I miss my sister, I realize. I feel cheated out of the past four years. In the span of time we were becoming adults and I had so many questions, we barely spoke. I return everything, put on eyeliner, and head back into her kitchen to open her fridge.
I know a pathology when I see one. June’s always been a slob, but these are multiple cries for help. I drag her trashcan close and throw out everything I’d set my sights on last night. I continue snooping in the kitchen. Every cabinet is filled with random garbage. The shelf beside the stove, the one where I’d keep spices, features a packing-tape gun, a roll of toilet paper, and a tennis ball.
The ball reminds me of the first guy I hooked up with in New York. I knew it was damaged that I slept with three random guys in barely a week when I arrived, which is why I don’t think about it. He wore Gucci moccasins, the ones with the fur, and had a single mattress on the floor of his room. The only other objects were a flat-screen TV and a candy-colored tangle of video game controllers. He had zero toilet paper, and as far as I could tell he washed his hair with bar soap, but he owned a brand-new tennis ball in the cabinet under the sink. I have no idea why.
I squeeze June’s tennis ball.
I pad into her bedroom. It’s sun-drenched and girlie. Tall, high, huge bed with white sheets and a pale-lilac reading chair in the corner. The closets cover the entire wall beside the bed. The mirrored panels remind me of my mom’s closet, but June’s are smudged with fingerprints. When I slide it open, there’s a handful of suits in dry-cleaner bags, an overflowing laundry hamper, and a shelf with stacked T-shirts. One of them, a tie-dyed Lord of the Rings tee, I recognize. When June first left for college, I was constantly hiding her stuff under my mattress to rescue them from Mom’s church donation pile. On her visits home, I’d wordlessly stow them in her suitcase before she left. I draw the heathered cotton tee to my nose and sniff deeply, expecting to invoke our old house, June’s old Clinique perfume, anything, but it smells of laundry detergent.
In her living room there’s a credenza below her TV. Inside is a row of encyclopedias. I look around to confirm—there are no other books in the house.
I stoop down to pull one out. Thankfully, they’re not conjoined decoy book spines that are featured as an aesthetic choice in the homes of asshole people. The navy hardback’s dusty as hell. I flip to a random page.
“Fernweh. Noun. Origin: German. Translated as wanderlust but more literally, far woe. Or, far pain. Longing for a distant place. Could be characterized as a homesickness for somewhere you’ve never been before.”
I’m struck by how I feel this way about New York even though I’m here.
Back in the kitchen, I fling open another cabinet door at random. Inside is a single wineglass. Beside it the wine key I brought. I open every cupboard and the dishwasher to verify what I feel I already know. That the wineglass she offered me was the only one she owns. There’s something so distinctly broken about this that it squelches a muscle deep in my body.
I check my phone. If I leave now, and run, I’ll be on time to class. Instead of putting my shoes on, I sit on the floor and text Patrick.
Last 10 yrs
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chapter 15
Oh my God. What did I ever do to him? Honestly, what kind of psychopath sets read receipts on? I’m scandalized and confused. I’m running up to Twenty-Eighth, the wind flying in my hair, zigzagging through pedestrians, hands jammed in my pockets. It’s cold. Freezing. I don’t remember the weather turning at all. I feel sort of high. Is Patrick rude? Deranged? Did he do an OS update and something went weird? Jesus, forget it.
Cancel Patrick. What a weirdo.
I’m in a flopsweat when I take my seat in Sociology. The fog at the small of my back dampens the waistband of my sweats. I look around furtively. I’m convinced people are watching me, judging me for my breathlessness, thinking I’m out of shape. The room is hushed. I’m in a row toward the back, but with the stadium seating, I can see kids going over their notes. I check my gCal. There’s a quiz.
I flip open my notebook. The reading was on scatterplots and distribution, basically how to interpret data sets and deduce correlations. The lecture was depressing yet faintly reassuring. It was about how humans compulsively categorize information because we need the illusion of control. Sorting scary, unfathomable variables like infant mortality rates by relating them to economics makes us feel safer. That if we can predict it or draw a little line, we’ll be protected from, at the very least, feeling stupid.
It’s why randomness is unacceptable. Why organized religion is a salve. It’s far more palatable to think of a divine order. Why conspiracies are easier to stomach over psychopaths making a rash decision that alters the course of history.
But then you have people who seem to know what they’re doing at all times. My favorite thing about June is that she mows through life with purpose. To me, nothing she does seems random. And when I’m within her reality distortion field, I feel like I know what I’m supposed to do too.
I’m only in New York because of June.
Ever since I can remember fashion’s the only way I can organize facts. I know when World War II ended, because Dior’s New Look was two years after. And I have a photographic memory for Marc Jacobs’s 1993 grunge collection for Perry Ellis, including how it got him canned. Ask me anything about why the Antwerp Six are so influential, and how I’m obsessed with its most elusive and iconoclastic member, Marina Yee, not solely because she’s Asian.
Even still, it was June who kept sending college catalogs to the house, addressed to me with no note, since we weren’t technically speaking.
June who filled out the paperwork for tuition assistance with her home address so I could qualify as in-state.
June also partially answered the application essay of how technology and media had affected my life.
But I couldn’t let someone who only listens to movie soundtracks speak for me entirely.
I responded to the other essay prompt, the one she’d never be able to answer, the one about art and culture. I wrote about Wong Kar-wai’s In the Mood for Love. It was the first movie I’d ever seen without any white people that was part of the Criterion Collection. It was that or the lesser-known movie Hyo, a word that non-Koreans can barely pronounce, a term that means “duty” or “filial piety,” this super-slavish devotion to doing well by your forebears, to do your parents’ bidding, often at the cost of your own dreams.
Everybody condemned the Danny Song casting. He’d just shot a superhero movie and critics presumed he’d be ill-suited for a micro-budget film about a Korean brother and sister in Oklahoma trying to keep their Chinese restaurant afloat after their parents are killed in a car accident. It had a 100 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes, which stunned everyone. It was produced, directed, and distributed by Korean-Americans and felt so distinctly Korean-American that it had never occurred to me that anyone else would relate to it. When I watched it, I knew I had to get out of Texas.
I’d considered applying to the design program. I’d gone as far as creating the mood boards, sketches, and sewn the garment projects but chickened out at the last minute. The jacket I’d made fell lumpily across my chest since I didn’t have a dress form and the cheap, chintzy fabric I’d ordered was all wrong.
I got in without declaring a field of study and it felt like a miracle. When I found out, by myself, after school, screaming and jumping in that hot, sticky house, I picked up the phone to tell June. But I chickened out on that as well.
I overheard Mom telling her on the phone a few weeks later. I closed the door to my room, face burning. But the next time June was home, I left the bath towel for her on the bed, the one we always fought over because it was the biggest and softest. And I reminded Mom to make rice without red beans because June hates them.
When I get out of the quiz, I see Cruella sharing a string cheese with her Chihuahua on a park bench. It’s as if they were
waiting for me, vivid and sunny, both dressed in yellow.
Life is random, I think. Data sets are fine, but mortality is random. Cancer is random. But seeing Cruella and her dog today feels like good luck somehow.
Instead of dicking around at McDonald’s for a coffee, I go home to my sister. I want to finish cleaning her fridge. Maybe do her laundry. I need to know how her doctor’s appointment went.
I run the long block, darting through the people with their heads bowed over their phones, earbuds glinting. I want to make June a cup of tea. Gather the remotes and phone charger and place them in her lap. I want to look after her in some way. Let her know I’m aware of what she’s done for me.
By the time I’m at her building, I feel stupid for sprinting back. Recalling that she wanted space. I press my ear to her door, nervous. I hear nothing. It’s cold, inert, and mute. Six inches of titanium or something crazy. It strikes me how even rich-people keys feel different, the way they glide in without catching or requiring any tricks of wriggling to turn.
June’s flipping through a Vermont Country Store catalog in the kitchen. Back in pajamas. I knock belatedly, feeling stupid.
“Hey.” I pointedly return the keys to her drawer.
“Hey,” she says, not looking up from the gift guide.
I study her for any news. I can’t even tell if she’s had blood drawn; her sleeves are pulled over her knuckles. It’s maddening how withholding she is. And she’s barely looking at the Corn Chowder set or the Summer Sausage basket as she’s turning pages.
Hanging up my coat, I make sure that my suitcase and bags are stacked behind the couch at an angle you can’t see from the front door.
“School was good,” I offer. “I, like, went.”
I shuffle into a spare pair of her house slippers. “So, how was your thing?”
“You know what’s weird?” she asks me, shutting the catalog.
“What?”
I reach across the counter to grab her forearm, partly as a joke, and when she doesn’t withdraw, I really begin to freak out.
“They talked to me for, like, an hour,” she says. Her eyes are glassy, and that groove between her eyebrows bites in deep.
“Okay,” I say. “Did they do more tests?”
She shakes her head. “No, it was just… I met my doctor. My special cancer gyno. She seems fine. Her engagement ring seemed a little excessive but whatever. I guess we’re going to run more tests. They want an MRI. Or I guess I want an MRI. I think I’m not supposed to eat beforehand, but they scheduled it for two p.m., so I’m going to be fucking starving….”
“What happens after the MRI?”
“I don’t know,” she says. “We’ll schedule the surgery.”
“Is that what they said?”
“Pretty much.” I can tell she’s barely listening. She grabs the catalog again and rolls it up tight.
“Okay, but what’s weird?”
“What?”
“Is the two p.m. MRI the weird part?”
“Huh?”
“You said, ‘You know what’s weird?’ ”
“What’s weird?” she asks me, scowling impatiently, as if I’m the one being distracted and annoying.
I slowly exhale the breath I’ve been holding. “That’s how you started this conversation, June. You said, ‘You know what’s weird?’ ”
“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.
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