Cradling Murphy in my lap, I watched from the picture window in the living room as Keith packed up the last of his belongings. Getting him to this point had not been easy. Keith fought me all night and then into the next day, but I stayed strong and unwavering. After all, I had what he did not – the time to come to terms with my fate. If I gave Keith that same courtesy, I knew he’d find a way to talk me out of my decision. It wasn’t that I didn’t want him – I desperately did – but I refused to chain this loving man to my side when there was a full, rich life out there just waiting for him.
Yet Keith refused to accept the reality of our situation. Armed with his honorary medical degree off Wikipedia, he went back and forth from the computer to me, presenting the facts about the disease as if he somehow thought I hadn’t already been beating myself over the head with them every single day for the past couple of weeks.
Huntington’s was an open-ended disease, and one that didn’t discriminate. Passed on from generation to generation, all who inherited it would eventually meet a horrible end. And even though the statistics were somewhat on my side – with a 50% chance of harboring the disease in my DNA, I didn’t need genetic testing to tell me what I already knew – the monster lying dormant inside me all these years was lazily opening its evil eyes. I could tick off the symptoms as I experienced them. It was no longer a matter ofif, butwhen.
Still, Keith clung to that 50% number like the glass half full kind of guy he was. I, on the other hand, had already anchored myself to despair. In my eyes, the glass wasn’t just half empty – it was bone dry. No matter when I got the testing, I knew the outcome would be the same – I died at the end.
Despite it all, Keith was willing to stand by my side. It was noble and romantic in a ‘doomed lover’ sort of way, but it was also unrealistic. I, of all people, knew that getting to the curtain call would be the real battle. As my brain cells slowly withered away, Keith would take the brunt of the suffering, and slowly but surely, he would grow to resent me – just as I’d resented my mother and she’d resented hers.
There was no easy answer. Every path for us led to heartbreak. If we stayed together, we lost. If we split up, we lost. No matter what, our hearts would break, and we’d have to learn to live our lives apart. Sure, I could go through the effort and time and expense to get an official diagnosis, but that would only bring us closer together, winding him around my disease as if it coursed through his veins as well as my own. No, going our separate ways was the only answer to us each escaping with the least amount of suffering. Apart, we could still cling to our memories, and I comforted myself in knowing he would go on to love again. Keith had too much tenderness in his heart not to pass it on.
And me? Without having to worry about him, I could get back to work and make what I had left of my coherent life matter. With any luck, I could get to a place in my life where I wouldn’t look back in sadness. Keith was my first love– my only love – my last love.
As he walked back into the house, Keith’s shoulders were slumped and heavy. All that was left now was the fine print. I’d already worked out the bigger picture. My grandmother had left a sizable inheritance to my mother, which would soon be passed on to me. As soon as that money was in my account, I’d buy Keith out of the house we owned together. And Murphy… I hugged him tighter to me. I suppose I could have pushed for shared custody, but I couldn’t bear the idea of Keith coming in and out of my life. It had to be a clean split for both our sakes. He got the dog.
* * *
“Are you all packed?” I asked, trying to sound unaffected in the face of such sorrow. I wanted desperately to postpone his departure, but why prolong the torture? I was a dead end, and the sooner he turned around, the better.
“Yeah.” Keith’s voice broke in the most grievous of ways. I resisted the urge to smother him in the love he deserved. No one had said this would be easy – but no one had said it would rip us to bloody shreds either.
I stood up, carried Murphy over, and transferred him to Keith’s arms.
“Are you sure?” he asked, nothing but misery in his words.
I fought back the tears as I dipped my head into Murphy’s soft fur and nuzzled him. Yes, I was sure. Even furry pups weren’t safe from a deranged mind.
“I’m sure,” I nodded, leaving a trail of tears in his unruly hair. “Mommy’s going to miss you, baby.”
“We’ll come by and visit,” Keith whispered, his hands sliding over my neck.
“No.” I took a step back, away from Murphy. Away from Keith. Forever. “That’ll just make it harder.”
He shook his head. “You don’t want this, Sam. I know you don’t.”
Of course I didn’t… but I refused to feed Keith to the monster inside me. My bottom lip trembled as I swallowed back the sorrow and asked one last thing from the man I loved. “Please don’t tell anyone why we split. If people find out, I might lose my job, and I want to hold onto that for as long as I can. I’ll let people know when the time comes.”
Keith stood there chewing over my words. “What do I tell my family?”
“Anything but the truth. Blame it on me, Keith. Tell them I cheated or that I broke it off. Just don’t tell them about this. Please.”
A storm passed over him. Anger. Despair. Hopelessness. He hated me. He loved me. I was destroying him – but only so he could live the life I could never give him.
“I would have stayed,” he said.
“I know. And that’s why you have to go. Someday, when you have a beautiful wife wrapped in your arms and a bunch of rowdy little kids crowding around, you’ll think of this moment and you’ll thank me.”
Keith defiantly shook his head.
“No, Sam,” he replied, carrying Murphy out the front door. “No, I won’t.”
34
Keith: Public Enemy #1
Like a refugee, I carried boxes of belongings into my parent’s house – the only place I’d found that would allow dogs on such short notice– and unpacked my measly possessions with a sense of finality. This was not what I wanted. And it certainly wasn’t what spoiled only-dog Murphy wanted. He now had to share attention with Mike, the golden retriever; Sally, the Shih Tzu mix; and Joshua, the tabby. And although Murphy didn’t say as much, I knew he already missed his mom.
My parents’ place might have been pet-friendly, but it came with judgmental disappointment. Sam had been a popular addition to the family, and because I wasn’t able to disclose the real reason for our split, my family just assumed I was the dickhead who’d left her. And then if you paired my perceived heartless dumping with the recent death of her mother, I came out looking like a double dipping of dog shit.
