Inside the O'Briens (28 page)

Tears stream down Joe's temples, wetting his hair as he remembers his mother, no longer the grotesque monster he despised and blamed and was ashamed of. She was Ruth O'Brien, his mother, a woman who had HD through no fault of her own, who gave her family love and gratitude when she had nothing else to give.

After all these years, he sees his mother. Re-membered.

I love you, Mum. Please forgive me
. And Joe's heart swells, knowing it's already done. He is loved and forgiven.

And, like a lightning strike, there is his example. His mother before him. The lesson that she passed down for him to pass on to his children—the courage to face every breath with love and gratitude.

“Okay, Dad. Let's wiggle our fingers and toes. Stretch your arms up overhead, and when you're ready, come to a seated position.”

Joe and Katie are now sitting cross-legged, eyes open, seeing each other in the mirror. Katie's face is wet with tears, too.

“Let's bring our palms together at our hearts.”

Joe copies Katie. They sit for a moment in silence, in prayer.

“The light within me bows to and honors the light within you. Namaste.”

“Namaste,” says Joe, smiling at his daughter in the mirror. “I love you, Katie.”

“I love you, too, Dad.”

“Thank you, sweetie.”

Love and gratitude.

CHAPTER 32

J
oe's standing in the front foyer, trying to understand what he's seeing, or rather, what he's not seeing. The marble blessing font is gone. He's staring at two screw holes and a patch of white paint in the shape of the font twenty years brighter than the white wall surrounding it, unable to imagine who would do this. A few months ago, he might not have even noticed its absence. The holy-water sacramental has always been Rosie's thing. But as Joe's HD symptoms have worsened, he figures water blessed by God is probably as effective as anything modern medicine's got for him and a hell of a lot cheaper. So for the past few months, he's bought into this devotional act, anointing himself in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit when leaving or returning home. One morning, when no one was looking, he actually removed the straw from his sippy cup, dunked it into the font, and drank a little. It couldn't hurt.

He tosses his keys onto the hallway table and goes to high-five the Virgin Mary, another ritual he's become almost obsessively attached to, but he's left hanging. She's gone, too. There's nothing on the table but his keys and the ivory doily where Mary used to stand. Have they been burgled by some crazy Catholic?

He finds a similar scene in the living room. The crucifix is missing from the wall above the fireplace. Jesus, St. Patrick, St.
Christopher, the angels, the prayer candles, even the Christmas carolers and the manger scene have all disappeared. Only the frogs, the babies, the Snoopys, and their family photos remain. To Joe, the room looks better without all that religious crap, but his skin goes cool. The statues and candles don't mean anything to Joe, but they mean the world to Rosie.

He continues to inspect the living room as if it's a crime scene. Rosie's ironing board is set up, but the iron's cord is unplugged, and the laundry is still a wrinkled heap in the basket on the floor. Vanished religious crap, unfinished ironing. Nothing else seems to be amiss, but then his eyes land on the TV cabinet, the final clue. The
Oprah
videotapes are gone.

Rosie's come undone.

“Rosie?”

He walks into the bedroom, and there she is, still in her pink pajamas, lying in the fetal position on the bed, her face red and puffy, her eyes sunken, her auburn hair looking like it's in an eighties rock band. He kneels down on the floor next to her and leans into the mattress like a boy saying his prayers at bedtime. His face is even with hers, only inches apart. He can feel her soft breath on his nose. She smells like wine.

“What happened, hun?”

“Nothin'.”

The Madonna holding baby Jesus is gone from the night table next to her. In its place are two bottles of Chardonnay and a jelly jar, all three empty.

“You're drunk.”

“So.”

“So? It's ten o'clock in the morning.”

“I don't fuckin' care.”

“ ‘Fuckin',' huh?”

“That's right,” she says, challenging him to correct her. He wouldn't dream of it.

“Whaddya do with all the religious stuff?”

“I packed it up.”

“Why?”

“ 'Cuz I don't believe in God anymore.”

“I see.”

“I don't. I'm all done. How, Joe?” she asks, sitting up now, suddenly coming to life. She's got a rant in her that's been simmering in wine all morning, just waiting for an audience. He can see it in her outraged green eyes. “How can I? How am I supposed to have faith in a God that would do this to our family? We're good people, Joe.”

“I know. Bad things happen to good people every day.”

“Oh, don't feed me any cliché bullshit. I was okay with you dying.”

“Thanks, darlin'. That's real sweet.”

“No, you know what I mean. I've been to too many police funerals with you. I've seen the grief on those wives' faces. I've been prepared to be one of those women since I was in my twenties.”

He gets it. The funerals always bring it home. This ain't no game of cops and robbers. This shit is real. Sometimes, the good guys get taken down. And when they lose a brother or sister in blue, every cop standing at attention, honoring the lost officer in the casket, is thinking the exact same thing.

That could just as easily be me
.

“I was okay when I was praying for just you,” says Rosie. “I could handle it. Dr. Hagler said the disease is slow, so okay, that's a blessing, right? We still have time. I prayed to God to give me the strength and grace to endure this, to take care of you, to be grateful for every day we have. You know I've always believed in trusting in God's plan.”

Joe nods.

“Plus we're Irish. We know how to endure backbreaking, soul-crushing hardship. Perseverance is in our blood, for fuck's sake.”

Joes agrees. They're a strong and tenacious breed of people, stubborn as a constipated mule and proud of it.

“But then JJ and then Meghan. They have this fuckin' hideous, mutated thing in their blood and their brains, and they're going to die before me, Joe, and I can't take it. I can't.”

It's a mother's worst nightmare, and Rosie's voice cracks under the cruel weight of it. She's weeping, and Joe can't think of what to say to comfort her. He wants to run his fingers through her hair, to wipe away her tears, to rub her back and hold her, but he doesn't trust his arms and hands to do what he intends. He might punch her in the face, squeeze her too hard, poke her in the eye, or dig his fingernails into her skin, drawing blood. He knows he might, because these things have already happened. It's as if the command center for voluntary movement in his brain has been hijacked by a gang of naughty kids, and they're in there maniacally laughing as they randomly, repetitively flip the switches. Or conversely, the kids are in there with their arms crossed, some stubborn, others indolent, flat-out refusing Joe's simple and polite request to turn the proper motor sequence for hugging on. So he resists the urge to touch her, and Rosie cries next to him alone.

“I think about their funeral services, their beautiful faces and their bodies in caskets, buried in the ground, and I don't want to spend one minute on this earth knowing two of my children are buried beneath it.”

“Shhh, honey, don't go there.”

“I can't help it. I keep picturing them dead in the ground, and it's winter, and their bodies would be so cold, and I can't stand it.”

“You gotta stop imagining that. They're not dying anytime soon. You gotta keep faith.”

“I can't. The faith I had is broken. It's gone. I tried. I tried praying for them, and it started all humble and hopeful, but then it turned to begging, and then it became this full-on
rage against God and the angels and the church. What if Katie and Patrick and baby Joseph get this, too? I could lose
everyone
, Joe.”

Joe notices Rosie didn't include Patrick's unborn, illegitimate bastard child in her list of “everyone.”

“They won't. You won't.”

“I'll tell you right now, I'm crawling into the casket with the last one. They're gonna have to bury me alive because I won't go on alone.”

“Rosie, honey, this isn't good for you to think like this. You gotta focus on the kids living.”

“What if the girls never get married and have families because of this? What if JJ and Colleen decide they shouldn't have any more children?”

“They can all do that genetic in-vitro thing. Or they could adopt.”

“What if JJ becomes symptomatic and he loses his job? How will he support his family? Who's going to teach Joey how to play catch and hit a baseball and all those father-son things?”

Her voice is spiraling higher with each question, and Joe fears she's going to what-if herself into a full-blown drunken panic attack.

“He's not symptomatic, and we have to hope that he won't be for at least another twenty years. And Colleen can teach Joey that stuff, too. Have you seen her throw? She's got one helluva arm.”

“I think I see it happening in Patrick.”

“It's not. You're just scared and imagining the worst. Look, there's so much hope to have for our kids. Those scientists are gonna find effective treatments and a cure for this thing.”

“How do you know? What if they don't?”

“They will. I have faith in them. There are all these really smart people right down the street in the Navy Yard labs who
are dedicating their entire lives to figuring this out. They already know the mutation, and that's the only thing that causes HD. It's gonna happen. They're gonna cure this someday, hopefully in time to save our kids. And hopefully no one else in our family has the gene. That's what I pray for.”

“You pray?”

“Jeez, you don't have to look
that
shocked. Yeah, I've been going to church.”

“Since when?”

“ 'Bout a month now. I figure if there's ever a time for praying and finding some greater purpose and grace, it's now.”

“Do you go to Mass?”

“Nah. I don't need the priest and all the sitting and standing. I'd probably fall on my face and cause a fuss. I go most mornings, after the seven thirty is cleared out.”

“So what do you do?”

“Just sit and pray.”

Joe actually started going to church because of his sister, Maggie. He finally talked to her on the phone last month, told her everything. She was stunned and upset and even cried while asking about Joe's kids, which surprised him, given that she's never even met them. While Joe's grateful that Maggie hasn't noticed any symptoms in herself, he also couldn't help feeling outraged. He and Maggie each had a fifty-fifty chance of inheriting HD from their mother. Why couldn't it have been Maggie who got it instead of him? Maggie has no children. It could end with her. Why would God curse Joe's kids with this wretched disease? And to his shame, he hated Maggie for probably being HD negative. He hated God for singling him out, for giving HD to his family. Most of all, he hated himself.

Without a consciously calculated decision to do so, he walked his sorry ass into St. Francis the next morning, collapsed into a pew, and, alone in the church, prayed aloud to
God. He prayed for many things that day, but mostly, he asked God for forgiveness. To his surprise, he felt almost immediately absolved, lighter, cleaner, the toxic hatred washed from his body. He's gone to church almost every morning since.

Four rows from the back on the right side, where they always sat as a family when the kids were little. He's only there each time for five minutes, tops. He could easily pray from his chair in the living room, but he likes praying in that spot, in their old pew, in St. Francis Church. He likes the columns leading to grand arches on the balcony level, fashioned after the cathedral in Limerick, Ireland; the pipe organ; the American, Irish, and Charlestown flags; the gold crucifix hanging from the ceiling; the stained glass windows and stations of the cross; the worn, red-painted wooden floors. His prayers whispered there feel official, blessed, heard.

God, please help the scientists find a cure for HD so my children don't lose their lives to this.

God, please let Patrick and Katie and baby Joseph be gene negative.

God, please let JJ and Meghan be cured, and let me live long enough to know they'll be okay. Or, if there can't be a cure yet, let them not become symptomatic until they're much older.

God, please pray for Rosie. Don't let me be too big a burden on her. Let her always feel loved by me. Please take care of her after I'm gone.

And lastly, God, if I'm not being too greedy, please let the Red Sox win the World Series, the Bruins win the Stanley Cup, and the Pats win the Super Bowl.

Amen.

Then he signs the cross, kisses his lucky quarter, and goes home.

“How 'bout this?” asks Joe. “I'll pray for you and the kids. You pray for me. Just me. That way you don't get overwhelmed, and everyone's covered. I know I could use the help.”

Rosie shakes her head, unconvinced. “But why, Joe? Why would God do this to us?”

“I don't know, hun. I don't know.”

He pauses, wishing he had something wiser to offer. Where's Katie with one of her damn inspirational yoga quotes when he needs her?

“Wanna put all the Jesus stuff back?” he asks.

“No,” she sniffles. “I can't. It still feels like a lie.”

“Okay, that's fine. We don't need it. Snoopy's still out there. We can pray to Snoopy. In the name of Snoopy, Charlie Brown, and the Holy Woodstock,” says Joe, crossing himself.

“Stop it, that's terrible.”

“Or we could use Kermit. Holy Kermit, mother of Miss Piggy.”

“Stop. That's ridiculous and blasphemy.”

“See, you still believe. Don't lose faith, sweetie.”

Joe holds on to the edge of the bed and stands, groaning as his knees crack. He flings his arms wide open, inviting Rosie out of bed.