Felix is leaving for Portland on Monday. Not for good. He’s only going for the week to help with setting up the new office, interviewing some potential new employees from the West Coast, meeting with the mayor and various people in Energy, Waste Management, and City Planning, preparing for the Big Move.
The Big Move is happening June first, four months from now, and Felix has already begun packing up his apartment. Katie is curled up on his couch, drinking Chardonnay, watching him remove books from his bookcase, stacking them into cardboard boxes.
“You wanna watch a movie?” she asks.
“Yeah, lemme just finish up this shelf.”
“I don’t get why you’re doing that now.”
“One less thing I have to do later.”
She shakes her head, not comprehending him. If she were in charge of packing, those books might get thrown into boxes four days before the move, but not a minute before then. It’s not simply that she’s a procrastinator. What kind of person wants to live in a living room full of brown cardboard boxes for four months? What if he wants to read one of those books before June? She shakes her head again. She imagines all of her books packed into moving boxes, and her stomach sours. If she were moving to Portland in four months . . . The sentence hurts too much to finish it.
“What do you think about next week?” asks Felix, holding a copy of Bunker Hill by Nathaniel Philbrick.
“Whaddaya mean?” asks Katie, playing dumb.
“Are you coming with me?”
“I dunno. I’d have to find subs for all my classes, and it’s kind of last minute.”
“Jesus, Katie. You’ve known about this trip for weeks. You’re totally dragging your feet. I think you don’t want to come, and you’re afraid to tell me.”
She’s afraid of a million things right now.
“That’s not it.”
“Then come with me. We’ll explore Portland together, see what’s there. You’ll love the microbreweries. We can go hiking, maybe find a cool space for your yoga studio. And we need to look for an apartment. The move is coming up fast, and we still don’t have a place to live.”
She winces without meaning to with every “we” and hopes he didn’t see her. He “we”s her all the time. He’s being positive and hopeful, even charmingly persuasive if she’s in the right mood, but today each “we” rubs her the wrong way, a bra strap on a sunburn, a callous assumption on the edge of bullying.
She hasn’t told him she’s not going.
“I’m okay with you picking out an apartment without me.”
“I think we should do that together. Let’s go find a place, and then we can really start imagining our future there.”
The only place she can imagine her future with any clarity is in a nursing home. And there’s no “we” there.
“I’m not sure I’m coming,” she says, tiptoeing toward the real answer.
Felix stops packing and rubs his bottom lip with his thumb. He has beautiful lips.
“Do you mean Monday or June?”
Katie hesitates. She doesn’t want to talk about June. She wants to drink wine, snuggle on the couch, and watch a movie.
Felix pinches his lips. He stares at her hard, as if he’s trying to see through her eyes, into her mind or maybe her soul. Or maybe he’s trying to see whether he sees Huntington’s in her eyes.
“This is about HD,” he says.
“Yes.”
He leaves the books and boxes and sits down next to Katie on the couch.
“What about HD is keeping you from coming with me to Portland on Monday?”
“I dunno.”
“You know you don’t have HD now, even if you’re gene positive.”
“I know.”
“And you might be gene negative, so all this planning around you having HD someday might be a colossal waste of time.”
“I know.”
“Then come with me!” he says, smiling, trying to persuade her with his dimple. That usually works.
“It’s not that simple.”
“You know you could line up the subs if you wanted to.”
She shrugs out of instinct, feeling like a kid in trouble with her parents. When cornered, it’s better to say nothing.
“If you get the test results, and it’s positive, are you breaking up with me?”
“I don’t know.”
Maybe. Probably.
“Jesus. You don’t know if you’re coming with me on Monday. You don’t know if you’re moving with me in June. You don’t know if you’re going to find out your test results. You don’t know if you’re breaking up with me if you have the HD gene. What the fuck do you know, Katie?”
She doesn’t blame him for getting frustrated and mad at her, but she can’t stand it. She hangs her head and stares at her claddagh ring, imagining her lonely finger without it. She wants to shrug or say I don’t know again and avoid him. She’d like to avoid everything—her test results, thinking about June, watching her dad fidget and fall, thinking about HD, being a depressing source of anger and frustration for Felix. Maybe she should break up with him now. His life would be so much easier without her.
Sometimes it feels as if Huntington’s is the only thing she knows. Her head is filled with thoughts of nothing else. HD. HD. HD. She looks up at Felix, his brown eyes focused on her, waiting, wanting her, and she wants him, too. And then she’s struck in the heart with what she knows other than HD, the unavoidable truth and the courage to speak it.
“I love you.”
Felix softens. He hugs her and kisses her gently on the lips.
“I love you, too. I know what you’re going through is terrifying and unfair and really hard. But you have to go through it. Right now, you’re just standing still. You’re sinking in it. Let me hold your hand and go through it with you.”
Katie nods. “You’re right. I want to do that.”
Felix smiles. “Good. I love you if you do or don’t have the gene, but I’m not doing a long-distance relationship. I’m not interested in seeing you on FaceTime or Facebook. I want to be in this with you, in person. All or nothing.”
“But—”
“I’m sorry, but at least I’m being clear on what I want. Can you get clear for me? For us?”
“It’s like you’re giving me an ultimatum.”
“I’m leaving in four months,” he says, his outstretched hand pointing out the cardboard boxes. “You don’t seem to grasp this. I feel like you’re deciding not to decide, and then the day will come, and I’ll go and you’ll stay because you never decided what to do.”
He’s right and he’s wrong. He knows her so well. She’s totally stuck. She can’t make any decisions. Does she get her results, or live not knowing her genetic fate? If she gets her results and she’s gene positive, does she break up with Felix or stay with him? Does she move to Portland with Felix against her dad’s wishes, abandoning her family in their time of need, or does she stay in Charlestown?
If she had to give an answer today, she’d honor her father and stay. Interestingly, if HD weren’t in the picture, her dad practically forbidding her to move with Felix might’ve pissed her off just enough to send her packing. But HD is smack dab in the center of the picture, and her dad’s influence gives her one more valid reason to pause, legitimizing her stagnation.
To be or not to be, that is the question. And so far, the answer has been radio silence. But she grasps that whatever she decides or doesn’t decide, Felix is moving in four short months. She grasps this every hour of the day.
“I’m sorry. I don’t know what to do,” she says.
“About the test results?”
“For one thing.”
“I think you should find out.”
“You do? You didn’t even want me to do the testing.”
“Not knowing isn’t exactly sitting well with you. You’re living like you’ve been handed a death sentence.”
“I am?”
She didn’t think he noticed.
“Yeah. I think you need to be okay, really authentically okay with not knowing, or you need to find out.”
So true. But which one should she choose? That’s the million-dollar question. She spends hours every day internally arguing the pros and cons of either decision. Ignorance is bliss. Knowledge is power. Living in the moment is enlightened. Planning for the future is responsible. Prepare for the worst. Hope for the best. By the end of each day, the tally is either even on both sides or too dizzying to count, and she collapses into bed, exhausted from the effort.
“If it’s negative, would you move to Portland with me?”
Katie considers his question as if she’s working through a profound and sacred riddle. It’s a strange shift in perspective, imagining a gene-negative outcome, free of Huntington’s, when so many synapses in her brain have been devoted to practicing the opposite. Then there’s her father’s voice, the one she’s always trusted and tried her best to obey, telling her to stay. Staying in Charlestown. The idea feels like a noose pulled tight around her neck. Staying. She’s shackled to a future as predetermined as her risk of HD.
She looks into Felix’s eyes and sees an invitation to freedom. Freedom from Huntington’s, freedom from the smothering limitations of this neighborhood, freedom to love and grow into who she really is. If she’s gene negative, this is her chance. Sorry, Dad.
“Yeah,” she says. “I would.”
A wide, immensely excited smile spreads across Felix’s face. She feels excited, too, realizing what she just admitted aloud, but the thrill is quickly seasoned with fear and guilt. She told her dad she wouldn’t go. Leaving would break her mother’s heart. JJ and Meghan are gene positive. Who does she think she is, imagining her life gene negative? Why should she be granted such a freedom? Felix hugs her, unaware of the obstinate torment within her, and holds on to her shoulders.
“That’s progress! Excellent. Okay, so now we know what’s holding you back. What about if it’s positive?”
Felix’s hands suddenly feel unbearably heavy on her shoulders, pinning her down.
“I dunno,” she says, knowing.
“Okay; we can cross that bridge if we find ourselves on it. How about just coming with me to Portland this week? Think of it as a vacation.”
Katie presses her temples with her fingers. She’s got a screaming headache. She could use a vacation, an escape. But she could go all the way to Fiji, stay in a five-star hotel situated on a private beach, and she’d still be thinking about HD. There is no escape.
“I really can’t.”
“Fine.”
Felix rises abruptly and returns to the bookcase.
“You still want to watch a movie?”
“I don’t care.”
Katie watches him packing another box, not looking at her. From what he’s told her about his job, she imagines Felix as a powerful and effective manager at the office. Her refusal to see things his way must be making him crazy. But he doesn’t look like a man throwing a tantrum, taking his ball and leaving the playground because he didn’t get what he wanted. His shoulders are turned and slumped, his eyes downcast. Her heart tenses, her blood pulsing hard against her temples as she understands his face. He looks scared. In all her self-centered fear, it never occurred to her that he could be scared, too.
“I’m sorry, Felix. Will you be going out there again before June? Maybe I could come next time.”
Felix shrugs. A taste of her own medicine.
“I’m just not ready to go next week. I didn’t find any subs.”
He says nothing.
“Go pick an apartment without me. I trust you. I’ll love anything you love.”
June first is a Monday. Katie imagines waking up that morning, her books still displayed in her bookcase, her clothes still hanging in the closet, her suitcases not packed, kissing Felix good-bye as he leaves for Logan Airport, staying behind and standing still out of fear of being HD positive. She loves him, and he deserves a life that isn’t cursed with Huntington’s. But what if she doesn’t move, she doesn’t open her own yoga studio, she breaks up with Felix, and it turns out she’s HD negative?
She will have given up everything for nothing.