She hands it to me.
I don’t say anything, just look at the fork, look at her, look at her eyes asking me a question.
“I’m going to be okay,” she says. “I really am. Just do this for me today, yeah? Like old times.
Remind me that it’s possible to feel safe.”
She’s keeping her voice steady, but I can see the nervousness in her arms and shoulders. She didn’t eat her lunch, and it’s probably a bit more serious than she’s letting on, but it’s also probably a bit less serious than in my worst worries. None of which makes me feel any better.
“I would tell you if it was bad,” she says. “I wouldn’t tell Dad, I wouldn’t tell Mom, I wouldn’t tell Meredith. But I’d tell you. I promise.”
“You promise?”
She smiles, and it’s so true, my heart sort of hurts. “I really do, Mike. I don’t want to die. I want to live. I want to live long enough so I can really live.” She shrugs, and it’s more relaxed, I can see. “Just a blip in the day. And I need a reminder.”
I believe her. I know what a blip is. I think I’d know the look of someone who was having more than a blip that freaked her out. They’d look like me.
I get some salmon and rice on the fork. I lift it up.
And I feed her. Mrs Choi and our grandmother sleep, the room is quiet, that middle bed between them empty, empty, empty, and I feed my sister her lunch. We share our craziness, our neuroses, our little bit of screwed-up-ness that comes from our family. We share it. And it feels like love.
“I’m still mad,” Henna says.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” I ask.
“Did you hear me? I said I’m still mad.”
“Then you should be mad at yourself, because if you’d told me it was you who wanted to paint the bridge–”
“And yes, I’m sure.”
She is still mad at me. I’m kind of mad at her, too. But she called asking me to drive her here tonight, not Mel or Jared or Nathan. Me. And I said yes.
“Henna Silven…” The tattoo artist gives up even trying to pronounce her name from the list and just looks at her.
“Silvennoinen,” Henna says. “It’s Finnish.”
“Sympathies,” the tattoo artist says. “My last name’s Thai. It’s seven syllables long. You ready?”
“Yep,” Henna says, standing.
She’s eighteen. She doesn’t need anyone’s permission for this, though she had to prove it to the tattoo parlour receptionist guy when we came in the door. I’m still only seventeen, but that’s okay, because I don’t want a tattoo. Like really, really not.
“You’re definitely sure about this?” I asked her a hundred times on the drive over. “You’ve never mentioned it before.”
“I never nearly died before,” is all she answered. She wouldn’t tell me what she was planning on getting either. Or how she found this place. Or why we were waiting for this one particular tattoo guy to finish putting a hummingbird on a lady’s upper boob. While we sat there, she did look through a catalogue of different types of lettering, so I’m guessing it must be words. She didn’t tell me what words, though, because she was too busy saying she was mad at me.
“Hold on a sec,” she says now, stopping me from following her in. I wait as she goes to the tattoo guy’s chair – he’s called Martin, which seems really old-fashioned for a cool Thai tattoo guy – and they have a quiet conversation about what she wants and where she wants it. It’s going to be on her side, by her stomach, the side away from where the cast is now. She shows the tattoo guy a piece of paper she didn’t show me. He nods, draws a few things on it, and I hear Henna say, “Exactly.”