Inside the O'Briens (18 page)

CHAPTER 18

K
atie hands Eric a present wrapped in blue paper and a white ribbon. As he's tugging on the ribbon, she suddenly wishes she could take it back. Giving her genetic counselor a gift seemed like a good idea back at home, but watching him open it here in his office, she feels weird, inappropriate, lame.

He tears off the paper, revealing a three-by-five white index card in a black frame. In Katie's neatest writing, the card reads:

“Hope is the thing with feathers

That perches in the soul

And sings the tune without the words

And never stops at all.”

—Emily Dickinson

Eric smiles as he reads it. “Wow, thank you. This is great.”

“I thought it would be good for your office.”

“It's perfect,” he says, standing the frame on his desk, facing Katie. “And my birthday was just last week.”

“Cool.”

“So,” he says, studying Katie for too many discomforting seconds, dipping his toe into conversation as if they're on an awkward second date, the possibility of a third looking highly unlikely. “I'm glad you came back.”

Katie laughs.

“What's so funny?” asks Eric.

“You kinda need people like me to come back or you'd be out of a job.”

“I'm not worried about my job, Katie. I've been worried about you.”

At first she feels flattered, special as the subject of his concern and care, but she backs away. Concern is a thin hair on the head of pity.

“How was your summer?” asks Eric.

“Good.”

“How's your dad doing?”

“He's okay. You can definitely see his symptoms. Those spastic, jerky movements—what are those called again?”

“Chorea.”

“Yeah, his chorea is getting more obvious. He's disorganized and forgetting stuff, and then he gets frustrated with himself and blows up at someone, usually my mom.”

“How's your mom doing with it?”

Katie shrugs. “Okay.”

“Is your dad still working?”

“Yeah.”

“Does anyone at the police department know about his HD?”

“Just his best friend there. He has another friend, an EMT, who knows, but no one else does. It's a secret.”

Tommy Vitale and Donny Kelly are keeping an eye on her dad. For now, they agree that he's okay to work, and no one else has to know. Honestly, she can't imagine that he can go on as a police officer much longer. And at the same time, she can't imagine her dad not being a police officer. Her dad is getting hard to imagine, even when he's sitting in his chair, right in front her.

They decided as a family back in May that they wouldn't
tell anyone in Town. This kind of news would spread like the plague. If it leaked, every Townie and Toonie would know within the week, maybe even the same day. Her dad doesn't give a shit what people in Town think about him, but it matters for JJ. If the guys at the firehouse know about her dad's HD, it wouldn't take a genius after a little Googling for them to figure out that JJ might have it, too. Then they'd start watching him, treating him differently, maybe passing him over for promotions. It wouldn't be fair to JJ. So they all swore themselves to secrecy.

And then she told Felix.

“So how about you? How are you doing?” he asks.

“I'm okay.”

She hesitates, holding back, protecting herself from being exposed. She bobs her cross-legged foot up and down and reads the Emily Dickinson quote.

“When I didn't hear back from you after two weeks and then a month and then two months, I figured I'd never see you again.”

“Yeah, well, for a while there, that was the plan,” she says. “Nothing personal.”

It's not like she was playing hard to get. Eric holds up his hands as if he's being held at gunpoint.

“Hey, I get it. This is tough stuff.”

“Do you see that a lot? People come in one time and then disappear?”

He nods. “Yeah, over half. Not unlike my stats following a first date.”

Katie laughs.

“Plus it was summer,” says Eric. “No one wants to find out if they're HD positive in the summer.”

“And now it's October,” says Katie.

“Yes, it is.”

“And here I am.”

“Here you are.”

“On our second date.”

Eric smiles and taps his fingers on his desk. A flirtatious energy passes between them. Katie blushes.

“So what brought you back?”

Katie switches her crossed leg, buying time.

“I told Felix.”

“This is the guy you were seeing back in July?”

“Yeah.”

“How did he take it?”

“Better than I thought he would. He didn't break up with me on the spot, so that was good.”

“Sounds like a good guy.”

“He is. He told me he loves me.”

She blushes again and looks down at her claddagh ring, feeling silly.

“But I don't think he really gets it,” says Katie. “He's read the little HD pamphlet I gave him, but he refuses to read anything else or Google it or anything. He says he doesn't need to know more now. I think he's in denial.”

“Or maybe you are.”

“How am I in denial? I'm
here
.”

And, she'd like to point out, it took some undeniably huge balls to come back here, but she decides not to say
balls
to Eric.

“About Felix and how he feels about you.”

Katie rolls her eyes.

“Yeah, he loves me and I love him, and that's all great, and I'm really happy. But
i
f
I have this, I'm going to change. A lot. I'm not going to be the same girl he loves right now, and I wouldn't blame him for not loving me with HD.”

“Does your mom still love your dad?”

“Yeah, but she's like a serious Catholic. She has to love him.”

“Devotion and a commitment to marriage vows are different than love. Has your mom stopped loving your dad?”

When they walk Yaz together, they hold hands. She notices them kissing more than they used to. Her mom dotes on him. She doesn't yell back when he blows up, and she doesn't seem to hold it over him after. She calls him “sweetie” and “my love.” Her calls her “hun” and “darlin'.”

“No. But he's not that bad yet.”

“True. Look, I've seen a lot of families with HD, and based on what I've seen, your mom is going to hate HD, not your dad.”

“Felix's boss wants him to move to the company's new office in Portland, Oregon. He wants me to go with him.”

“Do you want to go?”

“I dunno. That's what I'm trying to figure out.”

“And do you think your gene status will influence this decision?”

“I dunno, yeah, probably. But even if I don't have HD and actually especially if I don't, I shouldn't leave Charlestown. I feel so selfish even thinking about leaving now and abandoning my dad and JJ when they need me.”

“JJ is perfectly healthy. He might not be symptomatic for ten years or more. Your dad's still working. He's not in a wheelchair or needing outside assistance. Sounds like your mom and his friends have things well in hand. How long would you live in Portland?”

The Biofuel project in Boston lasted three years. Felix thinks the rollout in Portland would take roughly the same amount of time.

“I dunno, at least a couple of years.”

“So what's holding you back?”

Her eyebrows lift as she shoots him an exasperated look, a gesture stolen from her mom's playbook.
Don't play dumb with me, young man
.

“Your unknown gene status,” he says.

She nods.

“Okay, so what happens if you're gene negative. Would you go?”

She thinks. It wouldn't have to be forever. If her mom and dad need her help, she can adjust her life when that happens. If she doesn't have HD, she has no reason not to go. She loves Felix. She can't bear the thought of losing him.

“Yeah, I think I would.”

A nervous thrill rushes through her after hearing herself voice her truth aloud, and a stupid smile spreads across her face.

“Okay, and now the other possibility. What if you find out you're gene positive?”

And just like that, her smile retreats. The nervous thrill is shuttled into memory.

“I dunno. I feel like not going and breaking up with him would be the right thing to do.”

Eric nods.

“So you think that's what I should do?”

“No, no, I'm just listening, understanding your thoughts.”

“What would you do?” asks Katie.

“I can't answer that for you. I'm not in your shoes.”

Katie looks down at her feet. She's wearing black Toms.

“Plus, I don't think Felix would want to live with me,” says Eric.

“Very funny.”

“You don't have to be a martyr, Katie. If you're gene positive, you could have fifteen to twenty years with no symptoms. That's a long time. A lot of things can change in that amount of time. There's plenty of real hope in the research being done. We could have a really effective treatment or cure by then.”

Fifteen to twenty years. Enough time to hope for JJ and for her, Meghan, and Patrick if they're gene positive. Too late for her dad.

“It'd be a shame to end an important relationship, to cut a
man you love out of your life because of a disease that, if you're going to get it, won't even interfere with your life for maybe another decade or more. Maybe there's a cure in ten years, and HD will never interfere with anything. And then you gave up Felix and Portland for nothing.”

“Sounds like you're trying to convince me to get the test.”

“No, I didn't mean for you to hear that. I'm not here to influence your decision either way. I'm here to help you process the potential impact of every possible outcome. I'm just trying to paint a picture for you, to show you that your life doesn't have to stop or go off the rails if you take the test and find out it's positive.”

“Yeah, but it still doesn't seem fair to Felix,” says her Irish Catholic guilt.

“Not to be a downer here, Katie, but you're really young. You're only twenty-one. I know you guys are in love, but chances are, you two don't end up happily ever after, together forever. Chances are, you'll love a few more guys before it all works out. And none of that has anything to do with HD. It's just life.”

She's not realistically thinking about marrying Felix, but, to be honest, in the back of her mind, just for fun, she's trying on gowns. And Felix would look so totally hot in a black tux. It could happen. Her mom was married with three kids when she was Katie's age. She wonders what her chances are of ending up with Felix. Probably not as likely as her chances of getting Huntington's.

“Have you been in love before?” asks Katie.

“Yeah,” says Eric, hesitating, as if he has more to say but is unsure of whether it's appropriate to share it. “I've loved three women. Really loved them, but none of them lasted. Relationships are hard. At least they are for me.”

“This is so weird. I mean, I don't really know you, and we're talking about stuff I don't talk about with anyone.”

“That's my job.”

“Oh,” says Katie, visibly deflated.

“I didn't mean that it's not personal. We're sharing really intimate stuff here. I get what you mean. You can't really make this kind of decision without rolling up your sleeves, stripping off the armor, and going in deep.”

“Which decision? Moving to Portland with Felix or taking the test?”

“Both.”

Katie nods. Eric waits. The air between them swells with a sticky silence.

“One thing we didn't talk about last time when we went over the genetics that you should know. Remember we talked about the expanded HD gene. Thirty-five or fewer CAG repeats is a negative result and means you won't get HD. Forty or more CAG repeats means you will definitely get HD. Well, the test isn't completely black-and-white. There's a gray area.”

Eric pauses. Katie's stomach tightens, and she braces herself. She has no idea what he's about to say, but her intuition is sounding every alarm.

“If you have thirty-six to thirty-nine repeats, it's a result I can't interpret. This is called a reduced penetrance allele. This is the gray area. With thirty-eight or thirty-nine, you probably have a ninety percent chance of getting HD in your lifetime if you live long enough. It's probably around seventy-five percent if you have thirty-seven CAG repeats and fifty percent for thirty-six repeats, but none of this is exact. We can't really say for sure when the number is between thirty-six and thirty-nine.”

He waits, exploring Katie's face for how this new information is landing in her. It landed like a fuckin' drone attack. She never saw it coming. It was a big fat lie of omission. A bait and switch. She's so pissed, she can't even find the words. She takes a deep breath. There they are.