Positively Beautiful (27 page)

After dinner, Miriam announces she wants to talk to me alone. I throw a panicked look at Jason, who shrugs,
What can I do?
Miriam tucks my hand firmly under her elbow and draws me with her onto the vast screened porch scattered with colorful outdoor couches and a birdcage holding a large, grouchy-looking green parrot.

“You must be excited to see your mom tomorrow.” She sits on a couch and pats the cushion beside her. I sit, and try not to show this whole let's-have-a-talk thing is scaring the
bejesus
out of me.

“Yes,” I say. “I've missed her every minute I was gone.”

“I know she'll be happy to see you safe and sound.” I hear no judgment in her voice.

“I feel so … incredibly
guilty
,” I say, not surprised that I can talk to Jason's mom as easily as I can talk to him. Both of them have a straightforward quality that inspires honesty. “I ran away when she needed me most. I let her down once, and
I … I'm not sure I'm as strong as I need to be. I need to be
there
, and I wasn't the last time. I hope … I hope I can do it this time.”

“Your mom is going through chemo, and you just found out you have the BRCA mutation. Give yourself a break. It's not surprising you felt overwhelmed,” she says. “The important thing is what you do now.”

“My mom still doesn't know I got tested. Mom's genetic counselor told her it was best if I waited until I was at least twenty-one to get tested, and even then, there's really nothing I should do until I'm twenty-five. But I had to know. I had to know
now
. I did an online test, and that's how I found out.”

“Are you glad you did?” She raises an eyebrow.

I hesitate. Then, “Maybe I should have waited. In some ways it makes me feel so much more helpless knowing that I'm positive but that I have to wait so long to do anything about it. But at the time … it didn't feel like I could.” How to explain that sense of urgency, that impending doom that I felt? Waiting did not seem like an option. But now … Now, I'm not so sure I made the right decision.

She presses her fingers together under her chin. “From what I understand, these online genetic tests, which is the only genetic testing you can get without a doctor's order, test for just a few of the BRCA mutations. In some ways, that gives you a false sense of knowledge, when only a genetic expert can truly help you understand the results and what they mean to
you.
”

I sigh. “Well, I did it, and now I know I have two choices. Either I cut off my breasts, and maybe even take out my ovaries, or I wait and see if I get cancer. That seems impossible. I know
the doctors do a lot of screening on women with the BRCA mutation, but it seems like with up to an eighty percent chance of getting it—”

“That number is dependent on a lot of factors,” she says. “It's not cut-and-dry.”

“
Still
. I'm just waiting for the inevitable. I'll spend the rest of my life waiting to go through what my mom is going through. I don't think I can stand it.”

She doesn't say anything for a moment. Then she leans forward and takes my hand.

“Even before we found out about the gene, my family has lived with cancer as a sort of unwelcome but necessary houseguest,” she says. “We've been battling it for generations. It's a war that sometimes we win, sometimes we lose, but we're always fighting. Living like that, it changes a person. You never feel so alive as you do when death is at the door. Life is hard, but it's the only one we have, and I cannot envision living it in despair.” She stares at me without speaking, as comfortable with silence as her son.

“Jason has been … great,” I say, because my thoughts are like a mass of swirling birds in my mind trying to get out. “I don't know what I would have done without him.”

She nods and smiles her lovely smile. “Jason has always loved life, but finding out he had the BRCA mutation … it intensified something in him. He made a conscious decision to wring every last drop of joy out of each day he lives.”

I think about Jason deciding not to fall in love, but I don't say anything, because it doesn't feel right to tell her if Jason hasn't told her himself.

She sits back, and stares out at the sky and endless mangroves for a while without speaking. At first, I squirm, but then I follow her gaze and somehow get lost in the secret whisper of the mangroves, the smell of the oranges sweetly rotting on the ground under a nearby tree, and the sun-thrown water shapes wavering on the porch rail.

“There is a poem I think about when I am afraid,” she says after a while, “when I need to be strong. It's by Hannah Senesh, a young Hungarian girl who volunteered to parachute into occupied territory to help rescue other Jews during the Holocaust and who died by a Nazi firing squad. Her radiant, courageous heart shone through even in her poetry and it makes me feel strong when I read it.”

Miriam closes her eyes and pauses a moment before reciting softly:

“
God, may there be no end

to sea, to sand,

water's splash,

Lightning's flash,

the prayer of man.
”

“After she died, they found that she had written ‘I loved the warm sunlight.' Past tense, even as she wrote it in her cell, because she knew she was going to die. But still, she was able to enjoy something as simple as the warm sunlight on her face. I remember this when things seem like too much. I remember to notice the warm sunlight on my face.”

I'm standing at Ashley's bedroom window when a strange car pulls into the Levinsons' driveway early the next morning. The last person I expected to see gets out.

Stew.

Not only is he the last person I expected to see, he is the last person I
wanted
to see. I don't want to face him, don't want to try to explain what I can't explain.

Why did Mom send him instead of coming herself?

The doorbell rings, and Ashley speaks from behind me. “Is that your dad?”

I jump. “What? Uh, no. He's my flight instructor.”

Ashley is in a white T-shirt and boxers, and she looks so young, though she's actually a month older than me. We talked for a long time as I lay on the trundle bed that pulled from beneath her bed, and she never once complained about the closet light being on. At first it was uncomfortable, because I could
not talk to her about the BRCA mutation. Miriam and Jason are fiercely determined that she not know about it until she turns eighteen and I can't help but feel a little jealous of her innocence. Jealous, and sadness for what she has coming. The knowledge feels like a weapon, a life-exploding bomb. I wouldn't wish that on anybody, though a small part of me knows that ignorance is even more deadly. Ashley will turn eighteen in less than a year and then, for better or worse, she will know.

But as we lay there together last night it was hard not to think:
I am on the other side of a divide now. You are on the before side, and I do not want to take that away from you, because the after shatters your soul. What would you say if I told you we may share a death sentence in our very cells? I am a genetic mutant, and you might be one also.

I'm thinking about cutting off my breasts
, I might say,
and what will you do?

“Aren't you going to go down?” Ashley asks.

“I'd really rather not,” I say.

But I do.

Stew is standing awkwardly in the hall with Mr. and Mrs. Levinson, hand pressed to the small of his back, and a coffee stain down his shirt. He looks out of his element away from the airport, like a bird in a grocery store.

“Hi, Stew,” I say.
Hi, Stew, you must be superthrilled to see me!

Stew nods brusquely at me and goes back to his conversation with Mr. Levinson about a detour route to Interstate 75.

Jason comes down the stairs, and he's wearing a pair of shorts but no shirt and I try not to notice because we are just
friends
.

“Who is that?” he says, his voice husky with sleep.

“Stew. My flight instructor,” I say in a low voice. “I don't know why he's here.”

“Are you ready?” Stew barks at me.

“Uh … okay,” I say. It's not like I have any luggage. I have my purse, I'm wearing the same clothes I wore the day I walked away from Tweety Bird. I look like the same girl, but I'm not.

“I think we should give the kids a little privacy to say good-bye,” Miriam says, and Stew looks like,
No, I'm quite sure they've had enough privacy already
, but he follows Jason's parents as they go out the front door. Ashley drifts silent as a ghost after them, leaving Jason and me alone in the foyer.

I stare at the grayish tile on the floor. I don't know what to say.

“Atlanta's, what, eight or nine hours from here? Maybe I can come visit.” Jason is standing close to me, and I can't look at him so I stare at the tiny golden hairs on his wrist, breathing the scent of him, which is warm and musty from sleep. “Erin?”

I force myself to look up into his face. In the bright light of morning, his eyes are shimmering and sparkling with gold flecks. He's not shaven, and he looks older still. Away from the island, I'm not sure I recognize him.

“Will it be the same?” I blurt out. “Will we still be able to be friends now that … all this happened?” I wave my hand wildly around and he catches it in his own. Heat floods like molten sugar from my palm to the soles of my feet as he stares at me without speaking. It is not a comfortable silence, but a
sizzling one, volatile with unspoken feelings only needing a spark to take shape.

“Nothing's changed,” he says after a while, giving my hand a little shake. “We're still buds, okay? We can still talk.”

He lets go of my hand and I resist the urge to reach out for his again.

Stew pokes his head inside the door and says, “Daylight's wasting, sunshine,” even though it's only been daylight for forty-five minutes. It's that early. He must have driven all night.

“Uh … okay,” I say, looking back to Jason.

“See you, Erin,” Jason says, looking straight at me. His face, usually so clear and open, is shadowed.

“Okay,” I say, before I start crying, and I leave.

The ride back with Stew is excruciating. I try to talk at first, to apologize, to explain why I did what I did, but the words don't come out right. It doesn't matter, anyway, because Stew responds only in grunts and won't look at me.

“I'm sorry,” I say, “I really, really am.”

He looks at me, in his dirty shirt and with tired, angry eyes. “I lost a student once. I lost one and I thought I had again. And to find out it was some asinine stunt? So that you could hang out with your
boyfriend
on some tropical island? Do you know what you did to your mother? To me? You wrecked my
plane
. I thought you had died. And your mother is so worn and exhausted by all this she had to ask me to come get you. How does that make you feel?
This
is why I don't like kids.”
He shakes his head in disgust and refuses to speak to me again the rest of the trip.

I don't have a phone or a book, and apparently the radio in Stew's beat-up, old Chevy doesn't work, so I put my head back on the seat and close my eyes, letting the hot, dirty air beat on my face. I already miss Jason, and the island, and am trying not to think about what comes next. So I immerse myself in memories of dark, secret water and manatees playing and sharks that feel like silk.

She must have been waiting at the window because she comes out as soon as we pull into the driveway.

“
Erin
,” Mom says when she sees me get out of the car. She looks frail and exhausted and her hair is almost gone, and I run to her, holding her tight, and we're both crying.

“I'm home, I'm home,” I whisper. “I'm so sorry, Momma, I didn't mean to hurt you.
I'm so, so sorry
.”