Picture Us In The Light(100)
“Excuse me.” Joy stands abruptly, pushing back her chair so hard the arms get caught on the table, rattling it. Our waters slosh over the sides. She’s out the door before I can mentally gather myself enough to stand up.
“Do you think she’s leaving?” I say. “Crap.” I should’ve led up to things better. Or I should’ve practiced this more, or maybe I should’ve said more in my message to her so this didn’t feel as abrupt. I had eight hours in the car I could’ve been preparing.
“I don’t know.” Harry watches through the window, and for a second it feels like we always do, the two of us united against all the forces of the world. “No, she’s just outside.”
“Should I go after her?”
“I don’t know. No, probably not. I think you should just give her some space.”
“I can’t just sit here, though. She’s right there, and she’s my sister. I’m sure it’s her.”
“I know, but—it isn’t always better to be there, even if you’re trying to help. Sometimes you just have to back off.”
I feel my skin flush all the way down to my navel, a sick feeling worming into my stomach. How much am I supposed to read into that? “Yeah, but—” Whatever. I get up. I don’t believe that. Because this is what I always hoped for my life when I thought my sister had died: that somehow by being the one who was still here I’d figure things out. That it does mean something to be there, that the world is intrinsically different by you being in it, and that whatever ways it spins around you, you can take something from that and make it better, somehow, than it was.
And maybe now that sounds like wanting to just get credit for showing up. But it’s not nothing, right? Some people never show up. Or they start to and then they’re gone, or they want something bigger or flashier and less steady than the work of putting yourself there even when it’s not comfortable. I don’t want that to be true about me.
I find Joy outside crouched on the ground, breathing into cupped hands. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.”
“Do you need me to call someone?”
She closes her eyes. She looks so much like my mom when she does that, and without warning it makes me wish with all my heart my mom were here right now. She’d know what to say.
It’s just me, though, and I have no idea. I crouch next to Joy. “Can I bring you some water? I can order you some tea.”
“I don’t need anything. It’s just—you can’t just show up out of the blue like this,” she says. “Without any warning, without even asking—my God.” She drops her hands and takes more long breaths.
Oh. There’s a hollow spot in my chest where my heart should go. “I’m really sorry—I didn’t mean—”
“I just need to breathe a little while.” She does. There are a few people on the other side of the sidewalk outside what looks like a hardware store, and they’re watching us. One calls, “You okay over there?” and Joy waves him off. This street we’re on is basically the whole town and it makes it feel lonely here, kind of, way off on the edge of the world. Not a single car has driven by since we’ve been out here.
She takes two more long breaths and then she stands, unsteadily. I offer my hand to pull her up, but she ignores it, and I tuck it behind my back.
“I didn’t mean to freak out on you. But I was just having a normal day at work, and then all of a sudden out of nowhere you show up to drag up all these extremely personal things about my past—”
“I’m really sorry. I really didn’t mean for it to be like that for you. I thought—I guess I was just so excited to see you, and I thought you’d—”
She sighs. “They like me here,” she says, and it takes me a few seconds to understand that she means the restaurant. “They always bring my orders out right away. Our food is probably ready. Let’s just go back inside.”
When we go back in our food has come, and Joy sits down, almost mechanically, and resolutely picks up her fork. I can tell somehow that it’s important to her to pull herself together and sit through this meal, like maybe she’ll look back on this as a moment she had to be strong, a shitty time she had to get through and she gathered herself together and pulled it off.
I feel loose, like all my joints and cartilage are in danger of splitting and just coming apart, rendering me into dust. I can’t taste my curry. None of this is what I imagined. It didn’t occur to me that it would be her and she wouldn’t want to see me, that the sight of me would traumatize her.
All of us pick at our food, and Joy asks a little more about college. Everything I say she treats as mildly interesting trivia, roughly the same way Regina reacts when Harry sends her YouTube clips he thought were funny. Mostly, though, she talks to Harry, because apparently she considered doing a postdoc at Princeton and loved the area. And also I think because it’s probably easier—Harry doesn’t matter to her. Harry she’ll never have to think about again.
I think about my parents waiting back at home, and I imagine telling them about this: I went to see her and gave her a panic attack and then we came back. When the check comes, I reach for it, but Joy takes it before I can. “I can—”
“No, no,” she says breezily. “I’m a regular here.” Which isn’t exactly a reason, but—my Asianness fails me—I also don’t have the energy to fight for it. Joy pays. In her car on the way back she turns on the radio just loud enough that you’d have to raise your voice to talk over it, so we don’t.