Positively Beautiful (31 page)

The day after Christmas, Mom drives with me to Florida. Our Christmas was quiet, but nice. I gave her a new sweater. She gave me a new tablet.

On Interstate 75, I check my phone to see if I have a text from Jason or Trina. Trina and I have slowly begun talking again the past week but it feels tentative, uncertain. We're making progress, though. The foundation is still there.

“Erin, please don't text while you're driving.”

“I'm not texting.” I put my phone down. “I'm checking to see if I
have
a text.”

She sighs and shifts in her seat, putting her hand to her back. She pulled a muscle or something, and it's been bugging her. I feel bad, her having to spend so much time in a car when her back hurts. Of course, she could have let me drive by myself, but that wasn't happening. I'm not complaining, though, because it was a feat in itself to convince her to let me go visit Jason at all.

“Erin, I've wanted to talk with you about something.”

Buzz, buzz, buzz.
Awkward-conversation alert.

“Hmmm?” I check the gas, but we still have plenty. If this gets too bad, I might have to dive for an exit on the pretext of a pee stop. I glance at her out of the corner of my eye but she
looks determined. It's still hard for me to get used to her with white hair, but that's how it grew back in.

“I've been wanting to talk to you about Jason. You know, I thought long and hard about whether to let you go to Florida to stay with his family. It's just … Look. You'll have plenty of time to … expand your relationship with Jason as you get older.”

Oh God, she picks
now
to have the sex talk?

“You're still my little girl,” she says softly. “I know Jason was a great source of strength to you during my illness, and I know he still is. But … don't confuse love and gratitude.”

Love? Who said anything about love?

“You don't have anything to worry about. Jason and I are just friends.” And he has every intention of us just
staying
friends forever. More and more, this whole let's-be-best-buds thing is beginning to bug me.

“Just … be careful, okay? Sex is such an important part of an adult's life, but I just don't think you're ready for it. There are so many confusing, adult emotions involved in that type of relationship. I don't want you jumping into the pool without knowing how cold the water is.”

Seriously, this is about as awkward as my first-period talk.

“Jason and I are not going to have sex.”

We drive in silence for a little bit. My face is burning.

“I met your dad in college,” she says and stops. I can tell she's embarrassed too, which doesn't help at all.

I wait. I never realized how little I knew about my dad before. It sounds strange, but until recently I thought I knew everything there was to know about him. High tosses into the
air (“Watch the ceiling fan, Justin!”), bedtime poems, and his laughter as I tried to walk in his cowboy boots. But my six-year-old self's memories aren't enough anymore, and I will never get the chance to know him any better.

“It took a while,” she continues, “but then I realized I was madly in love with him. It scared me, honestly. We dated for quite a while before we … you know.”

“Sure.” I squirm, halfway wishing for a tractor-trailer to overturn or something, just so she'll stop.

“You don't want to regret anything.”

“Okay.”

After a while, I say, “You and Dad were madly in love?”

“Well, yes, of course.” She shifts again in her seat, wincing.

That seems odd to me. She and Dad were once just like Trina and Chaz? The way I want to be with a boy one day?

“How did you know you were in love?”

She looks out the window. “I don't know how to explain it. I'm not sure anybody can. It's like trying to explain pain. You can tell someone you hurt, but you can't really make them understand the pain. Love is like that. I suppose if I was going to try to explain it, I'd say love is something you can live without, but when you have it the world seems brighter, a happier place. It's easier to smile and to laugh.”

“And Dad? He felt the same way about you?”

“Your dad was so much braver than me. He said he knew the first time he saw me he was going to marry me. It took a long time for me to admit how I felt. Ever since this happened,” Mom touches her prosthetic breast, “I've been thinking about how I've lived my life. I … have regrets. I regret I wasn't
strong enough to stay with your dad. I never stopped loving him. I just couldn't handle the worrying all the time when he was up in the air. But if I'd known he only had two more years to live, I never would have divorced him. I would have spent every minute of it with him, right up to the end. You just never know. You never know what's going to happen.”

“I wish I was brave like Dad,” I say.

“So do I,” Mom says. “Every day I wish I was as brave as he was.”

We drive for a while, and finally I say, “Mom, there's something I need to tell you.”

She looks at me sharply. I'm guessing her Mommy Alarm is now going
buzz
,
buzz
,
buzz.

“I got tested for the breast cancer gene,” I say. “I have it. I didn't want to tell you while you were sick, but now … I wanted to tell you.”

There is an awful silence, and I sneak a glance to see Mom blinking rapidly, her throat working.

“Oh,
Erin
,” she says, when she can talk. “Oh, I'm so sorry.” Her voice steadies. “I don't understand … How did you get tested? I didn't think you could get tested until you were eighteen. Why did you keep it a secret?”

“I did it online. You can get tested for a bunch of genetic stuff like that. And … I didn't want to worry you.”

She shakes her head, and then sighs. “I guess I shouldn't be surprised. You kids are so much more savvy than we were at your age. I never would have thought … Okay. Well.” Her eyes are glazed with unshed tears. “We need to get you in to talk to a genetic counselor. That way you know all your options,
what you'll need to be thinking about. I wish you had waited … and talked to a counselor. That must have been so terrible finding out on your own. I can't even
imagine
.”

“Everyone said that the counselor would just tell me to wait. Mom … I couldn't wait. I
couldn't
. I had to know.”
But carrying that knowledge around by myself almost killed me
, I don't say. And,
Now I'm not sure I really wanted to know.

Mom takes a deep breath. “I suppose as they do more and more of this kind of testing we're all going to have to think about how it affects you kids. I suppose … what's done is done.” She looks real sad, though.

I take a deep breath. “I've been wondering … You chose not to take off your other breast, even though you knew you had the BRCA gene and that you may get cancer again. Why?”

She looks out the window and for a minute I think she is not going to answer. Then, “It's a very personal decision. Nobody can tell you what's right for
you
. For me, at the time, just taking the one seemed like the right thing to do. They also told me I need to take out my ovaries, but it seemed like too much. I don't know. I've been thinking more about it. Maybe I will do the surgeries.”

“Maybe we can do them together,” I say.

She looks at me sharply. “By the time you have to worry about it, hopefully there will be a
cure
for breast cancer. That or better surveillance techniques. I wonder if anybody ever thought about what all this genetic testing means to real people. Yes, hooray, we're able to see the mutations in our genes, but what do we do with the information? We cut off body parts. I pray every day we will find a cure for these diseases we can
predict but not stop.” She reaches over and pats my leg. “There's no reason for you to worry about it right now. Who knows what the future will bring?”

“But I do worry! I walk around feeling like I've got an expiration date stamped on my forehead. How do you live like that?”

She is quiet for a while. “Whenever I start thinking about it, I think about you, and your father. I think about the people I love, and even if my time is short, at least I had the incredible luck to have you in my life. Which would you rather, to have a long miserable life, or a short, beautiful one?”

Jason and I walk along the shore of our island, and the tide is low, the mud laid bare in all its intimate glory. We go slowly, the clattering crabs racing in front of us, and Jason points out the distinctive five-finger mark of a raccoon, which looks like a small hand. Birds wheel and dive, come to feed on the cornucopia of crabs, worms, mollusks, and other small creatures that are the Happy Meal of the shorebirds.

“The tides are different here in southwest Florida.” Jason bends down and slides his hand through the water. When he stands, the water falls like diamonds from his fingers. “Most places the water ebbs and flows twice a day very predictably, little foamy soldiers advancing and retreating.” He uses his fingers to make little legs marching along and I smile. “But here, the tides are pretty much a mess. They come and go as they please, some days having two very unequal highs and lows, other days only one high and low. And some days the
tide waits and waits until all of a sudden it piles up on shore all at once.” He sweeps his arm around, making a
whooshing
sound like the tide just wiped out everything around us.

I laugh. “What I would pay to spend one day in your head. It must be pretty crazy in there.”

“Crazy good, or crazy you-need-to-be-medicated?”

“Time will tell,” I tease.

We walk in contented silence.

I wasn't sure I wanted to come to the island, which is why we left it to the last day. I'm not sure why I was hesitant, except that the island had become such a magical, healing place in my mind that I was afraid reality would ruin it. I shouldn't have worried though, it was just the way I remembered it.

It's been a great visit, not only with Jason, but with his family as well. Jason lives in an apartment on the first floor of his parents' house, and I stayed upstairs in Ashley's room. She and I talked late into the night, not about the BRCA gene, which she still doesn't know about, but about everything else. After all she has been through with her family, she has a quiet serenity that fills a room. I suspect that the news of the gene mutation is not going to shock her. There's been too much cancer in her family to not know something is wrong. It might even be a relief to her to know one way or another.

“I've been thinking … ,” I say.

“Uh-oh.” Jason turns to look at me. His curly hair is untamed and messy, his blue-green eyes brilliant with the glitter of water.

“Seriously. I've been doing a lot of thinking about my BRCA mutation. I think I'm going to get the surgery to remove my
breasts. I don't think I can stand waiting the rest of my life to get cancer.”

It's the first time I've said the words out loud, and it's like a sneeze that finally came.

Jason doesn't say anything at first. He sits on a log and I sit beside him, digging my toes in the cool, slippery sand. I listen to the cranky creak of palm fronds moving in the light breeze and the sweet whisper of the light-shattered water.

“Everything I read said I'm going to need to start really paying attention five or ten years before my mom's first onset of cancer, which was when she was thirty-five. Cancer comes earlier every generation, so I'm thinking I'll remove my breasts by the time I'm twenty-five or so, and my ovaries in my thirties. My risk will be a lot lower then. What do you think?”

“Erin …”

“I know it seems crazy to be talking about cutting off my breasts when I'm only seventeen, but don't you see? It's the only way to not have to worry for the rest of my life. It's the safest way.”

“Life isn't safe, Erin,” Jason says.

“I know that. Don't you think I know that? What would
you
do if you had a choice?”

“I don't, though. I'm glad I don't have a choice. I don't want to have to make a decision like you and Ashley will. But if there was some part of my body I could cut off to reduce my risk? No way.”

“But it's the only way I can minimize the risk, to make myself as safe as possible. Don't you understand?”

“I understand you want to live your life safely, Erin. I don't.
I want to
live
, period. I don't think you can do both at the same time, not really.”

I shake my head, not knowing what to say. Jason always says exactly what he thinks, so why am I surprised he would tell me his opinion? But I want him to understand. I want him to tell me it is all right.

I want him to tell me it is all right because I'm falling for him. I have been for ages, but it is only today, as it is almost time for me to leave, that I see how much he means to me. Thinking about the months ahead when he will be in Florida and I will be in Georgia makes me feel cold and alone.

“Erin.” He tilts my face toward him with the tip of his finger. “It's your choice. You have to do what's right for
you
. But if you're asking my opinion, I think you should wait until you're older to decide anything. Don't worry about the future until you have to.”

“I wish I could do that,” I say in a small voice. “I wish I knew how to do that. But I don't. I'm not like that.”

Suddenly, I'm aware of how close he is to me. It's not the first time this week I felt this searing flash of attraction between us, but always before he would turn away, or say something, and nothing would happen. I'm not even sure he felt it. But this time, this time I
know
. I feel it deep inside, in that newly minted woman part of me that can tell when a boy is looking at her
like that
. I'm warm and jittery and without meaning to, I lean closer to him.