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.
“Those mom jeans do nothing for you,” says my sister, fishing a foam roller out of a box.
“Seriously? A New Yorker tote bag? No one believes you read that shit.” A single bottle of supplements is set on the coffee table.
“Why bother going to design school and not taking design?” she asks, peering over the top of a cookbook entirely dedicated to meals for one.
“You look like an idiot spoon-faced Steve Madden ad. Eat some carbs—what’s wrong with you?” She prods me with a second, demonstrably longer, foam-roller purchase.
“Why do you worship white-people things?” That one was close. I’d almost made it out the door.
“Who even asks someone that?”
“You’re not someone,” she says, twirling a pen over a brand-new, thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle of a chessboard. “You’re my sister.”
Meanwhile: Hey, June. Did you get the results of the MRI?
Nothing.
One night, I get home from work at a quarter to nine. Lately, June’s taken to hate-watching Seinfeld and heckling. “How is it funny that Jerry gets a South Asian immigrant deported after he ruins his restaurant?” I have a distinct suspicion she’s been muttering into an empty living room all day. I wash the subway grime off my hands.
I don’t know how cancer people are supposed to act, but you only ever hear about them running remission 10Ks or traveling the world searching for answers. It’s not as if I’m waiting for June to become inspirational, but so far she’s acting like a forty-year-old dude going through a breakup who’s moved back in with his mom.
“Is your office cool with you taking all this time off?” I ask gently. She needs to go the fuck back to work. She might be sick, but she’s pelting me with eighty-hour work weeks’ worth of determination and problem-solving. Well, me and sitcom legend Jerry Seinfeld.
“Fuck work,” she snaps. My spine stiffens. Okay, this is bad. This is depression or some other kind of mental health issue, because June does not refer to work in this way.
“Did you tell them what’s going on?” I take a seat on the couch, careful to keep the concern off my face.
“I haven’t told them,” she says. “I’m taking vacation days and you’d think I took a shit on the conference table.”
I wait for her to say more, but she doesn’t. She raises her thumb to her mouth and chews on the nail. In my peripheral vision, she’s tilting her whole head slowly as she makes her way across like she always does instead of rotating the finger which is so much easier.
“Did you eat anything today?”
“Whatever,” she says, still gnawing on her thumb. Eyes affixed to the screen. “You know, it’s not just that the show’s racist. It’s this institutional expectation that everyone will understand Seinfeld jokes that’s racist.”
I get up and open the pantry. “Do you want ramen?” I hold out the block of Shin Ramyun Black.
“Sure,” she says, and then, “The fuck is Shin Ramyun Black?”
“It’s like regular Shin Ramyun, but it’s way better.” I fill the pot and set it on the stove to boil. I’m starving.
“But we don’t have kimchi,” she calls out.
I check the fridge, knowing full well that we ate the last of it yesterday.
“Ramyun’s garbage without the fixins,” says June. “Kimchi, egg, and scallions. That’s how Mom would make it.”
With my back to her, I close my eyes. I can’t believe she invoked Mom.
I throw my coat back on. “I’ll be back,” I tell her, letting the door slam behind me.
I love a new deli. A fresh location. I’ve been eyeing this one for a while. I grab kimchi first. A squat plastic square the size of a wallet that’s eight dollars. I get a grapefruit from a pile since June needs vitamins and then switch it for the tub of cut-up mango. I splurge since June gave me her card.
Next to the eggs is a selection of dubiously healthy snacks strung up on a vertical display. I finger the chocolate-covered dried banana chunks through the black foil packaging. There can’t be more than six or seven in there. I check the price tag. Five bucks. Criminal.
I pluck them from the hook, taking them for a walk. I pick up a can of seltzer. Two since it’s me and June. I wish I could get some Chex, but this isn’t the kind of deli that has regular cereal. I check out the buffet offerings on the long steam tray. There’s congealed chicken and broccoli behind the sneeze guard and fried noodles. A chicken drumstick’s been dropped in the vanilla pudding. It makes me sad for whoever thought to add a maraschino cherry and a dollop of whipped cream to the dessert. While peering at egg rolls, I slip the packet of chocolate banana into my pocket. They make a satisfying swish against my nylon coat. It lies beautifully flat against me.
My phone buzzes in my pocket. It’s futile to wish it was Patrick. It’s been a week since I ghosted him.
Can we have Chipotle instead? It’s June. Except that her name in my phone still says Juju. I scroll through our iMessage chain. It’s been forever since she texted me. She usually calls because she’s an emotional terrorist. Her last dispatch was from a year ago. It says call Mom.
I have the goofiest picture for her contact. It’s from tenth grade, when she was growing a perm out. I snapped it while she was sleeping, and her mouth is hanging open. I click on info to change her name, and that’s when I see it.
A little croak escapes my throat.
Of course. I smile up at the groceries around me.
I’m so stupid.
That’s how June knows where I am.
On her info page, I can see her big-mouth avatar, smack-dab on Twenty-Sixth and Sixth Avenue. We’ve had our locations shared for years. We started even before Mom left. I stopped checking because I got too jealous when she went to college. Watching her pie hole gallivanting around Manhattan while I was stuck in Texas without a driver’s license was too painful. I leave it on. I can’t believe she never just told me she was trailing me when I asked. That sneaky bitch.
I scroll through my contacts. I’ve got my location activated with so many people. Girls from high school I don’t even talk to. Jesus. What have I been doing for the last ten years?
I wonder if telling Patrick that I did the brand identity for Jeremy’s literary magazine would make me pathetic or pathetic and delusional. Mostly I want to ask him what kind of ramen he eats. Whether he thinks Seinfeld’s racist. If he remembers what an asshole June was. I love that he’s a year older than her.
My pocket crinkles as I reach for paper towels.
I can’t believe he has his master’s degree. I wonder if there’s any way we would have started dating in high school. I’d have been a freshman and he’d have been a senior and…
I slide my hand all the way into my pocket. I find myself pinching the packet, tearing it open between my thumb and two fingers, hand cramping with effort. They slide out into my pocket but when I pop one into my mouth, I’m thrilled that it’s somehow even better than expected.
There’s no way one packet is enough. And if they sell out, I won’t be able to stop thinking about them. I head back to the fruit. This time, as if checking the nutritional information on the Tate’s cookies, I s
moothly grab another packet with my other hand and slip it into my other coat pocket.
Just as I turn around, I startle at a woman in workout clothes and AirPods in the aisle. I smile, and she even takes an earbud out to smile back as if to tip her hat. My sight line rises to notice the enormous shield of mirror rigged to the ceiling.
I casually look behind the register. My palms dampen. Behind the salad bar I’d studied so intently there are four flat-screen TVs of the security cameras’ views. My heart races and my breathing along with it. June will murder me if I get caught. I watch my hand unsteadily place the rice on the shelf in front of me. The mango’s returned to the cooler. I force myself to ditch my groceries quickly and calmly. I leave with my head ducked. I’m convinced I’ll be found out. That it’s a matter of seconds before someone dashes out from the back to block me from leaving. I hurl the door open, rushing into the cold night, and hurriedly walk back to June’s, stuffing the stupid banana pieces into my mouth and tasting nothing.
chapter 17
The next day, June’s sprawled out on the couch eating Pringles when I get out of class. It’s Halloween, and Halloween at design school is its own exhausting spectacle.
“Hey,” she says, when I hang my coat up. Rory’s well into Yale on Gilmore Girls. No matter the season it always seems like Christmas in Stars Hollow.
“Hey.”
She studies me. “Where were you?”
I stop myself from rolling my eyes.
“Class.”
The kitchen counter’s a mess again even though I wiped everything up this morning. A half-dozen condiments left out. Loose sesame seeds. A Diet Coke that’s been there since yesterday. I open the fridge. A few days ago, I broke down and removed the shelves to air them out in sunlight. The bottoms of the produce drawers looked like the contents of a shark’s stomach during an autopsy. I wouldn’t have been surprised to find an old toilet seat cover in there.
I tip the soda into the sink.
“Don’t clean,” she says. “I’ll call someone to come.”
“It’s okay,” I tell her, noisily crushing the bottle. I can’t believe that this time last year Ivy and I spent hours dressing up as prescription pill bottles with Euphoria makeup. We ate so much candy I googled whether you could give yourself diabetes. Sometimes my memories are so remote they may as well have happened to someone else.
I twist all the lids back onto the various seasonings and return them to their shelves.
The year before that, Megan and Hillary had a party at our house. It was nineties themed. They were actually kind of nice to me that day.
I sponge down June’s counters. I may as well. I looked up this building on StreetEasy and rent is, like, thirty-five hundred for a one-bedroom.
“Seriously,” she says, sitting up. “Don’t clean. It’s fucking annoying.”
I know this mood. June’s bored.
I check the time on the microwave. It’s 4:00 p.m. “Did you go outside today?” I already know she hasn’t. The air in the room is comprised of 100 percent mouth-breath.
She glares at me and bites into the stack of Pringles, which shatter across her sweatshirt. She brushes at them hard even though one of the crumbs is basically half an entire chip.
My sister is so jonesing for a fight.
“What?” she demands hotly. Every single baby hair on her head is sticking up in attack mode.
I can’t keep a straight face. A lactic-acid burn sears in my cheeks from keeping myself from smiling. I shake my head. “Nothing,” I say innocently. My chin wobbles.
I spray down the counters.
“I told you to fucking stop,” she says, doubling down. “So fucking stop.”
I can’t even look at her. She sits up. Covered in chips. Jutting her chin out.
I raise my hands and set down the Formula 409.
June and I have had fistfights and even drawn blood, but this isn’t that.
I’m trying to clear my throat. Reset. But chortles keep audibly escaping my nose. I bite my lips.
“What?” she counters again, but I hear her voice waver.
She gets up and marches toward me.
I back away from her with my blocking hand up. “I’m not fighting you, you psycho.”
At that, she reaches over and smacks my shoulder with her open palm.
I look down at my shoulder, then back at her.
Eyes hardened, hand aloft in a swat, she’s about as menacing as a Labradoodle in a tam-o’-shanter.
“What the fuck was that?”
June continues to glare.
“Look, I’m not hitting a bitch with vagina cancer,” I protest as she smacks me again, harder and harder, this time laughing.
“Uuuuuuuugh, I hate you,” she wails, dragging her ass back to the couch. “I’m so bored.”
“Go walk around the block.”
I slump on the couch next to her, undoing the top button of my pants. I’m just glad to be home.
“Let’s go to your apartment,” she says, kicking me for sport. “See if he’s gone.”
“What?”
She’s animated now, eyes gleaming. “Yeah, let’s see if that fucker’s out.”
“Now?”
“It’s been over a week.”
“Well, I can go check,” I tell her, getting to my feet. I wonder if this is her way of getting rid of me. “You don’t have to come.”
“I need an activity,” she whines. “It’s Halloween.”
She’s such a child. “Yeah, dick, also known as the worst subway night ever.”
“It’s early.”
I groan. “I don’t know, June. What if I need space too?” I echo her earlier sentiments. “What if this is personal and I need to process it?”
She appears to consider this.
“Bring me a glass of water.”
I fill a glass, remembering that I haven’t had water in several days, and take a long thirsty sip before refilling it to hand it to her. I already know she’s going to bitch about that.
“You should’ve served me first and then had your water. You act like I’m not older than you.”
God, she’s petty.
“I’m coming with you,” she says, dragging her hair into a sloppy ponytail. “It’s not the same thing.”
“What if I don’t want you there?”
She shrugs off her pajama top and pulls on a wadded-up hoodie over her T-shirt. “Really?” she demands. “That’s where you want to take it right now? You’ve been here for a week, all up in my shit, and you won’t invite me over? I just want to see. I know there isn’t a medicine cabinet or a drawer in this bitch that you haven’t snooped through, so suck it up. It’s my turn.”
“No!”
“Fuckface,” she says. “Either you invite me to your apartment and introduce me to your asshole boyfriend or… I’ll beat your ass.”
“God,” I rage, putting on my sweatshirt. “Fuck, you’re so inconsiderate. You have zero fucking noonchi.”
“I don’t need fucking noonchi when it comes to you,” she says, shoving her feet into mules. “You’re my family.”
“How is that even a thing?” I put lipstick on in the mirror by the door.
“Matter of fact,” she says gruffly, pulling on her coat. “Not only are you my family, but you’re my younger family. Fuck noonchi, asshole. You don’t count. I’m the heir; you’re the spare. You owe me your whole life. You wouldn’t even be here if it weren’t for me.”
I can’t tell if she’s talking about New York or Planet Earth.
We take the F to Brooklyn in silence. June was right. It’s early yet. Other than a small cluster of school kids in desultory costumes, it’s manageable. The one nice thing about Halloween on a Monday is that the hardcore weirdos are partied out from the weekend.
The train rises aboveground at Smith and Ninth, and even though I’m still aggravated, the ride is calming. The atmosphere’s electric, all the surfaces gilded at the edges. I love New York on crisp days lik
e these. It’s magic hour, and I can’t help but feel grateful. I read on a new age blog somewhere, probably while perusing supplements, that there are places on earth that are a vibrational match for you. That certain energy vortexes thrum along yours. I want to say that the fine print claimed it was a thing with Native Americans. Or Australian aboriginals. Hawaiians maybe—something that makes white women hawking powders and elixirs seem like they have any kind of history. But I’m sold on there being a home for your soul. New York feels right to me in moments like these. When I take a second to look out and remember where I am.
“See the Statue of Liberty?” I point her out on the other side of the train. She’s the size of a thumb on the horizon, a pale-green queen, arm raised high out in the water. To me, Lady Liberty’s like the moon, the way she can look bigger even from the same spot.
“Jesus,” says June. Marveling at the skyline. “You live in Butt-Fuck Egypt.” There are six more stops to go.
“It’s chill.”
And cheap.
I check on my rubble piles when we coast by.
“How long does it take you to get to school?”
“Hour.”
“Damn. That’s a hike. Takes me ten minutes to get to work.” She’s sitting in the seats facing me and crosses her legs at the ankles, looking out the window. Then she cranes down and tugs at the edge of her sock. “Look at this shit.” The bright-blue lip of fabric bites into her fleshy ankle. That’s when I notice that her other sock is lighter, with a scalloped white edge. “I’m losing it.” She looks at me stupefied. “I don’t think I’ve ever done this before.”
“You should get all the same socks.” Mine are uniformly black, from Uniqlo. I stick my toes out at her. Shaking my feet so she sees, but when she doesn’t say anything, I look up. That’s when I realize, to my horror, that June is crying. Again. The expression on her face is unchanged, but there are fat droplets coursing down her cheeks and falling onto her hands, which are lying in her lap like upturned bugs.
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