The Dizziness of Freedom - Chapter 6

 “I swear he opened every door in the house just so he could slam them all. It’s like being married to a teenager.”

The dining room of Olive’s favorite ramen restaurant was filled with the low hum of a room full of people all speaking at once in their indoor voices. The fuzzy drone of personal conversations was punctuated every few seconds with the rattle and clang of silverware on dishes or empty Asahi bottles being dropped into the bin.

“How is everything?” Their server, baring his teeth in a wide smile, appeared from nowhere, right in time for Olive to fill her mouth with broth and fishcake. She swallowed the bite prematurely, and when she choked out her answer: “all great, thank you,” it was followed by several small chunks of fishcake. The waiter nodded, his smile unflappable, and scurried off to surprise another patron.

“He’s just been so emotional since Xander died.” Lenny continued when the server had gone. Lenny wasn’t her real name, but it was what her family had always called her. The backstory was something to do with the Steinbeck novel, but no one remembered now except for their mother, who remembered everything. “I mean, I felt really bad at first, but how long is he going to mourn a fucking fish?” 

Getting only a weak smile and head shake from Olive, she continued. “Well, what’s been going on with you? How’s the new job treating you?”

“Oh, pretty good. The money is great, and everyone seems nice.”

Lenny waited for more detail but didn’t expect it. Even when they were kids, Olive had always given their mother the same short answers when probed for details of her life. “How was your day at school?” their mom might have asked. “Fine,” Olive would respond, and that was it. “Did you do anything fun?” was the usual follow-up, which would earn her another “I guess,” or “not really.” The conversational key, which Lenny had discovered but their mother never had, was to ask about something specific. Lenny made a habit of asking about a particular hobby or interest because if you could get Olive started talking about something she enjoyed, it was actually more difficult to get her to stop. 

“Oh hey, how was that anime club meeting at work? You mentioned you were going to go this week.” Lenny saw her sister’s eyes dilate and Olive grew very still for a split second before she turned her gaze back down to her ramen, twirling the noodles in her bowl with intense focus.

“Oh yeah, it was cool. We watched an episode of Inuyasha, and that was about it. Nothing to write home about.” Olive filled her mouth with an oversized ball of noodles as if to cue the end of the current discussion.

“You didn’t go, did you?” Lenny sighed. “Olive…”

“No, I went!” Olive’s protest was earnest but muffled. She swallowed. “Seriously. I was there for like ten whole minutes before I left.” Olive grinned then and so did her sister. 

“God, Len, It was so rough. As soon as I introduced myself, someone told me they hated olives. Who does that?”

“Olive, you hate olives.”

“I know that, but he didn’t have to say it two seconds after meeting someone named Olive.” Olive’s eyes lit up and she began to laugh. “But wait! There’s more…” she said in her best game show announcer voice. Lenny laughed and took a bite of her honey-garlic roasted pork. 

“There was this dude just openly watching porn on his phone.”

Lenny almost choked. “You’re joking!”

“Nope. I made the mistake of sitting next to him, and I could see what he was watching. Get this - it was furry porn.”

The two sisters broke out laughing together so loudly that customers at nearby tables looked over at them in mixed alarm and annoyance. Olive lowered her voice, still giggling, and continued.

“The craziest thing is that this guy had an erection in the conference room of a government facility. This neckbeard is getting tiny boners watching people in mascot costumes have sex, and our tax dollars are paying for it!” There were tears sparkling on Olive’s cheeks as she leaned back in her booth and laughed. Lenny was wiping her eyes, thinking she couldn’t remember the last time she had laughed like this with her sister.

A memory flashed in Lenny’s mind as she was wiping tears from her eyes, the way memories sometimes appear from what seems like nowhere and are suddenly as clear and vivid as if they had just occurred. 

Lenny and Olive had been in high school. Olive must have been in tenth grade because she still had that gray Oldsmobile that had only lasted a year. Lenny would have been in ninth grade then. The two girls had been perched on bar stools at the kitchen island of their childhood home. They were in the middle of shotgunning cans of Yuengling together and Lenny could remember the color the amber beer had made as it dripped down her sister's neck. People had been gathered around the sisters cheering them on as they drank the beer down through a punctured hole at the bottom of the can. The foam had frothed over the top of the can down over the girls’ hands as they drank. 

A pleasant warmth swelled in Lenny’s ribcage as she remembered the laughter she’d shared with her sister back then. God, the idea that the closest we can get to describing such a complex feeling is with milquetoast terms like “pleasant” and “warmth” is frustrating. It feels like your heart is trying its hardest to reach out and touch another heart. It’s a sort of yearning. The kind of yearning that makes you feel joy and grief at the same time. I think it’s a subconscious realization that no matter how close you are with someone, you’re still pretty far away.

That pleasant warmth swelled, and then as the memory went from images to the full experience of the night her heart sank and that hard-to-describe feeling shrank back into the place from which those feelings swell. 

Olive had composed herself and was constructing another balanced bite of ramen when she glanced up at Lenny and saw something in her sister’s eyes that made her stomach tight. It was a look with which Olive was compulsively familiar. Disappointment in the eyes looks very similar to pity, and maybe those two things aren’t too different from each other. 

Like the surprise bite of a snake you didn’t see in your path, Olive recalled a time when she had seen that look on Lenny’s face. It was the first time Olive’s parents had trusted her enough to go out of town for a weekend. Lenny had begged her older sister to let her invite friends over that Saturday. She hadn’t called it a party, but that’s what it became.

Olive had been standing in the foyer of their childhood home, arm extended, pointing at the front door, with Lenny standing behind her. High school students were filing out of the house with their eyes down, talking among themselves under their breath. Paul Forrester was the last of them; as he turned to leave, Olive had stopped him:

“Take this.” 

She had walked over to the kitchen island, plucked a hand-rolled joint from the counter. Holding it gingerly between her index finger and thumb, she’d dropped it in Paul Forrester’s open hand. Paul Forrester had looked past Olive at Lenny, shrugged, and then left. Olive had shut the heavy oak door behind him. When she had looked back at Lenny, the look was on her face. It was too old for Lenny, not the look a younger sister should give her older sibling, and it looked strange on her adolescent face.

Sitting in the ramen shop ten years later, Lenny had that same look on her face, and the memory it brought up was all Olive could think about. The two women finished their meals in relative silence. Olive was too busy now running that memory over and over in her mind to continue joking with Lenny, and Lenny could see that she’d lost her sister to some unknowable train of thought. 

“I love you, Olive. Keep trying new things. I promise, if you keep it up eventually you’ll find something that feels right.” Lenny said in front of the restaurant. 

“Love you, too,” Olive returned. They hugged each other and wouldn’t speak again until next month’s scheduled dinner.