Inside the O'Briens

by Lisa Genova

  Alone in her bedroom, she sits on her meditation pillow and reads the strange, beautiful graffiti on her walls. She’s scrawled many more inspirational quotes in black Sharpie on the walls from floor to ceiling over the summer, hoping her exterior world would seep into her consciousness and perk things up in there. Her mom isn’t too pleased that she’s been marking up the walls, but Katie can’t see the harm in it. She’s never been crafty and doesn’t want to waste money she doesn’t have on buying posters or painted boards. A two-dollar Sharpie and her walls are all she needs. They can easily paint over everything if she ever moves. When she moves. When. Someday.

  She reads the three quotes directly in front of her.

  “The pain that you create now is always some form of nonacceptance, some form of unconscious resistance to what is.”

  —Eckhart Tolle

  “Life is a near-death experience. Stumble around in giddy gratitude while you still can.”

  —Jen Sincero

  “What we think, we become.”

  —Buddha

  She thinks about HD. All the time. Constantly. The creepy, dark forest is teeming with it. HD. HD. HD. She’s a skipping vinyl record, and she wishes someone would smack her.

  “What we think, we become.”

  —Buddha

  She’s becoming HD. This self-sabotaging, obsessive habit has to stop.

  She settles into a comfortable cross-legged seat on her pillow and closes her eyes. She begins Ujjayi breathing, creating an ocean wave rhythm through her nose, in and out, in and out. On the next inhalation, she mentally says the word so. On the exhalation, she mentally hears the word hum. In, so. Out, hum. So hum is actually short for the Sanskrit So aham, meaning That I am. She’s breathing in and out, so-humming. That I am. That I am. So hum. So hum.

  The mind loves words. Feeding it a restricted script of So hum keeps it focused, absorbed in essentially nothing, holding it still. When thoughts and sensations arise, when the dogs start barking, she’s supposed to notice them, let them float by her like wispy clouds on a passing breeze, and then return to inhaling so, exhaling hum.

  At first, it’s working. So hum. So hum. Her mind is a clear glass of water, empty and clean. But then the dogs get a whiff of something scrumptious and take off for the woods.

  HD. HD. HD.

  She should call Eric Clarkson back. It’s rude to ignore him. But she’s not sure whether she wants to know. What if she’s gene positive? What if she has HD like her dad and JJ?

  And so the storytelling begins, a hallucination of a fictional future starring Katie and the O’Brien family, her mind an Academy Award–winning screenwriter, director, and actress. There are no romantic comedies or Hollywood endings in here. These epic tales are always extremely dark, invariably playing out the worst imaginable possibilities. And her sick, addicted mind loves every gruesome, dramatic second of it.

  Her thoughts time travel, trying on a future wardrobe of Katie and Katie’s life, where nothing is pretty. Her dad and JJ are dead. Her mom sells the house because she can’t afford it alone and moves in with one of Katie’s uncles just before having a nervous breakdown. Patrick is a heroin addict. Meghan kills herself. Katie has HD.

  She breaks up with Felix to spare him. He marries a perfect woman and has two beautiful, perfect children, and they live in the penthouse of one of those fancy condos in the Navy Yard. Katie imagines sitting on a bench alone, watching them walk and laugh and play in the park.

  She never opens her own yoga studio because she waited too long and then became symptomatic. Her balance was the first to go, so she lost her job right away. She ends up homeless.

  People are disgusted by the sight of her. She’s mistaken for being drunk in public and gets picked up by the police. It’s Tommy Vitale, her dad’s best friend, but instead of helping her, he locks her up. He says if her father were alive, he’d hunt her down and kick her ass for not fighting to live, for giving up and letting HD ruin her like this. He says she should be ashamed of herself. And she is. She’s ruined and ashamed.

  She’s a thirty-five-year-old homeless, unloved woman with HD.

  She’s a forty-five-year-old homeless, unloved woman with HD.

  She dies alone, ruined and ashamed with HD.

  Wait, she’s not breathing. So hum is gone. She’s forgotten to breathe, and she’s sweating, and her heart is bathing in a pool of adrenaline. Shit. This is what happens. This is why she’s a mess.

  She needs to get a grip, get present. Let go of the leash. No more getting dragged through the creepy, dark forest, lured into a future that may never happen. The future, good or bad, is a fantasy. There is only this moment, right now.

  Right now, she’s a twenty-one-year-old yoga teacher sitting in her bedroom, and she doesn’t have HD. She has an amazing boyfriend and a decent apartment, and her dad and JJ are still alive, and Patrick isn’t a junkie, and Meghan is fine, and none of the drama she just experienced in her head is real.

  None of it was real. She takes in a deep breath and lets it go, softening her panic-squeezed ribs, calming her anxious heart. She straightens her spine, places her palms on her thighs, and tries again. No more dogs. No more madness. This time, she begins by setting an intention.

  “I am here now. I am healthy and whole.”

  Instead of So hum, she repeats her intention in her mind over and over. Inhale, I am here now. Exhale, I am healthy and whole. Inhale. Exhale.

  The dogs are gone. The forest dissolves into a sunlit meadow. Inhale, I am here now. Exhale, I am healthy and whole. The meadow brightens until there is only white light. There is white light and breathing in and out. And then there is nothing, and in that still space of nothing, there is peace.

  Peace. Peace. Peace.

  And then she thinks, I’m doing it! And with that thought, she’s instantly ejected from that blissful, empty place. But that’s okay. She smiles. She was there. It exists.

  A space inside her where there is no HD.

  She opens her eyes. Felix is sitting cross-legged in front of her, grinning at her face.

  “Are you real?” she asks.

  He laughs. “As real as they get, baby.”

  “How long have you been here?”

  “About ten minutes. Your sister let me in.”

  And so Secret Invisible Mr. Martin is finally revealed. She wonders what Meghan is thinking right now, whether her mind is as blown as Katie suspects it is. She’s sure to hear an earful as soon as Meghan gets her alone. She feels nervous, beetles scattering in her stomach.

  “So how was meeting Meghan?”

  “Fine. She seems nice. It was just for a second. Good to know she actually exists.”

  “So, ten minutes. Really?”

  “Yeah.”

  She had no awareness of his presence, his bare knees only a couple of inches from hers. And she had no sense of time passing. If she had guessed, she would’ve said she’d been sitting in meditation for only a few moments.

  “Hey, I have news,” he says. “The Biofuel project rolled out so well in Boston, we’ve been contracted to implement the same model in Portland, Oregon. The CEO wants me to go and oversee it.”

  Katie feels her face drop.

  “No, don’t be upset. I want you to come with me.” She looks into his eyes, trying to catch up with him, searching for more.

  “I love you, Katie. You’re always talking about leaving this place, opening your own studio. Let’s go for it. Portland’s a great city. What do you think?”

  His words sit between them like an unwrapped gift, his face bursting with confident anticipation.

  “Wait,” she says. “You love me?”

  “Yeah,” he says, squeezing both of her hands, his eyes tearing. “I do.”

  “I love you, too. And I’m not just saying it back to say it. I have for a while. I’ve just b
een too scared to go first.”

  “Chicken.”

  “I know. I’m working on it.”

  “So what do you think? You up for this adventure with me?”

  Portland, Oregon. She doesn’t know the first thing about it. Maybe Portland is the place she’s been dreaming of, a city where there’s space for her to grow without limitations; where she can live without being judged for dating a black man; where people don’t look at her sideways for eating vegan; where she wouldn’t feel mostly invisible in the capacious shadow of her older sister; where she wouldn’t live under the oppressive and not-so-subtle expectation that she’ll marry a nice Irish boy from Charlestown and raise her many children Catholic; where people have ambitions beyond working in civil service, staying out of jail, raising a family, and getting hammered every weekend at the local bars; where she wouldn’t feel inadequate because she’s not a ballerina, weird because she doesn’t particularly care about Tom Brady or the Bruins, or uppity because her highest aspiration in life isn’t to be Mrs. Flannagan or Mrs. O Apostrophe Whatever; where she wouldn’t feel ashamed of who she is.

  Portland, Oregon. The other side of the country. Another world. Her own studio. A man who loves her. This could be her dream, laid out right in front of her for the taking.

  Take it.

  But what if she has HD and becomes symptomatic, and Felix can’t handle it, and he leaves her, and she’ll be left all alone out there? What if Portland is like Charlestown, and there isn’t enough room for another yoga studio? What if she opens her own studio and it fails? The timing doesn’t feel right. Her dad’s HD is going to get worse. JJ’s, too. They’re going to need her. It would be selfish to leave now. What if Meghan and Patrick are HD positive? What if she is?

  Let go of the leash, girl. Don’t ruin your life with thoughts that aren’t real.

  Okay, here’s what’s real. She’s a yoga teacher, daughter, and sister. She is sitting across from a brilliant, beautiful man she loves who loves her back. He’s just asked her to move across the country with him. She wants to say yes. She is here now. She is healthy and whole.

  And she has a second appointment to keep with Eric Clarkson.

  She stares into Felix’s brown, hopeful eyes, so exquisitely gorgeous and naive, and she’s terrified of the change she’s about to see in them. She takes a deep breath and lets it go. She inhales again, and on her next exhale, she holds on to his hands, looks into his eyes, her vulnerable heart facing his, and tells him what’s real.

  CHAPTER 18

  Katie 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 s
ays 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 if 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?”