RACINE
By Kate Lynch, 2015
"Racine, can you come over for dinner Thursday?" my mother asked with a squeak.
“You know I have scuba diving on Thursdays after work, Mom. Remember?”
“Can you come over for dinner Thursday?”
“I paid upfront...I should go ... What’s going on for Thursday?... I...okay, I’ll be there.”
"Good."
She barely let the sound of her voice carry through the line and I heard the click. I imagined a variety of catastrophes about to unfold: Extramarital affair, divorce, bankruptcy, disease. The most likely - Dad and some younger version of my mother canoodling and running off together. Mom was tipping toward obesity and Dad still taut. Or maybe, they needed money. Could mom have a closet gambling addiction? Or, was she sick? If it was Dad with the disease I don't think she would've been so quick to end the call.
Being an only child sucked once in a while and this was a once.
I paced around the room. Watered the fronds. Threw some New Yorkers from one pile of magazines onto another pile of them. Rearranged the unopened bills on the kitchen counter, not ready for confrontation. Laid some new pens into the cup where I liked to keep ten black and ten blue fine roller ball pens at all times. I preferred the black ink but the blue added a nice pop of color in the cup.
When the phone sounded again I answered on the first ring.
“Racine, it’s your father. Have you heard of epigenetics?”
“Hi, Pop.”
“Epigenetics,” he said.
“Sounds like science. Genes. Hereditary goings on?” I rambled, reacting to type A treatment. I felt my shoulders droop as I flopped onto my rainbow beanbag.
“Racine. You need to look it up and embrace it. Get ready for a discussion on Thursday.”
“You know I have scuba class that night.”
“Your mother said you’ll be there.”
Click.
Well, there wasn’t much left to do. I opened a drawer. Found and crumbled up a section of the block of hash my bestie left in the event of an emergency. The anxiety surge gave me cause to think this could escalate to just that. I took a cigarette out of the fridge, untethered the tobacco and in my palm, introduced it to the hash. Grabbed the little book of paper. And rolled them together. I cracked my window and waved to the neighbors out back as I snapped my blinds shut. I hoped they could keep their social event tame tonight.
Thursday rolled around slower than summer vacation when I was six. I got on the express train after work and headed up north. Caught a bus even farther north. And upon arrival at their building, waved to the new guy in the lobby, cruised by and mumbled, “Racine Axelrod, 6B.”I pulled my hat a little further over my forehead and slinked into the back corner of the elevator. I then maneuvered back to front and hovered by the control panel, hit the gilded six button at least twelve times and then the door close button another fifteen.
I made it. No interacting with neighbors. The key to the apartment was the biggest on the keyring I pulled from my clutch. I buzzed and turned the key at the same time, expecting to be greeted by Mom opening the door. Not tonight.
“Hello?” I entered.
The base note of musty air was covered with an evergreen candle aroma, which seemed all wrong because the season was eight months off.
“In the kitchen,” my mother’s voice called.
She was facing the window that faced the courtyard, cutting vegetables. I went to the side of her, kissed her on the cheek. “Hiya, Mom.”
“Hi, love, thanks for coming.”
“Of course. I didn’t bring anything. Sorry.”
“Why don’t you go sit in the living room – I left a few pieces of your mail on the table by the couch. Dad will be here any minute.”
I retraced my steps back into the depths of the dimly lit sitting room, stopped by the source of the evergreen scent and parked it. Damn!! Another Discover card bill. I shoved it in my clutch hoping my father hadn’t seen it already. I was ready for a science talk not a money talk.
And on cue, the door opened.
“Hi Racine.”
“Pop.”
We hugged replete with one shoulder touching and two taps on the back. He smelled like his deodorant wore off at lunchtime.
My mother appeared and there we were, our little trinity, ready for discourse on epigenetics, preceded by some type of bomb they were aiming and ready to launch.
“So? What’s this about?” I asked. “I know it’s gonna be dark.”
My mother sat next to me on the couch - the seams on her trousers ready to rupture. I fixated on that as my father’s voice wound up.
“Racine. You haven’t been kept in the loop on this because we wanted some firm answers and a finite direction to take this discussion before it was put on the floor. What I mean to say is that I brought some paperwork home. It’s an abstract on epigenetics. And, this is what’s important here. You need to know that you can change the course of your destiny by manifesting positive change in your thinking, your diet, your lifestyle...this doesn’t have to be a death sentence. It’s not about DNA it’s about the transcriptional potential of a cell. Do you understand? Science is making a fundamental shift and re-education is a necessity.”
So, there it was. No affair. No money problems. Instead, Death.
He pulled said abstract from his brief case and placed it where my Discover bill had been. Boom. There it was. New England Journal of Medicine. A shitty photocopy with crooked text on the front page. My pet peeve.
I didn’t look but could see the bleak expression on her face. My mother silent.
“Pop. What the hell are you talking about. You’re an attorney. Not a scientist.”
“I’m talking about 1962. Passion. Lust. Covert sexuality. Oppression from the right. From the left. We were teenagers once, too!” He burst out.
I was stunned at the loss of control. A show of emotion. What the fuck.
“A pregnancy. Nuns. Adoption papers. Why do you think your mother gained the recent weight? You have a sister. She tracked us down. She, Cheryl, she is terminal." His voice reached an unrecognizable pitch.
Terminal. Cheryl. Sister. The evergreen smell now thicker than the incense shaken all over a coffin gave rise to nausea and I ran for the loo.