The Family Gene

by Joselin Linder

  You’re already dead, I thought.

  * * *

  My father’s final autopsy report lists his date of birth as 2–1–47. Then it says simply, “Expired: 9–25–96.” Like a carton of milk.

  There are multiple causes of death listed. But, as they say, everyone dies when the heart stops. My dad’s autopsy describes “1000 cc. of creamy white chylous fluid” filling his abdomen. The surgeon who assisted on the autopsy later told Jimmy that my father’s organs had all but fused together from the five-yearlong pressure of that lymph.

  Hilary didn’t want to see his body. I did. He didn’t look like my father anymore. The thing that made my father, my father was no longer there. I wasn’t particularly religious, but what I was seeing convinced me that there’s hope that our existence doesn’t fully end at our death. Our bodies end. But they are not the things that make us, us. I knew this as I looked at the strange flattening of this bloated, unfamiliar body. The nurses had placed a stuffed bear under his arm that had arrived with one of the many baskets of flowers. My father would have never slept with a bear. I removed it and put it on the table.

  * * *

  Two days later, his funeral was standing room only. There were people all over the place, all the way to the far back wall. The week before, Jackie and my mother had gone to pick out a casket. My mother didn’t want to go into the funeral home, so Jackie had to choose. Jackie knew my dad would want the top of the line, but my mom would want the cheapest. She chose something that split the difference. She got it extra long so he wouldn’t have to scrunch.

  At the funeral, my uncle Norman, my grandparents’ middle son, told me he didn’t have the gene. At the University of Southern California, where he’d been tested, they hadn’t heard the telltale heart murmur. It had probably been a great relief to him, but frankly, I hadn’t even considered that he could have the gene. I mean, of course he could have the gene. I just hadn’t considered it. He and my dad were so different, not that that made for a scientific litmus test. I was glad for him.

  Four eulogies were read one after the other: Jimmy. Uncle Norman. My dad’s childhood best friend.

  Finally, the rabbi:

  Bill Linder saw life as full of opportunities and seized them. Now, much too soon, and after too much suffering, he is gone, having left another lesson as well, about how to die with courage, surrounded by love.

  We drove in a limo to the cemetery. As we pulled up, the dreary autumn sky suddenly unleashed a torrential rainfall. We were ushered underneath a tent where a burial hole was sunk in autumn’s hardening ground. It was difficult to hear the rabbi over the noisy tapping of rain on the canvas. My father’s extra-long casket was lowered, and per Jewish custom, each of us was handed a shovel to throw dirt onto it. As the first shovelful landed, a bright flash of lightning and a resounding thunderclap erupted nearly simultaneously. Then everything went quiet. The rain stopped and the sun came out.

  Thirteen

  After the funeral, I drank wine with the rabbi and smoked cigarettes by the side of the road out of eyeshot of my mother. Amy and Jason had driven in from Cincinnati for the funeral and left early to drive back.

  Later, Jeromy showed up. We had been cultivating our relationship, seeing each other on my regular trips home from school over the four weeks since the fair had ended. We wrote love letters and scheduled long phone calls like dates. Our relationship was still new. Jeromy sat at the kitchen table, far away from the other guests. I served him a plate of food. We discussed the fact that he had a plane ticket for Boston to visit me at school leaving that very night, but clearly, I wasn’t in Boston. He had contacted one of his friends who lived there and arranged to stay with him. I assured him I would try to make it back before he left.

  Getting those arrangements right struck me as deeply important that evening, more important than mourning with my family, which, in all fairness I felt like I had already been doing for several years nonstop. As Jeromy and I said good-bye, I remember feeling deeply upset about the possibility that I would not see him again that week.

  My father’s death had occurred during the week of a holiday. This meant we couldn’t observe the ritual week of mourning known as shiva (Hebrew for “seven” as in “days of mourning”) because the holiday was set to begin the next evening. The celebration of the harvest holiday trumped the ritual observation of death. When the rabbi explained this to us, I’m pretty sure my reaction was an inappropriate victory whoop. I probably followed it up with something like “That’s cool. I’ll just head back to school, then. You know, I’ve missed so much . . .”

  I didn’t actually care about missing school. The joy of my burgeoning relationship had me glowing. My father had died and I felt almost thrilled—not that my dad was dead, but that his suffering was over, and my suffering was over. I think my mother’s suffering, and even my sister’s, were just getting started. I, though, was bolstered by the pleasure that accompanies falling in love and being twenty-one. It felt like freedom.

  * * *

  The morning after the funeral, my uncle Norman and his wife, Ellen, took it upon themselves to begin the difficult task of cleaning out my father’s closets. I didn’t care at the time—or even consider that one day I might want some of his stuff. My aunt and uncle didn’t believe it would be good for any of us to live with the belongings of a dead man staring us in the face. My aunt had read somewhere that it kept you from moving on.

  My sister looked on in horror as Aunt Ellen filled enormous garbage bags with my father’s clothing, books, jewelry, and medical equipment. Our defeated mother muttered, “Sure, take whatever you want,” as they gathered up items for their sons and daughter, piling up his nicest watches, ties, and jackets. They were, after all, his brother, sister-in-law, niece, and nephews. It made sense to give his things to them, didn’t it? And what they didn’t get, some person shopping at Goodwill would make a good home for. Years later, we have often looked back on that afternoon with deep regret, having lost nearly all the material belongings from our father’s life in a matter of hours the day after his funeral.

  Later that night, my mother, sister, and I sat alone in our quiet house. We huddled together in the room that we had always called “the library.” It was my father’s office, with large wooden bookshelves lining every wall. Our dad, my mother’s husband, was gone. We held hands. We hugged and cried alone, together. For the first time in my life, we were a family of three.

  * * *

  I was happy to leave the following morning and spend most of that week in Boston with Jeromy. Our relationship was less than two months old, but it had been particularly eventful. We used our early days of falling in love to discuss and explore every horrible thing that had ever happened to each of us, a habit we never outgrew. Jeromy’s revelations included an insidious history of abuse that had funneled down the generations of his family tree. He told me that one of his cousins had tried to commit suicide. He had taken sleeping pills, but the dosage wasn’t enough to kill him. Jeromy told me that next time he had said he would do it two ways, like take the pills and shoot himself, just to make sure.

  Jeromy was the coolest person I’d ever met. He had fronted a band in high school called the Deceitful Peaches. I didn’t mind that he had baggage. I figured I was up for the challenge anyway, after the last few years. I didn’t even bat an eye when he confessed that he’d been trying out heroin to see if it could help him produce better art. In my effort to seem the perfect codependent, I probably just nodded and agreed that it was best to try out every option. After all, who was I to judge?

  My newest philosophy was: we are beholden to nothing! I understood that the only thing I wanted to do for the rest of my life was explore, find greatness, and die fat and smart. I confess I was happy, even verging on euphoric.

  * * *

  Jeromy moved into my Somerville, Massachusetts, dorm room that October. He got a job at a nearby restaurant, cooking in the back. I took a lot of poetry courses. The fact that he worked
nights made it easy to keep our relationship separate from my college social life. Jeromy couldn’t stand frivolousness and everyone I knew was in college and around twenty-one. The two worlds could only mesh when everyone was on psychedelics. Mostly I spent time in one world (school) or the other (Jeromyland).

  Over winter break, my mother, sister, and I took that trip to Key West we had been planning when my dad first realized he was sick. Jeromy stayed with his parents in Columbus. I had become uncharacteristically brave since my father’s death and my relationship with Jeromy had begun. Jeromy suggested that if I was going to go someplace as lame as Florida, I should make sure I found the art, which to him meant the real places with the real people, and also Hemingway. I had grown up in a middle-class suburban world. I was not a risk-taker. In Key West, though, I was keen to leave the manufactured spectacle of Duval Street. With my notebook and trusty camera, I strolled through neighborhoods where cocks fought mid-street. I was surprised that I didn’t feel self-conscious among the locals in my touristy dress and purple off-brand high-tops. I sat in public gardens earnestly reading Milan Kundera and Anaïs Nin. Although it was different from any trip I’d ever taken, it wasn’t fun. Not even a little bit.

  Key West was one of my dad’s favorite places. He and my mother had loved spending time there over the years. Now the three of us walked around bereft, even as we tried to blend in with the tie-dyed T-shirts and ubiquitous plastic parrots. The thing that we just couldn’t get past, the thing that kept showing up three meals a day, five-star restaurant or Margaritaville, was the goddamned empty chair at the table. There is no such thing as a three-top.

  Fourteen

  In the spring of 1997, as my graduation neared, I decided to take advantage of my college health plan and go in for one last checkup before adulthood. I peed in a cup, had some blood drawn, and left. A few days later, I received a call asking me to come in to speak with a doctor. I wasn’t even remotely concerned, although it’s never a good thing when a doctor wants to be able to look you in the eye.

  After a moment of flipping through my chart, the white-haired man looked at me and said, “Your platelets are alarmingly low.”

  Platelets are one of four things that make up blood—along with red blood cells, white blood cells, and plasma. The primary function of platelets is to clot your blood after you get cut and oxygen hits it. Platelets change shape, become sticky, and form a clot to seal the wound.

  “How low?” I asked.

  “Well, very low,” he answered. “If you got into a car accident, I’m afraid you would bleed out.”

  I must have blinked blankly several times. My father had been dead for less than six months after a four-year illness. I wasn’t sure I could handle what was coming.

  “I feel okay,” I told him.

  “We’d like to run a few more tests,” he told me.

  I returned a week later to learn that nothing seemed to be amiss, and was given a prescription for iron pills.

  I called Dr. Kricket to let her know what was going on. She comforted me by saying, “Look, kid, your blood clots, right?”

  “Right,” I agreed. I mean, so far it had never not clotted.

  “You’re anemic,” she added. “Eat more leafy greens.”

  My sister, Hilary, meanwhile, was back living in Columbus, where she was feeling exhausted. Most doctors would have thought she was depressed, lacking direction, and mourning the recent death of her father. But not Dr. Steiner.

  Dr. Carla Steiner was our family doctor. She was one of my father’s close friends and colleagues. My dad had always insisted he couldn’t be objective as a doctor for his own family. Over the years, my mother, sister, and I have joked that perhaps Dr. Steiner had a crush on him, which is why she always seemed so eager to please him, but was so remarkably unkind to the rest of us. In truth, though, Dr. Steiner was happily married. Our father had played guitar and sung the first song she and her husband danced to at their wedding. Her apparent unkindness was, more likely, due to the fact that she just wasn’t a girl’s girl.

  Hilary decided to get a routine checkup. Dr. Steiner drew blood and, much like the doctor at my university health service, discovered her platelet count was alarmingly low. However, rather than call her in and look her in the eyes, Dr. Steiner decided to call our mother and tell her that it was within the realm of possibility that Hilary had leukemia.

  Of course, my mother heard, “Hilary has leukemia.”

  My mom called everyone. She contemplated reinstalling the chairlift. Maybe we would just be that family who contended with dire illness after dire illness like a soap opera without rippling muscles and perfect lip liner.

  But Hilary didn’t have leukemia. Dr. Steiner downgraded her diagnosis to mono. Then finally landed on anemia. Like me, it sounded like Hilary needed to eat some spinach. That was all.

  * * *

  In May of 1997, I marched with my university graduating class, which is different from actually graduating with them. I had to finish one more semester before I could officially graduate. My grandparents flew in for the event. Jeromy and my best friend, Amy, came as well. We all pretended like it was a real graduation.

  After the ceremony, my family gathered in Columbus for the unveiling of my father’s headstone, another Jewish custom, which usually happens a year after a burial. In order to coordinate with my Phoenix-based grandparents, we moved the date up by six months.

  At the unveiling, my sister burst into tears and ran dramatically away from the ceremony. I watched her as though we were in a movie. It seemed like something people did in fiction, not in real life. That’s how emotionally distant I was from my sister’s grief. After all, death meant peace. There was no need for drama. Jackie hurried to her side and hugged her until her heaving subsided.

  The stone my mother had chosen read simply I remember the waters. It bore my father’s name, Dr. William Linder, D.O., and the dates of his birth and death, February 1, 1947–September 25, 1996; he was four months shy of fifty. The other half of the stone was blank, holding a spot for my mother, who, frankly, was already starting to seem emotionally buried next to him.

  The quote—I remember the waters—was from a song my father had written that I loved. I thought my dad would like having his own words immortalized, and my mother and sister had both agreed. It was appropriately poetic. What did it mean? Was my dad “the waters”? It was corny but sweet, like a good epitaph should be. The song went:

  I remember the waters.

  I remember them crystal clearly

  Flowing brightly by.

  And I remember the feeling

  Of a dew-set autumn morning

  A few years gone by.

  The lyrics, though perhaps a little vague, seemed full of feeling, ripe with nostalgia . . . or just better than Here lies William Linder, husband, father, son, brother . . . carrier of an unfortunate gene.

  * * *

  The night before I left to finish my final semester of college, Princess Diana was killed in a fiery crash. My only thought that night was for her boys, both of whom I figured would soon be battling drugs and alcohol.

  As I mourned the loss of a young mother that night, Jeromy and I began another of our many fights. I didn’t entirely understand his complicated relationship to life, even if I respected it. I once confronted Jeromy with a rope he had tied in a noose hidden among his stuff. He told me innocently that he used it to carry his records, and although I couldn’t understand how a noose would simplify carrying his records, I found it darkly charming. At least he listened to good music. Mostly, I felt like I was always trying to catch up and keep up with Jeromy. His brilliance outpaced me, and I would never comprehend his pain. He moved back to Columbus and into my parents’ lake house, which had been pretty much abandoned for the winter. I gave him one explicit instruction: he was not allowed to kill himself there. Fortunately, he accepted the condition.

  Several months later, we broke up and he moved to Arizona to live with his parents.


  * * *

  After I really graduated the following December, I moved home and started waitressing. I felt myself recovering some of the “Old Joselin,” the one I had been before my father’s illness, who raised her hand in class and completed her course work without telling the teacher she needed to be excused because she was having a personal crisis. I understood that the “New Joselin” needed health insurance. It didn’t matter that I was only twenty-two and had never really been sick, unnamed genetic variant aside.

  I chose a policy and my mom wrote the check. I mailed in the paperwork, but a few weeks later, I learned by letter that my insurance application had been rejected. Chalking it up to a misunderstanding, I called a number and set up an appointment with an insurance agent. As I sat across from him at his desk, my mother at my side, he typed a few numbers into an enormous desktop computer. He winked at me while the computer lazily sent along its information. Then the good salesman’s face fell.

  “Do you”—he looked up, suddenly awkward—“have a heart murmur?”

  How did he know?

  “Yes,” I replied, “but it’s functional.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said, a little bit sweaty, “but the state of Ohio’s preexisting-condition code precludes you from getting health insurance.”

  The only two people who knew about the murmurs were Dr. Kricket and Dr. Steiner. No other doctor had listened closely enough to my heart to hear it. It was very difficult to hear through a stethoscope. Dr. Kricket’s study wouldn’t have been made public, and certainly wouldn’t have made its way into the state of Ohio’s brand-new medical database. But Dr. Steiner . . . She seemed like she might be the kind of rule follower who just might put us in this position, whether or not our heart murmurs meant imminent death or long and healthy lives, simply because she felt it was her duty.