For her birthday dinner, Ellie always got to choose where they ate. It was part of the fun of it. This year she’d chosen Forbes Island. She’d rattled off her reasons to Nora as if ticking off a list. “Some rich old geezer built it a long time ago and it floats, and it’s an island with a lighthouse, and he lived on it in the San Francisco Bay for years and years, and he had huge parties on it, and now it’s anchored and turned into a restaurant facing Alcatraz, and I really want to go.”
Nora was surprised. She’d heard of it, of course—they’d seen it when they’d gone to see the sea lions at Pier 39. It looked like a standard tourist trap, like a five-and-dime version of Hearst Castle—glitz with all the glitter rubbed off. “Are you sure?”
“Yes. And I want Dylan to come.”
“Anything you want. It’s your party.” Easy to say. Harder to believe. Nora still fluctuated between hating Dylan for what he represented—an attack on her child’s very innocence—and what he was—a nice, sweet boy, a bit too old for Ellie but not by much, honestly. “Who else do you want?”
“It’s your birthdays the next day, too. Invite whoever you want.” Ellie had stuck her earbuds back in and gone on killing dragons or whatever she did in Queendom. Then she pulled one out. “Harrison. Is he coming?”
Nora’s brain cycled slowly once. “Yes. Is that okay?”
Ellie rolled her eyes. “God. It’s Harrison.”
Nora said, “What does that mean?”
Her daughter only said, “Sheesh,” and went to her room.
Nora had no idea how to interpret that word. Was it good, a “sheesh” of acceptance? Or was it a “sheesh” of irritation? Shouldn’t she be able to tell the difference between the two? Harrison and Ellie had been fine on the camping trip, fishing and laughing together like the old days, but since school had started again (her senior year! how could that be possible?), Ellie had been spending all her time either studying with Vani and Samantha or playing her game with Dylan. She’d refused to continue with water polo (she’d made varsity the year before), but to pad her application she’d been volunteering with a food bank on the weekends. She hadn’t allowed Nora to volunteer with her, pitching an honest-to-god fit when she’d suggested it. And whenever Nora and Harrison asked if she wanted to have dinner with them on Harrison’s porch, she did that “sheesh” noise that was a cross between a word and a curse. Nora had been choosing to ignore it, but she needed to figure it out sooner rather than later, especially since the week before, Harrison had said, “I want to move in.”
“Salt,” she’d said. “I think that’s what I forgot to put in.” She’d poked at the lasagna she’d made and pretended he hadn’t spoken.
“Here,” he’d said. “I want to move into your house.”
Nora had been noting the dates they had sex on her day planner. There were plenty of them, little blue Hs, circled at the top of the square that held the day. She didn’t want to forget a single time. But if she did, how would she know? It used to be that they’d drink a glass of wine and watch the lawn grow. Now they had sex and laughed and then gazed up at the long crack in his ceiling. Then they laughed more. Nakedness did that to old friends. Once Harrison had choked sobs into her hair, and once, after what had been possibly the biggest orgasm of her life, she had cried against his chest until the pillow had been as wet as the sheets below them. But mostly they laughed. That was the best part of it, even better than the actual sex. Naked, uproarious laughter.
“Did you hear me?” Harrison asked.
She shook her head. “No.”
“I want to—”
“I heard you. I just don’t want you to say that.”
“Why not?”
“Because.” There were so many reasons, the primary one being Ellie. Not that Ellie didn’t love Harrison like a . . . She still hadn’t admitted (out loud) to Ellie that she and Harrison were . . . were doing whatever it was they were doing. She was still hiding him in plain sight. “Just no. I’m fine.”
“But you won’t be.”
There were grooves at the corners of his eyes, fine lines she’d never noticed before. “I know. Then you can help.” Even that hurt to say. “Not before.”
“Let me help now.”
“When it’s time,” she said.
“How will we know when it is?”
She’d watched a video of a forty-eight-year-old man who’d been diagnosed four years prior to the filming. His voice shook when he spoke, and his words trailed off before the end of his sentences. “It’s hell,” the man had said, “knowing that I’m leaving them. Knowing I can’t . . . What is it I’m saying?”
“Knowing he can’t stay.” His pretty wife, a grim look belying her bright smile, filled in the gaps.
In the kitchen, Nora had said to Harrison, “We’ll know.”
Now the bargelike party boat ferried them the short distance from Pier 39 to the fake island. Ellie sat with Dylan, snapping selfies with no flash. Harrison sat on his own bench and sneaked peeks into the storage area. “Empty wine-cooler bottles,” he whispered at Nora. “People still drink those?” Luke stood next to Captain Mac, a hungover-looking young man who wore a captain’s costume that looked two sizes too big for his narrow shoulders. Mariana sat next to Nora on the flat bench seat.
“This should be fun,” said Mariana brightly. “How are you feeling?”
Nora took her knitting out of her purse. “If you’re asking about the functionality of my brain, it’s working. Firing on most of its cylinders.”
“Most? How was yesterday? At the doctor’s office?”
It was funny that she forgot random things—like the fact that she’d been making toast until she went to put the bread in the toaster and found cold, hard bread inside the slots—but she remembered every bit of that office visit. “Fine.”
“Really?” Mariana looked so happy to hear it. “Really fine?”
Nora couldn’t bring herself to tell her the truth: that she’d failed more tests than she’d passed. She’d screwed up the NYU story recall test and barely passed the Boston Naming Test. And that wasn’t even the worst of it. “Yep,” she said, patting her sister on the knee. She knitted another round.
“God, that’s getting long. Is it a kneesock?”
Nora decided right then. “Yes, it is.” It was easier to keep going than to decide to stop.
The island itself rocked more than Nora thought it would. Given that it was really just a huge floating pad, it made sense, but the roll and sway underneath her was unnerving. Nora liked to keep the ground steady underneath her. Lately it was her full-time job. This island seemed treacherous. Islands should be moored with long earthen limbs dug deep into dirt below—they shouldn’t sway like a hula dancer.
Before they were seated inside, the six of them trooped up the stairs of the lighthouse. Up top, a small beacon rotated and four or five other tourists snapped pictures of Ghirardelli Square. “If this is a real lighthouse, no wonder people crashed on the rocks around here,” said an old woman in a loud voice. “Imagine! I couldn’t put on my makeup in this light.”
Well, maybe that was the explanation for the wandering eyeliner and the lipstick on the tip of the woman’s nose.
“Let me get a picture of the birthday girl and the almost-birthday-girls.” Harrison, who always remembered to take photos of important moments, held up his iPhone.
With her back to the lights of San Francisco, Nora wrapped one arm around Mariana’s waist, the other around Ellie’s. They felt too thin to her. She, on the other hand, had been putting on weight—thanks to the meds—and felt like the solid one. She smiled at the camera and felt her roots grow down, down, down, through the lighthouse, through the wooden floor of the barge, through the water, past the plants in the murk, and into the mud far below. Somehow, she’d hold them all in place, safely through the storm.