Inside the O'Briens

by Lisa Genova

  “Hey, Mayor,” calls Joe. “What’s new?”

  “New York, New Jersey, New Mexico.”

  Joe chuckles. He’s been chatting with Murphy at this park for years and doesn’t know a damn real thing about him. Still, Joe looks forward to these amusing if inconsequential exchanges and finds comfort in Murphy’s consistent presence, a soldier at his post. One of these days, Joe will stroll through this park and Murphy won’t be here. Joe imagines the pigeons gathered beneath the bench, waiting, expectant, hungry, and then simply gone, relocated to another park, devoted to some other kind soul with time and bread. Joe sighs, watching Yaz amble through a pile of gold and brown leaves. Here every day and then one day gone, for Murphy, for Yaz, for Joe. For Katie. And the pigeons don’t give a shit about any of them.

  “Hey,” Joe says to Katie. “I’m sorry about losing my temper in front of Felix.”

  “That’s okay.”

  “That wasn’t really me.”

  “I know, Dad.”

  “Hope I didn’t scare him off.”

  “No, it’s good. He should see what this thing looks like. He should know what he’s getting into.”

  Joe flashes to a memory of his mother’s bony, contorted body, seat-belted into a wheelchair in her room at Tewksbury State Hospital, and wonders whether even Katie knows what she’s getting into.

  “He seems like a good man.”

  “He is.”

  “I like him.”

  “Thanks, Dad. Me, too.”

  A young woman walks briskly toward them on the path with her leashed dog, a black Lab. The woman seems to be fixated on Joe, her intent and trajectory aimed directly at him, but when she’s close enough to make actual eye contact, she looks away. Her dog veers off the path to check out Joe and Katie on the grass, wagging its tail as it sniffs their shoes.

  “Guinness, come!” the woman says, yanking the leash.

  She walks right past Joe and Katie, her eyes glued to the horizon. She doesn’t smile or nod or say hello. Katie’s posture stiffens, visibly defensive or embarrassed or both. Joe doesn’t ask.

  He’s generally not aware of his chorea on his own. It’s somewhat like pen tapping or foot jiggling or knuckle cracking or any other number of annoying physical habits normal people have that they might not be conscious of until someone asks them to stop. But it’s actually more than simple obliviousness. Dr. Hagler says he’s got something called anosognosia, which as far as Joe can tell is just a fancy medical word for clueless. It seems in addition to the slew of symptoms he’s already got, HD is crawling into his right hemisphere, causing anosognosia, stealing his self-awareness. So he doesn’t know he’s moving when he’s moving. He sees his lurching limbs and facial contortions through the mirror of the guarded, unforgiving stares of strangers. Then he knows.

  At first they stare, curious, trying to figure him out. Is he drunk? Mentally impaired? Is he harmless or violent? Is he contagious? Deranged? Before they get too close, they decide their best course of action is to look away, to pretend not to see the revolting display of human disability before them, and they move along as quickly as possible. To the uneducated or unloving eye, Joe is horrifying, unacceptable, and then invisible.

  Joe thinks about JJ and Meghan, about strangers and even friends and neighbors looking at his kids with this kind of contempt and disgust, and it makes him want to sit down next to Murphy on the bench and cry. This is what happened to his mother. Everyone assumed she was a drunk. She did drink, but Joe believes a more plausible chain of events now. She probably drank to cope with what was happening to her without her permission or control, to hide from the hideous changes in her mind and body that she had no explanation or name for, to anesthetize herself against the cruel judgment in her neighbors’ eyes and the fear in their footsteps as they walked away.

  He sighs. A white puff of vapor dissolves into the gray morning. Katie’s staring at the ground with her arms crossed.

  “So, where are you at with the genetic testing?” asks Joe.

  “I did the first two appointments, so I can go anytime now to find out, but I’m not sure I want to know.”

  Joe nods. He’s not sure he wants to know either. He slides his right hand into his front pocket and finds the quarter, the same one he’s been carrying since St. Patrick’s Day. He’s been careful not to lose or spend it. He likes reading the words beneath George Washington’s chin, as if they were a personal message meant for him. In God We Trust. The year on the quarter is 1982, the year his mother died. He holds that quarter in his hand every day, rubs it between his thumb and finger, and prays for no more Huntington’s. Patrick, Katie, his unborn grandchild. No more. The quarter is his superstitious symbol of hope, but his need to touch it and wish for fewer than thirty-six CAGs has become almost a compulsion. He fingers the quarter now, concealed inside his pocket, smooth and worn.

  Please, God, no more Huntington’s.

  “Felix is moving to Portland,” says Katie.

  “Maine?”

  “Oregon.”

  “Oh. When?”

  “Not sure yet. Probably sometime in the next six months.”

  Six months. Joe looks over at Murphy. One day here, the next day gone.

  “Are you thinking of going with him?”

  “I dunno. Maybe.”

  Joe nods, working through what that would mean.

  “Would you live with him there?”

  Katie hesitates. “Yeah.”

  Well, that can’t happen. Rosie’s already a wreck. If Katie moves to Portland with Felix, Rosie might have a legitimate nervous breakdown. She’s already convinced that she’s going to lose everyone. Her husband has Huntington’s, and two of her kids are definitely HD positive. Patrick’s hardly ever home. Never mind that Felix isn’t Irish Catholic and what the neighbors would think; if Katie leaves, Joe’s not sure Rosie could handle the void. She’d protest Katie moving to Somerville, never mind the other side of the country. Portland might as well be a city on the moon. It would feel like losing her daughter, like a death. With all that Rosie faces losing, Katie leaving home and living with a man out of wedlock would create an unnecessary pain, an avoidable suffering that need not be inflicted.

  Joe has to convince Katie to stay, but he’s unsure of how to approach her. It’s an odd transition as a parent, being a father to his baby girl who is now a young woman. Katie was just a cute little kid, Meghan’s happy-go-lucky sidekick, a blink ago. Back then, it was his right and responsibility to tell her what to do. Brush your teeth. Go to bed. Do your homework. Don’t talk to your mother that way.

  Don’t move to Portland with your boyfriend.

  He’s not sure he still holds the authority to make this kind of forbidding demand without meeting overt rebellion. It’s going to require a softer touch.

  “Hey, you know I like Felix, and I’m all for trying on the shoes before you buy them, but you know living in sin would make your poor mother crazy.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “And living all the way across the country with all that’s going on, to not have you around. You really haven’t known him that long. Maybe you could go a little slower, try things long distance at first, do Skype or Facebook time or whatever you kids do.”

  “Yeah, I could, but he doesn’t want to do long distance.”

  “Well, don’t let him pressure you into doing something you don’t want to do.”

  “I’m not. I don’t know what I want to do.”

  She sounds overwhelmed, like she’s unsure of so much more than her future residence.

  “Would your genetic test results influence your decision?”

  “I dunno. I think that’s one of the reasons I’m afraid to find out.”

  “Honey, I’m sorry to have to say this, but for the sake of your poor mother and the family, I don’t think you should go with Felix to P
ortland. It’s too serious, too fast anyway. It’s just not the right time, okay?”

  Katie hangs her head and fiddles with the bracelets on her wrist as she studies the ground. Just as Joe assumes she either didn’t hear him or forgot his question, she looks up.

  “Okay.”

  “Thanks, hun. I think it’s for the best, for everyone. If you and Felix are meant to be, the two of you will work it out.”

  She nods, her face expressionless. Joe exhales, feeling like he just dodged a bullet. That was fairly easy. Katie’s in agreement and not upset, and he protected Rosie from more tears. And he’s protecting Katie, too. Living with her boyfriend in an unfamiliar city where Katie has no family sounds like a bad plan any way he slices it, even without considering HD. She’s only twenty-one. She’s too young. Granted, he and Rosie were eighteen when they married, but times are different. They don’t know each other well enough. Joe and Rosie don’t even know his parents. It’s too risky. Katie’s got enough risk to deal with.

  “And listen, if you decide to find out, I know the genetic counselor probably told you not to bring me, but if you think it’s too much for Felix and you don’t want to go alone, I’d be happy to go with you if you want me there.”

  “Thanks, Dad. I don’t think I’m ready to know.”

  “Okay. If and when you ever are, I’m here for you,” says Joe, rubbing his quarter. “And I’m praying for you, every day.”

  “Thanks, Dad.”

  Joe’s got that genie-in-his-gut feeling that sees the truth light-years before his head does. He doesn’t want to jinx anything, so he doesn’t share his prediction aloud, but he’d bet his lucky quarter and everything he’s got that his baby girl is okay.

  Please, God, no more.

  CHAPTER 22

  Sleep is a blissfully peaceful respite from Huntington’s. When Joe sleeps, there are no involuntary thrashes, wiggles, or twitches. His body lies still in a normal state of slumber all night. Apparently, chorea will only tie on its tap shoes when there’s an audience. Even the devil inside him needs a good night’s sleep.

  The alarm wakes him, and he opens his eyes to a new day. He feels rested, reset, a tabula rasa. Before he pushes back the covers, he’s still thirty years old, a young man, ready to attack the day and capable of anything that happens. Bring it on.

  Then he stands, and every muscle in his body feels stiff and wound tight, shortened several inches. He’s bent over at the waist, groaning, rubbing his lower back, and his right knee refuses to straighten, and he remembers that he’s forty-four. He hobbles to the bathroom. He looks in the mirror, and he’s definitely forty-four, and he wonders how that happened. Then his shoulders shrug without instruction to do so, and he remembers that he has HD. Shit.

  He studies his puffy-eyed morning face in the mirror as if he’s meeting this man for the first time. Short, unremarkable brown hair. No sign of balding. Wrinkles at the corners of his eyes and creases like parentheses cupping each side of his mouth. Joe rubs the black, brown, and white stubble on his chin. He has a strong chin, like his father’s. The droopy skin of his eyelids makes him look sleepy even when he’s wide awake. He leans in closer to the glass and looks deep into his own eyes. Blue, the color of morning sky. His mother’s eyes.

  He’s forty-four, and he has Huntington’s. Every morning it’s the same drill, the same shocking, soul-sinking revelation. He sighs and shakes his head at the poor bastard in the mirror. The poor bastard in the mirror can’t believe it either.

  Joe’s on for shift 3, evening duty, and has only one necessary task on his agenda to accomplish before then. He showers, dresses in sweatpants, a hooded Patriots sweatshirt over a BPD T-shirt, a Red Sox cap, and sneakers. Patrick is still sleeping, and Rosie has already gone to work.

  She left his sippy cup and a plate of scrambled eggs and bacon on the kitchen table for him. He takes the cup and sucks on the straw. His hot coffee is ice cold. He downs the whole thing, ignores the eggs and bacon, blesses himself with holy water at the front door, and leaves the house.

  He walks to Bunker Hill Street and crosses in front of St. Francis Church to the top of the Forty Flights stairway. He reads the sign, dedicated to Catherine and Martin O’Brien, no relation.

  TO MASS AT ST. FRANCIS DE SALES

  DAYS AND NIGHTS

  THEIR STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN

  THESE “FORTY FLIGHTS”

  Joe stands at the edge with his hands on his hips, staring down the steep, concrete steps to the bottom. It’s an intimidating descent, but not as imposing as its misnomer implies. The stairway is actually seven flights of ten steps each. Joe has no idea how anyone got forty flights out of seven or ten or even seventy. Townies aren’t known for their proficiency in mathematics.

  Joe rubs the palms of his hands together, ready to go. Needing something constructive to do with his anger and fear, Joe’s been running these steps every day since finding out that Meghan is HD positive. He’s running for JJ and Meghan, to prove that he can, to wear out the demon inside him, to stay in the fight.

  He runs down, then up, down, then up. He runs up the seven flights for the third time, and he’s got a stabbing stitch in his side. His lungs feel like bags filled with gravel. He skitters down the stairs, and his quads are on fire. He keeps going, running up and down, punishing his muscles, flushing the anger out of his blood.

  This is his daily private PT session. Focus, balance, coordination, strength, control. He’s even heeding the imagined admonition of Colleen and Vivian, his physical therapist, gliding his hand along the black iron railing as he ascends and descends, just in case. Of course, at Spaulding, he’s on a soft, cushy blue mat, and every move he makes is supervised. Joe knows Colleen and Vivian wouldn’t actually approve of this activity, railing or not. Rosie wouldn’t like it either. Good thing none of them know a damn thing about it.

  He’ll readily admit that a slip here could be a mistake he’d regret. A fall could result in a broken leg or back, and either would lay him up for a long time. Or he could fall and crack his head. Lights out. Game over. That wouldn’t be a bad way to go, considering the options. Officer Joseph O’Brien died on These Forty Flights, his Stairway to Heaven. It has an enticingly poetic ring to it.

  But he won’t fall. He can handle this. Despite the involuntary ticks popping all over him while he runs, he’s in control. He focuses on the precision of each step even as he tires, pressing and lifting, each foot landing with a tap on the concrete, creating a steady drumbeat that echoes through his center, inspiring him, cheering him on despite the burn beneath his ribs and the weariness in his legs. Keep going. Stay in the fight.

  He’s fatigued, sucking wind. He harnesses Patrick’s rebellious attitude. These demons don’t know who they’re fucking with. He thinks of Katie and lengthens his breathing, gathering stamina. He pushes up another flight and another, maintaining his pace for JJ and Meghan.

  He pictures his mother, strapped to her wheelchair, wearing a bib, a nurse feeding her lunch. His mind runs wild with this memory and others like it, faster and harder than his legs up the stairs. His mother grunting like an animal, unable to speak intelligible words. His mother wearing a helmet while a nurse struggles to get her onto the toilet. His mother weighing ninety pounds. Then his mind’s a master magician, and abracadabra, every image of his mother is now Joe. Joe in a wheelchair, Joe wearing a bib and a helmet, Joe being fed and showered and hoisted onto a toilet, Joe unable to tell Rosie or his kids that he loves them.

  That last imagined thought chokes the air from his lungs. He runs up the next flight unable to breathe, his heartbeat pounding his skull like a drum. This is his future. This is where he’s going, and there’s no running from it.

  But not yet, he reminds himself. Not today. His lungs insist on air, and oxygen rushes in, feeding his starved muscles. Joe asks his legs to pump harder. They respond. He’s not in a wheelchair today. Today, he is al
ive and well.

  A pack of teenage boys gathers at the bottom of the stairway, wearing their tough gangsta pusses and pants hanging below their tighties. Joe will never comprehend what’s so tough about underwear. These kids don’t have a clue. They glare at him, likely annoyed that he’s invading their hangout and repulsed by Joe’s chorea, wishing this sweaty, weird old man would get the fuck off their stairs. Joe feels the pinch of embarrassed self-consciousness, but he pushes past it. He’s doing this, whatever it looks like, in front of a bunch of punk teens or not. He considers asking them why they aren’t in school today but decides to leave them alone.

  It’s a cold December morning, in the low forties, but Joe’s now steamy hot. He wipes his forehead, slick with sweat. He decides to make a quick pit stop after ascending the next flight to remove his Patriots hoodie. He’s panting and pushing up each step, almost there. Then the ball of his right foot misses the edge of the next step and skids out from under him. His heart and lungs jump and stay suspended, weightless in his chest. He’s falling. Before he has a chance to think, his hand reaches for the railing. It slides at first and then catches, wrenching his shoulder but saving his body from slamming prone onto the concrete, tumbling down the Forty Flights.

  He hangs there for a few seconds, dangling from the railing by one arm, lying on his stomach, feet splayed out several steps below him, waiting for his heart to calm the fuck down. He releases the railing and rolls over, taking a seat on the step. Looking down the length of the staircase, he rubs his shoulder and counts. Thirty-five. That would’ve hurt. The teenage boys stare at him with flat, uncaring eyes and say nothing.

  If Colleen or his physical therapist or Rosie had seen that little stunt, they would not be pleased. But they didn’t see it, and he caught himself. He may be a decrepit old man with Huntington’s, but he’s got the reflexes of a gazelle. Still in the fight, baby.

  Woop, woop.

  Joe turns. A cruiser is parked at the peak of the stairwell. Then he sees Tommy standing at the top, looking down at him with his arms crossed over his chest.