by Julie Clark
* * *
Chapter Thirteen
Dinner with Jackie and Aaron couldn’t have come at a better time. They live in a one-story white house with a picket fence, roses in front, and a stone path leading to the door—straight out of a fairy tale. We stand on the porch, next to chairs and benches with brightly colored cushions, where I imagine they sit to watch Nick ride his bike or scooter along the sidewalk. Maybe they enjoy a glass of wine or a cup of coffee while they put their feet up and talk.
Miles bounces next to me, eager to get inside, and Liam stands behind me, holding a tray of lemon squares. He bends down and brushes a quick kiss against my lips. I lean into him, appreciating his solidness, hopeful this evening will smooth out the rough edges leftover from our fight last weekend.
When Jackie opens the door, a cozy smell of roasted garlic and thyme envelopes us. “Hello!” she cries, giving me a quick hug. She takes the plate from Liam and says, “You must be Liam. It’s so nice to meet you.” To Miles she says, “Nick’s in his room. Straight back that way, to the left.” She points Miles in the right direction and leads us through the house, filled with deep, squishy chairs, bookshelves, and family photographs scattered across surfaces. From the back of the house, the sound of a blender cuts through the air.
“Aaron’s mixing drinks.” She leads us into an expansive kitchen and family room space that opens onto a trellised patio.
Aaron stands at the counter with his back to us, expertly tilting the blender to fully mix what looks like margaritas.
“Honey, they’re here,” Jackie shouts, and Aaron silences the blender, turning to greet us.
“Welcome!” He reaches out to shake Liam’s hand and then pours margaritas into four waiting glasses and passes them around. “I hope blended is okay with you. Sadly, we’re out of salt.”
“This works for me,” Liam says.
I turn and survey the room. The kitchen opens up into a lived-in family room, complete with a piano, sectional, and flat-screen TV. A wall made entirely of sliding glass leads onto the patio with a table set with colorful plates and mismatched glasses. The whole effect is funky and charming, just like Jackie.
“Jackie tells me you design video games,” Aaron says to Liam. “Have I heard of anything you’ve worked on?”
Liam leans against the counter and launches into a long list of games I’ve only heard of because he’s mentioned them.
“You worked on Golom 2000? Holy shit.”
“I was just one of many on the team,” Liam says, though I can tell he’s pleased with the acknowledgment.
“Is level thirteen really impossible to beat?”
“And we’re out . . .” Jackie says, pulling me by the elbow through the door and onto the patio. We sit in chairs with purple and orange cushions, and I sink back, setting my margarita on the table.
“This place is amazing,” I say. “Did Aaron design it?”
Jackie takes a drink and nods. “Over the course of four long years,” she says. “It was a nightmare. He’s really good at his job, but he obsesses over details. Midway through, I would have happily moved into a yurt if I’d had the option. I just wanted it to end.”
I laugh. “A ringing endorsement.”
“His clients love him. But I will never put myself through that again.”
Aaron and Liam emerge from the kitchen, each carrying a platter of assorted cheese and crackers.
Aaron grabs a cracker and turns to Liam. “If I were to load up Golom 2000 after dinner, could you beat level thirteen?”
Liam laughs. “I might know a few tricks.”
They return to the kitchen, and Jackie’s eyes follow them.
“Does he ever sit down?” I ask.
“Nope. He loves entertaining—the preparation, the planning. I love the eating and the talking. When we got married, I wanted to have our engagement party downtown, at this restaurant with an incredible rooftop deck, three-hundred-sixty-degree views. But Aaron wanted to host it himself, do all the cooking. His mother taught him to cook—it’s their thing.” Jackie smiles. “I can’t really complain though. I’m in charge of weeknight meals, but Aaron takes over on the weekend.”
A shout of laughter filters out through the open windows. A shadow passes across her face, the relaxed edges bunching up, as if she’s trying not to cry.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
“I’m glad you guys could come tonight. Aaron needs the distraction.”
“What’s wrong?”
Jackie scoots her chair closer to mine and lowers her voice. “He doesn’t want anyone to know, but I’ve actually been hoping to get you alone so I can get your thoughts as a geneticist. A couple of days ago, his dad was diagnosed with Huntington’s disease.”
“I’m so sorry.” My words fall empty between us. Huntington’s is a degenerative disease, attacking the central nervous system. There is no cure. Only a prolonged—and painful—decline.
Jackie shakes her head. “It’s hit him really hard.” She bites her lip and looks down at the drink in her hand. “I’m worried. About Aaron, but also about Nick. The reading I’ve done so far isn’t good.”
I sip my drink, careful to choose my words so they’re accurate but still encouraging. “The Huntington’s indicator is based on CAG repeats—a tiny sequence of DNA—on a specific gene. Any more than thirty-five repeats guarantees the development of the disease at some point in the future. More than twenty-seven means he won’t develop the disease but could still pass the gene onto offspring. Ideally you’re looking for less than twenty-seven. Aaron has a fifty percent chance of inheriting the gene, but the fact that he’s already in his midforties is a really good sign. The earlier you develop it, the more severe the onset. And his father wasn’t symptomatic until now, so even if Aaron does carry the gene, it might be decades until symptoms appear. Have you talked about predictive testing?”
Jackie shoves her drink aside. “We’ve talked about nothing else since we found out. I want him to do it. I don’t want it hanging over our heads, worrying every time he drops something or trips, thinking, Is this it?”
“But he doesn’t,” I say.
“If it were just him, I’d accept that he doesn’t want to know if some horrific fate is out there waiting for him. But we have Nick.” She looks again toward the kitchen, where Aaron and Liam work side by side at the counter. “I need to know that Aaron doesn’t have the gene so I can stop worrying about Nick.”
“Even if Aaron has it, that doesn’t mean Nick will. And you wouldn’t be able to test Nick until he’s eighteen anyway.”
“That’s such a bullshit rule,” Jackie says, swirling her melting margarita around in the glass.
“I get it,” I say. “But it’s meant to protect Nick and his rights as an individual.”
Jackie sets her glass down hard, spilling a little on the table. “But he’s mine. My child. What about my rights as his mother?”
I reach out and put my hand over hers. “I know.”
Just then, my phone rings from inside my purse—my mother. I reach down and press ignore. “Sorry about that.”
Something in my expression must catch Jackie’s attention. “Everything okay?”
“Nothing worth mentioning.”
Jackie reaches for a cracker. “Please don’t think I hold the monopoly on drama,” she says. “In fact, I’d rather talk about yours, if you don’t mind.”
It feels a little selfish, unloading my problems onto her, so shortly after learning what real problems sound like, but I also know the relief of losing yourself in a situation that holds no pain for you. “It’s my mom,” I explain. “She’s trying to get me to spend time with my dad.”
“You’re not close?”
I laugh. “No.”
I tell her about Dad and how my mother falls all over herself every time he returns. Then I tell her about the lunch he didn’t show up for. “I don’t know why she’s pushing so hard this time. He’s never going to change, but I’m the only one
who can see it.” From the kitchen, Liam laughs, and Aaron soon joins him. A melancholy contentment rises inside of me—gratitude for these new friends, but sadness because none of us gets a free pass from tragedy or pain.
“Maybe something’s different this time,” Jackie suggests.
“Believe me, nothing’s different.”
Jackie turns so she’s facing me, tucking her knee under her. “My dad died in 1989.”
I’m about to say something, but she holds her hand up.
“He was an asshole. Critical. Angry. Emotionally abusive. My mother was like a pill bug, rolling into a ball every time he’d start in on her. Nothing was ever good enough for him. He dropped dead of a heart attack while I was in college. He grunted goodbye in September, and that was the last thing he ever said to me.”
She pauses. I wait for her to tell me the rest, how she wishes she had the time to forge some kind of truce with him.
But she doesn’t. “If I’d been braver, I would have cut him out of my life a lot earlier. I wasn’t strong enough to stand up to him. My mother wasn’t either. But since he’s been gone, she’s reinvented herself. She’s the head children’s librarian at the Rockaway public library. She volunteers at my old elementary school, working with struggling readers. She would never have had the nerve to do any of that when my dad was alive. She’d still be scrambling, making sure dinner was on the table at precisely six o’clock, or that he had the right brand of peanut butter in the cupboard. Good for you for setting boundaries and sticking to them. Some men don’t deserve to be husbands or fathers.” She laughs, but it sounds hollow. “But you already know a lot about that.”
I lean back, my thoughts a jumble. This is the first time anyone has said I was doing the right thing. “My mother and Rose say I’m cold and unforgiving. Liam thinks I’m making a mistake.”
Jackie’s eyes soften. “You’re neither cold nor unforgiving, at least as far as I can tell. You’re just protecting yourself. There’s nothing wrong with that. I think you should be the one to choose how much you’re willing to let him in. No one else.”
My phone buzzes with a voice mail. My thumb hovers over the play button before jumping over and hitting delete.
Boundaries.
I drop my phone back into my purse as Aaron and Liam begin carrying out platters of food. Aaron calls for the boys to come to dinner, and they barrel through the door after him, loud and excited about the robot they’re building.
“Mom, please tell me we’re not going to eat and run. Nick and I have at least another two hours of work,” Miles says.
I laugh. “Well, we probably won’t stay for two hours, but you can have some time after you eat.”
Miles sags. “Well, it’s better than nothing,” he says, plopping into a chair next to Nick. I marvel at the miracle that they found each other.
Liam slides into the seat next to me, and I can tell he’s thinking the same. His gaze travels between the boys, and I reach under the table and squeeze his hand.
“So, Miles,” Aaron says, once we’ve started eating. “Did you ever make that chalk?”
Miles turns in his seat to face Aaron. “No, my mom was out of baking soda.”
“I’m sure I could find some for you before you go,” Aaron says.
“Thanks!” Miles beams at Aaron.
“Liam was a chemistry major for a little while,” I tell Aaron.
“Only for a semester,” Liam says. “Then I switched to computer science.” He turns to Miles and Nick. “Back then we used computers that took up almost the whole room.”
“Cool,” Nick says, taking a bite of his roll.
Miles looks at Liam as if he’s a stranger who just came in off the street and sat down at our dinner table.
“It’s amazing how much technology has changed, just in our lifetime,” Jackie says, glancing between Liam and Miles. “Liam, tell us about some of the games you’re working on right now.” To Nick she says, “Liam designs video games.”
“Which ones?” Nick’s eyes spark with interest, and I detect a slight thaw from my son. I shoot Jackie a grateful look, and she winks at me.
After the boys have finished eating, they excuse themselves to go back to their robot, leaving the four of us sitting around the table picking at the remnants of my lemon squares and drinking coffee.
“That was delicious,” I say.
“Thanks,” Aaron says, leaning back, stretching his legs out beneath the table. “I love to cook.”
Liam puts his arm around me and says, “Paige and I are taking a cooking class in March. A Night of Asian Fusion,” he says in his game-show-host voice again.
Jackie smiles. “Aaron’s mother used to sign the two of them up for cooking classes when he was a teenager. While everyone else was going out to movies or parties, Aaron was learning how to blanch tomatoes and make hollandaise.”
Aaron grins. “Are you complaining?”
“Definitely not,” she says. “Aaron comes up with these incredible combinations. It’s like he has a sixth sense. We joke that somewhere on his family tree is a famous French chef.”
“You should take one of those DNA tests that can tell you where your ancestors are from,” Liam says. “A guy I work with did it. All his life, his dad went on and on about their Irish roots. But it turns out he’s mostly German and Russian.”
Like a record scratch, the mention of a genetic test silences the table. Liam looks at the three of us, confused.
“Jackie tells me you designed this house,” I say, trying to pivot gracefully and failing. I reach under the table and squeeze Liam’s knee.
Aaron twists his glass in his fingers. “I trained as an engineer. My dad wanted me to build bridges and skyscrapers. I tried it for a little while and found it to be too corporate and impersonal. I sort of slid into environmental engineering sideways.”
“Aaron went to MIT,” Jackie says.
“I love designing houses that are functional and eco-friendly. Each project is different. It allows me to build, but to also focus on the people and the space, not the money.”
“That sounds like everyone’s dream job,” I say. “To be in it for the art, the pleasure of creating something important.”
“I’ve been very lucky,” he says, giving Jackie a sad smile.
An argument erupts inside the house, and Nick’s voice calls, “Dad!”
“That’s me,” he says, rising from the table and tossing his napkin next to his plate. “Be right back.”
Jackie watches him go and then turns to me. “Nick tells me things have gotten better for Miles at school,” she says, “and that Miles has told him some things about his father. Did you decide to show him the donor profile?”
Liam’s eyes travel between me and Jackie, measuring our words and trying to figure out when this might have happened and why I never told him. And the fact that I didn’t sits like a stone in my stomach.
“I did, and it seems to have helped a little bit,” I say, trying to keep my tone light. To convey to Liam that I haven’t locked him out yet again.
“I’m so glad,” she says.
I feel a shift in Liam’s demeanor, a leaning away, even though he hasn’t moved in his seat. Aaron returns from inside the house. “Crisis averted.” He sits again and turns to Liam. “Jackie tells me you surf?”
Liam’s eyes lock on to Aaron. “Every chance I get. You?”
“Occasionally. I picked it up when I moved here. I used to live in the San Francisco area, where most of the water sports happened on the bay—stand-up paddling, windsurfing, sailing. Only the very brave surf in the bay area.”
My breathing loosens, the tension dissipating a little bit.
I check my watch, surprised it’s already 9:30. “It’s late,” I say. “We should get going.”
Jackie smiles. “Thanks for coming,” she says. Her eyes hold mine, and I know she’s thanking me for more than that.
We head into the house. “Miles!” I call. Jackie and Aaron follow
us to the front door, where Miles soon joins us.
Aaron snaps his fingers and says, “Hold up a minute,” and disappears back into the kitchen. He returns with a Ziploc bag. “Baking soda,” he says, tossing it to Miles.
“Thanks,” Miles says.
Aaron reaches out and squeezes his shoulder. “No problem. Let me know how it turns out.”
Miles’s eyes shine. “I will. Thanks.”
Jackie gives me a hug and points to my purse. “Drop the rope.”
I’m confused at first, until I realize she’s talking about my dad. “Hang in there,” I whisper.
—
The ride home is silent, and I know Liam’s angry with me. When we pull up in front of our house, I hand Miles my keys. “I’ll be inside in a minute.”
I watch him scamper across the lawn and into the house.
“I should have told you,” I say, hoping to preempt the fight I know we’re about to have. “I’m sorry.”
“This is never going to change, is it?” Liam’s voice is quiet. Exhausted. “You keep me in my box, trotting me out for date night and family dinner. If I want anything more, I have to leave work early or sneak in after Miles goes to bed. Everything is on your terms. You can’t even be bothered to tell me about something as significant as showing Miles his donor profile.” Liam stares out the windshield, his face a stony mask.
“I wasn’t trying to hide it from you.”
“I know. That’s the problem. It never occurred to you that I might want to know something like that. You claim to be so frustrated that Miles won’t accept me, but he treats me exactly like you do. He’s never going to let me in because you’ve taught him he doesn’t have to.”
His words slam into me, as if I’ve been punched. “That’s not fair.”
He turns to look at me. “Why didn’t you tell me you were going to show him his donor profile? Why did I have to hear about it from Jackie?”
I look down at my hands. “I don’t know. It just didn’t come up.”