Splinters of Light (26 page)

E
llie’s face, when she’d been talking about taking care of her—her face had made Nora want to kill something. Maybe herself.

Taking
care
of her. Watching her as if she were a child. As if Nora weren’t the parent.

How would she know when it was too bad to keep going?

Thank god Harrison was there. He made it all feel normal. Just a campout. He’d grilled the burgers and the hot dogs—so many more than they’d ever eat; there were only six of them, for Pete’s sake. He’d actually gone through a whole package of dogs and had made at least ten burgers. “We can share them with the guys next door,” he’d said when she protested. The site next to theirs was full of young guys who seemed to have brought only beer and tequila. So far it seemed to be doing them just fine.

At the picnic table, Mariana whispered to Luke. Was it about Nora? “What do you think they’re saying?”

“Chill,” said Harrison in her ear.

“I can’t.”

“You have to.”

She looked at him, meeting his eyes for the first time all day. Heat lit the inside of her body, and she was half pleased, half upset. Harrison was still a secret, mostly. Mariana knew, of course. And because she did, Luke did. And Ellie might suspect something was still going on and so her boyfriend Dylan probably . . . Okay, everyone knew.

God. Shouldn’t she be too upset to think about sex? She was practically past
thinking
, for god’s sake. That was the damn point. But she thought about his mouth on hers, the way his fingers—so surprisingly long—pushed inside her, the way he knew how to bring her to orgasm within seconds, literally. He knew exactly what she liked, the exact pressure, tempo, rhythm. As if instead of books and friends and politics, they’d been talking about sex over those years of glasses of porch wine.

Maybe, in the pauses between their sentences, they had been.

“How?”

He pushed a plate full of meat at her. “You need to eat something. Then another glass of wine.”

She took it, knowing she wouldn’t consume more than a bite or two. “No wine. It freaked Ellie out.”

“None of her business, is it?”

“You know that thing you told me I should think about doing?”

Harrison tilted his head, thinking. “I can think of ten things. Which one?”

“That
thing
.”

“Oh! The pot card? You got it?”

“Shhhh.”
Nora looked over her shoulder at Dylan’s tent. Please, God, let them have all their clothes on in there. “I did.” She still couldn’t believe she’d been able to walk into the office, talk to a “doctor” on Skype for less than a minute, and get issued
a medical marijuana card. It had been easier and faster than getting a library card.

Harrison gave her a silly double-fisted thumbs-up. “Let’s fire it up!”

“I’m nervous.” She hadn’t yet dared try what she’d bought at the dispensary. All she could remember about the one time she’d smoked marijuana (at twenty, and at Mariana’s insistence, of course) was that it had made her paranoid and dry mouthed. She’d gone to bed and pulled the covers over her head and prayed that the cops didn’t come to raid their apartment. Nora didn’t do
drugs
. She hated to take so much as an Advil. And even though she’d read the study Harrison had sent her—that cannabis combined with ibuprofen or another COX-2 inhibitor could actually delay the long-term memory effects of Alzheimer’s, actually improving neuron capacity—it was too counterintuitive to make sense. Potheads didn’t remember anything, right? Wasn’t that her whole problem?

“Nothing to be scared of. I’m here.”

He was. Thank god.

“What about . . . ?” She jerked her thumb toward Dylan’s tent.

“Grab your stuff, and we’ll take a hike.”

Nora was going to get high in the woods. Who
was
she?

Besides nervous and worried, she wasn’t sure anymore. Pot probably wouldn’t hurt. Not once, anyway. She’d try it.

At the lake, as she showed Harrison what she’d bought, she had a sudden memory of being right there with Ellie at the edge of the water, years before. Ellie loved to look for frogs in the shallow, plant-filled murk. Every year, as they’d “hunted” frogs (which meant grabbing them, holding them for a second to marvel at their shiny sliminess, and then releasing them), she’d smelled the teenagers’ weed drifting through the reeds. It was a good place to hide from the grown-ups.

And now she was here, about to toke up.

Harrison showed her how to put the concentrate on the vaporizer’s element. “Just a little bit.”

“I don’t get it. What’s the difference between this and one of those e-cigarettes?”

“No difference. Then you just push this button, here. When it’s blue, you inhale.”

“Hard?”

He laughed. “As hard as you want.”

“How do you know how to do this?”

Harrison’s left eyebrow rose. “I have a couple of secrets left.”

What if Ellie saw her doing this? What if she acted baked for the rest of the evening? Nora rested her forehead on her knees. “No, I can’t. I’m not going to get high in front of my kid.”

“She’s not here. And this is medicine.”

“Yeah, right.”

“Nora.”

“Fine.” She took the small metal tube, pushed the button, and inhaled.

Harrison did the same. Then he leaned back on his arms, watching the far dock, where at least twenty children jumped, splashing and screaming.

“How long does it take?”

“As long as it takes.” He threaded his fingers with hers, and Nora felt her heart lazily thump in awareness.

“Oh, no!”

“What?” He didn’t let go of her hand.

“I forgot to take the ibuprofen.”

“That’s fine. I thought about that.”

“I’m supposed to take it together. At the same time. To prevent it from impairing my memory and so I don’t feel stony. Oh,
no
.” Was it too late? Could she run back to camp and grab some? Would she forget what she was doing on the way?

“Just feel it, Nora.”

She could feel it then, a downiness in the front of her mind. A lightness, a lifting off of something she didn’t know she’d been holding.

“Oh.”

“Not bad, right?”

It wasn’t bad. It was nothing like it had been twenty years before. Maybe now the formulation was more precise. God knew the dispensary where she’d bought it had seemed to know exactly what she needed. “Indica, not sativa. You don’t want to get stoned,” the young man had said. “You want to feel better and not stress as much.”

She hadn’t thought, then, that it would actually help.

But it did.

After a few long, stretched-out moments during which she felt her hands—always restless—lie still in her lap, Nora said, “I love you.” She was surprised. She never said it first—he always did.

“I’m glad,” he said simply.

“Why didn’t we do this a long time ago?” she asked.

“Weed?”

“No.” She moved her hands slowly between them. “This. Us.”

“You said you wouldn’t.”

“I did?” she said in startled surprise. “When?”

“When you said you wouldn’t date a man who had never been married. Or a man without kids. When you said you didn’t like tall guys, and when you said you were never dating again because you didn’t trust men anymore.”

“You listened to me.”

He inclined his head, a silent
yes
.

Nora felt her heart get wider, more broad. “I didn’t mean any of it.”

“How would I have known that?”

She leaned against him. It was easy. That’s what it was. Nora’s tongue didn’t get tied. She didn’t feel as if she were losing track of time. She reached in her pocket for her beach glass, the one she’d planned on keeping there all weekend. Instead, though, she skipped her green piece of glass across the still water. It had come from salt water, and she sent it whirling into fresh just
because it felt right. When the sun was almost all the way set, she suggested going back to camp to see if everyone had eaten.

Walking back, it just didn’t hurt as much. The knowledge of everything, the weight of it all, was easier to carry. Walking single file when the trail narrowed, she could hear Harrison behind her. Maybe he always had been.

N
ora wondered if she should keep hold of Harrison’s hand as they came into sight of the campsite, but he dropped her hand first, reaching to pick up a couple of good pieces of kindling.

“There you are,” said Ellie. She and Dylan both held long metal forks over the fire, roasting marshmallows. “Want a s’more?”

Did she? “
Hell
yes.” They laughed at her eagerness. It sounded like the best idea in the world. That part of smoking weed hadn’t changed, apparently.

When Ellie handed her a roasting stick, Nora put her marshmallow as close as she could to the wood without putting it directly in the coals. When it caught on fire, she let it burn a second before blowing it out.

“Tiki torch!” cried Ellie. There was approval in her daughter’s voice. Ellie had always preferred her marshmallows blackened before she pulled the hardened crust off with her fingers.
Then she’d complain mildly as the melted sugar burned her. Then she’d stick it back in the fire and do it all over again.

Luke, who’d been leaning back in his camp chair so the front legs were raised from the dirt, shoved his marshmallow farther into the flames. “That’s the right way.” His lit, too, and he held it up in the air, smiling at it.

He looked . . . Luke looked a little high, now that Nora noticed it. A little soft around the edges.

So did Dylan. He was reclined in another chair in much the same way, Ellie curled on his lap like a kitten.

Jesus, even Mariana had that soft, inward look.

Nora tried to work on her knitting, but even just the simple knit stitch seemed fuzzy in her brain. She held the sock loosely in her lap. “Is everyone here as stoned as I am?”

Ellie fell off Dylan’s lap to the dirt with a thump. “Holy shit.”

Luke started laughing.

Mariana goggled at her. “Nora?”

It was ridiculous, but her heart tickled, as if she wanted to laugh. So she did. She felt the ghost of shame—a recognition of something she
should
feel but didn’t. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have said that, maybe.”

Ellie, her face still shocked, her eyes wide, said, “Mom?”

“Yes, chipmunk?” Even that was funny, and she giggled harder.

“Harrison!” Ellie leaped to standing. “You got her stoned?”

“No,” said Harrison slowly, the grin on his face brighter than the fire that lit his face. “She got
me
stoned.”

“Mother?”

Nora should feel terrible. She should be horrified that her daughter knew. Instead, all she felt was expansive. “Do you want some, honey?”

Ellie’s mouth fell open and stayed that way.

“It’s not normal pot. It’s concentrate. Kush. For sick people.”
Nora touched her own nose. “Like me. I’m sick, so they gave it to me. And you shouldn’t do drugs. But if you wanted to try some, then at least you’d be with me when you tried it . . . And everyone else here is high . . . so we could . . .” Somehow, it seemed like a good idea, a sweet one, to share this feeling with Ellie.

“Nora!” said Mariana, her voice tight and thin. “We’re not high.”

Oh, no. If Mariana was shocked, then it was really shocking. Sudden despair twisted like a serpent in Nora’s chest, roiling and thrashing in her blood.

“I’m just kidding,” Nora hurried to say. “She’s only sixteen. I’m not going to give
drugs
to my daughter.
God
.” But for a second, she’d forgotten it was wrong. And that second was the worst second of all, and all the stoned expansiveness in the world couldn’t change that. She’d gotten it so wrong. So wrong.

But then Ellie barked a laugh. “Is this seriously my life? This is fucking nuts.”

Nora didn’t know what to say. There wasn’t an “I’m sorry” big enough to cover it, no groveling that would be low enough. To have offered weed to her daughter in front of everyone who was important, everyone who mattered . . .

Then her daughter passed another blackened marshmallow to her, and Ellie’s eyes were soft. The marshmallow was sweetness, turned inside out, and it tasted like impossible forgiveness. It was as easy as that.

Luke leaned far back, way behind him, and pulled out a guitar, all without getting out of his camp chair. He started strumming softly, as if he could change the subject with the instrument. After a moment, it seemed that was exactly what he was doing.

Dylan was busy saying something in a low voice to Ellie, and Ellie was saying something back. Then she sat on his lap again, wrapping her arms around his neck.

Soon her daughter would have sex with that boy, if she hadn’t already. Soon, even though Ellie wasn’t high now, she’d
try marijuana. She might try other things, too. Mushrooms, coke, ecstasy. Worse. Things like bath salts and whippers and things Nora hadn’t even yet read about online.

And Nora wouldn’t be there. “I wouldn’t be able to help anyway,” she said.

She caught the look that flew between Ellie and Mariana.

“What could I do? Encourage you? Discourage you? How is a mother supposed to know what to do?” She wasn’t supposed to ask it out loud, she knew that, but the rules felt skewed. Inside was out. Black was red. Her daughter was her mother and her sister was her, had always been her . . .

“Mom, it’s okay.”

Nora nodded. She couldn’t remember what she was agreeing to, but it felt right. She poked the fire with the metal stick, the marshmallow having already burned and dropped off in a plasticky black bump of molten sugar. Her knitting fell to the dirt, and she didn’t care.

Mariana, who had been hovering next to Luke, watching his fingers on the fretboard, came to Nora. She sat down next to her on the ground.

“Our pants will be dirty,” said Nora. It seemed important to say.

“It’s okay,” said Mariana. “We’re camping. We’re supposed to get a little dirty. That’s what we do.”

“Will you sleep in my tent?” asked Nora.

“But . . .” Mariana looked at Luke, who answered with a slow dip of a nod.

“Please? Ellie, you, too.”

“Mom, I brought my own tent—”

“Please. What if this is . . .”

A pause. Nora didn’t want to play the sick card. Even lightly stoned and not tracking well, she knew she didn’t want to lay it on the table.

So she didn’t. But they heard it. She knew they did.

“Okay, Mom.”

“Okay,” said Mariana, bumping a shoulder against hers.

In the tent that night, her high worn off to a paler shade of shame, Nora listened intently to the sounds of the forest around them. The night wind had picked up, soughing in the pines overhead. Teenagers cawed outside, running in groups, probably toward the lake. In years past, Ellie would have been with them, running from the younger kids, emulating the older ones.

But tonight, Ellie wasn’t with them. Neither was she in her boyfriend’s tent.

She was here, her body pressed firmly against Nora’s back. She sighed in her sleep, sounding like a smaller, rounder version of the wind.

Mariana lay with her back against Nora’s chest. They were a set of three spoons, with Nora in the middle. It was so warm they’d kicked off the top sleeping bag without discussing it.

Their breathing moved together, as if their lungs weren’t only related by blood but by a set of bellows that inflated and deflated them mechanically. Three breaths in, three breaths out, a sighing in time.

Tomorrow, they would spend the day fishing in a rented boat on the lake. Nora would hopefully finish the sock that was almost done and immediately cast on for the next one. She’d brought a drop spindle and some fiber to play with, though she wasn’t good at spinning yet. For the first time she wondered if she’d have enough time to learn to do it well.

Tomorrow night, they’d cook whatever they caught or they’d cook more burgers if they came up empty-handed. The next day, they’d repack all the supplies they’d carried up the mountain, dump their trash and recycling in the cans at the entrance of the campground, and drive home.

All this work. All this
effort
to pitch a tent and sleep with stuffy, recirculated air in a tent whose interior walls would be damp with breath by morning.

But all the work was worth it, for this moment of warmth, for this moment of being so close to her girls, both of them. Given a choice between this moment in a national forest and an all-expenses-paid trip to a tropical resort, she would choose this. She would choose the dirt tracked into the tent, the possibility of scorpions in their shoes in the morning (she would remember to tell them to shake their shoes). She would choose burned marshmallows over any chef’s crème brûlée. Any day.

Three breaths in, three breaths out. In tandem. Together.

Then.

Someday . . .

Nora held her breath.

Two breaths in, two breaths out.

Just two.

In her sleep, Ellie kicked the back of Nora’s leg and then tightened the arm that was draped around Nora’s waist. At the same time, Mariana pushed harder backward and tangled her foot with Nora’s.
Breathe,
they said in their sleep.
Breathe,
they encouraged her.

Nora breathed with the two she loved most of all.