sister, i remember
Nerves bounce furiously around her stomach, flutter inside her chest like heavy butterflies—like wind in her veins—and Jamie knows she’s shaking. She tries to channel it into her leg beneath the table, bouncing it up and down so quickly that it shakes her chair, scooting her forward a little.
It’s nothing. That’s what she tells herself. Just an ordinary day. Everything is going to be fine.
Wiping her sweaty palms on the fabric of her jeans, she looks cross the restaurant, seeking something familiar, something comforting. She finds it in the form of Dani sitting at a table near the windows. She has a mug of tea in front of her and she’s holding it between both palms as she looks out at the people passing by on the street. Jamie’s fingers itch a little with the urge to touch her, to get up out of her own seat and go to her, but she doesn’t.
“Jamie?”
The voice is deep—much deeper than she imagined—but warm, familiar. She doesn’t even have to look up to know who it is.
Standing beside the table is Mikey, hands stuffed into the pockets of his jacket and looking at her with a serious expression she vaguely remembers from when he was just a baby. She looks him over, takes in the clean cut of his light brown hair, the flush of pink to his pale, freckled cheeks and the gentle curve of his nose. If she squints, she can see the Mikey she remembers seeing all those years ago, little and chubby and reaching out for her with grabby hands as his adopted parents carried him out of the group home.
“Mikey,” Jamie says, not a question. “Wow.” She pushes her chair out, scraping it against the floor, and stands before him. He’s much taller than her and she has to crane her neck a little to look up at him. “Look at ya’. God, ya’ done growin’ yet?”
Mikey’s expression falters and then he smiles. “You done shrinkin’ yet?” he asks and Jamie laughs, delighted as the nerves begin to fade a little.
The last time she’d seen him, he’d barely been able to say more than a couple, garbled words in baby-speak. Now he’s teasing her and joking around.
More than anything, she wants to hug him, but she doesn’t. Instead, she gestures to the seat across from her own at the table and says, “If you wanted to…”
They sit down and sit in silence for a few moments, taking in the sight of one another. The waitress comes by and asks for their order, and when Mikey turns his head, Jamie sees it. On the side of his jaw, blooming down his neck, the skin is faintly mottled and jagged. It disappears beneath his neckline and, she assumes, continues down his chest.
An image flashes to mind of him as a baby, skin a livid red up and down his neck and chest. She can still remember the way he’d shrieked and cried and fussed and she hadn’t a clue what to do. She’d just held him in her arms, her own shoulder aching and flaring bright, hot pain through her nerves, and tried to quiet him down.
“I’m really glad you came,” Jamie says abruptly once the waitress has gone, shocking both herself and her little brother with her honesty. “I wasn’t sure if you would.”
Mikey nods. “Me, too,” he says, then, “I mean, I’m glad too. I...When Mom said you called, I...I was surprised.”
Mom .
His mother, he means. Not theirs.
The one that chose him, not the one that abandoned them both.
Jamie’s leg starts bouncing up and down again. She is suddenly very aware of the people around them. Her eyes flick over to where Dani is sitting again to find that Dani is already looking at her. She smiles. Jamie smiles back.
She turns back to Mikey. “Your mom said you’re at uni?” she says, hoping to open the conversation a little more.
“Yeah,” Mikey says. “I am. Studying accounting there.”
“That’s nice. And you like it?” He nods and she bobs her head in return. “That’s good.”
It’s strange to think of him as a nineteen-year-old. Every time she’s imagined him in the years that have gone by, he’s been a fuzzy shape or else that wailing, bright-red two-year-old that she couldn’t stop from tipping over that pot of boiling water. Some part of her expected him to be angry or perhaps even cold, given all that happened, but he isn’t. He seems happy in the most miraculous way, vivid and compassionate, filled-in colors and steady lines. They’d been blurry children together, sapped of painted edges and anything defining save for all they’d been left to carry for themselves.
She wants to ask him about his life—all of it; every part she’s missed. There are things that she does know about Denny, through the few letters they’ve exchanged over the years, but things are different there. Strained. Maybe they’re too alike. Maybe they’re too different. Jamie doesn’t know.
But she does know that Mikey is her little brother and the young man sitting in front of her—kind eyes and tentative smile; thanking the waitress as she sets a mug of tea in front of him—is a mystery she won’t be able to solve within this first meeting.
“What about you?” Mikey asks. “What have you been up to?”
Jamie doesn’t have a response to that right away. She takes a sip of her lukewarm tea, giving a noncommittal shrug. “A little here and there,” she tells him. There’s more to it than that, but the palatable version that has less a chance in changing the way he looks at her. “Worked at a house over in Bly for a bit, yeah. Gardening.”
It’s a very short version of the whole thing.
“Gardening?”
She nods.
“That’s nice.”
Silence falls again. They watch one another, the years and distance spreading out between them, lying flat on the tabletop. He has their father’s eyes, her eyes, and there is something in them that settles heavy in her chest. Something like: I know you and I don’t know you and I wish I could fix this .
She wonders what her own eyes say.
Probably something similar.
“Jean and Robert are good to you, though? Everything’s alright?” Jamie asks, unsure as to where the question comes from, but needing to ask. Needing to know.
Mikey nods. He spins his mug on the table. “We’re good,” he tells her. “We’ve always been.”
Jamie’s expression flickers, though she doesn’t notice that it does. “That’s good,” she says. “When we spoke on the phone, Jean seemed nice. Like she’s a good mom.”
Mikey’s eyebrows twitch upwards for a moment. She gets it. He’s not the only one carrying mother issues.
“She is,” he tells her. “I’m lucky to have them.”
At least he’s aware of that.
Across the restaurant, Dani has her chin leaned on her hand, very pointedly not watching. Jamie tries not to get lost in the shape of her profile, the dip of her jaw. It’s strange, but the longer she spends without her, the more she longs to be with her. Everything is still so shiny and new and Jamie is learning, much in the same way she’s trying to learn with Mikey. Trying to figure it all out.
But, in the end, there will always be things she can’t know—things she can’t fix. And there is peace in knowing that. In coming to terms with it.
What she can do: get to know him, ask about his classes, his friends, his interests.
Tell him about hers.
So, they talk. The two of them slashing their way through the overgrowth between them, all that dying green that’s built up in the time they’ve been apart. It aches a little, rattling like loose glass, to take these steps forward together, but they take them all the same.
And that is something, at least, if there can be nothing else.
Eventually, they come to a good enough place to end and then Jamie is standing again, just in front of her brother. Mikey towers over her and Jamie knows that they are both considering what they should do next as they part ways. Their movements have gotten Dani’s attention, though, and she’s watching them now.
“It’s really nice to see you again,” Mikey tells her honestly, far too serious for a boy his age. Affection aches in every one of her muscles at the thought. “Are you...staying in the city, or…?”
She knows what’s coming next and blinks. Says, “I’m...actually, I’m, um...I’m gonna be going to America soon, uh...in a couple days.”
Mikey does something she doesn’t expect then. He beams. “Yeah?” he asks. “Just visiting, or…?”
“Hopefully settling down somewhere,” Jamie tells him. “With, um…” She swallows thickly, heart stretched impossibly thin in her chest and thumping angrily, daring her to finish the thought. But she can’t. Not on her own. “Here, come here.”
She leads Mikey across the cafe then, over to where Dani is sitting and watching them with wide eyes, clearly not having expected to be brought into the mix. She blinks nervously, looking between the two of them, and Jamie settles a hand on her shoulder.
“Mikey, this is Dani,” she introduces. “She’s my, um…”
She doesn’t finish. Isn’t sure how. But Mikey is still smiling, eyes full of wonder at meeting this person who seems so important to his older sister. He reaches out a hand and Dani takes it, shaking it from her seat.
“Good to meet ya’,” he says and Dani smiles back.
“You, too,” she agrees. “Finally.”
Mikey nods and looks over at Jamie, beaming right back. “Finally,” she agrees and Mikey doesn’t look like he’s even considering arguing the point.
______
They make plans. Vague ones. Mikey gives her an address for uni and the telephone number for his residence hall.
Out on the sidewalk in front of the cafe, he pulls her into a hug that she has to lift to her tiptoes in order to meet. This is her brother, Jamie tells herself. A stranger still, yes, but maybe a little less strange. More than a stranger.
Her brother: golden, gentle boy that he is. He’s more than Jamie ever thought any of them would grow up to be, considering and if she has learned nothing else, she will walk away knowing this:
She doesn’t need to be sorry about anything in order to love him.
..