Chapter 6 #3
For some reason that struck Nora as ridiculously funny. The thought of Julia, accidentally high! And then Emily started laughing too. “You could’ve just come out here and joined us,” Emily said. “I would’ve shared with you the normal way.”
“I can’t smoke pot!” Julia exclaimed.
“Why not?” Emily asked. “Because you uphold the law?”
“No,” Julia spat back quickly. “No,” she repeated, her voice echoing softer. Then she said it almost no louder than a whisper, so at first Emily and Nora both weren’t sure they’d actually heard her right: “Because I’m pregnant.”
“Shit,” Emily said again, softly.
“A baby?” Nora said after a minute, thinking about how Julia always managed to one-up them at everything, even at this secret-telling. Unemployed. College dropout. None of that beat the fact that Julia was about to be the one thing none of them had ever known or understood: a mother.
Later that night, after the high had worn off, Nora was restless in bed, unable to fall asleep.
Even with the cool ocean air drifting in through her slightly open window, the sounds of the waves in the distance that, as a kid, had lulled her instantly to sleep—none of that put her at ease.
Worry for Julia coursed through her veins, making her heart beat too fast.
Julia was twenty-seven, only six years older than she was. She was much too young to face the one thing Nora had always feared most. Their mom had died of undiagnosed eclampsia having Nora, and she had known her whole life she never wanted that for herself or her sisters.
She and Julia and Emily had discussed it once, in this very house. That summer they met Olivia from Spain on the beach, when they were ten and thirteen and sixteen and were playing Truth or Dare while roasting marshmallows over the firepit.
When Emily chose Truth and Olivia had asked her how many kids she wanted to have, she answered: zero.
Nora and Julia had echoed the same.
“Well, that’s just ridiculous!” Grandma Vera had exclaimed, listening through the open window in the kitchen as she washed the dishes. “Your mother wouldn’t have wanted you to live in fear. At least one of you girls will have to make me a great-grandmother.”
The three of them had looked back and forth between one another, pressed their lips tightly together.
A silent, all-knowing promise passed between them.
It was the one thing they had all always fully agreed upon.
Julia, Emily, and Nora planned to grow up to be adults, women, maybe even wives. None of them ever wanted to be mothers.
But Nora couldn’t remind Julia of this now. It was too late. Julia was already pregnant. Nora’s heart raced on, and she wasn’t sure she’d be able to sleep all night.
Julia was extremely nauseous the next morning, before they even got on the boat with Nate.
It was true, her stomach didn’t do well on boats even on her best day, and this was not close to her best day.
She’d already thrown up once and was trying to quell her nausea by nibbling on a pack of saltines on the porch while she waited for her sisters to finish getting ready.
As she forced a dry cracker down her throat, she eyed the urn on the table.
And she wished Grandma Vera were still here so she could ask her all the things a woman was supposed to ask her mother when she was ten weeks pregnant, twenty-seven, and terrified.
Like, was she ever going to feel normal and not queasy again?
How could birth control that was supposed to be 97 percent effective just…
not work? And, now that she’d gotten herself into this situation, how was the baby ever going to get out of her?
It just didn’t even seem in the slightest bit possible that it could work the way she’d read in all the books.
“Women have been doing it for thousands of years,” she imagined Grandma Vera saying. “And you, my darling, are a goddamn rock star. You’ve got this.” She imagined Grandma Vera would then follow this up with an offer to accompany her to doctor visits for extra support.
But the imagined words didn’t feel real enough, or in the slightest reassuring now.
“Hey, Jules.” She looked up and Nate was standing in front of her.
She’d been focusing so hard on chewing the damn cracker, she hadn’t heard him walk up the porch steps. But now that he was standing so close, she suddenly noticed his smell. Oh my God, his smell. The sandalwood was so strong, she felt the bile rise in her throat, and she tried to swallow it back.
“Where’s the rest of the Trouble Trio?” Nate asked.
She held one hand over her mouth and tried to breathe deeply as she pointed with her other hand toward the house.
“You okay?” he asked. “You look a little green.”
“You know she gets seasick even thinking about boats,” Emily announced, walking out onto the porch.
She was still in her plaid pajama bottoms and wore giant sunglasses.
How much pot had she smoked last night? But suddenly Julia was grateful for Emily’s brashness.
For some reason, she really didn’t want Nate to know she was pregnant. Emily was a good distraction.
“You want me to grab a Dramamine? I think I have some in my house,” Nate offered.
She shook her head. And he put a hand on her shoulder, as if to steady her. But as he moved closer the smell of his aftershave returned and another wave of nausea crested in her stomach.
“I’m here.” Nora suddenly breezed through the door, wearing a white bikini with a sheer cover-up dress over it. “Nate! Oh my God, I haven’t seen you in ages.”
“Nora!” Nate said. “Jesus, you’re all grown up.”
Julia eyed her youngest sister’s perfect body, every inch of it visible through that ridiculous cover-up.
Nora was the shortest of the three of them, but also the curviest, and her large breasts were on full display in this getup.
Did Nora not remember how chilly the Pacific mornings were? She was going to freeze.
As if on cue, she shivered, and Nate grabbed her in a half hug, rubbing her shoulders to warm her up.
Nora shot him a grateful smile. Was she wearing lipstick? And eyeliner?
“Don’t you want to go get a sweatshirt, Nora?” Julia said.
As Emily said, “Can we please get this fucking show on the road?”
Nate stared at Nora just a beat too long before letting go of her, with a look on his face that made something uncomfortable thrum in Julia’s chest. “There’s a blanket on the boat,” Nate finally said. “Shall we?”
“Hold on a second,” Julia said. “I forgot—” But she didn’t finish her sentence. She was already running inside, up the steps.
She barely made it to the upstairs bathroom before she threw up again.
As Julia disappeared into the house, Emily picked up the urn off the porch table. Even once Julia returned and they all walked down the long stretch of beach, got on the tiny sailboat sitting by the edge of the chilly water, Emily was the one who clutched the urn tightly against her chest.
Emily had only been sailing here once before, when she was still in elementary school, the summer before Grandma Vera’s second husband, Grey, the retired navy admiral, died.
They had never met their real grandfather, but Grey loved Grandma Vera so much, they sometimes forgot she had ever been married to anyone else.
He’d rented a boat that summer and insisted on taking them all out.
But the water was choppy. Julia puked over the side.
Tiny Nora was crying in Grandma Vera’s lap.
And Grey had shaken his head, dismayed, and taken Emily to the front of the boat.
It was a rare moment in her childhood, when an adult had paid special attention to her.
Neither the youngest nor the oldest, the prettiest nor the most vocal, Emily had a way of being overlooked amongst her sisters.
But that day, Grey had shown her, and only her, the secret to finding the wind.
He’d even let her turn the till and steer the boat.
It was remembering that specific moment that had made her so devastated when he’d died six months later.
The memory resurfaced now as Nate pushed the boat into the water and then hopped on and took over the till.
The water was remarkably calm today, but the morning was gray and cool, the marine layer not yet quite burned off even though it was already midmorning.
Nora sat shivering, her knees huddled to her chest. Julia looked pale and clung to the edge of the boat.
Emily gently stroked the urn with her hand.
“I hope you’re dancing to Madonna with Grey right now,” she whispered, letting the wind take her words the same way it was taking the sail.
Nate sailed only a little offshore, just far enough, he told them, so any onlookers from the beach couldn’t really see them. He took his hand off the till for a moment to throw a blanket to Nora and she wrapped it around her shoulders.
“Oh God,” Julia said, as it suddenly dawned on her. “We were probably supposed to get a permit for this, weren’t we?”
“You’re not hurting anyone,” Nate said gently.
And Julia pressed her lips tightly together, trying to keep herself from explaining to him that that was not the way the law worked.
“Fuck a permit,” Emily said. “Grandma Vera paid taxes on this island for forty years and she wanted her ashes here.”
Julia frowned deeply, and Nate slipped a stick of gum out of his pocket and handed it to her. “Spearmint,” he said. “It’ll help with the seasickness.”
She held the foil-covered stick in her hand for a moment, wondering if this was okay to chew.
Or if the artificial sweetener would harm the baby.
But her stomach roiled, and she slowly put the gum in her mouth and focused on chewing it.
She would spit it out as soon as her legs were back on dry land.
Nora wrapped herself tighter inside the blanket and she suddenly felt six years old again, like she was the first summer their dad had let the three of them fly out alone to visit Grandma Vera.
And only because Julia was twelve and, as Dad used to say, highly responsible.
Nora, at the age of six (and also now), was not at all responsible.
That was why her teeth were chattering, because she clearly hadn’t dressed properly for this outing, and staring at the urn in Emily’s hands, thinking about the fact that this was all that was left of Grandma Vera, she started to cry softly.
Nora had always hated being the youngest, the smallest, the slowest. She lost every crab race on the beach, she was the only one who’d cried and had to go to the ER that summer of the stingray.
She sometimes had nightmares sleeping at Grandma Vera’s just because she was away from home, and the loud military planes landing just down the island on the base used to scare her.
But Grandma Vera had never made Nora feel small.
She’d given her a hug when she got scared and asked to sing a song with her.
Grandma Vera had been the one who’d first encouraged Nora to sing, who had called her my tiny songbird, a nickname that had felt just as endearing at sixteen as it had at six.
Emily removed the top from the urn, and the three of them huddled in close, each taking a handful to scatter in the water.
And Nora thought, I’m going to sing for you.
And Emily thought, I’m going to find someone who loves me as much as Grey loved you.
And Julia thought, I hope I have a daughter.