Desiderium

It was so terribly cold. Snow was falling, and it was almost dark.

In a parallel universe, she would be going through her closet for her most ornate pieces of clothing. Sequins. Glitter. Beads. Gold. Silver. Black. Red, if she was feeling particularly bold and her new college friends hyped her up enough. Her closet would be a warzone of discarded tops and dresses; that one too tight, the other too big, a hand-me-down from her mother whose hobby was picking out beautiful things even if she had no need for them. Tags hanging from skirts and sleeves.

Rhea liked beautiful. She sounds the word as she treads through the salted sidewalks. Three syllables.

She tucks her gloved hands into her coat’s pockets.

The nearest CVS from her house is 2.2 miles away—a short three minute drive, if her car worked. The recent heavy snowfalls have kept her and May home the last few days, and the cold had been no match for the battery in her beat-up Honda. Its days had been numbered since the fall when she began hearing more sputtering than rumbles when turning the key in the ignition. Rhea is surprised it lasted her this long.

She doesn’t know how much a battery will cost her, but that was a problem for a different day. Today, she needed to make it to CVS. Preferably with all her fingers and toes intact.

And she needed to get there quickly. May, she knew, wasn’t in any life-threatening danger. She had a fever, a bad cold. A cough that has racked her small chest every night and kept Rhea awake in the next room over.

But May was also 7 years old. Rhea had left her 7-year-old sister alone in their house during New Year’s Eve to get her medicine because there was no way she could have taken her on this 2.2-mile trek that sometimes has her deviating to the road because the piles of stupid snow are blocking the sidewalk. She kicks at the obstacle in front of her, wondering whose grand idea it was to shovel snow into a gigantic pile just before the crosswalk. Her boot causes a dip in the snow, icy chunks tumbling over one another to land in front of her feet. She steps in the pile regardless to hit the pedestrian button. Cold seeps into her knees.

Cars whiz by her on the busy road, their tires painting brown tracks through the new snow on the streets.

Two blocks back, she considered turning around. Her sister would have believed her if she had told her the store was closed for the holiday, and that they would have to make do with what they had for the night. She would complain and maybe cry when Rhea made her another hot cup of lemon tea, but she would drink it. Hot water. Lemon. Honey. They didn’t have much of the latter left. Rhea has been feeding it by the spoonful to May, trying to soothe her throat.

“Just a spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down,” she sings, the sound carried away by the winter chill, a puff of air the only evidence.

The song has been running on a loop in her head since May got sick. May has watched Mary Poppins a record number of times on her iPad these past couple of days. Rhea almost regrets introducing the movie to her but can’t bring herself to feel that way when May giggles as she counts the syllables for Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, excitement at soon being able to show her teacher dominating her cherub face, ruddy cheeks making her eyes squint in delight.

Her father’s face. Rhea can hear the way he used to laugh. May’s laugh now. Loud and boisterous, without a pause for breath. A string of laughter so contagious her mother could never prevent herself from joining.

In the distance, she spots a hazy red sign. The snowfall is growing heavier. She hurries her pace, fails to spot a patch of ice on the sidewalk, and after regaining her wobbly footing, slows down again. The only way this day could get worse would be to break an ankle. She certainly couldn’t fix that with honey.

She’s the only one walking the streets. She swears even the amount of cars that were passing her by earlier have lessened. It makes sense, she supposes. She hopes the CVS hasn’t closed early due to the storm. If it’s still open, she knows its employees would wish it had. It bothers her—feeling like a burden.

Rhea knows she should have gone to the pharmacy yesterday. She kept watching for a break in the snow, but it just kept falling, so cold and wet it turned to ice underfoot. She kept hoping May would be able to fight her cold on her own, but if anything, she’s grown worse, and Rhea can’t afford making a mistake in anything involving May. Right now, she feels like waiting was a very big mistake.

When she reaches the entrance of the CVS, the doors automatically slide open and Rhea closes her eyes in relief. The store is empty, but it’s open. She stomps the snow off her boots as best she can before making a beeline to the cold and flu medicine aisle.

And there’s no Robitussin in sight.

There is benzocaine. Acetaminophen. Guaifenesin. Phenylephrine. Diphenhydramine.

So many syllables. All of them labeled promising to treat colds.  

“Okay, focus,” she whispers. She needs medicine for kids. She scans the shelf for colorful packaging, and as she’s doing so, sees a employee walk by. “Excuse me, can you help me?”

The employee, a woman with a facial expression to match a thunderstorm, comes over to her.

“Hi, I was looking for kid’s Robitussin—the one with the cartoon grape on the front,” Rhea says. “But I don’t see it here. Is there another one here that treats the same thing?”

“Cartoon grape?” The woman asks. Her badge says Nora.

“Yes, it’s for coughs,” she says, and then adds “and cold symptoms.”

The woman furrows her brows, looking over the shelf for a moment before glancing at her from the corner of her eye. “What did you say you were looking for?”

Heat floods Rhea’s face. “Robitussin. For fever and coughs and stuff—for kids.”

The woman takes in a deep breath and hunches forward. She plucks a blue box and hands it to her. “This should cover all your bases, kid.”

Rhea looks down at the packaging. Sees acetaminophen, dextromethorphan, guaifenesin and phenylephrine written in bold white letters. Two cheery kids smile from the bottom right of the box. She glances back at the shelf and winces. $12.

She just paid their bills a few days ago. And though she splurged a bit for May’s Christmas gift—“Try to maintain a sense of normalcy,” her social worker encouraged—she knows there should be enough left in her bank account to cover the cost. It will be tight, but if she budgets well enough, she should be able to make it until her next paycheck. Maybe she can beg her manager to give her more shifts once May goes back to school, assuming she will feel well enough to go. If she’s not better by then, she’ll have to ask their neighbor to watch her a few extra days. It’s not an ideal remedy, but she can’t leave May home alone while she waits tables, and while her manager is somewhat tolerant of her bringing May to work when she’s in a pinch, Rhea knows the tragic novelty of their situation is starting become a simple, sad reality—the ones coworkers will whisper about to new hires as she leaves the room, and the new hires will respond with a version of “poor girl.”

Poor girl, indeed. $12 for medicine she’s not sure will work because May should have seen a doctor days ago but her pediatrician’s office was closed, and Rhea isn’t sure she can or should take her to the emergency room, or how that all works. She’s read enough tweets and seen too many TikToks of people complaining about sky-high emergency room bills to scare her.

Mom would know what to do, Rhea thinks.

She passes the candy aisle on her way to the register. Her heart drops, as it always does, at the sight of the tan carton of whoppers on the top shelf. A family favorite. An old family favorite. She sees them airborne in her father’s car, her mother’s red hair flying in an arc; feels the burning tug of her seat belt as the world turns upside down. Feels May’s warm hand in hers.

Nora is manning the register, bored look on her lined face, her graying hair tied back haphazardly with a clip. She watches Rhea as she approaches. Rhea wonders if they’re the only two people in the whole store. Save for the pop music playing softly through the speakers, she can’t hear anyone else.

“Just this, then?” Nora asks, taking the medicine from her, and Rhea nods. She scans the box and the register’s beep dominates all other sound. “I need to see ID.”

Rhea blinks at her for a beat. Nora repeats herself. “Oh, OK,” Rhea stammers, pulling out her wallet from her coat pocket, its key ring getting stuck for a second and forcing Rhea to yank it loose. She opens the zipper and is struck with panic when she sees an empty slot where her ID should be.

On the kitchen table. Next to the pile of court papers with which her social worker highly recommended she make herself familiar.

She stares at her wallet as if to conjure the ID out of thin air, before steeling herself with a deep breath. “I’m sorry, I don’t have it.”

“I’m not allowed to sell this to you then.” Nora starts to take the cough syrup away.

“No, please,” Rhea says. “I’m 18. I just forgot my ID at home.”

“I can’t sell this to you without seeing ID,” Nora says.

“For cough syrup?”

“People do crazy things on New Year’s,” Nora says, sounding bored and tired. “Drugs are drugs.”

“You don’t understand—this is for my kid sister. She’s really sick and I can’t go home without some kind of medicine. Her fever was at 101 when I left.”

Nora levels a look at her. “Where are your parents?”

Rhea knows what this woman is thinking: Who are the parents who allowed their teenage daughter to go out during this storm? How irresponsible. There are people in this world who shouldn’t have kids.

The judgment is plain to see in her eyes. That’s one of the worst parts of it all.

Rhea lowers her gaze to the navy carpet. “They’re not in the picture. It’s just me and my sister.”

A long pause. A deep breath. Clicks on the keyboard.

“That’ll be $13.27. Do you have a rewards card with us?”

Rhea looks up, surprised. Nora doesn’t meet her eyes. “No,” she answers.

“Would you like to sign up for one?”

Rhea shakes her head and inserts her card in the reader. Nora puts the cough syrup into a bag and hands it to her after the purchase goes through, tucking the mile-long receipt inside. “There’s coupons in the receipt,” Nora says. “Happy New Year.”

“Thanks, you too,” Rhea responds. She clutches the bag like a lifeline, humiliation and relief fighting a never-ending battle inside her. Judgment, at times, was better than the pity, but the pity made some things easier.

She steps outside into the snow, flurries striking her face in cold kisses, clinging to her eyelashes. Heat on her cheeks. Tears that quickly run cold. A 2.2 mile walk ahead of her. A little sister waiting in her bed, a pink flowered comforter tucked underneath her chin, her face illuminated by Julie Andrew’s voice.

Was there a word for what she was feeling? There should be, Rhea thinks. She wishes she could count its syllables.