Chapter 41 Noelle
41 Noelle
When I get home from work on Thursday, I change into some more comfortable clothes and debate what to have for dinner. I’m usually—as in, pre–June 20—the sort of person who plans most of her meals the weekend before, but I didn’t do that last Sunday, and I haven’t been in the mood to cook all week. So once again, I open up the cupboard where I keep my instant noodles. I needed to shop at two different Asian grocery stores to build this collection, and I’ve been going through it faster than usual.
“No,” Avery says, suddenly appearing at my side as I start the kettle. “You’re not having ramen again like a broke university student.”
I’m offended. “These aren’t the kind of instant noodles that broke students eat. They’re expensive ones.” Not too expensive, of course. Still cheap enough that my frugal self didn’t feel guilty for buying them.
Avery rolls her eyes as she puts the noodles back into the cupboard. She knows where everything goes now.
“Hey!” I say. It’s nice to feel outraged, to have an outlet for my negative emotions.
She gestures to the oven. “I’m making you dinner.”
“You don’t need to feed me.”
“Noelle.” She says my name sharply, and it makes me stand up straight. “You’ve let me stay here for weeks without complaint, even though I know you don’t like having people in your space, and when I tried to pay you, you refused. The least you can do is let me cook you dinner every now and then.”
“Fine,” I grumble. Whatever she has in the oven does smell good.
Fifteen minutes later, we’re seated at my small dining room table. We each have a plate of baked ziti and green salad. I start with the salad because the pasta looks a little hot.
Avery, rather than eating, says, “You’ve been mopey lately.”
“Have not.” I’m doing a good job of sounding like a sullen teenager today.
“What happened with Cam? Have you spoken to him since Tuesday morning?”
“We texted,” I reply. “I agreed to see him on Sunday.”
“You don’t sound very excited, considering you’re in love with him and all.”
“But he’s not in love with me! He doesn’t know me well enough for that.”
“Look,” she says, “you’re an honest person, unlike some people I know. I get why you feel the need to tell Cam about the things he doesn’t remember. I think you should. Yes, it’s scary, but you won’t know until you try. Did the wedding invitation bother you that much?”
I pick up a forkful of pasta, watch the steam rise from it, and set it back down with a sigh. “I’m convinced it won’t go well, and unlike before, I won’t have a chance to try again. I don’t like putting myself out there.”
“Yet you did it anyway. Many, many times.”
“Like I said, it was different then.”
“But Cam believed you every time you told him, didn’t he?”
That’s true, but I don’t have the “proof” that I had back then. It’s just my word—and Avery’s. Plus his slight feeling of déjà vu.
I look at the person sitting across from me. Before the time loop, most of my day-to-day interactions were surface-level conversations with coworkers. I’m not used to someone talking to me like this, not used to speaking so openly with a friend.
A friend who’s here even when I try to retreat into myself. A friend who will continue to be here even if things don’t go well with Cam.
I try a bite of baked ziti and nearly groan aloud at the cheesy goodness.
“This is amazing,” I say.
“Hard to go wrong when you use that much cheese.” She pauses. “I don’t expect you to act exactly like you did when we were trying to figure out what was going on and spending money carelessly because it didn’t matter. I know you’re looking for a new job, but I think you could be more like time-loop Noelle in other ways too. Just a little.”
“Yeah. Maybe.” I look down at my plate. “Though before I talk to Cam, I need to talk to my sister.” I’ve been preoccupied with my love life lately, but I’ll feel better if I make some progress with Madison.
On Friday, I email my boss to say that I’m sick. Then I spend a few hours looking for a new job, and I even send out my first application.
But that wasn’t the reason I pretended to be sick.
At 11 a.m., I take a deep breath and text Madison.
ME: hey. I know you don’t want to talk to me, so I’m texting you, and you can read it and reply… or not. But I hope you’ll at least read it.
ME: The truth is, I don’t remember exactly what I said to you and why we’re not on speaking terms. I know it’ll be hard to believe, but I have amnesia. I lost 7 months of my memory. While everyone else was living life like usual, I was stuck in a time loop, repeating the same day. I think it was caused by magical dumplings.
ME: I KNOW. But I’m serious.
ME: While I don’t have memories of your reality, you also don’t have memories of mine. When I was inside the loop, I told you what was happening to me, and you believed me. We got along better than we had in a while, maybe because having my world upended made me see things differently. I think I understand you better than I did before.
ME: I’m sorry that this is what it took, and I’m sorry we haven’t been close in a long time. I want to get to know you as an adult, without being so judgmental because you’re not like me. It came from a place of concern… you’re my little sister, and I only wanted the best for you, but I know that’s not how it felt. I promise to do better in the future.
ME: If you want to meet up today, I took the day off work.
I’ve never sent so many texts in a row without a response, but knowing how Madison feels about email, I think this is the way to go. If she wants to call me, she can.
I wait, and I wait. After five minutes of staring at my screen, I get a response.
MADISON: You’re taking a day off????
I chuckle. I know that’s difficult to believe, but is it really more unbelievable than everything else?
I don’t dwell on that for long. The most important thing is that she’s texting me back.
ME: yes, really.
MADISON: In this alternate reality, where did we meet up? Let’s go there.
I’ve read through the menu twice, and I keep checking my phone, half expecting a message from Madison that says she’s not coming or only just left home. She’s ten minutes late now.
A moment later, she sits down across from me, and I nearly sigh in relief.
“This place doesn’t seem familiar,” she says.
Unlike Cam, she doesn’t get déjà vu with me.
She peers at me curiously. “Why did we go here?”
“Because I was trying all the dumplings in Toronto in the hopes that—”
“You’d eat some that would get you out of the time loop?”
I nod. Then I smile at the face that’s so much like my own before my gaze falls to one of the physical differences between us: the tattoo on her wrist. She also has a row of piercings on her right ear; I only have one in each ear.
“What did we get last time?” She doesn’t wait for an answer, just insists we order exactly the same thing.
The server brings us our tea, and I place the order.
Once again, Madison looks at me curiously. She makes me tell her what happened, like she wants to hear it in person even after all the text messages. She’s not skeptical about my story, though. Or, at least, she’s significantly less skeptical than most people would be.
“Why do you believe me?” I ask.
By now, we have our dumplings. She reaches for one with her chopsticks, shrugging at the same time.
“Because you don’t make shit up,” she says simply. “Even when we were kids, you might ‘lie by omission’ on occasion, but that’s it. So if you’re telling me this, you have to be serious.”
To my sister, the idea of me making up a fantastical story is so unbelievable that she simply… believes me. It’s similar to what she said in the time loop.
I feel a smidge of annoyance that Madison sees me as so straight and narrow, but mostly, I’m relieved.
“Now tell me,” I say, “what happened between us.”
She sighs. “I cut back my hours because I couldn’t handle it anymore. Not so much the kids, but the parents.”
Madison, unlike me, has our father’s gift for teaching. For the past year, she’s been doing one-on-one tutoring and after-school English classes as her main source of income.
“You rarely disapprove of my choices out loud,” she says. “But that time, when I told you—and when I told you that I was moving back home—you flipped out. Told me I was taking advantage of our parents, even though I’m contributing toward the bills. Even though living with your parents beyond graduation is common in many places. I don’t know why it’s so much easier for most people to have full-time jobs than it is for me, but it is. I get overwhelmed so easily. And my periods are getting worse too.”
Madison has always had killer periods. She suspects she has endometriosis, but she’s never gotten a diagnosis. The last time she attempted to get one, the doctor told her to lose weight. I don’t think I fully appreciated how that affects other aspects of her life.
I was just so focused on wanting her to have security—that’s what our grandparents hoped for when they moved to this country—but the way I treated her pushed her away, and you can’t have total security in this world anyway. Things can change in an instant, despite your best intentions.
She mumbles something about productivity and value and late-stage capitalism, then says, “And Mom had a breakdown.”
“Mom what ?”
My sister chuckles. “You see? This is how I know you’re not lying. You’re a terrible actor. You wouldn’t be able to fake that kind of reaction. Anyway, Mom was distraught that we weren’t on speaking terms, and she felt like she’d failed us as a parent. I think it affected her so strongly because of her own trauma.”
My parents aren’t perfect, but when I was younger, stories from classmates would regularly make me thankful for the parents I had. I could appreciate how hard it had been for Mom to figure out motherhood when the examples in her own life had been horribly lacking. She did her best to make sure our childhood was nothing like her own.
Mom stopped talking to her parents before she married my father; they weren’t at the wedding. She continued to have a relationship with her sister, though it was always fraught. As children, my aunt had been the favorite and my mother had been blamed for everything. It colored their relationship as adults.
“Shit,” I say quietly.
Usually, when I hear stories about myself that I don’t remember, they’re told by my parents, about one childhood antic or another. Like the time I got a tricycle for my birthday and threw a tantrum because it wasn’t allowed in bed with me. Or the time I tried to give my baby brother away to Santa Claus at the mall.
But these stories, they’re about me as an adult. My sister isn’t telling me things that I dimly remember but don’t recall in detail; nope, I have no memory of them whatsoever.
“I shouldn’t have said that,” I tell her. “I don’t remember, but it’s entirely believable to me, and I’m sorry I was that person. I…” I don’t know how to put into words everything that I feel. I look down at my dumplings, as if they could have the answer. Ha. Looking for answers in dumplings hasn’t gotten me anywhere lately. I glance at the tattoo on her wrist instead. “I want you to be happy and healthy, and I admire that you’ve never been afraid to try new things.”
She snorts. “I’ve always been afraid.”
“Okay, yes—but you did it.”
“Sometimes it’s pure desperation.”
I hesitate. “I never try anything, except when I was stuck in that stupid loop. Like, I asked my coworker what his salary is.”
“And?”
“It’s higher than mine, even though I figure we should make about the same. So the next day, I asked my boss for a raise.”
Her eyes widen. I’m not insulted that she’s surprised.
“How did that go?” she asks.
“Not well.”
“Have you tried to change jobs, since coming back to the so-called real world?”
“I applied for something this morning, and I’m going to look harder this weekend.”
I tell her a little more about what happened in the loop, and I tell her about Avery, but I don’t mention Cam. I’ll tell her eventually, no matter the outcome, but I don’t feel like talking about that just yet.
“What about you?” I ask. “Tell me more, other than our fight. Christmas. Cecil.”
“Right. You don’t remember when he was born.”
I shake my head. “I knew Mona was pregnant, though. Dalton told me in some of the iterations of June twentieth.”
“She had a better pregnancy than last time, so that was good.”
We spend the next half hour catching up.
“You know,” Madison says, “it often felt as if you were in survival mode when you didn’t need to be. Like our grandparents, at times.”
I think she has a point, especially after my breakup. Parts of me shut down, and I forgot to start them back up… until recently. My little sister has always been very smart.
“But you’re doing okay after your breakup?” I ask.
“Yeah.” She chuckles. “Don’t worry, that’s the least of my problems.” Her expression sobers. “The other thing that bothered me? I worried you thought I was like Uncle Matthew. Someone who constantly needed help because he made every terrible decision possible and took advantage of people’s kindness.”
Like my mother’s relationship with her sister, my father’s relationship with his brother was always complicated. It felt like my uncle didn’t understand consequences.
“Don’t worry, I know you’re very different from him.” I set my hand on top of hers.
Outside the restaurant, she gives me a long hug, and I smile against her hair. As I head to the TTC, I feel lighter than I did before, but then a faint aroma hits me, becoming stronger as I pass a bakery.
Cinnamon buns.
Not just any cinnamon buns. I swear they’re exactly the same ones I had for breakfast the other day, and suddenly, I can barely get enough air into my lungs.
The first time I stumbled into Leaside Brewing, it was after eating dumplings at that same restaurant with Madison, which is also not far from Cam’s, and I knew the cinnamon buns came from somewhere nearby. Still, the coincidence of that scent is nearly enough to knock me to the ground, and I ache at the memory of our morning together.
Once I put myself back together, I consider running to the brewery, but I don’t. I’ll see him on Sunday, as we planned.
It’s weird being home at 4 p.m. on a Friday. Sometimes, I was home at this hour during the loop, but I’ve quickly acclimated to working again.
I feel better than I did before I left. I’ve patched things up with my sister, and having one person believe me makes me feel more hopeful about telling Cam, though it’s a very different situation. Madison has known me her whole life; Cam, not so much. He has no reason to think I’m the kind of person who’d be incapable of lying about such things.
After starting a load of laundry—might as well get that out of the way—I work on my current crochet project: a scarf. My thoughts turn to what I should say to Cam and where I should suggest we meet on Sunday. Unlike with my sister, I don’t want to do it in public. I’m sure Avery would be happy to make herself scarce for a few hours if I had him over, but I’ll suggest his place when we speak tonight.
I hope we can figure it out, but if he doesn’t believe me, I don’t see how we can be together. I try not to obsess about that now, though, when there’s nothing I can do.
Feeling like I’ve made enough progress in changing my life for one day, I settle down in front of the TV with a snack. Cheese and crackers, even if I ate multiple days’ worth of cheese in the ziti yesterday. Whatever. I’m going to enjoy myself. I’ve realized that’s an important part of life, even if it’s something I neglected for a long time.
However, a text message soon disrupts me.
AVERY: I found the dumpling stand