by Lisa Genova
She wears a silver claddagh ring on her right middle finger, a gift from her mother when she turned eighteen. Meghan, of course, got the good one, her mother’s real gold ring, the one her dad gave to her mom when they got engaged. The silver ring isn’t worth as much and isn’t a family heirloom. Her mom bought it at the Galleria mall. Katie wears it with the heart pointed toward her wrist, meaning she’s in a relationship.
Felix. She still hasn’t told him anything about Huntington’s. She knows this isn’t a sustainable plan, that she’s being inauthentic, lying by omission, but she can’t get the words to leave her mouth. Their relationship seems to be on the verge of change, on the edge of either breaking apart or becoming more serious. The slightest thing could tip the scale either way, and Huntington’s sits in her mind like a two-ton boulder. She’d like to see what’s going to happen between them without the cataclysmic influence of Huntington’s. What might’ve been. Meanwhile, this secret is breeding shame within her like a viral infection, spreading fast and making her sick.
Her bare face, feet, arms, and chest are pale and uniformly dotted with freckles. She has no tattoos, but only because she can’t decide what to get. That, and she’s a total chicken when it comes to pain. She wonders what’s going on beneath her pale, freckled skin. Muscles and tendons, bones and blood. Her heart beating, an ovary releasing an egg, her stomach digesting granola. Huntington’s plotting to kill her.
She wishes she had thicker hair and longer eyelashes like Meghan’s, fewer freckles, skin that could tan when exposed to sunshine, no pimples, better eyebrows, a more petite frame, prettier feet. She wants to look away, to get up and do something. She stays. It’s probably been only ten minutes, and she’s finding it hard to face herself for this long. She could stay for an hour in meditation with her eyes closed, but open is another story. Here she is, all of her. She feels self-conscious, ridiculous, judgmental, worried about someone coming in and catching her.
She returns to her breathing, to the rise and fall of her chest, and her eyes. A black outer ring surrounding blue surrounding a black hole. Blink. Blink. No subtle shiftiness. No red cars yet.
She stands, still facing the mirror, and presses her right foot into her left thigh. Vriksasana. Tree Pose. She places her hands in prayer position at her heart, then inhales, reaching her arms up as if they’re branches extending to the sky. This is her favorite pose. She is grounded, balanced where she is, but she’s also growing, reaching, changing.
She lifts her head up to the tin-paneled ceiling but looks beyond it, imagining a vast starry night sky above her, and sends out a prayer. With arms outstretched like a satellite dish, she closes her eyes, hoping to receive some kind of divine answer.
Suddenly, some invisible force knocks her off balance. Her arms and torso tilt right in an attempt to compensate, but she can’t recover and falls out of the pose. Shit. She tries to brush it off. So she lost her balance. This happens, especially if she closes her eyes. She’d normally compose herself and then rebuild the pose, but this time, her heart jams. Was that a symptom? A sign from God? Is this how it will begin for her, falling out of Tree Pose? Her first red car sighting.
Trying not to freak out, she starts over, lifting her left foot and pressing it against her right thigh. Tree Pose, the other side. She extends her arms overhead, spreading her fingers, every muscle in both arms and her standing leg ignited, active, strong. She will not fall. She stares herself down in the mirror, refusing to blink. Her eyes are fierce, her body in control.
She inhales. She exhales. She stays and stays. Her arms tremble, her standing leg burns and begs for mercy. She gives her arms and leg no say and stays.
Finally, she throws her exhausted arms up to heaven and says, “I’m a fuckin’ oak tree. You see me?”
She waits a moment more, then slowly lowers her left foot and plants it with purpose on the mat next to her right foot. Staring at her eyes in the mirror, she presses her hands together in prayer and lands them in front of her heart.
Namaste.
CHAPTER 14
Patrick just left. He was reluctant to go, but if he calls in sick for work again his boss might can him, so he had to leave. Meghan left a couple of hours ago for rehearsal at the Opera House. Katie thinks she was relieved to get the hell out of this claustrophobic living room, to have a nonnegotiable call time on a stage where she can become completely absorbed in something beautiful.
And then there were three. Katie and her dad are watching the evening news, waiting for news. Her mom is knitting a green-and-white blanket. She might be listening to the TV, but she never looks up at it. She’s waiting, too. They all thought JJ and Colleen would be home by now. Katie holds her phone in her hand, expecting it to vibrate any second. It never does. She’s too afraid to call or text them.
The evening news is probably not the best form of entertainment or distraction for any of them right now. The screen bombards them with one depressing, terrifying, catastrophic story after another. Wildfires in California that can’t be controlled, hundreds of homes destroyed, over a dozen people missing or killed. A father from Dedham goes on trial for murdering his wife and two children. Car bombs in Pakistan killing thirty-two civilians. Wall Street in a nosedive. Politicians throwing tantrums.
“Dad, can we watch something else?” asks Katie.
“Sox aren’t on until seven thirty.”
End of discussion. Her parents have over a hundred cable channels, but the news and the Red Sox are apparently the only two options available. She doesn’t press him. But the news is too stressful for Katie, as if each story adds a log to the fire of the living room’s collective anxiety. She decides to watch her dad instead.
He’s in constant motion, more than usual. She notices how he tries to make it all look normal. He’ll stitch the tail end of whatever part of him flings or pops or twitches into some kind of larger, meaningful-looking action. He’s become quite the improvisational choreographer. It’s always the strangest dance she’s ever seen.
His right leg snaps out as if he’s kicking away an invisible pesky dog. So he follows his foot and stands up. Standing, he must mean to go somewhere, so he walks over to the windows. He pulls the shade, sticks his nose in, and peeks out at the street. He stays there for a few seconds, muttering to himself. It makes sense that he would get up to look for signs of JJ and Colleen, but Katie’s onto him. The impulse to rise out of his comfortable seat began with an involuntary leg thrust, not with a premeditated plan to look out the window.
As he returns to his chair, there’s an extra bit of jostle in his step. She listens to the newly familiar jingle of change in his pocket as he walks. The sound of HD.
She continues watching him, and he’s more mesmerizing, and in some ways more horrifying, than anything on the news. He’s like a train wreck or a car accident or a house fire, and she’s the eyewitness, the rubbernecker who can’t look away.
Next, his left arm flings up as if he’s a nerdy student raising his hand in class. Then he bends his arm at the elbow and scratches his head as if he just happened to have a little itch. This is one of his signature moves. If you didn’t know he had Huntington’s, you’d think this guy must have a raging case of dandruff or head lice, or he’s just plain weird. He doesn’t seem to be consciously aware of his involuntary ticks or even his oh-I-totally-meant-to-do-that improvisations. He doesn’t glance over at Katie to see whether she noticed. He doesn’t seem embarrassed or fazed in any way. He simply continues watching the news as if nothing mentionable just happened. Nothing to see here. Certainly not any symptoms of an inherited, progressive, lethal neurodegenerative disease with no cure.
He keeps fidgeting and crazy dancing in his chair and watching the news with his wife and his daughter as if this were a normal Wednesday evening, and it’s starting to bug the piss out of her. As if any evening or anything at all could ever be normal again.
Then the fron
t door opens and Katie’s heart stops. Maybe the earth stops. Time seems to have. The sound of the evening news fades to a muted murmur. Her mom stops knitting and looks up. Even her dad goes still.
JJ and Colleen appear holding hands in the living room, two numb-eyed zombies who’ve just returned from a visit to hell. Their faces are puffed and splotchy. No one says anything.
Katie’s afraid to make a sound, afraid that any noise might push time past this exact second. Maybe what she’s seeing isn’t real. Maybe what’s about to happen won’t. The room is eerily silent, still, an unshaken snow globe on a shelf.
And then her mom starts bawling, and JJ’s on his knees in front of her, hugging her with his head in her lap on top of her knitting.
“I’m sorry, Ma. I’m sorry,” he says.
And then her dad throws the remote control across the room. It hits the wall behind the TV and shatters. The batteries go spinning on the wood floor. Her dad’s face is in his hands, and Colleen is standing alone looking like a paper doll, and Patrick and Meghan don’t even know what’s happening. This is actually happening.
Katie sits on the couch, watching the most tragic news of the day unfolding live in front of her, the sound of a scared little girl repeating the word no inside her head over and over and over and over.
CHAPTER 15
Katie’s sitting cross-legged on the living room couch in her apartment, sipping hot green tea, watching Meghan sew a ribbon into the arch of a shiny satin baby-pink pointe ballet shoe.
“I can’t believe you’re drinking tea. It’s like a million degrees out,” says Meghan, who is sitting tall on the floor with her legs in a straddle split, facing Katie.
“It’s freezing in here,” says Katie.
They own only one window-box air conditioner, and it’s installed in the living room. Even with it blasting on the coldest setting all day, bedroom doors kept open and an unobstructed shot down the hallway to the kitchen, the other rooms never cool down. The living room is the only bearable space in their apartment when the temperature outside hits anything over eighty.
“You coming tonight?” asks Meghan.
There’s an expectation in Meghan’s voice, the question not really asking, an assumption that Katie will be in the audience to see Meghan dance in Swan Lake, if not tonight, then before the end of the run. Meanwhile, Meghan has never been to Katie’s yoga class. No one in her family has. They all bend over backward and spend a small fortune to see Meghan in every show, but no one has done so much as a single Downward Dog in the yoga studio.
“Yeah.”
“You’re not wearing that, are you?”
Katie’s in black cropped yoga pants and a neon-yellow racerback tank top. Curtain is at seven. It’s three o’clock now. Meghan will probably leave within the next half hour for stage rehearsal, hair, makeup, and getting into costume, but Katie has at least three more hours to get ready before she needs to leave.
“Yeah, I’m wearing lululemon to the Opera House.”
“You might.”
“I wouldn’t, okay?”
“Just checking.”
Done sewing the ribbons on one shoe, Meghan grabs the Bic lighter from the floor near her pointed bare foot and singes the cut ends, the smell of burnt fabric reminding Katie of Sunday suppers and the quilted potholders her mother accidentally leaves on the burners.
“You should wear that sleeveless black dress that Ma bought you,” says Meghan.
“I don’t need you to tell me what to wear.”
“It looks nice on you, and you never wear it.”
“You act like I don’t know how to do anything.”
“Jeez, never mind. Wear whatever you want.”
“Thanks for permission to dress myself.”
Katie hears the familiar clipped note in her own voice, her cue to storm off, and she’s about to catapult off the couch when she remembers how sticky-hot the other rooms are. She shouldn’t have to sit here and subject herself to her sister’s fashion judgments and overall bossiness, but she refuses to be chased out of the only comfortable room in their apartment. Katie sighs, resigned to being stuck in the same room with Meghan. She wants to turn on the TV or grab a book to read, do something other than watch Meghan, who is now scratching up the bottom of her pointe shoe with a pair of scissors, but she doesn’t feel like moving. Katie sips her tea and watches Meghan. Even doing virtually nothing, Meghan is the star of the show.
A message vibrates on Katie’s phone. She lifts it and reads. It’s Felix.
What’s up for 2nite?
She types.
Teaching a private at 7. Meet u @ 10?
K. A 3 hr private?
Have to shower and get all pretty 4 u.
U r already pretty. Shower at my place. I’ll join u.
She blushes.
K.
She feels guilty, lying to Felix, but it’s a white lie, a harmless fib. If he knew she was going to the ballet tonight, he’d justifiably want to go with her. They saw the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater perform in Boston in April, and she and Felix were both blown away—the graceful power, the raw, earthy quality of their movements, all that juicy second- and third-chakra energy, so different from the floaty, sweet meringue prettiness of Meghan’s ballets. At one point during Revelations, Katie looked over at Felix and his eyes were wet with tears. This is one of the things she loves about him, that a dance can make him cry. He’s an MIT numbers nerd who would totally dig Swan Lake. But her entire family is going tonight, and she’s still not ready to introduce him to everyone, especially with all that’s going on now with JJ and Colleen.
“So am I ever going to meet this guy you’re seeing?”
Katie looks up, stunned, half believing Meghan was somehow able to divine her thoughts.
“What guy?”
“The guy you just texted.”
Katie looks down at her phone and then up at Meghan, knowing her sister couldn’t possibly read the screen from across the room. “That was Andrea.”
“Fine,” says Meghan, obviously not believing her. “The guy you’re having sex with.”
“What?”
“I’m not stupid. I know you don’t sleep here at least three nights a week.”
Physically exhausted from the long, intense hours of practice, rehearsal, and performance, Meghan goes to bed early, typically by nine thirty, and she rises with the birds, dressed and out the door before Katie opens her eyes. So even on the nights Katie stays home, Meghan doesn’t witness Katie going to bed or getting up in the morning. All Meghan sees is a shut bedroom door. Katie assumed her absence, like most everything else about her, went unnoticed by Meghan.
“And I know Mystery Man has stayed here at least twice now.”
“Wha—”
“Toilet seat up.”
“Oh.”
“So what’s the deal? Who is he? Why all the secrecy?”
Katie sips her tea, knowing the jig is up, but still buys a moment before answering. Meghan is working on the skin-toned elastics, sewing them close to the heel. Even in a plain white T-shirt and gray shorts with zero makeup on, Meghan looks elegant, beautiful. She’s an easy roommate, tidy, always washes her dirty dishes and puts them away, and when she’s here, unless their apartment is an oven and they’re cloistered in the living room, she spends most of her time in her own bedroom. They don’t see each other much, and when they do, it’s typically in passing, the conversation limited to the logistics of living together, often reiterations of notes written on the kitchen chalkboard. We need more toilet paper. Do you have any quarters? Mom’s looking for you.
“Well?”
It’s this damn heat wave, trapping them together in the air-conditioned living room, prodding them via forced proximity into the kind of sisterly conversation Katie would rather resist.
“I dunno.”
“Don’t worry. I’m not Ma. What’s his name?”
“Felix.”
“Felix what?”
Katie hesitates.
“Martin.”
“Hmm.”
“What?”
“Not O’Martin or McMartin? I take it he’s not from here.”
“No.”
“A Toonie.”
Katie nods.
“What’s he look like?”
“I dunno. He’s cute.”
“Okay. What else?”
“I dunno.”
“What does he do?”
“He’s in business development for this company that turns trash into fuel.”
“Smarty pants. How’d you meet?”
“Yoga.”
Meghan smiles at Katie while bending the shank of her shoe, forcing it toe to heel, working it over and over. The shoe crunches audibly as she does this, its stiff architecture breaking in, softening. It amazes Katie that these shoes will be worn only once. All this sewing and cutting and bending to get them supple and quiet and perfectly fitted for Meghan’s feet, and after tonight, the shoes will be considered “dead.” Meghan’s feet are so strong, the integrity of the ballet shoe will be ruined after a single performance, sometimes even after a single act. They’d actually be dangerous to wear a second time.
There seems to be a goading quality in Meghan’s stretched-out smile, the repetitive crunching of the shoe, the baited silence. Meghan wiggles her blistered, pretty toes.
“I don’t interrogate you about who you’re seeing,” says Katie.
“I’m not seeing anyone.”
Meghan says this as if not seeing anyone is the right thing to do, given their circumstances, which of course implies that Katie is doing the wrong thing, recklessly having a boyfriend when she might have HD.
