Splinters of Light

by Rachael Herron

  She wasn’t really serious, or at least she hadn’t been, not up until about sixty seconds ago. She’d been pregnant once in her early twenties and she’d never regretted the abortion she’d had. She’d never thought about getting pregnant on purpose. Not till now. “We could do it. Think about what it would be like.”

  “God. Everything is about your sister.”

  Heat filled her mouth, burning her tongue. Mariana held up a hand. “Excuse me?”

  “I know you love her more than anyone in the whole world, and I’ve always accepted that.”

  Anger flared low in her belly. She folded her arms. “You had no choice but to accept that.” Of course she loved Nora more. Of course she did.

  “That’s what I’m saying. I’ve been mostly fine with that up until now. But, Jesus, Mariana.” He wiped his lips. Normally he would reach out and touch her leg or she would twist and put her head in his lap. But neither of them moved. They were frozen. They didn’t jump when a firework mortar blasted somewhere outside, rattling the glass again. “A child that you”—he waved his hands in the air—“give birth to or buy or adopt or whatever, that won’t make Nora think you’re good enough to take care of her daughter.”

  It hit her with the force of the sun. He was right. It was literally the only thing she hadn’t tried in her constant quest for her sister’s acceptance.

  How naive of her. “Holy shit.”

  “Love—” He started to reach for her and then took his hand back, pulling the sheet over his lap. Luke was almost never conscious of his nakedness. Then he took a deep breath that Mariana could almost feel. “It’ll be okay. Having Ellie here. It’ll work great. We can move your office into the spare bedroom, and she can have the attic. She’s always loved it up there—”

  “No, no, no, no. No.” She wrapped her arms around her knees, realizing that she was freezing even though she was still sweating at the armpits. “It won’t—she won’t—we won’t need to do that. It’s not going to come to that. She’ll be fine. I don’t know how . . . But I’m not . . .”

  Luke’s answer was his silence.

  Mariana went on. “She will be. We have no idea what kind of breakthrough drug is about to be released. They’ve been researching it, just throwing buckets of money at it.” She’d read so much about it. Millions of dollars had to add up to a cure. Eventually. Soon. “And besides, she doesn’t want me to have Ellie. I’m not good enough.” Her voice trailed off. She wasn’t.

  “Well, she sure as hell won’t want Paul to have her.”

  “I hate that you thought of this.”

  Luke shut his eyes.

  She scooted forward then. She put her hands on his knee and shook it. “Nora’s going to be fine.” He smelled like them, like sex and sweat and faintly of the rosemary shampoo they both used. “She’s going to be okay. Eventually.”

  When he opened his eyes, she saw the truth.

  Fuck him, anyway. She scrambled off the edge of the bed and lunged for her robe.

  “You’re going to have a kid whether you like it or not,” he said.

  “Stop talking.”

  “Paul’s never going to help. You all know that. You’re going to have to take care of Ellie when your sister isn’t here.”

  “Stop.” They didn’t yell at each other. Ever. She was a professional in the field of mind-body balance. And she didn’t care that she was screaming. “You’re so full of shit. You don’t know anything.” Her hands fumbled with the robe’s tie—she couldn’t make a bow. She’d forgotten how.

  He stood and made the bow for her as she shook in front of him. Then he led her back to bed and pulled the blanket up over both of them. Mariana’s teeth chattered so hard she bit her tongue and she tasted blood.

  “I love you,” she said against his neck.

  “I know.”

  Another explosion roared outside. The smell of gunpowder drifted in through the open window. “No, I really love you.” She wanted to tell him she loved him more than Nora. She wanted to say it so badly.

  “I know.” His hand was heavy on the back of her neck.

  Open hands cling to nothing.

  What a bullshit mantra. She wrapped her arms around him as tightly as she could.

  Chapter Thirty-seven

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

  Labor Day

  When Ellie was little, we went camping. The first time she slept in a tent was the first time Paul ever had, too. Such a city boy that he could sing along with car alarms, he was convinced right down to his toenails that we were doomed to die a terrible, outdoor death.

  “How?” I said, pulling a citronella candle out of the pantry.

  “Bees.”

  “Bees are a drag, but they won’t kill you.”

  “What if a swarm of bees attacks us? What’s your fancy-pants idea then?”

  “Then we go into the tent and zip it closed,” I said while I filled the food box: string cheese, Goldfish crackers, red apples, and perfect green grapes. We’d been playing this game for a while now, and I’d realized I didn’t have to pay him my complete attention—I could pack for the camping trip while I listened to his galloping fears. We’d already checked bear–escaped felon–mountain lion off the list, and I figured it would take him a while to get to white lady–ghost–man with hook for hand.

  “What if the bee swarm follows us into the tent?”

  It was a ridiculous worry. They all were. That’s what I wanted to tell him. But the camping trip was my idea, and thus, it was my responsibility to assuage him. I didn’t have real worries yet. I had no idea I’d be for all intents and purposes a single mother in less than six months. I had no idea this man I loved so much would become a stranger not only to me but to the little girl he seemed to love so much. “Bees hate the sound of a zipper,” I said. “They’re more scared of being in a tent than you are.”

  Paul raised one thick eyebrow. “Now you’re lying.”

  I had no firm science to back up my claim, but I believed it. Bees probably did hate the sound of zippers.

  He scrolled down his mental list. “Okay. What if a spider crawls into Ellie’s ear?”

  I winced. “They don’t do that.”

  He grabbed a chocolate bar out of my hands and unwrapped it. “Aha! Now I know you’re lying. Remember the Schwartzes’ kid? Didn’t that happen to them when they went camping in Tahoe?”

  “Those are for s’mores.”

  “You have, like, twenty of them. And tell me I’m wrong about the spider.”

  Jennifer Schwartz had been convinced a spider had wriggled its way into her ear while she slept, and no one had believed her until they’d gotten down off the mountain and she was still alleging she could hear it moving inside. Sure enough, at the hospital they’d flushed out a small, harmless, but probably very surprised arachnid. I still got chills thinking about it.

  “No bug will climb into our daughter’s ear.”

  “You don’t know that for sure.”

  “You can have her wear earplugs if you’re worried.”

  “Oh.” Paul brightened and hopped up onto the counter next to the sink. He took a huge bite of the Hershey’s. “Good point. I’ll wear some, too.”

  “So really,” I said, moving so that I stood between his knees, “you’re concerned about getting something in your ear.”

  “No . . .”

  “And being stung by a bee yourself.”

  He used those long, strong legs of his to pull me against him. “I could be allergic,” he said.

  “But you’re probably not.”

  “Who knows? I’ve never been stung.”

  “Chances are good that you’re not.”

  “But if I am, I could die.” He made a tragic face, and I remember this: I laughed at him. Six months later, I would
be wishing for his death. (Don’t look at me like that, dear reader. If you’d seen the way he looked at me when he told me I couldn’t be enough for him, that we couldn’t be enough, you would have offered to dispose of the body.)

  “We’re camping in the backyard. We’re two minutes from the closest fire station. I think you’ll probably pull through.”

  “What if—”

  “Shhhh.” I kissed him. I remember so vividly the taste of that kiss: equal parts cheap chocolate and warmth, a mixture of exasperation and love. All of it tasted the same to me: safety. I heard a shuffling behind me, and I knew almost-four-year-old Ellie would be standing there when I turned, one thumb in her mouth, trailing Paul’s old Cal sweatshirt behind her, the sweatshirt she used as a binky. “There’s nothing to worry about.”

  “Lions or tigers?” said Ellie’s small voice. “Bears?”

  I spun to face her, my happiness beating full, wide wingspans in my chest. This was my family. My family. My own little world, and they came to me with their silly worries in the day, with their real fears at night. Me. Mine. “There are no creatures from The Wizard of Oz in our backyard. None. I promise you that.”

  “What about the downhill?”

  Ellie had a nebulous fear about the slope below our house: that a bogeyman would walk up it and into her room, that ghosts roamed under the oak trees at night. “The only thing down there is deer. Maybe a raccoon or two.”

  “What about skunks? What if we get sprayed by one?”

  Paul slid off the counter and tried—too late—to hide the chocolate wrapper. “Yeah, Mom. What about skunks? Huh?” He handed the last piece of candy to Ellie. Her face lit up, and she dropped her hold on the sweatshirt. I could try to grab it off the floor to wash it, but I suspected she needed it for getting ready to sleep outside.

  “A skunk would not be ideal,” I admitted.

  Ellie’s face was both horrified and thrilled. “What if it came in the tent and sprayed us?”

  “Then we’d go in the house and wash off.”

  “It doesn’t come off with soap,” said Ellie. “Steffie’s dog got sprayed and it had to stay outside forever and ever.”

  It had been more like a week, according to Stephanie’s mom, Janice. “It comes off with tomato soup,” I said, though I didn’t know if that was exactly true.

  Ellie screeched in joy. “A bath? In tomato soup?”

  I nodded. “I’d make those crunchy bread crumbs you like. And I’d put them in the bath with you.” I gathered my little girl into my arms, and I pressed my nose into the crook of her neck, right where she smelled like sunshine and No More Tears. I gave her neck a soft bite, loving the way she wriggled against me. “Then I would get a spoon and I would eat the soup!”

  The hiccups she always got when she laughed too hard started, and I held her tighter. “What if—hic—you ate me, too— hic?”

  “Then I would eat you up and you would be all gone!”

  “All—hic—gone!”

  Paul tickled her and I squeezed my little girl harder as she kicked and flapped and the three of us stood there in the afternoon sunlight that streamed through the west-facing windows, and none of us knew that it would be the last time we’d stand in that exact spot in the late summer sun, still a perfect, unbroken family.

  That night, after roasting marshmallows over the portable hibachi Paul used at Niners’ tailgate parties, we slept in our brand-new tent. The night was dry—we didn’t attach the tent fly. Paul and Ellie stared up through the overhead mesh in wonder, watching the stars. I swear they were twinkling at us on purpose, as if they knew we were there watching, light-years and universes below.

  “The stars see us,” said Ellie, right before she fell asleep, still on her back between us.

  Paul and I counted four satellites and three falling stars before I fell asleep. When I woke in the morning, he was still watching the sky, then streaked pale blue and pink with sunrise. It was perfectly silent. (Now I wonder if he was thinking about her, the woman he left us for. I hate wondering that.) Ellie had wiggled to our feet in the night, and I felt one small arm clamped around my ankle. Paul turned on his side to kiss me. He had morning breath. I remember I wrinkled my nose but kissed him anyway.

  “Let’s go camping again soon,” I said. “Real camping.”

  “Bees,” he said.

  “I’ll protect you,” I said. That was my thing. That’s what I knew how to do.

  Until I didn’t.

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Nora stood in the evening sunlight, spraying down the house. It had been so hot, reaching the midnineties every day for a week, something it rarely did for more than a day or two in Marin. So hot, and so dry . . . Nora couldn’t stop worrying that something would catch the house on fire. It was silly. Most of the year’s fireworks had stopped as local kids’ stashes dwindled. But some of her neighbors used those weed torches, and what if a piece of flaming Bermuda grass sailed up and over a fence, landing on her roof? What if someone tossed a cigarette out carelessly, and the wind blew it into her siding?

  If there was the slightest possibility she could make her home safer, she would.

  It was more than silly. It was ridiculous.

  And it was normal, apparently. Just one more fantastic symptom of EOAD. “Hypervigilance can present in some cases, leading to excessive worry where little if any is warranted,” said one Web site. One of the dozen new meds she was on could actually exacerbate anxiety. Of course. On a forum she’d reluctantly joined, she read that one man who lived alone had gotten so paranoid about break-ins that he’d booby-trapped every window with hair-triggered nail guns. He said that if he ever needed the fire department to come in and help him, he knew they’d get hurt on the way in, but he hadn’t been able to quiet his mind enough to take down the traps.

  Nora felt the same way about the hose. If she weren’t out there when the thermometer rose above ninety-five, the house would burn down. It would spontaneously combust. If she wasn’t paying attention to everything at all times, she’d lose everything. It was four weeks since she’d hit Ellie. She’d almost lost everything that day. Four weeks of not believing Ellie really forgave her the way she said she did. Mom. Get over it already. Move on. I have. You’re acting crazy. It’s fine. I understand. Whatever.

  Nora sprayed the southern side of the house this time, what she could reach of it. There was a spot that she couldn’t quite reach on the far side of the chimney. That part up there was as dry as old parchment, she knew it. At least she’d be able to spot smoke rising quickly. Crazy. She kept her head on a slow swivel—she checked the siding and then she scanned across the tree line below the house to see if any tendrils of smoke were curling upward. Then she checked her roof, especially around the chimney and the part she couldn’t reach with the water, and then started the whole scan over again.

  It felt crazy.

  Crazy.

  This was how insane people acted. This was how people with Alzheimer’s—old people with the normal kind of Alzheimer’s—acted on their good days. They worried about crazy things, things that didn’t warrant such care or attention. In all her life, Nora had never had more than a passing worry about fire. For the last three days of elevated temperatures, it had been all she could think about.

  She sprayed water in the air, enjoying the immediate shiver that ran through her body as the droplets smacked her skin on the way back down.

  What if instead of drifting apart—like the fibers in unspun wool—her mind actually fractured? What if it splintered suddenly and violently? What if this—right now—was the beginning of the end?

  What if this was her last summer?

  Okay, with the drugs she was on, she might have longer. This might not be her last summer. There were people who had two good years. Three. There were a couple of men in Texas and one woman in Rhode Island who had been on the treatmen
t for more than five years and still weren’t all the way gone. The longest holdout, though, a woman who had said she’d been cured by a combination of the treatment and a holistic healer in Colombia, had died two months ago in a care home. No one in the online forums was talking about anything else. She’d been a poster child of health, the only real EOAD success story, and now she was dead at fifty-one, her fairy tale morphed into a nightmare.

  Nora shot the hose at the wind chime Ellie had made when she was in summer camp. Built from driftwood and beach glass, it only clunked, but Nora had always thought it was the prettiest sound in the world. She sprayed it again, trying to memorize its particular wooden bonk.

  She’d decided to visit an Alzheimer’s care home. Googling “caring for an Alzheimer’s patient” wasn’t very goddamned helpful. It either brought up cheery-looking ads for dentures and care homes for the seventy-and-up crowds or it brought up terrifying stories of wandering elderly parents who were found dead of dehydration, days later, under freeway on-ramps.

  Being the one who was cared for: nothing—nothing—made her feel worse to think about. The other day (what day? she couldn’t remember . . .) she’d woken up on the couch, Ellie shaking her shoulder.

  “What? What? I was just napping.”

  “Your eyes were open.”

  Nora had tried to laugh it off. “No, they weren’t.”

  “You were stuck.” That’s what Ellie called it when Nora lost time.

  That day, Nora had blasted into the kitchen and made a double batch of almond macaroons. No one who was losing it, no one who was “stuck,” could possibly pull them off without ruining them, and it gave her pleasure to offer Ellie a plate of them, hot and rich and perfect.

  Ellie hadn’t even looked at her, just kept her eyes on her Queendom game, tilting her laptop slightly so Nora couldn’t see the screen.

  Nora was Ellie’s caretaker. No one else was. And it did not go the other way around.

  She chose a facility in San Ramon, an affluent community in the East Bay. She told the care home management it was research. “A piece I’m writing for my column in the Sentinel. I’d love to come by and ask a few questions. I write about domestic issues, and many of the women baby boomers I write for are starting to think about elder care . . .”