Inside the O'Briens

by Lisa Genova

  She and her dad sit side by side a safe distance apart and say nothing. The sunlit marble bench feels pleasantly hot against her palms. A sparrow hops past their feet on the bricks and skitters off into the grass. She hears children’s voices sailing through the warm air, presumably from a playground she can’t see.

  As she does whenever she has free time to think, she imagines the results of her genetic testing, printed and waiting for her on a piece of paper sealed in a white envelope in Eric’s office. What’s written on that piece of paper? She always begins with imagining that she’s gene positive.

  I’m sorry, Katie, but you will get Huntington’s disease, just like your grandmother, father, JJ, and Meghan.

  And then she begins believing that scenario, her mind readily running with it. A twenty-two-year-old girl tests gene positive for HD. A tragic tale. Her mind loves those.

  She imagines the possibility of being HD positive many times a day. Yes, her mind says. Yes, you are. And even though she knows the story is only a possibility, a thought created by her mind that isn’t real, the fear that the thought elicits is taking on a physical form inside her. The fear she carries is heavy, so heavy, and she’s powerless to let it go.

  She carries her heavy fear to yoga class and to bed with Felix. She stuffs the fear deep inside, but lately, it feels like there’s no more room. She’s a suitcase filled to capacity, yet every day she thinks about testing positive, and so there’s more fear to carry, so she must stuff more inside. She must.

  The tears are always right there, ready, but she holds them in. She holds everything in. She’s pretty sure that she soon won’t be able to zip herself shut. The fear is crowding her out. Every time her lungs expand, each time her heart beats, they bump up against the fear inside her. The fear is in her pulse, in every shallow breath. The fear is a black mass in her chest, expanding, crushing her heart and lungs, and soon she won’t be able to breathe.

  For a split second every morning, she forgets. And then the black heaviness is there, and she wonders what it is, and then she remembers. She probably has HD.

  So she’s faking it through her days. Every cheery hello, every class she teaches, preaching about grace and gratitude and peace, every time she has sex with Felix, she’s an imposter going through the motions of civilized society, pretending everything is A-okay.

  Hi, Katie! How are you? Good. I’m good.

  She’s not good. She’s a big, fat fuckin’ lie is what she is. She’s planning her Huntington’s, rehearsing her final genetic counselor appointment, hearing the words pronouncing her doomed fate. You are HD positive. And she’s practicing her response, strong, icy cold, even cocky. Yeah, I knew it. Then she moves on to imagining the first symptoms, never getting married or having kids, living in a nursing home, dying alone.

  Indulging in all this negative storytelling isn’t doing her any good, and she knows it. She has the tools to put a stop to it. If her thoughts can create the fear, her thoughts can eliminate it. But for some sick reason, she chooses to keep it. She’s wallowing in her fear, and it feels good in that bad kind of way, like eating a pan of brownies when she’s on a juice cleanse or sneaking a slice of bacon when she’s vegan.

  “So how are you doin’?” asks her dad.

  She’s about to throw him her pat reply, her tidy lie. The Good is in her mouth, but suddenly, she can’t stand the taste of it.

  “I’m scared, Dad.”

  She looks down at her shoes, the balls of her feet resting on the ground, still. She looks over at her dad’s. Heels up, heels down, toe tap.

  “I know, honey. I’m scared, too.”

  In the past, he would’ve tried to cover over her fear with some quick fix, like slapping a Hello Kitty Band-Aid on a bloody cut. Like most fathers wanting to protect their little girls, he would’ve tried to annihilate it or hide it or negate it, whatever it took for him to feel as if he removed the problem. Don’t be scared. There’s nothing to be afraid of. Don’t worry. It’ll all work out. He would’ve left her feeling still scared and alone in it. But today, to her complete surprise, he goes there with her.

  She scooches over to him, hip to hip, and hugs her arm around him. He wraps his arm around her, too. Being scared together is so much less scary.

  “I was thinking about you and Felix,” says her dad. “If you decide you want to move to Portland, you have my blessing. Your mother’s, too.”

  “I do?”

  “Live your life, sweetheart. No matter what happens, it’s too short. Go do what you want with no regrets, no guilt.”

  Her dad has been doing an admirable job of living well with HD, providing a positive example for his children, but this change of heart comes wholly unexpected. She appreciates his blessing, but it’s the heavy black mass inside her, and not her parents’ disapproval, that’s been keeping her from packing her things, refusing her permission to go.

  “You keep surprising me, Dad.”

  “What, you think you yogis are the only enlightened ones?”

  Katie laughs. Her smile lands in his eyes, and there he is, her father. If she looks for it, she can see his love for her in his eyes.

  “Are you saying cops are enlightened?” she asks, teasing him.

  “Oh yeah. They don’t let us wear blue unless we pass Zen training.”

  She laughs again.

  “Let’s go over there,” says her dad, nodding toward the footpath.

  The path is brick and uneven and windy, and Katie’s spotting her dad with every precarious step, unsure whether she has another Band-Aid should he fall, but they make it to the path’s end without incident. They’re standing before a small fountain, a shallow pool of water in a circle of concrete, a spigot spurting a modest splash of water in the center. Beyond the fountain is the familiar panorama of skyscrapers, Boston’s Government Center and financial district.

  “She’s a beautiful city,” says her dad, gazing out at the horizon.

  “Yeah,” says Katie, thinking it’s all right, wondering what Portland might look like.

  “I have something for you,” says her dad, digging into the front pocket of his pants. He produces a quarter, displaying it in the palm of his hand. “I want you to have this, for good luck.”

  He gives the quarter to Katie and then holds her hand inside his for a moment.

  “Thanks, Dad.”

  She folds her fingers over the quarter and closes her eyes. She imagines the black mass of fear inside her chest, takes the deepest breath she can, filling her lungs to capacity, and then exhales, breathing the black mass through her mouth, releasing it. Then she opens her eyes, winds up, and tosses the quarter into the fountain.

  She looks over at her dad. His face is shocked, pale.

  “I can’t believe you just did that,” he says.

  “What? I made a wish.”

  He laughs and shakes his head.

  “What did you want me to do with it?”

  “I dunno. I didn’t expect you to get rid of it.”

  “I made a wish.”

  “Good, honey. I hope it comes true.”

  “Me, too.”

  They stand there a bit longer before finding the car, beneath the warm, sunny sky, scared and hoping together.

  CHAPTER 34

  It’s early afternoon, and Katie and Meghan are sitting on the front stoop. Meghan is smoking a cigarette, something she does only if there’s no risk of their mom seeing or smelling it. Their grandfather died of lung cancer, and their mom goes ballistic whenever she catches Meghan smoking. Patrick is sleeping, Colleen is out walking baby Joey, their mom and JJ are working, and their dad is at PT. Cook Street is sunlit and quiet, no cars zipping down the road, no joggers or dog walkers. No one’s around.

  Katie hasn’t chilled out with Meghan like this in ages. They live together, so everyone assumes they see each other all the time. Onl
y rarely do they, and when they do it’s mostly in sleepy-eyed good mornings as they fill travel mugs with coffee or tea, quick hellos as Katie rushes off to teach a class or Meghan dashes to catch a bus downtown, whirling by each other as Meghan packs her makeup case for a performance or Katie changes out of lululemon and into jeans and a sweater for a date with Felix, a quick hug and good night before going to separate bedrooms, closing doors before going to sleep. On the few occasions Katie is actually there. She sleeps over at Felix’s apartment most nights. Even with the self-constructed barrier between them removed, she and Meghan are still in the habit of occupying separate sides of their old wall. Without a reason for them to remain distant, they still haven’t found their way back to being close.

  “So what’s happening with you and Felix?” asks Meghan, tapping loose ash from the tip of her cigarette.

  “I dunno. We’ve been fighting a lot lately.”

  She nods. “About what?” she asks, her perfectly sculpted right eyebrow lifting at the arch. She already knows.

  “He’s pressuring me to decide about Portland, and it’s totally stressing me out. It feels like too many things to figure out right now.”

  Katie’s genetic test results hang over her head like a guillotine, the pointed blade hovering inches above the tender, bare skin of her neck. But maybe she’s gene negative, and so there is no guillotine. Maybe her HD gene is normal, and she’ll never get HD. Maybe she’s free.

  She tries to imagine that sense of freedom, but she’s sitting next to Meghan, her big sister, an accomplished, beautiful dancer who will get HD, and being HD-free doesn’t feel like freedom. It feels unfair, tainted, rotten. She feels utterly unworthy of that freedom.

  “It’s like the worst possible timing,” says Katie.

  “Or it’s absolutely perfect,” says Meghan.

  Katie studies her sister, her smooth brown hair, her green almond eyes, the five freckles on her face. Five. It would take all day and a calculator to count the freckles on Katie’s face. Meghan’s petite frame, her small, delicate feet. Katie places her ugly Fred Flintstone bare foot on the step next to Meghan’s. Their feet don’t look one bit related.

  They have the same sense of humor and tastes in clothes, music, and men. Meghan gets Katie better than anyone on the planet. But, in addition to being naturally prettier and smarter and able to dance like an angel, Meghan has always been so much braver than Katie. In middle school, Katie was desperate to play one of the orphans in the production of Annie. In her wildest dreams, the drama teacher cast her as Annie. But she was too afraid, too loathsomely self-conscious to even mention her interest aloud, never mind try out. Meghan auditioned. She played one of the orphans. Katie hated her for it and, consumed with jealousy, didn’t speak to her sister for months. She never told Meghan why.

  Meghan was never afraid to flirt openly with the boy she liked, and is equally unafraid of dumping a guy’s ass if she’s not that into him. She knew she wanted to be a ballerina since she was a little girl and went after it, full throttle. No waffling. No wondering whether she’d be good enough or assuming she wasn’t. No vague plans of maybe someday. She just claimed it. This is mine.

  It was the same with Meghan’s genetic testing. She just did it. She didn’t agonize over each appointment or ignore Eric’s phone calls. She didn’t delay her judgment day. She arrived at Eric’s office the very day her results were ready, sat opposite him along with a friend from the Boston Ballet, and received her fate.

  Meanwhile, Katie is paralyzed, drowning in a thick, creamy vegan soup of fear.

  “How do you do it?” asks Katie. “You’re fearless.”

  “No, I’m not. I’m scared shitless.”

  Meghan inhales a long drag off her cigarette, turns her head, and blows the exhale away from Katie’s face.

  “But whatever; I gotta keep going. I’m a dancer. I’ll keep dancing until I can’t.”

  “What would you do if you were me?” asks Katie, looking for advice or maybe for her brave sister to make Katie’s decisions for her.

  “About Felix?”

  “And the test results.”

  “Find out the results and move with Felix.”

  “What if I’m gene positive?”

  “Move with Felix and be gene positive.”

  Katie blinks, stunned. Meghan didn’t even pause to think about it.“Yeah, but, wouldn’t that be totally unfair of me, to get further involved with him knowing I’m going to get HD?”

  “Jesus, don’t be such a martyr.”

  “I’m not,” says Katie, her voice a whiny violin. “I just don’t know if I could knowingly saddle him with that kind of future.”

  “Why do you get to pick his future?”

  Because. Because. Katie thinks, but she can’t complete that sentence without sounding like a spoiled brat or a total moron. They sit in silence for a few moments.

  “How do you think JJ’s doing?” asks Katie.

  “Okay, I think.”

  “You see anything with him yet?”

  “No, you?”

  “No.”

  “What about me?” asks Meghan.

  “Nothing. You’re fine.”

  “You swear to God?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Thanks. I’m kinda worried about Pat. I dunno—he’s got this thing going on in his eyes. Like they’re kinda shifty.”

  “That’s just how he is.”

  But Katie’s been thinking the same thing. Each time she thinks that she’s possibly seeing something, she sweeps it away. It can’t be. But there it is. Meghan sees it, too. Patrick might already be symptomatic. Fuckin’ hell.

  “Has he told Ashley about HD being in our family?” asks Katie.

  “I dunno.”

  “Do you think he’ll end up marrying her?”

  “No way,” says Meghan, picking at the dead skin on her big toe. “That’s probably for the best.”

  “Yeah,” says Katie, agreeing on both counts. She loves her brother, but even subtracting the possibility of HD, Patrick isn’t exactly stellar-husband material. “How about me? You see anything?”

  “No,” says Meghan, then checking out Katie’s feet, hands, eyes. “You’re good.”

  “Every time I fall out of a standing pose in class, I think, Is this it? Does this mean I have it?”

  “Yeah, HD totally fucks with your head. Before this, if I fell off pointe or messed up an eight count or something, I’d think, Fuck, and be mad at myself for like a few seconds. But then I’d think, Whatever, shit happens. Now, if I make a mistake, I have this huge, heart-stopping, wordless moment of panic. It actually feels like I’m having a heart attack.”

  “I have whole weeks of heart-stopping panic,” says Katie.

  “You gotta let it go, or it’ll make you crazy. I figure however long I have, I’m not going to let HD steal the symptomatic-free time I have. I don’t know when this thing’s going to hit, but I’m not going to live like I’ve got it before I actually do.”

  Katie nods. You are either Now Here or Nowhere.

  “I also figure most professional ballerinas are done with touring and performing in companies by the time they’re thirty-five. So no reason I can’t have a full-out dance career before HD sets in.”

  Katie nods. “That’s true.”

  “That’s why I’m going to live in London in the fall.”

  “What?”

  “I auditioned for Matthew Bourne’s company when they came to Boston, and I got accepted.”

  “So you’re going to London?” asks Katie, in total disbelief.

  “I’m going to London!”

  Here, Katie’s been agonizing over whether to move with Felix to Oregon, guilty and scared and worried over the prospect of leaving Charlestown and her family, her comfort zone, and there is Meghan, without any drama, who just, boom,
decides to move alone to another country.

  “I can’t believe you’re going to live in London.”

  “I know. I’m totally psyched. The company is called New Adventures, and they’re amazing. Matthew’s choreography is more contemporary and edgy, and I love his storytelling, how he combines acting and dance. You have to see Edward Scissorhands. It’s mind-blowing. They tour all over the UK. Last year, they also performed in Paris and Moscow.”

  “Holy shit, Meg. That sounds awesome. How long would you be there?”

  “I dunno. At least three years.”

  Katie studies her sister, and there’s not one ounce of guilt or hesitation in her. Of course Meghan should go. So why does Katie feel obligated to stay?

  “Do you think Mom and Dad will be upset about you leaving?”

  “Nope. They already know. Dad’s cool with it, and Mom’s trying to be. You know how she worries. And so, I kinda need to tell you something,” says Meghan, teeing up something big and bad with her tone.

  “What?” asks Katie, bracing herself.

  “I’m gonna move in with JJ and Colleen for the summer, rent-free, to save up money for London in exchange for some babysitting.”

  “Okay,” says Katie, relieved. That’s not a big deal.

  “And I hate to be the one to break it to you, but whether you go to Portland or not, you’re moving out, too.”

  “What?”

  “Mom and Dad need to rent out our unit for real. The going rate for a three-bedroom is like four times what we pay, and they need the money.”

  Shit. That’s a big deal.

  “When was someone going to tell me all this?”

  “It just got decided like two days ago, after I told them about London. Mom’s afraid to tell you. She’s feels bad that Dad turned our old bedroom into a dining room, and they’d be kicking you out without giving you somewhere to go. I told her you’d probably go live with Felix, but she acted like she didn’t hear me.”