“Oh, Lee!” Nina cheered, throwing her lanky arms toward the spotless sky, “I’m in love!”
I watched from the shore as she submerged herself in the Atlantic. Hunched over, I held my forearms in front of my frayed string bikini top. Nina rose from the water, singing incoherent joy as water from her bangs cascaded down her freckled face. Then, wiggling side to side, her shaggy pixie cut sprinkled the sea all around us. The waves were tame that day, but the water was frigid. Nina had insisted we call in sick and have ourselves a “mental health day.”
“It’s May Day! The worker’s holiday,” she’d said that morning when she called and woke me up. “We shouldn’t have to sell our labor to these tech assholes. And anyway, it’s Friday!”
Too afraid to ask her who she was falling in love with—she hadn’t even told me she was dating again—I yelled back, asking what love feels like. At twenty-seven, I didn’t know. I’d never been kissed, never gone on more than a few dates and only enough to count on my hands. More than anything, I wanted to fall in love with the man of my dreams, but love’s promise of rapture eluded me.
Again, Nina dunked herself in the water, seeming unaffected by the cold. She popped back up and swam against the tide toward me until her feet hit earth. She reached out to touch me, but I flinched away, nervously laughing. She lost her balance and fell to her knees.
“Oh, c’mere!” she shouted, finally standing.
Staring out at the sea, not me, she lightly dragged the back of her hand against the side of my face.
“Stop it, you creep,” I teased. “Your hand’s cold!”
“That’s what love feels like.”
“Love feels like someone dragging their wet hand down my face?”
She groaned and dove back into the water.
***
We were drained after the long trek back to Nina’s place, the garden apartment of a brownstone in Park Slope.
Her living room encased me like a warm embrace. The space was cluttered and cozy, her walls covered floor to ceiling, bookshelves lined with classics, and trinkets from family trips to Europe.
As she lay on the kitchen floor on her stomach—smothering Sparkles, one of her three elderly cats—I tossed my rubber flip flops off and lingered in the bathroom doorway.
“Why didn’t you tell me you have a new girlfriend?” I asked.
Nina sighed and propped up her head with her hands.
“It’s nothing. I shouldn’t have said I’m in love.”
“It’s okay if she’s ugly. I won’t judge.”
***
In the shower, I scrubbed my body with the loofah and soap I kept at Nina’s place for such occasions. As the water drenched me, the familiar felt foreign. Light-headed, I stared at my things in her shower caddy. I gripped the handle on the tiled wall, overcome by vertigo. I was almost angry, but why? All day I’d been irritated with Nina. It felt like our friendship was just happening to me, like I wasn’t an active participant.
I stared down at my naked body and felt disgusted with my drooping breasts and unshaven vulva. What was I doing in this woman’s shower? Why did she even like me? What was so special about me?
I cared for Nina, but I realized then, I was furious that she cared so deeply for me.
***
Nina and I had met three and a half years ago on my first day as a receptionist at Golden Age 3D, a soulless construction start-up that built cookie-cutter suburban homes in hot, abstract places like Florida and Arizona. It was Halloween, so I showed up in costume as Ms. Frizzle. I had the curly red hair to pull it off, but I felt anxious, fearing I’d be the only one in costume. Still, I dared myself to be myself. I was done fantasizing that Mr. Right would fall out of the sky before me.
I arrived at the office armed with a massive plastic pumpkin full of candy. Food is the best way to win a man’s heart, my mother had always said—not that she knew anything about love. My mother was right, but it was not the heart of a man I captured that day. It was Nina’s.
She appeared in the office, head down, over an hour late, wearing a green papier-mâché diamond sprouting from a headband. I knew instantly she was a Sim. Propelled by her own will, I hoped, not that of a simulation, she moseyed over to me and my pumpkin to introduce herself, a junior software engineer and the only other woman in the office. She rummaged through the pumpkin to pick out all the Almond Joys. We hit it off, discovering we had the same exact birthday. We both loved ABBA, The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City, and pretentious French new wave movies.
Nina invited me to her Halloween party that evening. Even with my makeup fresh and my pumpkin refilled, I was terrified. Maybe this was it. Maybe this was the party where I’d meet the love of my life.
My terror fizzled into disappointment. There were hardly any men, and the few there were gay.
That night, I learned the circumstances that had shaped us into “basically twins” could not have been any different. Nina was a Jewish lesbian from the Upper West Side. That fall, I became her token straight friend raised in a trailer in rural Pennsyltucky from where I’d fled to New York at nineteen without a college education.
Her queer misfit private school friends didn’t seem to mind any of this. Even Nina seemed to forget my inferior origins—but I remembered the differences between us.
***
Sunday morning, back at my place in the Heights, I rolled over in bed, still exhausted from our beach day. I grabbed my phone to scroll, wondering why Nina was being so cryptic about her new lover. I even felt a twinge of jealousy close up my throat. On her Instagram page, I checked every post—many of which I was tagged in—searching for dykes cruising in the comments. Nothing. I texted her.
who are you hiding from me bitch?? and why?? does she have an 11th toe??
Instantly, her chat bubble appeared.
Before she hit send, my screen flashed with an incoming call from an unsaved number with a Maryland area code. Maybe it was my brother. I swallowed and took a deep breath. When I answered hello, I knew his sigh. Then his voice, measured and deep. I felt his words more than I heard them.
“Mom’s in the hospital again. It might be the end,” he said, sounding pretty sad. “She’s been living with Tanya and I for the last six months.”
“And?”
“I think you should come say goodbye to your mother.”
***
Throughout my early adult life, I did things to which I had often, more than once and emphatically, said no. Visiting my dying mother was one of those things.
Despite the feeling I’d disappear, despite the constant desire to vomit, despite my body pleading “no!” I stood outside the Baltimore Amtrak station, hungry and dehydrated, waiting for Daniel to drive me to our mother’s deathbed.
She was in the ICU. She’d had cervical cancer for many years which spread all over her body. Daniel tried to explain, but I didn’t understand his medical jargon. I didn’t want to.
The hospital room had an impressive view of the Chesapeake Bay. My first thought was to send a picture to Nina, but I restrained myself, nearly wincing at the thought of my unread texts. One of the four walls was painted the same green as her living room. I wanted nothing more than to sit next to her, wrap myself up in her afghan, and watch The 500 Blows until my eyes and mouth went dry.
Daniel’s wife, Tanya, stood up from her seat at my mother’s bedside. I saw her stomach was swollen. She held Atomic Habits in one hand, and extended the other to me. Reluctantly, I shook it.
“I read that,” I said. “It’s terrible. Actually, I don’t even think I finished it.”
“Nice to meet you too.” She sat back down and mumbled, “I’m enjoying it.”
Then I allowed myself to look at my mother. The unruly red curls I’d inherited were all gone. Her body was withered and older than I imagined. She was hooked up to a dozen or so cables. Her lips were purple and slightly parted. I could see all her neck tendons.
As she flashed open her beady, bloodshot eyes, they began to well with tears at the sight of her two adult children.
“My baby,” she croaked.
I stopped breathing. My face felt numb.
She cleared her throat. Tears pooled above the taut oxygen tube crossing her cheekbones to plug her nostrils. Quickly, the little pool burst with the weight of reunion, and the liquid resumed its journey down the rest of her face. Daniel grabbed a tissue.
“My baby,” she said again, looking only at me.
I took a sharp, shallow breath. My throat closed up and my chest ached.
She attempted to touch me, but her hand was too weak. She couldn’t lift it more than a few inches off the bed. Suddenly, I was exhausted too.
Everything about her repulsed me, but still I reached for her arthritic hand. When I touched it, I immediately retracted it to instead grab my stomach with both hands. My entire lower abdomen clenched. It felt hotter than the rest of my body.
Her knuckles were so red and swollen I thought if I squeezed one puss might squirt out at me. The thought nearly made me gag. I needed to sit down.
“Lee! My baby!”
“Hi, Mom, yes, it’s me.”
“I’ve been asking for you since I got here. They said I—I kept asking Danny—I wondered, do you still love me?”
I accepted then that I was about to faint and rushed to sit down in the empty chair where Tanya had been. I hadn’t noticed she’d left the room. Daniel, totally oblivious to my pain, stood crouched over his phone. He couldn’t know just from looking that I wanted to leave, but still, I felt furious with him.
“I’m sorry Mom, I have to take Tanya home.”
“Daniel, c’mon!” I pleaded.
“Oh you c’mon, Lee. She’s pregnant.”
“Call her an Uber!” I said, but he was already gone.
I thought then maybe this was a dream. Maybe this was just sleep paralysis. I tried to move my body and couldn’t. Now I was panicking. I was sweating as the heat in my middle grew unbearable. Soon enough, I assured myself, I’d wiggle my toes and legs and sit up on Nina’s couch, relieved. She’d hold me and assure me.
My mother’s eyes grew heavy. I thought she might fall asleep before she turned her head to get a better look at me at her side. It was a slow, unnatural gesture that made me shiver.
“Do you still love me?”
I took a deep breath and closed my eyes. Through a haze, I saw her unveiling a platter of snickerdoodle cookies. I was little. It was my birthday, and she scooped me up like a doll and twirled me in the air as I smiled so big my cheeks grew sore.
“Yes, of course. I love you.” My voice was cracking. “I love you so much it hurts.”
I swallowed and got one last glimpse of her body. Then I ran out of the room, past the nurse’s station, all the way to the elevators, where I cried so hard I puked in a nearby trashcan. I felt dirty, but I knew even the most scalding shower wouldn’t clean me.
Eventually, Daniel drove me back to his McMansion in the suburbs. He didn’t speak to me or acknowledge my sobs and the stench of me. As we pulled into his garage, he simply handed me a house key and told me I was staying in mom’s room on the first floor.
***
After a much needed shower, I shut the bedroom door behind me, and sat on mom’s perfectly made bed. I chewed on my cuticles, still in a towel, mindlessly scrolling through Nina’s Instagram followers, determined to find the profile of her new girlfriend. After I gave up, I finally read her many messages from the past two days.
I’m not ready to tell you yet 🙁 Sorry
Earth to Lee!!!!! Are you still with us???
Then pictures of her cats and freak-outs about my silence.
Are you ghosting me? I miss you. Rick said you called out sick? I stg I will schlep to the heights if I don’t see you mañana at work
Then a reel of an influencer grilling peaches.
We should have a summer solstice party and make this
I crawled under the covers, naked, seeking oblivion. I could smell my mother everywhere. Though the bed was stiff and her memory inescapable, I was unconscious within minutes.
***
I woke up three hours later and called an Uber to the Amtrak station. I was back in Manhattan by noon.
Back at home, I kept my phone off for days and mostly slept and binged reality shows. I left my bedroom only to use the toilet or eat the occasional piece of toast.
Nina showed up on day five of my hibernation, but when I heard her rapid knock, I paid my roommate five dollars to answer the door and say I was out of town. With my ear pressed to my bedroom door, I heard her crackling voice from the hall begging him to text when I came home.
She’d left a bouquet of peonies. My favorite.
***
It was nearly four in the morning the first time I left the apartment a few days later. Without any conscious thought, I drifted into the subway. When I got off at Nina’s stop I headed toward the park instead.
There were already people running and biking around the loop, eager to start their days off right. The trees rustled in the summer breeze. I felt numb.
I’d made an entire lap around the park when I heard Nina’s voice calling me. I thought I was hallucinating, but when I turned behind me it was really her on a stupid morning jog.
Then I ran. Off the loop through the trees, toward the pond, unsure where my body would take me, as she chased me through a tunnel, yelling my name. When the pond came into sight, I wanted to jump in. Instead I ducked under the luscious limbs of a willow tree and sat at the trunk with my legs hugged into my chest.
“Dude, why are you running? What the fuck is going on?” Nina shrieked.
She burst through the tree’s limbs, but I still didn’t look at her.
“Did you tell her you love her?” I asked.
I looked up at her. The corners of her mouth drooped and she was tearing up. Even though she was sad, she was beautiful. My stomach lurched and it hit me: I love Nina. I am jealous because I love Nina.
“What the hell are you talking about?” I looked down and didn’t answer. “Jesus Christ, are you just going to ghost me in real life too?”
I held my breath, waiting for her to accept me for the coward I was.
“I just wish you’d talk to me,” she continued. “I don’t know what I did wrong.”
I swallowed.
“Where have you been? Are you okay?”
I shook my head and whispered, “My mom died. Or she didn’t. I don’t know. My brother keeps calling, but I haven’t answered. I saw her in the hospital. I went to see them.”
Nina crawled on her hands and knees to sit before me. Her face was flushed and she smelled of her favorite lavender body spray. I squeezed my legs tighter into my chest. She lifted her arm and tried to touch my shoulder, but I quickly grabbed her wrist with all of my strength and held it midair.
She was stunned.
“It’s you I love, Lee.”
Now I cried.
“I don’t want to be gay,” I whispered, releasing her wrist. She held it in the air. I looked down and hit my forehead with my palms repeatedly.
“Stop hurting yourself! I know you’re straight. Classic, huh.”
I stopped hitting myself.
“My mom was the saddest little shadow of a person.”
“I know. I’m so sorry. You deserved so much more.”
“When I was in high school I went on a few dates with a guy that dumped me before prom. I was a total mess. Crying. The whole deal. One night I was sobbing to my mom and she’s just, like, silent? After a bit, I get angry that she isn’t trying to comfort me. I say I want to ‘feel good!’ She tells me she knows how to make me feel good. And it’s just. You know. Hurts.”
I buried my face in the space between her neck and shoulder.
“Oh, my dear Lee,” Nina whispered as she hugged me and rubbed circles on my back.
“I love you too, Nina,” I said as I pulled away. “But it makes me hate myself and you and everything on the planet.”
Nina didn’t say anything. She just held me.
“I just hate everything,” I repeated through short breaths.
“It’s okay to hate everything sometimes.” She tucked a lock of my hair behind my ear. “Does anyone know?”
“Now you do, I guess.”
MONA LISA writes fiction. She is thrilled for the publication of her first short story in MAYDAY.
ASHE WALKER can be found on Instagram @marsupialpudding.
