The Find (10 page)

‘You find that Mr Bellydance, then?' he asked. There was a twitch of a smile and then a gasp as she turned her face away. A sneeze, he thought as she reached for the box on the counter, pulled out a tissue and blew her nose.

‘I spoke to him. He's going to fall some trees up by the road so we'll have a bit of space for the chopper. A Sikorsky 61,' she said, still not turning right back. Her voice was muffled. ‘We're going to need that.'

She grabbed more tissue. Her eyes were welling over, and she saw that he'd seen it.

‘Excuse me. I've had an exceptionally difficult day. I need sleep.' She glanced at the stairs to her right, but didn't take them: she couldn't get there. Instead, she put her arms on the counter and her head on top of them. Her shoulders shook; she tried to swallow back the sound. He had no idea what to do.

‘It's okay,' he told her, and her head jerked up.

‘It is
not
!' she came back at him, her voice tearing, and her face seemed to be nothing but eyes, drilling right into his, as if there was a huge history between them and some really terrible thing had just happened and it was all his fault. They both stood there, frozen. Then she looked away.

‘I'm sorry,' she said. ‘Very sorry.'

‘No problem.' He shifted his stance, moved the bell on the counter a little to one side. ‘Anything you need? Otherwise—'

But she stayed there, waiting, as if she had just arrived.

Go upstairs, she told herself. Don't make it worse.

‘It's been an incredibly stressful day. Is the bar open?' she asked and he had to tell her it had been closed for nine months.

‘I could really do with a drink,' she said.

There was Joe's, across the way, he told her. But she didn't move.

There might be something left still, he said, knowing that there was a half-bottle, or less, of vodka. He unlocked the bar, flipped back the hatch and found the bottle in the fridge. He was intending to pour her a double to take to her room, but she followed him and sat right down in the empty bar. Bluish light came in from the sign outside but otherwise it was dark. Well, you couldn't see the dust. He rinsed out a glass. Just vodka, he told her. No ice, no mixers.

‘Thanks.'

‘No problem.'

‘Please, join me,' she said, sipping already. ‘That really wasn't me out there,' she told him. ‘I'm not like that. I don't yell.'

‘I almost went for my father this morning,' Scott said. ‘That's not me either.' They both gave a quick laugh. ‘He stole my f-ing computer and sold it for booze,' he added. ‘Who needs enemies. Cheers!' They drank. ‘What happened to you, then?' he asked.

There was a dispute, she explained, over who had discovered the fossils she had told him about. To put it bluntly, someone else was trying to steal her discovery and what had happened today was that Mr Bellavance had been talking to that other person as well, and he had mistakenly assumed she was just some kind of assistant — and then, when he changed the date of the meeting the email had gone to the wrong person, and she hadn't been informed. She'd had to chase the man down and make the whole ridiculous, embarrassing situation clear to him.

‘Even though it worked out in the end, it was very upsetting—'

‘Sounds totally extreme.' They had both, Scott thought, had something stolen from them. He refilled the glasses, wondered about lighting up, and then didn't quite dare. ‘Stormy weather,' he said. ‘Has to change sometime, I guess.' They sat in silence, and he was starting to feel loose, though still on the good side of drunk. It was a pleasure to hear about someone else's troubles, and an opportunity to offload some of his own: he mentioned the flood, losing the house, the fact they'd let the insurance lapse. The move into the trailer. Mac's decline.

‘Won't work. Does anything to get a drink. And… sure, it was only a machine—' he tipped the last of the bottle into her glass, ‘but I was very connected to it.'

‘It's hard when you don't know how much you can really blame someone. Or, when you know you can't,' she said, looking him in the face — examining him, it seemed. When she leaned forwards, the light from the sign outside gilded her skin, made her hair glisten. She looked, for a moment until she moved again, as if she were made of metal.

‘I certainly know about that,' she said. Already she half-knew where she was going and that she would get there this time, lay the whole thing out, not just a couple of facts. There was something about him, she thought. It would be all right.

‘You okay?' he asked.

‘Do you mind if I tell you something?' she asked. Scott shook his head. What did he expect? Maybe she owed money. Perhaps she was a gambler, something like that. Or maybe she'd left her husband, walked out after years. Maybe she'd killed the bastard, was on the run—

‘Do you know anything about genetics?' she began.

‘What?'

It did not take her very long to explain and his first reaction was that it was way too bad to be true: the brain clotting up with this out-of-control protein, the jerking, staggering, and slurring, not being able to swallow, the thing she called ‘cognitive decline,' the turning into someone else, the whole idea of the fifty percent chance hanging over you for forty years. It was
exactly
like something someone very cruel had made up to scare you.

His second thought was that maybe this woman was some kind of compulsive liar? It was possible, he thought, that
none
of what she had told him that day was real.

‘So the way I snapped like that earlier could be a symptom,' she said. ‘Do you see? Temper. Loss of impulse control. Mood swings. I feel I sometimes can't tell anymore what is me and what's not. I'm thinking about this kind of thing more and more. All the time. I drop my fork and I don't know: was it just nerves or an accident, or was it a symptom?'

‘Shit happens,' he said. Whether he believed her or not, his heart was racing again.

‘You can know. I could find out. There's a test.' She drained her glass. ‘You can know, but there's nothing you can do to stop it. Would you take it?'

Yes, he thought and nearly said so but a second later, he thought, no, of course not! Forget it! Crazy. She was crazy. Or was she? In any case, the way she looked at him seemed far too intense and he wanted out of that unlit room.

‘Don't answer that,' she said. ‘It wasn't fair.' He shrugged.

‘Do you need anything else? Otherwise, I've got to lock up now.' He sloshed the glasses clean and came out from behind the bar.

‘Thanks,' she said when they were back in the brightness of the lobby, and offered her hand, as if they had concluded some kind of deal. Watching her climb the stairs and vanish at the top of them, Scott had a feeling of being pulled by some new kind of gravity into a parallel universe.

Either she was sane, he decided in the morning, or she was a clever kind of crazy because his first search threw up thousands of hits and everything she said fitted. The Hellish Disease even had its own abbreviation, HD. A doctor called Huntington: not much fun having a thing like that named after you. But as for whether she was at risk or whether she had it or not, there was no way to tell.

♦ ♦ ♦

Waking in the beige-painted room, with its brown velveteen curtains — 201, at the far end of the corridor from the one she'd had before — Anna felt better than she had for many weeks, clearer, more capable. Then it washed over her: she'd drunk more than her empty stomach could take and told everything — not just a little, but everything — to a stranger, a young man, not a professional of any kind, who already had quite enough to deal with on his own account. It appalled her, and yet she did feel different. Better. It was like being at the end of a long dive, the sheer relief of pulling off the suit. She lay there a few moments more, enjoying that feeling.

No harm had been done. Not yet, anyway — she clung to that and a little later, when she was up, she wrote his name on one of the envelopes from the folder in the room and underlined it. She got out her chequebook, dithered over the amount, deciding eventually to err on the side of generosity. A line had to be drawn.

Downstairs, she folded the receipt he gave her into four and put it carefully in the pocket on the side of her laptop case. From the same place, she extracted the envelope and placed it between them on the counter.

‘Thank you for last night. I'm sure you understand that I'd like you to keep the find and the other, personal things I told you completely confidential.' She pushed the envelope towards him. ‘Something towards your new computer. I hope everything works out with your father.'

Scott was broke. He was curious as to the amount. He did want whatever was in there — but at the same time, something in him held back. He wasn't sure what taking it
meant
.

‘No need,' he said, looking back at her. One of the first signs, he'd read, was something subtly wrong with the small movements of the eyes. He could see nothing of that kind, just a mixture of deep gold and dark brown. Despite the craziness, he liked Anna Silowski. He liked there being giant winged lizards in his hometown. He liked standing on the bottom of an ocean of air, his mind filled with things that might or might not be, and he even liked having to make up his mind what he believed to be true.

‘Please,' she said, ‘take it. Thank you, and goodbye.' She reached for the bag she'd left on the chair, and a moment later, was gone.

—
♦ —

HE WAS AMAZED BY THE FIGURE
on the cheque, which worked out at over a hundred dollars an hour. Even so, there was no way to raise the rest of what a new machine would cost. Chryssie Liz had dumped him:
You're not there when I want you.
Lauren was perpetually on his case about time-keeping and attitude:
It's time to take some responsibility.
He was punishing Mac for being the cause of all this: not long ago he'd seen him passed out under a bush on the bit of scrubby ground by the filling-station sign; he'd slowed down to check he was breathing, and then driven on past. Later that night, Constable Sutherland (Baz, who graduated from Big Crow ‘High' the year Scott and Matt dropped out) had called and suggested that if he picked his father up and took him home they would turn a blind eye to the small fire he'd started on Creek Road.
I'm at work, Baz
, Scott had said, and hung up. He didn't tell Dr Hoffman how he felt about all that, or how, to justify himself, he was digging up memories he normally preferred to forget: the few occasions when as a boy he'd actually seen his father lash out at his mother and worse still, the days following the outbursts when Mac would weep and beg for forgiveness, call her, of all things, his
Indian Princess
. He would promise her the earth and then, gripping Scott's shoulders too hard, push his forehead onto his son's as if he could press his thoughts through the two layers of bone right into his brain, tell him what a saint his mother was and how Scott should always treat her well. Remembering these things made it easier to be hard on Mac, but even so he knew it was shit, and it made him feel worse than before. At the same time, he couldn't stop doing it. But he mentioned none of this; he just shrugged, and said he thought maybe he was building up a tolerance to the medication. He needed more of it, or something far stronger.

‘Scott,' Dr Hoffman said, ‘it's not possible to build up a tolerance to the type of antidepressant you're taking.'
What did she know about it?
Scott thought.
You could build up a tolerance to anything.
And then suddenly he felt he would give way. He wanted to hit her. What would she think of that?

‘We'll review things at the end of the prescription. But there is something else...'

How long, Dr Hoffman asked, had Mac been out of work? She was asking because a brand-new facility had opened up near Nanaimo and there was a possibility Mac would be eligible for a funded treatment program — and near the top of the list too, if she referred him and they acted fast.

‘He has to want to do it,' she said. Want? His father would not want to do anything, ever, but Scott kept that to himself.

‘You owe me this,' he told Mac. ‘And you'll do it. Tell her you want to do it.'

—
♦ —

WAS SHE THE PERSON WHO ENDLESSLY
replayed a minor accident anyone else would put behind them, the person who had drunk warm vodka and then chosen to confide in a stranger? Was she the person who called to make an appointment to explore the possibility of taking the test she had been opposed to ever since she first heard of it, and then, less than an hour later, called again to cancel? Was she the person who finally agreed to making the appointment again only on the understanding that she probably would not turn up?

‘Yes,' she had told Juliette on the phone, ‘on a no-commitment basis, I'll make an appointment. But—'

‘That's absolutely fine,' Juliette said.

I'm going to go in
, she told Roger now, opening the window a crack and then getting out of the car,
but I might come right back
. And was the whole noncommittal thing a kind of trap, a way to reel her in? But even so, and partly because she could still turn back, Anna gave the receptionist her name and then sat to wait for Juliette, who arrived suddenly, before she could leave: a tall, Modigliani-type of woman in flowing clothes. She had a hint of grey in her hair, a warm, firm handshake.

‘Shall we go to my office? Or would you like some coffee?'

They sat in a small, rose-painted room, its window covered by a dusty Venetian blind that hung slightly askew.

‘I'm sorry. It's hardly the Ritz. We're moving to a new building, but not there yet.'

Anna didn't so much mind the room. She liked it being plain and empty, insignificant. The problem was not thinking straight. She should leave. No: it was the right thing to do. She was not sure. Yet somehow she was here.

Juliette's face was calm, her eyes alert.

‘So,' she began, ‘what led you to contact us now? Why are you gathering information about the test at this point?'

I'm not. This is a mistake.

But Anna stayed in the chair. Words came out of her mouth.

‘I have constant feelings that this or that thing might be a symptom. Only last week, after a couple of drinks, I told a complete stranger about the situation I'm in. It was a huge relief, and he was extremely good about it, but it seems like an odd thing to do—'

People closer to home often had an interest in the matter, Juliette said. Perhaps, she suggested, Anna wanted to confide in someone, but also to be able to escape from the person she had told?

Possibly. But — she didn't say this — she also wanted the opposite of escape. She wanted more. Several times since the trip to Big Crow she caught herself feeling as if there were a connection between her and the twentysomething man who had stared back at her from the other side of the bar. He had pulled her back from the edge that night. He had qualities: steadiness, tolerance, kindness. A kind of straightforward intelligence. Though really, she knew nothing about him, and probably he had forgotten the incident by now.

The test, Juliette explained, had a protocol which involved a series of appointments and would take several months. It was important to make clear that it could be halted or paused at any point, and might take far longer.

‘What we are trying to do is be sure that you really want the information we can give you, good or bad, and that you have support to cope with it. So, if you wanted to continue after today, or after we have finished, however long that takes,' Juliette said, ‘you would complete some psychological tests which I send to Dr Hutz. He would see you next for a psychological assessment, at least once, possibly more. That appointment would be at least a month away. And from there, you would make an appointment to see the neurologist, Dr Persaud, and after that, you can book your results appointment, which would be with Dr Persaud and me. And at some point during that process, you would give your blood sample, which takes about a month or so to process. So we find it takes sixteen weeks as a minimum. At any point in the process, of course, you are free to put things on hold, or simply slow it down…'

There were flow charts to explain the protocol, diagrams to explain the transmission of disease, which Juliette quickly put away: they had more time, then, for everything else. They moved on to family history. A brief questionnaire, which, if Anna did want to go ahead, would be sent to the psychiatrist.

Rate yourself on a scale of one to five for suicidal thoughts.

Optimism. Anxiety.

Complete the following with a word of your choice.

Juliette left Anna to complete these and when she returned with coffee, put the questionnaires in an envelope and sealed them. She could send them along or not, she said. Dr Hutz could be asked not to open them if Anna changed her mind, or, if he already had, would be requested to destroy his notes.

‘This is your information,' she said. ‘But you must ask yourself, are you in the best possible position to receive it? Do you have support? Is this the best time? What else is happening in your life right now?

‘I do think you should wait,' she said a little later on.

At the end of the interview, they walked back down the corridor, into the hum and bustle of the hospital, past the cafeteria and the mothers and babies and play space and finally, to the way out.

‘I like people. I want to help,' Juliette told Anna when she thanked her. ‘Take care.'

She was glad to wait. Was not. Was in tears by the time she reached the car.

Was she this person?