“Just out. A walk. Don’t worry.”
“How long will you be gone? Supper’s at four.”
“I’ll be back before then. I just need to clear my head. You okay?”
“I’m fine,” she says, and turns her back to Joe. He hears the flick, flick, flick of the potato peeler.
“Come here,” he says.
Joe places his hands on her shoulders, turns her toward him, and wraps his big bear arms around her back, pressing the slim length of her up against him. She turns her head and rests it on his chest.
“I love you, Joe.”
“I love you, too, hun. I’ll be home soon, okay?”
She looks up at him with her bloated face and heartbroken eyes.
“Okay. I’ll be here.”
Joe grabs his coat and walks out the front door, but before his feet hit the sidewalk, he stops and dashes back in. He dips his fingers in Rosie’s holy water and looks at the painted blue eyes of the Virgin Mary while he signs the cross. He’ll take all the help he can get.
On his way to the Navy Yard, he stops at the packie and picks up a bottle of Gentleman Jack. It’s not Glenfiddich, but it’ll do. As he hoped it would be, the Navy Yard is quiet and empty. There are no bars here since Tavern on the Water closed. The Toonies are all at the Warren Tavern, and the Townies are at Sullivan’s or Ironsides. His kids are all at Ironsides, Patrick behind the bar. And Joe is a lone Irishman in the Navy Yard, sitting on a pier, feet dangling over the edge, facing the beautiful city he’s loved and protected for more than half his life.
He woke up this morning just like on any other day. And now, just a few short hours later, he has Huntington’s disease. Of course, he had Huntington’s disease this morning before he went to see Dr. Hagler. He’s still the same guy. The only difference is in the knowing. The veil of the initial shock has lifted, and the knowing is beginning to fuck with his head.
Keeping the bottle of Gentleman Jack concealed in the brown paper bag, Joe unscrews the top and pulls back a generous swig and then another. It’s a raw, gray March day, in the low fifties but much chillier when the sun hides behind the clouds and the wind comes surfing in over the water. The whiskey feels like a glowing coal in his belly.
Ten years. He’ll be fifty-four. That’s not so bad. It could be worse. Hell, it’s more than anyone is guaranteed, especially a police officer. Every single time he’s dressed in blue, he knows he might not come home. That’s not just a noble sentiment. Joe’s been kicked, punched, and shot at. He’s chased after and confronted people who were hammered and doped up and pissed off, armed with knives and guns. He’s been to the funerals of his fellow officers. All young men. He’s been prepared to die in the line of duty since he was twenty. Fifty-four is old. It’s a fuckin’ luxury.
He gulps another nip and exhales, enjoying the burn. It’s the certainty he hates, for one thing. Knowing he has only ten years left, twenty tops, that it’s 100 percent fatal, makes his situation hopeless. Certainty eviscerates hope.
He could hope for a cure. Maybe those doctors will discover one within the next ten years. Dr. Hagler said there were promising things in development. She used words like treatment and research, but, and he listened for it, she never once said the word cure. No, Joe’s not going to hold his breath for a cure for himself, but he’ll climb a mountain of hope every day for his kids.
His kids. He knocks back another couple of gulps. They’re all in their early twenties. Still kids. In ten years, JJ, his oldest, will be thirty-five. The average age of onset. This friggin’ disease will be about done with Joe as it’s starting in on them. Maybe they’ll all get lucky, and by the grace of God, none of them will get this. He knocks three times on the pier.
Or all of them could have it, already hibernating inside them, waiting to crawl out of its cave. JJ’s a firefighter trying to start his own family. Meghan’s a dancer. A dancer with Huntington’s disease. A tear rolls down Joe’s face, hot on his wind-chilled cheek. He can’t think of anything less fair. Katie’s hoping to open her own yoga studio. Hoping. If she’s gene positive, will she stop hoping? Patrick doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing yet. He might need the better part of the next ten years to figure his shit out. How on God’s earth are he and Rosie going to tell them?
He’s also hung up on the how of it, his dying. He’s seen exactly what this disease does to a person, what it did to his mother. It’s a relentless fuckin’ demon. It’s going to strip him of everything human until he’s just a rack of twisting bones and a beating heart in a bed. And then it will kill him. Getting shot at and not running away takes bravery. Walking into a domestic dispute, breaking up a gang fight, chasing a suspect in a stolen car takes bravery. He’s not sure he’s brave enough to face year ten of Huntington’s. And there’s honor in dying as a police officer on duty. How will he find the honor in dying with Huntington’s?
He hates the thought of putting Rosie and the kids through this unthinkable ordeal, through what he and Maggie and mostly Joe’s father witnessed, powerless. Shit. Maggie. Does she know anything about this? Did his father know? Did letting everyone think his mother was a drunk carry less shame than branding her name with Huntington’s? If his father knew about HD, who was he protecting?
Everyone in Town blamed her. His mother’s tragic predicament was her own damn fault: She’s a lush. She’s a bad mother. She’s a sinner. She’s going to hell.
But everyone was wrong. She had Huntington’s. Huntington’s destroyed her ability to walk and feed herself. It mutilated her good mood, her patience and reasoning. It strangled her voice and her smile. It stole her family and her dignity, and then it killed her.
“I’m sorry, Mum. I didn’t know. I didn’t know.”
He silently cries and wipes his wet eyes with his coat sleeve. He exhales and tips back one more glug of whiskey before capping the bottle. Standing on the edge of the pier, he looks down past the tips of his sneakers at the black harbor water. He reaches into his front pocket and pulls out his change. He sorts out four quarters, warm and shiny in his cold, pink hand. Each kid has a fifty-fifty chance.
He flips the first quarter, catches it in his left hand, and then turns it over on the back of his right. He removes his left hand, revealing the coin.
Heads.
Joe throws it as far as he can. He follows its flight with his eyes, sees the point where it enters the water, and then it’s gone. He flips the second quarter, catches, turns, reveals.
Heads again.
He chucks that one into the water, too. Third quarter.
Heads.
Fuck. He winds up and pitches the coin high into the air. He loses sight of it and doesn’t see where it lands. Joe holds the last quarter in his hand, thinking of Katie. He can’t flip it. He fuckin’ can’t. He sits back down on the edge of the pier and cries into his hands, releasing pained, vulnerable, boylike sobs. He hears the voices of people walking in the shadows of Old Ironsides. They’re laughing. If he can hear them laughing, they can definitely hear him crying. He doesn’t fuckin’ care.
He’s soon emptied out. He dries his eyes, takes a deep breath, and sighs. Rosie would call that a good cry. He’d always thought that was a ridiculous expression. What could be good about crying? But he feels better, if not good.
Joe stands, opens his right hand, and again considers the fourth quarter sitting in his palm. He shoves it into his other pocket, down to the bottom where it’ll be safe, grabs his bottle of whiskey by the neck, and checks his watch. It’s time for supper.
He walks the length of the pier, whiskey playing in his head and legs, his cheeks raw from the wind and tears, with every step praying to God and the Virgin Mary and St. Patrick and whomever will listen for a dollar’s worth of good luck.