“I didn’t want a party.” Nora spun, looking over her shoulder. She looked frightened—too much so—her eyes wide. “No party, please.”
“No, no, I didn’t mean to—no surprise party.”
“We knew you would hate that,” said Harrison.
“Something else. A silent party of people who love you.” That sounded even weirder, so Mariana pulled out one bundle of vintage white envelopes with red and blue stripes at the edges. She thrust the stack across the table toward Nora. “Here.”
Ellie gave over her bundle, almost as high.
“What are these?” Instead of picking up the envelopes, Nora held on to her napkin, folding and refolding it.
Ellie bounced in her seat. “What do they look like?”
“They look like letters.”
“That’s it!”
Mariana felt Luke grab her hand. “That’s exactly it.”
“I don’t even know this many people.”
Mariana wondered why Luke was trembling and then she realized her fingers were shaking, not his. “Yes, you do. And they love you.”
Chapter Fifty
It was awful.
Nora could understand why they’d done it. Hell, if Nora had known someone diagnosed with a bitch of a disease like EOAD—if it hadn’t been her—she would have attempted the same kind of gift. But this, all the letters for her, addressed to her specifically, each one written in a different hand: it was too much.
She opened the first one. “I can’t believe . . . these are from . . . everyone. How did you . . . ?”
Ellie bounced harder in her chair. On another day, Nora would have told her to sit still so that she didn’t knock anything over. At this point, though, Nora realized she didn’t mind if Ellie accidentally punched a hole in the wall. Since they were below water level, the frigid bay would stream in, rising first to their ankles, then to their waists, their necks . . . And they would all sit there, politely, watching Nora open sodden envelopes, one by one.
“What does it say?” Harrison’s voice was low at her ear. She caught his eye, and she saw it then: such a look of love. It was so warm he glowed with it. “Go on,” he encouraged her.
“Come on, Mom, read it out loud.”
“Maybe just a few lines . . .”
You wrote in pen, never pencil, always sure your answers were right. (Mrs. Fisker, third grade, Oceania Elementary)
The way you so beautifully organized your home. Your pantry alone! The way you designed your spice rack made me so determined to make my house prettier that I went back to school and got that interior design degree. (Jan Heinhold, mother of Aubrey, Ellie’s sixth-grade best friend)
My girl. When I told you off at that stitch-n-bitch, I had no idea how many times I’d have to rely on you to prop me up. The almost-divorce, the time Johnny rolled his car and we thought he wouldn’t make it . . . I remember the day you picked me up when my car died in the Maze. Do you remember how fast the traffic whizzed past us? Do you remember how unafraid you were, while I shook like a dang leaf? If you forget, I’ll keep telling you. That’s what friends are for. Buck up. Fight. And try to remember the only thing that matters: We, your friends, so many of them, are here for you. (Lily, darling, treasured Lily)
Nora read a few snippets out loud. She was proud of how even she kept her tone. In pen, that was how she read it. No trepidation. She let no fear weasel into her voice, even when she read from Lily’s note, which made her want to put her head under the table and howl. Mrs. Fisker’s letter, though—it felt good, to be reminded that she’d been that headstrong girl, so sure of herself. So cocky. She’d take a little of that right now. That would be just fine. There was no way in hell she was going to read any of the other letters, though.
“How many of them are there?” She lifted one pile. There had to be fifty or sixty, just in that one stack.
“Over a hundred, and more are coming in every day,” said Mariana proudly. “Written letters, for their favorite writer. I had them sent to my office so you wouldn’t know.”
Nora slid down in her chair. “I don’t even know that many people. How did you possibly . . . ?”
Ellie, in her pleased voice, said, “Facebook. You don’t want to know about everything else I found out about you while I was prying into your computer.”
Nora felt ice slip down her back. “What did you find out?” She couldn’t remember what was in her hard drive, what she’d left open. Which essay had she been most recently working on? What could Ellie have found?
“Mom. I’m kidding.”
A light laugh. “I know.” She hadn’t known. She flipped through some more of the envelopes. More teachers. Friends she hadn’t seen for years. More than one boss. Two of Paul’s sisters. Many, many coworkers, all of whom, she knew, would have something good and embarrassing to say about her. There were probably some nice memories in the stack, too.
It really was a lovely thought. A gorgeous, generous gift.
And she hated it so much she wanted to claw her way out through one of the upper portholes. She’d pull herself through and land on the surface of the oil-skimmed water and splash as fast as she could to one of the small floating docks. She’d push away the sea lion in residence and she’d strip off her clothes. She’d bark like mad—she’d make all the same rude old-man throat-clearing noises that the sea lions did, and after a while, she’d get dark from thin sunshine radiating through fog, and then after long months, she’d become the tourist attraction, not them. Since the Bushman had died, no one had been jumping out from behind carefully arranged twigs at the passing Chinese tour groups. Where was the fun for the random San Francisco tourist? Really, she’d be doing the city a favor.
“Nora?”
“Mom?”
Harrison placed his warm hand on the back of her neck, something she normally loved the feel of. But she shrugged it off—too heavy, too confining. “You know what’s funny?” she said.
“What?”
“I’ve always spaced out.”
Mariana squinted at her as if trying to pull her into focus, but it had always been Nora with the weak eyes, not her sister. “Yeah . . .”
“I’ve always gone off in my own head, flights of imagination. I think it’s part of why I’m a writer. I like to sit and think about things before I do them. Remember, Mariana, Mom always said I’d practice in my head what I was going to try until I was good at it, and then I’d do it. I whispered words to myself as I learned them until I pronounced them correctly.”
Mariana nodded.
“But now, when I do it, when I rest and think, you all panic.” Nora laughed. “You should see your faces right now. So concerned for me. God, take a breath, would you? I’m not dead.”
Dylan, bless his heart, was the only one who followed her instructions and took a loud, deep breath.
She wasn’t dead. Even if they’d just staged her own funeral.
Nora excused herself to go to the bathroom again, this time using the one downstairs that was attached to a small room that had a tiny bed, still made up with sheets. Someone, the chef, or the manager, or maybe Mr. Forbes himself, probably still slept in that bed sometimes, watching the lights of the harbor out the thickly paned window. Someone got laid in that bed. Or she sure hoped someone did.
In front of the mirror, she looked at herself. She’d forgotten to do that recently, content to wash her hair, drag a comb through it once, and slide on some lipstick every once in a while. She hadn’t really looked at herself in a long time. Not in memory, actually.
Well. That was a laugh.
Nora had always compared herself to Mariana. She was used to looking at Mariana, so used to it that when she saw herself in the mirror, the differences were so plain as to be startling. Mariana was beautiful. She had great hair. Perfect skin. Lips that never chapped unless she had a cold, and then her nose got sw
eetly pink to match. Nora, on the other hand, turned beet red with every cold, sweating from every pore, her nose running like a hose.
She pulled her hair back, lifting it. She had crow’s-feet at the corners of her eyes. Had she ever noticed that before? She’d seen them at the sides of Mariana’s eyes, she knew that. She’d noticed them with some satisfaction, actually, meaning to check her own skin when she got home to the lighted mirror. She’d never remembered to look before now. Strangely, even in the watery green flicker of the fluorescent lightbulb, even looking like the older not-Mariana, she looked pretty. She could probably pass for forty, maybe younger.
Leaning forward with her palms on the cracked countertop, she looked in her mouth as if she were a horse. She still had a young person’s teeth. Only one filling and one very expensive cap.
They’d thrown her a funeral.
She bet they didn’t even know that’s what they’d done. They thought the gift of handwritten memory was clever, and it was. They thought it was kind, and it was that, also.
But they were eulogies. She’d seen on the envelopes the names of moms she used to carpool with, and the name of the woman who used to live next door, the one who sold Avon products much too aggressively. Oh, how tragic, they must have all said when they got the request. They’d told other mothers, women who didn’t know her, about how honored they were to comply with the family’s request. Well, at least this way she’ll know how I feel before she passes.
There was a peace to not knowing how someone remembered you. If the one single thing Mrs. Fisker really remembered about Nora was her propensity to do her math homework in pen, that was sweet, but limiting. Nora was someone who loved pencils, too, loved their soft scritch and how impermanent they were.
She loved how, if you were careful, when you erased no one knew anything was missing. And, conversely, if you pressed just hard enough, the indentation could never be ironed flat again.
Chapter Fifty-one
“So how much trouble will you be in if you don’t go home tonight?”
Ellie tightened her grasp on Dylan’s hand as they walked past the moored boats toward his car.
“It’s my birthday. Or at least it is for another hour or two. Why, you wanna knock over a liquor store?” She felt a whisper of nerves in her larynx followed by a grip of lust felt lower.
He laughed.
Ellie tugged his hand. “Or we could steal a car. You know how to steal a car?”
Dylan shook his head. “Besides what I’ve seen in The Fast and the Furious movies, I’m not that sure about hot-wiring.”
“Oh. Okay. What did you have in mind?” That same shiver moved from her throat to her spine. His roommate Ian was always home. Like, always. The guy didn’t even work, except for the ads he made for porn sites, but Dylan said that mostly just kept him in free smut and didn’t leave much over for partying. And no matter how much Ellie liked Dylan—or loved or whatever anyone else in her position called this feeling that made her want to crawl inside his coat and all the way under his skin whenever they were in the same space—there was no way in heck she was losing her virginity in a bed while a porn-obsessed mama’s boy listened from two feet away. Dylan had, of course, suggested his car. Nothing on wheels, nothing without a ceiling, nothing without a locking door. He’d looked disappointed when she’d said it, but Ellie didn’t care.
She wanted to have sex. In particular, she wanted to find out what it was like to fuck someone. She didn’t think she believed in making love, which was where she departed from her friends (everyone but Vani, of course). They all wanted their first times to be perfect, this idealistic sweet and sexy night where they got to wear Victoria’s Secret lingerie. A night when everything felt good, a night that ended in something magical, but what that magic ending was, no one seemed to be able to say.
Ellie was more pragmatic. From what she read, the first time never went smoothly. And it wasn’t like she expected to have a simultaneous orgasm or anything. But yeah, she wanted it to be safe and as fun as possible. That desire, in itself, made her feel hopelessly old-fashioned.
“So? Where are we going?”
He pointed. “Dude, you’re gonna love it.”
“Dude, don’t call me dude.” She was his girlfriend. Not just a gamer pal.
He smiled. “Sorry, I forgot. There’s this old-school twenty-four-hour Internet café that just opened in the FiDi. They have Queendom loaded, and I reserved two computers. We can play next to each other all night. Have you written any more about that burning punishment thing? BlueRazor and his gang hit me up earlier about it—he can’t wait to read what you’ve come up with.”
“Um.”
Under a streetlight wreathed in fog, Dylan turned to tug her against him. “What? Doesn’t it sound awesome?”
She could almost hear the dude he swallowed at the end of the sentence. She hid her disappointment, feeling awkward and too young as she rose on tiptoe to kiss him. She was a good writer. Was that all she was to him? A good player? Wasn’t there supposed to be . . . ? Oh, well. “Sure,” she said against his mouth. “I’ll never turn down a chance to watch your friends get burned at the stake.”
“But not me.”
“Never you,” she said, tugging on his belt loop. “I’ll keep you off the pyre if I have to throw myself on it.”
He pulled back, looking honestly touched. “Aw, man. Don’t let Addi die like that. What a waste of a great Healer. I’d reroll my character before I let you do that.”
A bubble of happiness rose in Ellie’s chest. Him rerolling was the equivalent of him throwing himself in the way of a speeding bullet for her. “Oh,” she said. She thought of the forms she had lying on her desk at home—she was vacillating between applying for early decision to Smith College and Mills College. Both were good for English and creative writing.
It was just that . . . she didn’t know that she wanted to write. Like her mom did. Wasn’t that too . . . obvious? A cheat?
How were you supposed to plan your whole life when it was falling apart?
The distance to Smith was twenty-five hundred miles. Hours of expensive plane travel. Mom would freak if she didn’t apply (Ellie had been talking about it for years—Mom had even ordered a book for her about famous Smith alumnae), but Mills College was also a great school, and it was only a ferry and a BART ride away. She could be home in two hours if her mother needed her. Faster, if she got a car.
Early decision was a commitment—an actual contract—not like early acceptance. She could only put in her ED decision to one place, and if they accepted her, she had to go.
Mills was in Oakland. Like Dylan.
Dylan growled happily at her, kissing her once more, and then said, “Come on. It’s only about six more blocks.”
They passed Lombard and the Fog City diner. The only people left on Embarcadero were late-night joggers, a few wandering couples like themselves, and the hardiest of panhandlers. One said in a low voice as she passed, “So cold.” She didn’t even have a dollar in her pocket, though, only her mom’s debit card.
“I’m sorry,” she said. She tried to meet his eyes, to make sure he knew she meant it, but he turned his head and spat on the ground she’d just walked on.
“Almost there.” Dylan turned right at Justin Herman Plaza.
“I know where we are! Have you ever been in the lobby of the Hyatt? It’s gorgeous.” Ellie walked faster. “My mom took me for lunch once after she had a meeting. She gave me a sip of her champagne. I think it was when she signed her book deal.”
“Let’s go in,” Dylan said.
“Really?”
“Sure. We have all night, right?”
The door opened automatically, the doorman wishing them a pleasant evening. Ellie smiled at him and he grinned back.
“Mom said this is the world’s largest lobby. Or atrium. Something like that. When we wer
e here they made it look like it was snowing with twinkle lights.” She gazed up as far as she could, and still the rooms rose higher. She felt tiny and fragile, surrounded by so much indoor air held up by concrete and well-made plans.
“We can try to get a drink at the bar,” Dylan said.
Ellie laughed. “This isn’t Merchants. We’re the youngest people here. They’ll card us for sure.”
“Over here,” said Dylan, and his voice sounded funny.
“What?”
He was walking straight toward the registration desk. Ellie looked over her shoulder. No one seemed to notice them. No one was watching. The people closest to them, a trio at a low couch, seemed miles away. “What are you doing?” she whispered.
He said good evening to the desk clerk. Like he did it all the time. “Reservation for Dylan Hacker.”
Ellie sucked in her lips and bit down, keeping them gently locked between her teeth. She said nothing as he filled out a card and signed something else.
The desk clerk’s eyes looked tired as she passed over the key cards. “Room 1215, sir. Do let me know if I can be of any other assistance.” She didn’t sound convincing.
Ellie waited until they were alone in the elevator to let out her squeal. “Holy shit! You had this planned all along!”
Dylan looked inordinately pleased with himself. He preened in the glass of the elevator, brushing off imaginary specks of dust from his shoulders. “Why, yes, perhaps I did. Perhaps I’m an evil genius. Happy birthday, Ellie.”
Ellie launched herself at him, wrapping her arms around him as tightly as she could. “I thought we were going to play.”
“We are. It’s just a different game. Are you disappointed?”
“I’m so disappointed.” And she kissed him as hard as she could to show him exactly how not disappointed she was.
Chapter Fifty-two
Ellie had said she’d be home late.
Nora lay in bed, staring up at the black outline of the fan she never used above the bed. When she’d asked Paul to put it in for her, she’d had the idea of menopause someday in mind. She’d lie next to him, bearing her hot flashes quietly, her naked, wet body stretched on the sheet below the turning blades. If Paul rolled over and noticed, maybe he’d bring her a glass of water. A clean, dry T-shirt, maybe.
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