Death Spiral (19 page)

“The condition was always there, you just didn't notice.”

“Didn't notice?” I snort. “How could I have not noticed that? You don't just overlook someone who looks like they've had acid thrown on their face.”

Dr. Monroe steps toward me with open arms as if for an embrace. What does she want me to do? Rejoice at the brilliance of her discovery? Get out the tambourines and patchouli and sing Kumbaya?

When I don't move, she drops her arms and sighs. “Your mother had a lot of other problems. Heroin makes a person sick. It would've been easy to overlook a skin condition with all the side effects from the drugs. You were a child. You can't blame yourself.”

It might be an answer I could accept so I could let go and start moving forward like everyone keeps telling me to do, but I don't want another lie being told about her. Another fact about Mom someone thinks they're the expert on.

“I'm not blaming myself,” I say, squeezing the lighter. “Her skin was fine until just before she died. If her skin being fine all those years means she didn't have the mutation then I'm telling you, she didn't have it.”

“I sequenced the gene, Faith,” Dr. Monroe insists. She goes to her desk, pulls open a drawer, and takes out a piece of paper. “She had the mutation. The results are right here.” She hands me a paper covered with rows of A, G, C, and T's, letter upon letter, like the genetic sequence she showed me that first day we met. One letter is circled in red pen.

“What's that?” I demand, pointing at the circled letter.

“The mutation. This should have been a T and it's a G instead. A single base change caused the disease. I'm sorry. This must be scary for you.”

“I'm not scared,” I snap, heat rising to my face. “That's not what's going on. She didn't have the mutation. I'm telling you.”

“Faith, you're in denial. You have to realize—”

“Will you please stop telling me what I'm feeling because I'm not scared, and I'm not in denial. My mother didn't have this condition. I'm telling you. She never even had a zit until the end.”

Dr. Monroe steps out from behind her desk. She puts a hand on my back and tries to lead me to a chair. “Faith, come on, sit down. The paper is proof.”

I shake off her hand and shove the paper in her face. “Well you know what? I don't care about your proof. Everyone has proof! They had proof that she died of an overdose, too, and look what happened to that. It was a lie. Everyone thinks they know what happened. But you're wrong. Sometimes people make mistakes. Even in science. People can make mistakes.”

“I can help you, Faith,” Dr. Monroe says. “We can sequence your gene and—”

“No!” I shout, backing away. “I don't want that kind of help. I don't have the mutation because she didn't have it. You're just like everyone else. You don't listen. You think because I'm sixteen I don't know what I'm talking about, that I'm not old enough to figure things out for myself. Well I am, and I'm telling you, you're wrong!”

Dr. Monroe lays her darling paper, her proof of Mom's mutation and her trouble-free drug, on the table and gazes out the window. I look out, too, at all those picture-perfect university buildings. Screw it. Screw them. All their high-priced knowledge and learning and theories are filled with loopholes and mistakes.

“Why should I believe you anyway?” I say, turning from the window. “That paper could belong to anyone.”

Dr. Monroe sighs. “Okay, look. You've been through a lot. You've been told all sorts of things about her that weren't true. I understand. I'll do one thing for you. I'll sequence something else. If proof of the mutation is what you need to let go and move forward, I can give that to you.”

“How?”

“I'll run the test again. I'll replicate the results and rule out error.” She walks to her god, her sequencer, and lays her hand on the machine. “I'll repeat this test if that's what you need. I'll sequence the same position from a different DNA sample from your mom, just to make absolutely sure. I can have the results by Thursday. But you have to promise me one thing.”

“What?”

“If we get the same results, which we will, you have to face this and you have to move forward.”

It's an easy promise to make because Dr. Monroe's wrong. I know she is. “I promise.”

“Okay, good, then bring me something from your mother that would still have her DNA. Something from a while back, before she was in the clinical trial, say five years ago, when she was younger.”

“What kind of thing?”

“A postage stamp, or a strand of hair from a comb. Maybe an old toothbrush. The mutation will be in all her cells, so it doesn't really matter what sample we use. Do you have anything like that?”

“I don't know. Maybe,” I say, thinking of the box in the spare room at Aunt T's—the random scraps of Mom's every day existence that for one reason or another we couldn't get rid of.

“See what you can find and bring it to me. It can be old. The DNA lasts for years. We'll sequence something from your mother when she was younger and you'll see. The mutation will be the same, and it's up to you to accept this and move forward from there.”

***

It's dark by the time my meeting is over. I say good-bye and head to the loading dock on the west side of the building by the parking lot to wait for Aunt T and Sam. I stand under a floodlight between a basement stairwell and a dumpster where a raccoon is working over scraps of cafeteria foods.

“Hey, buddy,” I say to the animal. He hisses and dives down into the trash.

Pretty soon the beam of headlights breaks through the dark and a truck pulls up in front of me. Sam hops out and opens the door so I can squeeze in.

“How was your trip?” I ask as I slide into the jump seat.

“Too many relatives and good to be back.” He smiles at me, then leans over and kisses my aunt.

I'm off the hook for conversation making after that, thank god, because after a few days apart Aunt T and Sam only have eyes for each other. They make it look so easy. The laughter. The kisses. The way he rests his hand on her thigh as she drives. They adore each other. It's obvious and right. Aunt T deserves love. She deserves a man like Sam who tolerates opera and doesn't mind country antique stores, a man who loves to cook up big, exotic dinners, then crawl into bed, lock the door, and “go to sleep early.”

Their loving banter and closeness should come with a warning: Possible side effects include severe loneliness and risk of depression. I stare out the window at the suffocating sameness limping by—black road, black sky, black night—then slouch down into the seat, close my fist around the lighter, and start thinking of Jesse. Of Anj. Of Mom. Even of Dr. Monroe. Of how many ways there are to push people away—fear, drugs, work. Different paths to the same isolation. I close my eyes, turn on my iPod, and try to lose myself to the mellow guitar and keyboards of Snow Patrol.

Distract and check out. The best drug of all.

***

When we get home, I hide out in my room and wait for Aunt T and Sam to go to bed. Once the house is quiet, I creep across the hall to the spare room and flip on the light. There, before me, lies the sum total of Mom's existence—one lonely cardboard box pushed up against a white wall.

I take a breath and cross the room. I pause for a minute at the box, then reach in and grab the first thing I touch—the black and white photo strip of Mom and I taken at a photo booth in the mall this past September. I glance at the grainy image. She was healthy that day. There were no scabs. No genetic disease. The photo is proof.

I reach in again. This time I pull out the clay pot I made for her in second grade, followed by her high school yearbook, then a small journal covered in blue fabric. I open the journal to the first page where a postage stamp with a picture of a kangaroo has been pressed to the paper. Mom's foreign stamp collection. I sink to the floor, the journal in my hands, and glance through the pages—the Matterhorn, some colorful tropical bird, a yak, someone playing bagpipes. The Eiffel Tower.

“Someday we're going to see the world,” Mom would tell me when she was in one of her I'm-going-to-get-better-and-anything's-possible phases.
Then we'd walk, or take a taxi if we had money, to the Philly Coin and Stamp Company on Chestnut where Mom would spend hours searching for just the right stamp. When we got home, she'd lick the small token of her dream and stick it in the book, turning the stamps into a scrapbook of possibility. At which point came the inevitable melancholy. She'd pore through the pages of her book like she knew a postage stamp was the closest she'd ever get to any foreign country. Then the drinking would begin, the drugs.

I turn to the Eiffel Tower again, the last stamp she bought before she died. This time she meant it. This time she believed her dreams really might come true. Dr. Monroe said a postage stamp would have the DNA she needed. I rip out the page with the kangaroo stamp from two years ago when Mom was in her Australia phase and slip the paper into my pocket, but I don't leave. Now that I'm here, I want to know what else is in that box.

I dig in again. This time I pull out a Neil Young concert t-shirt. I bury my nose in the blue fabric, and it's memory by molecule, each scent a story. A hint of clove cigarette and Mom and I are at the Wachovia Center for a Rolling Stones concert with some dealer friend who managed to score us not drugs, but tickets. A trace of patchouli and she's burning incense to rid the place of something gone bad in the fridge. A touch of lavender and Mom's slathering on hand cream, doing battle with the dry skin between her fingers.

But it's the visual reminder that leads me straight to the kitchen table where we're sitting the last time she wore this shirt. The day we saw the white bird. I start thinking about faith, about angels, and science, and the laws of the universe. Most of all I think of her.

She's become a piece of scientific curiosity. A gene. A mutation. A disease.

I want her back before she was all that.

I know just what to do. I put down the shirt and paw through the rest of her stuff, searching for the bird feeder, the one thing I know for sure I kept. I grab the splintering wooden feeder from the bottom of the box and head straight to the kitchen to paw through Aunt T's culinary collection for something birds will eat. I settle on a mix of sunflower seeds and peanuts, then creep outside into the cold, starless night and go straight to the oak outside my window to hang the feeder.

Maybe Mom's angel will return.

Nineteen

Tuesday morning, I put on my running shoes and tell Aunt T I'm going jogging before school. Instead of a brisk early morning sprint, I slog to the Bank of America parking lot where Dr. Monroe's agreed to meet me so I can avoid another trip to the city. She's waiting in a red car by the ATM machine when I get there. I check around for the Rat Catcher, then slip her a plastic baggie with the kangaroo stamp. She promises to be in touch as soon as she gets the results, and drives off.

My mind starts churning the second she's gone. I don't know what to do with myself, how to stop my brain from boiling over, so I start to run. I choke down the fumes on Eagle, then turn left and cut through a neighborhood lined with postcard-quaint colonials and old trees with massive trunks and gnarled limbs.

Cold air scorches my lungs. Words and images pound my mind as my feet pound the pavement. Genetic IPF. Cover up. Autopsy report. Dr. Glass. Dr. Monroe. Dr. Wydner. The Rat Catcher. Side effects. Mutation. Heroin. Overdose.
Over and over again the words sing in my head like a mantra. I break into a sprint, hoping to outrun my thoughts, but the faster I run, the faster the images come until I have to stop. I can't run. Not from this.

I double over on the sidewalk to catch my breath. A committee of crows argues in the trees above me. Gray clouds hang low in the turbulent sky. I lick salt from my lips, and for a few seconds it's just those birds and me. A moment of still before the thoughts start to churn again.

Ten minutes later I arrive at school exhausted and sweaty. First period is a blur, and by the time I get to social studies I'm so out of it, it's not until I'm at my desk that I realize something's wrong. Not a single butt crack is showing. Not a single pair of boxers, and there definitely isn't any cleavage.

Then there's me.

My face is flushed. My hair is tangled. I'm wearing a gray sweat suit, which is about as attractive as being dressed in a garbage bag, and I'm painfully aware that I didn't shower yesterday
or
this morning. I'm so out of here. I'm creeping across the room when Anj catches my eye. Her stony look stops me in my tracks. Then I remember. Presentations are today—
our
presentation. That's why she wanted to meet in the library yesterday, to work on our project.

Before I can say anything, Anj turns and marches to her seat. I stare at the back of her head, at the neat bun and pearl drop earrings, and remember how I judged her when we met, how I assumed she'd be stuck up and wouldn't give me the time of day. I was wrong. She was the one who reached out to me. I swallow hard and put my head on my desk as the first presentation begins.

“…the economic transition to a market economy during colonial times…”
I hear Logan Axleman say.

I drift in and out of attention through Logan's presentation and as the others drone on: “…political ideology…witch hunts…early democracy…Faith Flores.”

Faith Flores?

I sit up to see Mr. Robertson looking at me. Anj is already at the front of the room. I straggle up the aisle and take center stage beside her as she carefully arranges moccasins and stone tools on a table. I pick up a whittled stone for inspection. These aren't toy store trinkets, I think with growing despair. These are museum quality artifacts.

Anj finishes her display, turns to the class without a single glance in my direction, and begins. “On his first trip to the New World, Columbus encountered the native Arawak people. Instead of appreciating this new culture, Columbus saw the people as a commodity.” She clicks on the first slide of an indigenous child, peers at her notes, then looks up at the class in perfect public speaking fashion. “Columbus' mission was to go back home to Spain with gold and spices. But he quickly realized that the real treasure in this new land was not gold. It was not spices. It was the Arawaks. Instead of returning the welcomes of these people, Columbus brought them back to Spain as slaves.” I stand there like a tick, parasitizing her hard work and efforts as she goes through each carefully crafted slide and delivers her flawless talk. “Unfortunately, we all know that history has repeated such brutal, such outright horrible crimes against humanity many times. We can only hope that we've learned a lesson and such treatment of indigenous people will end! And don't forget to donate to our Africa awareness campaign. We will be collecting donations outside the cafeteria before homeroom.”

“You go, Sistah!” Marissa, a hippy chick who spends wads of cash to dress like she didn't spend a cent, shouts.

Beside Marissa and Duncan—who stands up and calls, “Right on, Lass!”—Anj's conclusion is met with silence. The status quo tipped to the liberal left is not the way things go around here. The winners write the history books and that's who we're taught about, but soon Mr. Robertson, with his gray comb-over and red sweater vest, starts to clap and the rest of the class takes the lead and follows.

When the bell rings, I slink out of the room, the word “asshole” attached to me like a kick-me sign. I've just managed to slip through the door when Duncan stops me and smiles.

“What?” I snot off. I don't mean to sound so harsh, but seriously, what reason does he have to be smiling at me after I just blew off his girlfriend?

“Nothing,” he says, putting up his hands. “I'm just happy.”

“Well good. I'm glad for you.”

I'm about to walk my bad mood to a bathroom stall, the one speck of privacy in this place, when Anj bursts out of the classroom. She throws her arms around Duncan and nails his face with kisses. I'm thinking um, sure the presentation was good, but it wasn't that good, was it?

“Mr. Robertson is recommending me for the independent study in Scotland next semester!” she squeals. “It's going to happen. My parents agreed and my grandmother already said she'd give me the money!”

Scotland? Independent study? Anj is leaving? Is that why this assignment meant so much to her? So Mr. Robertson would write her a recommendation?
I should be relieved. If Anj goes to Scotland, she'll be nowhere near me. The Atlantic Ocean ought to be enough distance to keep her safe. Still, my stomach plummets to my feet, and my heart isn't far behind.

Duncan's freckled face goes blotchy. He springs Anj off her feet and spins her in a circle. “Bloody awesome! You'll meet my mum and dad and stay with us in Glasgow. I'll show you where Bruce and Wallace slaughtered the English at Bannockburn and Hamden Park where we've been slaughtering each other in football ever since, and I'll take you out on the North Sea, and I'll teach you how to drive British style and…On second thought that's a scary idea.” He laughs so hard he has to put Anj down.

When he finally stops laughing, he elbows Anj in the ribs and they both glance in my direction. Duncan gives Anj a purposeful look, pecks her on the cheek, and takes off just as the bell for fourth period rings. Everyone darts off to class, but my former best friend and I don't move. We stand on opposite sides of the hall, our backs to the lockers like we're about to draw pistols and duel.

“You're going to Scotland?” I snap, channeling all my anger, sadness, and guilt into a fight. “You could've told me.”

“Sor-ry,” she snaps back, glaring. “It's not like you asked about my life. Besides, I did try and tell you. That day at the methadone clinic, but you were so preoccupied with whatever was going on with your mother, I didn't have the chance.”

It's my turn to drag out my syllables with pissed-off righteousness. “Well ex-cuse me for not asking. I've had a few things on my mind if you didn't notice.”

I expect her to throw a match on my gasoline, so our friendship can really go out with a bang. Instead she drops her eyes and lowers her voice. “I didn't want to hurt you, you know? Be another person who leaves? I tried to tell you again last week, but you wouldn't return my calls, and you didn't show up in the library after school, and then I figured you just didn't care.” She pauses and looks up at me. “I'm going to finish junior year abroad. Duncan's family agreed to host me.”

Words like “sorry” and “you're right” are on the tip of my tongue, waiting to be formed, but Anj isn't safe in Scotland yet, so instead of building a bridge, I go for dynamite and blow it up. “That's cool. Whatever. Doesn't matter to me. I've gotta go. Later.” I turn and start heading for my locker.

“You know what your problem is?” she calls after me.

I stop.

“You're too scared to get close to anyone. I guess I thought eventually you'd open up or at least trust me. I wanted to be your friend, but you would never really let me be. I mean I get it. You took me to that place in West Philly where you used to live.”

My whole body tenses. How did she know I lived there? I never told her.

“I figured it out, Faith,” she says, answering to my body language and inner thoughts. “You didn't have to tell me. And I see how hard it must've been for you. But the whole world isn't shit just because you had a rough time.” She pauses and sighs, but I will myself not to turn. “All the times I've invited you over, you never said yes. It's not even about the project and doing all the work myself this weekend. Because I did it, and I feel really good about that. It's just that you didn't return my calls. You didn't even give me an explanation about what was going on. You just turned your back and for no apparent reason blew me off. It's as if our friendship is a joke.”

I hear the click of her clogs on the tile as she walks away, but I don't turn. I don't tell her that our friendship's not a joke. Never has been. Never will be.

***

For the next two days I wait for Dr. Monroe's results and try to concentrate on school. I've pissed off Anj enough to make her totally ignore me and possibly hate me. (Big sarcastic pat on the back for that). Jesse, on the other hand, doesn't ignore me, but rather turns up wherever I go. Need a sip of water? There's Jesse at the drinking fountain. Bathroom? Jesse's gotta go, too. Every time I see him, he breaks into conversation, monologue actually, since I don't answer.

A few times I almost crack a smile, like when he tells me about his new organic hemp boxers (standard rise, roomy cut), but alas, smiling will only egg him on, so I remind myself of Dr. Carlisle's “accident,” put in earbuds, and tune him out.

I haven't seen the Rat Catcher since my drug bust, so I'm thankful for that at least, that and the fact Aunt T and I have made a full, superficial recovery. I don't care how superficial it is. At least there's
someone
to talk to, even if it
is
about the weather.

Dr. Monroe's text comes Thursday during a biology lab on cell division where we're supposed to be peeling onions and making microscope slides. I grab a pass with the excuse of too much onion burning my eyes and escape to the bathroom to check the message.
Call me
is all it says
.
I stand by a dripping faucet and punch her number. She picks up on the first ring.

“We have to talk.”

“Okay, when? Can you meet somewhere? I don't know if—”

“Now.”

“Now? Uh, okay.” I slip into a stall and perch on the edge of the toilet. Someone's doused the place with air freshener. The stench, that has nothing to do with flowers and everything to do with chemistry, makes my eyes water. “I'm listening.”

“When was that sample from you brought me?”

“About two years ago,” I say, feeling defensive, though I don't know what about.

“This doesn't make sense,” Dr. Monroe mumbles.

“What doesn't make sense?”

“I sequenced the DNA on the stamp.”

“And?”

“And the mutation wasn't there. Two years ago your mother didn't have the mutation, and before she died she did.
That's
what doesn't make sense. I thought maybe there was a mistake and the samples were from two different people,” Dr. Monroe goes on, “so I did a genetic profile and sure enough both samples are from your mother.” I try to cut in with a question, but she doesn't let me. “I've spent the day researching this, Faith. Every known case of genetic IPF is something you're born with. The mutation has never been known to happen spontaneously. Never.”

I feel like I've been trapped in some surreal Salvador Dali painting.
Attack of the double helix! Revenge of the death spiral!
“Then how did she get it, unless someone gave it to her?”

Dr. Monroe doesn't answer.

“Hello? Are you still there?” I lower my voice as the bathroom door opens. A tall, skinny Goth chick with black lipstick and bone-white skin crosses the room, cracks the window, and lights a cigarette.

“Still here. I'm thinking.”

“About what?” I say, closing and locking the stall door.

“About what you said.”

“What I said about what?”

“About someone giving her the mutation. It's not impossible, but why would someone do that?”

“Not impossible!” Screw whispering. I don't care what Goth Chick hears or thinks. I'm the junkie's daughter. The druggie who got busted for dope. Now I'll be the crazy girl in the bathroom stall ranting into the phone. “That's insane! You're saying my mother had some mutation when she died that she didn't have two years ago, and the only way she could've gotten it is by someone giving it to her? How the hell would someone do that?” I don't actually expect an answer. I expect Dr. Monroe to laugh and tell me I'm on some candid camera reality show.

“They could've used a gene therapy vector that targets the lung, something like a modified adenovirus,” she says instead.

Either I'm losing my mind or Dr. Monroe's losing hers. Is this a trick? Some way of trying to confuse me and throw me off the track of what really happened? Like the genetic IPF is a scam and it's all about the side effects? A curl of smoke rises above the stall. The odor seeps into my nose and makes me cough. Then again what if it's not a trick? What if what Dr. Monroe says is true? Why would she lie?