“Water?” She looks over at me. “I have sparkling. Wine?”
It takes everything for me not to roll my eyes. I feel as though my sister’s masquerading as a dynamic careerlady from a Hallmark movie. I want her to cut the shit immediately and tell me what’s going on.
“Yeah, I’ll take a glass of wine.” Mostly I want to see what happens when I ask for one. We’ve never had a drink together.
That’s when I remember her ID in my wallet. Fuck. This is a trap.
I walk farther into her apartment, into a morass of tasteful beige and oatmeal furniture. The entire back of her apartment is glass, and her view is spectacular.
“Red or white?” she asks.
“June,” I deadpan. “It could be fucking blue. I don’t care.” Across the way, in an office building, I watch two women separated by a cubicle type into black monitors. I wonder if they’re friends. Or if they’re locked in an endurance contest to see who leaves first. I wish I had binoculars.
I never get to be this high up, and it’s wild how June’s New York has nothing to do with mine. Sort of how some people’s news is the opposite of yours or how their phone configurations are alien even if the icons are the same. Part of me is proud that she gets to have all this—knowing that we come from the same place and that she’s earned it. Another part of me wonders if she’s secretly Republican.
I take a seat on her tufted beige couch, staring at the matching love seat. I’ve never met anyone in New York whose living room can accommodate two sofas.
She hands me a glass of white wine. “The red’s nicer,” she says.
We both look at it. I can never tell if she’s fucking with me.
“I couldn’t find the bottle opener,” she explains, and sits down across from me. I feel like I’m in therapy.
I turn the wineglass in my hand. I’m tempted to snap the delicate stem in my fingers. If she brings out a cheese board and throws on smooth jazz as the lights dim, I’ll bolt.
“Thanks,” I tell her, taking a sip. It tastes like grass. “Your place is nice. That’s how I guess you know you’ve made it, right? When nothing’s IKEA.”
“Yeah,” she says, with an anemic little chuckle. “Thanks. And you’re still in…？”
“Windsor Terrace.”
“Is that Queens?” I watch her for any hint of a joke.
“Brooklyn.”
June tilts her head. “Right, you live out by that cemetery.”
“It’s closer to the park.” She’s definitely spying on me. I’ve never told her where I moved to. I couldn’t risk her telling Mom I slept near corpses. I take another sip of wine. “We have a park in Brooklyn, you know. It’s older than Central Park. Plus, they didn’t raze a Black-owned neighborhood to build ours.”
June knows everything there is to know about a handful of subjects. On everything else, she’s wildly indifferent. For the longest time June said “intensive purposes” and not intents and purposes, claiming I was the asshole for correcting her because everybody knew what she meant.
“So, you’re good?” she asks. I’ll give her two more questions before I break.
“Yeah,” I tell her. “Good. Work’s good. School’s good.”
“Mom was saying how last semester—”
“Last semester was last semester,” I interrupt. So that’s what this is. Mom’s guilted her into checking up on me. Fucking narc. Firstborns are the goddamned worst. “This year’s better. There was this one teacher, Hastings, total pervert—he really had it in for me. And everyone who was on my group project was an absolute nutcase. Flakes and drug addicts basically. This semester’s…” I wave her off.
“I hated group projects,” says June sportingly. “Always ended up doing everything on my own.” She takes a sip from her water glass. I briefly wonder if she’s pregnant.
Fuck. That would be so weird.
“Yeah.” I sit up straighter and set my wine down on the broad, mirrored coffee table. “And my job’s going well,” I continue. “Honestly, it’s much better this year. It’s fine.” I hate how defensive I sound. Having a genius for an older sister, who scored a full ride to Columbia, has not been optimal for my professional self-esteem. “Look”—I cross my arms—“it’s fine. Tell Mom to calm down.”
June winces and shoots me the stink eye. See, there. That’s the June I know. “Who said anything about Mom? I’m the one asking. You’re smart when you focus. I’m tired of people giving you a pass because you’re emotional.”
I stare at her long and hard. She’s like Mom when it comes to mental health stuff. June thinks anxiety is for pussies. That you can banish it with intestinal fortitude. According to her, depression is laziness that can be fixed by high-intensity interval training and caffeine.
“What do you want, June?”
She sits up and leans in. I lean in too. Monkeying her.
“I’m sick,” she says.
“Yeah, well, what kind of sick?”
“I have cancer.”
chapter 4
My mouth snaps shut. I vaguely sense that I’m smiling. It’s a horrible tic. A placid little placeholder while my brain catches up. “What?”
My scalp prickles. Everything else is numb.
Cancer.
My sister is going to die.
I wonder if in a few years this will have been the worst thing that’s ever happened to me. Or if things get worse. If this moment defines me as an adult, I need to know right now by how much. My sister died, I imagine myself saying. My sister died. Well, my sister died. I wonder if a sister dying is worse than a mother dying. I’m deciding it is.
I imagine the viewing. I’m dressed in a vintage Dior suit I don’t own. My sister’s gleaming casket on the pulpit above us, me turning to Mom, her unseeing face wild with grief as Korean hymns swell around us, the flower-perfumed air coating my throat.
Fuck.
My therapist, Gina Lombardi, says I need to name five things I can see, feel, and hear when I catch myself losing it.
My lungs expand with as much air as I can hold.
I tap the cool glass in my hand with a nail.
Black socks against cream carpet.
Fuck.
I make it as far as my sister’s lap. Her hands are gathered there. My gaze retreats, skittering to the window behind her.
Christ, this is unbearable.
I yank my attention and force it to land on her face. I’m trying not to blink. I’m momentarily terrified that I might yawn.
“I might have cancer,” she says crisply. “I’m pretty sure I have cancer.” My sister nods several times with grim finality. As if it’s settled. As if she decides what’s cancer. “I have cancer,” she tries again. “I just don’t know how much.”
“What?” I rise to my feet. She stands too.
I pound the rest of the wine, tilting my head way back. “So, do you have cancer or not?” I can’t feel my arms.
“Well,” she says. “We’re still hoping it’s something else. Like endo or PCOS.”
I don’t know what any of these words mean or who “we” refers to.