The Break(25)

My mom smirks. She doesn’t like when I sound smarter than her. “Understated,” she repeats, a little too snarkily. But I smile anyway. For the first time I can ever recall, her trademark peasant blouse and cutoff jean shorts look all wrong, and a small, guilty part of me sees her how any sophisticated New Yorker might: as an out-of-date suburban woman who doesn’t live here. It’s the cruelest thought I’ve had in years.

“June, you’re gonna do just fine here,” my dad says, picking up on our tension and trying to snap it like always. He lowers the next box of my stuff onto the concrete with his back rod-straight because that’s what a physical therapist told him to do after he got injured years ago in a racing accident. It always makes my chest tighten when I see him move like that.

“Just remember what I said,” I remind them, and then I lower my voice. “The actual apartment is really small. But it has potential.”

My mom’s eyes are puffy—she must have cried this morning. I just need her to get through meeting Sean, who’s waiting for us upstairs. I glance up to the fourth-floor window and I swear I see a curtain move, but I can’t imagine Sean would just be standing up there watching us.

I’m more nervous by the second. When I called my mom and dad last week to tell them about Sean asking me to be his roommate, my dad got really territorial about the whole thing. How long have you known this boy, June? he asked me, and then he tried googling Sean, but not much came up because Sean is the only person my age without any social media accounts.

“I’m just not sure she needs all that stuff,” my mother says as she watches my dad carry the boxes to the door. The packing tape on one of the boxes has come undone, and a gymnastics trophy peeks out, the plastic gold gymnast striking a pose so flexible it borders on crude.

My dad says, “Well, then, she can throw it all away.” He grunts as he lifts the next box, forcing a toothy smile in my direction. “Can’t ya, June?”

I smile back. “Sure can,” I say. I’d rather them not fight here. I glance sideways at my mom. “Unless you want to keep some of it?” I ask.

My mom rolls her eyes. “I don’t want to keep your old trophies and artwork, no,” she says. She hasn’t said it rudely, but the words themselves are painful coming from any mother’s mouth, and they land just like she knows they will, and I can’t help but flinch no matter how much practice I’ve had at her slights.

“Oh,” I say. I take a breath. I try to tell myself what I always do, that maybe she just doesn’t have a filter. And she came here, didn’t she? To this foreign city that makes her uncomfortable.

My mom stares at the elementary school across the street. “Reminds me a bit of your old school,” she says, gesturing toward it. She’s skinny, but she’s also almost fifty, and the pale white skin on her arms is starting to go a little looser. Wrinkled, even. And the only thing similar about my elementary school and this one is the red bricks, so I know she’s just searching for something to say. She always does that in lieu of an apology.

“Yeah, it does,” I lie.

“Are you two going to help me, or just stand there looking nice?” my dad asks us. He’s dripping sweat. It’s at least eighty, and the sun heats up the New York sidewalk like a griddle.



“Sorry, Dad,” I say, moving to get a box out of the back seat.

My mom stays put as my dad and I carry the final boxes.

“Ready?” my dad asks when we’re done.

“Ready,” I say. And then I buzz Sean’s apartment, my nerves spiking.

“Yeah?” Sean says gruffly into the intercom.

“It’s me,” I say back. “It’s June.”

My parents exchange a look.

“Come up,” Sean says, and then the doors buzz. My dad snatches the handle and yanks it like a bomb will go off if we don’t open it in time.

“Yikes, Dad,” I say as he shoves the boxes into the vestibule and lunges to open the second door.

“Shouldn’t this Sean person come help you bring up your things?” my mother asks. “Isn’t he your good friend. Weren’t those your words?”

“Mom,” I say, frantically gesturing to the intercom. And then I whisper-hiss, “He can probably still hear you.”

Embarrassment passes over her face for a split second. “Let’s go,” she says, holding open the door so I can follow my dad with a box that’s too heavy for me. I muscle through it, feeling my lower back straining. My mother makes a humph sound when I almost fall, like this whole thing is a debacle I’ve dragged her and my dad into.

We take the elevator in silence. When it opens, my dad shoves his two boxes into the hallway and pushes them over the floor.

“It’s the other way, Dad,” I say, pointing toward 4D.

Sean swings open the door. “Hello,” he says formally. He regards us curiously, like we’re animals at his beloved Bronx Zoo.

“Care to help?” I ask as I nearly crash into him with my box.

“Oh,” he says, and then he reaches out his hands to take my box like the idea hadn’t occurred to him. Maybe my mother is right.

“This is Sean,” I say.

“I’m Nick,” my dad says.

“Joan,” my mother says, not really meeting his eyes.