by Julie Clark
The DSR also ensures that the donor-conceived have a safe place to search for their biological identities and to make these connections with their half-siblings and where possible, their donors as well. When matching on the DSR, make sure to ask a few pieces of information from the donor profile that have not been posted, and that only the donor, or someone with the donor’s profile, would know.
© 2000–2017
* * *
Chapter Seventeen
“Oh my god.” Rose stops midstride to face me head-on. We’re only halfway around our first lap of the Annesley track, and the crisp October air bites through my light sweatshirt, raising goose bumps. Sycamore and pine trees rise behind the old brick-and-stone stadium, which surrounds us on three sides. The fourth opens to a majestic view of the Pacific Ocean.
I called Rose first thing this morning and begged her to meet me because despite our disagreement over Dad and the tension that has settled between us, Rose is still my person, the one I turn to when I don’t know what to do.
Her hands press into her temples as if to physically keep her head from exploding. “Tell me exactly what he said.”
I start walking again, keeping my eyes on the track in front of me. I tell her about Aaron’s dad’s diagnosis, his past as a sperm donor, and how he asked me for advice last night at the bar.
Rose lurches to a stop again. She grabs my arm, holding me in place. “Do you think he’s Miles’s donor?”
A runner approaches from behind, passing us on the left. I try to match my breathing to hers—in and out, one step at a time. I start walking again, pulling Rose along with me. “No. I think it’s nothing more than a very disturbing coincidence,” I say, trying very hard to believe it myself.
But Rose’s thoughts barrel ahead. “But if he is Miles’s donor, could Miles have the Huntington’s gene too?”
I look away, toward the ocean. “Theoretically, yes. But, Rose, the chances of that are infinitesimal.”
Rose nods. “There’s no way,” she agrees. “If he donated before he met Jackie, then he can’t be your donor. Miles and Nick are the same age.”
I close my eyes. I need Rose to help me chase away the possibility, not force me to argue the opposite. “Frozen sperm doesn’t expire. Some clinics discard it after twenty years, but theoretically it lasts forever. He said he donated about twelve years ago. It fits the timeline.”
Rose is stunned into silence. We’re barely walking at this point. “Oh my god.” The realization of what this might mean for Miles—the uncertainty, the fear—settles onto her face. The panic that kept me up all night pokes through her voice. “What did you say when he told you?”
“Nothing. Because there’s nothing to say.”
“But what if you’re wrong? What if it is him? And what about Jackie? What will you say to her?”
I look across the stadium at the empty bleachers rising toward the treetops.
“I don’t know,” I admit.
Rose is incredulous. “This could be Miles’s father. His brother.”
I need to gain control of this conversation. “There’s no reason to think that, Rose. Thousands of people use ACB every year.” The wind whips my hair around my face, and I struggle to tuck it behind my ears. “If you were to travel to New York and meet someone on the subway who has a friend in Los Angeles named Henry, would that mean this person knows your Henry?”
“Possibly,” she says in a low voice. And I know she’s right.
I think about Miles and Nick together, subtle similarities I didn’t register as significant until now. The identical arch of their backs as they observed the grasshopper at the school picnic. The way they finish each other’s sentences. Even the way they walk is the same—a lopey, zigzag gait that I should have recognized. I chastise myself. Close friends often finish each other’s sentences or adopt each other’s mannerisms. Similarities prove nothing.
Rose’s voice pulls me back. “How could the clinic have let Aaron donate? Don’t they screen for genetic diseases?”
“They can’t screen for everything. Huntington’s isn’t one of the tests.”
Rose looks incredulous. “How could he put so many families at risk?”
“I don’t think he knew. If one of Aaron’s grandparents had it, it’s likely no one talked about it. In those days, they would have been sent away to an institution, forgotten. Or maybe they passed away before the onset of symptoms.”
We round the end of the track, walking directly into the wind. In a low voice, Rose says, “I don’t know, Paige. I have a bad feeling about this.”
I don’t look at her, instead focusing on the back of the runner in front of us, rounding the corner with her smooth stride and loose limbs. I want to run after her and keep on running, away from this place I’ve landed. “Bad feelings aren’t proof,” I say.
Rose gestures toward the bleachers, and we sit down in the first row. The cold metal of the bench seeps through my pants, chilling me even with the shining sun. “Isn’t there something you can do?” she presses.
“If he notifies the clinic of his father’s diagnosis, we can get proof that way,” I tell her.
“So you’re going to sit back and wait?”
“Do you have a better suggestion?” I look down at my knees, and notice a tiny hole in my running tights. “It’s very unlikely,” I repeat.
Rose looks toward the ocean and back again. “I hope you’re right.”
“When have I ever been wrong?”
Rose gives a shaky laugh. “Lots of times. I still have that scar on my knee from when you convinced me I could fly.”
“I’m not wrong about this,” I tell her. “We’re worrying over nothing.” I don’t think Rose believes me any more than I do.
—
Back at work, the steadiness I rely upon settles over me, like a heavy cloak blotting out the rest of the world. Jenna, Bruno, and I sit in my office, having just returned from the lab, where I reran Scott’s last sample myself. The results are the same.
I turn to Jenna. “What do we know about oxytocin?”
She smiles, familiar with this routine. I don’t believe all knowledge rests with the PhD. Younger minds and eyes are sometimes much more flexible. “It’s a hormone that’s released by the pituitary gland. It’s responsible for pair bonding.”
“And what do we know about the inhibitor?” I ask her.
“It impedes the release of oxytocin from the brain,” she says. “Therefore, the subject has trouble with bonding and attachment.”
I look at Bruno. “What do you think?”
“I think the sample is corrupted,” he says. Jenna starts to argue. “No offense,” Bruno says to her. “It happens.”
“How do you explain my getting the exact same results then?” I ask. “No variance.”
Bruno shrugs. “I can’t.”
A thread of a hypothesis is growing inside of me. “Bio 101, Jenna. Talk to me about gene expression.”
“We all have genes waiting for the right conditions to express themselves. Cancer genes. Obesity.”
I nod. “What if something in Scott’s life has caused the inhibitor gene to turn off?”
Bruno says, “DNA methylation?”
I think of the lecture I gave my freshman biology class in September on mutation and methylation and shake my head. I turn to Jenna. “We need another sample. Can you schedule something with Scott this week?”
—
After Jenna leaves, I make my way back to the lab, to distance myself even further from the worry that chases after me. When the door clicks shut, I pause, taking in the scene. The room is long, with white walls and high windows. Scattered across the space are several workstations with grad students and lab assistants bent over them. I check the log by the door and see that several samples are waiting to be processed and pull up a stool to an empty workstation, snapping on gloves. Most lead researchers spend the majority of their time in an office, reading reports and soothing administrators, but I’ve
made sure that will never happen to me. I don’t ever want to lose the feel of the lab, for my hands to forget the precise steps involved in extracting DNA. When I look through a microscope and see an entire world—a unique set of instructions for a human being—it’s a magic that still takes my breath away. It’s a meditation that corrals my racing thoughts into a box where I can keep them separate, until I’m ready to think about them again.
“Hey there, Dr. Robson,” someone calls from across the room. But I’m already focused on the task at hand, hypnotized by the low hum of equipment, my body finally relaxing enough so that I can forget everything else.
MTDNA
* * *
There are lots of things about my mother I hope I’ve inherited. Her strength and determination are just two of them. She never faltered when we were growing up, never wavered in her belief that she could do everything. I only now realize how much she kept hidden from us—the loneliness, the self-doubt, the isolation of being a single mother when single mothers were rare.
Genetically, we are inextricably linked to our mothers through mitochondrial DNA. It’s a unique form of DNA that isn’t found in the chromosomes. In fact, it isn’t part of the genome at all. It lives in the cell between the nucleus and the cell membrane. Like the Y chromosome, mtDNA does not combine with genes inherited from your other parent but is passed on, whole, to you. It will live inside of you—the story of your mother, and her mother, and all the mothers who came before. A boxed set of every mother in your line, back to the beginning of time, stamped onto every single one of your cells, replicating throughout your entire life. Complete and unchanging.
When Miles was a baby, I used to think he could sense the exact minute I woke up, because the moment I opened my eyes, he’d start to cry. Or I’d know he was going to fall a fraction of a second before he did. Even to this day, he’ll sometimes start talking about the very thing I was just thinking about. Humans have a long history of stories about a mother’s intuition. Could it be connected to the exact replicas of the mtDNA living inside the cells of our children?
The scientist in me refutes this, but the mother in me knows it’s true.
* * *
Chapter Eighteen
When my mother arrives at my door, carrying Miles’s Halloween costume, I know I can’t avoid her any longer.
“Cool! Thanks, Grandma!” Miles grabs the costume. “Did you remember the ninja star?” He rifles through the bag, tossing everything onto the floor.
“Miles,” I say. “Grandma worked hard on that costume. Don’t throw it on the floor.” To my mother, I say, “Ninja star?”
She laughs. “Relax. It’s just cardboard, covered with tinfoil.”
Miles pulls it out of the bag and holds it up. “I think this will work,” he says. “Come into my room so I can show you the book I was telling you about last night. You aren’t going to believe the photos they have of Jupiter in it.”
My mom laughs and kisses him on top of his head. “In a minute. I need to talk to your mom first.”
Miles scoops everything up and says, “Okay, but don’t take too long,” before disappearing back into his room.
“What did you want to talk about?” I lead her into the living room, where the late-afternoon sun slants through the windows, making a bright spot on the wall behind the couch. I slide the curtain closed, and the room dims, both of us taking our battle positions on either end of the couch.
“Stop being a shit.”
Well, I guess we’re skipping the niceties. “You came here to tell me that?”
“No.” She smooths her blue nylon pants over her knees, avoiding my eyes. “Actually, I came here to tell you that even though I disagree, I will honor your desire to keep your distance.”
I’m shocked. My mother never gives up a position once she’s established it. “Why now?”
“Because your father doesn’t have a lot of time, and I don’t want to spend it arguing with you. Accept him, don’t accept him, we all need to move on.”
“And how does Dad feel about this?”
She looks down, picking an invisible piece of lint off her pants. “He was the one to suggest it.”
“Of course he was.” Always running away when things get tough. “What about Miles? Is Dad going to keep his distance from him too?”
“I’m happy to come here to spend time with Miles. But you can’t insulate him from the world. He’s going to come into some contact with your father occasionally.”
She senses my hesitation and says, “What do you think will happen, Paige?”
“I’m scared he’ll get hurt.”
My mother scoots closer to me on the couch. “You’re not scared for Miles. You’re scared for yourself.” She looks toward the window, squinting at the bright light seeping through the curtains. “I know what you think of me. I see the silent judgment in your eyes every time your father comes back and I let him.” She looks at me, challenging me to deny it. “I gave up the possibility of having a normal family by loving your dad. I never questioned whether he’d return; I just trusted he would. That’s what kept me going when things got tough. But I don’t regret it. He’s the love of my life.” She looks down at her pants again. “I am sorry about what it did to you girls though.”
“The only thing we ever knew for sure was that we could never count on him.”
“I thought I was doing the right thing, making sure you had a relationship with your father, as unconventional as it seemed.” She folds her hands on her lap. “Your dad and I had a long talk last night. It’s not fair to force him on you, and if you feel more comfortable staying away, he will honor that. And I will too.”
I can tell this doesn’t sit easy with her.
“Why do you care so much about whether I have a relationship with him?”
She looks at me, incredulous. “He’s a part of who you are,” she says. “Whether you like it or not.”
I start to argue, but she holds up her hand.
“Let me finish. Forgiveness doesn’t mean forgetting, or even having a relationship with him. It means understanding what happened, looking beyond your version of the past and seeing things from someone else’s perspective.”
“I have,” I say. But she looks at me like she used to when she caught me in a lie, as if she can see inside my brain. My version of the past is the lens through which I view my world. To remove it would mean looking at everything I’ve done—Miles, my study, my father, and Liam—differently. And I’m afraid of what I might see.
She takes my hand and squeezes it. My mother’s hand has been a constant in my life, smoothing my hair, drying my tears, yanking me into the dentist’s office or across a street. But as I stare at our intertwined fingers, I notice how swollen and bent hers are and remember that she too is getting old.
“I feel lost, Mom. Like I can’t do the right thing for anyone. I’m always disappointing someone—you and Rose, Liam, Miles.”
She sighs and pulls me closer. I let myself lean into her, the floral scent of her lotion enveloping me, reminding me of the many times she sat with me like this when I was younger. “You’re letting fear make your decisions,” she says. “Fear of letting Liam all the way into your life and fear of upsetting Miles if you do. Fear that your father hasn’t changed and fear that he has, because then you’d have to do something about it.” She tucks a piece of my hair behind my ear, and I try not to notice the slight tremor in her hand.
“So what should I do?” I ask, hoping for one of the solutions she used to give me. Try again. Ignore what they say. Tell them you’re sorry.
She kisses the top of my head like she did to Miles, like she’s done to me thousands of times. “I can’t tell you that. Life is scary. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t live it.”
DNA METHYLATION
* * *
DNA methylation is a process that occurs in every single cell of your body, more than a billion times per second. Methylation is critical to cell health and controlling gen
e expression. But like anything that happens so frequently, errors can occur. Scientists are learning that faulty DNA methylation can also be triggered by outside factors, such as trauma. Or grief.
* * *
Chapter Nineteen
“Have we heard anything from Jorgensen about the bridge grant?”
Bruno gives me a funny look. “Nothing yet,” he says. “But you’ve asked me that twice already this morning. What’s the matter with you?”
I look down at my desk, sorting a pile of pens and pencils. “I’ve got some stuff going on,” I admit. “It’s . . .” I trail off, shrugging into silence.
“Want to talk about it?” he asks.
I want to tell him all of it. But I don’t have the energy to face his brand of honesty right now. “Not really.”
Bruno nods just as his computer pings, and he swivels to read the email. Something must catch his attention, because he sits forward suddenly and begins furiously tapping his keyboard.
“What is it?” I ask.
“We got the second set of labs back for Scott Sullivan,” he says, his eyes glued to the screen. “His oxy levels are still elevated. In fact, they’re slightly higher than last time.”
I quickly log on to the secure database and pull up Scott’s file too.
We’re quiet, each of us drawing our own silent hypotheses.
“Now what?” he finally asks.
“I don’t know.”
“At this rate, he might not even qualify for phase two.”
Bruno and I look at each other across the desk, our years together silently communicating what neither of us want to say out loud.