Chapter 45 Georgia
Georgia
Eddie and I shoot to our feet upon seeing Junie so distraught, and we stand there frozen, waiting for her to say something.
Junie’s sad gaze is laser focused on me, heavy like a dumbbell. It’s as if Eddie is invisible to her, and he shuffles back,
away from us. I glance over at him, one hand in his pocket, one hand in his hair gripping the back of his bowed head. Does
he know what this is about? Is Junie worried there’s something going on between us? Why isn’t he rushing to his girlfriend’s
side?
“No. It’s just— I—” Junie says.
“You know we’re just hanging as buds out here, right? Just a quick break before we get back to work.” I look again at Eddie,
hoping to make meaningful eye contact and urge him to jump in. “Right, Eddie?”
Junie closes the gap between us, uninterested in her boyfriend as she breezes by him, and I wonder if it would be ok to pull
her close to me. I stop before I do.
Junie shoots me a grin, but now, lined in true worry, it only imitates her usual smile. “Eh. I’m kinda over him, if you wanna
take a spin.”
I don’t even smile. Not like I usually would because nothing about this moment feels right. Nothing about her joke feels sincere. And Junie jokes can fix a multitude of ills.
“I’m sorry. Seriously, I’m not interested in Eddie,” I say. “We can completely avoid each other, if that’s best. I don’t want
you hurt like this.”
Junie reaches up and cups my cheek. “You haven’t done a thing wrong, Peach. It’s not about him.” She turns to him. “Eddie,
can you let me and my sister talk, please?”
“Of course,” he says. “But for the record, I do love Junie, and I would never let anything in my control harm her. Never ever.”
I watch the way Eddie looks at my little sister, whom I’ve adored as a vocation, and I recognize it. Of course I would recognize
the look of the most important thing in my life, protecting Junie. He loves her, yes, but it’s gentle and sweet and lined
with the fear that only comes from desperately wanting good for someone completely outside you.
Junie pulls me down to sit on the curb beside her as Eddie reenters the shop.
“Eddie and I aren’t dating,” she says. “Weren’t ever. We were pretending.”
Junie picks at her fingernails, and as a reflex I gently pry her hands apart. A nervous chuckle escapes me. “What? No. That
makes no sense.”
“There’s a reason for it, and I need to tell you. It’ll make sense. And I’ve been trying to find a good time to tell you this,
but I knew you’d be mad. I knew you’d be so sad. I just couldn’t—”
I take her hands again, squeezing them this time. “Just tell me.” I try to channel my mama and all the Junes before her. “You
know you can always tell me anything. What is it? More on the Goldilocks front? Because if we need to change course and just
put the shop back together, that’s fine. There’s no shame in just chalking it up to not working out right now.”
Junie shakes her head, and her face trembles slightly when she sucks in a breath. “It’s not the shop; it’s me.”
My gut doubles in on itself, and I swallow the knot that instantly fills my throat. This is it. This is the moment I’ve known
was coming. This is the moment the brief hiatus from tragedy and chaos breaks. I’ve tried to convince myself for years that
I was overreacting, being slightly insane, but like some depraved prophet, I just knew.
“Tell me, honey. Wh-what’s wrong?” I force out the words as my body resists.
“I’m sick.”
“What does that have to do with spending time with Eddie?” My confusion slows my worry.
Junie stays quiet, but then it clicks and suddenly the pieces rearrange themselves into a clear picture.
“Eddie’s been doing medical care on the side for you, hasn’t he? Please tell me you didn’t let your insurance lapse.” It’s the big sister in me, but I’ve tried to hammer into her the importance
of investing in her health.
“I still have insurance.”
“Right. Ok,” I say. “So it’s about the medical bills? What do you need that costs out of pocket? Allergy testing? The price
is highway robbery, but we’ll figure it out. It’s more important than the renovation. I get it, I really do—”
“You don’t get it, Georgia.” Junie is firm but kind. “I’m sick.”
It’s knee-jerk for me to take charge, but I will my body to be still on this curb and my mouth to stop running. I watch Junie’s
throat dip and release, her face fall, her reluctance to look me in the eye, and I know. Looking at her, I can see this is
something more.
I raise a hand to cover my mouth as the ground seems to flip over me and spin.
Like Mama, I think. Like Mama, I know.
I shake my head as tears gather.
“Yes.” Junie nods. “Like Mama.”
My insides break in quick agony right along old fault lines. I know how to hurt this way. Yet somehow, this time, I’m not
crippled by it. The heat in my chest builds and burns through me.
“And you told Eddie? And not me?” My voice is clipped. “You’re terribly, terribly sick, and you didn’t tell me?”
“He was just there that day.” Even the way she says it sounds like an excuse.
He was there. I’ve made it my life’s mission to be there for Junie, to be the one in the wings, the one listening in for the slightest
need. I have thrown myself into the fire time and time again, happy to become dust for the sake of her flourishing. I have
shrunk myself for her sake. And yet, he was there.
“What do you mean he was there? When?” I ask.
Junie shrugs. “His mom had an appointment the same day I got my actual diagnosis. Complete coincidence, but he was there—physically,
at the clinic.”
“No, Junie. I am there for you. I’m the one who shows up for you. Eddie? Not a snowball’s chance.” I stand and pace, despite nothing, not
even the ground below my feet, feeling solid enough to rely on. “I’ve been here, Junie, sleeping in the next room, trying
to save this shop, and never, not once, did you think to mention to me that you have cancer just like our dead mother?” It’s
not until I’m finished that I realize I’m shouting.
Junie stands and hangs her head like she knows she messed up. “I’m sorry.”
And it’s just about as gutting as her first admission.
I go to her, of course I go to her, and I wrap her in my arms, and I hold on like something’s trying to take her, and a sob cuts up my throat.
I won’t let her go, not ever. Her mouth is beside my ear and I hear tears in her shaky breaths.
My throat aches as I try to bite back the scream that demands to be heard, and I pull her closer.
Suddenly it feels like she has an expiration date, like she might vanish from within my grasp.
“You must’ve been so scared, Junie Bug,” I whisper in her ear. “I’m here now. I’m not going anywhere.”
Junie pulls back. “I wanted to tell you, you know that. It’s just, I didn’t want to hurt you.”
Junie drops onto the curb. I sit down beside her and wind my fingers into hers. I remember when hers were smaller than mine,
and time hasn’t changed the way I hold her. I wonder if we’ll get to do this with ultra-wrinkly hands too.
“Tell me everything I missed,” I say.
Junie lays her other hand over ours together and squeezes. “Truly, Eddie’s been a godsend. He’s been kind and patient, showing
up on time and checking in.”
I don’t want to ask the next question, but I need to know the answer. “What’s the plan?”
Junie tells me about starting chemo this morning, she tells me about however many times, however many weeks she’ll have to
go, but it’s not what I want to hear. This is the punch list of bad luck, the how-to, the messy middle. This is what I want
to rush through and past, blinders firmly in place. I want a guarantee, a promise, a prize at the finish line. I want the
doctor to look me in the eye and tell me, “This is highly treatable. Your sister will be fine. Yes, you may take her place.”
“What are the chances?” I ask.
It’s then that I remember a podcast I listened to once where an oncologist talked about this question, how much she hates
it, how unreliable a percentage can be. She was talking in terms of scientific accuracy, but I remember agreeing with logic
all my own. It doesn’t matter what size the percentage is; what matters is that you get a spot inside it. Ninety-nine percent
is so promising until you become the one. I want to know my assigned seat, that I have one.
“Are you kidding? I’m a Louise.” Junie puts on a plasticky smile that only sits on the surface.
In the silence I let sit between us, her face crumples because she’s drawn the same conclusion as me: Mama was perhaps the
most Louisey Louise born to earth and look what happened to her.
It’s when I think about Mama, and the end, and the pain that followed and never left that I finally break. I double over and
sob in heaves as I think about my Junie sick, alone, probably terrified even if she pretends she’s ok. I think about all the
times I went to the ends of my earth to help her, to protect her, to save her just like this beauty shop. Yet this time there
is nothing to be done.
It’s the very first time I cannot do the thing I’ve always done best: save her.
My little sister’s life is just outside my reach.
Junie could die. I can’t breathe.