Could I Have This Dance? (22 page)

“I was afraid if he knew, well … I was afraid he wouldn’t want me.”

“But it wasn’t your fault. It was rape. You said he forced you.”

“I know.” She hesitated. “But in my heart, I wondered. I kissed him that night, Claire. I meant it as a good-bye, but I ignited a passion that wouldn’t be stopped. He forced me into the barn. I tried to stop him, but I never screamed out. I should have yelled for help, but I never did.”

“Grandma, you can’t blame yourself. You never intended for him to treat you like he did.” Claire gripped her hand. “I’ve seen rape victims before, Grandma. There’s often guilt. Women blame themselves. It’s a common reaction, Grandma, but that doesn’t lessen the crime he committed.”

Elizabeth sniffed and forced a smile. “Thank you, Claire, but I didn’t come here to pour out my problems to get your counsel.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Because I think this man, Steve Hudson, is Wally’s biological father. I’ve never had blood proof, but over the years, I’ve had my suspicions. And when I saw your father during your graduation, it all came pouring back. Your father stumbles around just like Steve Hudson did before he died.” She sighed heavily. “Well, I knew about the rumors about the Stoney Creek curse. They abounded in Steve’s family. His grandfather was the one who built the still.”

“Harold Morris?”

“The same. And legend has it that he stumbled around and went crazy because of a curse placed by Eleazor Potts.”

Claire nodded. She knew the rumor.

“I became convinced that your father must be under the same curse, either because he drank the still’s liquor, or because he was in line for a generational curse.”

“So why tell me now?” Claire shifted uncomfortably, aware of a gnawing anxiety about her father’s parentage.

“Because you wanted to know about Wally’s father. You were concerned about an inheritable disease. And I was concerned about a possible generational curse.” She lifted her hands. “But I didn’t think this disease you mentioned, this … Harrington’s—”

“Huntington’s,” Claire corrected, her mouth suddenly dry. If Daddy’s father wasn’t Grandpa, then … The thought seemed to stick. She couldn’t allow herself to continue.

“Huntington’s disease, yes. Well, I didn’t think it was possible that you could be right because I didn’t think Steve’s parents had any diseases like that.”

“They did? One of his parents had Huntington’s disease?”

She shook her head. “No. It certainly doesn’t sound like it, but until I talked to Steve’s brother, I was under the false understanding that I knew who Steve’s real mother was. Evidently, the woman I knew as Steve’s mother, who lived until a ripe old age, wasn’t his real mother at all. His real mother died in childbirth. Steve lived, but his mother suffered a fatal hemorrhage.”

“So his real mother was …”

“Evangeline Morris.”

Claire was putting this together. “And Evangeline Morris’s father was Harold, who was one of the two brothers that ran the secret still.”

“Exactly. Anyway, the way I understand it, assuming Steve really was Wally’s father, sins of the father can be punished up to the third and fourth generation. So if you count Harold’s daughter as the first generation, Steve would be the second, Wally the third, and …” She paused. “You would be the fourth, so I thought you needed to know.”

“Grandma, that’s crazy. I’m not going to be cursed because of something Harold Morris did. That’s so, well, so Old Testament.”

“It’s in the Bible, Claire.”

“You came up here to warn me that I might be in line for the Stoney Creek curse?”

“I’m not crazy, Claire. This may sound upsetting to a scientific mind, but I’m convinced our sins have long-ranging ramifications to our children, and beyond. What I’m not sure about is what triggers the curse. I thought for a long time that it was the drinking that actually brought it on, that a person in line for inheritance of the curse may be able to dodge it
by avoiding the devil’s drink. I knew Steve’s mother was a teetotaler, and she had no signs of any problems. But then when I learned that Steve’s mother was a different woman altogether, well, I feared again that it may strike every generation regardless of the alcohol. But maybe if we pray, or take you to a priest perhaps, we can negate the curse’s power.”

“This isn’t making sense, Grandma. Was Evangeline Morris affected?”

“I’ve thought about that. She didn’t lose her mind, or stumble about like your father and Steve, but she did die a horrible death at a young age. It may be that her death was the way the curse was manifested. Perhaps if she’d have lived a bit longer, she would have lost control of her legs and arms as well.”

“I am not believing this conversation.” Claire stood and began to pace. Her worst fears, the very ones she’d been able to dismiss as improbable, were back, knotting her stomach into a tight fist.

“And I can’t believe that you wouldn’t be concerned.”

“Grandma, everything you’ve told me concerns me. In fact, it terrifies me, but not because I’m scared of some mysterious curse.” She walked to her desk and lifted a piece of computer paper from the printer. “In fact, you may have just stumbled on a solution to the mystery that’s plagued our little town for generations.”

“I know I have. But it’s no mystery.”

“Look, Grandma. Just consider the possibility that the manifestations of this curse, as you call it, are really symptoms of an inherited disease, a disease which doesn’t manifest itself until midlife, and causes a deterioration of mental capacity as well as slurring of speech and an inability to control the muscles, making them appear intoxicated, and causing strange movements that some have even described as looking like a dance.”

Her grandmother tapped her fingers on the table.

“Just look here.” She wrote down Harold Morris’s name at the top of the page. “Harold is here. He stumbles around town, loses his mind, and commits suicide.” She drew a line down from his name and wrote
Evangeline.
“Evangeline Morris also has the gene, but since the disease isn’t manifested until midlife, she never shows any sign of the disease, and dies before anyone realized she had it.” She drew a line down and wrote Steve. “But she passed the gene to Steve, and—By the way, how did he die?”

“He committed suicide, Claire.”

Claire nodded. “So he had the disease too. You said yourself he stumbled around like Daddy.”

“Walked just like him.”

Claire drew a line to her father’s name and drew three lines from Wally’s to Clay, Claire, and Margo. “Daddy gets the disease, but no one
picks up on it because he’s always been a drunk. All of his symptoms are attributed to alcohol intoxication or withdrawal, depending on whether he’s bingeing or dry.”

“And there is a disease like you’re describing, I take it?”

“Yes!” Claire threw up her hands. “Huntington’s disease, the disease of my patient in the ER that I told you about.”

Elizabeth confirmed her memory of the conversation with a nod.

“Grandma, why did you ask me on the phone whether Huntington’s disease could skip generations?”

“Because I wanted to be sure that my theory was the correct one, not yours. I knew, or at least thought I knew, that there was no evidence of Huntington’s in Steve’s parents. But when I talked to Steve’s brother, and found out about Steve’s real mother, it blew my little theory.”

“And, unfortunately, it made mine a bit more plausible.”

“Now look, Claire, you don’t really know if any of this is right.”

Claire began clearing the dishes, placing them in the sink. “This can’t be happening to me.” She shook her head. “I’m too tired to even sort this out. I didn’t sleep last night, and I’ve got to be on my feet again at five tomorrow morning.”

“Claire, we’ll chat again tomorrow over supper. I’ll take you out.”

She shook her head. “I’ll be in the hospital. I won’t be home again until Saturday.”

“Goodness me. They shouldn’t work you like that.”

Claire was too weary to explain the mentality of surgery training. “I know, Grandma, but they do.”

“I’m supposed to be in Martha’s Vineyard by then.”

“You’re welcome to stay as long as you like, Grandma. You’ll just have to entertain yourself. I’m afraid my schedule as an intern won’t allow me to be much of a host.”

“I’ll be fine. I’m used to taking care of myself. It’s you I’m concerned about. I came up here to warn you about the future, hoping we could plan some intervention to change it. But all I’ve done is upset you.”

Claire yawned. “I’ll be okay, Grandma. I just need to sort things out in my head, work out a way to deal with this new information, that’s all.”

She paused. “I need Daddy to get a blood test. A genetic test for the Huntington’s gene.

Her grandmother approached and gripped Claire’s arm. “Claire, I’m not sure it’s best if Wally knew this information. It might devastate him to learn he may not be a blood McCall.”

“Grandma, isn’t it more important that he learn the truth?”

“Not if the truth is destructive.”

Claire moved away and placed the leftover pieces of pizza into a Tupperware container.

“I’ll put some thought into this, Claire. I’m sure there’s some way around this problem. Just give me some time.” The old woman raised her hand and pointed a bony finger toward Claire. “I may have been wrong about this all along. Maybe my suspicions about Wally are unjustified. Maybe he’s really John’s boy after all.”

“But maybe not. You don’t really know.”

“And maybe it took the town’s only woman doctor to finally solve the Stoney Creek curse.”

Claire yawned. “I’m too tired to care right now.”

She collapsed on the couch and snuggled against the pillow used by John Cerelli the night before. “I’m just too tired to care.”

Chapter Fourteen

C
laire forced her eyes open and looked around in the dim light. She lay still for a moment, in that confused state between consciousness and sleep, wondering where she was and what day it was. Slowly a sense of orientation drifted over her. She recognized her living room and remembered eating dinner with her grandmother. She pushed away the blanket and realized she was still fully clothed. She had a dull ache in her lower abdomen, and she suspected it was her bladder that had forced her from slumber. Alarms sounded in her brain.
What time is it? Am I late for rounds?

She jumped from the couch and stumbled over her surgery text, which sat in the middle of the floor. It was still dark. Claire took comfort in that. She breathed a sigh of relief when she saw the glowing digital readout on the microwave: 3:28.

She went to the bathroom and returned to the couch. There, she collapsed again and closed her eyes. Outside, Lafayette had begun to stir. Car sounds and the mournful song of a tomcat punctuated the night.

Slowly Claire began to sort through the clutter of her anxieties. She’d been a surgical intern for less than a week, at a program reputed to make or break the best medical students in the country. She’d ridden bareback on an emotional bronco, flying one hour with the joy of new discovery, and groveling in the dust of humiliation the next. She’d gone from being committed to John Cerelli, to tasting the bitter doubt about him which surrounded her attraction to Brett. She’d accepted a diamond ring in the middle of it all, and proceeded to forget her fiancé in her thrill of a surgical resuscitation. And to cap things off, she’d heard a tearful confession from her grandmother that confirmed Claire’s worst fears: her father may have an incurable disease, the genes for which may be resting in every cell of her own body, just waiting for the right time to strike.

She felt as if there was a billowing black cloud looming above her, just waiting for the right conditions to electrify her life. It certainly wasn’t raining yet, but to Claire, it looked like rain in the forecast.

At four, she cast off her blanket. She had a crick in her neck and knew sleep would remain elusive. She’d go to the ICU and get a head start on her Friday, a day notorious for bringing out the business for the trauma service.

She wrote her grandmother a note, dressed for work, and left for the Mecca. Maybe focusing on work would be her ticket of escape from the cloud over her head. Or maybe her grandmother was wrong all along, and her father was just a drunk. Oh, how she hoped that could be.

The idea struck Claire as ironic. The very item that seemed to be her biggest anchor—her hatred of her father’s despicable habit, and the stigma that surrounded the family as a result—she now desired the most. “Oh, God,” she whispered, “may it only be alcohol that Daddy has to fight.”

By midafternoon, intern business on the trauma service had lulled, thanks to the work Claire had done before rounds at six. She’d been too busy to give serious thought to her current dilemma about her father, so she’d “back-burnered” the item. It was a technique she’d practiced since college, when she noticed that sometimes the best solutions would come at times other than when she was directly focusing on a particular problem. It seemed that when she pulled away from giving all of her attention to an anxiety, an answer would present itself. Invariably, if she stared directly at the problem, carefully inspecting every facet, her worries would multiply, blocking out even the most apparent answer.

She hung up the Dictaphone at the fifth-floor nursing station and began completing a discharge instruction page for patient Ricky Lemario, a thirteen-year-old who had ruptured his spleen in a skateboarding accident. She carefully wrote the instructions she had already given to Ricky and his mother. “No contact sports for three months. Come to outpatient radiology for a follow-up CT scan of the abdomen in six weeks.”

She hurriedly filled out a discharge prescription for a pain medication and placed the chart in a rack to be processed by the ward secretary.

I can’t just order a blood test on my father without his knowledge. And to obtain a genetic test for a serious disease without his permission seems unethical. So why not just get the test myself?

The idea seemed to have merit. It would provide a straightforward way of approaching her immediate concern about her own risk. After all, if she didn’t have the Huntington’s gene herself, she could at least go on with her career without worrying about coming down with some dreaded disease in the prime of life. It was a direct approach which appealed to her surgical personality. See a problem, solve a problem. There would be no mulling
over eighty possible scenarios. That mentality was for internists and those with time for cognitive wheel-spinning. Surgeons like problems which can be solved with direct intervention. A chance to cut is a chance to cure.