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.
She’d never turned the fan on. Not once.
Now she probably never would.
What had Ellie meant by late? Why hadn’t Nora thought to clarify?
Nora checked her phone for a text. Maybe she’d spaced out—that’s what she called it to herself now; she’d needed a better term for getting stuck—and hadn’t heard the ding of a message received.
Nothing.
She checked Facebook. Seventeen friends had posted inspirational messages on their boards, but nothing for her, nothing from Ellie. Kids didn’t use Facebook, anyway. She clicked onto her secret account on Instagram, the shameful one. Candi Wells. She’d opened the account with a fake Gmail address, using the name of a girl Ellie had gone to school with in first and second grade. Candi had moved to Texas, and as far as Nora could tell by a pretty in-depth Web search, didn’t have an Instagram account or even a Facebook page. She’d heard a rumor through the mom mill that the Wells family had become ultrareligious and had seven more children and that Candi was either close to getting married or actually wedded with a kid of her own.
Ellie had accepted the friending on Instagram within minutes. She’d sent a sweet message about one of the houseboating pictures Nora had attached to the account, a picture full of generic-looking kids she’d pulled randomly off the Internet. The ruse allowed Nora to look at Ellie’s pictures, which she did, more often than she liked to admit to herself.
As usual, Nora’s throat got tight as she flipped through the photos. It felt as if she were about to cry, but it was from shame, not sadness. Ellie was a good kid. No, she was a great kid. The kind of kid who said no when Nora had asked if they could be Instagram friends, but the kind of kid who wouldn’t have put up a fight if Nora had insisted on access to her pictures. She would have just shrugged and allowed it. Ellie wasn’t the type to open a secret account to hide it from her mother. Nora had Ellie’s computer password written down in her desk, just in case she ever needed it. Ellie hadn’t seemed to mind overmuch giving it to her. She wasn’t devious.
No, that kind of sneakiness belonged to her mother.
Her throat so tight it felt hard to breathe, Nora checked the most recent photos, posted tonight.
A sob snuck up on her, painful, like a hiccup gone wrong. There was a gorgeous shot—beautiful, really—of the three Glass women outside the restaurant. Harrison had taken it with Ellie’s phone while Nora, Ellie, and Mariana had grouped themselves around the life-sized pirate wench holding the ashtray. Ellie was pretending to stub out an imaginary cigarette, Nora was standing at attention, smiling in a way that she’d hoped didn’t make her look as tired as she felt, and Mariana—she saw now—was tweaking the pirate’s nipple with a leer. A light from a tiki torch illuminated their hair so they all looked somehow radiant.
Blessed.
Well, goddamn it, she hadn’t meant to cry tonight. That hadn’t been on the agenda.
She slid the photo off the screen, and the next one populated. Again Ellie was lit from above, her hair shining golden brown, as she kissed Dylan. Obviously a selfie, the shot was a little crooked, and both of them were smiling. It was the kind of kiss you gave someone you really liked. Loved. The kind of kiss where your teeth clacked against each other’s and you just laughed. The photo was two hours old, taken at eleven p.m.
Candi Wells “liked” the photo.
Nora was about to turn off her phone and stare back up at the motionless fan when a text message bounced onto the screen.
I’m going to stay out tonight.
Nora coughed. She would have typed back but she was too angry to move her thumbs. She needed to breathe, to recover. Stay out. She was seventeen and about a minute, not an adult. Yeah, it was a Friday night, but that didn’t mean anything. Staying out? All night? In Oakland?
If that’s okay, came the next text. I’m still in the city. With Dylan.
Nora knew she was with him. Of course she knew that.
We’re at a hotel.
This, at least, she knew how to answer as a mother. Which hotel? Address.
Hyatt. Embarcadero.
Jesus. It felt as if Nora had taken off her helmet in space, all the air vacuumed out of her lungs.
We did it.
And at those words, with that admission from her baby girl, Nora could breathe again. This wasn’t boasting, though Ellie probably thought it was. This was her girl reaching out to say, Is this okay? Am I doing this right?
Is he asleep?
Yeah.
She could let her daughter think that. Are you okay, chipmunk?
No response.
Maybe she wasn’t a chipmunk when she was naked in a man’s bed. Fair enough. Ellie? It doesn’t have to be good. Remember we talked about that? Most first times don’t go that smoothly.
It was kind of . . . okay.
Good. Was that good?
You’re not mad at me?
Nora wasn’t. Not at all. She was glad to her very bones that they had this moment, this exact one. There was no one there but the two of them. It’s always me and you, chipmunk. She didn’t text it. Instead, she thumb-typed, Of course not. I’m glad you texted.
You’re not mad I’m not coming home tonight?
Oh, that. The sex thing had thrown her off the not-coming-home thing. Yeah, you’re in trouble for that. Trouble. What did that even mean anymore?
The response was immediate. Love you, Mama.
As Nora fell asleep, she kept her phone in her hand, a new kind of rock to hold. If she needed it, she could swipe the screen to unlock it and stare at that last text from the girl she loved.
That word, “Mama.”
That word was blood, was power, was strength. That word was memory. It was life.