CHAPTER 21
The sky is clouded over, and the morning light is dull. Joe and Katie are walking Yaz. This is more of an expression than actual description these days. Yaz is old. He’s recently lost the mojo in his scamper and doesn’t have the stamina to walk up the steep hills of Charlestown. So Katie carries him, tucked in the crook of her elbow like a furry football, and Joe and Katie walk.
It’s Wednesday, and Joe has the day off. Katie doesn’t teach until noon. The chilly, damp November air is harsh and unwelcome against the exposed skin of Joe’s face and hands. They haven’t seen any joggers or mothers pushing strollers or even any other dog walkers. Town feels oppressively quiet today, and the dreary, subdued mood of the neighborhood seems to permeate father and daughter. They haven’t shared a word since they left the stoop.
They reach Doherty Park, and Katie releases Yaz to the ground. Yaz sniffs the grass, investigates the empty benches, and takes a whiz against the trunk of a tree. Murphy’s sitting in his spot on the far bench, holding court for at least a dozen pigeons clustered at his feet.
“Hey, Mayor,” calls Joe. “What’s new?”
“New York, New Jersey, New Mexico.”
Joe chuckles. He’s been chatting with Murphy at this park for years and doesn’t know a damn real thing about him. Still, Joe looks forward to these amusing if inconsequential exchanges and finds comfort in Murphy’s consistent presence, a soldier at his post. One of these days, Joe will stroll through this park and Murphy won’t be here. Joe imagines the pigeons gathered beneath the bench, waiting, expectant, hungry, and then simply gone, relocated to another park, devoted to some other kind soul with time and bread. Joe sighs, watching Yaz amble through a pile of gold and brown leaves. Here every day and then one day gone, for Murphy, for Yaz, for Joe. For Katie. And the pigeons don’t give a shit about any of them.
“Hey,” Joe says to Katie. “I’m sorry about losing my temper in front of Felix.”
“That’s okay.”
“That wasn’t really me.”
“I know, Dad.”
“Hope I didn’t scare him off.”
“No, it’s good. He should see what this thing looks like. He should know what he’s getting into.”
Joe flashes to a memory of his mother’s bony, contorted body, seat-belted into a wheelchair in her room at Tewksbury State Hospital, and wonders whether even Katie knows what she’s getting into.
“He seems like a good man.”
“He is.”
“I like him.”
“Thanks, Dad. Me, too.”
A young woman walks briskly toward them on the path with her leashed dog, a black Lab. The woman seems to be fixated on Joe, her intent and trajectory aimed directly at him, but when she’s close enough to make actual eye contact, she looks away. Her dog veers off the path to check out Joe and Katie on the grass, wagging its tail as it sniffs their shoes.
“Guinness, come!” the woman says, yanking the leash.
She walks right past Joe and Katie, her eyes glued to the horizon. She doesn’t smile or nod or say hello. Katie’s posture stiffens, visibly defensive or embarrassed or both. Joe doesn’t ask.
He’s generally not aware of his chorea on his own. It’s somewhat like pen tapping or foot jiggling or knuckle cracking or any other number of annoying physical habits normal people have that they might not be conscious of until someone asks them to stop. But it’s actually more than simple obliviousness. Dr. Hagler says he’s got something called anosognosia, which as far as Joe can tell is just a fancy medical word for clueless. It seems in addition to the slew of symptoms he’s already got, HD is crawling into his right hemisphere, causing anosognosia, stealing his self-awareness. So he doesn’t know he’s moving when he’s moving. He sees his lurching limbs and facial contortions through the mirror of the guarded, unforgiving stares of strangers. Then he knows.
At first they stare, curious, trying to figure him out. Is he drunk? Mentally impaired? Is he harmless or violent? Is he contagious? Deranged? Before they get too close, they decide their best course of action is to look away, to pretend not to see the revolting display of human disability before them, and they move along as quickly as possible. To the uneducated or unloving eye, Joe is horrifying, unacceptable, and then invisible.
Joe thinks about JJ and Meghan, about strangers and even friends and neighbors looking at his kids with this kind of contempt and disgust, and it makes him want to sit down next to Murphy on the bench and cry. This is what happened to his mother. Everyone assumed she was a drunk. She did drink, but Joe believes a more plausible chain of events now. She probably drank to cope with what was happening to her without her permission or control, to hide from the hideous changes in her mind and body that she had no explanation or name for, to anesthetize herself against the cruel judgment in her neighbors’ eyes and the fear in their footsteps as they walked away.
He sighs. A white puff of vapor dissolves into the gray morning. Katie’s staring at the ground with her arms crossed.
“So, where are you at with the genetic testing?” asks Joe.
“I did the first two appointments, so I can go anytime now to find out, but I’m not sure I want to know.”
Joe nods. He’s not sure he wants to know either. He slides his right hand into his front pocket and finds the quarter, the same one he’s been carrying since St. Patrick’s Day. He’s been careful not to lose or spend it. He likes reading the words beneath George Washington’s chin, as if they were a personal message meant for him. In God We Trust. The year on the quarter is 1982, the year his mother died. He holds that quarter in his hand every day, rubs it between his thumb and finger, and prays for no more Huntington’s. Patrick, Katie, his unborn grandchild. No more. The quarter is his superstitious symbol of hope, but his need to touch it and wish for fewer than thirty-six CAGs has become almost a compulsion. He fingers the quarter now, concealed inside his pocket, smooth and worn.
Please, God, no more Huntington’s.
“Felix is moving to Portland,” says Katie.
“Maine?”
“Oregon.”
“Oh. When?”
“Not sure yet. Probably sometime in the next six months.”
Six months. Joe looks over at Murphy. One day here, the next day gone.
“Are you thinking of going with him?”
“I dunno. Maybe.”