Chapter 40

chapter 40

I check the awningof the brick and wood restaurant in Nolita before entering. It’s a perfectly respectable, bustling trattoria, and I’m told to walk all the way to the back and downstairs. The “secret bar” where June’s having her get-together is located in the basement beyond the coat check. For once I made the right decision and wore sneakers so that I can beat an Irish goodbye. I’m not in the mood for some Vyvanse-snorting, Atlas Shrugged obsessive finessing me over sixteen-dollar cocktails.

I come straight from school, wearing the least flattering clothes I own. Classic man repellant. Wide-leg black pants, Vans, and a black sweater with holes at the elbows. The space is cavernous, cold. A cellar wine bar aglow in red lamplight, dark carpets, and rows of dusty bottles behind the long wood bar. I was expecting flocks of suits, but the crowd is diverse. Erratic jazz plays, and the gathered clusters talk in low tones. The ambience isn’t dominated by any particular energy. I’m surprised June knows about this place. It seems the kind of place Jeremy would hide from his friends.

Booths line the back wall, which is dotted with framed pictures. I see June standing among the crowd spilling out from the corner table. She’s wearing a low-cut dress, champagne flute in hand. Her heels must be at least six inches tall. When she teeters toward me, my insides wobble. I imagine her tumbling, cracking her head wide on a table. She grasps my forearm unsteadily.

“Hey, you made it,” she says. Her blowout highlights her cheekbones, the layers cascading in soft waves around her face.

“Um.” I’m speechless from the full majesty of her dress. It’s literal red satin, wrapped around her waist, and her décolletage is hoisted up in full commitment to the fluttery flamenco hem. The cut flatters her enormously. “Nice dress,” I tell her, instead of what I want to say, which is: “Tits much?”

“Thanks.” Her eyelashes are so long, she’s serving uncanny valley. Compared to how she’s looked in the past month, it’s almost as if she’s wearing a prosthetic face.

Someone over her shoulder cracks a joke I don’t catch, and she turns around. I look past her to regard her friends. It’s an odd mix of pale-blue button-ups under sleeveless fleece vests, one guy in a comically slender suit, and a woman with super-short hair in jeans and a windbreaker. My initial assessment is that they don’t look rich. Or even particularly smart. “No, seriously,” insists a sandy-haired guy with enormous teeth. “Look it up—it’s called compersion. It’s experiencing joy at someone else’s joy even when you have nothing to gain from it. It’s the opposite of jealousy and the highest form of empathy.”

“I don’t think you’re in any danger of becoming an empath,” says my sister, cutting him off and pulling me into the fray. “Guys…”

The guys turn to me.

“This is my little sister, Jayne.”

“Hey.” I smile weakly.

“This is Malick.” June gestures to everyone in order. “Wooj, Lyla, Elliot, Chen, Golds, Adam…” I make no effort to retain any of their names as I keep my hand raised in hello.

They chuckle and murmur, some of them waving encouragingly.

“So, this is Selina’s sister,” says one of the middle ones, toasting me with a beer. “Respect.”

“Didn’t Selina actually have a sister?” the bearded one asks, as if I have any idea what they’re talking about. “Wasn’t she like a nun? Maggie or something?”

“Silence, nerds,” says June, raising a hand.

“Selina?” I ask her.

“Ignore them,” she says. “I put a card down.” She leans in to tuck a strand of hair behind my ear. “Tell Serge what you want.” She points to the bartender behind me. “Did you eat?”

I shake my head.

“I’m getting food sent over even though I know digesting isn’t sexy.” She huddles closer. She smells of dark, lacquered wood and smoke, a perfume I don’t recognize. “I don’t want anyone barfing before we get to it,” she says.

“Who are these people?” I ask her.

“Work dorks, mostly,” she says. “I went to college with Lyla. She’s a socialist.” June shrugs. “I thought I’d mix it up.”

She squeezes my arm. “Thank you for dressing hideously so that I can sparkle. It’s so considerate.”

“Do you need anything?” I gesture toward the bar.

June knocks back the rest of her drink. “Actually, I’ll come with you.” She burps a little and grabs my forearm for support as I lead.

“I want to get pregnant,” she tells me once we’re out of earshot.

“Tonight?”

“While I can.”

An odd squeak escapes my throat. “What—and those guys back there are your donors?” I glance at the table.

“Essentially.”

“June.”

“I’m serious,” she says, clutching my forearm with her talons. “Just to know what it feels like at least for a second.”

“If you were pregnant for a few days, it’s just a few cells. It’s like you ate a corn nut. It’s barely a shadow.”

“I haven’t ever even taken the fucking morning-after pill.”

“It’s no picnic,” I retort, and she looks at me for a beat.

“Gross,” she says, and then laughs.

I sit sidesaddle on a stool watching her lean onto the gleaming wood bar, boobs hoisted, foot hitched on the brass railing underneath.

“Why?”

“May as well take the ol’ equipment around the block.”

“Well, do you want to have a baby?” I ask her.

“Not with any of these dipshits,” she quips.

Her smile dies when she sees my expression.

“Don’t you think if you want to be pregnant for a second, it might be worth thinking about? Dr. Ramirez said you could talk to a fertility specialist. You could still freeze… something.”

She ignores me to hail the bartender. “I’ll have two Bombay martinis, extra dry, filthy. With two olives each, up.” June points her thumb when she says “up.”

For a second I’m distracted that she knows how to do that. To order a martini in that way.

“You’re going to have kids, right?” She turns to me.

“I…” I think about my period. How long it’s been gone. How I’m terrified that I’ve broken something in there from all the abuses I’ve heaped on my body in the last few years. “I don’t know,” I tell her.

Our frosty martini glasses arrive. She leans over to slurp the top of hers before picking it up, and I copy her. It’s briny, slippery, and cold.

June takes her cardboard coaster upright and absentmindedly saws the edge of the bar with it. “I did talk to them. The fertility people. I even talked to Steph, and I’m not a good candidate for ovarian preservation. I asked. I can physically do it all—go on hormones, put it off as long as possible, try to have a baby—but nobody advises it. The thing is, I don’t want to find an angle on this one. I always try to game things, and it’s never worked. The reality is, I don’t want to risk it…”

She raises her glass to me. “I got to get knocked the fuck up right now.”

“Okay.” I raise mine. “To you conceiving however briefly at your secret hysterectomy sex party.”

We clink glasses.

“And to the science fiction horror show of me giving birth to my own fucking uterus and ovaries.”

“Jesus, June.”

She keeps her glass held aloft, so I touch it with mine.

We drink.

“Life is fucking weird,” she says.

“It is.”

“Do you think it gets worse?”

“Probably?”

She laughs and toasts me again, which makes me laugh. My sister hugs my shoulders and squeezes. I wrap my arms around her middle. In her stripper heels, she’s taller than me for once.

“Fuck, Jayne,” she says after a while, blinking rapidly, eyelashes fan-dancing. “I hate this.” She exhales slowly. I hand her a cocktail napkin, which she touches to the corners of her eyes. Her fingernails are shellacked in an oystery color. “But at least semen is an antidepressant, I think. It’s also basically all protein, right?”

“Totally.” I have no idea if this is true.

“Promise me you’ll have kids.” June blots her nostrils and inspects the contents of her napkin.

“June.”

“You’d be a good mom,” she says. A lump forms in my throat. “Everyone fucks everyone up, but you’re so fucked up already, you’ll be understanding about stuff like that.”

“Thanks, I guess.”

“You’re a good teammate.” She clears her throat.

I think about the two of us. Our tiny cult.

“And you’re sure you don’t want to talk to Mom about any of this?”

June shakes her head and extracts the olive at the bottom of her glass. “They have enough going on.” My sister places the furry olive pit on her napkin.

I think of Dad’s lump of dough, parceled off and tossed into deep-freeze time-out so that the rest of the family can thrive. I wonder if that’s what June’s been doing all along in plain sight. Hiding her vulnerabilities so as not to be a burden.

When her second drink arrives, she takes another healthy slug.

“Wish me luck,” she says, heading back toward her friends. “Gotta get my organ basted.”