Splinters of Light (10 page)

“Oh, Mariana.”

“Screw him.”

“Really?”

“No,” said Mariana. “I love him. But he doesn’t matter.
You
matter.”

A thicker relief trickled down the back of Nora’s throat. “Sleepover?”

Mariana took her hand and gripped it so hard it hurt. “Will you make me orange juice?”

“I’ll squeeze a thousand oranges. Just for you.” She could almost taste Mariana’s thick pancakes, still liquid in the middle. Perfect.

Ellie waved from the top of a broken piece of concrete and then jumped down lightly, as if she were folded paper. Nora’s origami girl. She shouldn’t be out in the rain.

“We’ll tell her tonight,” said Mariana.

Nora nodded. “Maybe.”

Mariana squeezed her hand harder. “Together.”

W
e’re not telling her today. We can’t. It’s not time. Not today. Soon. When we know more. Not today. Please. Not now.

Mariana would do anything for her sister when Nora’s eyes looked like that.

God, please don’t let her cry again.

She punched a pillow and turned it over. She lifted her hair so the coolness of the pillow soothed her neck, which felt rigid with knots.

Sick.

Sick.

Sick.

It was the only word Mariana would let rattle around in her brain. The other words—words that were too big, too hard—she let go of with tight breaths, breaths that should move more easily, if she could figure out how to breathe ever again.

Open hands cling to nothing.

They were words she’d said on the meditation podcasts how
many times? Hundreds, at least. It was BreathingRoom’s catchphrase. Two weeks ago, a blogger had quoted her on HuffPo, and their Web site hits had tripled.
Open hands cling to nothing.

She couldn’t help it. She was clinging.

She slid farther under the bedding. One breath in, one breath out, dropping the words
death, alone, gone, memory, light, Nora.

Nora.

Another breath. Luke, if he were here, would lie in front of her. He would scoop both sides of her face in his big hands and put his mouth next to her ear.
Breathe, love.
She would take his breath, eating it right in front of him, accepting what he offered. She was supposed to be the Zen one, but he was the one who calmed her.

He wasn’t here, though. He would have been, had she asked him. But they were on such uneasy footing since she’d said no to his proposal. He said he was okay whenever she asked him, but he barely met her eyes when he smiled. She worried she was losing him.

Or she
had
worried about that until she suddenly had to worry about losing the most important one of all.

Mariana put her nose under the top sheet and breathed.

Usually these sheets against her skin—the smell of them—filled her with a contentment she didn’t find anywhere but retreat centers. Yoga was the closest she came to it in everyday life—the tired, heavy warmth of her limbs as she got into the car Luke had bought her for her birthday and used the seat warmer on the way home. Or postorgasm, when there was nothing to do but breathe and feel Luke’s chest behind her, rising and falling. That’s how good the smell of Nora’s sheets was. Once, years before, Mariana had tried talking Nora into doing her laundry for her. She’d actually thought for a moment that Nora would do it. Of course, Mariana might have had a bit too much to drink, which had been the reason she’d stayed over that night. She was embarrassed now to think of it, the recollection a sharp poke in
her mind. This was before BreathingRoom, before Mariana had to be better. “Please?” she’d said to Nora. “I need this. To
smell
this every night. Oh, the
heaven
of it. Please?”

Sitting on the edge of the bed, Nora had looked at her with wide eyes. “Are you asking me to be your
maid
?”

“No!” She didn’t have the money, anyway. “It’s just . . .” Mariana had clutched the sheets with both hands, pulling them to her nose again. “Maybe I am. I just want your sheets. Come on.”

Nora’s gaze had been amused. “I can’t believe you’re asking me to change your bed linens.”

She called them linens! No one was as Martha Stewart as her sister, not even goddamn Martha herself. “Please? It won’t take you more than an hour to get over the Golden Gate if you come midday. You come into the city once a week to go to the office anyway, right?”

Nora’s chin moved from amused to cold. “Won’t you be back here soon enough, anyway?” Ice rattled her syllables, the sign to back off.

It had rankled, that assumption her sister held that Mariana would fuck up again and have to move back in. Although, with the sun-scented sheets . . .

“I
have
a life,” Nora continued, the implication that Mariana didn’t have one. “A job. Your sheets can smell exactly the same as mine. Just get a clothesline. Amazon. Twenty bucks.”

They wouldn’t smell the same, though. Sheets line dried in San Francisco would smell of burritos and diesel, not ocean and blue skies. Nora’s sheets smelled of Tiburon and morning hikes and afternoon picnics on sunshiny Mount Tam.

Now, her phone in her hand, the sheets over her nose, Mariana brought up a search window before she caught herself.

No.

She would
not
google early-onset Alzheimer’s. She would
not
. Her fingers felt an ache at the tips, adrenaline surging in painful spikes. Before she could punch the letters into the search box, she
threw the phone away from her so that it landed on top of the blanket at her feet.

Mariana pulled the sheets up higher, now to just below her eyes. One breath in, one breath out. She taught users of the BreathingRoom app to imagine their breath as the ocean, their thoughts as the waves. You didn’t need to follow waves to shore to make sure of the sea. The water was always there, no matter what.

What if, one day, the ocean were drained bone-dry?

There was a knock at the door, and then Ellie stuck her golden head around. “Can I come in?”

Mariana threw off the covers and opened her arms. “Get in with me, you gorgeous chipmunk of an Ellie-bean.”

H
er niece ran at the bed like she had when she was a little girl, getting to sleep with her aunt on very special occasions. She leaped and slid in. Mariana noticed for perhaps the first time how long her niece’s legs had gotten. “How tall are you now?”

“Five-five,” said Ellie. “I feel like I’m going to get a little taller but maybe not by more than an inch or so.” She put a pillow against the headboard and shimmied backward, comfortable in her skin. Mariana wondered if at that age, that terrible age of sixteen, she would have been able to leap into an adult’s bed and cuddle up close. Then, the only person she had cuddled with was Nora. They’d always had their own beds, but every night Mariana had crept out of her own and into Nora’s, folding her body to fit her sister’s, falling into the thick, hard sleep that made her blood feel like maple syrup. The worst way Nora could punish her during a fight was to tell her she couldn’t sleep with her. Mariana had a clear memory of standing next to Nora’s bed one
night when they couldn’t have been more than eight or nine—Nora wouldn’t let her in the bed, even though during the day Mariana had been the offended party, upset that Nora had let next-door neighbor Sven cut the hair of her garage-sale-but-precious-nonetheless Barbie. Mariana had been exhausted and too stubborn to patch up the fight. Nora refused to pull back the covers. Mariana’s legs shook, trembling, as she stood next to Nora’s bed for an hour—maybe more—until Nora’s rigid posture wilted and Mariana knew she could creep beneath the blankets. She could trick Nora into cuddling her until the morning, when the fight would likely begin again with just as much spirit.

Now Ellie was the one she cuddled as often as she could. “Five foot five? How would you know you’re close to done growing? You could go to six-two.”

“I just know,” said Ellie. “I can tell my body doesn’t want to get much taller.” She lifted the sheet and peeked underneath. “I think my boobs are going to get bigger, though.”

“If you’re anything like us, they will.” It was a lament. Neither she nor Nora loved their abundant bra size. It was easier to go fast when you had less weighing you down.

“That’ll be okay. I’ll need a new bra.”

Mariana sighed and wriggled her feet closer to her niece’s. “I would never have been able to ask for that when I was your age.”

“A bra? Why not?”

Why not? Because their mother hadn’t liked to admit that her daughters’ bodies were changing, and when she’d been forced to face it—the first bra, the first box of maxi pads—she’d made them feel like they’d done something wrong. It wasn’t as if their mother had acted mad at them—she was usually too tired to be very angry about anything. Ruthie Glass had worked two waitressing jobs to pay for their small apartment, and when she was at home, she was usually sleeping as hard and fast as she could. Pads and bras were expensive, money that wasn’t in the budget and—when the twins were twelve—suddenly had to be.

“Your grandma didn’t like to talk about stuff like that.”

“How did you learn, then?”

Mariana pushed a second pillow under her head. “We figured it out. Together, me and your mom.”

“How? There weren’t computers then, right?”

Mariana laughed. “You make us sound ancient.” But Ellie was right—how
had
they learned about what was going on inside their bodies? The Internet hadn’t existed in the mideighties. They’d learned from osmosis. They’d read Judy Blume books to learn about bras. Nora, a better, faster reader than Mariana ever was, whispered the words to Mariana at the kitchen table while their mother snored on the couch. At the library, they’d pored over the Whole Earth Catalog, staring at the products that might or might not have been vibrators. In seventh grade, Becca Tripton had told them she’d had sex with a ninth grader, but she’d been their only firsthand authority, and Becca had also thought you could get pregnant from a toilet seat, something Mariana and Nora had a hard time believing. “We read as much as we could. And we guessed.”

“How did you guess about something like your period? She must have told you something.”

“She gave us a brown paper bag.”

Ellie made a sound like someone was tickling her. “What was in it? Oh! Did it have one of those sanitary napkins with the straps and the belt?”

“Are you kidding me? Do you think I’m eighty years old?” At Ellie’s age, forty-four and eighty were practically the same thing. “I never wore a
belt
.” Thank god. Mariana had always had a hard time with period management—she still did. Nora had always been good at it—she’d always known when she was going to start and always had in her purse exactly what she would need. She’d always had what Mariana would need, too, pressing a tampon into her hand in the hallway at school, not needing to ask why Mariana looked so panicked. Even now, Mariana could be
at work and feel total surprise when she got a cramp. But why . . . ? It had to have been . . . oh, four weeks since the last one. Of course. Always a total fucking surprise. “No, in the bag was a box of tampons and a box of mini pads and a cartoon leaflet titled something like
Your Body and You
.”

“How old were you?”

“When we got our periods? Twelve.”

Ellie nodded knowledgeably. “That’s the median age.”

“Really? It used to be thirteen, I thought.” Poor girls. Everything was so hard at that age, and to have to balance sudden, new blood at an even younger age was just rude.

“Hormones,” said Ellie. “In our tap water.”

“What?”

“I wrote a paper about it. Female growth hormones are everywhere now, in our water and in the plastic things we buy and the animals we eat. It’s why girls get breasts earlier nowadays. Some boys even get boobs. And it’s why our periods start sooner.”

Mariana glanced down at her own chest. “Unfair.”

Ellie shrugged. “It is what it is. Did Mom ever tell you about when she taught me how to put in a tampon?”

Mariana barked a laugh. “No.”

“Yeah. She was so uncomfortable about the whole thing.”

“I
bet
she was.” Nora might have always known when her period was coming, but she sure hadn’t liked to talk about it. She liked to manage it. To handle it.

“I needed her to! I wasn’t going to just put something up there without help.”

Mariana couldn’t contain her hilarity. “You’re killing me. Did you make her put it
in
?”

Ellie laughed, too, her girlish giggle shifting to something more grown-up right in the middle. Mariana realized she was laughing like she did with a friend. “Oh, my god, Ellie, I’m dying.”

“Of course I made her. And it hurt, so I made her take it out and put it back in. It took, like, an hour. It was awful.”

“Oh, my god, if I didn’t know you like I do, I would swear you were making that up.”

Ellie looked surprised. “What’s wrong with that? Who else is supposed to show me if not Mom?”

“You’re right, chipmunk. I love that you don’t give a shit.” It came out of her mouth wrong. It wasn’t exactly what she meant to say, but it was true: Ellie
didn’t
give a shit about some things. She didn’t seem to care about the way she looked, for example. She wore sloppy clothes that she liked, T-shirts with holes at the stomach that had dinosaurs roaring at robots on them. Her favorite pair of jeans looked like mom jeans, big in the butt, a little too long at the bottom, but with pockets that Ellie loved to fill with things she found when she was outside. Even when she was little, when Mariana “borrowed” her to stay overnight in her small, old apartment in San Francisco, Ellie managed to fill her pockets with rocks and sticks and leaves of plants that smelled good. Trees were set in sidewalks and gardens were more expensive to maintain than cars, but Ellie brought the natural world inside with her without really trying. She still did that. Tonight, she’d gone out on the porch after dinner to talk to someone on the phone and had come in with cobwebs in her hair, as if she’d been wriggling under the porch.

But Ellie didn’t seem to mind what Mariana had said. She twisted a bit farther down the bed and turned on her side so she could face her aunt. She breathed softly, and Mariana wanted to wrap her up and hold her tight, but she didn’t want to startle her. This was nice enough. This, in her sister’s miraculous sheets.

Her sister . . .

Nora had said she needed to wait. That she wasn’t ready to tell Ellie. She’d said she needed the exact words.
Maybe a counselor. I’m thinking of hiring someone to help me figure out exactly what to say.
That, as much as anything, had turned Mariana’s bones to ice. If
Nora
needed help finding the right words, then the rest of them should probably give up on language entirely.

Breathe. Now.
This moment was all she had, this moment with the sixteen-year-old she loved the very, very most. “Who were you talking to earlier?”

Ellie’s expression was sleepy already, her cheeks soft, her lashes low. “Mmmm?”

“When you went out on the porch when we got home.”

A different smile creased her niece’s face. “Yeah.”

“Oh, really? I know the sound of that ‘yeah.’ Who is he?”

She smiled more deeply. “No one.”

“Hmmm. I know that guy, and he’s usually pretty hot.”

One shoulder lifted and dropped. Ellie kept her eyes closed, but her expression was complicated. Satisfied and worried, all at once.

“Okay, you want me to guess.”

Ellie nodded once.

“He’s a pirate.”

Ellie’s eyelids flew open, her face amused. “Kind of. But only in the computer way.”

“Isn’t that almost as dangerous as the high seas nowadays?”

“Nah. And if I tell you anything, you have to not judge him. Or tell Mom.”

Fair enough, if she could wrangle info out of her. “So an online pirate.”

“He torrented the game we play.” Then Ellie covered her mouth with her hand.

“A gamer. I should have known. Is this
Mynga 7
?”

“No.” Scornful. “I haven’t played that in, like, months.”

“That Queen-whatsit?”

“
Queendom
. It’s awesome. The topography is sick and it’s
totally
interactive. You get to make up your stories as you go. Like, I’m writing story lines, and other players are picking them and playing them.” Pride lit Ellie’s eyes. “I’m . . . He likes the stories, too.”

“Okay. So this guy is a player. He . . . Let me guess. He rides a winged something.”

“Close.”

“He’s a shape-shifter.”

Ellie shook her head. “No.”

“A dragon.”

“I
wish
he was.”

“He kills them.”

Ellie looked admiringly at Mariana. “I wish Mom ever noticed what was going on in my games.”

“She does,” said Mariana, knowing Nora didn’t.

“It’s okay. I’m used to it.”

Mariana snuggled farther down, bringing the pillow with her. Ellie smelled adolescently like bubble bath and, faintly, like sweat. “So he kills dragons. And you protect them, right?”

“Yeah. I’m a Healer.”

“So you protect and heal dragons and he kills them. I’m getting it. Star-crossed lovers, am I right?”

Ellie shifted, as if suddenly uncomfortable. She rolled onto her back and stared at the ceiling.

Mariana felt the pang of worry again. She could almost hear it, one note being struck deep inside her. Ellie was too young to actually think she was in love or star-crossed. “This is a crush, right?”

“Sure.”

“You’re saying it’s more?” Mariana pushed up on her elbow.

“Nah,” said Ellie, but she closed her eyes.

Mariana poked her in the shoulder. “Don’t play a player. I’m not your mother.”

“Is there . . . I’m not sure, but is there something wrong with her?”

“Are you trying to change the subject on me? Tell me about the boy.”

“No, really. I think there’s something wrong with her.” Ellie rolled back onto her side and grasped the edge of Mariana’s pillow lightly. “I do. She hasn’t been acting right.”

“What do you mean?” Mariana’s fingers went cold.

“Distant.”

“Like . . .”

Ellie released a deep breath. “Like she’s having a hard time remembering who she is. I came home the other day and she was watching TV.”

“Oh, my god. You’re
kidding
me.” Mariana tried to inject lightness into her voice.

“Don’t laugh. It was weird. She never
wastes time
.” Ellie put the last few words in air quotes. “But the TV was on an infomercial. About hair something. Like maybe to take hair off. Or get more hair. I’m not actually sure what it was. It was just making noise, and she was staring at it like it meant something. Like it was her computer.”

Mariana couldn’t do this. She wasn’t prepared.
Dissemble, cover. Hide.
“Was she working on her next piece, maybe? Did you ask her? Maybe she’s finally writing about the hold the tube has over normal mortals like us?”

“I thought maybe that’s what it was, but I said hi, and she just looked at me weird.” Ellie stuck the corner of her thumbnail into her mouth. Out of habit, Mariana gently pushed her thumb away.

“Don’t bite your nails.”

“I’m not. And then later, when I came down for dinner, I asked her about it. She said she hadn’t watched any TV at all. She pretended like she didn’t know what I was talking about.”

“Oooh. I know. She’s going hairy in places she can’t mention, and she was trying to hide it from you.” Mariana gave a laugh that felt as forced as it was. “Depilation happens, you know, even in the best of families.”

“Fine. Whatever. That’s probably it.”

They were humoring each other.

“I’ll find out,” said Mariana.

“You will?” The hope in Ellie’s voice melted Mariana inside. The sweetest thing, the most honest, true, and brave thing about the relationship between Nora and Ellie was how much the mother and daughter cared about each other. Mariana had
always stood outside it, watching. Admiring.
Wanting.
Nora would kill for Ellie, that was obvious and natural. That’s what mothers did. And Mariana knew she would lay down her own life for Ellie, too. In a fucking heartbeat.