A Perfect Life (34 page)
Authors: Eileen Pollack
So the three of us will go to Manhattan for the wedding. We will buy tickets to a ballet at Lincoln Center, tour the Museum of Natural History, take in MoMA and the Met. Yosef will steal an afternoon from work and treat us all to lunch. “Only not Russian Tea Room,” he will joke. “I've got more than enough Russkies at home.” Yosef finally managed to bring his family to New York. He married a girl he only half loved to help him care for his parents, and they now have three kids. Yosef hates his jobâI often find brochures from his company in my mailbox, the ads for enzymes and gels and new biotechnological gizmos overlaid with Yosef's handwritten claims: “Puts hair on chest!” or, “Shines shoes and cures female complaint!” But he loves the money it allows him to lavish on his kids, on his parents, and on us. Once, he took Lila on a spree to FAO Schwarz. If I tell him she might have the gene for Valentine's, he will want to take her on a spree to Bloomingdale's. Then again, what harm could that do? Why should I deny Lila any
thing she might enjoy? Although I would hate to treat her as if she were one of those kids who gets to go to Disney World because she has only a few months to live. For all we know, she's perfectly healthy.
I pull her closer to my chest, then find myself thinking of the very first time I ever nursed her. That awful obstetrician had instructed me to allow my daughter no more than five minutes on each side. I debated going back to my room to get a watch, but Lila was already batting a breast as if it were a vending machine that wouldn't give her what she paid for. I squeezed the swollen nipple and helped her latch on. She closed her eyes to concentrate. I felt a stab of pain, then a surge of relief as she started to drain my milk. I had nothing to do but study her face, mouth working, eyes shut. I watched that face for so long, I had the sensation that Lila and I were one. And I drew as much contentment from watching that face as Lila seemed to draw from sucking at my nipple. Not a single clock marked those minutes. Time hadn't merely stopped. It had ceased to exist.
This book was inspired by the dedication and brilliance of the men and women who found the marker for Huntington's chorea, a story wonderfully told by Alice Wexler in her memoir,
Mapping Fate
. Readers may notice certain parallels between the histories of Jane Weiss and the neurobiologist Nancy Wexler, or between Arlo Guthrie and Willie Land. That said,
A Perfect Life
is entirely a work of fiction, and no resemblance is intended between the occurrences and characters portrayed in this book and any actual events or people.
I am deeply grateful to those who provided me with advice and encouragement while I was researching, writing, and editing this novel: Charles Baxter, Suzanne Berne, Nicholas Delbanco, Tom Glaser, Linda Gregerson, Sharon Greytak, David Housman, Marcie Hershman, Maria Massie, Maxine Rodburg, Adam Schwartz, and Therese Stanton. Most of all, I want to thank my agent, Jenni Ferrari-Adler; my editor, Megan Lynch; and everyone at Ecco Press who has helped to give life to this book.
EILEEN POLLACK
holds a B.S. in physics from Yale and an MFA in fiction from the Iowa Writers' Workshop. She is the author of two story collections, two previous novels, and two books of nonfiction, and has received fellowships from the NEA, the Michener Foundation, and the Rona Jaffe Foundation. Her work has been included in the Best American Short Stories and the Best American Essays series. She is a former director and current faculty member of the Helen Zell MFA program in creative writing at the University of Michigan. She divides her time between Ann Arbor, Michigan, and New York City.
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A PERFECT LIFE
. Copyright © 2016 by Eileen Pollack. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
FIRST EDITION
ISBN 978-0-06-241917-0
EPub Edition May 2016 ISBN 9780062419200
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