Dr. Indigo didn’t pursue the topic further and merely nodded once, though clearly frustrated by the lack of information.
“I’m currently in pretty good health,” I said, “if that means anything.”
It didn’t seem to. The doctor grabbed a legal pad and scribbled something on it. “DNA tests are relatively inexpensive, and the data you’ll get will go well beyond the basic ethnic breakdown.”
“More blood?” Kylie asked. “I guess that’s okay.”
“No blood,” Dr. Indigo said. “Just saliva. I can give you a link where you can plug in the data from the file you’ll receive and get some really detailed medical information regarding susceptibility to a number of genetic diseases.” She tore off the page and presented it to me with a flourish. “It’s a start,” she said brightly.
I wasn’t there to start; I was there to finish. Would I drag Kylie back to this office, which smelled like a Dead show but charged enough to feed us for a week? Was it worth it?
“Depending on how quickly you get the results,” Dr. Indigo continued, “we can add them to the discussion about Kylie’s blood work next time you come. Some people hear back in a few weeks.” She shook Kylie’s hand, and then grasped mine. “I don’t believe in throwing pills at people to temporarily mask their symptoms. I want to help your daughter, but it’s going to take time. I promise you that I’ll try my best to heal her, and I won’t easily give up. I’ve been doing this a long time, and I’m good at what I do.”
I’d trusted before and been sorely, devastatingly disappointed. With the amount of probiotics I’d been ingesting, my gut should have been sending clearer messages, but nothing came. I studied the doctor more closely. Her face was finely etched with lines that came from squinting and frowning and pursing her lips—lines very similar to my own. Her part revealed a stripe of gray. The bags under her eyes could hold everything I owned. The physical evidence said Dr. Indigo worked very, very hard.
Could I swing this? I let go of the doctor’s hand, my mind going immediately to my bank statement, credit card debt, and accrued medical bills. I couldn’t afford to integrate anyone’s spirituality and wellness. But then, when your kid needs help, money becomes less a tangible thing and more something that could materialize by sheer willpower. “We’re paying out of pocket,” I said, figuring it would be better to be direct. “Do you offer discounts for those who can’t use insurance?”
“Discounts?” The doctor looked truly confused. “I’m sorry, but I don’t think so.”
“Why not?” Kylie asked. Her tone was quizzical but not disrespectful. “Our last doctor had a Groupon.”
Dr. Indigo smiled in a way that seemed more genuine, less blandly professional. “Maybe I’ll come up with a Groupon just for you,” she said, bending to help Kylie with her jacket.
“Then it wouldn’t be a group-on,” Kylie said, grinning back at her.
“Smart girl,” the doctor said, and then addressed me. “These things have a way of working out. Don’t let the cost add stress to an already stressful situation.”
“Thanks,” I said, the word sticking in my throat, as if I’d developed an anaphylactic reaction to hope.
“Another quack?”
My mother stood at her stove, whisking eggs for veggie omelets. Breakfast for dinner. We started the tradition when Kylie got sick. In the beginning, she sometimes slept until the afternoon, so we ate breakfast when she finally dragged herself out of bed.
“Why do you always ask that?” Kylie said, laughing. “It makes me think of ducks.” Mom offered her a spear of red pepper, which she accepted. Kylie nibbled her food, taking teeny-tiny rabbity bites.
“It might be too early to tell,” I said. “But she seemed all right. Smart. Competent. Definitely expensive.”
“They all are. Think she’s worth it?”
“I think so. We didn’t really talk specifics yet, but she’s definitely committed to helping us.”
“Then we’ll figure it out,” Mom said.
“I’ll talk to Matt tonight.”
She snorted. “Good luck with that.”
“Mom.” I tilted my head toward Kylie.
Mom nodded, abashed, and flipped a nut-free, gluten-free, dairy-free pancake. “Just write down everything you want to say before you get on the phone. Get it all on paper. Make a shopping list.”
My mom had spent her entire working life behind the bar of Stef’s Tavern, a narrow, dimly lit neighborhood joint wedged between a dry cleaner’s and an insurance office on the main stretch of one of the tiny blue-collar suburbs ringing the city. Her parents had bought it when the local men did mostly shift work, and the bar was open for business from 6 a.m. to 2 a.m. during its heyday, the early morning bartender sleeping on a cot in the storeroom during the split in his shift. When my grandparents retired, my mother took over managing the bar, which she felt was most effectively done by standing behind it, mixing drinks, and playing psychologist to the (mostly) men who spent hours knocking back beers and telling stories. She knew the inventory like the back of her calloused hands—every bottle running low, the maraschino cherry count, the number of lemons and limes and how many slices she could get from each, the frozen hamburger patties, the rolls of toilet paper—the hundreds of items it took to run even a very basic, old-school establishment. Every morning, Mom flipped to a clean page on a legal pad and jotted down everything the bar needed for the day. Toward the bottom of the page, she jotted down what she needed. Don’t back down when you ask Jim to finally settle his tab. Remember to be kind to Raymond—he lost his job again. Don’t be afraid to fire the accountant. Sometimes I’d steal a look at her list and just see phrases scrawled at the bottom—calm down, stop being chickenshit, consider the other side—it took a certain kind of woman to run a bar solo, and Mom knew she was the most qualified person to keep herself focused and in control.
They say adopted kids eventually end up looking like their adoptive parents. I spent considerable time hoping this was true, and that it also meant I’d eventually inherit mom’s personality traits. As much as I wished, it didn’t happen—my hair stayed dark instead of dirty blonde, my eyes never morphed from chocolate brown into my mother’s crystal blue, and I tended to act impulsively instead of steadily mapping out possible consequences, a leaper not much interested in looking more than a foot in front of me. But . . . dealing with my soon-to-be ex-husband meant I needed to channel my mom as best I could and gather my scattered thoughts and emotions into some kind of order. Shopping list, it is. I grabbed a legal pad and pencil, and sat down on the corner bench Mom installed when I was eight. It offered comfort then, it offered comfort now.
On top of the page I wrote, Dr. Indigo.
And then, I didn’t write anything else.
I had to think.
Matt and I were estranged. Though it was an appropriate description, the word was not exactly accurate. It implied we’d become strangers to each other, but what actually happened, as we negotiated the particulars of Kylie’s health care, was we got to know each other even better.
Matt was surprisingly more rigid than I thought, more conservative in his thinking, and had less trust in my judgment.
I was gullible when I thought I’d been pretty savvy, bull-headed when I thought I’d been pretty open, and much, much angrier.
Neither of us meant any harm. Both of us wanted to help Kylie.
But I’d read countless articles about how previously solid marriages began to fray at the seams when a child gets sick. It was a sad reality, but a reality all the same. Our bickering got to the point where the only thing we could agree on was that we loved Kylie and wanted to seek out the best care for her. That should have been enough to keep us together.
It wasn’t.
This shamed us, but still didn’t change the fact that for the last year, we’d slept in different beds, in different houses, and lived different, sadder lives. And so did our daughter.
I called Matt without writing a shopping list.
“I really think this doctor is going to help,” I said. “She seems smart and committed.”
“They’re all smart,” he said, “but never smart enough. Why are you putting her through this again? Think this through, Ally. And I thought we agreed to give it a rest for a while. How many more days of school does she need to miss before they hold her back a grade?”
“She’s ahead of the other kids. They won’t do that.”
Matt sighed. “This doctor wants to do tests, right? Tests are expensive. There’s no need to test for things that have already been tested. Can she take a look at the old files and come to some conclusions?”
“She wants to do her own blood work.” I waited, knowing what would come next.
“Out of pocket, right?”
“Yes. But I think I can work a discount.”
“Ally—” Matt paused. He’d become increasingly careful with finances, which made me think what he was going to say next required some finessing. It scared me.
“We need to start saving our money for the future,” he said, voice low, as though Kylie were in the room. “We haven’t got any answers, so we can’t plan. What if she needs some kind of long-term therapy or a hospital stay? Our insurance is not good. Our savings account is nearly dry. I don’t think we need to take yet another risk with another doctor.”
He was absolutely right and oh-so-wrong at the same time. It was my turn to pause. Was I reacting because I wanted to win this one, or because I thought Dr. Indigo could help Kylie? I thought about the lines on the doctor’s face, about the way she held my hand, that firm grip. “I think it’s worth it. I want to give this doctor a chance.”
“Well, then you’re going to need to take the money from your tip jar,” Matt countered, voice tight.
He hung up before I could respond.
I wished I could say Matt was a bad guy. He wasn’t. That was the problem with this scenario—the only thing we could blame with any fairness was the illness. And we didn’t even know what that was exactly.
It was enough to make anyone inflammatory.
CHAPTER 2
“It requires spit. So much spit. When I did it, I seriously dehydrated myself.”
Jenn with two n’s was talking DNA tests while I cut her hair. Every hairdresser has a client who works her every last nerve, and Jenn was mine. But she was loyal, and my appreciation for that valuable trait overrode my irritation at her constant need to complain. Jenn had sat in my chair every six weeks for the past eight years, and that formed a relationship of sorts, tenuous as it was.
Today Jenn requested an asymmetrical bob because she was hosting an ’80s party. She’ll hate it, I thought to myself, but Jenn with two n’s could rarely be dissuaded.
“I think Kylie will be okay,” I said, though it did worry me a little, given her persistent dry mouth. “The vial looks pretty small. I’ll give her a lot of water before and after.”
Jenn’s shrug was almost violent. She didn’t like to be wrong. “I guess. It’s your daughter’s well-being we’re talking about. I just think you should give it more thought.”
I had given a lot of thought to the DNA test since visiting Dr. Indigo’s office. On the ride home, after I explained what the test could uncover, Kylie pressed me to do it, saying she thought it was cool that something as gross as spit could tell us stories about our ancestors. When we got home, I’d ordered the kit immediately, my thoughts racing when I imagined plugging all that info about genomes and whatnot into a formula that could potentially give us some clues for helping Kylie.
As soon as I logged out of PayPal, guilt settled over me like Kylie’s weighted blanket. Though my mother and I had never spoken about it, there was a tacit agreement that who I was biologically had nothing to do with who we were as mother and daughter. My origins were barely ever mentioned, as though Mom had conjured me out of thin air. And from what I understood, it was as if she had—my birth mother had never tracked me down, and my adoption was as closed as a locked door. Those DNA results might tell Kylie exactly who she was, but they’d only remind me who I wasn’t. I could handle that. But, they’d also remind my mother of the one fundamental thing we didn’t share. How much would that hurt her? I wasn’t sure, but I knew that it would.
I forced myself to refocus on Jenn with two n’s. “Anything surprise you about your results?”
“They were exactly what I expected. My results were almost pure—ninety-eight percent Northern European. I suppose that’s why my hair is so blonde.”
Though she liked to pretend otherwise, her hair was so blonde because I made it that way. With bleach. I smiled at her in the mirror. “I’m not so concerned with the ethnic breakdown. I want to see what kinds of genetic diseases are lurking in my family tree.”
Jenn made a face. I guessed her disease profile was 98 percent pure as well. The other 2 percent was a propensity for self-absorption.
“I found out I have a third cousin who lives just outside of San Diego,” she said. “Never knew it. Can you imagine? I contacted her, and we are like, the same person. Seriously. We both prefer lasering instead of waxing, and she’s really into CrossFit, just like me. Truly unbelievable.”
I didn’t want to go into the stats on how many thirtyish suburban women liked body hair maintenance and keeping fit. Again, I smiled into the mirror and said, “Wow. What are the chances?”
Jenn nodded vehemently. “I know, right? I have a ton of distant cousins, apparently, but I only contacted her so far, because she posted a photo. So many of them are anonymous—who knows what kind of person you’re dealing with? You’re practically putting your life in someone else’s hands when you go online these days. You know Tina, right? The one who works at the coffee shop near the library? Well, she decided to try Tinder, and you are not going to believe . . .”
I zoned out. I knew it wasn’t nice. But I kept replaying the conversation I’d had with Matt the night before, and regretting the conversation I failed to have with my mom. I didn’t want Mom paying for Kylie’s services. She simply couldn’t swing it financially. She’d sold the tavern three years ago when it sadly became clear her long-time customers were sucking down prune juice instead of Budweiser—it was currently a craft cocktail bar that catered to people like Jenn. After paying her bills and settling up her tax bill, Mom had very little left. I couldn’t ask her to squeeze the last dollars from her savings account. If I cut three or four more heads every week, I might be able to cover the fees, but the long hours meant more time away from my daughter. Matt was always happy to spend time with Kylie, but I felt like our schedules should be somewhat regimented and equal. The phrase “custody agreement” had not been uttered by either of us, but it hovered ominously over our heads, like a low-hanging rain cloud.
I finished snipping and started blow-drying. Jenn kept telling me about Tina’s dating life, and I tried my hardest to follow what she was saying, but I still couldn’t focus. That morning, Kylie woke with a sore, scratchy throat and a low-level headache. I sent her to school anyway. Was that the right decision?
Parenting requires constant questioning of yourself. Parenting a sick child requires self-interrogation worthy of CIA operatives at Guantanamo Bay. And in the end, you’ve tortured yourself so much mentally that you aren’t sure what you believe.
“It’s lopsided,” Jenn with two n’s said, breaking into my thoughts.
Jenn always complained. I knew this. But today my patience was thinner than her overly lasered eyebrows. It took everything I had, but I forced a benign expression. “Didn’t you ask for asymmetrical? That means the two sides won’t match.” I ran my hand along the bottom. It was a good cut, not one I would have chosen for her, but the exact look she requested. “It’s perfect for your ’80s party. I admire your dedication—most people would have just gotten a wig.”
“I’m not most people,” she snapped. “This is for my thirty-fifth birthday party. It’s important. Fix it.”
Scissors in hand, I snipped the teenies
t, tiniest bit from the longer side. When I was done, I fluffed it up. Jenn stared at herself for a long moment, and then said, “Now it’s perfect.”
“That it is,” I managed to say without rolling my eyes.
She left a substantial tip and promised to text photos of her big party—to which I was not invited. Usually, I would never expect an invite to a client’s social event, but for some reason, Jenn’s exclusion bothered me. I could feel an irrational anger brewing, the suffocating pressure of a slow rise in blood pressure.
I was being ridiculous. Time for a breather. My next client wasn’t due for another half hour—I could swing a quick outing if I hurried.
“I’m going for coffee,” I told my friend Heather. Normally a stylist, she was here on her day off, filling in for our receptionist, Roxanne, who was down with strep. “You want the usual?”
“Nope,” Heather said, her eyes growing wide and bulging.
Heather never turned down caffeine. “What’s up with you? Why are you making a frog face?”
She nudged her chin toward the waiting area behind me. “You’ve got a client.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Yes,” she hissed, “you do. He’s a walk-in.”
I turned, stomach sinking, as I was pretty sure I knew who it was.
Sure enough, Matt sat there, reading an old copy of US magazine. He looked thin and pale.
I felt Heather’s hand on my shoulder. “You need backup?”
“Not yet. If you hear me scream, come running.”
“You know I love you,” Heather said, “but this is kind of messed up.”
She wasn’t wrong. It was.
I walked over to my almost ex-husband. “Ready?”
He nodded and headed directly to the hair-washing station. Matt had done this a thousand times. I wondered how many more times he would.
I’d been cutting his hair for over a decade, but it wasn’t habit that kept him coming back after we broke up. At least I didn’t think so.
The Other Family Page 2