Splinters of Light (30 page)

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

Halloween

When Ellie was little, she hated the dark. This was after Paul left. A night-light wasn’t good enough. She needed the overhead light left on. After Paul left, she was scared of the night sky in the backyard and of the night wind when I drove with my window down. She wanted the night turned off and the day turned brighter.

So the idea of Halloween was completely out, I thought. Trick-or-treating, sure. We could go while it was still light, before sunset, when the other gangs of sweet princesses and
scallywag pirates were out marauding. But the haunted houses? They were a no-go, obviously. They were too scary for a little girl who saw bogeymen in the back of the closet at four in the afternoon.

The problem was that the biggest haunted house in Tiburon was right up the hill from us. It was so close we could hear the terrified screams from inside my kitchen. At five years old, Ellie was
finally
starting to get over her fear of the dark. Listening to the sound that made her cringe like a startled kitten, I wanted to march up the hill and murder all the screamers myself.

Ellie whispered, “Screaming is
awful
.”

“I know, Ellie-belly.” I fixed her tiara. “We’ll go down the hill. We won’t go there.”

“I want to go to the haunted house,” said my sister, Mariana.

I straightened. Stared. “You what?”

“I want to go. I love haunted houses. They’re hilarious.”

I felt like covering Ellie’s ears with my hands, as if Mariana were swearing. “No, thank you. I don’t want to terrify my poor
daughter
.”

Mariana shrugged dismissively. “Nah, I can go by myself. I’ll catch up with you on Robbins Street, how’s that?”

“I wanna go with Auntie.”

“Come on, Ellie, Auntie’s being ridiculous.”

Ellie dug the backs of her tiny wedge heels into the grass of our front lawn. “No. Haunted house. With Auntie.”

“No,” I said.

“She can come with me if she wants to, Nora.” Mariana’s voice held an edge, and I wanted her to stop talking. Mariana wasn’t a mother. She didn’t
know
. Not the way I did.

“No.” It was the only word I felt sure of, anyway.

“So maybe what’s going on here is you’re the one who’s scared?”

“No!”

But it was true. My daughter got her fear of the dark from me. Her fear of monsters under the bed was mine. Back then I still checked behind the shower curtain when I got home (what I would do if a serial killer jumped out at me, I had no idea—I just hoped one wouldn’t). I was frightened of the inky blue shadows in the laundry room after dusk. I didn’t even like going to the movies because when they dropped the lights, anything could happen.

“Mama, I want to go house haunting.”

Mariana lifted Ellie, her light blue dress sparkling in the falling twilight. She put her on her shoulders, and we all looked down the hill toward the edge of the sunset. Red swaths of low cloud dressed the marina. I thought it looked ominous. Mariana said, “Man, that’s beautiful.”

I sighed.

“Okay,” my sister said. “We’ll go do this and come straight back.”

“Stay here,” shouted Ellie. “Stay here. I’ll take care of you when I come back.”

I sat on the front porch and smiled at mini Yodas and crooked-hatted witches. I gave each trick-or-treater three mini–candy bars, listening to them exclaim in joy as the weight hit their plastic buckets or pillowcases. Tortured screams filtered down the hill from the haunted house. Did Mariana really not care that she was scarring her niece for life? It really didn’t matter to her at all?

Of course, I was wrong. When it comes to how I think about my daughter, I so often am. I’m at the age now when I can look back and see that just as a child doesn’t know where the divide from their parent is until they hit the developmental separation phase, I didn’t really know until that moment that Ellie wasn’t actually an extension of myself.

When she came tearing up the lawn, she slipped. She almost went down in her ridiculous kiddie heels, but she righted
herself at the last second, and she launched herself at my knees and held on tightly. I bent at the waist to comfort her. I went to dry her tears, and it wasn’t until then that I realized she wasn’t crying. She was laughing and hiccuping so hard it took a full five minutes before she calmed down enough to tell me that she loved it.

“There was a guy all wrapped in bandages, and—
hic
—he came out and ran at me—”

Mariana grinned back at me, unrepentant.

“An’ I was supposed to scream, because that’s what all the other little kids were doing, and some of the grown-ups, too, but I—
hic
—just laughed because it was actually the guy from the bank, Mama, and he had black and red stuff on his face under the bandage, and he was so
silly
.”

I hugged her hard. “You liked it, chipmunk?”

She wriggled out of my arms and fell backward on the lawn. She made grass angels with her arms and legs, and I knew I’d never get the green out of the blue sateen, but I didn’t care.

“No, I loved it.”

“Huh,” I said, handing the bowl of candy to Mariana so she could fend off the next herd of wee Harry Potters. “I think I would have been really scared.” I threw myself on the lawn next to her and looked up at the stars. “You weren’t frightened?”

“No,” she said and kicked harder, poofs of her dress floating up into the air. I wished for my own fairy dress.

“Why not?”

“Because Auntie was there.
Hic.
”

That night when she went to bed, screams still trickling down the hill like the cries of uncanny birds, Ellie said, “Turn it out.”

“Your light?”

“Yeah.”

“You’re going to sleep all right without it?” I asked. (This is the worst part of all: When Paul left and Ellie slept with the
light on again, a small, secret part of me was glad. I was glad that I wasn’t the only one afraid to be alone. We both slept with the full wattages burning above us, burying our faces in our pillows only as the night went on and darkness became a greater need than courage.)

“Yeah,” she said, turning on her side and tucking her hands under her banana-covered pillowcase. I wanted to know
how
she was ready. (
How did you do that, Ellie? How did you reach that point? How did you know you were there?
)

“You just want the light off tonight? On Halloween?” I couldn’t help pushing.

“It’s time.”

That was all she had to say.

Ellie always gets where she’s going at the exact right time. Me, I’m always a little bit behind the curve.

When I went to bed that night, I snapped off my own light. All I could hear was my own terrified heartbeat. Alone. So alone in the dark.

Then I slept harder and sweeter than I had in years.

“I
don’t understand,” said Nora.

Behind Benjamin Matthews was a view of the Yerba Buena Gardens. The construction going on in the street served only to make the fountains look more idyllic. As the fog melted in the October sun, light winked cheerfully off the glass walls surrounding the carousel. A small part of Nora had dreamed once, long ago, that she’d rise through the ranks at the paper and someday sit right there. That was before she started writing her own column, of course, which was where she belonged. She knew that, but it didn’t get rid of the slight longing she felt when she saw the desk’s mahogany smoothness, when she heard the grandfather clock ticking from where it had stood in the corner since the newspaper started, seventy-six years before.

Benjamin leaned forward and put his head in his hands. “God, Nora. Don’t make this hard on me. It’s hard on me, too.”

“Excuse me? I think—although I’m not totally sure—that you’re firing me. You’re asking me to make it easy?”

“I’m not firing you. That’s what I’m saying.”

“You just told me—”

“I encouraged you—”

“To take a sabbatical to get better.”

“Yes.”

“I’m not going to get better.” For the first time, Nora said it clearly. Her voice didn’t break. She didn’t tear up. It just was.

“I know.”

“Then what—”

“Look. I can’t fire you, because . . .”

“Because I could sue your ass off. ADA. Discrimination.” The idea was novel. She hated it.

Benjamin jammed his hand through his hair, always too long. It was his one vanity, besides the paper itself, and journos laughed about his coif behind his back. Around town, though, he was known for being kind and smart. He was probably being both right now.

“Don’t fire me, Ben.”

“Nora—”

“I need the job. What do you need? A note? I’ve brought those in. I’ll bring more.” It wasn’t exactly true that she
needed
the job—she and Paul had bought long-term disability insurance long ago when they were young enough for it to be inexpensive, and thanks to his life insurance, her job, and careful investments, she’d have enough to leave some over for Ellie. She’d run the numbers ten times. Maybe more.

The skin around Benjamin’s mouth was white. “Nora, I just—”

“Did I screw something up?”

“No—”

“Bullshit,” said Nora.

Benjamin jerked backward. His gaze flicked over her shoulder. Good. He
should
be worried.

She paused. “Just tell me. What did I do wrong?”

Benjamin closed his eyes and kept them that way, as if he were frightened she’d be able to change his mind if he looked at her.

“Tell me.” Anger dissipated like the fog outside the window, and the rigid fear, so normal now, slid under her skin in its place.

“You keep turning in the same piece.”

“What?’ Nora laughed. That didn’t even make sense. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“The piece on the old-age home in Los Angeles.”

“Dementia village,” she corrected. They were huge in more civilized countries like the Netherlands, countries actually committed to caring for their elderly. And they were amazing, true villages in which the store clerks were actually nurses, and the “house cleaners” were caretakers. Fully fenced and safely inescapable; buses arrived and picked up the people waiting at the bus stop, drove them around the village, and then dropped them back off at the same stop where they’d been waiting. It worked for some, and they trundled back to their cozy apartments. Others stayed sitting on the bench, happy to grab the next bus to nowhere. “It’s fascinating. And you have to admit that our nation is so behind the times it’s scary. We lock our dementia patients inside hospital wards they don’t understand, in places that offer them no quality of life beyond getting the right meds at the correct time. That place in San Luis Obispo is the first in the United States to do it. But it’s a start.”

Benjamin stood so suddenly that Nora’s heart jumped. He looked furious, his mustache jumping.

Or . . . god. He might be crying.

Oh,
come
on. Really?

“Nora.” His voice was like the sand on the temblor board at the Exploratorium, the board that demonstrated liquefaction in earthquakes. She could almost see the waves of it threading through the room to her ears.

Whatever it was he was going to say, she didn’t want to hear it. “No, thank you,” she said.

“You’ve turned that piece in four times.”

Nora felt the shaking in his voice reach her body. So far the earthquake was confined to her shoulders and lungs, but soon it would go deeper, to her belly, and then to her feet, and then she’d collapse to rubble. That wasn’t acceptable. Didn’t she have insurance for meltdowns in the workplace? “No, I don’t think I have.”

“The same piece. Different words, differently ordered paragraphs, but the same piece. Every time.”

Suddenly it made a sick kind of sense, how familiar the piece felt as she wrote it, how easily she’d come to the conclusions she had. “Why didn’t you—I don’t think—”

“Nora, you’re not fit to work right now. What I need you to do is go get yourself better.”

He knew as well as she did that wouldn’t happen. A month before, she’d told only Melanie Fine in HR and her officemate Frank about her diagnosis, but the next time she’d gone to work everyone knew. HIPAA was a joke, apparently. Rachel, the intern in Sasha Banks’s pocket, the one who tattled to Supply on people who used more than three Splendas per coffee, gave her a soft, “I’m so sorry . . .” the last time they’d passed in front of the vending machine.

Benjamin continued. “HR can help you with the insurance. It’s called a medical retirement. It’s just a little early, that’s all. They’ll help with everything.”

“I’m confused.
Are
you firing me?”

He teepeed his fingers on top of a pile of paperwork. “No . . .”

“You can’t.”

“No.”

“You’re
encouraging
me to take early retirement.”

Benjamin looked so damned
relieved
.
“Yes.”

She didn’t have to do it. She could fight. She could write about it, sell it to
The
Oprah
magazine. She could do a hell of a job on this one: “How I Lost My Mind but Not My Career.”
Her readers would love it. She might even get another book deal from it.

If only this were a workmen’s comp issue. If only she could blame the fact of her illness on too much newspaper ink in her twenties or on too much lead from absentminded pencil licks.

In twenty seconds, Benjamin would open his eyes again. He’d shake her hand. He’d give her a hug, whisper in her ear how hopeful he was of the future, all the advances science was making, how he wanted her back at her desk as soon as she felt better. If she felt better.

Before he could do any of it, Nora walked out of the room. She didn’t want to fight. She didn’t want to write an exposé. She didn’t want anything but to feel fresh air on her face.

Nora walked to the elevator without stopping at her desk. The elevator took too long to rise, so she took the stairs down to the lobby. She left her desk behind. She left the collection of drawings Ellie had made her over the years and her favorite coffee mug. The computer was theirs—they could wipe the hard drive themselves. When you quit, you only took a box with you if you had a safe place for the contents.

In the bright sunshine outside, Nora stopped, blinking like a mole coming up from underground. A homeless man lurched toward her, muttering, “The end is
nigh
, motherfucker fuck,
end
this bitch.” She sidestepped around him, dodging two construction workers sharing a cigarette next to a battered city pickup.

She looked up at the sun and realized a truth (all over again? how could she know if she’d felt this before? did it matter?)—the end
was
nigh, motherfucker. The end was written. Unless she got mowed down in a crosswalk by a Muni bus, unless she suddenly found her body was riddled with previously undiagnosed pancreatic cancer that would take her out in weeks, her ending was pretty much written. As she tucked a twenty into the can of a thin blond woman cradling a fat terrier puppy, she realized that strange feeling in the middle of her chest was relief.

Relief.

Nora would probably never have to have chemo.

She wouldn’t break a hip at ninety.

She wouldn’t develop debilitating rheumatoid arthritis.

She wouldn’t lose her eyesight or her hearing.

Really, she didn’t have to worry about
how
she would die, because she wouldn’t be there for it. By then, the Nora she’d built—the one she’d thought was the very essence of herself—would be gone. Even her pleasure neurons would degrade from the aggregated amyloid, and she wouldn’t take joy anymore from the things she once loved. The person inside her skin who would die wouldn’t be
her
.

Who was a person without memory?
What
was a person without memory? Would she be like a dog, happy to wake and eat and sleep, or would she be more like a jellyfish, bobbing gently until she stung without warning?

There was nothing she could do. Nothing to fix.

That, in itself, might be . . .

It might be freedom.

Most likely, she wasn’t going to die today, and really, wasn’t that all anyone got?

Fuck it.

Isn’t that what fearless people said? Fuck it. All of it.

Nora looked up into the sky. The fog had cleared completely, and the sky was azure. The air itself was so beautiful she wanted to push it into her pockets, fill her purse with it. Fall was San Francisco’s best season, Nora’s favorite. She could walk to Powell and hop a cable car to the water. She could buy flowers at the Ferry Building and ride the early boat home. She could do
anything
.

So she texted Mariana.
What are you doing?

The answer was so quick her sister must have been looking at her phone.
Working. Why?

Movie at the Metreon?

Which movie?

Does it matter?

A short pause. Nora imagined Mariana sitting in her office chair. (Her sister had an office. A real one. Her own. It still astonished her.)

I’ll be there in fifteen. No butter.

Joy.

Nora wouldn’t tell her about the firing. The retirement. Whatever it was that had just happened. Not yet.

Nora would let Mariana think there wasn’t any butter on the popcorn even though it wouldn’t be true. And even though she didn’t like them, Nora would dump Raisinets into the bucket because Mariana loved them melted and salty.

Then they would both lean their heads back and watch the screen, shoulder to shoulder, bumping hands in the popcorn bucket, reveling in the unexpected piece of stolen time.