The Exiles

by Allison Lynn

  “He’s your father.” Emily paused, he heard a door shut on her end of the line. “He got hurt today? And they called you?”

  This accident: What were the chances that Nate would be so close to the scene, that the police would find him so easily, that he should have been at the Narragansett house at the exact moment when the officer showed up? It was unreal. A sign. Nate tried to see it as a gift. If his father woke up, Nate would have him at a disadvantage, stripped of his street clothes and strapped to machines. It seemed that a hospital, with his father weak and under supervision, was the best place to confront him. It was the kind of setting where people had reconciliations and came to terms with the truth.

  “Em, I don’t even know if he’d want me here. He could be out for days, for a month, forever. Go back to the hotel. Trev and I will find a way there and I’ll keep my phone on.”

  “Okay.” Emily sounded unsure.

  Nate hung up, put his phone back in his pocket, and lifted Trevor out of the wagon. The boy wound his arms tight around Nate’s neck. Where other babies’ arms were like Michelin Man stubs, Trevor’s body was already taking on sophistication, getting ready for complicated maneuvers. It was as if he had shorn his baby fat early in anticipation of a future as a major-league pitcher.

  “Thanks,” Nate said to the nurse, “I needed that break.”

  “I’d have kept him longer—it’s nice to see a healthy kid, usually—but he got a little wild. Boy, he’s a yeller,” the nurse said with an uncomfortable laugh. “I changed his diaper, hope you don’t mind. He was wet.” She waved her hand, excusing any further gratitude. “See you later, alligator,” she twiddled her fingers at Trevor as she walked away. Her steps were fast and staccato, as if relieved.

  Nate couldn’t imagine Trevor, someday, coming to a place like this to visit him, old and feeble. Or young and feeble, felled by Huntington’s. Nate didn’t want Trevor to ever see him the way they were seeing George right now. Was it better to cut your son off?

  “Mr. Bedecker?” The doctor assigned to George’s case stood in front of Nate.

  “Call me Nate.” He began to get up with Trevor in his arms.

  “Please, sit,” the doctor said. “Your father’s suffered a serious head injury. His body was thrown toward the steering wheel and his head hit hardest. As for his brain function, we’ll have to wait and watch for the swelling to go down in hopes that he’ll become more responsive.”

  “Which means?”

  “It’s impossible to determine if and when he’ll come out of this coma. If he does come out of it, I can’t predict what his level of function will be.” The doctor shrugged. “This kind of head injury, in my experience as well as wider experience, can have a good prognosis and recovery, but it is impossible to know at this point.”

  “You’ve seen this before.”

  “I specialize in head trauma,” the doctor said. “Yes.” He wore a cheap but sturdy suit under his white jacket, a respectable forest-green tie with a gold check-mark pattern. He actually started to smile, and Nate wanted to hug the doctor, take him home with him. A walking and talking fount of knowledge.

  “So you’re a neurologist? Can I ask you a question?”

  “As I said, there’s little I can tell you so far.”

  “It’s just one question,” Nate said, not sure if he wanted the answer—and not sure if this was the man to ask. The man Nate should be talking to was his father. After all of these years, it was time he talked to George. “My father, when you were examining him, his brain function, did you notice anything else wrong? I mean, I haven’t seen him in almost a decade, and to be honest, it’s a fluke that I was summoned after his crash because we’re not really in touch, we haven’t talked in years, even to say hello, he doesn’t even know who I am, as a person. I just happened to be at his house at the wrong time. But I think he may be sick.” Nate paused. It was the first time he’d voiced this sentiment. He expected that when spoken aloud, he would see how foolish he was—presuming that his father had a fatal genetic disease. Instead, the potential truth of Nate’s fears coagulated and felt alarmingly present. Trevor reached up with his lithe left arm and started pulling on the neck of Nate’s sweater. “If I sound crazy, I’m sorry.”

  “Sick has myriad definitions,” said the doctor.

  “I’m thinking Huntington’s. I think he has Huntington’s disease, chorea, Huntington’s chorea. I think he has Huntington’s.”

  The neurologist thrust his hands into the deep square pockets of his lab coat and stood still for a moment. His eyes were focused on the sterile air behind Nate. When he spoke again, his voice had lost its softness and was serious, intent. “Is he at risk for Huntington’s?” When Nate didn’t answer, the doctor asked, “Is your family gene-positive? Huntington’s is not something that would show up in our standard tests, nor is it related to the injuries he sustained today. To answer your question, we’d have to do a gene test, or look at his symptoms once he’s awake. It’s rare, it’s—” the doctor paused, “it’s not something we see often. It’s a rough prognosis.”

  Nate nodded, and after another moment of strained silence, of Trevor trying to chew on Nate’s shirt, of the doctor shifting his weight from one foot to the other, Nate told the neurologist the story of his grandfather (the ostensible proof that the gene was in the family) and he recalled his hunches about his father (the gut feeling that the gene had been passed down to George, the article in the Times). The doctor sat beside Nate and took it all in. Nate imagined how he looked to the man, so healthy, with his own healthy son, their polished exteriors acting as deceptive cover for the potential deaths their bodies were harboring. In the world of Huntington’s, good hair and the lack of a beer gut didn’t mean anything. As Nate finished, an orderly approached, summoning the doctor to another case.

  “There’s no way to know without doing a test, and your father needs to be conscious in order to give consent for that test,” the doctor said. Then, standing, looking down with a wince of a smile, a sympathy grimace (so much softer than the grimace that Nate had seen, in pictures, frozen on the faces of late-stage Huntington’s sufferers), the doctor glanced from Nate to Trevor and back to Nate again. “You could get tested, too, you know.” Then with one more pained look at Trevor, he added, “That’s a loaded issue. It’s not a process to be taken lightly. Even,” he said, “if you didn’t already have a child.”

  “If you’re telling me I’m too late, I know that,” Nate said, holding Trevor tightly. The doctor nodded, briefly placed a hand on Nate’s shoulder, and then walked away, across the linoleum, toward his next patient, another life on the brink. Nate cupped his son’s cheek in his palm and the boy’s name (Trevor, Trevor, Trevor), thudded inside his chest like a heartbeat.

  CHAPTER 21

  The Things Nate Knows, Reprise

  A BEAT-UP AUDI PULLED into the Viking’s circular drive. As the car moved out of the sun and into the hotel’s shadow, Emily saw that Nate was at the wheel. She could make out Trevor’s shape, too, strapped into a baby seat in the back. Where had they gotten an Audi? The car’s front fender was crushed in and the right headlight smashed to near nonexistence. The car was winking, making Emily feel left out of a private joke.

  Emily had been sitting on the Viking’s steps for almost an hour, ever since she’d fled her tour of the Elms. She had two days to figure out how to deal with the NYPD. They had no proof, she reminded herself. It was totally normal to go to the bathroom at a party. It was basic physiology: Alcohol makes a person pee. She’d had, what? Two glasses of wine and a vodka-soda? Three glasses of wine and the vodka? Enough to have to use the restroom. Who, though, had turned her in to the cops? Who would have cared enough to notice that she’d wandered toward the study? That information was innocuous. What she feared was that the snitch might have seen more, might have told the cops more. Get a grip!

  Nate waved at her from the side of the Audi before leaning into the backseat and unhooking the boy. She needed to tell Nate
about the painting. He’d been carrying it around all day! But he hadn’t mentioned it. If he’d stumbled on the canvas, he’d have said something. She’d tell him. She’d tell him before Tuesday, before she lied to the cops. She’d tell him after they dealt with George and whatever it was that had happened to him today. Her head was clouded by the Rufino, but she understood that George was top priority at this moment. She could barely grasp the fact that George Bedecker was here, in Rhode Island (she could barely grasp the fact that she was here in Rhode Island), let alone that George Bedecker was ailing and that Nate had seen him. And that somehow Nate had been beckoned after George’s crash. The hospital had found him. Or the cops? She and Nate seemed to be cop magnets. Emily couldn’t remember what Nate had told her. Someone had tracked Nate down, and Nate had rushed to his father’s side. For the past four years Emily had been begging Nate to reconnect with his dad. Until today, he hadn’t seemed interested.

  “What the hell, Nate?” Emily said as she approached, motioning to the beat-up car. Other than the whopping dents, it looked new and impeccably detailed.

  “Yeah, it’s a little trashed.” He looked defeated and tired. “And the car seat is on loan from the cops, so we need to bring it back. But at least the gas tank is mostly full.”

  “But where did you get it?” Emily asked.

  Trevor, in Nate’s arms, blinked at Emily and grinned. Without taking his eyes off his mother, the boy began to fervently suck on the fingers of his right hand.

  “It’s the car George crashed,” Nate said, as if this should be obvious. He tapped his fingers against the metal of the driver’s side door, edgy. He’d just seen his father for the first time in eight years or something, nine years, Emily figured. “As long as we don’t drive it after dark”—he motioned to the busted headlight—“we’ll be okay. Em, you look like shit.”

  Her eyes were red and puffy, she was sure. She looked no better than he did. She’d cried at the Elms, after her tour left the basement and she was alone.

  Nate gave the car keys to the valet and walked past Emily, straight up the front steps, toward the hotel lobby. At the top, he turned and looked at her.

  “We need to talk,” he said. She nodded, and Nate turned again and continued his walk into the hotel.

  While Nate sat on the suite’s couch, Emily lay Trevor in the Pack ’n Play, washed her hands, fetched Nate a glass of water from the bathroom (where she popped an Inderal for herself), and took out the room-service menu. She spread the menu on the surface of the small desk. Nate looked as if his head was about to combust. Food would be good—food and drink weren’t a cure-all, but they helped. The important thing was to keep her body moving. These small motions accumulated power until they were as soothing as any beta-blocker. She needed to find steady ground, to give her thoughts room to breathe. She picked up the phone to dial for room service, but put it down when she noticed Nate staring at her.

  “What?” she said. She stood still for the first time and returned Nate’s glare. He hadn’t said anything about his father’s condition since he’d gotten back to the hotel. George Bedecker was unconscious, maybe dying. Maybe the cops would go easy on Emily now that her father-in-law was in a coma. She didn’t actually believe this. “What is it?”

  When he didn’t answer, she said, “We can go back to the hospital if you want. We can spend the night with George. Is that what you want? You tell me, and we’ll make it happen. If you never want to see him again, we can do that, too.” Seeing his father in a coma had to be shocking to Nate, no matter how out of touch the two were. “We can do whatever you want. Just tell me.” Emily needed to hear his voice.

  “It’s been a bad day,” he said.

  “For me, too,” she said, then quickly qualified the statement. “Sorry. My dad didn’t fall into a coma. My day’s been fine.” Her day had been a disaster.

  She opened the minifridge in search of a shot of gin, but they’d finished the final little bottles last night and the maid hadn’t restocked them today. All that remained were two cans of Heineken. “We need to call down for drinks,” she said. The Inderal had taken her down a notch, but she felt a circumspect angst clawing at the edges of her peripheral vision. “We’re practically dry. Some holiday, this Columbus Day. Welcome to the New World.”

  “Emily, sit down.”

  “Nate,” she said. She glanced over to the ice bucket, empty. “Just one drink. You’ll feel better afterward, I promise.” Or two drinks, two drinks would be adequate. They both needed to feel better.

  “Sit down,” he said again, and hearing the insistence in his voice, she turned to face him. There was a hesitancy to him now. His eyes were wet, glossy. Nate looked like a child suddenly, like a blown-up Trevor come to life. He looked scared.

  The Nate who’d driven up in the Audi fifteen minutes ago was a man with a father. This was a new Nate, not the Nate Emily knew and had known for four years. That man had been tethered to no one but herself and Trevor. And this guy? Emily felt woozy. It wasn’t clear where any of them stood. Like a china table-setting after the magician swiped the cloth out from under it, everything was in its place again, but an inch or two off-center.

  “You’re making me dizzy with all your running around,” Nate said. “Sit down. Sit the fuck down. That’ll make me feel better.”

  Emily nodded and sat next to him, his serious tone startling her. They should go back to the hospital. Whatever their relationship, Nate should be by his father’s side. Emily could bundle Trevor up and they could bring him along. It would throw the boy off schedule, but who cared? If nothing else, maybe this weekend would finally train the boy to be adaptable. And then tomorrow, or Tuesday, she’d find a lawyer. She’d actually prepare for her interrogation by the cops.

  Nate reached out and grabbed Emily’s hand and she felt his fingers touch hers, lightly, as if testing them for flexibility. Or testing his own.

  “My father, it’s not just the accident,” he said.

  She nodded. The couch was soft and deep and, when it came down to it, she didn’t want to go to the hospital, she didn’t want to bundle Trevor up and drag him away, and Nate didn’t seem to want that, either.

  “Talk to me,” she said.

  Nate nodded and then, in a tone so even that it sounded rehearsed, he said, “In 1974 I came to Newport with my father. I saw his father, who was sick. I think it was Huntington’s disease. I think my father has it now. I think I may have it. I think I could have passed it on to Trevor.”

  “Your father, George?” Emily didn’t understand. “You said George had a car accident, not Huntington’s disease.” Nate had never mentioned any disease in his family other than his mother’s leukemia. Huntington’s couldn’t be a major disease, Emily told herself. It couldn’t be that harmful if she’d never heard of it. “You found out your father has Huntington’s? At the hospital?”

  “Oh God, I’m sorry.” Nate paused, looked away from Emily. “My mother tried to warn me, before she died, but I didn’t listen. I didn’t want to know, and it was just me then, it didn’t matter. But now with Trevor—”

  “But he’s okay. He’s healthy,” Emily said. He’d passed every genetic test in utero, and aced all of his doctor’s appointments since then. He was perfect! Oh, he had his idiosyncrasies. There were his ears of course, which stood out like nautilus shells from his head. And that unwavering gaze, staring at strangers with the rudeness of a social neophyte. But he was in perfect health! He was perfect to Emily. “The doctors say he’s fine, Nate. He’s okay.”

  “Looking fine doesn’t mean anything,” Nate said. And then he laid out for Emily the facts of the disease, its ability to hide for decades, for most of a lifetime. And then, the way it emerged and slowly killed its carrier. “I convinced myself I didn’t have it, that it wasn’t in the family at all, until a month ago. My dad was in the Times and they said he was drunk, but he doesn’t drink. He hates to drink. The staggering, it’s a Huntington’s symptom.”

  Emily though
t about the last month, week after week of Nate wandering through their life in a haze. All of the conversations they’d had about the move, about restaurants to hit before they left the city, about his new job. She thought about his surprising joy (surprising, it seemed, even to himself) when she told him, eighteen months ago, that she was pregnant with Trevor. Of his ridiculous reluctance to talk about his parents and acknowledge that he had any kind of past.

  “You and your fucking avoidance,” she said. “You can’t will away a disease by not thinking about it.”

  Nate took the newspaper clip out of his wallet and handed it over to Emily. She glanced at it. “It doesn’t matter, does it, if your father was actually drunk or not? Your mother blatantly told you the disease is in his family—what, you thought she’d lied?”

  “I’m an imbecile.”

  “Is there a chance your mother was wrong? That you misunderstood? That I’m misunderstanding?” Emily said. “Are you saying this disease is in our family now? Or are you just bouncing the idea off me? Because I need facts. You can’t come at me with this hazy theory and expect me to be okay with it.”

  “I don’t know,” Nate said. “All I have so far are theories. I’m sorry, I’m just sorry.”

  The night had grown dark outside and they hadn’t switched on any lights and in the pale doom Emily listened and asked questions and gradually she realized how deep the gulf had become between Nate and her, how many secrets they’d kept. Nate was the closest person in the world to her, and she was (she believed, truly believed) the closest to him. Yet still they’d been occupying spaces secluded from each other. Nate was telling her that he might be dying, and that he’d known this for some time.