by Cari Noga
“Just options, huh?” Sam whispered to Linda, as Robby returned with a second tray.
Felk stood up. “I’ve given Robby my card. You still have it, right, son?”
Robby nodded.
“And I’ve got Robby’s e-mail. I’ll be in touch.” Felk nodded at them both, then held out his hand to Robby. “Robby, it was a privilege to meet you. I expect to be seeing you in the future. Check out those websites I gave you, and the reference books. Sibley’s guides are the best. See if you can find a local Audubon club. Just keep up with the birds and it’ll all work out fine.”
“OK.” Robby shook his hand, his brown eyes gazing straight up into Felk’s blue ones.
Witnessing that eye contact, Linda vowed to do whatever it took to nurture her son’s interest, and pretended she didn’t hear Sam muttering they should have skipped the sightseeing cruise and gone to the Empire State Building instead.
Richard had meetings at church that evening, so Brett made Western omelettes for herself and Amanda. The phone rang just as they were finishing. Amanda’s friend Abby was so excited Brett could hear her, too.
“It went great. Mrs. Hamilton said my voice was one of the best in the choir, and she asked me to rehearse ‘You’re the One that I Want’ tonight and perform it when they audition the leads tomorrow! I could have died, I was so excited. Amanda, I could be Sandra! And we’re only juniors.”
“That’s so cool, Ab. You’d be great,” Amanda said, walking down the hall, toward her room.
Brett rinsed the dishes, musing. Auditions. She thought back. Amanda mentioned something about musical auditions last week. Were they today? She chastised herself for not knowing for sure.
She filled the dishwasher quickly, then walked down to Amanda’s room. Hesitating, she listened. The phone conversation must be over. She knocked lightly and peeked in. “OK to come in?”
“I guess.” Amanda didn’t move on the bed. The phone receiver lay facedown next to her.
Brett wedged herself into the small space left between her daughter’s feet and the end of the bed. “Was that Abby?”
Amanda nodded.
“What’s new with her?”
“She got asked to audition for one of the leads in the musical today.”
“Good for her.” Brett paused. “Weren’t you going to audition, too?”
“Yeah, probably. Abby said I can still do it tomorrow.”
“Oh, OK.” Brett reviewed her daughter’s response, evaluating whether to probe further.
“I just wanted to come home and see you this afternoon, is all,” Amanda suddenly added.
“Really? You wanted to come home instead of hang out with your friends?” Brett patted her leg, wondering if that really was a good thing for a sixteen-year-old girl. Amanda pulled her knees up quickly and picked up the phone.
“Mom?” She was fidgeting with it, turning it around in her hands.
“Yes?”
“You know how I asked you about being on the news yesterday, being on the boat?”
“Mmm-hmmm.” Brett sat up straighter, feeling suddenly wide-awake.
“You said you weren’t. But this morning, on the news, they were rerunning the crash coverage and . . . and I saw you.”
“Saw me?” Brett’s throat closed.
“On a boat. Just like Kelsey said.”
Brett’s heart thumped. Here it was already, the moment of confrontation. She knew it would come eventually, but she had only scripted Richard opposite her. It was harder with Amanda, who had stopped fidgeting with the phone and pinned her with an unwavering stare. Brett sighed and nodded, almost imperceptibly.
“So I was right.”
Brett nodded again, more distinctly.
“Why did you tell me you weren’t? What’s the big deal? So you decided to blow off the conference and do something fun.” Amanda shrugged.
There it was. The life raft of the next lie laid, so innocently, by her own daughter. Amanda thinks I was just playing hooky. She didn’t notice anything between me and Jackie. So easy to step into, to maintain the charade a little bit longer. Of course it was wrong to lie. But it was her duty to protect her daughter, too. Wasn’t it? Just for a little while longer. Until I talk to Jackie. Until we figure this out.
She shrugged, too. “I don’t know, Amanda. I was so surprised when you asked. With the plane crash, everything was so confusing. And scary.”
She’s not convinced. Think of something else.
“And going to the conference was expensive, so it was important that I make it worthwhile. I didn’t want you to think we were wasting time, or money. I’m sorry.”
“‘We?’ ”
Brett’s heart pounded again. I. I meant I. I didn’t want you to think I was wasting time or money. This was how the devil used lies—like a web, snaring you with another and another and another, until you were hopelessly entangled. On the ferry, with Amanda far away, it was easier to lie. Face-to-face, here in her room, it was almost physically painful.
She stood up, folding her arms, cupping her elbows tightly, as her thoughts galloped, back to New York, back to Jackie. Was she lying to her family, too? What sacrifices was she making?
“Mom?” Amanda’s voice brought her back to the bedroom.
Brett looked down at her daughter. So trusting. She cleared her throat, and stepped in deeper.
“Yes, we. Me and Mrs. Longwood. Jackie Longwood. We were on the ferry together. I met her at the conference. She’s from a church in North Carolina. Charlotte.” On the firmer ground of the truth—albeit incomplete—Brett spoke more quickly now. “They’ve had a meal program and a delivery service for a long time. Much longer than we have. I wanted to learn more about how they did it all.”
“Oh.” Amanda’s brow furrowed. “But, then, why were you on the ferry? Couldn’t you just talk at the hotel?”
Brett thought rapidly.
“It was Jackie’s idea. It was her first trip to New York. She wanted to take the sightseeing trip. I figured we could talk on the boat just as well as inside a hotel, so why not?”
The furrow on Amanda’s forehead smoothed, but didn’t erase. Brett felt exposed in the gaping silence, willing her daughter to accept her explanation. The back door opened.
“Anybody home?” Richard’s voice filled in the void.
Brett stiffened. She opened Amanda’s door. The hallway stretched like a ship’s plank. What if he had seen the news, too?
In the kitchen, Richard was loosening his tie, glancing at the paper.
“Hi.”
“Welcome back.” His mouth smiled, but not his eyes as he leaned forward to kiss her cheek. “How was the big city?”
“Fine,” Brett said, looking back at Amanda’s door. She’d expected her daughter to follow, but she hadn’t. Hmm.
“‘Fine?’ Four days away, and that’s all you have to say?” Richard poked his head into the refrigerator, emerging with leftover Chinese.
“No, of course not. I’ve got lots to tell you. I—”
Richard held up his hand, cutting her off. Sitting down, he closed his eyes and bowed his head. “Come, Lord Jesus . . .”
The familiar grace rumpled Brett’s mood. Couldn’t he skip it just once?
His eyes opened. “All right, tell me all about it. What did you learn that might help us set up a mobile meal program here? Did you make any connections?”
“I think I did make one good connection,” Brett said slowly, measuring the words. She couldn’t afford another “I-we” slipup. “A woman from a church down in Charlotte.”
“All the way from North Carolina, huh? No kidding.”
“Right. Two years ago she started a mobile program building on the community meals they served at the church. Just like we’ve been talking about. At first, they used a ten-year-old van with a hundred thousand
miles on it and some old pizza delivery bags to keep the food hot.” Brett was reciting the biography Jackie shared at the first, real conference last fall.
“Now they’ve got the attention of private donors. Some local car dealers just donated six brand-new delivery vans. They’ve got a volunteer waiting list, if you can believe that. They’ve even been nominated for the governor’s most humanitarian nonprofit award.”
“Really! I wonder if Pennsylvania has an award like that. Can’t buy that kind of publicity. It would sure boost the congregation.” Richard looked excited as he took another bite of cold kung pao.
Once, he would have been excited about the award for its own sake, not the publicity, Brett thought. “I don’t know. I think—”
“This is a wonderful report, Brett. More than I hoped for. That hotel room might just be worth it, after all.”
A vision of herself and Jackie, together in the king-size bed, emerged. Oh, that room had been so worth it. To feel so alive, so electrically alive, down to every last nerve—
“Brett?” Richard coughed. “Brett?”
The bed evaporated. “I’m sorry. What?”
“I said, what’s your next step?”
“I thought I’d go down to Charlotte to see their operation myself,” Brett heard herself say, without hesitating.
“A plane ticket.” Richard sighed, then brightened. “Maybe we could all go. Does your friend have children? We could go over Amanda’s spring break. Drive down together. Save the plane fare, get away from the cold and snow. Enjoy some family time and all help move our church forward together. Like that mission trip we took back in college, remember?”
As Richard talked himself down south, panic galloped through Brett. Was he reading her mind? Until this afternoon she hadn’t thought of the mission trip in years. Even if he wasn’t reading her mind, she and Jackie would be exposed. It was a crazy risk. It would be impossible.
“It would be perfect timing. Let you plan a little bit more up here, build some more success with the church meals, before making a big leap like this.”
Breathe. Just breathe. And think, Brett.
“I’d have to talk to Jackie. Maybe they’re busy. Or maybe spring break wouldn’t be a good time for them. Maybe they’ll be going on spring break themselves,” Brett said. That sounds reasonable. It’ll buy me time. Her heartbeat slowed.
“Of course, of course. It doesn’t have to be spring break. That would just be convenient,” Richard said. “But get in touch soon to find out what works for her, and we’ll figure something out.” He stood up and hugged her, the embrace feeling more like a vise to Brett. “The Lord will make this happen, Brett. I’ve just got a feeling about it.”
He threw away the empty Chinese container and turned on the TV.
In her room, Amanda stepped back from the door, deflated. They’d never gone on a spring break vacation. So she would definitely be at auditions tomorrow. If she wasn’t going anywhere for spring break, being in the musical would at least get her out of the house. Plus, it would give her something to think about besides her mom, who suddenly wanted to run all over the country instead of staying home like she’d always done.
She reached in her backpack for her copy of the lyrics. Now she just needed to make the cast.
EIGHT
Deborah and Christopher. Good afternoon.” Dr. Marissa Singh strode into her office and shook their hands. “Lovely to see you again.”
Deborah smiled feebly. She wondered if the fertility specialist practiced saying that with just the right tone and expression, knowing everyone who faced her in these tastefully upholstered chairs wanted to be anywhere but there.
“Tell me about your consultation in New York.”
“They sent the report, right?” Puzzled, Deborah moved to the edge of her seat.
“Indeed.” She lifted a medical chart. “But I’m interested in your perspective, too.”
“Oh.” Deborah paused, tucking her hair behind her ear. “I was encouraged. The doctor corroborated what you said about the two—the two other times. That we’d done everything right, that after transfer, it’s really a matter of beating the odds. And he said with my age and health status, I’m still a good candidate.” She watched the doctor, who listened impassively.
“So we’d like to discuss transferring our remaining embryos,” she finished. “I asked for an evaluation when I called?”
“I have it right here,” Dr. Singh said, opening another file. “Three embryos left. All rated in very good condition.”
Deborah’s heart leaped. The doctor seemed to read her mind.
“That could change, you know.” The doctor looked up. “We’ll re-evaluate when the embryos are thawed.”
“We’re aware of that,” Christopher said, speaking for the first time.
“Good. And what do you think, Christopher? How do you feel about a third attempt?”
Deborah’s heartbeat accelerated. She had kept her word. The fertility books had gone to the library. She had unliked the Facebook pages and chat groups. And except for telling him of the appointment, she had steered clear of discussing IVF, pregnancy, and babies since the drive home from New York last week.
Her husband shifted in his twin chair. He turned to her and reached out his hand. Deborah took it. He pulled their clasped hands into his lap while he held her gaze for a long minute, and then turned back to Dr. Singh.
“I’m willing to give it one more try. One last try.”
Deborah exhaled audibly. The doctor regarded them both. Photographs of her family were arranged behind her on a credenza. It looked like two boys and a girl. Deborah fixed her eyes on their smiling faces, as if the doctor’s own fertility could somehow permeate to her.
“All right, then.” Dr. Singh flipped papers until she found a blank page. “It’s just a matter of determining when the next opportunity for transfer is, then. When was your last period, Deborah?”
Half an hour later, with the transfer scheduled for February 8, they parted outside the clinic with a plan to meet for dinner at their favorite Chinese restaurant, Campus Cantonese. In between, Christopher had a late meeting on campus. Deborah decided to call Helen.
Her new phone showed one text. Julia Adams again. Christopher had introduced them at the dean’s summer picnic and then gone off to hatch the grant proposal with Julia’s husband, Michael, the newest member in the bio department. What a difference a decade made, Deborah had thought while half-listening to Julia’s own pitch for fund-raising help for some nonprofit, remembering how she and Christopher had first paired off at the same picnic.
She deleted Julia’s message. She’d figure some way out of that. As she held the phone, it rang.
“Hi, Deborah. It’s Helen.”
“Helen! I was just going to call you. How are you?”
“I’m—well, I’m OK. Been better, actually.” She paused. “Is this an OK time for you to talk? Do you have a few minutes?”
“Sure.” Deborah’s brow creased. Helen sounded breathless again. But she couldn’t be doing her morning workout now. “What’s going on?”
She heard a long sigh. “I’m not really sure how to start.”
“Just start.” Deborah frowned.
Helen sighed again. “OK. Well. It started a couple months ago. I wasn’t feeling so great. Tired all the time. Achy. Sore muscles.” She paused again. “What felt like a sore throat. I couldn’t swallow anything.”
“How awful.” Deborah said sympathetically. “You went to the doctor, right?”
“Right.” Helen breathed deeply. “A lot of doctors, actually. My GP sent me to a specialist. That specialist sent us to another one, at the University of Washington.”
She hesitated. Deborah’s skin prickled. The pauses felt like a tsunami building from the West Coast, looming over flyover country, poised to crash over her on the East. Say it. G
et it out, she silently urged her sister.
“They put me through a whole slew of tests. Genetic tests.”
“OK,” Deborah said, filling in the pause left for her. “And?”
“They showed I have the gene for Huntington’s Disease.”
Huntington’s Disease. Deborah ran the name through the database of fund-raising groups she stored in her head and came up negative. That meant no awareness, no money, or both. Not good.
“I don’t know—” she started.
“It’s a neurological disorder. It leads to muscle degeneration, then dementia. Symptoms typically emerge between the ages of thirty-five and forty-five.”
Deborah exhaled deeply. “Helen, my God, I’m so sorry. But what does it mean, exactly? Does having the gene mean you have it now? What’s the treatment? What can I do?”
“I have it now. The symptoms indicate it’s in the early stages.” Helen paused, her voice faltering. “There’s—there’s no treatment. There are some things they can do to alleviate symptoms, but there’s no cure.”
Silence stretched over the continent again. Deborah couldn’t speak.
“Deborah? Are you still there?”
“I’m here.” Her voice sounded strangled, to her own ears. Helen was only forty-five. She couldn’t have some fatal, untreatable disease. Not after they lost their parents so young in the car accident. It wasn’t fair.
“I’m so sorry to tell you this over the phone. I wanted to tell you in person, when you came out here. That’s why I was so upset after the crash. But when that didn’t work out, and you started talking about another IVF cycle, I knew I had to tell you as soon as possible.”
Her last sentence echoed. “Tell me because of the IVF? What does that have to do with anything?”
Helen spoke softly, sorrowfully, delivering her sentence. “Huntington’s is a genetic disease, Deborah. I inherited it from Mom or Dad. And there’s a fifty-fifty chance you did, too.”
As the school bus growled away from the curb, Robby reached into his backpack for his Sibley’s guide. They had bought it in New York, at a bookstore on the way back to the hotel. The bookstore was on a corner and had a revolving door just like the museum. The author was David Sibley. In the cafeteria Dr. Felk said it was the best guide there was, and so did the guide, on the cover. “More than 6,600 illustrations in all,” the back cover informed him.