Chapter 14 #2
Nora vacillated from joy to seething with rage in the twenty minutes since talking to her sisters.
She considered for a moment calling Dad, inviting him to opening night.
But she remembered what a downer he’d been after he’d come to see her in Beauty and the Beast, and she didn’t want him to dim what was left of her excitement.
She worried he would focus on the off-off part of her news and not on the fact that she’d actually gotten a starring role in a very hip and inventive take on Shakespeare.
And besides, she told herself, it didn’t matter. It didn’t matter if no one came to support her. She would make her dreams come true all on her own.
Nora was still telling herself this by opening night a month later.
It became something like a chant as she repeated it in her head, slowly, rhythmically.
Even after the first performance ended to a standing ovation and the rest of the cast wandered outside to greet family members who gave them hugs and flowers.
Even then. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter.
She snuck out of the back entrance, suddenly wanting to avoid everyone.
She rushed out without removing her stage makeup and was eager to get home to wash her face and undo her hair from the braided buns.
It was a chilly night for May, and rainy on top of that.
She pulled up the hood of her raincoat and let herself out onto the cool, wet sidewalk.
And then as she walked back toward the front of the theater to catch her train, she suddenly saw a woman walking out the front exit who looked remarkably like Julia.
Had Julia come to surprise her last-minute?
Nora sloshed through a puddle to catch up to her, but when she touched the woman on the arm the woman turned her head, and it was clear, up close, that she was much too old to be Julia.
Maybe she bore a small resemblance, but she had wrinkles around her eyes and her mouth that Julia wouldn’t have for at least twenty more years.
“I’m sorry,” Nora said. “I thought you were—”
“Nora?” The woman said her name softly.
“How do you… know my name?” Nora suddenly felt chilled from the rain and she shivered.
The woman stared at her for a moment. Then she held up her program from the show. “I should be more polite—Ms. May. I read it in your bio. You were really great up there. You should be proud.”
Nora thanked her and slowly let go of her arm.
And then the woman turned and walked away before Nora could ask her anything else, before Nora could say the crazy thought that was running through her head: If their mother were alive, she imagined she would look just like this woman.
Sound just like this woman. Show up for Nora on opening night of an off-off-Broadway play, even if no one else in her family would.
But of course, that was ridiculous. Because her mother had been dead for over twenty-six years. Exactly the same amount of time that Nora had been alive.
Still, Nora actually thought about saying something to Emily and Julia about this strange encounter when they all arrived in Coronado a few weeks later.
She had it there on the tip of her tongue as she got out of the taxi, that there was a woman who’d come to her show who, if she hadn’t known better…
if she hadn’t known better, she might have thought was their mother.
But Nora was the last sister to arrive, and the moment she walked in the door, Julia held out a schedule.
“You’re late!” she exclaimed, like it was Nora’s fault the flight had landed with an almost two-hour delay.
She shoved the schedule into Nora’s free hand before she had even let go of her suitcase.
Nora glanced at it, and they appeared to have already missed the first few line items on Julia’s agenda:
Ice cream cones from MooTime.
Walk on the beach.
Dinner reservation at the Brigantine at 6.
S’mores at 7:30.
(Dammit, Nora had forgotten to bring the graham crackers this year—she’d have to stop at Vons and buy some.)
“If you hurry, we can still make our dinner reservation,” Julia said, glancing nervously at her watch. Nora fought back the urge to tell her that the world wasn’t going to end if they missed it.
“I’m starving,” Emily grumbled. “Nora, put your stuff upstairs and let’s go.”
Nora swallowed back the words that she had wanted to say to them for weeks. “Just let me change really quick,” she said instead.
“Do you ever think about Mom?” Nora asked Julia later that week.
The morning clouds had burnt off early, by nine, the sky was a brilliant blue, and Julia had even agreed to cross off the day trip to the San Diego Zoo from her schedule in favor of pulling the sand chairs and umbrella out of the small shed and lugging them down to the edge of the water.
Julia and Nora sat there now, toes a safe distance from the cool stingray-laden Pacific, staring out at the sparkling crested blue. Nora was sipping a mimosa she’d made up at the house, and Emily had wandered off down the beach alone for a walk with hers. Julia sipped just orange juice.
“What?” Julia asked, like she had misunderstood Nora’s question over the rush of the tide. Though, she had heard Nora perfectly well. She just needed a minute to form an answer. A trick from her attorney days. Ask them to repeat the question while you worked on formulating the best thing to say.
“Mom,” Nora repeated. “Do you ever think about her?”
“Well…” Julia still floundered and tried to ignore the slight cramping in her abdomen that had been there off and on since she’d woken up. “I mean, of course, I think about her sometimes. I’m sure we all do.”
Nora nodded. “But do you think about what she might be like now? You know, if she were still alive.”
Julia shook her head. “Why would you ask that?”
Nora shrugged. “No reason, really. It’s just… I wonder what Mom would have thought about my show. Like if she would have come up to me afterward and told me she was proud or something?”
Shoot. Her show. Julia had been in such a trance of hope and wonder and worry, of prenatal vitamins and fretting over every small pang, that she had forgotten about Nora’s show after Nora had called to invite her.
She should’ve at least sent flowers or a fruit basket or called her after opening night or something.
“She would’ve definitely been proud,” Julia said emphatically now.
“We’re all proud of you, Nora. I was really sad to miss this one. I’ll for sure catch your next one.”
“Sad to miss what?” Emily asked, plopping back down into her sand chair and setting her empty Solo cup down in the sand.
“Nora’s show,” Julia said.
“Yeah, I was too.” Emily pulled her sunglasses down and put her head back against the chair like she was about to take a nap.
“I mean it,” Julia said, realizing it made her sound even more disingenuous to say that.
She wanted to tell Nora and Emily right then, why she had been so spacey and distant, why the last two years had seemingly slipped away from her, outside of her.
But then she felt that small cramp in her stomach again, and she bit her lip.
She was scheduled for a twelve-week ultrasound next week.
She would wait and call them both with the news then, and she would explain everything.
“And not that either of you asked yet,” Emily said. “But my new job seems really great.”
Shoot. Julia had forgotten about that too. Though at least she’d remembered to send a card for Em’s graduation from grad school. And she’d replied all to the email Dad had sent with pictures from the ceremony saying how great Emily looked in her cap and gown.
“That’s really awesome, Em.” Nora picked up her Solo cup of mimosa and held it up in a toast now. “To your new job,” she said.
“And to our little baby sister becoming a bigger star,” Emily added, raising her own empty cup to tap Nora’s.
Julia picked up her cup of orange juice and tapped it gently against each of her sisters’. “And to May sisters and many more May weeks in Coronado,” she said. In her head, she silently added: And to the new niece or nephew I’ll introduce you to by this time next year.
Julia’s flight was the last to leave this year, and so the house was already quiet and still when she felt that awful familiar trickle as she stood from the breakfast table.
She ran to the powder room, hoping against all hope that she had mistaken the sensation for something else.
An accidental spill of water from God knows where, or milk from her cereal.
Or that it was her imagination, that it wasn’t happening. It couldn’t be happening.
But as she sat down on the toilet she heard, and felt, the rush of liquid, and when she looked down, the toilet water was completely red, and she heard herself let out a small scream that sounded like it came from somewhere else. Somewhere outside of her. Shrill and distant and ethereal.
This can’t be happening again. Here. Now. What about the sparrow?
She knew she needed to go to the hospital, but her sisters were already gone. Ted was thousands of miles away. She was all alone. In this house, in this realization about what was happening to her body. Again.
She tried to stand and was struck with a wave of dizziness. Then, another rush of blood, into the toilet water. She hadn’t bled this much the other times. Something was very wrong. How was she even going to get out of this bathroom, much less to the hospital alone?
Her mind felt foggy, but in some distant space in her head, she had the thought that if she stayed here, bleeding like this, she might die. But what was she supposed to do?
Get to the phone. Call an ambulance.
The window next to the toilet was half-open, letting in the damp morning air, and then she heard the sudden squawk of a seagull.