Page 108 of Time Loops & Meet Cutes
“What did we get last time?” She doesn’t wait for an answer, just insists we order exactly the same thing.
The server brings us our tea, and I place the order.
Once again, Madison looks at me curiously. She makes me tell her what happened, like she wants to hear it in person even after all the text messages. She’s not skeptical about my story,though. Or, at least, she’s significantly less skeptical than most people would be.
“Why do you believe me?” I ask.
By now, we have our dumplings. She reaches for one with her chopsticks, shrugging at the same time.
“Because you don’t make shit up,” she says simply. “Even when we were kids, you might ‘lie by omission’ on occasion, but that’s it. So if you’re telling me this, you have to be serious.”
To my sister, the idea of me making up a fantastical story is so unbelievable that she simply… believes me. It’s similar to what she said in the time loop.
I feel a smidge of annoyance that Madison sees me as so straight and narrow, but mostly, I’m relieved.
“Now tell me,” I say, “what happened between us.”
She sighs. “I cut back my hours because I couldn’t handle it anymore. Not so much the kids, but the parents.”
Madison, unlike me, has our father’s gift for teaching. For the past year, she’s been doing one-on-one tutoring and after-school English classes as her main source of income.
“You rarely disapprove of my choices out loud,” she says. “But that time, when I told you—and when I told you that I was moving back home—you flipped out. Told me I was taking advantage of our parents, even though I’m contributing toward the bills. Even though living with your parents beyond graduation is common in many places. I don’t know why it’s so much easier for most people to have full-time jobs than it is for me, but it is. I get overwhelmed so easily. And my periods are getting worse too.”
Madison has always had killer periods. She suspects she has endometriosis, but she’s never gotten a diagnosis. The last time she attempted to get one, the doctor told her to lose weight. Idon’t think I fully appreciated how that affects other aspects of her life.
I was just so focused on wanting her to have security—that’s what our grandparents hoped for when they moved to this country—but the way I treated her pushed her away, and you can’t have total security in this world anyway. Things can change in an instant, despite your best intentions.
She mumbles something about productivity and value and late-stage capitalism, then says, “And Mom had a breakdown.”
“Momwhat?”
My sister chuckles. “You see? This is how I know you’re not lying. You’re a terrible actor. You wouldn’t be able to fake that kind of reaction. Anyway, Mom was distraught that we weren’t on speaking terms, and she felt like she’d failed us as a parent. I think it affected her so strongly because of her own trauma.”
My parents aren’t perfect, but when I was younger, stories from classmates would regularly make me thankful for the parents I had. I could appreciate how hard it had been for Mom to figure out motherhood when the examples in her own life had been horribly lacking. She did her best to make sure our childhood was nothing like her own.
Mom stopped talking to her parents before she married my father; they weren’t at the wedding. She continued to have a relationship with her sister, though it was always fraught. As children, my aunt had been the favorite and my mother had been blamed for everything. It colored their relationship as adults.
“Shit,” I say quietly.
Usually, when I hear stories about myself that I don’t remember, they’re told by my parents, about one childhood antic or another. Like the time I got a tricycle for my birthday andthrew a tantrum because it wasn’t allowed in bed with me. Or the time I tried to give my baby brother away to Santa Claus at the mall.
But these stories, they’re about me as an adult. My sister isn’t telling me things that I dimly remember but don’t recall in detail; nope, I have no memory of them whatsoever.
“I shouldn’t have said that,” I tell her. “I don’t remember, but it’s entirely believable to me, and I’m sorry I was that person. I…” I don’t know how to put into words everything that I feel. I look down at my dumplings, as if they could have the answer. Ha. Looking for answers in dumplings hasn’t gotten me anywhere lately. I glance at the tattoo on her wrist instead. “I want you to be happy and healthy, and I admire that you’ve never been afraid to try new things.”
She snorts. “I’ve always been afraid.”
“Okay, yes—but you did it.”
“Sometimes it’s pure desperation.”
I hesitate. “I never try anything, except when I was stuck in that stupid loop. Like, I asked my coworker what his salary is.”
“And?”
“It’s higher than mine, even though I figure we should make about the same. So the next day, I asked my boss for a raise.”
Her eyes widen. I’m not insulted that she’s surprised.
