chapter seventeen
In San Francisco, the light of day never fell harshly, but mornings were cold and rude all the same. Laurie was out of bed before Mal, who had never seen the inside edge of nine o’ clock. It was a Saturday, and already noon on the East coast, so she called her mother before she could call to complain about Laurie’s daughterly insufficiencies.
“Do you think you’ll visit soon?”
“In the summer,” Laurie promised.
And if she and Mal were still together then, maybe she’d even stay a while. In that house. That Mal had bought for them.
Laurie went into the studio and started to paint, since understanding what had happened last night, or the fact that an actual house on the east coast was apparently waiting for her, wasn’t a real possibility.
Digital art never felt quite real. She couldn’t feel close to a painting she hadn’t struggled with. The tight stretch of dried paint on skin, the smell of it, the complexity and uncertainty of hue and the ache in her wrist—the markers of her love.
It occurred to her that putting up a painting on the wall was rather like getting married, as if by turning her love from a verb into a noun, a possession, she had checked something off a list.
My painting. My wife.
How strange the possessive sounded! Loud and belligerent, not like her at all.
“Good morning,” Mal said. She was dressed, but wrapped up in a blanket. The heating in this house really was awful. “It’s nearly ten-thirty. Shall we get brunch?”
Laurie nodded and started putting away her brushes. “Do you need to call Tara?”
“Already did.” Mal rolled her eyes. “She sent me a stream of sailboat emojis and said she’d go down with the ship.”
Laurie noticed she wasn’t wearing the cocktail dress from last night. “Did you have a change of clothes here?”
Mal hesitated. “Actually, I had several in my backpack. I really was going to Mexico. I just figured I’d stop by the party first.”
“Oh.”
As they headed downstairs, Laurie started feeling uneasy. This could become a pattern. Mal wanting to go somewhere, Laurie inadvertently tying her down. Pinning her to the wall like a painting. Art and people both—how simple to mistake having them for loving them.
Mal’s phone rang.
“It’s Aditi.”
She stepped away to speak to her sister, while Laurie stared at her profile in confusion. She loved Mal. She was as sure of that as she was that she didn’t want to give up her studio so Mal could move back in. She couldn’t tell if that reluctance was self-sabotage.
“I’ll call you back,” Mal said, and turned to Laurie, looking worried. “Aditi convinced my mother to come up to the city today. They want to get brunch with Tara before she goes back to school.”
“We can catch up later.”
“We both go, or neither of us goes.”
“It’s a family thing.”
“Tara made you family when she called you that day.”
When they got to brunch, Tara was scowling. Her face cleared when she saw them. Even Aditi seemed unsurprised to see Laurie, although Aditi’s mother only nodded stiffly.
“I told them you two usually get brunch together,” Tara said carefully.
Oh, right. They’d have arrived to see Mal wasn’t home.
“I don’t see why you need to stay in San Francisco if you’re going to be on your own,” Mal’s mother said to Tara. “You might as well be at home, where we can cook for you, do your laundry.”
“A meal isn’t free when it comes with long faces and lectures,” Tara said.
“Tara!” Aditi said.
“What? It’s true.”
“We just want what’s best for you,” said Tara’s grandmother.
“Do you?” Mal asked suddenly. There was no anger or accusation in her gaze, just open curiosity. “What do you think that is?”
Her mother spluttered, as if the question was ridiculous and the answer obvious.
“No, seriously,” Mal said softly, “I think we all want only the best for each other. We just disagree about what that means.”
“And what do you know about raising a child? Or about what it takes to get three fatherless kids settled?”
Laurie flinched. Mal didn’t react. Instead her brows furrowed, and she took on that calm, managerial voice that Laurie had only ever heard her use at work. “Getting us settled. What does that mean to you?”
“The same thing it means to anyone with a lick of sense. A good job. A house. A marriage and kids.”
Aditi added, “That’s later, though. Right now, it means good grades and good friends, not partying and coming home to a street covered in shit and heroin needles.”
“And if she had these things,” Mal asked, “a house, a job, a marriage and kids, do you think she’d be happy?”
“She’d be safe ,” Aditi said, casting a worried glance at Tara, who was watching the exchange with held breath.
“Safe from what?” Mal asked, with that calm stillness in her voice, but a glance below the table showed Laurie her restless, bouncing knee.
“What kind of a question is that?” Aditi asked. She looked at her nearly empty brunch plate as if it might offer her a reprieve.
“You’ve both said the same things to me a hundred times. My grades were never high enough, my job—”
“That’s because you never tried !” Mal’s mother said. “You could have gone to college at fourteen if you’d bothered.”
“But why ?”
“What do you mean, why? How can you have such gifts and squander them? The rest of the world would kill for a fraction of your talent, and you… you just…”
Mal took a deep breath, and exhaled. “This was never about me, was it? Mom, a 4.0 GPA can’t prevent cancer. There’s nothing we could have done to be safer.”
“That’s not what we’re saying,” Aditi said. “You’re twisting our words.”
“Then explain,” Mal said. Her fingers clenched inside her linen napkin.
Laurie had been silent, unable to speak past the flood of emotion in her chest. Mal’s profile, tense but focused, was so different from the image burned into her memory, of her standing on a deck in Tahoe with her wet hair rolling down her shoulders, whooping with joy into the mountains at finally being free.
She slid her hand over Mal’s leg, quieting the restless twitch there. It wasn’t much, but Mal threw her a grateful look and placed her own hand on top of Laurie’s.
“Maybe we should talk about this later,” Aditi said. “We’re making Laurie uncomfortable.”
Silence fell over the table. Somehow, in an instant, it was her move. She’d only been listening. But if she said nothing, if she conceded to her discomfort and retreated to the bathroom for a bit, this would only drag on forever, each of them insistent and unyielding in their own way, never actually listening to each other.
And this was her family now too.
“I don’t mind,” she said. “There may not be a later time for everyone to talk more. In January, Tara’s going back to college and before that, Mal and I are going to Mexico.”
Mal shot her a look of surprise, but a smile broke out over her face.
“When?” Aditi asked.
“Mexico?” her mother asked. “What for?”
“For a holiday,” Mal said. “Right now, in fact.”
“A holiday ?” her mother shrieked. “The family’s in crisis, Tara’s spiraling out of control, and you’re going to leave and go to Mexico?”
Under the table, Laurie’s fingers threaded through Mal’s and held tight. Mal squeezed back.
“She’s not abandoning me,” Tara said. “She’s giving me the room to show I’ve learned my lesson.”
Laurie had never heard her tone sound quite like that— respectful and reserved. She reminded herself to tell Mal, later, how good she was with Tara. That she shouldn’t listen to all those who said she was screwing this up. Not that she would, but maybe it was time Laurie pulled her weight and tried anyway. She ran her thumb soothingly along the back of Mal’s hand.
“This is nothing against you, personally, Laurie,” Aditi said hastily. “We’re just trying to understand.”
“What’s to understand?” her mother asked, sneering at Mal. “You’re just like your father. When things get hard, you run. You don’t care who you hurt or leave behind.”
That, finally, made Mal flinch. Her fingers started to pull away.
“That’s not true,” Laurie said, tightening her grip.
Everyone’s eyes turned to her, but she couldn’t stay silent anymore. “She doesn’t have to deal with any of this, but she does. I’ve never met anyone as generous, as forgiving, as patient. So many people have tried to hurt her or cut her down, but she ignores them and doesn’t hold a grudge. And any time anyone needs her, she drops everything to be with them.”
She wanted to tell them that even last night, Mal had been so hurt by the distance Laurie had put between them, but she’d put aside all her grievances and come to the party just for her. And this morning, Laurie could tell she wasn’t settled— they weren’t settled—but she’d postponed Mexico and come to this painful brunch so Tara wouldn’t be alone.
“You all say you care,” Tara added in a small voice, “but Mal’s the one researching how to seal or expunge my record. Dad’s not even answering my calls.”
“He’s just hurt,” Aditi said.
“And his feelings matter more than Tara’s future?” Mal asked. Again, she’d somehow managed to ask without accusation, as if it were a genuine question upon which she wished instruction.
“No, I just meant if you came home, if he saw that you needed him—”
“—but I don’t though,” Tara said.
“Tara, you can’t say that,” Aditi said. “You always need family.”
“Yes, and my family came through for me when I needed them,” Tara said, looking at Mal and Laurie with open, unreserved affection.
“Laurie’s been a good friend,” Mal’s mother conceded, sounding as if it took her a lot to do so, “but family is something else. It’s—”
“—Unconditional?” Tara asked, chin jutting out in challenge.
“Supportive,” Mal added, squeezing her hand.
“Forgiving,” Aditi said, and Laurie stared at her in surprise.
“Unwavering,” Laurie whispered, so only Mal could hear her.
Mal’s mother looked around the table, then more closely at the two of them. Her eyes widened and she leaned back with a startled cry. “Wait a minute. You’re not… you two aren’t…”
Laurie turned to Mal, and answered the question in her eyes with a smile.
Mal lifted their joined hands from underneath the table and placed them in full view of everyone.
“We are,” she said, simply.
Tara squealed so loudly she sent a knife to the floor, and then started shouting all sorts of things— I knew it, it’s about time, you two are idiots —but Laurie wasn’t listening.
Until Mal had said it, Laurie hadn’t realized how much she’d needed to hear it, and how perfect the answer was.
We are .
She turned to Mal’s mother, hoping she wouldn’t see too much condemnation there. Strangely, there wasn’t any. There was terror though, and a lot of it. The older woman cast her eyes around the restaurant hurriedly, as if to see who might be watching, listening, whispering.
It was like looking in a funhouse mirror, if she’d let fear and shame become her inheritance, if she hadn’t walked into the light.
“It’s all right,” she told her. “We’re safe.”
“We should celebrate,” Tara said. “Maybe get a bottle of champagne?” All heads turned to her. “For you, not for me !”
“We can get smoothies ,” Aditi said sternly.
“Smoothies are fine too.” Tara turned to them. “So, are you going to get married?”
“Tara!” Aditi said.
“Well, I asked and she said no, and it’s not legal in California anyway,” Mal said.
“It will be,” Tara said firmly. “And she only said no because your proposal was terrible.”
“Let’s maybe leave them to tell us their plans when they’re ready?” Aditi asked, her throat straining with embarrassment.
“But they have to have a big wedding,” Mal’s mother said suddenly. When they all stared at her, she shrugged. “What’s done is done. I don’t care who you marry, but you have to get married.”
Mal groaned. “Baby steps.”
“You really are like him, you know,” her mother said. “Once you get an idea in your mind, nothing can stop you.”
“Speaking of which,” Laurie said, seeing the opening, “Don’t we have somewhere to be?”
Mal shot her a grateful look. They said goodbye to the others, and made sure Tara had her spare keys and enough cash for the cleaners. Laurie stepped aside and let her boss know she’d be out through the end of the year, although he wasn’t planning to come to work after Tuesday either anyway.
“You did this, you know,” Aditi said, coming up to her.
“Did what?”
“Oh, sorry, I meant that in a good way. Mal’s always lived in her own world. When she was little, we couldn’t even get her to talk to guests or stop reading at dinner. Mom always thought it meant she didn’t care about people. But you’ve anchored her.”
Laurie frowned. “I hope not.”
“It’s a good thing,” Aditi said. “She wants both to be in the world but free of it. To understand people but not be beholden to them. To soar away and explore, but always be able to come back home on her own terms.” She surprised Laurie with a warm, strong hug. “You give her that.”
Mal and Laurie walked to the Enterprise center and got in the little Chevy she’d booked, since a Zipcar couldn’t be taken across the border.
“Are you sure about this?” Mal asked. “I could also just drop you off at home if you’ve changed your mind. And don’t you need to pack?”
“My bag’s ready. We could also just buy anything we need along the way.”
“We could.”
Mal grinned and put the car into gear. Within an hour they were on the freeway. Soon, they left behind the endless glass and silicon towers for the soft, fuzzy hills near San Jose.
“This trip,” Mal said hesitantly, “I decided I had to go because of a dream I had.”
“Okay.” She didn’t need to justify herself, but Laurie was happy to listen.
“Everyone’s souls were candles, and they were guarding their candles in shrines and going to work without them. If you wanted to see someone’s soul, they’d put you through a series of trials. Except my soul wasn’t a candle.”
“Oh?”
“It was a laser. People were attracted to it from a distance, but if they got close they either ran away scared or got burned to cinders.”
“Mal,” she sighed.
“You’re the only one who operates on my frequency. With everyone else, I have to turn it down.”
Laurie slid her hand into Mal’s and let her tears roll down uninterrupted. There was no reason to hide them. There never would be again.
They passed Monterey, where Laurie had organized strategy meetings through which engineers and venture capitalists would somehow stay focused despite the whales and dolphins in the background, and the bay at Moss Landing where she’d run a dozen team-building kayaking trips. It felt good to leave it all behind, to cut off all the umbilical cords and make space for something new.
Something now .
She felt it then, the same hum of the road that had sent both of them and so many others to this golden coast in search of magic and insight, the certainty that this was all there was to home in America, to yield to the gut-lurch of the accelerator and lean forward into the next crazy venture beneath this illimitable sky.