Watch Us Shine

Contents Cover Title Page Dedication Contents Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Epilogue Acknowledgments About the Author Also by Marisa de los Santos Copyright About the Publisher iii v 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234 235 236 237 238 239 240 241 242 243 244 245 246 247 248 249 250 251 252 253 254 255 256 257 258 259 260 261 262 263 264 265 266 267 268 269 270 271 272 273 274 275 276 277 278 279 280 281 282 283 284 285 286 287 288 289 290 291 292 293 294 295 296 297 298 ii iv Guide Cover Contents Chapter 1 Dedication For Helen and Tim Boulos, with love and gratitude Chapter 1 Cornelia My mother is a garden. My father is a street overlaid with gold on that day in fall when all the ginkgoes drop their leaves at once. My husband, Teo, is a salt marsh soaked in dawn and the Blue Ridge from a distance and our backyard and the star-riddled night sky in the desert. My stepson, Dev, is a shining creek running through woods. My friend Viviana is a rooftop museum café. Her daughter, my almost daughter, Clare, is a meadow: bee balm–starred, fringed with goldenrod, milkweed floss skirting the grass tips like ghosts. My sister, Ollie, is a laboratory, gleaming. My brothers are both beaches in July. My friend Piper is a kitchen, immaculate, with white cabinets, white marble countertops, and oversize appliances that beam like the moon. My children. Oh, my children. Rose and Simon. My children are everywhere I am or have ever been or have ever dreamed of going. When I was a kid, I assumed everyone’s brain did this nifty trick: conflating people with places. And then in fourth grade, in the middle of class, in a preamble to answering God-only-knows-what question, I piped up, “You know how people are places and when you’re with them, it’s like you’re in the place or, you know, you go to the place and the place is them?” and then paused before continuing to look expectantly at my fellow nine-year-olds only to find that they did not, in fact, know and could not even imagine, and thus learned that the people/place thing is my own little weirdness. Like most of my weirdnesses, I can’t help it. It’s reflexive, immediate, more synesthesia than simile. When I hear my brother’s name “Cam,” I picture his face, yes, hear his big, sunburst laugh laughing, usually at me, but also, a little window in my brain opens out on yellow sand blooming with umbrellas; white lifeguard stands; dipping, looping kites; the ocean green as a bottle. My mother is a garden. A mild, Upper South garden where butterflies clap their wings in the lavender. You can picture it; I know you can. Clouds of asters. Riots of roses. Shaggy peonies staked into perfect posture. Espaliered magnolia against the garage wall. Delphinium spires, the blue of which . . . well, you know that blue, don’t you?—the one that makes you want to climb inside it and live out all your days. In the garden that is my mother, there is always a trellis strung with morning glories. There is always a mockingbird in a tree. What my mother, Ellie Brown, is not, not in the slightest bit, is a place where you could plant your boots on snow crust or a frozen lake, tip your head—in its tasseled and probably also ear-flapped hat—back, and watch the northern lights. I am not entirely sure where those places are, except for very far away. Iceland? Finland? Lapland? I’m not even sure if the northern lights are something you watch or merely look at: Do they waver and ripple or just stand still and shine? But I do know that she has nothing to do with any of it, with snowfields or ice floes, with fjords or reindeer or auroras, with any place where people believe in elves. In the garden that is my mother, there are four equal, equally undramatic seasons. And I can see how you might think this all sounds a tad crazy, but I swear if you met her, within five minutes of meeting her, two minutes, you’d know exactly what I mean. But there she was, in her hospital bed in the rehab center, just out of a physical therapy session, with her spindly hands—never had I thought of them