Double Helix

by Nancy Werlin

  Or beg.

  “I’ll be there in ten minutes,” I said. I hung up. I clutched the sink for a moment longer and just breathed. Then I left the apartment like a heat-seeking missile, taking only the time to call over my shoulder, “Gotta go feed the rabbits again.”

  And when I got to Viv’s and she let me in, and she took one look at my face and then simply opened her arms, at that moment I understood what she’d been trying to say all along about trust. I saw that underneath everything, she had had it for me. And that—at that moment—finally, shakily, so did I, for her.

  “I had no right to come here like this,” I said to her, later. We had been silent together a long time. “I want you to know that I know that.”

  “Shh.” Viv’s eyes were so clear. “You do have the right, Eli. I give it to you.”

  We were in her bed in her room. We were mostly naked. I curled my body entirely around hers and held her. I felt her move her head so that her cheek brushed my arm. I could still feel the fear in me, and the bewilderment, but it was at a distance. I was safe, for now. And, slowly, an idea came to me.

  “Could you do something for me tomorrow morning?” I asked Viv.

  “If it’s before noon. After that I have to go to work.”

  “Could you go to city hall and look up some building plans?”

  “That’s it? All right. For what building? And what do you want me to look for?”

  “The building’s Wyatt Transgenics.” I hesitated, because part of me knew that if I did this myself, it would be easier and cleaner. Would Viv be able to read a blueprint for a building she’d never been in? But Viv had turned in my arms and was looking at me with interest and—yes—pleasure at being asked. She could tell I was about to open up. It was what she’d wanted all along, and it was something I could give her now. A little bit, anyway.

  “I need you to count the number of subterranean levels in the building plan,” I said. “Look through every page of the plan. It might be that one section of the building has more basement levels than another section. I just want to know what the plans actually call for.”

  “Okay,” Viv said. She was regarding me thoughtfully. “I can do that.”

  “You’re wondering why I want to know,” I said.

  She nodded. “Yes, but—”

  “Well, it’s that—”

  “Wait,” Viv cut in. She had a very determined look on her face. “It’s okay, Eli. You don’t have to tell me. I can just go and get the information for you. I don’t need to know why. You’ll tell me when you’re ready. Or not.”

  “But—”

  “I was thinking about what you said. Before, you know.” She ducked her head, then raised it to look at me straight on. “I’ve realized that I was wrong and you were right. About respecting privacy, I mean. I don’t expect you to tell me everything you think and feel.”

  “Oh,” I said. I took her hand. “And here I’d just about decided you were right and I was wrong.”

  She frowned. “Really?”

  “Well,” I said. “There might always be things I need to keep to myself. But I want you to understand that it won’t be because I don’t trust you. And—and love you. I do—I love you, Vivian Fadiman. And I trust you.”

  Viv’s hand turned in mine. She gripped it hard. Then she smiled. “I know,” she said. “I know that now.”

  CHAPTER 27

  THE NEXT MORNING, early, while my father’s exhausted snores resonated through the apartment, I returned home to the apartment, stepping over and around the piles of things in the living room until I’d made my way to the photograph album. I located the picture of my mother, the picture that so closely resembled Kayla Matheson. I looked at it for an entire minute, just to be sure I hadn’t imagined their resemblance.

  I hadn’t, though on close examination Kayla and my mother were not as similar as I had at first thought. It wasn’t just that Kayla was more beautiful, more perfect. Her eyes were a little different—narrower. And their noses were quite dissimilar. For a second I was filled with relief. But then my unease returned. There was still something here that was worrisome. These were two girls that you’d instantly know—know!—were closely related. I did not believe it was a coincidence. I could not.

  And whatever this resemblance was, whatever it meant, I was involved in it somehow. Finding out about it would not just mean finding out some things about Kayla and/or my mother that I didn’t really want to know. It would mean finding out some truth about me. Some secret knowledge waited within me like a shark lurks in the darkest, uncharted depths of the sea, and it had been with me, on some level, always. Always.

  I acknowledged it now. I said it aloud, softly. “Something is strange about you, Eli Samuels. Something is very strange.” And as I heard the words, I could feel their truth.

  Something was strange within me. Yes. But . . .

  But it wasn’t Huntington’s disease.

  My mother had had HD, but I didn’t. I suddenly knew that, knew it with a sureness and ferocity that needed no confirming genetic tests. I knew it—and I knew why I knew it.

  I put a hand against the wall to support myself as memory rose in me.

  I am seven.

  We are seated at the kitchen table; my mother, my father, and me. The silence around us is thick as smoke, and I sense that I should be quiet. My parents are each looking at sections of the newspaper, and I have a book in front of me, but none of us are reading. We are waiting, though I don’t know what for.

  Then the phone rings.

  My father leaps frantically to answer it, nearly overturning his chair, and my mother grabs me from my own chair and up in her arms. My book falls open onto the floor. We ignore it. She holds me tightly. We watch my father on the telephone.

  “Mrs. Emerson. I’ve been waiting for your call.” He is quiet, listening intently. “You’re sure?” he says. “You’re absolutely sure?”

  A moment later, his face is alight with joy. Transcendence. He whirls and yells to my mother, “It’s no! Ava, it’s no! They’ll send a letter as well . . .”

  He says a few more words into the phone, but I don’t hear them. I feel my mother bury her face in my hair. I feel her heart pounding hard against my cheek.

  Then my father hangs up the phone and comes over. He puts his arms around us both. “Eli is okay,” he says. “Ava, our little boy tested negative. Thank God.”

  My mother exhales, hard. She says, “I told you. I told you to believe in him.”

  My father is silent a moment. Then he says, “Yes. You did tell me. You did tell me he was honorable. I guess you were right. About this, anyway. Thank God.”

  “Stop thanking God.” There is an edge to her voice. “He got us into this mess. Thank Dr. Wyatt.”

  There is a long moment of silence. For some reason I feel that I can’t, shouldn’t, move, or the world will shatter around us.

  Then my father says, “I suppose.”

  “We couldn’t have done it without him,” my mother insists. “It was the only way. And now Eli is negative. No matter what happens to me—our son will be fine. That’s all that matters.”

  “I love you, Ava,” my father says.

  “I know,” whispers my mother. But I can tell she is not looking at him. Her head is still turned down, and her lips are still pressed against the top of my head. “I know. I thank you for letting me do what I had to do. Maybe now you can let go of the rest.”

  My father does not reply directly. He simply says, again, “I love you.” And then he adds, “And I love our son. No matter what, that wasn’t a mistake. Since the moment we knew you were pregnant—Ava, I’ve always known that couldn’t be wrong . . . no matter how it came about.”

  “I know,” whispers my mother again.

  Still holding the photograph of my mother, I got up from the floor. I went over to the hall table, where I’d replaced the HD-NEGATIVE letter, burying it under the mound of old mail that filled the drawer. I had a clear photographic memor
y of the letter—it had seared itself into my brain on the day I’d read it—but I wanted to look at it again. I needed to be completely sure that I had not made all of this up.

  It took me a few minutes to find the letter, but I did, and I opened it. My eyes went directly to its signature.

  Harriet Emerson, MSW. Genetic Counselor.

  Mrs. Emerson. I’ve been waiting for your call.

  Next, the date: July, 1993. When I was seven. When testing for Huntington’s first became available to anyone who wanted it—any adult, that is.

  Finally, the key sentence: As per Dr. Wyatt’s request and referral, we have tested your blood sample and can confirm that you are negative for Huntington’s disease.

  It had not been my father’s blood sample that had been sent in—by Dr. Wyatt—for testing. It had been mine. I had been tested as soon as the procedure was available, even though it was not legal to test a child. I had been tested, I supposed, because my parents had needed to know, for sure.

  And Dr. Wyatt had helped them. He had sent my blood sample in, claiming that it was from my father.

  CHAPTER 28

  THE CONNECTION BETWEEN my parents, Dr. Wyatt, and me was now clear. Well . . . clearer. Something illegal had been done. I should not have been tested as a child.

  But that didn’t strike me as being such a big deal. I could easily understand why my parents had done it. The early, secretive, illegal test didn’t begin to explain my father’s hostility toward Dr. Wyatt, though. Wouldn’t he have simply been grateful for Dr. Wyatt’s assistance?

  I looked at the photograph of my mother, which I had placed on the hall table. Kayla’s resemblance to my mother was not explained, either. For a second I thought of my very first theory: that my mother had had an affair with Dr. Wyatt. I was surprised at the rush of hope this thought now gave me. It was so . . . so ordinary.

  But I didn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe it. And the reason I couldn’t was because of the other thing that was not explained. My niggling knowledge, my bone-deep awareness that—even though it wasn’t HD—there was still something very peculiar about me. Something very peculiar that had always been there.

  Turns out Swampy isn’t a man who’s turned into a plant. Swampy’s a plant that tried to become a man.

  Of course I didn’t think I was a plant. But—for the first time I allowed a question about my origins to arise fully in my conscious mind from where it had lurked inside me . . . well, forever.

  Since the moment we knew you were pregnant—Ava, I’ve always known that couldn’t be wrong . . . no matter how it came about.

  What had my father meant by “no matter how it came about”? How had I come to be?

  Kayla’s resemblance to my mother—was Kayla my sister? Half sister?

  I fished in the drawer for the box of envelopes, slipped the photo of my mother into one, and put the envelope into my backpack. Determination filled me. I would get answers, and I would not allow my mind to run wild before I did.

  Facts. I needed facts.

  I would go to Wyatt Transgenics today, and I would find Dr. Wyatt there, and I would show him the photograph. I - wouldn’t tell him about the HD test—that was between me and my father. But I would demand—well, I would ask for—an explanation about Kayla.

  A particularly loud snore came from my father’s room, and my eyes went automatically to the hallway. A second later, I found I had picked my way back through the piles of my mother’s things and moved to stand outside his bedroom door.

  Going through my mother’s belongings yesterday had seemed to do my father some good. In fact, when I’d come back home this morning, after the time with Viv, I found that he had actually packed some things away in a box, labeled firmly for charity. It was a start. And he’d slept. The snores were evidence.

  He would get better, my father. He had decades ahead of him. I leaned my forehead against the door of his bedroom, listening to the snores as they came strongly, regularly. My father could have a good life now, without my mother. He could heal in the days and weeks and years ahead.

  He had promised me that he would think about telling me what had happened between him and Dr. Wyatt. As far as I knew, he was still thinking . . . and I would go on letting him. I would give him all the time he needed. I would not go to him with my new memory, or with the letter. I would take my questions to Dr. Wyatt instead.

  And—despite all the things I’d told myself, and Viv, last night, about trust—I wasn’t ready to talk to Viv yet, either. I - couldn’t be sure what Viv would think if she knew I was uneasy about more than the number of basement levels at Wyatt Transgenics. If she knew about Kayla. If she knew about . . . well, about Swampy.

  I stepped away from my father’s bedroom door. “Sleep well, Dad,” I whispered.

  At work, I showed my badge at the front desk and loped up the double-helix staircase two steps at a time. At the top, I turned left instead of right, and marched like a tin soldier to Dr. Wyatt’s cramped office, the same one in which he’d interviewed me only a few weeks ago.

  The door was open.

  Dr. Wyatt was inside, sitting in the same dangerously one-armed chair that I remembered from before. He was writing rapidly on a yellow legal pad. After a couple of minutes, understanding that he wasn’t going to look up on his own, I rapped on the open door. Once. Twice. Then a third time, much harder. “Dr. Wyatt?” I almost bellowed his name.

  Dr. Wyatt’s head jerked. I had the feeling I’d awoken someone from a deep sleep. But then he turned to face the doorway and saw me. “Eli!” he said, and smiled. He looked so absolutely delighted to see me. I couldn’t help it—I smiled back.

  “Hello,” I said.

  He waved me inside his office. I closed the door behind me. I didn’t want interruptions.

  Dr. Wyatt didn’t appear to notice or care about the door. He was looking at my face, examining it just as thoroughly as he had on the first day we’d met. I waited, as I had then. And eventually he said, “I heard about your mother’s death, of course. Are you okay?”

  The kindness on his face—the honesty and rightness of his not saying the pointless I’m sorry—overset me for a second. I managed to nod. What had I been thinking? I had turned him into some kind of monster in my mind, but he was no such thing.

  “I’m okay,” I said.

  After another moment of examining my face, he shook his head. “No. Something is bothering you. What is it?”

  I drew in a breath, and then let it out. “It’s just—I have a question for you. It’s about my mother.”

  “Yes?” Dr. Wyatt said.

  I reached into my backpack and pulled out the picture. My hand was shaking as I gave it to him. “This is my mother,” I said. “When she was a teenager.”

  Dr. Wyatt took the photo. He examined it for a bare second before looking up again at me. “Yes?”

  “She looks like Kayla Matheson,” I burst out. “She could be her sister!”

  Dr. Wyatt nodded. “Yes,” he said simply.

  For a moment I thought that would be all. For a moment I thought Dr. Wyatt would claim it was a coincidence and send me away.

  But he didn’t. He continued, smoothly: “Good for you, Eli. Good for you for coming to talk to me about it. I was hoping you would, sometime. In fact, I was surprised and disappointed that you didn’t recognize Kayla at once, when you met her. I got her here to Cambridge for the summer on purpose to meet you.”

  I stared at him.

  “But of course, you didn’t know your mother when she was young,” he said. “The resemblance is remarkable. Those genes bred true.”

  CHAPTER 29

  THERE WASN’T AN EXTRA CHAIR in the room. I leaned up against the second table, opposite Dr. Wyatt. I realized I’d dropped my backpack onto the floor by my feet.

  “I’m sorry, Eli.” Dr. Wyatt was frowning. “I see from your face that this truly is a surprise. I’m afraid I assumed you knew about my association with your mother—that that was why you
contacted me in the first place—but that you just weren’t ready to talk to me about it yet.”

  “No,” I said steadily. “I told you what I knew when I came in here that first time. My mother used to mention you. My father disliked hearing your name. I knew who you were from looking you up, and from science classes at school, and from reading newspapers. I was curious. Maybe I had an instinct that there was more—I think I must have. But nothing concrete.”

  Except that . . . when I wrote that initial email to Dr. Wyatt, I had actually been in pursuit of what I was now on the brink of learning. I was getting what I’d asked for, even if until now I hadn’t fully let myself know I was asking for it. Somewhere in me, I had known . . . something.

  “I see,” said Dr. Wyatt. He was still holding the photograph of my mother. He looked down at it and then up at me. “I’m not sure what I should tell you—what you want to know. How much, that is. If you’re ready . . . ?”

  I swallowed. “Okay. Just tell me this: Is Kayla related to my mother? To me? And what about my dad?” I backed up around the table I’d been leaning against and sank down to sit on the carpet, facing Dr. Wyatt. I pressed my back against the wall. I tightened my arms around my knees.

  Dr. Wyatt put down the photo. His voice brightened. “Well! The problem is that the word ‘related’ is old-fashioned and inexact. The right way for you to look at it is to understand that you and Kayla have some DNA in common.”

  I understood all of the words he’d just said, but I didn’t know what they meant together. “Do you mean my mother is Kayla’s mother? That Kayla is my half sister? Or . . . or . . .” I stopped.

  Dr. Wyatt said, quietly, compassionately: “Yes. Or.”

  I exhaled. I had a sudden vision of Foo-foo. She and her transgenic sister rabbits were valuable because they produced a kind of milk that their “normal” sisters did not. For each transgenic rabbit now up in the lab, there had first been a normal rabbit egg, and a normal rabbit sperm. Creation: a fertilized egg. But then . . . careful insertion of the right DNA to bend the development path . . .