Rules for 50/50 Chances

by Kate McGovern

  I know Caleb noticed that I put a little extra effort into my ensemble tonight. When he first saw me take off my coat in the restaurant, he made an obvious “I’m impressed” face. Under the table, our knees are just barely grazing each other.

  “Okay,” Lena interrupts the hockey talk with a little clap. “Before dessert, presents!”

  I groan. “Seriously, guys, you didn’t have to get me anything. And you especially don’t have to give it to me in public,” I add, glaring at Lena. She just smiles, and pulls an envelope from her purse.

  “Relax, it’s nothing big to unwrap. This is from me and Caleb.”

  She and Caleb went in together for a present for me? That’s weird. It’s hard to imagine the two of them hanging out without me, or even talking on the phone. I give her a quizzical look, and then turn to Caleb, who just grins at me.

  I take the envelope, slightly apprehensive now, and slide my finger under the flap to open it. Inside there’s a pamphlet from Amtrak: “California Zephyr,” it reads on the front. “Chicago—Denver—San Francisco.” Folded inside is a gray-blue paper ticket.

  For an instant, it’s like the very last moment of a ballet, when the music and movement stop but hover, waiting for the audience to break the spell with their applause.

  I look up at both of them. “What did you do?”

  “It’s the Zephyr, or whatever it’s called. The most beautiful train ride in the country, right?” Lena looks at me like it’s totally normal that the two of them would have just handed me a four-hundred-dollar birthday present.

  “You guys bought me a cross-country train ticket?” I look from Lena to Caleb and back to Lena.

  “Well, it’s not technically cross-country. It leaves from Chicago, so you’re on your own getting there,” Lena says.

  “Guys, this is nuts. This is way too expensive. I can’t let you do this.”

  “We’re not taking it back,” Lena says, shaking her head. “Look, you keep saying how much you want to take this train, right? And you need to go to San Francisco. It’s perfect.”

  I look at the departure date. This train will put me in San Francisco on April 3, the day before the PCCA audition. Of course.

  “Anyway,” Lena goes on. “Your dad already knows. And he helped us pay for it, so you don’t need to worry that I’ve spent my entire college fund on your birthday. Okay?”

  “Guys, this is just—this is too much. I don’t even want my dad spending this much on a train ticket.” I’ve looked online. I know what the tickets cost.

  Lena’s eyes flash from me to Caleb and back to me. She leans across the table and grabs my hands. “Listen. We know how much this means to you. Trains run in your family. You’re doing this. We’re not letting you not do this.”

  Hot tears spill down my cheeks. I try unsuccessfully to wipe the snot from my nose without making a disgusting mess of myself. Caleb slides a napkin toward me.

  “I can’t believe you’re making me emote in public,” I say through the napkin. “Thanks a lot.”

  Lena sits back in her seat, looking utterly thrilled with herself. “I knew this was a good birthday present. Didn’t I?” She looks to Caleb, who concurs.

  “I can’t take credit for this,” he says. “It was all Lena.”

  I blot at my eyes with the soggy napkin. “Here,” Lena says, pulling a compact from her bag. Of course Lena would think to keep a small mirror on her person at all times. I take a quick look at myself in the unforgiving light of the restaurant. My nose is bright red and my eyes are puffy. The mascara Lena made me apply earlier is now running down my face in little streams of Maybelline brownish-black. I mop them up as much as I can.

  “It’s more than a good birthday present, guys. It’s…” I stammer. “I don’t know what to say. Thank you.”

  “I’m so good,” Lena says, doing a little dance in her chair. “I’m so, so good.”

  * * *

  “Let’s get in your bed and watch Dirty Dancing like we used to,” Lena says as I fumble for my house keys. “To celebrate your future life as a famous dancer.”

  “Please stop with the famous talk,” I say, finally locating the keys in the bottom of my bag and shoving them in the top lock. “But yes to Dirty Dancing.” I turn and wave to Caleb, who’s waiting to see us get inside before pulling away.

  We step into what I can only describe as a hurricane. But not the fun kind.

  The first thing that happens is a ceramic vase is hurled across the dining room, missing my father’s head by a matter of inches.

  “Ellen! Calm down!” Dad lunges across the room to grab my mother, who has the china cabinet open and is smashing mug after bowl after plate to the floor. The pottery in the cabinet is the product of years of collecting, a piece here and a piece there, mostly from the shops we visit on the way up to Maine in the summers. Some of it goes back much longer than that—the tea cups and saucers with elaborate gold trim are from Gram’s wedding. She always says the china was a much better investment than the marriage itself. Now I can see at least two of the set are shattered on the floor.

  “I told you to leave me alone. I don’t want you hhhere,” my mother growls at Dad, throwing a green-and-pink-flowered creamer to the floor.

  Behind me, I feel Lena’s hand squeeze my arm. Then she steps instinctively backward, into the foyer.

  I go toward my mother. “Mom, Mom,” I say, putting a hand gently on her arm and taking a dessert plate from her hand. “It’s okay. Stop. Stop doing this.”

  Dad exhales hard and crosses to the kitchen, letting me take over. We’ve gotten used to this choreography—one of us stepping in, wordlessly, while the other steps out to regain the patience required to not take Mom’s words or actions personally.

  Mom lets the plate go and looks at me, her eyes wide and sorrowful. “Rose,” she says. “Rose.” Her hands shake and she’s out of breath, spent from the fury of the moments before. “I’m—I’m—I’m sssorry.” She looks at the floor around her feet. It’s covered in hundreds of shards of broken dishware. “I’m sorry I made this mess.” she asks.

  I take both her hands in mine and rub them until they almost stop shaking. Almost, but not quite. “It’s okay,” I say. “It was an accident.”

  * * *

  Once Mom’s in bed, I close my bedroom door behind me and stare at myself in the narrow full-length mirror. The warmth I felt at dinner—the nerves of being out as a foursome, like Caleb and I were really a couple; the excitement of them presenting me with the most ridiculously awesome birthday present ever—it all seems like it can’t possibly have happened just hours ago.

  My mother is disappearing, every day a little more than the day before. I get undressed and lift a leg up onto the ballet barre Dad screwed into the wall for me when I was eight. I stretch and plié, watching myself in the mirror, wearing nothing but my mismatched bra and underwear. With every inch that I push my stretch a little farther, I think of the look on Mom’s face as she smashed those dishes to the ground. It wasn’t even her. San Francisco seems even farther away now than it did three hours ago.

  Twenty minutes after I’ve finally crawled into bed, there’s a knock at the door.

  “Where’s Lena?” Dad says, poking his head in.

  “Um, she left,” I say. “A little too much excitement around here tonight.”

  “You okay?” he says, coming in. He’s quiet for a moment. “I’m sorry about that. That I left you with that mess.”

  “It’s fine.”

  Dad shoves a pile of T-shirts and leotards aside to make himself a spot to perch on my armchair. “It’s getting a little crowded in here, isn’t it?”

  “It’s fine, Dad,” I say, waiting for him to say what he really wants to say. “What?”

  “What what?”

  “You want to talk to me about something specific, I can tell.”

  “You know, people always think dads are so predictable—what do you know, maybe I just came in to say one last happy birthday to my dau
ghter whom I love and adore.”

  I glance at my phone. Eleven fifty. It’s still my birthday for ten more minutes. Happy birthday to me. “Okay. But you also came in to say something else, I can tell.”

  Dad clears his throat. “All right, maybe I am that predictable. So they gave you the train ticket, I assume?”

  “Yes, sorry. I forgot. Thank you. It’s a great present.”

  It’s a stupendous present, but after what I just witnessed in the dining room, the idea of leaving Mom—or more to the point, leaving Dad and Gram alone with Mom—seems almost impossible.

  “Good. They were very excited about it, Lena especially. I personally don’t understand what you and your mother think is so romantic about spending two days breathing canned air, but to each her own, I suppose.”

  “Will you be okay?” I say.

  “What? When you’re gone? Of course—we’ll be fine! It’s only a few days, anyway.”

  “No, Dad—I mean. If I went to school out there. Would you be okay?”

  He gets up and spends a little too long looking at the pictures tacked to my bulletin board, as if he hasn’t seen them all before: a selfie of me and Lena making stupid faces, and one of us as eight-year-olds, swinging in unison in our elementary school playground, grinning goofily with our hands joined across the gap between our swings. There’s another of Mom and me after a ballet recital when I was eleven. It’s one of the last pictures of our life before her genetic bomb exploded on us.

  Dad takes that one off the wall. “Nice shot,” he says, not looking up.

  “Yeah.”

  “You look alike in this picture.”

  His sentimentality must be getting to him in his old age. Dad and I are pretty indisputable look-alikes—there’s no resemblance between Mom and me, at least not phenotypically. Genotypically is a different story.

  Finally, he tacks the picture back to the board and clucks his tongue, just like Gram does when she doesn’t know what she wants to say. “Listen, you know I don’t want you to go to college across the country. Personally I’d like you to go to college in this room.”

  “Okay, Dad,” I say.

  “Look, Ro. It’s a great program out there. You can’t get that anywhere else. We want you to do the right thing for you. Your mom and I both.”

  Tears prick at the back of my eyes and throat for the second time tonight. “I know that, Dad. But what am I supposed to say to her—what I want to do is leave you, now? Like this?”

  He comes over and sits on the edge of the bed. I can’t remember the last time he came in here and sat on the bed with me, like he was going to tuck me in and read me a story. “You’re a good kid,” he says, pulling my head into his shoulder and kissing the top of it. “The thing is, your mom and I can’t … Parents just want to keep their kids safe from all the bad, messy stuff. And we can’t. I mean, I don’t know if anyone can, really. But we certainly can’t. We can give you this. We don’t want you to limit yourself.”

  Sometimes, around my parents, I have a feeling that’s like love and appreciation, but it’s so much bigger than that that I can’t put a name on it. There’s no word for it. This is one of those moments. “Okay,” I say. “I won’t. But, Dad?”

  “But, child?”

  “I need to tell you something.”

  His body stiffens up. “What’s that?”

  I can’t hide it from him anymore. “I need to know my HD status. Before I go away to school. I saw Dr. Howard, to talk to him about the test.”

  “You what?” His voice is low and calm but laced with fear, I can tell.

  “I can’t make a decision about next year unless I know. If you want me not to limit myself, I have to know what kind of life I have to limit or not limit.”

  Dad rubs his hand firmly over his chin a few times. His forehead folds into more wrinkles than I can count.

  “You didn’t want to discuss this with me first?” He looks hurt, like I’ve gone behind his back about this. Which I guess I have.

  “Well, I’m discussing it with you now.”

  “This isn’t a discussion, it’s an announcement.”

  I pull my knees up and squeeze them against my chest, hard. “Dad, I’m eighteen now. I’m allowed to make this decision.”

  “Just because you can, legally, doesn’t mean you should—or shouldn’t ask—or talk to us…” The words get caught in his mouth.

  “Okay, so maybe I actually don’t want your input,” I say, as my heart rate picks up speed. “I’m sorry. No one else understands the situation I’m in, and I’ve made a decision.”

  He stands up and turns to face me, both hands resting on the top of his head. “So that’s it, Rose? You’re eighteen—your parents get no say?”

  Heat rises in my chest. I knew Dad wouldn’t be thrilled about this, but I assumed he would accept my decision once I’d made one. I don’t want to fight over this. But it’s my life. It’s my call.

  “I don’t want to fight about this, Ro,” Dad says, reading my mind. “Especially on your birthday.” He lets out a long, heavy breath.

  “You have to trust me on this,” I say.

  “Is it so hard to imagine why I wouldn’t, though? I mean, Rose. Come on. This is huge. It’s a huge decision.” Dad’s face is pink. I can see a vein pulsing on the side of his head. “I wouldn’t know what to do if I were in your shoes. So how can you be so sure?”

  I don’t say anything.

  “No. The answer is no,” he says finally.

  “The answer is no? I didn’t ask you for an answer, Dad. I’m not asking your permission. I’m not even asking you for money. I have the money.”

  “You have the money?” Dad looks incredulous. The $375 fee is going to deplete most of my savings account, which is supposed to be for college, but technically, I have the money.

  I nod. I’m afraid if I say anything else I’ll start to cry again.

  “No—no. You just—you cannot do this. We can talk about this again in a few years. Not now. I will not negotiate. No.”

  Then Dad does something he’s never done before: He turns his back on me and leaves. He doesn’t quite slam the door, but it shuts hard behind him anyway.

  In eighteen years to the day, I have never seen my father like this. Rage pounds against my chest cavity, desperate to bust its way out, but I refuse to let it. My father can say no all he wants. I don’t need his signature anymore.

  * * *

  I sit frozen on the bed, staring at the closed door, for who knows how long. Finally, exhausted, I flop back and stare at the ceiling. You can still see the outlines of the stars that formerly glowed in the dark against the white paint. Mom put them up there when I was six—I remember sitting on the bed and watching her on a step ladder, sticking them up there and trying to make the Big Dipper and Draco the Dragon and Orion. All my friends had glow-in-the-dark stars on their ceilings, but no one else had constellations. Mom used to do a lot of crafty things like that—stars on the ceiling, magazine covers wallpapering the downstairs bathroom, whole scrapbooks full of my baby pictures and locks of hair and swatches of fabric from my old onesies. Now she can barely dress herself, and her train scrapbook looks like it was made by a crazy person. Which it was.

  I bet the stars are crazy bright when you’re riding through the middle of Iowa or Nebraska on the California Zephyr. Lying there, I try to imagine myself skipping the Huntington’s test, running away to San Francisco to dance next fall, pretending there’s no hurricane creeping up the coast of my life, ready to wreak havoc. But that version of me won’t quite stick in my head; it’s slippery, somehow. It feels like a lie.

  SPRING

  Rule #3: Knowledge is power.

  Eighteen

  The man-nurse, Derek, is so smooth with the needle that I barely even feel it going in. It’s taken a month, plus three more Roxanna appointments, before they finally let me schedule this test. My blood shoots through the clear tube into the first vial and he pops it off and pops another one on so
quickly I almost miss it. When the two vials of blood are full and topped off with purple plastic stoppers, stickers with my identification info stuck to them, he spreads a Band-Aid gently over a piece of gauze on my arm.

  “That’s it,” he says, smiling.

  “Yeah, right,” I say. “That’s it.”

  * * *

  I never mentioned the test to Dad again. We barely spoke for two days after our fight on my birthday. I stayed late at the studio rehearsing for the spring showcase and my audition, then slept at Lena’s two nights in a row. I didn’t want to give him the chance to raise it again. He’d made up his mind, but so had I. On the third day, he waited up for me to get back from rehearsal. I came home to find him sitting in the living room, reading. Sleep and the constant hum of our old refrigerator were the only sounds in the rest of the house.

  “Long day?” Dad said, putting his book down.

  “Tech. So, you know. Yeah.” In the two weeks before the spring showcase, we’re in the theater constantly, stopping and starting through our choreography while the lighting team focuses lights on us from every direction. It’s more exhausting than dancing—standing around, waiting to dance.

  Dad followed me into the kitchen and cleared his throat. I spread peanut butter on a rice cake and waited for him to say whatever he wanted to say.

  “Parents, you know,” he said finally. “The whole protection thing is our job. We’ve talked about this before.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “And?”

  “That’s why I think you should not get this test right now. I hate to pull rank on you, but I have a lot more years of life wisdom here.”

  I took a bite of rice cake and watched the crumbs scatter across the counter. “You waited up to tell me the same thing you said the other night?”

  “No. I waited up to tell you that I love you.”