by Lisa Genova
“Training for the Olympics?”
“Yeah.”
Tommy trots down the steps and takes a seat next to Joe. Joe stares straight ahead past the bottom of the staircase, down Mead Street. The punk boys are gone. They must’ve heard the siren and taken off. Tommy sighs.
“This isn’t the smartest thing you could be doing.”
“It’s for my application to Harvard.”
“I’m not going to be able to talk you out of doing this.”
“No.”
“You wanna ride home?”
“Yeah, man. Thanks.”
Tommy offers Joe a hand, and Joe takes it. There’s an extra moment in their clasp before they release, an unspoken exchange of respect and brotherhood. When they reach the top of the stairs, Joe taps the Forty Flights sign with his fingers, a promise to return tomorrow.
Keep going.
Stay in the fight.
CHAPTER 23
It’s early in the morning, not yet six o’clock, and Joe is dressed and ready, sitting in his chair in the living room, waiting for Rosie and the girls. The shades are still drawn, the room dark, lit only by the TV, which is tuned to QVC. Rosie must’ve been up in the middle of the night again. He’d like to watch the news, but the remote is on the ironing board, and Joe can’t motivate out of his seat to fetch it. Two women with high, nasal voices are yammering on and on about the miracle of furniture coasters. Joe hasn’t moved a piece of furniture in this house since getting rid of the cribs a million years ago, but the ladies win him over. This innovation is pure genius. And it’s only $19.95. He’s searching his pockets for his phone when Katie walks in.
She mumbles a sleepy hello and plops herself onto the couch. She’s wearing her typical uniform of black yoga pants, UGGs, and a hoodie, but something about her is different. Her face is clean. Joe can’t remember the last time he saw his little girl without makeup on, especially around her eyes. She wouldn’t agree, but Joe thinks she looks better without it. Less is more. She’s a naturally beautiful girl.
He’d like to chat with Katie, to find out what’s new with her and how she’s doing, but he can’t seem to start a conversation these days. He waits for her to throw the first pitch, but she’s got her eyes closed. Her breathing is long and steady, in and out, her face placid. Her eyes remain shut. Joe studies her and wonders whether she’s fallen asleep. Maybe she just doesn’t want to watch QVC. Maybe she just doesn’t want to watch her old man.
Damn it. The coasters are gone. While Joe was watching Katie, QVC moved on to the next item, a device that folds clothes. He has no interest in this one. Meghan is still upstairs, and Rosie is in the bathroom doing her hair, a multistep process that Joe has learned cannot be rushed or skipped over. They don’t know where the hell Patrick is, and they’re not waiting on him. Meghan appears, looking urgent, bundled in a puffy black coat, a black hat, and a fuzzy white scarf, a pocketbook slung over her shoulder.
“We ready? Where’s Ma?” she asks.
“Two minutes,” calls Rosie from the bathroom.
Meghan hovers on the threshold. Katie’s still asleep or meditating or ignoring all of them. Rosie finally walks into the living room, the chemical scent of aerosol hairspray blowing in with her like a tornado.
“What’s that smell?” asks Rosie, her nose scrunched up, detecting something other than hairspray.
Joe hadn’t noticed anything before, but now he does. He zeroes in on Yaz lying at the foot of Rosie’s rocking chair, sitting in a puddle of diarrhea.
“Shit,” says Joe.
“Language,” says Rosie.
“Just describing what I’m seeing,” says Joe, pointing to Yaz.
“Gross,” says Meghan.
“Aw, not again,” says Rosie, retreating in a hurry to the kitchen.
Yaz hadn’t had an accident in the house since he was a puppy until last week or so, and now it’s an everyday occurrence. Yaz lifts his head and meets Joe’s eyes, and Joe could swear Yaz is apologizing. Yaz returns his head to the rug, helpless and ashamed of what he’s done, breaking Joe’s heart.
Katie gets up and squats down next to Yaz. “Poor baby.” She carefully scoops him into her hands and carries him into the kitchen.
Rosie returns with a bottle of Windex, paper towels, and a can of Lysol.
“At least it wasn’t the couch again,” says Rosie, wiping the floor.
Katie returns with Yaz wrapped in a towel. “What should I do with him?”
“Put him on his bed and let’s go,” says Rosie, spraying Lysol and waving her hand through the air.
“Where’s Pat?” asks Meghan.
“We’re not waiting for him,” says Rosie.
Rosie herds them toward the front door. Pausing in the foyer behind the girls, Joe dips his fingers in the holy water above the statue of Mary and signs the cross. Rosie does the same, then looks up at Joe and smiles.
“Here we go,” says Joe.
And they’re off to the hospital.
THEY EXIT THE elevators on the fourteenth floor of the Blake Building, and a palpable relief lightens Joe’s step as he walks down the hallway behind Rosie. They make their way past the waiting room inhabited with people slumped in their chairs, looking as if they’ve been there all night. Despite the languorous appearance of its residents, it’s a room expecting celebration. The sleepy people here are accessorized with Mylar balloons and stuffed animals and vases of cheery flowers. Nothing like the gateway to hell on floor 7 of the Wang Center.
Rosie stops, and Joe follows her into a room where they find JJ and Colleen sitting upright together in a hospital bed. And there he is. Joseph Francis O’Brien III, swaddled in a white blanket, wearing one of the two thousand mint-green infant caps Rosie knitted for him, cradled in Colleen’s arms.
Wasting no time, Rosie makes a beeline for the baby. She hugs and kisses JJ and Colleen, but it’s the baby she’s after.
“Can I hold him?” asks Rosie. “I just sanitized my hands.”
“Sure,” says Colleen.
Rosie scoops her grandson into her arms, and her face becomes a memory, a picture from their photo album twenty-five years ago, an expression of uncomplicated joy and love Joe hasn’t seen in a long while. Rosie removes the cap and glides her fingers over the baby’s bald, somewhat cone-shaped head.
“He’s perfect,” she says, tears in her eyes.
“Congratulations,” says Katie. “He’s so cute.”
“I wanna hold him next,” says Meghan. “How are you feeling, Colleen?”
“Okay.”
Colleen’s face is without makeup, swollen and splotchy. Her hair is damp at the hairline, happiness and exhaustion fighting for the spotlight in her eyes. She actually still looks pregnant, a significant bump at her midsection protruding beneath the bedsheets, but Joe’s not dumb enough to mention it.
“She’s a champ,” says JJ. “Sixteen hours of labor, forty minutes of pushing, no drugs. She tore a little—”
“TMI, JJ,” says Meghan, holding up her hand.
“Thank you,” says Colleen’s father, who is sitting in a visitor’s chair near the window. “I know I didn’t want to hear that next part again.”
“Sorry, Bill,” says Joe, walking over to shake Colleen’s father’s hand. “I didn’t see you over there.”
“No problem. I’ve got three daughters. I’m used to going unnoticed in a room.”
Joe laughs. “How about the little champ’s stats?”
“He’s seven pounds, eight ounces, twenty-one inches,” says Colleen.
Joe stands beside Rosie and studies his grandson’s sleeping, puffy eyelids, his round button of a nose, his delicate, pursed lips, his dimpled chin, his pink face, his bald cone head. In truth, he’s an ugly little thing, and yet he’s the most beautiful sight Joe’s ever laid eyes on.
Joseph Fran
cis O’Brien. A name now passed down three generations. Joe’s at once bursting with pride and wishing they’d picked Colin or Brendan or any of the other fine Irish names on their list, names having no association with Huntington’s. Joe hopes his name and an ugly Irish mug are the only two things this baby inherited from him.
When Joe’s kids were born, he remembers thinking they each began with limitless possibility. Each pink-headed baby was a blank slate. But now he’s looking at his grandson, only a couple of hours old, and he’s wondering whether everything is already mapped out, the parameters preset, his future predetermined, written in the stars before his cord was cut. For Joe’s mother, for Joe, for JJ and Meghan, Huntington’s disease was inevitable, fated before they took their first breaths. How many times will this story repeat itself? A repeated DNA sequence causing a tragically repeated life story, generation after generation after generation.
Birth. Huntington’s. Death.
Beginning. Middle. End.
Rosie unwraps the folds of the blanket to reveal the baby’s tiny feet, and while she’s kissing his toes, Joe is skipping over the baby’s entire life, imagining him as a man with Huntington’s. Rosie rewraps the sleeping, ugly, beautiful baby and passes him to Meghan’s ready arms, and Joe is imagining the baby as a shriveled, not-yet-old man, dying alone in a hospital bed with no one to hold him.
While Rosie fits the green knit cap back onto baby Joseph’s misshapen head, Joe tries to divine the number of CAGs strung together inside there, fearing the worst. Please, God, don’t let him have what I gave to JJ.
Joe takes a deep breath and shakes his head, trying to rid himself of this overpowering feeling of doom, but it’s got the gravitational pull of a large planet. He should feel happy. He looks around the room. Everyone is smiling. Everyone but Joe and the baby.
“Whatsamatta, Joe?” asks Rosie, elbowing him.
“Me? Nothin’,” says Joe.
He’s got to snap out of it. They’re not cursed. Inheritance is random. Shit luck. Be lucky, baby boy. Rosie eyes him with suspicion and annoyance.
“Would you like to hold him, Joe?” asks Colleen.
“No thanks,” says Joe.
It’s one thing to drop and break a crystal pitcher, his cell phone (he’s on his third), many wineglasses and jelly jars, but he’d never forgive himself if he dropped his newborn grandson. He’ll keep his clumsy, disease-ridden paws off this innocent baby and enjoy him from a safe distance. Both Rosie and Colleen’s father seem relieved by Joe’s answer. Joe notices Bill keeping a ready, watchful eye on him. Joe doesn’t blame him one bit. A grandfather’s protective instinct. Good man.
Patrick shows up carrying a white teddy bear, smiling through a busted-up face.
“Jesus, Pat,” says Meghan.
“Bar fight. You should see the other four guys.”
His right eye is swollen shut. He’s got a shiner ripening purple and green under the other, and his lip is torn open at the corner.
“Your lip is bleeding,” says Katie.
“I’m fine. Congratulations,” says Patrick to Colleen, handing her the bear. “Good job, brother.”
“Look at you,” says Rosie. “You need stitches.”
“I’m fine,” says Patrick, touching the baby’s blanket, having a look.
“You can’t be in here near the baby like that,” says Rosie, swatting at Patrick’s hand.
“I’m not gonna get blood on the baby.”
“You’re already in the hospital. Go down to the ER,” says Rosie.
“Ma, I’m not spending the next twenty hours in the ER.”
“That’s not going to close on its own. Don’t argue with me. Meg, go with him.”
“Aw, why do I have to go with him?” asks Meghan. She kisses baby Joseph on the head and snuggles him into her soft scarf.
“Because I said so,” says Rosie.
“Fine,” says Meghan, passing the baby to Katie. “You suck, Pat.”
“See what you have to look forward to?” Rosie says to Colleen and JJ.
Joe watches Patrick shuffling out of the room, escorted by his younger sister, and Joe knows it’s time to have a sit-down with his son. Patrick rarely comes home after his shift at the bar, and they have no idea where he goes. They’re not aware of a girlfriend. As much as Joe and Rosie aren’t fans of his all-nighters and sleeping around, that behavior isn’t so extreme for Patrick. It’s the fighting. He’s been in a number of brawls in the past month, and that’s new. Joe thinks Meghan’s gene status is hitting Patrick particularly hard. Joe sighs.
Colleen’s mother and sisters return from the cafeteria, carrying trays of coffee. There are hugs and congratulations and gushing, and cups of coffee are passed to Bill and JJ, and the room is now a party, loud and crowded.
“I’m sorry, you guys, but I’m really tired,” says Colleen. “You mind if Joey and I take a little nap?”
Of course, everyone understands. Katie passes baby Joseph back to his mother. Colleen’s sisters make a plan to check on her in an hour. Joe kisses Colleen on the head.
“You done good, hun.”
“Thanks, Joe.”
Katie and Rosie decide to go to the cafeteria for breakfast. Joe and JJ begin heading to the main building to check on Patrick in the ER, but JJ asks Joe to join him outside for a few minutes instead. Joe follows JJ away from the General a couple of blocks to a bench where they take a seat, and JJ pulls two cigars from his coat pocket. JJ raises his eyebrows, offering one to Joe.
“Absolutely,” says Joe.
Joe’s not a smoker, and he actually hates the nasty taste of a cigar, even a supposedly good one, but he’s never passed up an invitation to smoke a stogie. For Joe, the cigar is never the point. Smoking a cigar is all about male bonding, the guy equivalent of shopping or mani-pedis. JJ lights the cigars, and they both take a couple of puffs.
“I have a son,” says JJ, marveling at the sound and truth of the words.
“Yes, you do. You’re a father now.”
“It’s amazing, isn’t it, Dad?”
“It is.”
“Do you remember this moment with me, when I was born?”
“I do. Best day of my life.”
JJ crosses his right ankle over his left knee, swings his arm over his dad’s shoulder, and puffs his cigar between his teeth.
“You know I love you and Mom. And Pat and Meg and Katie. And I love Colleen. But I don’t even know this baby, and the love—” JJ clears his throat and wipes his suddenly wet eyes with the back of his hand. “It’s bigger. I’d lie down in traffic for him right now. I didn’t know it could get bigger.”
Joe nods. “This is only the beginning.”
Wait until he grabs your finger, smiles at you, says he loves you, cries in your arms. Shares a cigar with you after the birth of his first child.
And a bigger love swells inside Joe, pushing aside the overwhelming fears of every horrible thing that will and might be, making room for every magnificent thing that is and might be. This is only the beginning, and there’s more to the middle than Huntington’s. HD will be Joe’s death, but his life and JJ’s and Meghan’s lives and the life of this beautiful baby boy, whatever his fate, is about a million other things that have nothing to do with HD.
Joe puffs on his stogie, hating the bitter taste but loving the sweet experience, soaking in this magnificent moment in JJ’s life. The birth of his first child. A son. Joe’s grandson.
And then it hits him. This is a pretty fuckin’ magnificent moment in Joe’s life, too. Right here on this bench with his son on a cold December morning in Boston. Proof that even a life cursed with Huntington’s can be magnificent.
“This is only the beginning, JJ.”
CHAPTER 24
It’s only ten degrees outside. Ten. That’s a shoe size, for cripes sake, not a temperature. And the wind
feels like an angry woman who won’t shut up—relentless, caustic, making an already uncomfortable situation kiss the feet of unbearable. It’s got to be minus ten with the windchill.
And the snow has just started. Boston is supposed to get two to three inches, not enough to cancel school or release the kids early, but enough to cause plenty of auto accidents, as if the people of this city have never dealt with this shit. Bostonians are no strangers to winter nor’easters and blizzards. It’s the second week in January, and they’ve already endured three major winter storms, each dumping more than six inches of snow on the city. Drive slower, or better yet, stay off the friggin’ roads. No one learns. Vehicles will be skidding into one another, careening down the steep, narrow roads of Town, ricocheting off parked cars like pinballs. Joe’s favorites are the tinker toy cars, the Fiats and Smart cars, and the old rear-wheel-drive tankers, both kinds spinning in place, stranded in the street, blocking traffic.
Joe’s standing in the middle of the road, at the busy intersection of Bunker Hill and Tufts Street, assigned to crossing-guard duty for the elementary school, filling in for the civilian crossing guard who called in sick this morning. This person could actually have the flu. A nasty stomach bug has been sweeping through the station, knocking anyone who flirts with it down for a week. But Joe suspects this crossing guard, feeling perfectly chipper, checked the weather forecast for this morning and said, Fuck it. I don’t get paid nearly enough to stand outside in that. Joe’s not sure he does either.
He’s wearing his heaviest police jacket under a fluorescent lime-green vest, a hat, white mittens, and long johns underneath everything, but it’s all useless against this kind of cold. The air is a thousand sharp blades slicing his exposed face. His eyes won’t stop watering, and his nose is running its own marathon. Tears have frozen solid between his eyelashes, icicles are accumulating on his cheeks, and snot is crusted on his upper lip. Jesus, even breathing hurts. Every inhale flash freezes the lining of his lungs, refrigerating him from the inside out. His fingers and toes have gone numb. He’s a frozen slab of meat directing traffic.
