Page 12 of Lift Me Up

She turns away, headed to her baking cabinet in the corner of her illustrious kitchen. It’s her happy place. All marble counters, sunny, robin’s egg blue walls with white accents, and black appliances to tie it all together. No normal person has two oven ranges, but Sienna does, and she puts them to good use. From where I sit, I see her pulling sugar, butter, flour, among other things. The makings of the croissants as requested, as if we aren’t surrounded by an impossible amount of sweet treats already. She turns on the music, a soft lull of a piano cover of a pop song I can’t place. I watch in fascination as she precisely measures and pours, then stirs and kneads; makes magic at her fingertips.

I won’t give up on convincing Sienna that the pop-up bakery is a good idea. If I can show her that she will be supported, that people will love what she creates even if she didn’t graduate from a fancy pastry school, maybe then Sienna would consider the full business idea with me seriously. If she did, I would be getting away from a job that doesn't do anything but pays the bills and I could help my sister live both of her dreams, being a mom and showing her love for people through her sweet treats.

“So!” She breaks my thoughts and I blink away the daze, watching her work deftly on the dough.

“So?”

“What brought you here unexpectedly? Not that the visit isn’t welcomed, of course, but usually you at least text me to tell me you’re coming.”

Just like that, the haze of distraction that I worked very hard to build up while here dissipates. My mind instantly goes back to work, to that elevator, to that conversation and that girl.

“Oh, it’s nothing.”

I pick at the hangnail on my thumb anxiously, and maybe that’s my tell, because Sienna stops folding and kneading the dough as she waits for me to spit it out. Eyebrows raised, eyes narrowed, head tilted, she’s like a suspicious mom accusing her child of something she already knows they’ve done, and I can’t help but smile at the thought of Sienna being just that someday. I sigh. “There was… a thing, at work. It’s been on my mind lately.”

She nods at this, knowing I can’t divulge the information regarding the people I talk to and the places I answer for. She goes back to her baking, and I go back to the hangnail. We sit in comfortable silence until she shatters it. “So who is she?”

“What? I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I deflect. How the hell did she know?

She scoffs. “Oh please, Noah. I’ve seen you as a lovesick high school boy, and chasing your crush around the playground at recess. You’re not fooling me. But, if you’re not ready to talk about it, then make yourself useful and pass me the chilled butter from the fridge.”

I get the damn butter because damn it, I am useful. I distract myself by watching my sister fold pastry dough with ease, and I definitely do not think about the girl in the elevator. Absolutely not.

CHAPTER SEVEN

GEORGIE

The thing is, no one ever tells you how to deal with chronic illness. There’s no handbook, no be-all/end-all game plan to make things magically better. There’s no right or wrong; there’s only through.

But each chronic illness is different. It comes with its own set of challenges or limitations and struggles. It does not consider how well or how poorly you take care of your body. It does not judge. It takes and it takes, until you have nothing left to give.

The spoon theory is something I truly believe in. I read about it once, about this metaphor someone created for their friend who has lupus as a way to explain what happens to their energy living with chronic illness. You have a set number of spoons representing your energy each day. Each task takes a certain amount of energy or in theory, spoons. So, what might take a healthy person 2 spoons to shower could realistically take someone who is chronically ill 7 spoons to complete. Now that may not seem like much, but if they use up their spoons too quickly or on a task that takes more spoons than average, they might run out faster than a healthy person with ample spoons to spare.

In my mind, I like to imagine that my spoon set is mismatched. I have some small spoons, some large, some are twisted, some bent out of shape. I only have a couple of perfect spoons. Each kind has a different amount of energy, each important. But sometimes I forget to wash some of them, and sometimes I lose a few. I can hope that one day I’ll have a complete set of regular spoons, but for now I take care of the mismatched ones I have as best I can.

Looking up from my bowl of cereal, I gaze over at my sink, knowing and dreading that in mere minutes I will make my way over there to place the dirty bowl in it. Or maybe the counter. By the looks of things, the dishes have piled up again. I swallow my final spoonful of Fruity Yums (look, I buy generic brand cereal because name brand is too expensive for barely flavoured cardboard) and sigh at the pink, cereal-dust flavoured milk in the bowl. I could drink this, it is customary with cereal after all, but that requires a spoon—the metaphorical kind, not literal—that I just couldn’t be bothered to use right now.

I cringe as I get off the couch, mindful of everywhere my body aches. My back cracks, my thigh burns. The monster is still there and rearing its ugly head. No bandage, no matter how thick the padding is, covers it enough to take the sting away. It rubs every time I walk, turning my thigh this way or that to escape it. A friendly cousin monster has bloomed from all the stress of everything too. It sits right under my breast, where the skin pulls across ribs in just a way that reminds me it’s there with every breath I take, angry and red and covered with a bandage to save my shirts from the impending shit storm. There’s absolutely no way I am wearing a bra today.

I get the bowl to its final destination, dumping the milk into the sink of dishes and the bowl goes on the kitchen counter next to the other bowl from my morning cereal.

“George?” Franny’s voice echoes through my apartment.

Franny is the only person other than my parents who can call me George. Well, I don’t communicate with my dad much anymore, he decided that a new life with a new family in a whole new city was better than sticking around and trying to make things work with the one he had. So, I guess it’s only my mom and Franny who call me that now.

I clink the dishes to pretend I am doing something productive. She peeks around the doorway, her golden hair with purple tips swishing as she shakes her head at me when she spots my mountain of dishes.

“Francis,” I say to her coolly, pretending I know nothing about the dish mountain in question behind me.

“Did you need some help with those?”

She’s not mocking me, I know. Franny has always been there for as long as I’ve known her. The first day I moved in was supposed to be the start of something great. The first day in a new life with Brandon, who wasn’t even here to help me with the move. It was just my dumb luck that the elevator broke (go figure), and the other one was already on service for another couple moving out who refused to let me use it for one trip of big furniture.

So, I had to haul my things one by one up five flights of stairs, heaving and huffing the whole way only to find that my apartment door had locked behind me after the first trip. I had to call the building manager to be let back in, which just so happened to be Franny. She not only let me back in, she also helped me with my smaller items up and down the stairs, and then forced the couple using the elevator to let me use it for the big furniture. Building manager authority and all. But her act of kindness urged me to make her cupcakes as a thank you, and a ‘hello I’m your 4 floors away neighbour, please like me’ gift, and that was it. I had her hooked the moment she tasted homemade marshmallow buttercream.

So yes, I know she’s not mocking me when she asks if I need help. But I know that she knows that I will refuse, and instead of continuing to let the dish pile fester any longer, I use my remaining spoons of energy to clean the kitchen.

“Georgie,” Franny says in a tone that sounds an awful lot like ‘come on, don’t be stupid, let me help,’ but I just wave her off.