Page 90 of The Comeback
I glare at her. “Why do you want the big talk now?”
“Do you want me to apologize for being myself?”
“How about being sorry you left us so you could do it?”
In the silence that follows, the Beach Boys give way to some surf rock band. Phoebe looks at her drink. “I told you before why I did. I don’t know how long you want to stay mad or what you gain from it. We nearly lost Dad.” She doesn’t elaborate after that.
I hate that she makes sense because I have a good seventeen years of sour resentment clinging to me like a sweaty sports bra. What do I gain from this low-level warfare? Nothing except that I can tell myself Phoebe is a flake and her decisions are flaky and thus nothing to make me question my own life. But Phoebe enjoying herself doing my exact opposite makes me wonder if I have the same choices open to me, even now.
She lets that sit for a moment, then leans back in her chair, making it creak alarmingly. “I regret quitting school. I was jealous when you got your degree.”
“Jealous ofme?”
Phoebe rolls her eyes. “You don’t even know how proud Mom and Dad are of you. ‘Ari’s about to graduate. Ari’s top in her class. Ari has a fancy-pants job. Ari’s life is going so well.’” She says this in a singsong voice that’s half-mocking and half-dejected.
“Is that why you never called?”
“Probably. I don’t have a good answer.” She makes a face. “That sounds bad. I’m not a good person, shit.”
We drink our overpriced juice-beer.
“I want to talk about other things,” I say.
She looks relieved. “Done.”
I cast around for a neutral question. “Where were you before Montreal?”
“Peru, working in a hotel near Machu Picchu for a few months,” she says like it’s no big deal.
I feel almost shy when I ask her, “Can you tell me about it?”
“You really want to know?”
“I love hearing about people’s travels,” I say honestly. “I’ve never been anywhere.”
“No?”
“Work.”
Phoebe’s expression is understanding. “One day we can go somewhere together.” She gulps down her radler as this casual offer makes my eyes fly up to her face to see if she’s serious. She is. “Okay, tell me when you get bored.”
I don’t get bored at all. For the next two hours, Phoebe regales me with travel triumphs and mishaps. Missing a flight in LA and meeting a movie star in the bar. Learning how to make espresso from a man who insisted he learned it in Sicily from a Mafia consigliere. She’s amusing and wry and makes me laugh so hard my stomach hurts. Then my heart hurts a bit because I could have had this years ago.
She signals the server for the bill. “You know, you could go to Korea. On vacation.”
I kick at the sand under my feet. “That ship has sailed.”
“I only met Jihoon for a bit, but he seems like a good guy. He’d hear you out, especially if you made an effort to see him.”
“The problem is there’s nothing to hear out. It was the right decision.”
Phoebe drags a finger through the condensation on her glass. “You don’t have a single regret?”
“Of course not,” I lie.
She looks at me skeptically. “I had a therapist do a thought exercise with me once. Do you want to hear it?”
First I need to get over my sister mentioning a therapist so casually, which is not something she learned to do in the Hui family home. “I don’t know.”
