Chapter 22 #2
“I mean— ” Dee squints at me as though she isn’t sure how to phrase it.
Which isn’t like Dee. “Okay,” she says, “I don’t know.
It’s weird. You seem really full of energy, and that’s good.
But there’s this . . . pull. Like I feel like you’re sort of brighter when I look at you, like you’re radioactive.
I don’t know. It’s freaking me out a little. ”
“Yeah, I feel great,” I say. “Maybe my sad diet’s finally working. Less inflammation, probably.”
She nods quickly. “That’s amazing.” And then, after a few seconds, “Damien is leaving.” Damien is her immediate boss.
I look up and she reads my expression.
“Yeah.” She swigs the rest of her espresso. “It would go to me.”
“That’s a big deal, Dee.”
“A lot more money. A little more travel.”
“How do you feel about it?”
But we both know: She can’t wait.
“We’re talking about moving the office. I’m voting for closer to the train. I think it’ll happen. That’ll cut my commute a little at least.”
“That’s amazing, Dee.”
“Are you happy here, T?” It’s abrupt. She looks uncomfortable, having asked it. “I mean—I should ask you: Is this an okay life for you?”
“Are you okay with me being here?” I ask back.
She nods emphatically. “Of course! I don’t know what I’d do without you. But . . .”
I wait.
She taps her empty shot glass—the one she uses for espresso—sets it down on the stone ledge, and fiddles with her silver pinky ring. “You might want . . . something more? At some point. For yourself?”
I bite my lip.
She blinks, looks away. “I know what you told me. But then you said— ”
“You don’t believe this is enough for me.
” I swat at what is hopefully the last mosquito of fall and realize a second later what Dee means.
I’d said Joel had broken up with the imaginary other woman.
I’d said I was thinking about dating him.
My lie to cover up the reality of Joel trying to kill me. Of me trying to kill Joel.
“T . . .”
“It’s okay,” I say quickly, wanting to move on.
But she says, “I haven’t asked about Joel. You don’t want to talk about him. I know.” She holds up her hand, preempting me. “But it’s made me wonder. You seemed like you were really thinking about trying something there. That seemed like a good sign.”
Crap.
I redirect. “It’s a good life. Ella’s been doing so well.
We have the group, Ms. Nancy, all our routines.
Those tigers.” Ella loves the tiger statues on campus—she has named her favorite pair Claire and Della, and she climbs on their backs and pretends to ride them in the summer, when the college students are gone.
“And I have my business.” If I ever go back to it.
“I know all the OBs, and Lillian. . . .” My favorite home-birth midwife. “And I love this house!”
As if on cue, Mom flushes the toilet and the brown house washes itself clean, finishing with a satisfied trickle, settling in the wake of her footsteps returning to the living room. Her Inner Peace in a Bikini (weight loss and meditation) podcast goes back on at full volume.
“It does feel like home, doesn’t it?” Dee says.
I nod.
“We could finally redo the kitchen, put in one of those hoods so we don’t have to open the front door every time you cook a steak.” She sounds hopeful. “Stupid smoke alarm.”
“It’s not a big deal.”
She lowers her voice. “Remember Ella? ‘Is it a real fire this time?!’ For like two years.”
We both smile.
“And a back deck.”
“I need to get back there and weed.”
“I’m thankful for you, T.”
“I’m thankful for you.” I squeeze her hand for a moment. She squeezes back.
“Life is sort of terrible,” she says, catching me off guard again. “You feel safe for a second, and then something crashes in and fucks it up.”
I blink. Dee doesn’t talk like this very often.
She’s too busy charging through life. Sometimes I forget where Ella’s anxiety comes from.
Sometimes I forget that Dee used to climb into my bed almost every night when she was little.
The nightmares, the closet door that couldn’t fully shut, the things that might happen if she wasn’t vigilant, the small cruelties of her friends waiting for her at school in the morning.
Sometimes I forget that I was the confident one, the one who let stuff roll off, who could keep it in perspective, whose mind measured the right proportions.
“I lie there in my bed and think about how you’ll die,” she says.
“How Mom will die. And Ella—I’m so scared for her.
” We both look at Ella and she glances up, her polka-dotted sweatshirt healthily dirt smudged, one doll held aloft as though about to fly or fall.
“I just want her to have a good life. A good little life where she can feel loved and look at flowers and stuff.”
“Learn to code?” I tease.
“Are you talking about me?” Ella calls.
“Nope!” we call back.
“She might love coding!” Dee retorts, playfully defensive. “What if she wants to go into tech? She doesn’t have to wait around for college or something. She doesn’t have to wait for things. And be poor. And scared. And dependent on some loser.”
“I know, I know,” I say. “You made a good choice. She’s happy.”
“You’re the one making it happen,” she says, tearing up. She flicks a sheaf of braids over her shoulder, swallows.
“Both of us,” I whisper. “We’re a team. All of us.”
“Even Mom a little,” Dee says, and we smile at each other. We are silent for a minute, and pale yellow leaves helicopter down from our neighbor’s willow oak.
I am annoyed at myself for how irritated I’ve been feeling with Ella, how on edge.
“We’ll always be a team,” Dee says with the tone of someone circling purposefully back to her original point, “but maybe when life gives you a chance at someone you care about, even though it’s so scary, you can just .
. . maybe talk to him again? I mean, I know he really messed up.
But I also know you really, really liked him.
And I don’t think you’d like him if he was a bad guy.
I have this feeling, like there’s more to the story. ”
So that’s what the little talk about life being short and bad was about.
“I don’t know, Dee. . . .”
“It’s so hard to open yourself up,” she says quickly. “I know it’s so hard. But I want you to get everything you deserve.”
A shiver runs through me. I stand up. “Sorry. I just remembered, I should— ”
“It’s okay,” she interrupts.
For a second, we just look at each other. My beautiful little sister, gold beads glinting in her braids, lipstick game as fierce as ever. I want to tell her, but this time make it the actual truth.
I turn and go into the house.
Everything you deserve. I hear her words in my head.
Maybe that’s exactly what I’ll get.