Nora zipped her Windbreaker to her chin as she walked briskly through the heavy fog. Ellie called this “disappointed tourist weather.” Visitors hoped for clear days to walk across the bridge, but Nora knew what they really wanted was the view from Hawk Hill in Marin or Fort Point, down below. They wanted the photo of the bridge itself, which they couldn’t get from the span no matter how hard they tried. As Nora walked, she wove through dozens of couples taking photos of themselves standing in front of metal girders. She darted around school groups clumped like flocks of chickens in front of the rails. They’d get home, download their cameras, and flip disappointedly through the images on their computer screen. You didn’t get that shot of the bridge, Harold? I can’t believe you didn’t get that shot. Maybe they wouldn’t even be able to identify where they’d been when they took that picture—nothing visible behind them but the gray fog, as thick as upholstery fabric.
The fog comforted Nora. She liked the way it became sodden only after prolonged exposure. She didn’t feel the dampness until she pressed her finger against the fabric of her running pants and felt the wet sponginess. Her hair got heavier with it and she could feel the moisture collect on her eyelashes.
She stopped midspan and looked up, but the tower tops were gone, lopped off by the lowering cloud. The ends of the bridge were missing, too. The only things that existed in the whole world were this section of the bridge, the cars that whooshed by in both directions, and the people who clicked and snapped their way past her. The water below was almost invisible, the same non-color as the fog.
Nora wrapped her hands around the wet red rail and held on until the metal slowly—so slowly—warmed under her hands. She liked the feeling of it, her hands growing colder as she put her own energy into it. Her hands lost, what, one degree? The iron absorbed it, impervious. The bridge sucked it out of her, but she didn’t mind giving it away. Everyone else only leaned against the metal as they posed in front of the gray blanket of fog. They weren’t giving it anything, like she was.
“Ma’am, can you tell me about how your day’s going today?”
Nora jumped. “Excuse me? Fine.”
To her left was a police officer. He was tall, with a wide mouth to match his wide chin. “Whatcha planning on doing tomorrow?”
What was this? “I’m . . . not sure.”
“I sure would love it if you turned around so we could talk.” His badge read Briggs, and his dark eyes were kind. “Nothing bad will happen if you let go of the rail, I promise. I’m here.”
“Did I do something wrong?”
Another voice, female, came from her right. This police officer was short, wearing a pink lipstick that didn’t suit her complexion. “We just want to talk. We’re not going to hurt you.”
She hadn’t imagined they would. “What is this about?” Maybe she matched the description of someone wanted. Wouldn’t that be something, if they’d confused her for a bank robber or a . . . Nora couldn’t think of anyone else the police might be looking for. Was that a symptom of the disease, that she couldn’t? Or did it just prove that she was basically—and boringly—law-abiding?
The male officer said, “What if we talk about what you’re doing tomorrow. And hey, if you don’t have plans, let’s make some, huh? We can help. Hell, you can always come back another day, right?”
Nora released the rail, suddenly realizing that she was freezing. Shivers racked her and she rubbed her hands together. “Seriously.” Her teeth clacked. “What is this about?”
There was a gentle touch at her elbow. The woman officer said, “Come with us for a second. We’re just going to talk.”
A cluster of people stared at the trio they made. Several phones were held in the air, as if something interesting was happening. “A jumper,” someone hissed to someone else. Nora twisted her head to look around, to see if she could spot the person they were talking about, but Officer Briggs guided her forward, his hand in the middle of her back, as if he were guiding her firmly from a dance floor.
“Oh,” she said, the realization dull and painful, like a hangover. “You thought I was going to jump.”
The female had a small computer tablet in her hand. “May I have your name, ma’am?”
“Nora Glass. I wasn’t going to jump.” She looked over her shoulder again. “I don’t even think I could from here. Don’t you have that safety barrier?” No, maybe they hadn’t built that yet. She couldn’t remember . . .
“Date of birth?” Officer Briggs smiled at her. “You don’t have to give it to me—it’s just something I gotta ask.”
“You don’t have to—I don’t need—” Nora didn’t know what she needed. Sunshine winked off his badge. When had the sun burned off the fog? She hadn’t noticed it happening. “What time is it?”
“Four fifteen.”
Nora had gotten to the bridge at twelve forty-five. She and Lily had planned to meet at one. It didn’t take more than an hour to walk the whole bridge, round trip. “God. I got stuck again.”
Chapter Forty-one
Nora found herself writing a list of all the ways Mariana had let people down over the years. It was a terrible list, one she’d never show to anyone, and it was one she couldn’t keep herself from writing.
They still hadn’t talked. Her cell phone had stopped ringing, and Mariana had switched to sending e-mails. She sent those dorky Hallmark e-cards, the ones that sang and bounced around the screen. She sent a picture of her and Luke, both of them making faces. She e-mailed a list of ways she sucked (I’m too loud, too careless, too quick to throw out glass instead of putting it in the recycle bin. I got way drunk at that Christmas party you had five years ago. I forgot to pay the PG&E bill and we only found out when the lights went out). Each e-mail Nora read melted her anger. Her rage was now just dirty slush, but it was still there. She loved her sister. She loved her daughter. How—and where—did those intersect?
Nora needed to make her own list. She’d always thought they were a perfect circle—all three of them living within the same diameter. Now she imagined they were a Venn diagram, with her own crooked, broken circle draining, becoming more and more empty as theirs filled with colors she couldn’t compete against.
She took out a yellow sheet of legal paper and a red pen she’d dug out of the bottom drawer of her desk. Normally Nora didn’t use red ink. She didn’t like its accusatory nature. When she was catching her thoughts for her columns, she needed blue or black ink in her Moleskine journal, or even better, her soft, dark pencil.
But for Mariana’s sins, she needed red pen.
Eddie. The goldfish they’d shared in high school. They’d argued so badly about whose turn it was to feed him that finally their mother—exasperated—had ordered them to divvy the chore. Nora got the even months, February and April. Mariana got the odd ones, January and May. When it was Nora’s month, Eddie got his pinch of food every morning at seven a.m., even on the mornings they didn’t have school. Nora would roll out of bed, feed the fish, and roll back into bed, pressing herself up against Mariana’s warmth. But during odd months, Eddie sometimes got skinny and pale. One November morning, Eddie didn’t move. Nora had thought fish went belly up when they were dead, but it wasn’t the case with Eddie. He’d been in the same position for days—Nora had noticed but thought it was just chance that she’d managed to see him always sleeping in the same spot in the bowl. It wasn’t until one of his fins had broken off and floated next to him in the water that they’d noticed he was all the way dead. Mariana hadn’t fed him in two weeks.
Timothy. Against Nora’s better judgment, they’d adopted Timothy when they moved into their first college apartment. He was black and small and very, very stupid. They called him Antonio Banderas, because even with all his faults, he was pretty. He stayed inside because if he’d been let out, he would have rolled in front of the first dog he saw, begging to play. One night while Nora was at work at the colle
ge paper (putting out a piece on the Persian Gulf cease-fire), Mariana got wasted with two girlfriends. They drank cheap vodka and smoked a joint and left the window in the hallway open. Timothy, curious as always, jumped on the ledge, fell out the window, and died, proving once and for all that not all cats landed on their feet.
College. In their last year—only six months before graduation!—Mariana had disappeared with Raúl. She sent Nora postcards from places like Thailand and Bangkok, finally ending up at the ashram in India. Nora didn’t think she’d ever been more angry at her sister. Nora had hauled Mariana to class, sometimes almost physically when she didn’t want to get out of bed, and she’d tutored her (even though Mariana usually did better on the tests than Nora did), and then Mariana had given it all up. For nothing. Raúl had jilted her, Mariana said when she walked back into the apartment without even a phone call of warning, her eyes bright with something that made Nora wonder if Mariana wasn’t in recovery for more than just a broken heart. But she’d been so furious with her, for throwing everything away, that she hadn’t talked to her, hadn’t said a word when Mariana asked, “How’s tricks?” Nora had left the room without a hug or a kiss of greeting. She’d slammed her bedroom door and locked it behind her.
The next day the doorbell rang. Nora stayed in bed, her door still locked. She didn’t care who’d come by. Mariana could handle whatever it was. Nora was done handling things. A few moments later, Mariana knocked on her bedroom door. Then she banged. Then she started screaming something Nora couldn’t understand, hurling her body against the wood. Nora was still too furious to open it, and it felt good to hear the franticness in Mariana’s voice. How could she have left her?
Then the door crashed down. Not open, but down. Mariana had rammed her body against the door so hard that it came off its hinges and ripped off the latch, collapsing inward, the door and Mariana thumping to the ground to the sound of both of their screams.
“She’s dead,” shouted Mariana to Nora. “That was a cop. At the door. He told me. She smashed her car. I yelled for you. I screamed for you! Why didn’t you come out? Mom’s dead.”
Every muscle and every cell in Nora’s body froze, turning into sudden ice. She was a floe, adrift. She pulled back the blanket and Mariana crawled in. They spent the next twenty-four hours doing nothing but eating frozen burritos and sleeping wrapped around each other like week-old spaghetti, impossible to pull apart without breaking. They’d left the door where it was on the ground, and when they stood the next day on shaky legs to plan their mother’s funeral, they stepped on and over the door like it was nothing more than a rug.
Antonia. Mariana’s friend Kim asked her to be her baby’s godmother. What Kim was really looking for was a babysitter who couldn’t say no, which she got, but when Mariana managed to lose Antonia at the zoo one rainy afternoon (the child was safely turned in to lost and found), her godmotherly rights (and the friendship) were revoked.
Every houseplant God ever made. When Mariana moved into her first San Francisco apartment (the first time they ever lived apart, both of them stubbornly taking leases on tiny spaces that could barely be called studios and were only two blocks apart), Nora bought her a pothos. It was black within a month, which was probably some kind of world record. Next, Nora got her a ficus. That one took six weeks to kill, its brown leaves spiny and brittle on the floor. When Mariana managed to kill six geraniums within three months, Nora gave up and just brought her orchids in bloom from the grocery store (a tip she’d recycled for a column about what to give people with black thumbs). When the blooms fell off and the stalks withered, Mariana quietly threw them out, the space remaining clear until Nora gave her another one.
Every feeling ever. This wasn’t fair. Nora’s fingers cramped. She scratched out the words three times and rewrote them again a fourth. When Nora had a strong emotion, Mariana evaporated like mist. Tears could chase Mariana out of a room faster than pepper spray. How she made a business of catering to thoughts, feelings, the inner workings of human beings all around the globe, Nora could barely fathom. It wasn’t fair.
But none of this was fair. None of it. It wasn’t fair that she was going to have to leave her daughter to the care of someone who couldn’t take care of a geranium. (The fact that it wasn’t fair that she’d have to leave her daughter—period, full stop—wasn’t something Nora could face yet, and she still didn’t know when she’d be able to. It wasn’t something to write down. Ever.)
Nora folded the yellow sheet double, then triple, until it wouldn’t bend any more. She stuck it into her pocket and then looked out the window. Harrison was reading under the willow in that old ripped hammock he liked so much. It was Thursday, his light day. The heat had broken, and it was seventy-five degrees out there. Perfect for a nap outside. On Thursdays she usually tried to finish her writing early, too, so both of them could work in their gardens, calling back and forth to each other before sharing their glass of wine.
She knew Harrison was upset with her, upset that they were still sneaking around, upset that she wasn’t taking him seriously when he said he wanted to help. At some point, he’d want more. Or worse, he’d want to give her more while she could only give him less and less.
She’d never do that to him. Besides, she told herself, what guy didn’t want a casual, easy hookup every once in a while? Nora would sneak over, they’d have amazing, mind-blowing sex, and then she’d sneak back before Ellie got home from wherever she was for the night. There was no harm in it.
Nora almost believed it herself.
He was coming on their camping trip, like he always did. Nora realized she had no idea how to spend that time with him. On previous trips, he’d always been cast in the role of friend. She wasn’t sure he’d allow himself to be placed there again.
Her hands were cold even though the sun shone through the window. She held up the piece of paper that held her sister’s faults and tore it into tiny pieces. She couldn’t think this way about Mariana. Not anymore. Nora had to get over it, get over the fact that Mariana had screwed up by not bringing Ellie home that night. There would be a night when Ellie would have no home to come to.
Ellie had to have someone to look after her. Paul, since that terrible conversation she’d had with him, a phone call in which he accused her of making up her illness just to get some time off from being a mom, wasn’t in the running. Even if she’d wanted him to be (which she didn’t), he wasn’t. When he’d left them, he’d left them so thoroughly there was no door leading back in, no cracked window for him to squeeze through. The occasional ice cream cone wasn’t enough and Paul would never want to be more than that to Ellie; he’d made that perfectly clear on the phone. And even though he hadn’t been a real father to Ellie since she was three, Nora had wanted to kill him again, for the first time in many, many years. It was one thing to leave your little girl in the care of her mother. It was another entirely to essentially orphan her when that mother was dying. Unforgivable.
Some high school senior girls were old enough to take care of themselves. Nora saw them at Ellie’s water polo matches. They drove like adults; they reasoned as full-grown women. Some of the girls in Ellie’s class had been working since the age of fourteen. Those girls’ mothers were housecleaners who had started working at the same age. They were in the same high school in Tiburon but they were part of a different world. They didn’t socialize with Ellie’s group, the richer, whiter group. Nora was ashamed that Ellie’s core group of friends was made up of kids whose parents made enough to lease a new car every year, but what could she do? Go make friends with the poorer students. She couldn’t say that. But if Ellie had counted among her confidantes girls who worked nights and weekends, girls who had to weigh paying for a movie with buying a meal that would otherwise be skipped, wouldn’t that in turn make Ellie more grateful for what she had?
The yellow scraps of paper littered her desktop like judgmental confetti. She typed her sister’s name into
Google and scanned the first results. “Life changing. Powerful. Transformative. An up-and-comer to watch. You need this app. Redemptive.”
Her sister was redemptive?
Of course she was.
How many times had she redeemed a day for Nora in their lives? How many times had the only good, only real thing been the moment Nora saw her sister? Until Ellie, Mariana was what Nora knew of love. Falling in love with Paul had been wonderful and good and it had brought her her daughter, and when he’d divorced her, he’d left a massive, moon-sized crater. She’d never seen the crash coming, and the dust of it had darkened the skies for a long time.
But dust settled. Craters got filled.
The only thing she wouldn’t be able to recover from was losing Mariana, the only true love of her life. Or Ellie, who was her very soul.
She had to face this. Head on. With truth, or at least as much of it as she could manage.
Nora was going to die.
Worse than that (funny, that there was a worse), Nora couldn’t protect Ellie from everything—or really, from anything. She couldn’t protect her from Mariana’s carelessness. She couldn’t even protect her from herself, not anymore.
Nora picked up her cell phone. She hit speed dial number one.
Mariana answered, and her voice was so happy when she said, “Nora?” that it made her burst into tears. “I’m sorry,” Nora said.
“You should be,” said Mariana. “You know I hate it when you cry.”
For the next hour, they said words that would have made sense to no one else, babbling at the same time, a twinspeak made of regular, common words tumbling over one another like rocks, like beach glass, like love. Each word meant the same thing: I need you. Each response meant the same thing: I’m here.
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