Splinters of Light (5 page)

T
he funny thing was that Nora wasn’t nervous when she went in to meet with Dr. Niles. She could admit she might have been a little obsessed with WebMD when it first hit the Internet, but she liked to think she channeled her hypochondria for good now. Using a combination of the Mayo Clinic Symptom Checker, the NIH, and the CDC, she’d successfully diagnosed her friend Lily’s onset of Bell’s palsy and Ellie’s whooping cough. She was good at diagnosing the difference between a cold and the flu (it was usually a cold). She had all the markers of perimenopause: breast tenderness, urinary urgency, fatigue. Her period had been five days late last month, and the PMS had been horrible. Always driven to clean while premenstrual, Nora had taken down the ceiling fans—actually uninstalling each one—to swab each blade with her homemade vinegar–tea tree oil cleaner. (Her column “Does Green Really Clean?” had gone viral the year before, getting more than four million reads and pushing
When Ellie Was Little
back onto the
bestseller list, and now, even if she’d wanted the industrial strength of 409, she wouldn’t have been able to justify buying a bottle of it.) She predicted the doctor would tell her to start thinking about HRT (she wasn’t interested), and then she’d get back to work on the column that was giving her fits, the one on how working from home could be just as productive as working from an office. In annoying irony, she kept wandering away from the computer, forgetting to finish it.

Dr. Niles’s office could have doubled as a hotel lobby, full of healthy potted plants and watercolor paintings of boats and bays. When Nora was done filling out paperwork, the tan receptionist handed her a box of Valentine hearts with a conspiratorial smile. The pink
Be Mine
tasted like a preschool chalkboard might, granular and sweet. While she chewed her way through the small box, she played with the piece of beach glass she’d chosen that morning—pure, clear blue, and perfectly round. It was a good worry stone, made for a doctor’s office. She put it back in her pocket when she started to put it in her mouth, almost confusing it with the candy heart in her left hand.

The doctor herself was as pretty as the office, with a blond bob and a manner so warm Nora thought she might have missed her calling as a preschool teacher. She could picture Dr. Niles bending down to stick a SpongeBob Band-Aid on a six-year-old, receiving kisses that smelled of peanut butter. She would be careful with germs and keep one of those tiny plastic bottles of Purell in the front pocket of her adorable smock, which she’d wear un-ironically. Ellie’s preschool teacher, when Nora thought about it, had been someone who should have been a doctor. Mrs. Finchly’s posture had been so rigid Nora had sometimes wondered if she wore a brace under her plain dresses. She’d smiled at the kids, but Nora had never seen her squat on the playground, arms wide open, like all the mother-helpers did. Mrs. Finchly took her job seriously. Much more seriously than the teacher in the other preschool class did, the one who was always wandering
around with Play-Doh on her dress and her arms filled with finger-painted maracas and flutes made of bamboo. Yes, Mrs. Finchly would have inspired more trust as a doctor than as a teacher.

In Dr. Niles’s office, Nora asked her, “Did you ever teach?”

The doctor shuffled a paper, pushing it underneath a brown manila folder. Was that where the answers were? The nerves Nora hadn’t been feeling rushed in to fill their familiar place. She wanted to reach forward, grab the folder, and run. In her car, she would read the words that would tell her why they’d taken so much blood, why the phlebotomist with two-almost-three children looked at her so strangely the last time she’d sat in his ergonomically correct chair with the armrests made for tired elbows. If she didn’t understand the words, she’d google them on her phone. She was a trained reporter, after all. She knew how to do research.

“Not really. When I was premed, I was a TA for a couple of classes. Once I had to teach a semester of childhood development but I wasn’t that good at it.” She smiled. A dimple darted into her cheek and then ducked away. “Why?”

“Do you have kids?”

Gamely, she said, “Not yet.”

“But you will.”

“I’d like to.” Dr. Niles held out her left hand and looked at it as if the small, sparkly diamond still surprised her. “I haven’t been married that long, actually. We do want kids. Someday.”

“The sooner the better.”

The doctor looked at Nora again with that sweet gaze. “You were young when you had your daughter?”

“Not too young. I was twenty-eight.” Could this woman be any more than twenty-five? She was a doctor—was it even possible she could be that young?

Dr. Niles pulled out another sheet of paper. “You just have the one child, is that right?”

“Yes.” Nora’s blood chilled, as if she’d plunged her wrists into ice water. “Why?”

“And you’re not married?”

“Divorced.”

“Are your parents still alive?”

“We never really knew our father. Our mother died in a car crash when she was forty-four.” Her age. God. She hadn’t thought of that till right now.

“She never had these kinds of episodes that you’ve been dealing with? Memory loss or confusion. Any kind of mood swings?”

Nora frowned. “Mom was a little volatile, I remember, just before the crash, but she was still working two jobs and her boyfriend had also just moved out. She was tired. It just happened.” What was the doctor implying? That if her mother hadn’t died young, she would have had something? Had what?

“What about your sister? You’re a twin, right? Identical?”

“Fraternal.” Nora was confused. “Are you asking if she’s married?”

“Does she have children?”

There was so much more under her voice, things that Nora didn’t understand. Fear tugged at the base of her neck.

“No. Just my Ellie.”

Dr. Niles nodded and leaned back in her chair. She steepled her fingers. In an older doctor, it would have come across as pensive. Knowledgeable. Instead, she looked like a child playing in a leather chair too big for her small body.

“You came by yourself today?”

“You’re scaring me,” Nora said with a smile. Maybe this would make the young doctor laugh and realize she was being too serious.
Oh, sorry! I didn’t mean to frighten you. It’s really no big deal at all, nothing to worry about.

“We’ve found something.” The words were blurted out rapidly, as if the doctor didn’t know what else to do with them. “You have early-onset Alzheimer’s disease.”

Nora laughed at the words, relief soaking her like warm water. It was just a mistake, then. “I’m forty-four. Not old.”

Dr. Niles’s voice was tight as she said, “Early-onset is a different beast, I’m afraid.”

“I don’t understand. I don’t have Alzheimer’s. I’m
forty-four
. You can’t get it that early.” She would tell the doctor her job.
That
was always a good idea.

Dr. Niles reached forward, touching her papers again. Nora’s papers. Her tongue darted out and wet her lips, and Nora realized the doctor was nervous. Maybe even more so than Nora was.

“In some unfortunate cases, it can start as early as midthirties. I hate telling you this. I’ve actually never run across it in my practice, and I’ve been up the last two nights at home, researching it.”

Nora pictured her, propped up in bed with her laptop. She would wear a peach negligee, something sheer enough to please her new husband but decent enough to wear to the kitchen to make coffee. Nora used to have one like it, in cream. Dr. Niles would sit in bed, distracted by the sound her husband made gargling mouthwash. She would read about Nora, about what was apparently in her blood, her body. She would read about how to get it out.

“What’s your first name?” Nora asked her. It was suddenly incredibly important that she know what her husband called her in the middle of the night when he rolled over and found her ear next to his lips. Nora must have known it, must have heard it when she first introduced herself, but it had dropped out of her mind.

It had dropped all the way out.

“Susan,” the doctor said. Her eyebrows came together and her mouth wobbled for a split second.

Her husband called her Susie. Nora knew he did.

Nora picked up her purse, which she’d left thoughtlessly at her feet. As if she wouldn’t need it. She took out her Moleskine and her favorite pen, the burgundy Montblanc fountain pen she’d
bought herself the first time her book hit the
New York Times
list. She would make particular, careful notes, and then this young doctor would fix it. Not a problem. “What does this diagnosis mean for me, Susan?”

To Nora’s horror, Susie’s mouth wobbled harder. She pressed two fingers against her lips. “Oh, god. I’m so sorry. This has never happened to me before.” She spun in her huge leather chair so she was completely hidden. A child playing hide-and-seek, only Nora, the seeker, was more goddamned terrified than she’d ever been in her life.

Ten seconds later, when the doctor spun back around, she was normal again, the only telltale sign of any emotion a slight glassy sheen in her cornflower eyes. Her lips were steady. She placed both hands flat on the top of the papers on her desk. She looked directly at Nora, sizing her up. Nora made a reckless, unnecessary line on the blank page as if she had something to note.

“It means you have an incredibly rare, familial, incurable, fatal disease that we hate to diagnose in anyone.”

Nora wrote the unacceptable words slowly. One by one.

Rare.

Familial.

Incurable.

Fatal.

“I’m so sorry,” pretty Susie said.

O
n Valentine’s Day, Luke took Mariana to the House of Prime Rib. They sat in a cracked leather booth and they both ordered a martini: top-shelf gin, very dry. The banquet room seemed to demand this. Mariana didn’t usually eat meat, but she missed it. Sometimes she figured she could atone for slipping up in other ways. It was worth the hit on her karma. Probably.

With excitement in his voice, Luke pointed out the huge metal contraption that housed the eponymous meat. “Look at that right there. Prettier than a 2002 Harley V-Rod. And look at you. Even
more
gorgeous.”

That might be a first, being compared to a metallic zeppelin full of meat. Not that she was complaining. There were worse things to be compared to.

Luke thickly buttered and chewed his bread thoughtfully, his eyes closing in pleasure. Mariana had always liked watching him chew—it was part of how he lived in his body, with conscious awareness. His lower jaw moved with a similar deliberate
slowness. He made love to her the same way, with careful attention and long, measured movements.

Her sweet, rich, generous, motorcycle-riding gearhead.

Mariana had met him two years before in a bar south of Market—all dim sconces and velvet wallpaper, perfect places for making out with your new favorite person, places to slide business cards across dark maple bars and order drinks with never fewer than six impossible-to-find ingredients. She’d been there with Molly, another yoga teacher at the studio where she’d been working. That night at the bar, she and Molly had been playing their usual game of dividing the men in the room into categories of men they’d sleep with and men they wouldn’t. As usual, Mariana felt a twang of conscience. “Isn’t this exactly what we don’t want them to do to us? Fuckable and unfuckable?”

“Come on, this was probably the first game in the world, and it’ll probably be the last,” Molly said. “We’re going strictly on looks, and we’re evolved enough to know that looks mean nothing and the ones we like the best are probably asshats. Doesn’t make it not fun. Besides, I don’t have the cash for another drink here if I don’t flirt my way into the next one. And you need to get your mind off tomorrow.”

Mariana felt sick again. The next morning, she was going to pitch her idea for BreathingRoom to two venture capitalists who looked, in their online profiles, like they weren’t more than eighteen. Who was she kidding?
She
wanted to build an app? Her laptop was six years old and had been used when she got it, and her cell phone still flipped open. Not only that, but everyone who heard the phrase “meditation app” had laughed at her—everyone but the two young guys she’d met at a different, equally trendy SoMa bar two weeks before. They were the kind of guys who knew people who built ideas into apps and apps into money. Mariana had the idea. That, a rent-controlled apartment in the Mission, and a startlingly impressive collection of way-too-expensive shoes were really all she had.

Molly nudged her. “That guy, go.”

The man at whom Molly pointed hadn’t fit in with the place at all. Six foot four, thick necked, a leather jacket ripped at the elbows hanging from his enormous shoulders, he’d looked shell-shocked. He’d caught Mariana’s eye once and smiled, a real smile. Not a SoMa one. There was no “what do you do?” about his gaze, just an interested “who are you?” vibe. She’d smiled faintly back, automatically nervous of a man who looked like he might club his women over the head before dragging them to his lair.

“No way,” said Mariana. “Never.”

“I dunno,” said Molly, leaning on her fist. “He probably can’t afford to buy any more drinks here than we can, but his eyes are kind of dreamy, and everyone likes a guy with a rap sheet, right?”

Later, in the hallway of the bar, as she was coming back from the bathroom, the heel of Mariana’s Fluevog Mini Zaza had caught on a taped-down wire that crossed the carpet, and she’d tripped. He’d been there, a few feet away.

She’d been prepared to shoo away his offer of help. To get up on her own, thank him, and get back to her friends.

But instead of pulling her up, he dropped to his knees and then shifted to a cross-legged seat. Her impulse to leap to standing faded. She hadn’t had that much to drink, just a whiskey and water, but in front of him, she suddenly felt unstable. He reached into the pocket of his leather jacket and pulled out a plastic package. Weed? Something harder? Was he a dealer or something?

“Gummy bear? To soothe the nerves.”

“Oh?” Mariana found herself reaching for a green one. “What makes you think I need my nerves soothed?” She did.

The man with the silver eyes smiled. “Don’t you?”

Surprised at his perceptiveness, she said, “I guess I do.” Then she admitted, “I’m going after something big tomorrow. Really big.”

“Like, a dream big?”

“Totally my dream big. I’m worried I won’t pull it off,” she confessed. “I have to make a really good impression.”

“You kidding me? You’ll knock ’em dead. I know it.”

He’d given her a red gummy bear, the best one, he said, and they’d sat, comfortably chatting with each other about favorite mechanisms of sugar transport. Tootsie Rolls were high on both their lists. He liked a Snickers bar way more than she did. She liked the way his jacket creaked when he moved his arms, and the way his hands looked battered.

He stood eventually, taking her hand and holding it with his huge one for a second too long, a second that started heat to her core. Back in the bar, Molly shot her a thumbs-up but didn’t break away from the small dark-haired man who seemed to be holding her interest. Gummy Bear Guy started to introduce Mariana to his friends and then they both laughed, realizing they’d never told each other their names.

“Mariana Glass,” she said to his friend. She immediately forgot his name, but then she turned back to Silver Eyes. “And you are?” she said.

“Luke Clement,” he said. Then he threaded her fingers with his and, without excusing them, pulled her behind him into an unused room full of broken chairs and one listing desk. He kissed her, a kiss so hot it seared her body with its strike of lightning. She felt heat on the soles of her feet. “H-holy
shit
,” she stuttered in the dark room. “Come home with me.”

His huge fingers cupped the back of her head. “Don’t you have an early meeting?”

She did. The most important meeting of her life. She should have an early night. Meditate. Prepare. “I’ve never needed that much sleep. Come home with me,” she said again.

“Okay,” he’d said, running his tongue to the soft spot under her chin. “You ever ridden on the back of a Harley?”

*   *   *

In bed that night, both of them still covered in a thin layer of sweat and utter satisfaction at getting something so right on the first try, Mariana had said, “What’s your deal?”

Luke said, “Huh?”

She rolled so that she was naked on her belly and grabbed his hand. “You have a line of grease under your nails.”

“I told you. Motorcycles. That’s my job.”

Mariana narrowed her eyes. “But your nails themselves are manicured. Over the dirt.”

If a mountain of a man could blush, Luke managed to do so. “I guess I forgot to mention I might . . . own the motorcycles.”

“How many of them?”

He shrugged. “All of them? I inherited a Harley dealership.”

“Oh, shit!” She blinked.

“Just a thing,” he said. He’d slid off the edge of the bed, his cock, even though now soft, still startlingly large. He stood in front of her, seemingly totally unself-conscious. “Want some water?”

She nodded. His revelation stirred something in her, something she wasn’t proud of, but something she acknowledged. “If you put ice in it, I’ll let you stay all night.”

He smiled, as if unsurprised. “What if I wanted to stay longer than that?”

“You’ll have to bring me ice cream.”

He brought her a choice of the two she had in the freezer: chocolate chip cookie dough and caramel fudge. “Skip your meeting with the money dudes in the morning.”

She laughed. “I can’t. I’m telling you, this is the first idea I’ve had that’s good. I have to hire someone to build this app.”

“I’m just saying you might be able to find funding closer to home.”

Mariana ditched her apartment, rent control and all, and moved into his Potrero Hill loft two weeks later. It wasn’t just about BreathingRoom and the fact that he hired the developers for her. It was about him, about Luke. Mariana had fallen in love. The fact that he was wealthy was just . . . handy.

Now, in the House of Prime Rib, Luke was acting funny.
Suspiciously. His gaze darted around the room, as if looking for someone.

“Are we waiting for somebody?”

Luke rubbed the back of his neck. “No. Why?”

Mariana laughed. “I was kidding. What’s going on?”

He shook his head. “Nothing. You want dessert?”

She thought about it. “Nah. Not really. That was amazing, but I’m full.”

He frowned. “But you always want dessert.”

“Usually. But not tonight. You go ahead and get something, though.”

Luke ordered the chocolate torte. He fiddled with his watch. “How’s the app?”

It had turned into shorthand for BreathingRoom.
The app, the app, the app.
“Fine,” she said. She’d been trying so hard not to bring it up over dinner. Luke didn’t care enough about technology to keep up with the details of her struggling business. She knew he didn’t want to know how difficult it was to optimize an entire site so it was easy navigate on both iPhones and Androids. (Nora, who’d written a piece on the most reasonable phones and their various platforms, did—she was the one who’d told Mariana she needed a responsive site. Mariana hadn’t even known what the term meant.) The third-party marketer Mariana had chosen for the pay-per-install had reneged on their quoted price, and she couldn’t afford them anymore. And she was
not
going to ask Luke for any more money. Not this month, anyway. She’d just asked him for money to hire an in-house developer so the bugs could be more quickly fixed and . . . she wasn’t going to ask for more. That was all there was to it. If she fucked it all up, well, it wouldn’t be the first time she’d fucked something up so big she had to run in the other direction to avoid the avalanche’s crash. She’d call her sister tomorrow. Nora was the best sounding board, anyway. She always knew what to do.

“I love you,” Luke said, still tugging at his watch, pulling at the strap.

Mariana smiled. “I love you, too.”

The waiter appeared, hovering tactfully. “Your dessert.”

The bowl appeared to be holding multicolored beads, or maybe jelly candy. “I think he ordered the torte—,” she started.

“No, this was what I wanted. Thank you, sir.”

With a nod and—
was that a wink?
—the waiter retreated.

Mariana gaped. “What . . .”

“Gummy bears. I thought I’d offer you all the flavors. You can have anything you want in this bowl. Anything. There’s strawberry and grape and blue, whatever that is, and if you don’t like any of those, then I was hoping you’d consider accepting this.” Luke reached forward, placing a diamond ring on top of the pile of bears.

“Oh, Luke.” A gust of fear blew through her.

To Mariana’s horror, Luke stood and went down on one knee.

Not here. Not in front of God and everyone. Not where she couldn’t . . .

“Mariana Glass, I love you. Will you marry me?” His voice was choked, thickened. The diners around them, as if alerted by some subsonic engagement bell, dropped their voices to silence. Even the noise of the attached bar quieted.

Mariana’s fingers clenched around her napkin. She heard a woman sigh. Then another. But she couldn’t fix her face, couldn’t get the right words lined up, couldn’t, couldn’t . . . She was going to, she would fuck it up, there was no way she could explain, she didn’t even know—

“Mariana?” He was white around the eyes. “Don’t leave me hangin’ here, babe.”

She felt the word “yes” in her mouth, tasted it. Then Mariana said,
“No.”

The worst part was her volume. As if an almost-silent whisper of the same word wouldn’t have had the same devastating
effect on him. But she practically yelled it, the terrible word hanging above them. Luke pulled his head back as if she’d hit him with pepper spray. He retreated a million miles just by blinking.

Confident, strong Luke. Never, in the two years she’d known him, had she seen him in retreat. Not once. He’d been so sure she’d say yes.

She’d thought she would, too. Up until thirty seconds ago.

Then she was on the floor with him, and her arms were around his neck. Her lips against his cheek, she murmured, “I’m so sorry. So sorry.”

Luke stayed completely still, as if the “no” had turned him to stone.

The few gasps she’d heard when she’d answered changed into a swell of approval. She could almost hear them changing their minds. Perhaps they’d misconstrued her answer. “Yes,” that must be what she’d said. Perhaps her “no” actually meant “yes,” maybe that’s the way they worked as a couple.

“So sweet,” she heard a woman say.

A man offered a hearty “Congratulations!”

Mariana kept her face against Luke’s neck. How could she stand up? How were they possibly going to be able to walk out of the restaurant and back to the car where they’d left it on Polk Street? When they got home, how would she brush her teeth next to him before getting into bed with him? Her fingers were pressed so tightly against his shoulders that she knew she would leave ten tiny bruises there against his skin, markers of the time he got it so wrong, so very wrong.

Luke didn’t speak.

He still hadn’t moved, still stuck in a kneel that now looked more like a crouch. No tears. Too hurt for tears.

“I’m so sorry. I can’t. No, Luke.”

Finally, he spoke. “I heard you the first time.”

Slowly, so slowly, Luke stood, extending to his full enormous height. He carefully placed his credit card on the table, along
with the car keys. The jacket he’d hung on the hook at the end of their booth creaked over his shoulders. “I need to walk.”

“Wait . . .”