“Oh,” she says, waving my attention away. “It’s not even that weird. I just can’t believe I was in there for an hour, because I don’t remember anything she said. I feel like I just watched her mouth move for sixty minutes.”
I tug on my lip. My nose fills in anticipation of tears. I don’t know what to do. Or what to say. I feel like leaving immediately, calling Ivy and getting drunk. But I also know that people who “do the work” would stick around. I wish I wanted to.
She shuffles over to the couch. I make myself follow her.
“I feel so dumb that I didn’t bring a notepad.” She gives her head a slight shake. “Once the doctor left, the nurse told me everything over again, but I don’t know if I retained much of that, either.” Her eyes track back and forth as if she’s scanning her memory. “I should have voice memo’d it.”
This doesn’t sound anything like my sister. My coding math-brain sister. I hate it.
“Jesus, June.” My voice cracks on her name. “I told you I’d come.”
She kisses her teeth. “Whatever, I’ll record it next time.”
“When’s the MRI?”
“Next week.”
“I’m coming.”
She shakes her head. “It’s an MRI. I just lie there.”
“Well, I’ll sit there.”
“That’s the other weird part,” she says with a faraway expression. “There was this pregnant woman in the waiting area. She was huge. And she was Asian. But with bangs. It felt like some kind of fucked-up psychology experiment.”
I glance down at her coffee table. The rug underneath needs vacuuming. I hear her sniff. We’re not big criers in our house. Once, a long time ago, Dad burst into tears, and June and I just backed away from him as if he were plutonium. We couldn’t even make eye contact with each other for the rest of the day.
The silence hangs horribly between us.
“Do you want to watch Gilmore Girls?” I ask.
“Yeah, okay,” she says. June always wants to watch Gilmore Girls.
I make her start on season two, when Jess appears. June likes Dean, which is all you really need to know about her even though I’m a Logan apologist, which makes me emotionally unwell. It’s weird—we’ve only ever watched from season two to six.
When we were kids, we’d watch Gilmore Girls and Friends on a loop. Dad bought a TV/DVD combo player on sale from Costco, and we’d made him buy the box sets because we didn’t have cable. Everything we owned was from Costco. It’s where June’s movie soundtrack obsession started. Mom bought her the Cruel Intentions soundtrack, and we listened to that on a loop for a year.
“I can’t believe she doesn’t just go with him,” I muse when Jess tries to get Rory to follow him out the window.
“I can’t believe the little poser steals Lorelai’s beer when Luke saved his homeless ass,” says June pointedly.
We both love Paris. Total personality disorder.
I don’t even check my phone until Dave leaves Lane because Adam Brody’s turncoat ass went to The O.C.
Patrick’s texted me back. It’s a string of emoji.
Korean flag.
British flag.
Highway.
Cactus.
Palm tree.
Camera.
Laptop guy.
Money flying away.
The little dude bowing or doing push-ups.
Then he goes: I’m shit at brevity. And emoji. I can give you a long synopsis if you’d like.
I try to wait until morning to respond. That way he’ll know that I read it too, that fucker. But I break.
Use your words, I tell him.
chapter 16
Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck. I can’t believe Patrick went to Yale.
Also, Patrick is not only the type of guy to leave read receipts on, he texts bricks. Huge walls of texts. Sermons.
I lived in Seoul, he’s written, when I check my phone the next morning. Moved to London for a bit. Went to art school in Cali. Straight to Yale for my MFA. Moved here because I’ve always wanted to be here. It’s everything I thought it would be and nothing like what I’d expected. Walking around with music on feels like I’m living inside a movie. What about you?
It’s stupid how unprepared I am to have the question turned around on me.
All day in class, I think about what to write.
I painstakingly transcribe the text on notes, typing and deleting.
My roommates kicked me out, I imagine myself telling him. Then I ran out on my other roommate who’s also my fake boyfriend and an unrepentant skeez. I only graduated high school by hate-studying because I couldn’t bear to see any of those people ever again. I’m living with my sister because she feels sorry for me, when she’s the one who deserves compassion. Because: postscript, she’s dying. My sister died of cancer, Patrick. My sister.
The question sets me on edge. I can’t show the work. I don’t know what I’ve done. I barely know where I’ve been. The next day, during my shift at the store, I almost have a meltdown behind the register. A long-necked, older redheaded woman tried to use an online gift card for an in-store purchase. “I don’t have a computer,” she says in a high-pitched voice, bobbing her head for emphasis. Six people suddenly materialize in the line behind her. “My late-husband, Morty, gave it to me,” she says. There’s something cartoon ostrichy about her that I can’t shake. “Why would you sell a real-life, physical card if it’s not for the material world? Why are you making life so hard?”
“I’m sorry,” I tell her over and over. “I don’t know why life’s so hard.”
“Want to get dinner or a drink or something?” Mari asks me just before eight. “Either Mercury’s in reggaeton or it’s a full moon. Everyone’s being a pill today.”
I shoulder my backpack. Not going straight home to June’s storminess is enormously appealing, but I can’t leave her alone. Over the past few nights, there were moments that I got up to watch her sleep. To make sure nothing awful is happening on my watch. I need to stop googling the symptoms I’m observing—irritability, fatigue, forgetfulness—but I don’t know what else to do when she can’t retain what her oncologists are saying.
“I have homework,” I tell Mari, swiveling around to show her my book bag. It’s partly true. On top of everything else, I’m way overdue on sending Patrick thirty words about my existential purpose.
I love what he said about feeling like he’s in a movie when he’s in the city. This pierces me to the core. It’s why I want my streets scored to music with no words, because the lyrics get in the way of the faces. It’s part of why I can’t write him back. I don’t know how to speak honestly without sounding corny.
I want to say how the grizzly dude in the flak jacket selling political buttons is why I love Union Square.
Or that Cruella gives meaning to Seventh and Eighth Avenues.
When I recognize people, it lets me hope that maybe they recognize me, too.
Over the next few days June and I ease into a routine where she slinks off for appointments as I mince around, physically collapsing into myself, cringing about the imposition of leeching off her resources. I have no idea what she’s told her office but she’s suddenly around at all hours, watching me. Every morning I spring off her couch to shove the pillow into my suitcase, folding up the blanket as small as it will go. To earn my keep, I cook and clean. I break down cardboard from a confusing onslaught of disparate Amazon Prime, interspersed with daily assaults on my already porous self-esteem.