said you didn’t want to have a big party?”

“I didn’t
want
a party.” Nora spun, looking over her shoulder. She looked frightened—too much so—her eyes wide. “No party, please.”

“No, no, I didn’t mean to—no surprise party.”

“We knew you would hate that,” said Harrison.

“Something else. A silent party of people who love you.” That sounded even weirder, so Mariana pulled out one bundle of vintage white envelopes with red and blue stripes at the edges. She thrust the stack across the table toward Nora. “Here.”

Ellie gave over her bundle, almost as high.

“What are these?” Instead of picking up the envelopes, Nora held on to her napkin, folding and refolding it.

Ellie bounced in her seat. “What do they look like?”

“They look like letters.”

“That’s it!”

Mariana felt Luke grab her hand. “That’s exactly it.”

“I don’t even
know
this many people.”

Mariana wondered why Luke was trembling and then she realized her fingers were shaking, not his. “Yes, you do. And they love you.”