The Perfect Son (21 page)

Harry shrugged. “You’ve been kinda busy. I figured you’d catch on at some point.”

“But I didn’t,” Felix said slowly.

“No biggie. Can I order some songs on iTunes when we get home?”

Felix pulled out his wallet and pushed a twenty-dollar note across the table. “If you lose that, I’m not replacing it. And you can order up to five dollars’ worth of songs on my credit card.”

“Thanks, Dad!”

“We have to learn how to do this, how to trust each other.”

“You mean we need to be a family without Mom as the maypole.”

“You remember?”

“The village Morris dancers? Hell, yeah! And Saint John took us to that pub for a real ploughman’s lunch afterward, and Mom got wasted.”

“Tipsy.”

“Nah, Dad. She threw up in a rosebush, remember?”

“She underestimated the power of Pimm’s, despite my warnings.” Felix smiled. At the time, he had been furious, but now, with the power of hindsight, he saw Harry and Saint John giggling. He saw a family being a family. Warts and all.

His smile slipped away. There were so few memories with giggles.

Harry fidgeted and kept glancing toward the kitchen, his focus already broken.

Felix smoothed out the flyers he’d picked up at the desk. “There’s a sculpture made from what appears to be a crushed car in the lobby. That looks interesting.”

“Not really into cars, Dad.”

“Me neither.” Felix caught himself about to crack his own knuckles and stopped. “There’s a special exhibit on Archibald Motley. Jazz Age modernist. And there’s another installation with—hmm—impressive, if you like modern art”—he didn’t—“Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein that might appeal to you.”

“Oookay,”
Harry said.

Was this a standoff, like a game of chicken?

“Be right back, Dad. Gotta find the restroom.”

And Harry was gone.

Harry ate the way he tackled life—fast, messily, and with lots of head bobbing.

The waitress came back to check if everything was okay. Felix replied, “Yes, thank you,” before Harry could speak with his mouth jammed full of food. Why had Ella not worked harder on his table manners?

“Something wrong, Dad?”

“Admiring the fact that you eat with such gusto,” Felix said. “While your mouth is wide open.”

Harry stopped midchew, then swallowed hard. “Starving.”

“Evidently.”

“Did you see the gift shop? They have jewelry. You should buy something for Mom, for Valentine’s Day.” Harry shoved more cookie into his mouth.

“We don’t celebrate Valentine’s Day, Harry.”

“Maybe this is the year to start.”

“Maybe it is. Do you have a present for Sammie?”

Harry shook his head several times. (He never did anything once.) “Would you help me choose something?”

“Of course. Would you help me choose something for Mom?”

Harry beamed. “Yup. My pleasure! So. Shoot. Why are we here? Is there something going on with Mom that I don’t know about?”

“You know what I know, Harry, which isn’t a great deal. We’re watching and waiting.”

“Yeah, like you and I do that so well.” Harry pushed away his empty plate, sat back, thumped his feet on the floor, sat forward. “You’d expect more from medical science in the twenty-first century,” he said.

“You would indeed.”

“Could we take Mom to England?”

“I have a call in to Saint John. His brother is on staff at Papworth, the leading heart hospital in England.” Felix sipped his Perrier. “But I think we have to accept that a transplant is in her future.”

Harry traced circles through the crumbs of his giant cookie.

“In the meantime, we need to create a plan.”

“For what?” Harry’s voice turned cautious. His face distorted through a series of tics.

“Your future.”

“Could you make that sound a little less scary?”

“College.”

Harry jerked his chair closer to the table, then pushed it back. “Can we talk about this when we get home?”

“No, Harry. Spring break is less than six weeks away, and I need to make plane reservations. We’re going to do a weeklong college tour in the Northeast.”

“What does Mom say?”

Felix wrestled the edges of a headache.

“You haven’t told her, have you?” Harry said.

“No. Harry, she’s too brittle to get dragged in. You and I need to figure this out on our own. Then we can involve her, and it will give her something uplifting to think about.”

“My leaving home is uplifting?”

“Yes. College is a marvelous time in your life. You’ll be independent without the responsibility of being a wage earner.” In a year and a half, Harry would leave home. That gave Felix a year and a half to prepare him. And a year and a half to prove—or fail to prove—that he could be a good father.

Harry scratched the side of his head, rose out of his chair, plonked back down. He picked up his white linen napkin, twisted it as if he were squeezing out a wet rag, and dumped it on the table. “Can we put this off till the summer, when we have a better sense of the whole transplant thing?”

“No. Whatever happens with Mom, you have important decisions to make that will shape your future. The path you take now will set you up for the rest of your life.”

“But I feel like the world’s upside down and there is no future.”

“That’s rubbish. The future—your future—is out there waiting. You need to start looking at colleges, and you need to start making decisions.”

“There isn’t room in my head for all this.”

“Make room.”

Harry stood up. Felix leaned forward and dropped his voice. “Sit. Down.”

“I’d like to go look at the art now, Dad. I have a lot of homework.”

How could a good parent argue that one in public? The guy on his laptop—was he listening? Was the group in the corner waiting to judge?
Will that man be a good father and let his son do his homework?
Jazz played softly in the background. Trumpets with mutes. He’d played the trumpet at Eton. And had failed to make first trumpet in the school band.

Felix signaled the waitress. “Check, please?”

Harry got up and left. Clearly, they weren’t going to the gift shop to buy Valentine’s Day gifts.

Harry stopped in the middle of the huge, empty atrium, huffing out his breath. Was Dad trying to go behind Mom’s back? Because if so, there was only one place this was heading: Harvard. And if Dad knew anything about him, anything, he would know that Harry would be miserable in a pressure-cooker bastion of whatever-ish-ness.

His thoughts scrambled. He actually wanted to growl.
Grrr.

Like Max—well, not as extreme as Max—Harry was going to live outside the lines with the weird kids. With the freaks and ghouls, as The Smashing Pumpkins would say. Or somewhere with a really good basketball team. They probably made you wear ties at Harvard.

He turned left. Jazz Age modernist? Nah. Andy Warhol and iconic soup cans sounded better. He turned right into the other exhibit. The security guard welcomed him with an odd sideways glance.

Harry stared back.
My tics offending you?

The guard looked away.

Harry scratched his chin, then stuffed his hands into his jeans pockets. This was a great space. Nothing crammed in overloading his brain. Art galleries could make his thoughts spin.

Wow!
Harry peered at the sign: “Lichtenstein
Water Lilies (Pink Flower)
. Enamel on stainless steel with painted wood frame.” Pop art with reflective bits, like a mirror.
Bizarro!

And that? On the far wall, a painting of an African American dude against a gold background. He was dressed in a suit, sunglasses, and a Superman T-shirt, and the words “aint nuthin but a sandwich” were scrawled in all caps across the top. Harry took a picture on his phone, texted it to Max. Fahamu Pecou was the artist. Harry started reading the wall sign. Something about teenage drug addiction and . . . Now that was art! An Andy Warhol silkscreen of a Campbell’s tomato soup can.
Awesome.
He took another picture for Max.

Which way, which way? Harry turned, went back to the Pecou, and followed the far wall of the gallery. The picture of a mother and a baby caught his eye, a lithograph called
Worker Woman with Sleeping Child, 1927
. The kid looked peaceful, and yet the mom was watchful. Anxious. Harry remembered that expression from playgrounds and public spaces. Mom always on high alert.

As he walked through the medieval and Renaissance art and into the antiquities area, memories played: Mom losing it in the supermarket because he’d wandered off after she’d instructed him to stand still and not move; Mom frantic when he went on a dragon-slaying adventure in the park; Mom pulling him away from some dude in Target who’d said he was one cute kid.

His whole life, Mom’d had his back. And now everything was changing, and Mom was the one who needed protecting—and Dad? Dad wanted to push him out into the world and wave farewell. Home, his comfort zone, was disappearing into a sinkhole. And the future loomed like the monstrous black sculpture directly ahead—a towering nonfigure dripping scraps of black fabric, black branches, black flowers. It seemed more shadow than solid, except for the pair of black taxidermied fighting birds rising out of the middle section. Harry moved closer, transfixed by decay—a regular Dudley Dursley sucked into the Dementor’s Kiss. Dad talked about the future, but what if there was no future? What if there was nothing but fear and death?

Footsteps echoed on the wood floor behind him and disappeared around the corner. With a final glance at the sculpture and the weird shadows it cast on the wall, Harry followed Dad. But then he hung back by a still image of a boxing match. “Between Sugar Ray Robinson and Randy Turpin,” the sign said. Off to his right, Dad appeared to be writing on a piece of card.

Harry waited a few minutes, pretending to study Sugar Ray. When Dad moved off, Harry followed and stopped in front of some interactive thing called “A man is . . .” Above a small writing shelf with pencils and index cards were the words “Share Your Thoughts.” People had tacked handwritten cards to the wall. Spotting the perfect calligraphy Dad had learned with a real fountain pen was easy.

Dad had written one word.
Alone.

TWENTY-TWO

In silence, they walked across the bridge and through the ivy-wrapped trees that lined their path home. Harry had pretended to sleep in the car. Felix knew it was an act—even when Harry was curled into a ball, there were telltale signs of ticcing. Felix unlocked the front door. As he turned off the alarm, Harry schlepped in and tossed down his backpack. It landed on top of the shoe cabinet.

Unwinding his cashmere scarf, Felix banished the image of all those damn key chains scratching the blemish-free ash lid. He would not comment; he simply would not.

“Dad, I’m sorry.” Harry fell to the floor and levered off his Converse. “I know how hard you’re trying to make everything work, and I don’t mean to make it harder. It’s just that I’m so overwhelmed.”

“Welcome to my life.”

“I was thinking. In the car. What if I took a gap year? I could—I don’t know. Get an apartment with Max and—”

“And do what, Harry?” Felix’s left eye twitched. Brilliant. Now he had a tic. “What will you do for money?”

“I’ll get a job.”

This was a prime example of Harry not thinking, of Harry making illogical, uninformed decisions. This was a knee-jerk plan aimed to appease, nothing more.

“A job,” Felix said. He hung up his scarf and coat. “And what job are you qualified for?”

“Lots. I could sell video games at GameStop.”

“You have no life skills, Harry. In this economy, if you don’t have a college degree, you might as well hold up your hands in defeat and say, ‘Fine, I’ll live in a cardboard box.’”

“That’s stu—”

“Stupid?” Felix tapped his palm. “Were you going to tell me I’m stupid?”

Harry cleared his throat multiple times. “Can Sammie come over?”

“No. You have homework. And after supper, we
are
going to look at college brochures, and that includes the one for Harvard.”

“Even if I don’t want to go down that route?”

“This is not an option, Harry. You are going to college. You are going to a good college.”

“I’m not disagreeing.” Harry’s shoulder shot up and down as his head ticced sideways. Again and again. “But no one’s asking what I want here. Not you, not Mom, not the school. It’s all about perfect SAT scores or my imperfect brain. And I’m sick of it. I can’t do this right now. Everyone has to back off. Stop pushing so hard.” Harry’s entire body seemed to judder with a scattershot of tics. “When I get overwhelmed, Mom encourages me to break things down and set small goals. You should try it sometime—thinking small. Aiming low. Way cheaper than therapy.”

Felix dug his fingernails into his skin until pain numbed his hand. “Now you’re telling me I need therapy?”

“That’s not”—Harry started stuttering—“what I said.”

“Correct me if I’m wrong, but a few hours ago, weren’t we talking about trust?”

Harry pulled out a barstool and collapsed onto it. A heap of Harry. “You . . . don’t think . . .” His words came out slowly, with long gaps between as the Tourette’s took hold. “This thing . . . you have . . . for order . . . is a little odd?”

“I’m a Fitzwilliam. We’re all a little odd.” Felix straightened his spine; his hand had begun to sting. “Yes, I’m a perfectionist. That’s why we have this great life, why I have a well-paid job, why you go to a private school, why your mother could stay home with you, why we have this house. There is nothing wrong with being a perfectionist.”

“You set standards no one can live up to.” Harry sounded tired—deflated and defeated. “Standards I can’t live up to with a GPA off the charts and perfect SAT scores. What else do you want you from me, Dad? Because I don’t get it.”

“It’s not that simple, Harry. Not everything can be judged by test scores.”

“By what, then? What am I doing wrong?” Harry paused and cleared his throat repeatedly. Felix waited. “Do you have any idea what half of the kids in eleventh grade are doing? Sleeping around, drinking, taking drugs. The other day, a senior offered me a shitload of money for a handful of Klonopin.”

“I hope you said no.” Kids were dealing prescription meds? He would have to report this to the school director.

“Really? You think I would deal drugs? I’m not irresponsible, Dad.” There was a hard edge to Harry’s voice that Felix hadn’t heard before.

“Maybe not, but you have no sense of order, and you’re unnaturally messy. You have only to
walk
through the kitchen, and every cabinet knob is sticky. And your bedroom looks like the city dump.”

“That’s not fair. I cleaned it just last week. You could eat off the fucking carpet.”

“Given the crumbs, I sometimes wonder if you do.”

“Excuse me?”

“Disorder follows you.”

“Disorder, huh?” Harry shot up and slammed the stool into the concrete island. If he broke that stool, swear to God he would pay for it. “Gee, thanks, Dad. And being a Nazi neat freak isn’t weird at all.”

“Don’t use that word,
Nazi
. It’s abhorrent to me.”

“Don’t use
disorder
. It’s abhorrent to me. I’m not a freak show because I’m wired a little differently.” Harry had never yelled at him before.

“That’s it.” Felix threw up his hands. “I don’t understand you, Harry. I have tried, but as God is my witness, we have nothing in common.”

“How hard have you tried?” Harry’s head was bobbing constantly now—tics blending into each other.

“That’s not fair. I’ve put my life on hold for you and your mother. I’m bending over backward to take care of you.”

“I can take care of myself!”

“Really? You can’t even find your shoes half the time.”

“What’s this unnatural obsession you have with putting away shoes?”

“Don’t turn this around. This isn’t about me. It’s about you.”

“Funny, I thought everything in this house was about
you
. By the way, you’re wrong when you say we have nothing in common. We have everything in common.” Harry’s hands moved every which way in a blur. “We’re both fucked up in the head.”

“Are you quite done, young man?”

Harry grimaced and blinked, grimaced and blinked. “Google ‘obsession with perfectionism,’ Dad. See what nasties turn up.”

“Go to your room,” Felix said.

“Gladly.” Harry grabbed his backpack, went to his room, and slammed the door.

Felix picked up a cut-glass water jug that had been a wedding present—
it’s a jug, a jug, not a pitcher
—and slammed it onto the floor. It shattered, and so did he.

Harry threw himself facedown on his bed. Then he kicked the pile of laundry to the floor. The clean laundry Dad had put in his room. Maybe he should set up a Dad-free zone with a sign that said “Keep Out.” Suppose there
had
been a system for all those college mailings? Did Dad think of that for one minute? No. Dad thought only in black and white: there was a right way of doing things—his way—and a wrong way—Harry’s way.

Dad was breaking stuff. That couldn’t be good. But maybe now he’d understand how it felt to be criticized. Harry pounded the pillow. Without Mom, this house was toxic. Waves of anger and despair bounced off the walls. He needed out.

His room was pitch black, but he didn’t care. He didn’t care about anything right now except Sammie. He pulled his phone out of his back pocket and texted her. No answer. Was she doing her chem homework? She’d been worrying about it at recess. (Science wasn’t her thing.) Harry hadn’t been sure how to help, so he’d told her the answer. Who knew that would be a mistake? He’d had to work pretty hard to get her to forgive him.

Sitting up, Harry tugged out his laptop. He turned it on, logged on to his Facebook page, hit the message icon.

hey whatcha doing dad’s being a dick can I come live with you LOL

Silence. He drummed his fingers on the side of his laptop. She was online; she’d just commented on a post of Max’s. He sent another message.

hello anybody out there really need to talk dad’s a dickhead

No, he isn’t.

pretty sure he is can I come over

You mean can Mom and I come get you because you’re too scared to ask your dad for a lift?

yup

He sent her a sticker of an animated smiley face. His favorite one. The one that bounced up and down and looked psychotic. Made him smile. Nothing else made him smile right now. Except for Sammie. And Max. Harry picked up his phone, sent Max a text.

hey maxi-pad dad hates me

Mom hates me. Parent swap?

Harry cracked up. Went back to his Facebook page.

please?
He added a row of hearts.
i can give you the full update on life with attila the dad & we can be homework buddies

Your dad isn’t that bad, Harry. He’s just being a dad.

your dad isn’t a jerk

My dad’s terminally ill, Harry.

sorry that was thoughtless

He couldn’t get anything right today.

Don’t worry about it.

so can I come over

This time he picked the robot sticker with lots of hearts.

Let me ask Mom.

Harry flopped back onto his pillows. Never thought that simple phrase, that one short sentence, “Let me ask Mom,” could be so loaded, so precious. He would give anything in the world to be able to ask his mom.

Felix splashed cold water onto his face, pulled back, and stared into the powder room mirror; Pater’s face stared back. As he aged, he looked more and more like the monster from his own childhood. And now the transformation was complete. For a moment back there, he had seen nothing but anger—a hot, seething mass that could destroy anything in its path. Felix slugged his second glass of Macallan, then carefully placed the tumbler down next to the sink. He flipped over his right hand and examined his broken lifeline, which disappeared as it snaked around his wrist. Tom had always joked, “Either you’ll end up living two lives, or you’re going to develop a split personality and become a serial killer.”

His whole arm began to shake. For a moment, he’d wanted to hurt Harry. God help him, he had wanted to hit his own son.

Genetics will out.

A tornado of noise whooshed down the hall and stopped outside the powder room door. Harry knocked quietly. A timid knock, a scared knock, one that said,
I don’t want to wake the monster.

“Dad? Dad, are you in there?”

“Yes.”

“I’m going to do my homework at Sammie’s.” Harry paused and then words rushed out. “I need to calm down and regroup and might be better for both of us if I go out for a while.”

Felix put his hand on the doorknob. As he turned it slowly, the doorbell chimed. “Wait. It’s a weeknight. You are not going out on a weeknight.”

Harry grabbed his backpack. “We study well together. She helps me focus. Sammie’s mom is here. She wants to say hi.”

Felix glanced back at the mirror. Did he have a choice? He swallowed hard and walked into the hall.

Sammie bounced through the door and threw her arms around Harry’s neck. Her mother followed, and Felix blanked on her name. Something beginning with . . . ? Gray and lifeless with pouches of loose skin under her eyes, she looked almost as wasted as Ella.

“Hi, Harry,” Sammie’s mother said. “Do you mind if we stop and pick up a pizza on the way home?”

“That sounds great, Mrs. Owen. You’ll be okay, Dad? For dinner?”

Felix nodded. He’d planned to cook for them tonight, make a cottage pie using the recipe Mother had dictated over the phone. Maybe he’d skip food and have a liquid dinner.

“Felix, good to see you again. How’s Ella?”

“She’s fine, thank you.” Felix kneaded his shoulder. The muscles, tight with tension, crunched under his fingertips. “How’s your husband?”

“He’s doing well, thank you for asking. The tumors aren’t getting any bigger. Always a good sign,” she said. “Would you like Harry home by a certain time?”