The Perfect Son (20 page)

Harry parked. Perfectly. “Who da man!” He punched the air, and Dad exhaled loudly.

“That was good, Harry.”

For real? Dad had used
good
and
Harry
in the same sentence without irony?

“You didn’t tic at all while you were driving.”

“Can we do this again tomorrow, Dad?”

“If you take your medication.”

The pressure started building. A tic that wouldn’t be contained.
No, not now. Let Dad say
good
and
Harry
one more time. Please.

He should have known. Compress all that energy, pack it together as if it were a bound and tied Slinky, and sooner or later it would spring free. Tics 101. Harry started jiggling from side to side. His foot stomped on the brake, stomped on the brake. Repeated.

Dad opened the passenger door and let out a sigh. It was a small one, but it was a sigh. And that
wow!
moment vanished. Replaced by the feeling you got when you were in the back of a car and it hit a speed bump too fast, and your stomach went
bleh
and you prayed you didn’t hurl. Worst feeling in the world, topped only by the realization that if he wanted to win Dad’s approval, all he had to do was not tic—not release any
nervous habits
—for the rest of his life.

TWENTY

Nudging the door open with his foot, Felix stood on the threshold of Hades. The doorknob would, of course, be sticky. Stickiness oozed from his son’s pores.

Piles of books or papers didn’t bother him, but the mayhem of Harry’s room had no rhythm. Even the posters weren’t hung straight. Coheed and Cambria definitely tilted toward the left, and the Tar Heels basketball team was decidedly wonky. It was clutter run amok; it was bedlam. And it stank of unwashed socks and leftovers.

The trail of disaster snaked from the unmade bed to the desk to the floor. An open family-size bag of salt and vinegar chips gaped next to Harry’s laptop, and not one but two plates of toast crumbs sat on the floor. A third plate was upside down, as if kicked over in a mad dash to exit the room. An action that made perfect sense to Felix.

His son was living in a hell of his own creation.

Reaching around the doorjamb, Felix grappled for the light switches. He had returned from the hospital to discover the house in darkness except for the light blazing under Harry’s door. Which meant the lights had been on since the boys had left for their Sunday matinee.

Felix hesitated. Was the dump of unopened mail under Harry’s desk composed of college mailings? Trying to ignore the sensation that he was speeding down a helter-skelter ride, Felix stepped into Harry’s lair.

A color brochure from Princeton peeked up at him, and—Felix squinted—there was an envelope from Harvard. He stepped closer, picked it up, and flipped it over. An unopened envelope from Harvard admissions.

Now he understood the old adage about blood boiling, because really, cut him open and he would bleed bubbling lava.
Of all the irresponsible, immature . . .
Felix made a sweeping gesture with his hands. Brushed away the red-hot anger; slowed everything down. He would be calm; he would be rational. He would get this sorted.

Felix walked into the kitchen and grabbed a black bin liner. Then he returned to Harry’s room, scooped up the sliding pile of college information, and dragged his haul into the living room. He moved the coffee table to one side, dumped the contents of the bag on the floor, and, sinking to his knees, began making sense of chaos.

Out on the street, car doors slammed and a cloud of chatter raced up the walkway. Max and Harry were home. Felix stayed on his knees and continued his work.

One brochure, one breath; one brochure, one breath
.

“Festering turd!” Max laughed as the front door crashed open. Dark and cold spilled inside. The weather had turned again: winter was back.

“King of the festering turds!” Harry yelled, then guffawed.

That was it. Felix jumped up. “Boys!”

“Sorry,” Max mouthed. He glanced at Harry. “I should go.”

“’Kay, dude. Later.”

Harry collapsed on the hall floor like a toy that had been unplugged. He tugged off one Converse without unlacing it.

“Movie was great.” He jumped up. Pulled a fistful of change from his pocket, dumped it on the shoe cabinet, and then levered off his left shoe with his right foot. “Whatcha doing, Dad?”

Felix folded his arms. “Creating order out of your college mailings.”

Harry glanced up, looking wary. “You took those from my room?”

“Harry, most of these are unopened.”

“What were you doing in my room?”

“Turning off all the lights that you had left on again.”

“’Kay. But please don’t mess with my stuff.” Harry went through his pockets and then slapped the wall. “Goddammit.”

“Harry! Language! If your grandmother heard you—”

“Lost my phone.” Harry grabbed the portable phone, dialed. “Maxi-Pad! You shouldn’t be answering the phone while you’re driving. Ha!” Harry snorted. “Let me know if you find my phone in your car. Yeah, lost it again. Imagine that.” Another snort of laughter. “Later, faggot.”

“Harry!”

“What?”

“Don’t call your best friend a faggot.”

“Why not? It was a joke.”

“Suppose Eudora heard you. Imagine how she would feel.”

“She’d laugh, Dad. She has a great sense of humor. Or haven’t you noticed?”

Felix counted backward from ten. “Your uncle was gay. I find that word deeply offensive.”

“Sorry, Dad.” Harry blushed scarlet. “I’m not homophobic, you know that. It’s just not a word that means much to my generation.”

“Talk to some of your friends who’ve been bullied for their sexual orientation, and I can assure you it will.”

Harry looked at the floor. “Sorry.”

“Now that you’re home, you can help me sort through these brochures. Do you have a college file?”

“Uh—nope?”

“Harry, this isn’t a joke. This”—Felix drew his arm through the air—“is your future. Tossed into something that resembles a rubbish dump in a third-world country.”

“I would have sorted them out eventually.”

“Sit down on the sofa, and we’ll go through them now. Together.”

Harry bounced toward the living room, then changed direction. “Love to, Dad, but I’ve got to work on my calc.”

“No, Harry.”

“Homework takes precedence.”

“College takes precedence.”

Harry grimaced and blinked, grimaced and blinked. “Dad, I’ve got to do my calculus. It’s due tomorrow. I don’t have time for this right now.”

“You had time to go to the movies with Max, ergo you have time to do this.”

A car alarm went off in the street.

Harry gave an exaggerated sigh and collapsed onto the sofa. “Shoot,” he said. His knee jiggled, and he cleared his throat with a series of little ahems that could—or could not—have been a new tic.

“Let’s start at the beginning. What are your top ten choices for college?”

Harry shrugged, and Felix’s phone rang—Robert.
Bugger it.
He and Robert had planned to talk an hour ago, but he’d fallen asleep by Ella’s bedside and completely forgotten. Unbelievable—his brain had become a bottomless sieve.

“I thought you and your mother had narrowed this down to an A-list?” Felix put his phone on “Mute.” Robert didn’t believe in voice mail, which meant he would keep calling until he got an answer.

“Not really. Mom was hung up on the idea of smaller, in-state colleges, so she organized the Asheville trip. That was as far as we got.”

From somewhere in the sofa, Harry’s phone made a ridiculous noise, like a clown’s horn. “Ha!” He started tugging off pillows and dumping them on the floor. Then he burrowed under the seat cushions. Felix clamped his teeth together.

“Found it!” Harry held up his phone as if he’d just been awarded a ribbon at the state fair.

Maybe Harry should consider chaining his possessions to his waist.

“Can you please put all those cushions back where they belong?”

“What? Yeah. Sure.” Harry started scrolling through text messages.

“Harry!” Felix snapped. “Will you pay attention?”

“Please don’t get angry. That’s not an appropriate response for my ADHD.”

“Maybe if you were better about managing your meds I wouldn’t need to raise my voice.” If Harry said, “Yeah, whatever,” honest to God, Felix would no longer be of sound mind or action.

“Truth is, Dad—” Harry stood up. “I’m thinking about UNC Chapel Hill. Go Heels!”

“That’s a ludicrous idea, Harry.”

Harry blushed again. “Why? It’s my life and my choice.”

“And my money.”

“Fine. I’ll apply for a Morehead-Cain Scholarship.” Harry started playing
Angry Birds
on his phone, then put it down. “What if Mom doesn’t recover? What if she never gets better—even with the transplant? If that’s the case, I want to stay close to home.”

“You are not to talk about your mother that way. Do you hear me? She’s going to recover; she’s going to get better. These things just take time.” Why was he yelling? Did he believe that if you said something loud enough, it had to be true?

TWENTY-ONE

Felix waited in the school carpool line, engine idling. He had a date with his son at a good neutral location: the Nasher Museum of Art on the Duke campus. Art always calmed Felix. Or rather, paintings with blocks of neat, contained color did. Random paint splashes left him utterly confused. Hopefully, the art would also calm Harry—so they could have a meaningful conversation about Harry’s future.

The lead car in the queue pulled away, and Felix inched forward. A woman wearing more layers than an arctic explorer cut in front of the Mini and waved. She even mouthed, “Hi.”

From polar vortex to spring to record lows in the space of a few weeks. It was as if they were trapped in that film
The Perfect Storm
, when the characters thought they’d escaped, only to discover they’d been sucked back into the storm of the century. And a rogue wave.

Felix nodded at the woman, and then ducked down to fiddle with the heating controls, a preemptive strike against conversation for the “Ella update” grapevine. Not that there was anything to update. They were stuck in a holding pattern, running on fumes and waiting for permission to land. That had to change. The key was forcing Harry to think about the next stage of his life. If Felix could jump-start the college conversation, then he could give Ella something to focus on other than her ejection fraction and how far she could shuffle unaided. The college decision was about to become the family lifeboat. (Hopefully with no rogue waves on the horizon.)

In the last two days, Felix had started making a new set of lists. Spring break was looming and he had a plan, although he had yet to initiate negotiations with Robert for more leave. In the meantime, there were flights, hotels, and rental cars to book; tours to sign up for; and arrangements to be made so that Harry could sit in on classes. It was a logistical nightmare, and one that was going to necessitate hiring in-home help for Ella, unless she had made a miraculous recovery at that point. But if they were extremely well organized, they could keep the trip short. First off, he needed Harry’s full attention and minimal distractions.

Since Harry processed life better on a full stomach, they would start in the café. At pickup each day Harry was cranky, which, Felix had discovered, was caused by hunger blended with bottled-up stress. Years ago, Ella had said Harry would suppress his tics and rage until he got in the car, and then everything would explode in a cyclone. Finally, Felix understood what she meant.

He poked his head up and glanced around to make sure there were no other school mothers on the prowl. He spotted Harry chatting and laughing, his arm draped around Sammie’s shoulder. Had he forgotten their date? Felix frowned. Harry had no sense of time, no sense of urgency, no sense of the fact that his father had cut out of work early, despite another barbed comment from Robert. If Harry bounced up to the car and asked him to drive Sammie home, nothing would contain his anger. And then he would be forever labeled the father who’d lost the plot in the school parking lot. Maybe he’d get some form of parental probation. Throughout school he’d never had detention, unlike Tom, who’d treated any notice of disciplinary action as a merit badge. How would it feel to be a rule breaker?

Harry’s head bobbed, but it was too controlled for a tic. Well, well, Harry was checking to make sure none of the teachers were looking. Then he kissed Sammie on the lips. Tom would have approved.

Harry started bounding down the front steps, then turned and rushed back to retrieve the lunch box he’d dropped during his illicit kiss. Felix raised his eyes. Since the beginning of the month, two lunch boxes had gone missing in the bowels of the school. One had been located after a week, but Felix had dumped it as nonrecyclable hazardous waste.

The cars lined up behind the Mini now snaked out onto the road, which meant he had become
that
parent, the one responsible for holding up the carpool line. Throwing the passenger door open, he waved Harry in.

“Hey.” Harry, breathless and flushed, grimaced and blinked, grimaced and blinked.

“You haven’t forgotten our arrangement, have you?” Felix didn’t mean to say arrangement. Too formal, too stiff. Too un-Harry-ish.

“’Course not.” Harry’s shoulder and head twitched. “We can eat first, right? Starving.” He tugged out his phone, pulled it close, and grinned like the village idiot.

“Something funny?”

“Text from Sammie.”

Felix reached into the back seat and grabbed the bag with the small bottle of water and the pill container. “Here. Take a Ritalin.” Then he inched out of the parking lot, checking in all directions. The school parking lot was a quagmire of potential disaster: student drivers backing out too quickly, little kids running to cars without paying attention, mothers tearing in late. The stuff of nightmares.

“How was school?”

Harry gulped back a pill. “Good.”

“How’s the homework situation?”

“Good.”

Which projects had been due this week? He’d started adding Harry’s deadlines to his phone’s calendar, but there were so many to keep track of. “How did you do on that philosophy essay?”

“Good.” Harry was typing a text.

“Are you even listening to me?”

“Uh-huh.”

“What did I just ask?”

Harry gave him the
duh, Dad
look. “How my day was.”

Felix swallowed the sigh.

“This going to take long? This art museum thing?” Harry jiggled in his seat, cracked his knuckles, started to wind down the window, then changed his mind.

“I just need your undivided attention for half an hour.”

Harry didn’t answer; he was scrolling through his phone, already moving on to the next distraction. He watched television the same way—getting up in the middle to race around the house. Trying to sit through a movie with Harry made Felix want to gouge out his own eyes.

Thank God for Ritalin, because if there had been no hope of sharpening Harry’s focus, Felix would have lost his mind.

Harry toyed with one of the many key chains on his backpack, and then raised his muddy Dr. Martens toward the dashboard.

“Don’t even think about it,” Felix said.

Harry went back to his phone and started playing
Angry Birds
. Felix tried not to watch out of the corner of his eye. Distractions were so inconsiderate to drivers. He cleared his throat and attempted to put his mind elsewhere.

“Are you mad at me?” Harry didn’t look up.

“Why would you ask that?”

Harry scratched through his hair until he resembled an electrocuted hedgehog. Had his son started wearing hair gel? “Avoidance, Dad. That’s good.”

“No.”

“No, what?”

“No, I’m not mad at you.”

“’Kay.” Harry paused. “Why are you brooding?”

“I’m not.”

“’Kay.” Harry sighed.

Felix flicked on the right-hand indicator and they crawled onto Duke Street. “Are
you
mad at me?”

“Nah.”

“Avoidance?” Felix couldn’t help it; he smiled.

“Maybe we should agree neither of us is mad.” Harry buried his phone in his backpack. He sat back and crossed his arms. “Let’s start over. Hi, Dad. How was your day?”

“Are we playing truth or dare?”

“Yup.”

“Total shit.”

Harry grinned.

“How was your day, Harry?”

“Total shit. Can you keep a secret?”

“From my extensive friendship network that includes Eudora?”

Harry sucked in his breath. “Max has a crush on this girl who’s involved with a narcissistic jerk senior and she knows it—”

“Knows that her boyfriend’s a jerk?”

“No, Dad.” Harry slowed down. “That Max has a crush on her. And she’s flirting with him. It’s not going to end well. I keep telling Max to stay away from her, but she’s really hot and—promise you won’t tell anyone this?”

“Scout’s honor.”

“You were a Boy Scout?”

Felix changed lanes. “I was being facetious.”

“Right. Anyway. Max thinks he’s in love. Like, totally in love. Like, the real deal.”

Felix braked as the car approached a red light. “How’s your love life?”

Harry blushed violently. “Good. Yours?”

“Complicated.” Felix glanced up in the rearview mirror. “Hazza, can I ask you something?”

“Surrre.”
Harry chewed the corner of his lip.

“Do you think your mother’s depressed?”

Harry didn’t answer for a few seconds. “Maybe. When we talk it feels, you know, forced. Like she’s trying too hard. One of my friends has it bad. Depression, I mean. Had a horrible time finding meds that helped.”

“And he talks about it?” The light changed and they started moving forward.

“She. To her friends? Yup. Why wouldn’t she?”

“In my world, one doesn’t discuss mental health. One pretends life is lovely and suffers silently.”

“It’s hard, isn’t it, Dad?”

Felix wasn’t sure if Harry meant the way their lives had turned out, depression, or this thing called love, but he agreed on all counts.

A concrete walkway with evenly spaced steps and handrails led them up a gentle, wooded slope toward the museum. Under the trees to his left, American robins, larger than their English counterparts, hopped through the leaves. Fallen leaves usually set Felix’s teeth on edge. At home, they mounded up in inappropriate places and mixed with rubbish blown in from the street. But the leaves here created a perfect carpet that ran up to the steps and stopped. Not a single stray leaf defiled their path. Everything on the Duke campus was close to perfection. It was a place that spoke of an established world order, of tradition, of old money. Of things being maintained the way they should be. Felix inhaled. Even the air smelled fresher at Duke.

Harry ran ahead, and Felix followed him through the museum door.

“Wait.” Felix stopped by the semicircular check-in desk. “Would you like to see the exhibits while we’re here?”

“Sure, Dad,” Harry called over his shoulder. “But can we eat first?”

Without a backward glance, Harry shot across the vast, empty atrium toward the nook with the café. He looked so small, so insignificant, and some unfamiliar instinct made Felix want to run after him, saying, “Wait. Don’t leave me behind.” Instead, he paid for two five-dollar tickets. Harry, it seemed, was an adult at seventeen.

Sunlight filtered through the angular ceiling of glass and steel to create a crisscross pattern on the far wall—a trellis of light and shade. A strangely calming sight that might have quieted his thoughts, had a passing cloud not momentarily blocked the sun.

Felix strode toward the café. Plates and silverware clattered in the kitchen behind the counter, and Harry jiggled amidst a row of empty chrome tables. He had chosen a spot in a patch of sunlight. As hoped, the place was semideserted.

“I knew you’d want the sun,” Harry said with a huge smile. Even his smile was larger than life. Harry did nothing quietly.

A muted hum of voices rose from the small group in the corner, but it was impossible to distinguish individual words. Good—the acoustics favored privacy. Felix pulled out a chair, gripped the cold metal arm, and sat.

A young waitress in black trousers and a black shirt came over and handed them menus. “You’re just in time,” she said. “We have a limited menu after four o’clock.”

She reached over to grab the chain on the blind behind Harry.

“Can we leave that up?” Felix said.

“Sure.” She glanced at Harry.

“My dad’s a Londoner,” Harry said. “Winter sun’s a novelty for him.”

Felix frowned at Harry. Now he was giving out personal information to a stranger? What next—a full family bio on Facebook?

Harry’s face contorted into a grimace.

“You okay?” she said.

“Was I ticcing? Sorry, I have Tourette syndrome.” Harry spoke as if they were still discussing the sun.

“Good for you. I’m bipolar.” She glanced at Felix with a hesitant smile. “Wow. I don’t normally blurt that one out.”

“I guess it’s easier to hide than ticcing.” Harry grimaced and blinked, grimaced and blinked.

Felix slumped back in his chrome chair and watched, amazed. In the window behind Harry and the waitress, traffic crawled to a stop.

“Not necessarily. You don’t want to be around me when I’m off my meds and manic.” She twirled the pen through her fingers.

“I bet it feels good sometimes, the mania.”

“Yeah, man. It does. Not for other people, though.”

“Yeah.” Harry nodded.

“Right.” Her voice brightened. “You guys need a few minutes?”

“Nah.” Harry grabbed the menu. “Italian cream soda, please. Vanilla. And . . . oh yeah. One of those.” He pointed at the words
warmed chocolate chunk cookie
. “Thanks for bringing me here, Dad. This is fantastic!” He rocked back and forth in his chair.

Felix picked up the menu, studied it, and put it down. “Perrier. Thank you.”

“Coming right up.” The waitress smiled at Harry and then disappeared.

“Dad—” Harry looked down at the floor and looked back up with big puppy-dog eyes. He cracked his knuckles, and Felix winced. “I haven’t had my allowance for the last two weeks.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”