“Another time. Really, I don’t even know if my dad and JJ will be there today.”
Felix’s mouth goes tight, and he lowers his head as if he’s searching for meaning in the ugly pattern on the linoleum floor.
“You know what, I’m not hungry. I should get going.”
He leaves the kitchen and returns in a moment, fully dressed.
“See ya,” he says, and barely kisses her on the cheek.
“Bye.”
She should stop him, invite him to supper, apologize. Instead she says nothing, paralyzed and mute, and lets him go. Shit.
She sits at her crappy kitchen table, stunned to be suddenly alone, and doesn’t touch her oatmeal and banana. She wishes she’d gone to Andrea’s class, that Felix had stayed, that she wasn’t such a stupid coward, that she knew how to walk her yoga talk. The kettle whistles, jolting her out of her seat. She pours the boiling water into one mug and leaves the other empty on the counter. Sipping her green tea, she replays what just happened and rehearses what she might say to him next. She hopes he’ll forgive her and call her later. She hopes to God she didn’t just end their relationship, that she didn’t just lose him. But mostly, she hopes he didn’t bump into her parents on his way out.
CHAPTER 11
Katie is sitting between Patrick and Meghan on the couch in her parents’ living room, wondering what Felix is doing. She almost invited him to Sunday supper today, had the words ready and wrapped in her mouth, but at the last second, she chickened out and swallowed them instead. He hasn’t brought up meeting her family since they fought about it last week, so the issue seems dropped for now. But she’s going to have to bring him one of these Sundays. She can’t keep Felix a secret forever.
JJ and Colleen are sharing the love seat opposite her, their legs and bodies pressed against each other, JJ’s arm draped over Colleen’s shoulders. They look so happy. Katie wishes Felix were here.
Her mom glides into the room, practically tiptoeing, places a six-pack of Coors Light and a chilled bottle of Chardonnay on the coffee table without a word or looking at anyone, and returns to the kitchen. She’s back a moment later with a bottle opener and three jelly jars and leaves again. Everyone looks at one another. That was weird.
They aren’t allowed to start drinking until supper is ready. It’s a strict rule. Patrick shrugs, leans over, grabs a beer, and cracks it open. Katie twists the bottle opener into the cork and pulls it free. JJ takes a beer, and Katie pours a glass of wine for Meghan.
“Wine?” Katie asks Colleen.
“No thanks, I’m good for now.”
“Where’s the remote?” asks Patrick.
“I dunno. You live here,” says JJ.
The boys search the room without getting up off their asses.
“Pat, go put it on,” says JJ.
“Nah, you do it.”
“I’m comfortable here with Colleen. Get up, see if anyone’s playing.”
“B’s aren’t on till tonight.”
“Go see what else is on.”
“I’m still lookin’ for the remote.”
Patrick leans back into the couch, his heels together, knees spread out, and sips his beer. Katie shakes her head. Her brothers are pathetic. The room does feel strange, oppressive even, with the TV off. In fact, Katie can’t remember ever being in this room without it on. It’s as if they’re missing their fifth sibling, the one who never shuts up and demands all the attention.
Colleen pries herself out of the love seat, marches over
to the table with the angels and frogs, and returns with the remote.
“Thanks, hun,” says JJ, grinning at Patrick as he turns the TV on.
He’s flipping the channels, not landing anywhere, but the light and noise coming from the screen give them all a common purpose, and the room instantly feels brighter, familiar again. Katie sighs and smells Windex. That’s weird. It usually smells like whatever animal her mom is boiling this week. Her obsession with ironing aside, her mom isn’t exactly famous for domestic tidiness. Wiping all the dusty figurines and surfaces down with Windex typically only happens when they’re having company. Katie inhales again. Only Windex.
With the exception of bacon, which somehow bypasses everything she knows and believes and still makes her mouth water, she has a hard time stomaching the smell of Sunday suppers. But the house doesn’t smell like bacon or chicken or lamb. Has her mother finally figured out how to remove the taste and smell from food?
The front door opens, and her dad stands before them in the living room, carrying a plastic bag and three pizza boxes, smiling as if he’s Santa delivering a sack of toys.
“I’ve got pepperoni, plain, vegan cheese and veggie for Katie, and a salad for our little rabbit.”
“Where’d you get it?” asks Katie.
Papa Gino’s doesn’t do vegan anything.
“The North End.”
“Wow, really?”
Her mom brings in a stack of paper plates and napkins, and they start peeling off hot slices of pizza.
“Wait, we’re eating in here?” asks Meghan.
“Yeah, why not?” says her mom.
“Is there a game on?” asks Katie.
“Not ’til tonight,” says Patrick.
Pizza and beer in the living room for Sunday supper sounds like a party, but Katie tenses. This never happens, not unless there’s an important game on. Something’s off.
Her dad sits in his chair, her mom in the wooden rocker. He’s drinking a beer, and she’s holding Yaz, but neither of them have plates of pizza in their laps. Her mother’s face is pale and distracted. She’s looking in the direction of the TV but not at it, rubbing Yaz with one hand and the crucifix on her necklace with the other. Her dad is fidgeting in his chair. He looks nervous.
The room suddenly feels stranger than it did with the TV off. There’s an electric energy in the room, and Katie goes still and cold as it passes through her. She feels an animal intuition, an instinctive pinch in her nerves. Thunderclouds gathering. A lion waiting in the brush. Songbirds silencing before taking flight. Something is coming. Something bad.
Patrick is stuffing his face with pepperoni pizza, chewing with his mouth open. It’s got to be him. It’s always him. He’s done something illegal, and either he has to come clean now, or their dad has to arrest him. But Patrick looks totally chill.
Maybe it’s her. They saw Felix. That’s it. Here comes the lecture. They’re not going to let her stay here under their roof for practically free if this is how she’s going to behave. Shacking up with a black man who isn’t Catholic or Irish or from here. What will the neighbors think? Doesn’t she care about her reputation and her family’s good name, if not her soul?
She’ll have to choose between her family and Felix. Maybe. Maybe this kind of ultimatum will be a blessing. They’ll be doing her a favor. Good. I’m gone. Outta here. Just the kick in the pants she needs. She could live with Felix until she finds a place of her own. But where would she go? She’s not ready. She hasn’t saved up enough money to leave Charlestown, and she can’t afford to live here on her own either. Shit.
Her mother gets up, takes the clicker from the love seat arm, and points it at the TV, shutting it off. JJ looks up at her in protest, but the stricken look on her face stops him from complaining. No one does. No one says a word. She sits back down in the rocker and clutches her crucifix.
“Now that we’re all here together, your mom and I have something we want to tell you,” says her dad.
He’s trying to talk, but the words aren’t coming. His face floods pink and twitches, struggling with itself. The air in the room thins, and the bottom of Katie’s stomach drops out, her insides and two bites of pizza sinking without a floor. This isn’t about Felix. Her dad clears his throat.
“I had a medical test, and we found out I have something called H
untington’s disease. It means I’ll have trouble walking and talking and a few other issues over time. But the good news is it’s slow and will take at least ten years.”
Huntington’s disease. She’s never heard of it. She looks to her mom to gauge how bad this is. Her mom is squeezing her crucifix in one hand and hugging herself with the other as if she’s holding on for dear life. This is really bad.
“So you’ll start having trouble walking in ten years?” asks Meghan.
“No, sorry. I have some of the symptoms now. I already have it.”
“It’ll take ten years for what, then?” asks Patrick.
“For him to die,” says Colleen.
“Jesus, Coll,” says JJ.
“No, she’s right. You’ve seen this at your job,” says her dad, checking with Colleen.
Colleen nods. Colleen’s a physical therapist. Seen what? What has she seen?
“So you know the next part of this speech, huh?” says her dad.
Colleen nods again, all color drained from her face, which is clenching as if in pain, scaring the shit out of Katie.
“What next part, Dad? Ma?” asks JJ.
Her dad looks to her mom.
“I can’t,” she whispers. Her mom reaches over and pulls a tissue from the box on the side table. She dabs her eyes and wipes her nose. Her dad exhales forcefully through pursed lips, as if he’s blowing out candles on a birthday cake, as if he’s making a wish.
“So this Huntington’s thing is hereditary. I got it from my mum. And so you kids. You kids. Each of you has a fifty-fifty chance of getting it, too.”
No one moves or says anything. Katie forgets to breathe. Then her mom starts crying into her tissue.
“Wait, fifty-fifty chance of getting what? What is it again?” asks Meghan.
Her dad, their rock, their protector, always so sure of everything, looks physically fragile. His hands are shaking. His eyes are wet and pooling fast. His face grimaces as if he’s just sucked on a lemon, struggling to hold back his tears, and it’s turning Katie inside out. She’s never seen him cry. Not when his dad died or when his friend on the force was shot and killed or when he finally came home the day after the marathon.
Please don’t cry, Dad.
“Here.” He pulls a stack of pamphlets from his jacket pocket and lays them on the coffee table next to the boxes of pizza. “I’m sorry, I can’t talk.”
They each pick up a copy and start reading.
“Fuck,” says Patrick.
“Language,” says her mom.
“Ma, I’m sorry, but fuck language right now,” says Patrick.
“My God, Dad,” says Meghan, clutching the pink silk scarf wrapped around her neck.
“I’m sorry. I’m praying every minute that none of you get this,” says her dad.
“Is there anything they can do to treat it?” asks Meghan.
“They have some medications to ease the symptoms, and I’ll do PT and speech therapy.”
“But there’s no cure for this?” asks Patrick.
“No.”
Katie reads.
Huntington’s disease manifests in motor, cognitive, and psychiatric symptoms that typically begin at age 35–45 and advance relentlessly until death. There is currently no cure or treatment that can halt, slow, or reverse the disease’s progression.
Her dad has Huntington’s. Her dad is dying. Ten years. This can’t be happening.
Each child of an affected parent has a 50 percent chance of developing the disease.
Symptoms typically begin at thirty-five. That’s in fourteen years. And then she might be dying of Huntington’s disease. This can’t be happening.
“If you have the gene, is that it, you’ll definitely get it?” asks JJ.
Her dad nods. A tear trickles down his pink cheek.
Katie buries herself in her pamphlet, looking for the fine print, the exception, a way out. This can’t be right. Her dad is fine. He’s a strong, tough Boston cop, not someone sick with a fatal disease. She reads the list of symptoms again. Depression. No way. Paranoia. Totally not him. Slurred speech. Clear as a bell. They must be wrong. The test was wrong. A mixup or a false positive. Dead in ten years. Fuck those assholes for being wrong and making her dad cry.
She keeps reading. Reduced dexterity. Sometimes, but so what? Temper outbursts. Okay, yes, but everyone loses it once in a while. Chorea.
Derived from the Greek word for dance, chorea is characterized by jerky, involuntary movements.
She looks at her dad. His feet are doing an Irish jig on the floor. His shoulders shrug. His eyebrows lift, and his face grimaces as if he just sucked on a lemon. Shit.
“So we can find out if we have the gene?” asks Meghan, reading the booklet.
“Yes. You can have the same blood test I had,” says her dad.
“But if we have the gene, there’s nothing we can do about it. You just live with knowing you’re going to get sick,” says Meghan.
“That’s right.”
“Does the test tell you when it will happen?” asks Katie.
“No.”
“Fuckin’ hell,” says Patrick.
“How long have you known about this?” asks JJ.
“There’ve been some symptoms for a while, but we didn’t know about Huntington’s for sure until March,” says her dad.
“You’ve known since March?” asks JJ, his jaw clamped and his hands squeezing into fists, as if he’s resisting a sudden, overwhelming urge to break every ceramic frog and angel in the room. “Why are you just telling us this now? It’s friggin’ May!”
“We needed some time to process it ourselves,” says her dad.
“It was hard getting you all together at the same time,” says her mom, defending him.
“That’s bullshit—we all live here,” says JJ, now yelling.
“There’s Meghan’s dance schedule, and either you or your dad are working on Sundays,” says her mom, her voice wobbly, Yaz covered in a heap of damp, crumpled tissues on her lap. “We had to tell all of you, all at once. We couldn’t tell two of you and leave the cat half in the bag.”
“Why is Mom talking about a drunk cat?” asks Patrick.
Katie laughs, knowing it’s inappropriate, but appreciating Patrick for the momentary relief from the tension. But Colleen bursts into tears, hiding her face in her hands.
“It’s okay, baby, it’s going to be okay,” says JJ.
Rather than consoling her, this only escalates her crying, until it can’t be contained inside her hands. Her head suddenly pops up, and it’s Colleen, but it’s not. She looks nothing like the sweet, affable sister-in-law Katie’s known since elementary school. Her eyes are desperate and crazed, and her mouth is open and distorted, as if some kind of Hollywood horror movie special-effects transformation took place within her hands. JJ tries to hug her, but she won’t have it. She’s up from the love seat and out of the living room. The rest of them sit in apprehensive silence, listening to her feet stomp up the stairs. The door to their apartment slams, and Colleen is wailing somewhere overhead.
“What the fuck was that?” asks Patrick.
“She’s scared, you jerk,” says Meghan.
“JJ, we know you two have been trying to start a family,” says her dad. “Even if, God forbid, you carry this thing”—he stops and knocks three times on the wooden side table—“there are medical procedures, pretty common in-vitro stuff, and they can make sure your children never get this.”
This sounds encouraging to Katie, like a real honest-to-God life raft in this roiling sea of shit, but JJ doesn’t seem to want to grab it, as if he’s voluntarily drowning.
“It’s too late, Dad,” JJ finally says. “She’s pregnant. She’s ten weeks. We just heard the heartbeat.”
Shit. Katie’s been expecting her brother to say th
ose words for three years. She’s imagined so many times the delighted screams and hugs, the congratulations and toasts to the health of the first O’Brien grandchild. Her mom, especially, has been waiting on the edge of her seat for this news. The baby already owns a whole wardrobe of adorable yellow and green knitted blankets and booties and the cutest little hats.
Her mom starts sobbing. She crosses herself over and over.
“So it’s too fuckin’ late for a medical miracle,” says JJ.
“You won’t need one,” says her mom, her voice swimming in tears, sounding more devastated than convincing. “You and the baby are going to be fine.”
“Yeah, man. You’ve always been real lucky,” says Patrick. “I’d bet anything you don’t have this. Million-to-one odds.”
“Yeah, JJ. You gotta stay positive,” says Katie. “I’m so happy for you.”
JJ smiles, but he doesn’t mean it.
“I’d better go,” says JJ.
“Tell Colleen I’m sorry,” says her dad, standing.
Her dad walks over to JJ. Their hugs are usually casual, manly slaps on the back, but this one is a real embrace. Her dad and JJ hold on to each other, no space between them, squeezing hard, and Katie starts to cry.
“You’re gonna be okay,” says her dad, finally releasing his oldest child.
“You, too, Dad,” says JJ, wiping his eyes. “We’ll fight it, right?”
“Yeah.”
JJ nods. He’ll be lucky. They’ll all be lucky. Or they’ll fight it. Katie scans the open page of her booklet. But how? How can they fight something that can’t be prevented or cured or even treated? There are no medical miracles for this disease. She takes a deep breath and wipes her eyes. She prays to Jesus on the wall, the ceramic angels on the tables, even Kermit the Frog. If there are no medical miracles, she’ll just have to pray for the good old-fashioned regular kind.
CHAPTER 12
Katie, Meghan, JJ, and Patrick are sitting in a row on the grass on Bunker Hill, sharing a brown-bagged bottle of Jack, watching the tourists and the Toonies and the actors sweating their asses off in Revolutionary War costumes, playing their new favorite game. Some families get together and play Parcheesi or backgammon or Go Fish. They play Guess How Strangers Will Die.