Double Helix

by Nancy Werlin

  Viv sank down onto the sofa. She had hugged me when I’d come in, but then she’d immediately backed off. “Why didn’t you call?” she demanded now. “I was all alone at the restaurant, and I . . .” She bit her lip.

  I desperately hoped she wouldn’t cry. Not in front of my father. Then—the smeared makeup—I realized she probably already had.

  This was unfair and wrong, I thought. The two of them in the room together—it was like worlds colliding, worlds I’d put so much energy into keeping separate. I had nothing to say to them. More, I didn’t really even feel apologetic. Why should I answer to them? I’d been thoughtless, yes. But wasn’t I allowed that now and then? Wasn’t I allowed mistakes? By - people who said they loved me?

  Viv said, “I waited and waited, and finally I called your father and introduced myself.” I heard the emphasis on the last two words clearly. She added, “He didn’t know where you were, either.”

  There was a pause in which I could have said “I’m sorry,” again, but I didn’t. I looked at Viv and she looked at me.

  “Let me guess,” said my father. His voice could have competed with a desert for dryness. “You were at Wyatt’s?” He was looking directly at me, and must have seen the acknowledgment on my face.

  Viv gasped at my father. “If you knew that—guessed—why didn’t you tell me? We could have called Dr. Wyatt—- could have checked!”

  My father said, very precisely, “I dislike Dr. Wyatt.”

  Viv’s mouth fell a little open. “Oh,” she said.

  My father was still staring straight at me. “You acted like a cad tonight,” he said. “I’m ashamed of you.” Before I could reply—not that I had any idea what I would say—he levered himself away from the wall. “I’m going out,” he announced. “Over to the Sheraton to have a scotch at their bar.”

  I turned and watched as he moved unhurriedly to the small table near the door and pocketed his keys. I watched his back as he opened the door and left. I kept watching the closed door as the silence came down around me and Viv and enclosed us. Finally, without looking at her where she sat behind me on the sofa, I said, “Viv? Want to take a walk? I can’t stand being in this apartment right now.”

  She didn’t reply, and in the end I had to turn to her. “Can we walk?” I asked again. I was trying now to temper the anger out of my voice. I still didn’t fully understand where it had come from or why I felt it. With another part of me, I knew this was Viv—Viv, who I loved. That I wasn’t really angry at her.

  A whole minute passed before Viv shook her head. She leaned her elbows on her knees and her hands cupped her face. I could hear that she was wheezing.

  I tried, then—a little.

  I said, “We could go out tomorrow night instead. How would that be? I’d pick you up this time so you wouldn’t have to wait anywhere.”

  Viv shook her head again. She leaned down further to conceal her face. Her shoulders shook, her breath heaved harshly—she was clearly trying not to sob aloud. “I’m sorry,” she choked out. “But I am never going back to that restaurant.” She curled further in on herself.

  I knew I should sit beside her on the sofa and pull her into my arms. Stroke her hair. Say, “There, there.” Murmur apologies and never agains and tell her I loved her over and over and over.

  Instead I went looking for a box of tissues, didn’t find one, and came back defiantly with a new roll of toilet paper.

  Viv was still crying. I put the roll down on the coffee table in front of her. I watched her, this girl that I really did care for, who had truly been the only good thing in my life for the past year, and I felt incredibly distant from her.

  My father was right, of course. I knew it. I had acted like that old-fashioned thing, a cad. Thoughtless, rude, cowardly, stupid. No argument. I should have fallen to my knees before Viv and begged forgiveness for hours. I should have been cuddling her right now.

  But I was so tired. And it all suddenly seemed melodramatic and unnecessary—the apologies, the explanations. Games, theater, hoop-jumping. I had apologized already, several times. Was it really necessary that I abase myself? I would never make her do that, if the situation were reversed. Couldn’t this just be over? Couldn’t she be generous enough to forgive me easily ? Did she have to cry? Did she have to be so . . . so manipulative ?

  I liked having a girlfriend. But for a second I wondered: What would it be like to have one who wasn’t so emotional? Someone with whom I could just, oh, play tennis?

  I hunkered down on the opposite side of the coffee table from Viv. Finally she stopped crying. She looked up. I handed her the toilet paper roll and she looked at it, then at me, and then tore some paper off and blew her nose. “Sorry,” she said. “I’m a mess.”

  “I’m the one who should be apologizing,” I said, not because I felt it, but because it was what I was supposed to say.

  Viv shrugged. She got up and disappeared into the bathroom. When she came out, her face was scrubbed and she - didn’t sit back down. She said baldly, “I wasn’t crying about tonight. I know you think I was, but I wasn’t. Even though it was awful. Almost unforgivable, except for—I was crying—oh, Eli. Your mother. Oh, Eli. I am so sorry.”

  My mouth dropped open. I had been totally blindsided. I stared at her, not believing I’d heard what I’d heard. She knew. She knew—

  All at once, rage was there. Swelling in me. Ready to boil over. Ready to—

  “I asked your father about her tonight, while we were waiting,” Viv said starkly. Compassionately. “He told me everything. Oh, Eli—”

  Ready to explode.

  I cut her off. “Well, congratulations. Now you know. And you also know that I didn’t want you to know. I didn’t choose to tell you myself. Not yet, anyway.”

  “But, Eli—”

  “You didn’t care about that, though, did you? You took the first opportunity you had to go poking around. You went behind my back. How does it feel? Huh? How does it feel to know? Are you happy now?”

  “It’s not like that! I was worried, I—”

  “You were curious. It had nothing to do with being worried.”

  “But it did!” Viv was white. “How can you accuse me like this? It was all mixed up together. I had to call your father because I was worried about you, and I came over here to wait with him—he asked me to, if you care to know—and—”

  “And you seized the opportunity to ask where my mother was. You couldn’t wait to find out.”

  “But it wasn’t to be nosy! It was . . .” She faltered.

  I waited. I could feel the sneer on my face.

  “It’s because I care about you! I love you! I needed to know—I knew there was something going on. Something awful. I had to find out. You needed to trust me and you didn’t. But you can trust me. I’ll show you—”

  I could hardly believe that the voice that lashed out whiplike into the air was my own. “You think I’ll trust you now?”

  Viv’s hands groped behind her and pressed up against the wall. Her back collapsed against it. It was almost the exact same spot where my father had stood, half an hour ago.

  “Eli. Please. I only thought—”

  I had never felt so cold. “Vivian. You didn’t think. Or you thought only about what you wanted. You ignored what I wanted. You trampled on my privacy. So listen to me now, because this is the only time I am going to say it.

  “I do not want tourists in that part of my life.”

  Ten full seconds of silence ticked by.

  Then Viv whispered, “I’m not a tourist. I love you. This is so terrible . . . I’ve read about Huntington’s. I know a little bit. I’ll learn more. I want to share this with you. Let me. Please. Please.”

  She was reacting exactly the way I had known she would. I noted the fact like a scientist.

  “I don’t want to share,” I said. “My father got to share. I wanted to keep you out of it. That was what I wanted.”

  We stared at each other.

  “But love i
s about sharing,” Viv said, after a moment.

  “No,” I said. I could hear the conviction—and the raw anger—in my voice. “Love is about protection.”

  “No,” Viv said frantically. “That’s all wrong! You’re wrong, wrong!”

  “You’re the one who’s wrong,” I said.

  I think we both knew at that second, as our words hung in the air between us, that there was nothing more to be said. After all there had been between us—nothing.

  I don’t really remember the minutes that followed. But, finally, it was over. Viv’s cab came for her, tooting from the street below. Upstairs, there was no slamming of doors or anything like that. Viv and I even hugged each other for a few seconds, though I felt as if I were made of stone. I kissed her on the brow. Then I sat in the living room and listened. I heard the cab’s engine noise fade as it drove away.

  I felt a strange kind of peace, because I knew I had done the right thing, even if in the entirely wrong way. Viv would know that, too, shortly. Shortly, she’d thank her lucky stars to have been extricated from me so easily. She’d read up on Huntington’s—I knew Viv, and that I could count on—and she’d be horrified and pitying, and beneath that, even if it took her years to realize it, relieved.

  Some things were not meant to be shared. Could not be shared. Even if she never admitted it, she’d know. She’d read and she’d know.

  This was for the best.

  I stood in the shower for a long time. Then I went to bed. Of course, I didn’t sleep well. I never did, alone.

  CHAPTER 16

  AS SOON AS THE sun came up the next morning, I went running beside the river. I threw my whole body into an outright run. But I was aware, as my legs pumped and my feet pounded and my heartbeat and breath steadied into an easy, regular, fast rate, that the endless length of a summery Sunday—a perfect blue-skied day—stretched out horribly before me. Empty.

  I sprinted faster, rounding the curve past the old Harvard boathouse and heading across the Charles River to the Allston side.

  I could call Kayla Matheson later. I could ask her to play tennis this afternoon. I was fairly sure that she—and Dr. Wyatt—expected me to call today. If it hadn’t been said straight out yesterday, if an explicit date hadn’t been made with a time and day attached, it had been implicit. It wouldn’t be great exercise—which was a pity, because right now I felt like I - couldn’t get enough—but that wasn’t the point. And, I told myself, there would be no need to feel guilty about seeing Kayla now that things were over between me and Viv.

  It was a funny thing. Kayla was beautiful. I could tick off item by item those things about her that were so amazingly inviting: her lithe figure, sexy hair, creamy skin. And she was no airhead, either. But right this second the pieces wouldn’t come together in my mind. I couldn’t picture her, just her parts. Couldn’t feel her attraction; only knew it had been there. Whereas Viv—being without her last night . . . right now I couldn’t believe I had been so damned stupid.

  No. I didn’t need to think about Viv, and I would not. Would. Not.

  She knew. She knew about my mother, and that was that.

  Twelve miles later, I wasn’t tired, but the path along the river was now crowded with fitness-minded Bostonians and Cantabridgians, and I realized that even if I didn’t want breakfast, I ought at least to drink some water. I headed back to the apartment. Only as I came in did I realize what—who—I’d - really come back for.

  My father was reading the newspaper and drinking coffee in the kitchen. We said nothing to each other as I stood by the sink and downed three glasses of water, one after another. Then I turned and looked at him.

  “Okay,” I said. “I can feel you thinking it, so just say it right out loud.”

  “You dumped her last night, didn’t you? That nice girl.”

  It wasn’t his business. Besides, he already knew. But he kept looking at me, and so finally I said, “Yeah, I—we—broke up.”

  He slammed down his coffee cup. “Don’t try to tell me it was her idea! Why, Eli? She’s pretty, smart, nice. And if you got some kind of erotic charge from being secretive, get over it. I already knew you had a girlfriend.”

  “You did not know about her,” I said, stung.

  “I knew a long time ago.” At my skeptical look, he added, “Listen, I was there when you told your first lies about eating your vegetables. How could you think I wouldn’t know about her?”

  “But I—”

  “Last year, March, right?” continued my father. “Mid-month. First time you had sex.”

  My jaw dropped.

  He said, “Anybody who was paying attention would have known. You wandered around grinning to yourself. Pulled out the cell phone every half hour when you were home, which - wasn’t often. Held yourself differently. Didn’t hear what I was saying most of the time. And I’m sure you won’t remember it, but you did mention her, a few times, by name.” He shrugged.

  It felt—so strange to realize my father had observed me that closely. I felt naked. Exposed. It was not comfortable or good.

  “I was happy for you,” my father went on. “I could tell this was a girl you cared about. A girl who cared about you.” A pause. I could almost hear him making a deliberate decision to say what came next. “I was hurt when you didn’t bring her home.”

  Damn him. “You know why I couldn’t,” I said.

  “Do I?”

  I grabbed the second chair of the dinette set by its back and pulled it toward me. “You know so much. Don’t tell me you - didn’t know that, too.”

  “But she needed to hear about your mother. She was in pain about your having been so secretive.”

  I stared at him. “She told you that?”

  “She didn’t have to tell me. It was obvious.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Of course. Everything is obvious to you.”

  He sighed. “It’s her right to know, Eli.”

  “Really? How do you figure that, Dad? How do you figure her rights in this particular situation are more important than mine? In this particular situation that happens to involve my mother? And my genetic inheritance?”

  “In a serious relationship—”

  “She’s—she was—just a girlfriend!”

  “You weren’t serious about her?”

  I was silent. So was he. In the end I said, “I needed a relationship that worked for me. That didn’t involve other people. What’s so wrong with that?”

  “She’s another person.”

  “You know what I mean. Other other people.”

  “And you know what I mean.”

  I did. He meant the same thing Viv had meant last night. But they were both wrong. Why couldn’t I choose to be in a relationship but not share some things? Didn’t I have a right to privacy? Couldn’t—shouldn’t—someone who loved you make room to give you privacy when you told her that you needed it? Couldn’t she do that without question? Not whine about feeling hurt, feeling excluded? Not pick pick pick at you? Couldn’t she—couldn’t Viv—understand that it was not about her? That it was not personal?

  It was then that my father said what he had been wanting to say all along. Because he, too, didn’t understand that it was not about him.

  “I knew exactly what Vivian was feeling. You’ve shut me out, too, Eli. Since Ava went into the nursing home, you won’t talk, you won’t tell me what you’re thinking. You’ve slammed shut like a jailhouse door. I’d hoped you were at least talking to your girlfriend, but now I see you weren’t even doing that.

  “Don’t you understand—you don’t have to do this alone,” he said. “If you’d only listen to me . . . Eli, you don’t have to go through this alone.”

  “Yes,” I said. “I do.”

  “But—”

  “It’s my own goddamned choice,” I said. “And, by the way, you’re really the wrong person to give lectures on the psychological benefits of trust and the rights of the other person in the relationship. Like you don’t have secrets of your own.
Like there isn’t something important that you won’t tell me.”

  “Eli—”

  “Let’s talk about who slammed shut like a jailhouse door first,” I said. “Let’s talk about who’s got secrets that go way back. Before I got this job, even. Way before, Dad.”

  “You’re talking about Wyatt.”

  “Feel free to share,” I said. “Keeping things to yourself is a sign of lack of trust. Of a dysfunctional relationship. Probably even of mental illness.”

  “My situation and yours are not the same.”

  “Oh?”

  “You don’t understand.” He looked away.

  I said, “Then this is your chance to help me understand.”

  I waited a full minute more. Then I turned my back, filled my glass of water again, and drained it.

  “See you later,” I said, and walked out of the kitchen.

  CHAPTER 17

  I WENT TO WORK.

  There was no necessity for it. I wasn’t on animal care that weekend; Larry and Mary Alice had thoughtfully given me a couple of regular workweeks before putting me on a rotation that included weekends. Who’d have believed that if I had had the phone number of the woman who was caring for the rabbits on this beautiful spring day, I’d have happily swapped with her?

  Then I realized I could go to work anyway. I had an ID badge, I had a card key for our lab, there was other work I - could find to do, and why not just go there? The thought was a big relief.

  Wyatt Transgenics felt strange and empty at noon on a Sunday. Of course, there were always people in the building—far fewer on weekends, but the security guards were there, and lab assistants like me to care for the animals. Also, some of the scientists worked hours that were anything but regular. The empty feeling simply came from the contrast of the bright May warmth outside to the artificial light of the corridors within. That, and the quiet.