Louise and Eric came back into the room. “Jake, you and I need to hit the sack, huh?” Louise said. She looked at Charlotte with an expression more grave than her words sounded. “Dr. Reese told me she might be able to help you with your back pain, son. Case it’s a while before we get you to the doctor. How about you let her have a look?” She helped him pull the Mariners T-shirt over his head with a static crackle, his hair clinging to the neckline so it stood straight up for a moment. He seemed unself-conscious about partially undressing, relaxed around them now.
Charlotte asked him to walk toward the far wall and back, then she had him lean over and touch his toes. The curvature was more obvious to her this time, his pelvic crests clearly asymmetrical in height. She wished she knew more about the problem and could give Louise specific advice, if indeed Jake was allowed to stay here. It had been fifteen years since she’d studied either orthopedics or pediatrics, but something about Jake’s clinical picture nagged her. Was it the degree of the curvature? The rapidity with which it must have developed, given that no prior doctor or school nurse had caught it? She picked up his shirt and crinkled it into a sleeve to go over his head. “Thank you, Jake. I know some doctors in Seattle who might help you feel better. Would you be willing to talk to them? If Louise and Mr. Simpson said it was okay?”
“If they can make it stop hurting.”
He put his arms up for his T-shirt but Charlotte stopped when it was halfway over his head. “Just one more part of the exam, do you mind?” She placed her hand softly against his rib cage and turned his body so the lamplight illuminated him from the side. With her fingers, she parted the fine pubescent hair just beginning to grow in the hollow of his armpit, and there in the deep golden cove she saw a scatter of dark freckles. The dermatologic signature of neurofibromatosis. Just like Eric had.
—
Charlotte felt drained. They checked the ferry schedule and realized they were likely to miss the midnight sailing back to Seattle from Bainbridge; it would be quicker to drive around through Tacoma. After an hour and a half on the long stretches of empty highway Eric was sound asleep and she drifted into a half-formed dream of Raney pulling her IV lines out, rising from her ICU bed dressed in jeans and a Mariners T-shirt, looking no more than twelve years old. A light flashed—a car passing—Charlotte jerked awake and swerved hard to the right in a panic. The wheels dropped onto the gravel shoulder and spun with no traction; Eric cried out when his shoulder struck the door. The Saab ended up facing backward on the opposite side of the deserted highway; the headlights sparked on fragments of broken glass, glittering reminders of past tragedies.
They found a motel outside Tumwater and checked in. The room felt damp and close, the carpet uncomfortably nappy. Eric used the toilet and rinsed his mouth, then stripped to his shorts and slid under the bedcovers. He lay on his back with his hands crossed over his chest. How could someone sleep in that position? And yet she knew he would hardly move the rest of the short night. She didn’t take her shoes off until she was sitting on the edge of the bed, then tucked her feet up before they could touch the carpet. She was exhausted but wired, too fatigued to drive or think clearly and too agitated to sleep. The streetlights over the parking lot cast a yellow glow through the windows, and in her buzzing semiconsciousness the room was a television set, she and Eric and Jake and Raney inside while David watched—the one in control was the one least invested.
After a while she turned on to her side, facing Eric, studying his profile in the unnatural, intrusive light. His eyes were still closed, but she knew he was awake. “Are you going to tell me what the gum is for?” he said.
“I wondered if you saw that. Do you need to ask?”
Eric sighed and opened his eyes, staring at the ceiling. “Can they really get a DNA sample from gum?”
“Aren’t you the one writing about all the latest genetics research? Yes. Usually. Unsweetened is best.”
“And were you going to get my sample the same way?” He crossed his arms under his head and turned to look at her, but with the light behind his face she couldn’t make out his expression. “Or were you planning to drug me and swab my cheek?”
Charlotte reached over to his chest and ran her fingers over his skin. Pale. Smooth. Almost no hair. “I was hoping you would give it to me. Willingly.” She pressed her fingers softly against the flesh under his arm where the freckles of neurofibromatosis marked him, where she had seen the same sign on Jake. “Will you?”
He pulled her hand away. “Have you asked yourself what you’ll do with the results? Either way? A match, no match? You can help him just by being a doctor. Being a friend. We both can. If Jake has scoliosis, even if he has neurofibromatosis, we can help him get treatment.”
“How can you question it now, with the axillary freckles?”
“Because sometimes we see what we want to see. Not just you—everyone. And the question still begs—if he has the disease, does it matter where he got it? Does it change anything?”
“It feels wrong not to know. Not to take responsibility for it. You know what it’s like to live with this diagnosis. You could help him—as more than some anonymous friend.” Eric stared at the ceiling, his jaw set. “Maybe the real question you should be asking is why you’re so scared to find out if Jake is your son.”
He was quiet for a moment; then, too restrained. “Look at me, Charlotte.” She held her eyes wide in mock exaggeration. “No. Look at me.” He sat up in bed and turned his back to her, parted his thick hair to expose the pink rind of his scar. “Teach Jake how to live with it? The opposite is more likely. You think he needs to watch one more parent . . . There is no cure for this, Dr. Reese.”
“You’ve had an unlucky course. An unusual course for NF.”
“Yes. We don’t choose our luck, do we? Or our parents. Except in this case, maybe Jake can.”
“And is that true for us too? You’re waiting for me to choose so you don’t have to? Choose to give up on marriage and children so you can pretend you would have ever given those a chance? We’re stuck, Eric. Stagnating. The only risks you’re willing to take are ones that don’t include people.”
He was still turned away from her, his feet on the floor ready to get up, dress, and walk out. She almost didn’t know if she cared anymore, which scared her more than the fear he would leave. Then his head sank into his hands with a sigh so close to a sob she wished she could see his eyes, wanted to touch him but couldn’t cross over. After a long time he lay down and said in a resigned voice, “All right. I’ll do it. I’ll take the test.”
—
Charlotte let Jake’s chewed wad of gum air dry, as the instructions said, and mailed it to the genetics lab she had chosen, practically at random, from the hundreds advertised on the Internet. The customer care representative told her not to send Eric’s sample until they were certain they could get an adequate DNA extraction from the gum. She would send Charlotte the necessary buccal swab test kit if the extraction succeeded.
Three days later a small package arrived in Charlotte’s mailbox. The contents looked so innocuous: an envelope, a clear bag, and two sticks that looked much like home pregnancy tests.
Eric read the instructions and slid the cover back to expose a white fabric-like surface on one end. He scraped it against the inside of his cheek a few times, then closed the cover and put the stick into the bag. He repeated the steps with the other stick. Charlotte put the test sticks into the envelope and wrote the date on the flap, filled in the form, and sealed the envelope. It was done. Two minutes for the test, a lifetime to muster the courage, she thought but did not say aloud. It would only take forty-eight hours; the results should arrive on Saturday. It felt like forty-eight days to Charlotte.
And in the course of that time Raney began to improve.
—
Charlotte woke early on Saturday. By the time Eric came out of the bedroom she was immersed in a cleaning frenzy, the living room furniture pushed askew so she could mop in places no
one looked or cared about, least of all her. He was wearing a flannel shirt so faded it looked like a chamois, exposing skinny bare legs, his hair going in every direction except straight up.
“You’re cleaning,” he said.
“Sherlock!”
“You’re anxious. You only clean like this when you’re anxious.”
She looked at him sharply and drove the mop hard at a stubborn spot of ancient grime. He walked back to the kitchen and poured a cup of coffee.
As noon approached she found herself at the front window, watching for the postman. But when the small slot beside her front door at last slid open and the day’s mail plopped onto the hall carpet, she made Eric pick it up. He brought the pile of envelopes into the living room and sat next to her. It was there, second from the top. So thin. So innocuous. How could so many lives be so permanently changed by the few words inside it?
Eric handed it to her. She could tell he was nervous, perhaps as much about her as about any test result. “Do you want me to open it?” he asked.
“Yes. Open it.”
“Do you want to read it with me?”
“No. You read it.”
Eric slit the envelope crease with his thumb and pulled out a pamphlet and a few sheets of paper. He scanned the first page, turning it over, and then put the second one on top. Charlotte detected the slightest tightening around his eyes. The concentration on his face made it obvious this page held the results. He put the paper on the coffee table and took her hands. She almost stopped him, felt she had to be ready for the answer, but in what way? He was right—what difference should it make? Wouldn’t they help Jake either way? She closed her eyes and told him to say it.
“I’m not Jake’s father. We don’t match.”
Charlotte felt like a cannon had exploded through her middle, splintering this moment, this day, every day to come. Splintering hope she didn’t even know she’d nurtured. What had she been thinking? How had she let herself slowly, unconsciously, become so utterly convinced that the result would be positive? Eric pulled her into his arms. “Hush. Hush. It’s okay, babe. It’s okay.”
• 19 •
raney
They drove around the Olympic Peninsula for two weeks, staying at cheap motels, or in sleeping bags on beaches or in campgrounds, leaving before the park rangers came by to collect a fee; they spent a few nights in the back of the Tahoe while the rain hammered the roof and the truck shivered in gusts of wind. David would pick up the local papers and read the want ads, applying for anything that remotely resembled bookkeeping. They stopped in every public library so he could use the computer to hunt for jobs. There was nothing locking them into Washington—Raney said he should look all over the country, on the Internet at least. But whether for pride or sheer compulsiveness or because he felt as rejected as these sparsely populated counties seemed, he insisted on exhausting the peninsula before they moved on.
As Raney saw it, she still had a full-time job. Now she had to make Jake believe this move was an adventure. A summer vacation touring the bleak towns in the farthest, forgotten corner of America, scattered along the broken two-lane roads like lost pennies collecting dust under sofas—not worth the trouble to retrieve. Sometimes, she told Jake, you have to believe in fortune—the world will give you what you need when you need it. Things will work out. Jake promptly reminded her of the last history lesson he had studied in school—Robert Scott’s disastrous expedition to the South Pole, how he nearly died en route only to discover a Norwegian flag already planted, and then actually died eleven miles from getting back home.
—
Three weeks after leaving Quentin they stopped outside Queets for coffee and gas just south of Kalaloch on 101. Raney waited beside the gas pumps, unwashed and unkempt and braced against the biting rain, watching Jake kick an empty beer can down the side of the highway until a logging truck whooshed past and crushed it. David came out of the store after paying, and she pulled him around the building behind the Dumpsters where Jake couldn’t witness or overhear. “We need a home, David. A house, a trailer, a single room and a hot plate. No more fast food, no more roadside Sani-Cans.”
David put his wallet into his back pocket and scanned the sky, squinting in the single sun ray that darted through a cloud break and then vanished again. Looking for heavenly guidance out of this hell, Raney thought, like he might honestly believe heaven or hell cared what happened to their three vagrant souls—specks in the chaff of the universe. But she could see him bending to her ultimatum—or trying it, at least. “Well, there’s the job at the lodge. Hourly—no benefits.” He paused. If he was giving her a chance to change her mind he could wait forever. Let him freeze in the rain beside these putrid garbage bins while she and Jake took a bus back to Quentin. “I’ll drive on over and tell them I’ll take it. For now.” He smiled at her. His smile still made her want to trust him, for one more mile. One last mile. The way some flowers inevitably follow the sun; their biology gives them no choice in the matter.
They got into the car and turned around, heading back to the coastal resort in Kalaloch. Raney stared out at the landscape—windblown trees, bent by the Pacific gales. She missed the lushness of Quentin—horizons hemmed so close by the forests and hills the world felt smaller. Something you might cope with. But there was a beauty here that she could imagine settling with, if they stayed for a while. If they had a place to live and a way to pay for it. And at almost the same moment that thought entered her mind, a red-and-black sign caught her eye—vivid in the spectrum of natural golds and greens. It was a For Rent sign, pointing up a gravel road that could have led to the moon, it was so empty. Nothing visible from the highway. She told David to stop the car and back up. They looked at the sign for a minute, and then turned up the rough drive.
After a quarter of a mile with no man or man-made structure in sight, David was ready to turn around. But Raney was determined. “The sign didn’t look that old, and the road’s been used.” And then through the brush and cattails they saw a trailer, so brown and squat it popped into view like a nesting ground bird brooding her eggs. The image alone made Raney feel like it could be turned into a home. It was locked—they had to stand on stacked cinder blocks to see through the windows. The owner had built a lean-to along the front and busted out the wall so that it had more corners and rooms than a simple rectangle. They could see two small bedrooms; a tiny galley kitchen with a two-burner cooktop. A bathroom with a shower and double sink.
Raney felt her first spark of hope since seeing her own house disappear in the Tahoe’s side-view mirror, and she made David hurry back down the driveway to copy the phone number off the sign, worried someone might rent it before they could call. “Oh, right!” he said. “There’s probably a backup on the highway waiting to get that phone number.” They had to drive four miles to find a cell signal. David let it ring ten times before he hung up, but Raney made him call back and try again, despite his smug protest that it was a waste of energy and they should keep driving. But this time someone answered. Raney held her breath.
David asked a long string of questions about the trailer before Raney heard him ask if it was still available. He kept shaking his head and asking the owner to repeat his answers—“Barely understand his accent,” he whispered to Raney. Finally he asked what the rent was; she saw him wince. He told the owner he’d think about it and call back.
“I don’t care what the rent is. Take it.” Raney caught Jake’s eyes in the visor mirror—he looked ready to jump whichever way she called it. “Will he rent to us by the month?” David nodded. “Okay, then. This month is yours. If the job doesn’t work out, we’ll move back. We could be home before school starts.”
—
The owner was a Korean grocer down in Aberdeen. The rent was pitifully low, but so was their money, and when he called the owner back, David wangled a way to work part of the rent off by doing some bookkeeping for the store. They had to drive to Aberdeen to sign the lease and pick up the keys. Before th
ey left, David wanted to look at the trailer again, in case there were any obvious leaks or damage he might leverage into lower rent.
Jake and Raney roamed the wide-open land that stretched uninhabited in every visible direction, only a few twisted barbed-wire fences marking the boundaries of what must be acres of property. The land had been clear-cut at some point in recent time, exposing a contour of marshy swales and hillocks gouged by logging trucks. Thorned blackberries and the forlorn stumps of decapitated trees stood in weedy patches aflame with fireweed and Indian paintbrush. Jake walked over the uneven turf with his hands in his Windbreaker pockets, scanning his new territory. There would be no worries about bullying neighbors here. There were no neighbors.
Raney caught up to him, and they walked toward the closest marsh until the soaked earth sucked at their shoes and Jake got her laughing at the flatulent sounds. They picked cattails, broke open the felted brown rods, and threw the moist fluff in the air and on each other. He leaned over, trying to snare the largest reeds without falling knee-deep in mud, and Raney saw his hand fly to his back.
“Jake? Is it your back?”
“I’m fine, Mom,” he said, his good humor turned sour.
“No, you’re not. You’ve been lying about it, haven’t you? Why?”
“Why complain? So David can say I’m just trying to get out of hard work?” He stormed ahead of her, his Windbreaker slung around his shoulders so his T-shirt was drawn taut against his spine. Raney wove toward drier ground to follow him, but when she looked up, she saw something so plainly she wondered if she’d been blind for the last weeks. Jake was limping. She walked faster, marking the fit of his blue jeans and the lay of his cotton shirt—it was suddenly obvious. One hip was riding higher than the other, as if his legs were uneven.
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