A Perfect Life (25 page)

By dawn, I had grown restless. I couldn't keep putting off decisions that couldn't be put off. I walked to Central Square and bought the paper. The morning was overcast. Paul Minot was down from Maine, visiting Maureen, and I didn't want to interrupt them. Besides, I was afraid that Maureen would consider an abortion an affront to anyone whose parents might have judged their child too imperfect to live.

I loitered by the Dunkin' Donuts. The smell of coffee made me queasy, but the bland, cakey crullers seemed just
what I needed to make my nausea subside. I bought four crullers and took the bag to a bench by city hall, where I studied that day's
Times
. In the lower-left-hand corner, just beneath a story about the latest cease-fire in Beirut, there was a head shot of Sumner, that sealish face and double chin.
RESEARCHERS REPORT GENETIC TEST FOR RARE KILLER
, the headline ran. “Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have discovered the first genetic test for Valentine's chorea, a fatal disorder that slowly destroys the victim's mind and nervous system. . . .” Sumner described the “emotional relief” the test might bring people at risk for “this scourge.” He was cut off by a notice that the article was continued inside, as if my life were a serial whose next installment was delayed to keep the audience coming back.

On the jump page, I found a brief but surprisingly accurate description of the method I had used to locate the marker. A diagram detailed each step, although Willie would have said such illustrations made sense only to those who already knew what they meant. Beneath the photo was a sidebar. The reporter (I guessed the byline belonged to the woman in the brown dress) had done her research thoroughly. “Though apparently healthy, Weiss, 33, lives with the knowledge that she might carry the silent gene for this killer.” Dr. Weiss, she went on, was “obviously reluctant” to submit to the test or to divulge her result. The reporter mentioned Willie, although she didn't link him to me and said only that his father, “a popular performer,” had died of Valentine's chorea in 1969, which was why the condition was sometimes referred to as “Dusty Land disease,” which sounded like something a person might contract by living
in a desert. Willie, whom the reporter had reached in New Hampshire, was quoted as saying, “I'm happy for all the folks who want to know if they have it. Me, I think a test that tells you when and how you're going to die is just about the last thing anyone needs.”

Thanks a lot,
I thought.
Couldn't he have kept his reservations private?
“Willie Land,” I kept reading, trying to convince myself this “Willie Land” in the paper was the father of my child.

There was a photo of Dusty lying shriveled in his bed, and another of me, leaning against a wall in Kresge Auditorium, blank eyed, detached. The profile ended with a quote from my father—harmless, thank God—about the need to redouble our fundraising efforts and develop not only a test for Valentine's, but also a cure.

The other newspapers carried similar quotes. The
Post
, in its lead editorial, endorsed Vic's committee. “Human beings,” it said, “are the only creatures who seem to be aware they will die. Until now, we have been spared knowing the details. How will seemingly healthy young people react to learning that an agonizing death lies in wait when they reach middle age? Surely this is too important an issue to be left to scientists.” The
Journal
debated the ethics of insurance companies refusing coverage to those who tested positive for the gene. The
Globe
ran a picture that my father must have given them—a snapshot of my mother, Laurel, and me taken in the fifties. All three of us wore identical dresses with green leaves, red cherries, and white collars. Laurel and I wore our hair parted down the middle, braided, with bows. Laurel's eyes were more slanted than
mine, and my nose was a little longer, but I was surprised by how much we both resembled our mother.

I studied those photos. But it wasn't news of the past I needed. It was news of my future. That's why people read newspapers, I thought. For the horoscopes and the forecasts, the predictions of war and whether the market will go up or down. Everyone pretends to care what happened the day before to strangers, but all we really want to find are clues to our own future.

A man with matted hair settled on my bench. I had seen him often in Central Square, walking with a strange hop-skip-hop-jump to avoid stepping on the cracks, touching every second telephone pole. I held out the crullers.

“Are they poison?” he asked.

No, I said. I had just bought more than I could eat.

“You made an error,” he said. He took a cruller, set it on his knees, clapped twice, took a bite, set it down, clapped two more times, took another bite, clapped.

I walked to the drugstore and bought a pregnancy kit. I wanted to take the test right then, but I would need to wait until the next morning, when my urine was fresh. In the meantime, I would go home and grab a glass of milk to wash down the crullers. I would put on a warmer jacket, then bike to the lab and find out if my blood had been tested. If it hadn't, I would start running the gels myself. I was a scientist. I couldn't allow my fear to prevent me from doing what I needed to do. I would get in touch with Laurel and beg her to give me a sample of her blood. When the data were in—Laurel's blot, my own, our cousins', and our aunt's—I would try to figure out which pattern the marker
for Valentine's took in our family, and, after that, whether I had the gene. And whether Laurel had it.

I climbed the stairs to my apartment, patting my trousers for the key. I must have left without locking the door, I thought. I went in and found my sister standing before a window. On the floor beside her feet lay a rubber wet suit.

She lifted the newspapers from my arms and dropped them by the trash. “You should never, never read your own reviews. They'll only throw you off. It's like trying to drive while you're looking in the rearview mirror.” She smiled the smile that meant she knew how much I loved her. “My brilliant sister, Jane.” Lifting the wet suit, she looked like Peter Pan bringing Wendy his shadow. “I know today isn't ideal sailing weather, but this will keep you warm.”

I didn't know what to say. Wet suit or not, the last thing I wanted was to spend this miserable afternoon bobbing up and down on the Charles River. “Are people even allowed to go sailing when it's this cold?”

“You think everything is illegal. There's no law against going sailing in December.”

“What about you? You don't have a wet suit.”

“I haven't capsized a boat in years.” Laurel folded the limbs of the suit and tucked the amputated torso in her leather backpack. “You wanted to go sailing so badly . . . that's why I took off a day from rehearsals and drove all the way down from Vermont.”

The invitation seemed more like a punishment than a treat, but I couldn't bring myself to turn it down. I asked if I was supposed to change into the wet suit, and if so, what I was meant to wear underneath.

Laurel smiled, exposing the bridge of skin to her gum. “You remember that guy Chuck I went out with? He lent me a key to the Harvard boathouse and forgot to ask for it back. You can put the wet suit on there. You'll want to bring a slicker and rubber boat-shoes.”

I owned neither of these items, so I pulled on a nylon windbreaker and a blue woolen cap from Weiss's. We walked down to the street, where Cruz's motorbike was parked. Laurel handed me a helmet, although she didn't have one herself.

“This was the only way I could get down here,” she apologized. “It's okay, Cruz taught me how to ride.”

I shrugged and climbed on. I didn't care about anything but wrapping my arms around my sister and burying my face in her hair. The boathouse wasn't far. Few cars were on the streets. But I had to use all my self-control not to drag my heels to slow her down.

We parked beside the boathouse. Laurel let us in. The room smelled of damp wood; the river sloshed beneath the floor. Laurel handed me the wet suit. Maybe we could just go for a walk, I suggested. I knew a nice café where we could stop for hot cocoa.

“You keep after me and after me to take you sailing. Then you say no, you don't want to go sailing, you want to drink hot chocolate.”

“I didn't mean for you to take me sailing in December! I just wanted to spend time with you. To talk. We do have a lot to talk about.”

Laurel glanced around the boathouse. “I could teach you how to row. That would keep you warm. A scull is even
less likely than a sailboat to capsize, and you can right it yourself.”

There was no point in arguing. It was like the time we were kids and she wrote a play and refused to speak to me until I gave in and agreed to act the role she had assigned. “All right,” I said. “I've always thought rowers looked, I don't know, as if they were doing something human beings weren't supposed to be able to do.”

“They can. Come on, I'll show you.”

I struggled into the wet suit—it was warm but constrictive, like being swallowed by a snake—and helped Laurel slide the scull from its rack. Balancing it above our heads, we maneuvered it to the dock. She fitted it with oars and showed me how to climb in. At first, it was awkward. But I sat behind Laurel and did whatever my sister did, rolling the oars beneath my palms, pushing out, then pulling up, and in no time we were gliding so fast I felt afraid; skimming that close to the surface in such a frail shell was like soaring through the clouds on a paper airplane.

“You're doing great!” Laurel called back to me. “You're a natural!” She began to row faster, as if she were trying to get away from me. Inside the wet suit I was sweating.
Stroke, stroke, stroke, stroke
. We rowed beneath the heavy gray stones of the bridge, which magnified the oars' slap on the water. We would be stopped by the dam eventually. We couldn't keep rowing out to sea.

I opened my mouth to tell Laurel to stop. The wind caught my throat, and I leaned overboard and gagged. The doughnuts came up. I kept retching bile, as if I might vomit out my unborn child.

Laurel looked over her shoulder. “Jane? Are you okay? What's the matter? Jane!”

It scared me that anyone, especially my sister, would regard me with such concern. I swallowed hard and wiped my mouth. “I'm not sick,” I said. “I'm pregnant.”

Laurel's oars windmilled against the water. The scull spun sideways and rocked. I gripped the sides of the boat. Laurel fumbled with the oars, laying them inside the scull. “You poor thing.” She patted my ankle. “How many weeks has it been?”

The river smelled of sewage. “Eleven,” I said.

“What are you waiting for? You didn't do it on purpose, did you?”

I asked if she was kidding.

“How do I know? Maybe you found out that you don't have the gene.”

“Or maybe I don't plan everything. Maybe I'm not quite as cold-blooded as you've always thought. Maybe I was tired. Maybe the moon was out. Maybe there was no moon. Maybe I was lonely. Maybe I wanted to be in love with someone. Maybe I
was
in love with someone.” I started crying harder, the truth coming to me as I said it. “Maybe I really, really wanted to have a kid, and I knew I couldn't bring myself to have one on purpose. Maybe I wanted to trick myself into needing to marry Willie. Maybe I made love to a man without protection because I got tired of thinking so much. Of protecting myself so much. Of protecting all of us so much.”

Laurel stared at the shore. “But if he's at risk, and you're at risk . . . Jane, you know I'm no good with statistics. But
it's higher, isn't it? The chance? Any baby you might have with Willie would be more likely to get it?”

She sounded jealous, as if I had attempted the most difficult dive in the Olympic event she had been practicing all these years.

“Does Willie know?” she asked. “No, I'll bet you haven't told anyone. But listen, don't try to go through this alone. It's awful. I don't only mean how much an abortion hurts. And believe me, it does hurt. I'm talking about how terrible you feel afterward.” She dipped her hand in the river and spread cold water on my forehead, then tapped the remaining drops on my neck, like perfume. “You swear you'll never let it happen again. And the second time . . . The second time, I almost didn't go through with it. I was about to walk out. Then I realized that my kid wouldn't have anyone but me to take care of it. I'm not sure I would be a decent mother even if I weren't at risk. I can't imagine myself staying in one place and being responsible for someone else all the time.”

The clouds were suffocatingly low, the same slate gray as the river. I imagined Laurel on her back, knees up, gripping a stranger's hand.

“I'll go with you,” she said. “All you have to do is to let me know when.”

She was saying this to prove she was less judgmental than I was. Or she found it easier to be with me now that she knew I wasn't perfect. I told her I hadn't decided what to do. Besides, I didn't know her number in Vermont. I didn't even know if she had a phone.

“Let's get you home,” she said. “We'll take it as slowly as you need to. If you feel sick again, we'll rest.”

It took us twice as long to row back as it had taken us to come. I crawled out of the scull and lay on the swaying dock. I had to close my eyes so I wouldn't see the clouds rushing past.

“I'm sorry,” Laurel said. “I can't lift the boat myself.”

Somehow I got to my feet. We swung the scull to our shoulders and slid it in its berth. Laurel handed me her jacket. The leather smelled of balsam. “We need to get you home so you can take a hot shower. Then I'll have to start back. There are people I need to see about scenery and costumes. It gets dark so early these days, I would rather drive while it's light.”

I clenched my jaw shut to keep my teeth from chattering. “Wait,” I said. “I have a favor to ask you.”