Crying Laughing

by Lance Rubin

  “But you went to that first neurologist in February or whenever that was,” I say. “They didn’t say you had ALS, right?”

  “No,” Dad says. “That’s what made it more confusing. Mom had been googling my symptoms back then and was really freaked out it might be ALS. But that neurologist said it was super-unlikely, that I was too young, and so we ruled it out.”

  “That doctor was a moron,” Mom says.

  “He was,” Dad agrees. “But it was nice to hear at the time.”

  “Then in July, when Daddy’s legs were feeling stiff, I forced him to get a second opinion. And that’s how we ended up at Dr. Yu.”

  “Oh,” I say. I think about me two hours ago, blissfully shoving cookies in my mouth while waiting to tell my father I’m thinking about joining a stupid improv troupe. Two-Hours-Ago Winnie was so naïve. “But if you do have it, what does that mean?”

  “Not much, really.” Dad is suddenly bizarrely chill. “I take an expensive drug, which hopefully Mom’s health insurance will continue to cover, and we all go on with our lives.”

  Mom seems like she has something to add but then closes her mouth and looks away.

  “Okay…,” I say, mostly reassured by this assessment.

  “Yeah. As long as you’re cool with me dropping beans on a fairly regular basis, this shouldn’t be a problem.”

  I have a joke forming in my head, but I can’t get my mouth on board.

  “And we’re not telling anyone yet,” Mom says. “Daddy doesn’t want anyone else to know right now.”

  “Okay,” I say.

  “Not even Grandma.”

  “Especially Grandma,” Dad says. “For now, anyway. I’m just not ready for that.”

  “Sure,” I say, and it occurs to me that if he hadn’t literally spilled the beans (good god, that’s so stupid), he still wouldn’t be ready to tell me, either. Suddenly I’m outside my body, crawling on the ceiling like Spider-Man, staring down as he adds, “You know how many questions she would have.”

  “Right, yeah,” I watch myself say, and I’m suddenly aware of how many questions I have. Like, for example:

  Is Dad going to die?

  No, right? This wouldn’t be so casual if he were going to die.

  “And, uh,” Dad says. “Yeah, that’s it. We just wanted to bring you, you know, into the loop. But not to make you worried. Don’t worry. Be happy.”

  I’m whisked back into my body as Mom smiles at me. I can tell she’s trying hard to evoke happy, but she’s a few clicks short.

  “All right,” I say. “But, so, like…” If I throw out enough tiny words, maybe he’ll understand my question without me asking it. “If, uh…With ALS, what are the…What else will…?”

  “Oh. What will happen to me?” Dad looks at Mom, then scratches his shoulder, casual as can be. “I mean, it’s hard to say for sure. ALS manifests in so many different ways for different people. Likely more of the same. Trouble projecting my voice. Trouble walking. Random impulses to murder family members.”

  “Ohmigod, seriously?”

  Dad smiles.

  “Not funny,” I say, though of course another joke is very welcome.

  “Sorry, Banana. I promise ALS won’t make me murder you or Mom. But hopefully taking this drug will slow down the progression of things, so I’ll stay like this.” Mom places her hand over Dad’s, and he winks at her. Usually that would be my cue to make fun of them for being gooey, but I decide to give them a pass. “Oh, and do me a favor,” Dad says. “Don’t google ALS. I don’t want you to read random crap on the Internet and start freaking out. Because most of it doesn’t apply to me. Okay?”

  He seems relaxed about it, and Mom does too, but coming from parents who generally trust me to look at or watch whatever the hell I want, it’s slightly disturbing.

  As Dad waits for me to respond, for a flicker of a second this thought appears:

  Nothing will ever be the same.

  But I push it away. Because, really, everything in Dad’s behavior seems to be saying that things will be the same, that a year from now, the day Dad spilled the beans will be nothing but a funny story we tell from time to time.

  “Sure, yeah, no prob,” I say. “I will never google anything ever again.”

  “Thanks, Banana,” Dad says, choosing that moment to take his first bite of burrito. “So anyway, how was your day?”

  5

  I really want to google ALS.

  But I’m not going to. I will respect Dad’s wishes. It’s the least I can do.

  Though if I were to look…I mean, I’m not some unsophisticated doof who can’t place things in their proper context, Chicken Little clucking her head off that the sky is falling.

  Still, he said not to, so as I sit here in bed, I’m mindlessly scrolling through Twitter instead. That’s how I know I’m in a weird headspace. I used to be on Twitter all the time, but then it started to overwhelm me. So many smart, funny people saying so many smart, funny things, how could I possibly measure up? I would painstakingly compose a thought, but then the idea that I’d launch it into the black hole of the Internet, to all 126 of my followers, only to have it land with a resounding two likes was enough to convince me not to tweet at all. It’s just not for me.

  Instead, I go to comedy and pop culture havens like Vulture, sites that don’t burden me with the feeling that I should be cleverly participating the whole time. I pop over there now, only to find a long feature on the brilliance of Steven Wright, Dad’s all-time favorite comedian. He’s this guy with a really low, slow voice who tells amazing deadpan jokes like “You can’t have everything. Where would you put it?” You kind of have to hear his delivery to fully get it, but he’s totally a genius.

  Now, though, he reminds me of Dad, and Dad’s possible ALS, a condition whose specifics are readily available to me by typing three letters into a rectangular box:

  ALS

  I let the letters sit there, my finger hovering over the return key.

  It’s not like Dad would ever know.

  And I’m really curious. His voice has gotten weaker, and his hands, and his legs, but how much worse is it going to get?

  I’m interrupted by Enya. She’s this Irish New Age singer who was popular, like, two decades ago. Leili loves her—which Azadeh and I make fun of as much as possible—so I have her as Leili’s ring and text tone. Saved by the Enya.

  Are you making prudent decisions? Leili’s text reads.

  I’m confused until I remember she’s referring to our chemistry teacher, Mrs. Tanaka, who for some mystifying reason uses the phrase prudent decisions at least ten times during every class. Oh, to be back a few hours ago, when the biggest thing on my mind was mocking a dingus teacher.

  I impulsively respond:

  My dad might have ALS.

  I know my parents said we aren’t telling anyone. But Leili and Azadeh are incredibly trustworthy. And I can’t not google it and not tell anyone!

  I look at the words I texted. It feels like they’re about someone else’s dad.

  The three dots hang out in Leili’s word bubble. I can imagine the look on her face: eyebrow squished down, cheek squished up, sort of smiling, sort of not. If Azadeh is nearby, Leili will call out, “Uh…Oz, Winnie’s being weird,” and then they’ll huddle around the phone for five minutes discussing how to respond.

  Finally, the three dots disappear, only to be replaced by: ???

  Leili is the most considerate person I know, and she obviously doesn’t want to risk offending me by saying the wrong thing. One of about eight thousand reasons why I love her. I write back: Not a joke.

  My phone makes beeping noises. Most kids I know do everything in their power to avoid ever having to speak on the phone, let alone FaceTime. Leili isn’t like that. She understands when real human connection might be helpful. L
ike now.

  “Hi, Lay,” I say, my back up against the headboard.

  “Hey,” Leili says, sitting on her twin bed in the room she and Azadeh share, her brown eyes brimming with empathy. “Are you okay?”

  “I don’t know,” I say. “I think so. It’s weird.”

  “Aw, Winner.” She and Azadeh are the only ones who call me that. It’s super-endearing. “Oz is here too.”

  “Aloha,” Azadeh says, popping her head into the frame, her hair wet and floppy. Leili shoots her a quick dagger for her whimsical Hawaiian greeting during this serious moment.

  “Hey, Oz,” I say.

  “So what’s going on?” Leili asks.

  I didn’t think I was feeling emotional, but as my best friends stare at me through the screen, I find a golf ball in my throat, blocking all the words. I swallow twice, creating a little space.

  “You know how I’d mentioned that my dad’s been having some weird symptoms this past year, like with his legs and hands?”

  They nod.

  “So, yeah, he’s been seeing some different doctors, including this neurologist in New York City.”

  “Wow,” Azadeh says. “The Big Apple.”

  “Azadeh,” Leili harshly whispers, accompanied by an elbow nudge.

  “Yeah,” I say. “So he and my mom just told me at dinner that he…you know, like I texted. He might have ALS.”

  “Oh no,” Leili says.

  “That’s awful,” Azadeh says.

  They both seem to know exactly what it is, which makes me feel like an idiot.

  “You know about ALS?” I ask.

  They’re silent.

  “Yeah,” Azadeh says, glancing at Leili. “It’s that…It’s the ice bucket challenge disease, right?”

  “And it’s neurological,” Leili adds.

  “Are you just saying that because I told you he saw a neurologist?”

  Leili moves her mouth to the side, her go-to thinking face.

  “Yes,” she says, her eyes returning to the screen.

  They don’t know either. I’m glad.

  “But seriously,” Leili continues, “what does ALS entail?”

  Leili is the only person on the planet who uses the word entail in daily conversation. “I don’t actually know,” I whisper. “My dad made me promise not to look it up.”

  “What? Why?” Azadeh asks, nose indignantly scrunched.

  “Because he said every case of ALS is different and he doesn’t want me to get freaked out reading symptoms that might not even apply to him.”

  “Well, he didn’t say we couldn’t look it up, did he?” Azadeh asks.

  My breath catches in my chest. I look toward the bedroom door, paranoid that Dad might have heard. But I hear his and Mom’s muffled voices down the hall as they get ready for bed, and I know of course he didn’t.

  “No,” I say. “He didn’t.”

  “Do you want us to?” Leili asks.

  My answer is simultaneously Of course! and Absolutely not! I stare at my door one more time, heart racing like I’m about to shoplift or something, before giving a couple tiny nods.

  Leili and Azadeh nod back, and then Azadeh’s phone is out, and it’s happening. They’re both looking down at her screen. “Okay, we got it,” Leili says.

  I’m reminded of a sleepover at their house in fifth grade, when we stayed up way too late asking the Ouija board stupid questions and patiently waiting for answers, the most memorable being that Leili was one day going to write an award-winning novel called The Beautiful Dolphin. Except in this case, I don’t know if I want to hear the answer. I pop up from the bed with my phone so I can walk around the room to distract myself.

  “Oh geez,” Azadeh says as they read.

  “It’s not…necessarily…that bad,” Leili says, but she has a horrified look on her face.

  “It’s pretty intense,” Azadeh says.

  Leili shoots her another dagger. “But you said your dad might have it, right?”

  “Right,” I say. “Yeah. I mean, he didn’t want me to look it up because he said a lot of the symptoms wouldn’t apply to him. What kind of stuff are you seeing?”

  “Um,” Leili says. “Nothing that helpful.”

  “Most of this is pretty horrible,” Azadeh says.

  I feel like I’m on the verge of a panic attack. “Okay, maybe just show me the screen.”

  “No, you don’t need to…,” Leili says. “I get why your dad thought it wasn’t worth it to look because—”

  “Show me the screen,” I say, in my commanding no-nonsense voice. Leili and Azadeh look at each other, using nonverbal twin code to try and decide what to do.

  “You sure?” Leili finally asks me.

  I nod.

  Azadeh bites her lower lip and sighs before holding up her phone. The words, slightly hard to read since it’s a screen viewed through a screen, wash over me.

  ALS, or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, is a progressive neurodegenerative disease that affects nerve cells in the brain and the spinal cord.

  Okay.

  Early symptoms vary but can include tripping, dropping things, abnormal fatigue of the arms and/or legs, slurred speech, muscle cramps and twitches, and uncontrollable periods of laughing or crying.

  All right.

  When the motor neurons eventually die, the ability of the brain to initiate and control muscle movement is lost.

  Hmm.

  With voluntary muscle action progressively affected, people may lose the ability to speak, eat, move, and breathe.

  My god. THAT’S ALL THE THINGS.

  And:

  Usually fatal.

  “Could you scroll down, please?” I ask. I’m searching the page for how long people survive after diagnosis.

  I know most of this probably doesn’t apply to my dad, but if it does, how long does he have? How long do I have with him? How long how long how long how long why is the one piece of information I need so damn hard to find?

  “Maybe put it away now,” Leili says.

  “No,” I say, “I’m fine. I just want to read this.”

  I can’t find the answer. There is no answer.

  “We’ll put it away,” Leili says, guiding Azadeh’s hand down out of the frame.

  I feel a storm threatening to explode from behind my eyes, so I take off my glasses (were you picturing me as someone who wears glasses? well, I do) and press the knuckle of my left thumb against each of my eyes. I’ve cried in front of Leili and Azadeh before—we’ve been besties for seven years, so, obviously—but I don’t feel like doing it right now, especially over something that might not even be relevant to my situation. I take a deep breath.

  “Well, okay then,” I say. “That was educational.”

  “I’m so sorry, Win,” Leili says.

  “It’s not just me, right? ALS seems like the absolute worst.”

  “Well, it’s not not the absolute worst,” Azadeh says.

  “Yeah.” I plop down onto my beige rolling chair and stare at the framed picture on my desk of me with Mom and Dad. I’m holding their hands in front of the house we rented on Cape Cod when I was ten.

  “How were your parents?” Azadeh asks, almost like she knows I’m looking at them. “When they told you.”

  “My dad seemed normal,” I say. “Pretty calm, made some jokes. My mom seemed a little more tense. But they both said they didn’t want me to worry.”

  “I’m sure most of what’s on here is not applicable to your dad’s situation,” Leili says.

  “Definitely,” Azadeh agrees.

  I’m not as sure. It said dropping things.

  And other symptoms may have been in plain view for months, and I’ve just been completely oblivious.

  “It’s still a lot to process, thou
gh,” Leili says. “If you ever want to talk to someone, I’m sure Connie would see you.” Connie is Leili and Azadeh’s therapist. They love her.

  “For sure, for sure,” Azadeh says.

  Leili and Azadeh started seeing Connie after their mom, who’s a gastroenterologist, was involved in this big malpractice suit a couple of years ago. It almost cost her her job and put tons of stress on their family. Their younger brother, Ramin, essentially stopped talking for three months. It was that bad. I’d always felt so lucky that my family wasn’t going through something like that. Ha.

  “Thanks,” I say.

  “We can come over if you want,” Azadeh says.

  “It’s almost ten o’clock,” I say. “And we have school tomorrow.”

  “We wild like dat.”

  “There’s no way Mom and Papa would drive us to Winnie’s right now,” Leili says.

  “I would run there!” Azadeh lets loose her big, throaty laugh, the one that makes people turn and look when we’re at the movies or Luigi’s Pizza. It only lasts a few seconds, though, before Leili nudges her and she reins it in. I kind of wish she’d kept laughing.

  “Thanks, Oz,” I say. “But I’m good.”

  “Well, we should probably sleep soon,” Leili says. She looks to Azadeh, checking if she has anything else to say. Azadeh gives a subtle shake of her head, like Let’s give Winnie her space. I’m fairly fluent in their secret language of nods and glances. “We love you, Win. Call whenever.”

  “Even if it’s three in the morning,” Azadeh says.

  “Yeah,” Leili agrees.

  “Just not four in the morning. That’s way too late.”

  Azadeh gets a smile out of me with that one. “Thanks, ladies. Love you.” I click off first because I know they won’t.

  I spin around in my desk chair, part of me hoping my parents will knock on the door and say reassuring things. All is silent, though. They’re probably asleep already.

  Shit.