When we get to his sister’s house, he leaves the car running. “I’ll just grab him,” he says. “You can sit tight. I won’t be but a minute.”
“OK,” I say. He shuts the door and I watch him walk toward her front porch another flush of heat coursing through my body. Once he’s inside, his cell lights up in the console where he left it, blaring that obnoxious ringtone.
“Damn phone,” I mutter.
It’s silent for a few seconds and then it’s off again, lighting up and buzzing and ringing. By the time Eric gets back to the car with Aja, whoever is calling him has tried six times.
“Your phone is blowing up,” I say as he eases into the driver’s seat.
“What?” He turns to me.
“Your phone,” I say as it takes off ringing again. He picks it up, punches a button, and holds it to his ear.
“Hey, Aja.” I turn toward the backseat to look at him.
“Hey,” he says. I’m about to ask him if he knows that more cars are stolen on New Year’s Eve than any other holiday, when the panic in Eric’s voice catches my attention.
“What’s going on? Slow down . . . slow down! When? . . . How? Oh my god . . . OK, OK . . . Jesus . . .”
His face grows paler with each word and there’s a tremor to his voice I’ve never heard before. I stare at him, a pit growing in my stomach, and then his eyes meet mine.
I raise my eyebrows and he mouths one word: “Ellie.”
PART III
We should meet in another life, we should meet in air, me and you.
Sylvia Plath
(Twenty years ago)
* * *
* * *
The New York Times
(continued from page 19B) It begs the question: what does the future look like for a girl who can’t have human contact?
“No contact sports, for starters,” says Dr. Benefield. “And yes, Ms. Jenkins must be very careful about hugging her daughter or touching her anywhere that’s not covered by a protective layer of clothing. Allergies are unpredictable and you just can’t take the chance. One day it’s a severe rash and then the next it’s anaphylaxis—life or death.”
A frightening prospect for any child, but what about as she gets older? I mention boys, the normal rites of passage that teenagers go through: hand-holding, first kisses—and eventually, sex.
Dr. Benefield shifts in his seat.
“Sometimes science can advance at a rapid pace,” he says. “It’s entirely possible that, with the right attention and research, a cure of some sort could be conceived for Jubilee’s condition in the next five or ten years.”
And if it isn’t?
He clears his throat. “Then yes, Jubilee will remain unable to have skin-to-skin contact.”
“So, no kissing,” I clarify. “No sex.”
Dr. Benefield offers a curt nod. “Correct.”
It’s a difficult condition to fathom, and many draw comparisons between Jubilee’s case and The Boy in the Plastic Bubble, a 1976 made-for-TV movie starring John Travolta. The plot was loosely based on the real lives of David Vetter and Ted DeVita, two boys born with extremely compromised immune systems—any contact with water, food, or clothing that had not been highly sterilized could kill them. The boys were both confined to sterile, germ-free rooms for the entirety of their short lives (Vetter survived 13 years, while DeVita lived to see his eighteenth birthday).
When I mention the “bubble boys” to Dr. Benefield, he nods, as if it’s not the first time he’s heard the association. “It’s just an entirely different circumstance,” he says. “Jubilee can be out in the world—she just can’t connect with anyone in it.”
He means “connect” in the physical sense of course, but one has to wonder if it’s a Freudian slip. After all, if you can’t touch, hug, or kiss anyone—how much connecting are you doing?
For now, Jubilee doesn’t let those overarching life questions about her future get to her. When our little interview comes to a close and she’s done with her homework at the kitchen table, she looks from me to her mom. “Can I go read now?”
This story is part of a special health series of articles on the sharp rise of childhood allergies in the world, including a look at some of the rarest conditions. Look for next week’s article: “The Boy Who Couldn’t See the Sun.”
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twenty-three
JUBILEE
IF YOU’D TOLD me six months ago that shortly in the future I’d be on Interstate 95 speeding north in the dead of night on New Year’s Eve in a car with a man and a ten-year-old boy, I’d have laughed and laughed and laughed (after panicking a bit at the mere thought of leaving my house). But I guess nobody could have told me that, because six months ago I was alone.
And now? Decidedly not alone, but wishing with each passing road sign that I had been more parsimonious with that Xanax Madison gave me for Christmas.
I glance over at Eric, who’s had the same intense look on his face since he got the phone call. When he hung up, he immediately started the car, floored it out of Connie’s driveway, and began driving through the streets of Lincoln like a man possessed. It wasn’t until we were passing the dark, overgrown, abandoned golf course on the outskirts of town that I realized he wasn’t taking me home, and the panic started to set in. Just when I thought I had gotten used to being in the few places outside of my house that I had ventured—when I was starting to think I had conquered most of my agoraphobia—I was now stuck in a tin can hurtling outside the city limits and learning that I am not in fact over my fear of the unknown.
“So, um . . . ,” I say in a small voice. “I guess I’m coming with you?” Eric’s elbow is lodged on the door frame, propping his fist up to clench tufts of his hair. Lost in thought, he barely glances at me when I speak, and then his eyes go wide.
“Shit!” he says, but he doesn’t slow the car. “I didn’t even— All I was thinking about was getting to her. Do you want me to turn around?”
I do, but I also know that he doesn’t really want to. “No, it’s OK.”
“Are you sure? I could stop at the next exit. Call you a cab?”
Being alone in a place I’ve never been before strikes even more fear than driving somewhere I’ve never been with Eric and Aja.
“No, no, it’s fine.”
Eric nods, squeezing his hair again.
“What happened?” I ask quietly.
He sighs before he speaks. “Drug overdose. Ellie had a seizure.”
“Oh my god. From what?”
“I don’t know. I knew Ellie was into pot, but I didn’t think—I thought that was all. Goddamn it! I told Stephanie . . .” He trails off into his own thoughts.
I wait a few minutes and then ask: “Is she OK . . . is she going to be?”
“I don’t know.”
WE STOP FOR gas and snacks after about an hour, but the rest of the five-hour drive is mostly silent. When we cross the New Hampshire border around three a.m., Aja says: “Did you know it takes Venus two hundred forty-three Earth days to make a full rotation on its axis, but only two hundred twenty-five to orbit the sun? So a day on Venus is longer than a year.”