Chapter 6 #2
Julia gave Nora a look but then picked up a pen from the table and scratched off tomorrow afternoon’s walk to Dog Beach. “Fine. Do whatever you want tomorrow afternoon. But tonight and the boat ride tomorrow morning are nonnegotiable.”
Nora glanced at the schedule again. The first thing on it was s’mores at seven p.m. Nora felt herself tearing up, remembering what it had been like to be a little kid and anticipate exactly that moment, that gooey, marshmallowy, chocolaty moment, soon after she arrived at this house each May.
Julia had noted in the schedule (of course she had) that Nora was responsible for getting graham crackers, Emily chocolate, and Julia marshmallows.
“And tomorrow morning we have to be out on the water exactly at ten a.m.” Nora realized Julia was still talking, and she glanced back at the schedule.
10 a.m., Monday: Scattering Grandma Vera’s ashes in the Pacific.
“Nate already borrowed a sailboat from his friend to take us and he needs it back after lunch tomorrow,” Julia added.
Nate. Was he coming with them to scatter the ashes? The last time Nora had seen Nate, she’d been barely seventeen, a kid. Now she was in her early twenties, the same decade he was.
“You know what?” Emily said, interrupting Nora’s thoughts.
“I’m actually down with this whole schedule.
” A slow smile erupted on Julia’s face, and Nora fought the urge to roll her eyes.
“Seems like an easy enough way to manage the week,” Emily continued.
“Keep our promise to Grandma Vera. And probably not kill each other, since we won’t have the time. ”
“Exactly.” Julia full-on smirked, annoyingly pleased with herself. She and Emily nodded at each other like they had been in cahoots all along.
And Nora felt it again, that cold, hollow feeling in her chest of always trying to catch up to her sisters and perpetually feeling left out.
After a shared takeout pizza for dinner (per the schedule), which Julia only picked at, pulling off the slices of pepperoni and stacking them on the side of her plate in a neat little pile, they roasted their s’mores by the firepit.
Then Julia excused herself and went upstairs to bed.
Nora glanced at her watch—it was not even seven thirty.
Time changes and travel aside, she was not at all ready for sleeping.
“Wanna smoke a joint with me?” Emily asked Nora as soon as Julia had disappeared inside the house.
“You traveled with pot?” Nora whispered, worried Julia would somehow hear and scold them.
“I drove, remember.”
“Still, isn’t it like illegal to carry it across state lines or something?” Nora didn’t distinctly know if this was true, but it seemed like a dumb thing to do, even for Emily.
Emily shrugged. “Only illegal if you get caught. And anyway, medical marijuana is legal in California now.”
“Is that why you have it? There’s something medically wrong with you?” Nora raised her eyebrows.
“I’ll be right back,” Emily said, ignoring Nora’s question. She stood and wandered inside the house.
Nora did not smoke pot. Except for once, at a frat party last year.
The getting high part was fine, even preferable, maybe, to getting drunk.
Because getting drunk always made her have to pee in places that did not have the nicest bathrooms. It was the smoking part she didn’t enjoy.
The way it burned her lungs and had made her cough until she’d almost gagged.
It’d made her voice feel froggy, made her hoarse, and she cherished her singing voice more than anything.
Still, she tried to recall a time in her life when Emily had invited only her to do anything. She came up blank.
Emily walked back outside and lay down on the lounge chair next to Nora’s, in front of the still-lit firepit.
She lit her joint, the tip glowing an orangey yellow, like a firefly, and Nora was hit with the sudden overwhelming odor of pot.
If Nate was home, if he had his window open, would he notice?
Or would the smell waft upstairs to Julia’s open window?
Nora didn’t say any of that out loud, though. When Emily handed her the joint, Nora took it, inwardly begging her lungs to be cool for once. She took a slow drag and immediately sputtered into a coughing fit.
Emily giggled and took the joint back. While Nora patted her chest, trying to remember how to breathe.
“Want to know a secret?” Emily said when Nora finally stopped coughing.
When she could breathe again a lightness came over her, and it hit her how much she loved this backyard, this house, this island. Owning part of this, committing to come here every year for the rest of her life with her older sisters. It was pretty goddamn amazing.
“Well, do you?” Emily prodded.
A secret. Right. “Yeah,” Nora said. “Tell me your deepest, darkest secret.”
“I like women,” Emily announced. “I’m dating a woman.”
Nora laughed, a giant bubbling laugh that welled up inside her hollow chest and burst up uncontrollably through her throat.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Emily spat. “I am baring my soul and you’re laughing at me?”
Nora waved that notion away with her hand. “No, no, I’m not laughing at you baring your soul… I’m laughing because… because…” she sputtered. “You think that’s a secret. A deep, dark secret?”
“It is a secret,” Emily said. “I haven’t told anyone.”
“I have literally known you liked women since the summer I was ten. When we came here and you met that girl from Spain on the beach, remember? What was her name?”
“Olivia,” Emily said. “And we were just friends! I was like thirteen.”
“Okay,” Nora said. “But it has not occurred to me once in the last eleven years since that you would ever fall in love with a man. It’s not a secret if it’s already obvious, dumbass.”
Emily chuckled and passed over the joint for Nora to take another hit. “So all it takes for you not to be a total uptight bitch is getting a little high,” Emily mused as Nora’s lungs sputtered into another choking fit. “Good to know.”
Nora probably should’ve been offended, but now she was just feeling light. “Don’t you have a real secret you can tell me? You know, like something I don’t already know,” she said as she handed Emily the joint.
Emily chewed on her bottom lip, then opened her mouth to say something, as if maybe she did have a real secret and was considering spilling it. But then she shook her head and took another hit on the joint.
Nora was already high enough that she let the moment pass. “What’s your girlfriend’s name?” she asked instead.
“Helen,” Emily said. “But I’m probably gonna break up with her when I get back to Boston.”
“Break up with her? Why?”
Emily didn’t say anything for a moment, and Nora watched the joint glow orange, the wisps of smoke trail delicately above her sister’s face. “You know how Julia said at her wedding in her speech that Ted dazzles her or whatever?”
Nora nodded, though she didn’t remember this particular detail about Julia’s wedding. She had turned twenty-one just a few weeks before and had had one too many mixed drinks at the open bar.
“Well,” Emily continued. “Helen doesn’t dazzle me.”
No one had ever dazzled Nora, man or woman, with maybe one exception.
She glanced toward his house now, but it was completely dark.
Nate didn’t appear to be home. Or he was already fast asleep.
And even in her strange amorphous state, she felt grateful he wasn’t sitting in his backyard wondering where the pot smell was coming from.
“Okay, your turn,” Emily said, passing the joint back to her one more time.
“To dazzle you?” Nora asked, eyebrows raised. She inhaled and coughed again, and even though she could feel herself smiling, she vowed she would never smoke anything ever again. She had to protect her lungs, her voice.
“No, I mean tell me a secret,” Emily said.
“I don’t think I’m going back to school in the fall.” Nora blurted it out before she could stop herself.
“What? Why not?” Emily asked.
“I’m moving to New York instead. I want to be on Broadway.”
Emily snickered. “Dad is going to kill you!”
She was not wrong. But it had taken Nora three years of college and processing Grandma Vera’s death to realize that maybe that wasn’t the worst thing in the world.
Maybe it was worse to be living a life someone else wanted for her.
She’d been saving up the rent checks Julia had sent all year, her share of Grandma Vera’s legacy, and maybe that extra bit of security was what she needed to take this leap.
“But you wanting to be on Broadway is hardly a secret,” Emily continued.
“I’ve known that since that visit when Grandma Vera taught you all the songs from Funny Girl.
” She smiled a little at the memory. “The two of you stood here in the yard belting out ‘Don’t Rain on My Parade’ like you were twin goddamned Barbra Streisands. What were you, seven?”
“Eight,” Nora corrected her. “And I still maintain my secret is more of a secret than your secret.”
Emily sighed. “Fine, if we’re trading secrets Dad would kill us for, then mine is I can’t get a job. I’m completely unemployed.”
“Wait, what? What happened to that museum job you mentioned at Julia’s wedding? I thought you’d been working there for months already?”
Emily shook her head. “You misunderstood. And I didn’t correct you.”
“I have a secret too.” Julia’s voice suddenly came from somewhere behind them. Nora turned, and her oldest sister was a shadow on the brick patio just outside the kitchen.
“Shit,” Emily said, and she dropped the joint, grinding it out with the bottom of her flip-flop.
“I know you’re smoking pot,” Julia said. “Did you think I couldn’t smell it with my window open? I’m pretty sure you’ve already given me a contact high.”