Page 18 of No Place Like You

I usedto watch Charlie Brown a lot as a kid. My favorite wasIt’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.I always remember how the grown-ups talked in the movie. They never said actual words. It was just awhomp-whompnoise that sounded like someone was talking to you while you had your ears covered.

Those are the exact sounds ringing through my head right now. I hear Janet’s voice, all distorted and wonky, but I don’t hear actual coherent words.

“My surgery is scheduled for next week. When I go in, we’ll?—”

“I-I don’t understand,” I finally say, cutting her off mid-sentence. She looks up at me, her hands wrapped around the frosty glass still full of strawberry and cream whipped together with a cherry on top. Jukebox music plays around us and the rectangular table in the middle of the small booth we’re sitting in as I try to process what she just told me.

“It’s stage three lung cancer,” she elaborates after tossing the word “cancer” at me without so much as a warning. Then again, is therereally a way to warm up to that word? That threatening, ominous word that feels like the world is crumbling underneath me.

“You don’t even smoke.”

“You don’t have to be a smoker to have cancer.”

“But you’re healthy,” I continue to argue. “I don’t think I’ve ever even seen you have more than two glasses of wine. And you run a 5K, like, every Thanksgiving for that Turkey Trot thing. And?—”

“Dex,” she calls, regaining my attention. She doesn’t say anything else. Instead, she looks at me with silently pleading eyes. And I feel like a complete asshole. So instead of continuing this demand for answers to questions that feel irrelevant at this point, I sigh.

“Sorry,” I say with a deep breath. I take a long pull of my milkshake.

When Janet and I were kids, we traveled to Brooklyn from South Jersey often to visit our grandparents when they were alive. We were surrounded by smaller, quieter towns and beachy streets, so a visit to the city was always a big deal. We’d hop into my parent’s minivan, duffel bags packed to the brim with pajamas and board games, and drive my parents crazy during the two-hour drive to Brooklyn. And because we spent as much time here as we could—three-day weekends, holidays, or long stretches of time over the summer—we grew attached to the one spot that made the best mint chocolate chip milkshakes and onion rings, The Lunch Car. Whether it was to get us out of the house when we became a little too stir-crazy or to appease a late-night, post-dinner snack craving, a thick, cheek-hollowing milkshake, a steamy serving of onion rings still glistening with hot oil, and our grandparents ushering us into an empty booth always did the trick.

But now, the same basket of onion rings, cooled and untouched, alongside the milkshake that suddenly tastes like cardboard, is doing nothing to soothe the numbness coursing through my head.

What makes things worse is that we don’t have a cozy two-bedroom apartment to go back to after this where my grandma would most likelybe baking some pie and my grandpa would return to whatever home improvement project he was working on that week. And for some reason, knowing we’ll be working through this just the two of us makes it that much scarier. If there were ever a time I needed a mom or a dad, or even a gruff grandfather or a snuggly grandma, right now would be the time.

We sit in silence for a minute before Janet picks up an onion ring and takes a crunchy bite. “So what happens from here?” I ask, my gaze fixed on my milkshake.

My big sister has cancer.

She takes a deep, cleansing breath. “Like I said, my surgery’s scheduled for next week. On the nineteenth,” she explains, her voice in full problem-solving mode. “And then…most likely chemo.”

I nod. I keep my eyes focused on the space in front of me, making it obvious I’m avoiding her. But then she reaches for my hand. She gives it a firm squeeze, and I finally look at her.

“Dexter,” she urges. Her voice comes out shaky and scared.

“We’re going to get through it,” I assure her, though the shattered fragments of my composure are hanging by a thread. I might just break down right into the pool of liquifying whipped cream in front of me.

Her response is to nod, though the up and down movement of her head is slow and uncertain.

“Does Charles know?” I ask.

“Yeah,” she answers, her voice sounding less guarded as we veer our conversation away from treatment and prognosis. Her phone chirps on the table just then. She turns it over in her hand and looks over whatever alert she has set on her phone. “I have to get back to the gallery.”

I look at my watch. It’s close to eight, well past her usual office hours. “It’s late.”

“I know,” she says, gathering her things. “I have to get a few thingsbefore I go back home.”

“I’ll walk you.”

She shakes her head. “I can get there on my own. And Charles is going to meet me there,” she explains. “He’s going to stay with me until I need to lock up.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah, I’ll be fine.”

I sigh. “Okay,” I answer, defeated. “I’ll call you tomorrow.”

“Can you do me a favor?”

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