Splinters of Light (31 page)

O
n Halloween, a teacher’s workday on which her daughter got out of class at noon, Nora and Ellie drove into the city to have lunch with Mariana, something they hadn’t done in a long time. Nora tried to get her to wear a costume. “It’ll be fun. Be Glinda. I love that costume on you.” Ellie had said something kind like “Okay, maybe,” but then she’d come down in a black tank and jeans. She held a cardigan in one hand, her backpack in the other.

“Oh,” Nora said, disappointedly.

“But you’re not wearing a costume, either,” said Ellie.

It was the kid’s job to wear the costume, not the mother’s.

“Okay, then,” said Ellie gamely. “Let’s be Rory and Lorelei.”

The Gilmore Girls.
It had been their favorite show for years, and they’d watched it together over and over, marathoning whole seasons on long Saturdays while tucked up on the couch. Nora’s heart rose happily. She looked down at herself. “Should I change? Would Lorelei wear capris?”

Ellie smiled. “Just grab a coffee cup. I’ll hold a book. There, we’re done.”

It was Ellie’s first time driving in the city. She was quiet most of the ride, which Nora appreciated. “You’re doing great, kid,” she said. “You’re a natural.” It helped that the Prius was an automatic and did well on hills.

Ellie didn’t answer.

“Don’t you feel like you’re doing well?” asked Nora. “Getting past that psycho taxi was no joke.”

There was a pause. Then, “Did you make me drive because you can’t?”

Of course she had. The week before, Nora had driven into the city to get her final paycheck. She’d gotten lost on Market.

On Market. No one got lost on Market Street.
Tourists
didn’t get lost on Market Street.

“Of course not.”

“Because you can just tell me that. You don’t have to praise my driving. I know I’m not that good.”

Nora stomped her invisible brake. “No,
no
! Go left—that’s a one-way.”

Ellie steered quickly around two bicycles and turned left.

“Good job,” said Nora. “Now do you believe I can still drive in the city?”

“Yeah,” said Ellie. “I guess.”

At the restaurant, one of the new hip places that Mariana always knew about,
Nora ordered a Caesar salad. Ellie looked at her funny, but Nora continued, saying to the waiter, “Dressing on the side, please.” True, she didn’t like anchovies, but it was all she could think of that the restaurant would be sure to have. Every restaurant had some version of a Caesar.

The menu didn’t make sense to her.

It had happened once before while she’d been out with Ellie, and that time she’d also been able to cover because that had just been a hamburger joint. Blue cheese with bacon. It didn’t matter
that the words curled back on themselves, twisted themselves like worms off the page, through her eyes, tunneling into her spongy, recalcitrant, increasingly more amyloid-blocked brain.

But she was able to fake it. That was all she wanted for now.

Nora glanced casually at the wine menu to see if the words had straightened out yet, but they hadn’t. She didn’t even know if it was the wine menu, actually. It was merely the right size, long and skinny, and the waiter (dressed in a one-piece giraffe costume) had left it on the table. Maybe it advertised desserts. It could be a religious tract for all she knew. The word
cognac
unkinked at the bottom, dropping with a clink into her mind as she recognized it on the page.

“Oh, I love cognac,” Nora said. Her voice was too loud. Too chipper. It used to be Nora could do chipper without even thinking about it. She’d thought it was an innate part of her personality. She’d been proud of it like it was something she’d inherited, like big eyes or perky breasts. She’d thought it would always
be
part of her.

But every day, it got harder. Every day she lost a piece of that chipperness. It dropped off her body—small chunks, one piece at a time—and someday she’d be a small block of bitterness with no memory, a piece of broken agate with no sparkle that someone took off the windowsill and threw out because they thought it was nothing more than trash.

Her sister was looking at her strangely. “It’s not even two o’clock. You want cognac?”

“Mom?”

Nora laughed. “Come on, you two. I just said I liked it. I’m not going to order it.” She swept her hair off her forehead with the backs of her fingers. When was the last time she’d gotten a haircut? She couldn’t remember. “Although if I did, it wouldn’t be the end of the world, since Ellie can drive me home.”

Mariana broke a breadstick, letting the crumbs fall to her plate. “The biggest plus of a daughter old enough to drive. Cognac
at lunch.” Her voice was light, and Nora felt an unclenching in her chest, a releasing that came from gratefulness.

If they couldn’t fix it, then they could still ignore it. That was a big something. When had she stopping thinking—hoping—they could fix it, fix her? When had that change occurred in her body and her thoughts? Was it outside the
Sentinel
after being fired, when she’d realized she would never die from cancer or break both hips? Was it at home when she’d stared up at the acoustic ceiling in the spare bedroom and realized she could tear it out herself, not worrying about the possible asbestos? Nora didn’t know when the knowledge that she wouldn’t escape her diagnosis had shifted inside her, but it felt, somehow, okay. It felt all right. Not ideal. But all right.

Nora took a breadstick out of the glass. “I can’t believe they still do this. I don’t think I’ve seen breadsticks on a table since
When Harry Met Sally
. Don’t they know no one eats bread anymore?”

Ellie said, “They’re gluten-free.”

“No way.”

“It’s a gluten-free restaurant.” It was said as if Nora won the award for most stupid mother in the universe.

Well, that must have been what it said on the menu. Shit.

“Still. It’s weird. I feel like I’m waiting for Tom Hanks. Or was it Billy Crystal?”

“Not Harrison?” said Mariana.

“What?” said Nora as lightly as she could.

“How’s it going with him? I haven’t seen him since the camping trip.”

Didn’t her sister get her cues? The wide eyes, the slight shake of her head? She didn’t want to talk about Harrison, who still wouldn’t let go of the idea of moving in, who wanted to sleep with her every night. He wanted to harness himself to her like a strong ox paired with a weak one, not realizing he was bound to just go in circles that way. “I don’t know,” she said. “He’s fine. Yeah.”

“Come on, Mom.”

Come on,
what
? Nora desperately wanted to ask what Ellie meant.
Come on, I know you’re still fucking Harrison even though you try to hide that part from me? Come on, you’re not making sense? Come on, no one in the history of the universe has ever liked a breadstick?

“I lost my job,” Nora said instead.

It was as if she’d set a gerbil on the table. Mariana reached forward—aiming for what?—and knocked the glass of breadsticks over. Some fell to the tiled floor with a hollow clatter. Ellie stood halfway like she was going to run; then she sat again. She held out her hands, palms up, as if she were waiting for rain. Or praying. Everything on the table gave one solid jump, and Nora realized belatedly it had been her own knees hitting the underside of the wood.

“What happened?” Mariana finally got the words out.

At the same time, Ellie said, “What did you
do
?”

There weren’t words big enough to hold the apology she was looking for. “I’m sorry.” She reached to grasp Ellie’s still-upturned hands, but she yanked them away. “I’m so sorry.”
Look at me.

Ellie’s eyes, though, were on her thick water glass, locked on it as if she were responsible for keeping the water inside it telekinetically.

Nora turned to Mariana. “I’m sorry.”

Mariana sat forward. “Don’t be silly. There’s absolutely nothing to be sorry for. How could they fire you?”

“It—”

“Don’t they know you’re going to sue their ass off?”

“What—”

“Americans with Disabilities Act. They haven’t heard of it?”

“It was actually early retirement. Not required but strongly encouraged.”

Mariana’s eyes were wide with disbelief. “And you
took
it?”

“What else was I supposed to do?”

“Sue them. You’ve worked for the paper for one million years.”

Yes, Nora was a dinosaur. “Thanks.”

“It was their
job
to take care of you.”

It was no one’s job but her own.

“It was their job,” fumed Mariana. “We should still sue.”

“They’re my friends.”

“They’re a corporation. They’ve never been your friend.”

Nora thought again of the way Benjamin had helped her when Paul had left—he’d even once turned in a piece and put her byline on it. They’d been practically rookies then. He’d saved her job. She thought of the way Jerri had been putting banana muffins in her mailbox at work for weeks. They were triple wrapped, first in waxed paper, then foil over that, then tucked into a small ziplock.

“That’s not fair to them. They tried.” Benjamin had tried. He’d fought to keep her. She knew that he’d hated encouraging her to leave almost as much as she’d hated hearing him do it.

Goddamn, she hoped that was true.

“Does that mean we have to move?” Ellie’s face was pale, like she was getting the flu.

“No!” That was exactly why Nora hadn’t been going to tell either of them until . . . when? Until they noticed she hadn’t visited the office for a month? Until they realized that they didn’t hear her fingers clattering at the keyboard every morning until noon? “No, honey, we’ll be all right.”

“What about college?”

“Smith is still a go. We saved for that. Easy.” Nora waved her hand, but Ellie looked even more worried. “You did send it in, right? The essay for early decision? You told me you did.”

“Yeah,” Ellie muttered. “I said I did, didn’t I?”

Mariana’s eyes were tight. Pulled. Maybe they both had fevers. “It’s bullshit. Fuckers.”

“Hey!” Nora gestured weakly toward Ellie.

Mariana didn’t even blink. “What? They’re fuckers, and that’s fucking utter bullshit.”

“They did their best.”

“What about insurance?”

Ellie’s face looked even paler now.

“Stop,” said Nora. “We can talk about it later.” Not in front of Ellie. She was only thirteen. She shouldn’t have to deal with this kind of thing, shouldn’t have to think about it.

Wait.

How old was Ellie?

Nora looked at her daughter’s white face. “You had walking pneumonia. Remember?”

Ellie bit her bottom lip and said nothing. She shook her head slowly.

“Of course you don’t. You were four. They thought it was just croup at first, and then maybe whooping cough. But it was pneumonia, and when your fever spiked, you had a seizure.” It had been one of the worst things Nora had ever seen—her child launching backward, her neck at such an unnatural angle she knew she couldn’t breathe, only the whites of her eyes showing, spittle frothing at the left corner of her mouth, her fingers splayed so hard they felt like pencils when Nora tried to gather her to her chest. She’d thought Ellie was dying, and even though the phone was in her hand, she couldn’t remember the number for 911. She tried 119 first and then 199. The ambulance came when she got the number right, and took Ellie away—they wouldn’t let her ride with them. “They said they didn’t have the right seat belt for me,” said Nora.

“Mama,” said Ellie in a voice Nora had never heard before.

“You’re too pale. Way too pale.”

“Nora,” said Mariana sharply. “You’ll come up with me after lunch”—she gestured vaguely upward as if her office were somehow suspended in the air above them—“and I’ll have your office send all your paperwork to me.”

Sixteen
. That’s how old Ellie was. “We don’t need to do that.”

“Yes, we do. We have to work out your insurance, your severance . . . God, what about your 401(k)?”

“I have long-term disability. It’ll be fine.” No, Ellie was seventeen. Wasn’t she? There had been a birthday. All of them had gotten an extra year to live, an extra year to get closer to dying. Ellie wanting to be tested for the mutation . . . Never. Birthdays were a terrible idea. “How old are we?” she asked Mariana. “We’re . . .” They couldn’t be forty-five. That was impossible, but if she was doing the math in her head right, if she knew what year it was . . .

“We should go,” said Ellie. She stood, scooping her sweater off the back of the chair as a grown-up woman would. “Let’s go get her paperwork for you, Aunt Mariana, and then I’m going to take her home.”

Her.
As if she were the child. “Our food isn’t here.”

“I’ve got Kind bars in the office. Don’t you worry about a thing, Ellie-belly. We can fix this,” said Mariana. She stood, too, leaving only Nora still sitting. When had Mariana become so competent? So efficient and businesslike?

And her Ellie.

Nora barely recognized the young woman standing in front of her, and it had nothing to do with EOAD. Ellie was taller, straighter, her eyes clearer and more sober than they’d ever been. She grew up.

In that moment, because of her, her daughter grew up.

Ellie draped Nora’s purse over her shoulder and tucked Nora’s cardigan under her arm with her own, the two different woolen greens clashing.

Mariana nodded sharply. “I’ll tell the waiter. Where is that damn giraffe?” She peered around the restaurant. “Wait for me out front?”

Ellie nodded. “Will do.”

Nora didn’t even think she’d ever heard Ellie use that phrase before. Or maybe it was the adult tone of it that was so surprising, the efficiency of it.

Her throat was tight. All of this, all the pain that pulled
between Mariana’s and Ellie’s eyes, the looks they were shooting each other, the barely held-back tears that swam in their eyes, all of it was because of her.

Will do.

A visceral joy swam through her empty, growling belly.

There sure was a hell of a lot to be said for seeing your daughter grow up in one split second.