“You know nothing. You have no clue.”
Mariana’s face was terrible, and Nora knew her own probably matched. She felt like an inferno inside, a fire that had ice at its core, and Mariana looked the same—her cheeks and eyes red, her lips as white as paper.
Mariana went on. “I never took care of anything? You honestly think you’ve been taking care of me this whole time?”
Nora didn’t think it; she knew it. Nora had been the one to keep them together, since forever. Since the first moment they slept in the same crib. There was a picture of them somewhere, standing in the rain as toddlers. Nora held the umbrella high over both their heads.
“Fuck you.” Mariana’s voice was so low she was almost inaudible. “I’ve let you feel that way my whole life. Because that’s the one thing you needed.”
The taste of Nora’s laugh was vinegar in her mouth. “Right.”
“You remember that guy Bill? The one you thought got away from me, another one of my failures?”
Bill had been nice. The only truly nice guy her sister had ever dated until Luke.
“He tried to rape me.”
Nora gasped. “No. He didn’t.”
Mariana laughed, a brittle piece of chipped glass. “I couldn’t tell you. You would have fallen apart. That was during the time you thought you weren’t going to pass your econ class. Remember? You couldn’t think of anything else. It was all you thought about and every other night you were on the couch crying, thinking that if you didn’t pass, you’d be kicked out of college and you’d wind up living on the streets. You were so upset all the time, hyperventilating when you found mold on the yogurt in the fridge. You could never have handled knowing. You think you’re taking care of things, but you’ve only ever known how to deal with things on the surface. The easy things. If Windex can’t clean off the dirt, you’re not interested.”
“No—”
“I broke his thumb, you know that? Snapped it. You were out in the living room, flirting with some frat guy, and that’s all you talked about when we walked home that night. You didn’t ask me one thing, and I knew I couldn’t tell you.”
“His thumb?” Nora’s brain felt like sludge. Her sister’s words weren’t making sense. They were crawling back on themselves, like the words on the menu at the gluten-free restaurant had.
“The reason I came home from India? The reason I left Raúl? I needed an abortion.” Mariana spoke through gritted teeth. “The day I had it you got mad at me for not bringing home the half-and-half you wanted me to pick up. I’d taken a cab. I didn’t have money for an extra stop on the way home from the clinic.”
Nora remembered that day. Mariana had come home with no half-and-half, her face blank. Nora had accused her of being stoned, and her sister had slammed her bedroom door so hard the mirror had fallen off their bathroom wall and shattered. Nora had been furious she’d been the one who had to clean it up. As usual.
The words Nora chose were so distant she almost didn’t know how to pronounce them. “No, you would have told me that.”
“You would have dissolved into nothing.”
Ellie was sobbing now, but Nora stayed frozen. Broken. “I would have—”
“If I’d told you, you would have done exactly what you did with everything else. You would tell me it was my fault and then clean it up so it looks tidy from the outside.”
It was the worst accusation of all. And the accusation didn’t matter, nothing mattered but the fact that Nora hadn’t comforted Mariana then, when she’d needed it most. Nora hadn’t been there for her. “You should have—”
“You think I’m the same person as you, just the weaker version. I’m not. I’m me. I’m only me. Fucked up and forgetful, but fucking real. I’m the Velveteen fucking rabbit, and you’re still wearing a goddamned price tag.”
“Mariana, no.”
Her sister dug her keys out of her purse on the countertop and kept talking while she shook them in front of her. “Let me tell you who I am. For once. Maybe you’ll hear it this time if I make it really, really clear to you.”
“Mama. Auntie,” said Ellie. “Please stop.” Her voice was a child’s. She should go to bed soon, thought Nora, and then realized she had no idea what time it was or how old Ellie was or who she herself was. She glanced at her hands. More lines, her mother’s nails . . .
“I’m someone who takes care of you, Nora Glass.”
“I—”
“Don’t interrupt me. You need to know this. When your life fell apart, I came running. I was here every weekend after Paul left. Every single one.”
Weakly, Nora managed, “I’m sorry we put you out like that—”
“Oh, Jesus, shut up. This is where I wanted to be. I’ve been taking care of you since before that, though. You think you’re the tough one, not because you keep the memories, but because you rewrite them that way. By the time you put something in essay form, you’ve already changed it in your mind, made yourself into better-than and everyone else into less-than.”
The accusation cut like a whip. It was so patently untrue. Nothing made sense. Was this the disease? “I don’t even—”
“That was fine. I let you think that was okay. That’s on me. And it’s true, you were the one on track, to get your degree, to find your way in life. Not me. I’ve always been a fuckup, but that didn’t stop me from taking care of you.” Mariana’s lower lip trembled, and that—just that—was enough to make Nora want to fling herself off the cliff from which she was currently hanging.
And then Mariana delivered the killing blow, the one Nora never saw coming, the one she would never recover from.
Her keys still jingling, Mariana said, “You think you can’t die because it would destroy me, but what’s actually true is that it destroys you to think about doing this alone. You’ve never had to struggle through anything by yourself. I have. Back then? Starting with Bill trapping me in that room at the party? That’s when I knew the truth—that I would have to take care of myself. I knew I could. I’m strong. But you’ve never seen that. You’ve been seeing me as a disaster area for so long that you forgot to look at me. And it’s just going to get worse. I’ll be with you when you die, taking care of you, but I’ll be alone again afterward. As usual. And someday I’ll do what you won’t have to: die alone.” A crystal-shattering pause. “I have to admit, it might be nice not to be judged all the time.”
Then her sister was gone.
Her sister was all the fucking way gone, leaving nothing behind in the foyer but two Glass women both shaking like they were taking their last breaths, the very last breaths left in the whole world.