CHAPTER 23
It’s early in the morning, not yet six o’clock, and Joe is dressed and ready, sitting in his chair in the living room, waiting for Rosie and the girls. The shades are still drawn, the room dark, lit only by the TV, which is tuned to QVC. Rosie must’ve been up in the middle of the night again. He’d like to watch the news, but the remote is on the ironing board, and Joe can’t motivate out of his seat to fetch it. Two women with high, nasal voices are yammering on and on about the miracle of furniture coasters. Joe hasn’t moved a piece of furniture in this house since getting rid of the cribs a million years ago, but the ladies win him over. This innovation is pure genius. And it’s only $19.95. He’s searching his pockets for his phone when Katie walks in.
She mumbles a sleepy hello and plops herself onto the couch. She’s wearing her typical uniform of black yoga pants, UGGs, and a hoodie, but something about her is different. Her face is clean. Joe can’t remember the last time he saw his little girl without makeup on, especially around her eyes. She wouldn’t agree, but Joe thinks she looks better without it. Less is more. She’s a naturally beautiful girl.
He’d like to chat with Katie, to find out what’s new with her and how she’s doing, but he can’t seem to start a conversation these days. He waits for her to throw the first pitch, but she’s got her eyes closed. Her breathing is long and steady, in and out, her face placid. Her eyes remain shut. Joe studies her and wonders whether she’s fallen asleep. Maybe she just doesn’t want to watch QVC. Maybe she just doesn’t want to watch her old man.
Damn it. The coasters are gone. While Joe was watching Katie, QVC moved on to the next item, a device that folds clothes. He has no interest in this one. Meghan is still upstairs, and Rosie is in the bathroom doing her hair, a multistep process that Joe has learned cannot be rushed or skipped over. They don’t know where the hell Patrick is, and they’re not waiting on him. Meghan appears, looking urgent, bundled in a puffy black coat, a black hat, and a fuzzy white scarf, a pocketbook slung over her shoulder.
“We ready? Where’s Ma?” she asks.
“Two minutes,” calls Rosie from the bathroom.
Meghan hovers on the threshold. Katie’s still asleep or meditating or ignoring all of them. Rosie finally walks into the living room, the chemical scent of aerosol hairspray blowing in with her like a tornado.
“What’s that smell?” asks Rosie, her nose scrunched up, detecting something other than hairspray.
Joe hadn’t noticed anything before, but now he does. He zeroes in on Yaz lying at the foot of Rosie’s rocking chair, sitting in a puddle of diarrhea.
“Shit,” says Joe.
“Language,” says Rosie.
“Just describing what I’m seeing,” says Joe, pointing to Yaz.
“Gross,” says Meghan.
“Aw, not again,” says Rosie, retreating in a hurry to the kitchen.
Yaz hadn’t had an accident in the house since he was a puppy until last week or so, and now it’s an everyday occurrence. Yaz lifts his head and meets Joe’s eyes, and Joe could swear Yaz is apologizing. Yaz returns his head to the rug, helpless and ashamed of what he’s done, breaking Joe’s heart.
Katie gets up and squats down next to Yaz. “Poor baby.” She carefully scoops him into her hands and carries him into the kitchen.
Rosie returns with a bottle of Windex, paper towels, and a can of Lysol.
“At least it wasn’t the couch again,” says Rosie, wiping the floor.
Katie returns with Yaz wrapped in a towel. “What should I do with him?”
“Put him on his bed and let’s go,” says Rosie, spraying Lysol and waving her hand through the air.
“Where’s Pat?” asks Meghan.
“We’re not waiting for him,” says Rosie.
Rosie herds them toward the front door. Pausing in the foyer behind the girls, Joe dips his fingers in the holy water above the statue of Mary and signs the cross. Rosie does the same, then looks up at Joe and smiles.
“Here we go,” says Joe.
And they’re off to the hospital.
THEY EXIT THE elevators on the fourteenth floor of the Blake Building, and a palpable relief lightens Joe’s step as he walks down the hallway behind Rosie. They make their way past the waiting room inhabited with people slumped in their chairs, looking as if they’ve been there all night. Despite the languorous appearance of its residents, it’s a room expecting celebration. The sleepy people here are accessorized with Mylar balloons and stuffed animals and vases of cheery flowers. Nothing like the gateway to hell on floor 7 of the Wang Center.
Rosie stops, and Joe follows her into a room where they find JJ and Colleen sitting upright together in a hospital bed. And there he is. Joseph Francis O’Brien III, swaddled in a white blanket, wearing one of the two thousand mint-green infant caps Rosie knitted for him, cradled in Colleen’s arms.
Wasting no time, Rosie makes a beeline for the baby. She hugs and kisses JJ and Colleen, but it’s the baby she’s after.
“Can I hold him?” asks Rosie. “I just sanitized my hands.”
“Sure,” says Colleen.
Rosie scoops her grandson into her arms, and her face becomes a memory, a picture from their photo album twenty-five years ago, an expression of uncomplicated joy and love Joe hasn’t seen in a long while. Rosie removes the cap and glides her fingers over the baby’s bald, somewhat cone-shaped head.
“He’s perfect,” she says, tears in her eyes.
“Congratulations,” says Katie. “He’s so cute.”
“I wanna hold him next,” says Meghan. “How are you feeling, Colleen?”
“Okay.”
Colleen’s face is without makeup, swollen and splotchy. Her hair is damp at the hairline, happiness and exhaustion fighting for the spotlight in her eyes. She actually still looks pregnant, a significant bump at her midsection protruding beneath the bedsheets, but Joe’s not dumb enough to mention it.
“She’s a champ,” says JJ. “Sixteen hours of labor, forty minutes of pushing, no drugs. She tore a little—”
“TMI, JJ,” says Meghan, holding up her hand.
“Thank you,” says Colleen’s father, who is sitting in a visitor’s chair near the window. “I know I didn’t want to hear that next part again.”
“Sorry, Bill,” says Joe, walking over to shake Colleen’s father’s hand. “I didn’t see you over there.”
“No problem. I’ve got three daughters. I’m used to going unnoticed in a room.”
Joe laughs. “How about the little champ’s stats?”
“He’s seven pounds, eight ounces, twenty-one inches,” says Colleen.
Joe stands beside Rosie and studies his grandson’s sleeping, puffy eyelids, his round button of a nose, his delicate, pursed lips, his dimpled chin, his pink face, his bald cone head. In truth, he’s an ugly little thing, and yet he’s the most beautiful sight Joe’s ever laid eyes on.
Joseph Francis O’Brien. A name now passed down three generations. Joe’s at once bursting with pride and wishing they’d picked Colin or Brendan or any of the other fine Irish names on their list, names having no association with Huntington’s. Joe hopes his name and an ugly Irish mug are the only two things this baby inherited from him.
When Joe’s kids were born, he remembers thinking they each began with limitless possibility. Each pink-headed baby was a blank slate. But now he’s looking at his grandson, only a couple of hours old, and he’s wondering whether everything is already mapped out, the parameters preset, his future predetermined, written in the stars before his cord was cut. For Joe’s mother, for Joe, for JJ and Meghan, Huntington’s disease was inevitable, fated before they took their first breaths. How many times will this story repeat itself? A repeated DNA sequence causing a tragically repeated life story, generation after generation after generation.
Birth. Huntington’s. Death.
Beginning. Middle. End.