Megan's Bath-- Chapter 7

Michael walked out of the exhibition and passed through two more galleries, searching for Megan. He finally found her in the museum atrium, where there was a little cafe with a central fountain. The rushing water created both a soothing echo which flowed throughout the atrium and a little breeze that caused the wide-leaved plants in the neighboring garden to wave gently. She sat alone at a small table at the corner of the fountain, staring forlornly into its pool.

He headed over to her and waited expectantly for her to acknowledge him, but she refused to look in his direction.

"Mind if I join you?" he asked.

Megan shrugged.

Taking that as permission, he pulled out the wrought-iron chair and sat down. For several minutes they sat in silence, both watching the fountain. He stole glances at her, gradually realizing that she was wincing slightly every so often. He noted that her arm-- close to the fountain-- was flecked with black marks where occasional water droplets were landing. Yet she didn't move her arm away. Her eyes, fixed on the water, were full of longing.

He was alarmed.

Hoping to distract her, he fished around in his pocket. "Would you like to make a wish?" he ventured.

That made her look at him finally, and he extracted a dime and held it out to her.

"What would I wish for?" she asked glumly.

"A new family," he responded.

She smiled slightly, in spite of herself.

"Look," he continued, "I'm sorry, honey. What we did was wrong."

She looked surprised.

"We were wrong to compromise your care like that." He laid the dime down on the table. "Like I said, your mom has a lot of issues with her mom, and I think they clouded her better judgment-- hers and mine." He laid his finger on the dime and pushed it around in little absentminded circles. "She loves you, and I don't think it occurred to her that we were doing anything that could hurt you. She was trying to protect you from somebody she saw as a bad influence, and after we knew your grandfather had the mutation, we figured the mystery of the source was solved and there was no harm in leaving the rest of it alone."

Megan pursed her lips. "Yeah...maybe."

"I think the thing to do now is to go on home, and I'm going to talk to your mother and figure out what to do next. Obviously, we need to talk to Dr. Greene." Dr. Greene was Megan's geneticist. "But let me handle things with your mom, okay? This is a sensitive subject for her, and it's better that I work it out with her."

Megan nodded, but she didn't look pleased with the solution.

"Well?" he prompted her.

"Well what?"

"Is that okay?"

"It's going to have to be, isn't it?" She held out her hand for the dime. "Can I have that?"

Michael picked up the coin and dropped in her hand. She thought for a moment, then pitched it into the fountain; it fell in lightly, barely registering a ripple.

***

Meanwhile, Helen sat at the kitchen table, her eyes locked on a thick envelope that she had found in her mailbox. The handwritten Tarpon Beach on the return address, in the elderly version of her mother's script, stared back at her.

She wrestled with what to do for many minutes, one moment wanting to tear into the envelope and pour over its contents, the next wanting to seize the envelope and throw it into the trash unopened. Finally, she made a decision.

I know what is wrong with your daughter, her mother had written earlier.

Helen had grown increasingly worried about her daughter's isolation, losing hope that the legion of doctors around the world would ever come up with a diagnosis, much less a cure, and daunted by the task of having to educate and care for a girl-- before long, a woman-- who could be killed by the thing that every other person depended on for life. She wasn't quite willing to start reading every quack letter she received, but perhaps--

She took a deep breath and carefully tore open the envelope. It took a few minutes to work up the courage to withdraw the letter, a few more to unfold it, and many more to begin to read.

She was stunned by her mother's account of meeting her father. Passed out on a beach? She rolled her eyes. That should have been your first clue that he was a loser, she thought.

Then she came to the passage where her mother described the night she threw her lover out for good.

You were nine, and by then you had the habit of locking yourself in the bathroom when he would stop by.

Helen remembered how she would fill the tub, climb in, and lie back until her ears were submerged. The warm water comforted her and muffled her parents' words. She would stay in long after her fingertips and toes had shriveled into raisins.

I accused him of using again, and he didn't deny it. I told him I couldn't go on like this any more, never knowing where he was or when he was coming back. He was very sorry, but when I told him he needed to get clean, he shocked me by refusing. I told him he would never see you again if he didn't stop, and that's when he told me that he needed the drugs to keep seeing us. It hurt too much if he didn't use them, he said. This made me so angry, and I told him that if it was so horrible and painful to be with us, then maybe he could do us all a favor and just stay away. He shook his head no, no, it wasn't like that, and I said, then what is it like?

When Helen read her father's explanation, she gasped, then re-read and re-read the passage to make sure she had understood it correctly, then went on to read the rest of her mother's letter, her heart sinking when she realized that her mother had not only believed his ridiculous story, but was now asking her to believe him too, and to base her care for Megan on it! Her confusion turned quickly to the familiar anger and betrayal.

After all this time, she's still making excuses for him!

She folded up the letter meticulously with trembling hands, then set it aside and sat there stewing in fury. She became so lost in her anger that she jumped when she heard Michael's key in the lock.

Michael and Megan came in.

"How was the museum?" Helen asked, failing miserably at masking her distress.

"Fine," said Michael uncertainly. He looked at Megan. "Give me a minute to talk to your mother, okay?"

Megan turned to obey, but then spotted the thick letter on the tabletop. Oh shit, of course it would show up today! "Is that from Maria?" she yelped, pointing at the papers.

Helen was taken aback. "Excuse me?"

"Go upstairs, Megan," urged her father, pushing her gently towards the staircase.

"Wait a minute, Michael," said Helen, rising. "Megan, what are you talking about?"

"Maria," said Megan. "Your mother." She could see that her mother had already opened the letter, so the jig was up anyway.

"Go upstairs," warned Michael. "Now."

"Did she tell you what was wrong with me?"

"Megan, how do you know--"

"What did she say?" begged Megan. "What is that?" She moved to grab at the letter, but Michael stood in the way, effectively blocking her on the staircase.

"This?" asked Helen, suddenly grabbing the letter and holding aloft, her voice dripping with disdain. "This, Megan, is a bunch of bullshit."