Rosie unwraps the folds of the blanket to reveal the baby’s tiny feet, and while she’s kissing his toes, Joe is skipping over the baby’s entire life, imagining him as a man with Huntington’s. Rosie rewraps the sleeping, ugly, beautiful baby and passes him to Meghan’s ready arms, and Joe is imagining the baby as a shriveled, not-yet-old man, dying alone in a hospital bed with no one to hold him.
While Rosie fits the green knit cap back onto baby Joseph’s misshapen head, Joe tries to divine the number of CAGs strung together inside there, fearing the worst. Please, God, don’t let him have what I gave to JJ.
Joe takes a deep breath and shakes his head, trying to rid himself of this overpowering feeling of doom, but it’s got the gravitational pull of a large planet. He should feel happy. He looks around the room. Everyone is smiling. Everyone but Joe and the baby.
“Whatsamatta, Joe?” asks Rosie, elbowing him.
“Me? Nothin’,” says Joe.
He’s got to snap out of it. They’re not cursed. Inheritance is random. Shit luck. Be lucky, baby boy. Rosie eyes him with suspicion and annoyance.
“Would you like to hold him, Joe?” asks Colleen.
“No thanks,” says Joe.
It’s one thing to drop and break a crystal pitcher, his cell phone (he’s on his third), many wineglasses and jelly jars, but he’d never forgive himself if he dropped his newborn grandson. He’ll keep his clumsy, disease-ridden paws off this innocent baby and enjoy him from a safe distance. Both Rosie and Colleen’s father seem relieved by Joe’s answer. Joe notices Bill keeping a ready, watchful eye on him. Joe doesn’t blame him one bit. A grandfather’s protective instinct. Good man.
Patrick shows up carrying a white teddy bear, smiling through a busted-up face.
“Jesus, Pat,” says Meghan.
“Bar fight. You should see the other four guys.”
His right eye is swollen shut. He’s got a shiner ripening purple and green under the other, and his lip is torn open at the corner.
“Your lip is bleeding,” says Katie.
“I’m fine. Congratulations,” says Patrick to Colleen, handing her the bear. “Good job, brother.”
“Look at you,” says Rosie. “You need stitches.”
“I’m fine,” says Patrick, touching the baby’s blanket, having a look.
“You can’t be in here near the baby like that,” says Rosie, swatting at Patrick’s hand.
“I’m not gonna get blood on the baby.”
“You’re already in the hospital. Go down to the ER,” says Rosie.
“Ma, I’m not spending the next twenty hours in the ER.”
“That’s not going to close on its own. Don’t argue with me. Meg, go with him.”
“Aw, why do I have to go with him?” asks Meghan. She kisses baby Joseph on the head and snuggles him into her soft scarf.
“Because I said so,” says Rosie.
“Fine,” says Meghan, passing the baby to Katie. “You suck, Pat.”
“See what you have to look forward to?” Rosie says to Colleen and JJ.
Joe watches Patrick shuffling out of the room, escorted by his younger sister, and Joe knows it’s time to have a sit-down with his son. Patrick rarely comes home after his shift at the bar, and they have no idea where he goes. They’re not aware of a girlfriend. As much as Joe and Rosie aren’t fans of his all-nighters and sleeping around, that behavior isn’t so extreme for Patrick. It’s the fighting. He’s been in a number of brawls in the past month, and that’s new. Joe thinks Meghan’s gene status is hitting Patrick particularly hard. Joe sighs.
Colleen’s mother and sisters return from the cafeteria, carrying trays of coffee. There are hugs and congratulations and gushing, and cups of coffee are passed to Bill and JJ, and the room is now a party, loud and crowded.
“I’m sorry, you guys, but I’m really tired,” says Colleen. “You mind if Joey and I take a little nap?”
Of course, everyone understands. Katie passes baby Joseph back to his mother. Colleen’s sisters make a plan to check on her in an hour. Joe kisses Colleen on the head.
“You done good, hun.”
“Thanks, Joe.”
Katie and Rosie decide to go to the cafeteria for breakfast. Joe and JJ begin heading to the main building to check on Patrick in the ER, but JJ asks Joe to join him outside for a few minutes instead. Joe follows JJ away from the General a couple of blocks to a bench where they take a seat, and JJ pulls two cigars from his coat pocket. JJ raises his eyebrows, offering one to Joe.
“Absolutely,” says Joe.
Joe’s not a smoker, and he actually hates the nasty taste of a cigar, even a supposedly good one, but he’s never passed up an invitation to smoke a stogie. For Joe, the cigar is never the point. Smoking a cigar is all about male bonding, the guy equivalent of shopping or mani-pedis. JJ lights the cigars, and they both take a couple of puffs.
“I have a son,” says JJ, marveling at the sound and truth of the words.
“Yes, you do. You’re a father now.”
“It’s amazing, isn’t it, Dad?”
“It is.”
“Do you remember this moment with me, when I was born?”
“I do. Best day of my life.”
JJ crosses his right ankle over his left knee, swings his arm over his dad’s shoulder, and puffs his cigar between his teeth.
“You know I love you and Mom. And Pat and Meg and Katie. And I love Colleen. But I don’t even know this baby, and the love—” JJ clears his throat and wipes his suddenly wet eyes with the back of his hand. “It’s bigger. I’d lie down in traffic for him right now. I didn’t know it could get bigger.”
Joe nods. “This is only the beginning.”
Wait until he grabs your finger, smiles at you, says he loves you, cries in your arms. Shares a cigar with you after the birth of his first child.
And a bigger love swells inside Joe, pushing aside the overwhelming fears of every horrible thing that will and might be, making room for every magnificent thing that is and might be. This is only the beginning, and there’s more to the middle than Huntington’s. HD will be Joe’s death, but his life and JJ’s and Meghan’s lives and the life of this beautiful baby boy, whatever his fate, is about a million other things that have nothing to do with HD.
Joe puffs on his stogie, hating the bitter taste but loving the sweet experience, soaking in this magnificent moment in JJ’s life. The birth of his first child. A son. Joe’s grandson.
And then it hits him. This is a pretty fuckin’ magnificent moment in Joe’s life, too. Right here on this bench with his son on a cold December morning in Boston. Proof that even a life cursed with Huntington’s can be magnificent.
“This is only the beginning, JJ.”