Annemarie shakes her head. “Not that I’ve ever heard.”
“Okay, anyone else with cancer?”
“My mother-in-law’s cousin—but that’s no blood relative to you. No, most of the women in our family live pretty long. It was a shock to everyone when your mother passed so young.”
I look up at Annemarie and see that her soft brown eyes are shiny with tears. She’s the second person I’ve made cry today and it’s not even noon yet.
“I’m sorry for bringing up bad memories, Zia, I know how close you were to my mother. She always said you were her favorite cousin.”
Annemarie lifts a corner of her apron up to wipe her eyes. A timer goes off and she moves to the oven to remove a large round pan. When she upends the pan the cake that slides out is shaped like a giant flower. The other molds, I now notice, are shaped like leaves. “It’s all right, cara,” she says, filling one of the leaf pans with the smooth yellow batter, “you have to ask your questions. I just hope that the answers you get bring you peace.”
DRIVING TOWARD POUGHKEEPSIE I KEEP HEARING ANNEMARIE’S LAST WORDS, BUT instead of applying them to the medical questions I’ve answered for today’s appointment I think about the questions I have about Christine’s death. Would their answers give me peace? Would knowing why she died the way she did make it any easier to do without her?
For the first time since I recognized Christine in that figure floating in the water, I feel the full weight of losing her. My best friend. In many ways, my only friend. Although I’m friendly with a number of the mothers of Bea’s friends, most of them are at least ten years older than I am. There was no one I thought to call to come with me to this appointment. If she were alive, I would have called Christine and she, after telling me I was overreacting and worrying too much, would have gotten on the next train to go with me. She’d gone with me when Neil was first admitted to Briarwood and to the ER with me when Bea got a concussion from falling off her bike when she was seven. I’d gone with her when she decided to get an AIDS test eight years ago and when she’d gone into rehab. So why hadn’t she called me when she found out she was pregnant?
I glance across the highway toward the shining strip of river and the hills on the other side. Beyond those hills I can just make out the cliffs of the Shawangunks, an area famous for rock climbing. Neil had taken both of us several times and always Christine had been fearless. I can’t imagine what would have made her so afraid to tell me that she was pregnant—unless she’d been afraid to tell me who the father was.
THE GENETIC COUNSELING OFFICE IS IN A MEDICAL OFFICE BUILDING ADJACENT TO A shopping center on Route 9 just south of the Mid-Hudson Bridge. When I check in the receptionist collects the questionnaire I’ve filled out and tells me the geneticist will have to review it before seeing me. Then she asks if I want to put this on my insurance. I’ve already retrieved my insurance card, but the way she’s phrased the question gives me pause. It hadn’t occurred to me to wonder what my insurance provider’s reaction might be to the news that I have a gene predisposing me to breast cancer.
“You don’t have to decide now,” she tells me when she sees me hesitate, “you can discuss it with the counselor. Help yourself to tea or coffee and have a seat.” She gestures toward a tray set up with two silver urns and a plate of pastries and bagels. Helping myself to a cup of chamomile tea (I’m a little jumpy from the espresso), I sit down on a couch upholstered in a green and lavender chintz that matches the wallpaper and lampshades. The carpet is a restful shade of pale green and so plush that I’m tempted to slip out of my sandals. In fact, settling into the deep, soft cushions, I’m tempted to take a nap. The faux-Victorian decor has obviously been designed to lull nervous women into a soporific trance. Even the framed Alma-Tadema prints of scantily draped women lolling around on cushions suggest that we are here to join a seraglio instead of waiting to have our blood taken and our genes scanned for fatal imperfections. Or our babies’ genes. I notice that three out of the four other women in the waiting room are pregnant.
I sit and read a story in an old issue of Rosie about the actress Fran Drescher’s bout with uterine cancer. Bea and I used to love watching The Nanny and I have to restrain myself from asking everyone in the waiting room if they know how the actress is doing now. Then I read an essay in More about a woman whose best friend has breast cancer, which sends me sniffling to a Kleenex box covered in a crocheted tea cozy. Everything here feels cushioned, as if to blunt the blow of potential bad news. Finally I decide I’m better off checking in with the Barovier sisters than reading any more magazine stories.
August 28, 1892
Mr. Penrose is working now on a second copy of the Dryope triptych, which he’s been commissioned to paint on a screen for one of his patron’s drawing rooms. I think Clare was shocked to hear that he would interrupt his real art for such a project.
“We should never denigrate the decorative arts,” Mr. Penrose told Clare. “Remember that William Morris himself said that the most important production of art is a beautiful house.”
On our way home that day I remonstrated with Clare for embarrassing Mr. Penrose. I reminded her that he’s not a wealthy man. After all, the glassworks were failing when Papa bought them from the Penrose family and most of the money Augustus’s father got from the sale went to pay off his debts.
“Mr. Penrose will have to make his own way in the world and if that means creating beautiful interiors for homes, I say that is a noble endeavor. Think of how a mood is changed by our surroundings—how more harmonious is the life lived among beautiful things …”
“Miss McKay?”
I look up, startled out of Eugenie’s little lecture on interior decorating, at a woman who, in a lavender smock and flowered dirndl skirt, could have walked out of Eugenie’s journal. Her long black hair, pulled back into a loose braid, and large dark eyes could belong to one of the Pre-Raphaelite models.
“I’m Irini Pearlman. We spoke on the phone. I’m sorry to have kept you waiting, but I’m ready for you now.”
As I rise she puts out her hand to shake mine but as I place my hand in hers I stumble a little in the thick carpeting and she enfolds my hand in both of hers to steady me. I imagine for a minute that she’s going to hold my hand all the way into her office, but she lets go after gently squeezing my hand and gestures for me to walk in front of her down a corridor lined with more Alma-Tadema prints—these of girls lounging on a marble terrace above the sea.
Irini Pearlman’s office is slightly less frilly and feminine than the waiting room. The prints here are tasteful watercolor botanicals. The drapes and the two upholstered chairs in front of her desk where we sit are plain cream-colored linen—a fabric that reminds me, for some reason, of that muslin dress Eugenie altered for Clare and then realtered for herself.
“I’ve reviewed your family history and drawn up a quick chart showing the genetic risk factors we would be testing for,” Dr. Pearlman says, indicating a sheet on a clipboard that she holds out for me. “Obviously, the major cause for concern is the presence of early breast cancer in a primary relation—your mother—” She points to a circle she’s drawn and inked in. “And then we have the great-aunt—” she points to another circle, this one half-darkened with a question mark above it, “—but we’re not even sure whether the lump she had removed was malignant or benign …”
“No, and as I wrote down there’s just not a whole lot of information on that side. My mother’s cousin, Annemarie, said the women could barely pronounce the word cancer without making the sign for the evil eye.”
“Yes, in my family, too, the aunts would spit and say a prayer against the kaynohara. Not an uncommon attitude in the old country, but it makes my job a little harder. I have to say, though, that from this it doesn’t seem like you have much to worry about—”
“Really?” I notice I’m leaning toward her, ready to fall into her reassuring dark eyes.
“But of course, whenever there’s a parent with the diagnos
is there’s cause for concern, especially here because your mother was fairly young. I can understand why you would consider having the test. Let me explain a little about the factors you should keep in mind …”
I lean back while Irini Pearlman explains my statistical chances for getting breast cancer with or without one of the two genes that have been identified in “family clusters” with breast cancer, BRCA1 and BRCA2. Although I’m pretty bad at statistics and my mind starts to wander when too many numbers get bandied about, Dr. Pearlman’s very good at her job. If I’ve got one of the genes, I have an 85 percent lifetime risk of developing breast cancer compared to a 10 percent lifetime risk for women without either of the genes. More disturbing is the news that if I have the BRCA1 gene I have a 40 to 60 percent chance of developing ovarian cancer compared to a 1 to 2 percent chance in the general population.
“Wow, that’s pretty high,” I say, “especially since ovarian cancer’s so deadly.”
“Yes, there’s no reliable screening for it, which is why many women who test positive for the gene elect to have their ovaries removed. Of course, that isn’t a decision to be made lightly if you’d planned to have more children …”
Dr. Pearlman pauses, leaving a hole like one of the blank spaces in her questionnaire for me to fill in, but I’m already too dazed by the onslaught of information I’ve received to even pretend to know whether I’d planned to have more children or not. I remember Christine asking at the train station, have you felt that much for anyone since Neil? It’s hard for me to imagine ever caring enough for anyone again to even think about having another child.
“There’s no reason to get too far ahead of ourselves,” Dr. Pearlman says as if she can hear the questions roiling around in my brain. “We like to bring up the prophylactic measures available because without their existence there’d be very little reason to pursue this line of inquiry, but as I said, the chances are you don’t even have the gene. There’s also no reason to decide today whether or not you want to have the test. Perhaps there are family members you wish to consult …”
“No,” I say, “I want to have the test. I might as well get it over with while I’m here … or do I have to go to a lab?”
As answer, Dr. Pearlman gets up and retrieves a hypodermic kit from a filing cabinet behind her desk. I’m a little surprised that she’s the one to take my blood, but also a little relieved. Because I have narrow veins, giving blood is never easy for me. There’s something extremely soothing in her voice though, as she talks to me while swabbing the underside of my elbow and flicking my arm to raise my veins. She tells me the results will take three weeks and that I’ll have to come in for an appointment and I’m not to expect to receive any information on the phone. She also tells me that it’s probably safe to use my insurance—that they haven’t had any cases of people losing their insurance with a positive diagnosis—but that I’m welcome to pay out of pocket if I’d like. Although it’s expensive, I tell her I’ll pay for the test myself.
I look away when the needle goes in and Dr. Pearlman asks me inconsequential questions about what I do for a living and how old my daughter is and where we live—all to distract me from the needle in my arm.
“We get a lot of people from Penrose College,” she says.
“Oh yes, that’s how I was referred—”
“From that poor woman who died?”
I turn my head just as Dr. Pearlman pulls the needle out of my arm and presses a cotton swab hard into the crook of my elbow. “You mean Christine Webb? She came here?”
“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said anything …” Dr. Pearlman gets up to dispose of the needle and comes back with a Band-Aid for my arm, avoiding my eyes while she replaces the blood-dabbed cotton with the adhesive bandage. “Everything that happens here is confidential.”
“But if Christine came here you should at least talk to the police. Here—” I take out one of the business cards that Detective Falco gave me, “—this is the number of the detective who’s handling the case. I’m sure it’s important, especially if it had anything to do with the baby …”
Dr. Pearlman looks up at me and quickly looks away, but not so quickly that I don’t catch a look of pity in those dark eyes so heartbreaking that I feel certain Christine came here because of her unborn child—and that the news she got wasn’t good.
DETECTIVE FALCO HAD GIVEN ME TWO CARDS; I KEPT THE ONE HE’D WRITTEN HIS cell phone number on. I dial the number from a pizzeria across from the medical center. He answers on the third ring.
“It’s Juno McKay,” I say, “do you have a minute?”
“Of course, Miss McKay, what can I do for you?”
“Well, I just had some tests done at a genetic counseling office in Poughkeepsie—”
“Anything wrong?” he asks, interrupting me.
“Oh no—well, at least let’s hope not.” I try laughing but it comes out more as a gasp. “Just checking something out. The reason I called, though, is that the genetic counselor mentioned that she knew a friend of mine from the college. I thought at first that she meant Fay Morgan—”
“Why did you think that?” he asks, interrupting me for the second time.
“Because Fay referred me to her.” I pause, expecting another interruption, but Detective Falco is silent. “Anyway, it wasn’t Fay—it was Christine. She came in for some testing about a month ago. Around the same time she would have been up here visiting Briarwood.”
“Did the counselor say what she was being tested for?”
“She wouldn’t tell me anything, but I gathered it had something to do with the pregnancy and that the news wasn’t good. I gave her your card and she said she’d call, but I thought I should give you her name and number as well.”
“Absolutely,” he says, “good work.”
I give him Irini Pearlman’s name and number and the address of the genetic counseling office and he thanks me. I can tell he’s ready to get off, but I detain him another moment. “I guess bad news about her pregnancy could have been a motive for killing herself—”
“And it could tell us who the father was,” he says, interrupting me for the third and last time. Then he thanks me again for my “good work” and hangs up. I’m not sure why, but the thought of Detective Falco homing in on the identity of Christine’s lover makes me feel a little queasy, almost as if I’m the prey that’s being circled. Or it could just be the loss of blood that’s making me feel light-headed. I buy a slice of Sicilian pizza and head across the river.
IT’S BEEN YEARS SINCE I’VE BEEN TO NEW PALTZ, NOT SINCE NEIL AND CHRISTINE AND I used to drive through on our way to rock climbing in the Gunks. Sometimes we’d pick up bagels on our way in—the only decent bagels north of the Bronx, Neil used to say—and stop at one of the bars on our way back. New Paltz had a lot more going for it as a college town than poor rundown Rosedale.
It still feels like a seventies college town. If anything Main Street seems to have gone back in time since I last saw it. Tie-dyed shirts and bright Indian kurtas hang in the windows, long-haired men and sandaled young women—many with babies in Indian-patterned slings—walk along the main street.
When I check the directions on the opening notice again I realize that the gallery is just outside the town, over the bridge that crosses the Wall Kill, in an old stone building—in fact, it’s called Stone Gallery—by the side of the stream. The sight of the full parking lot brings me such a sensation of relief that I realize that my nervousness hasn’t all been over seeing Neil again. It’s the old anxiety I always felt when he did a show—the fear that if it were too sparsely attended or if too few paintings sold or sold to the wrong people or he overheard a callous comment or it was badly reviewed or not reviewed at all, Neil’s manic high that preceded the show would dissolve into crippling depression. It took me a while to realize that it didn’t really matter how the show went, that there was no amount of success that could staunch that downward flow from elation to despair—a process as inevitable as w
ater flowing to the sea.
I park and walk up a flight of stone steps to an arched doorway flanked on either side by blue flags emblazoned with the show’s title—River Light—and Neil’s name and proceed down a narrow stone corridor. I wonder if the building is one of the original Huguenot buildings the town is famous for. It feels ancient, cool as a tomb, the wide planked floor worn and sloping ever so slightly downward so that I’m surprised that the room I emerge into is not some dark underground cavern. It is, rather, spacious and filled with color and wavering light.
I’d been expecting to see something like the river landscapes Dr. Horace showed me at Briarwood, but the canvas that fills the wall facing me could only be called a landscape in the most elemental sense. There is water—a great expanse of dark purplish water at eye level as if the viewer were swimming in it or skimming the surface in a low boat—and a towering rock face tinged with indigo and violet, and striped by wavering bands of pale mauve light that seem to be moving. In fact, the light is moving. The entire room is filled with reflected light coming, I soon figure out, from narrow rectangular copper basins lining the walls. I step over to one of the basins and look down through clear water to a tumble of smooth rocks at the bottom that nearly camouflage the underwater light fixtures. When I take another step forward the water vibrates, making the light bands on the paintings and walls jitter and shake.
“The basins are mounted on high-tension springs,” says a woman who’s come up behind me, “so that the pattern of light responds to the presence of viewers in the room. The artist is commenting on the Heisenberg uncertainty principle—the theory that there is no way to make an observation without affecting that which is observed.” I stare at the woman to see if she’s having me on, but she stares back with a straight face, as if explaining art via obscure physics theories was everyday stuff to her. Maybe it is. The woman is tall and slim, her silver hair cut boyishly. She’s wearing an ankle-length coat woven in a multicolored geometric pattern that looks vaguely Aztecan and chunky amber earrings the size of cherries. She looks like she could be a physics professor or an Aztec priestess. When I look down to see the springs under the water basins I notice that she’s wearing lavishly impractical sandals of blue satin, the strap between her toes encrusted with a rhinestone dragonfly that appears to have just alighted on her foot.