The Perfect Son (3 page)

In the passenger seat, Harry was folded in half. What a gift to sleep that way, as if his constantly flailing body were finally unplugged. Once he’d become mobile, young Harry had stopped napping, and the broken nights had lasted through most of middle school. This new ability to conk out anywhere seemed to have coincided with Harry’s starting high school. On random nights, however, he still shuffled into their bedroom, whimpering, “Mom, I had a nightmare. I need a hug.”

Felix’s own mother had stopped hugging him when he’d turned five.
Mother.
She had never been the easiest of people. Since turning eighty, she had become downright unpleasant. Harry had nicknamed her Moaning Myrtle, which was kinder than her cleaning lady’s mumbled
miserable old trout
.

As Felix turned right onto Airport Boulevard, sirens advanced toward him like an approaching thunderstorm. He pulled over and stopped, and a bright-orange ambulance shot past, heading back toward the highway, lights flashing, siren howling.

Some poor bloke was probably strapped to the gurney inside. A wiped-out businessman who’d stayed over the Saturday night to save his firm money—an honorable thing to do—then risen early, showered and shaved, unaware that this flight would not be the carbon copy of every other trip home. Hopefully, the poor bastard would survive. Rotten luck to be taken ill at an airport.

Looking over his shoulder, Felix inched back onto the road and continued two miles an hour below the speed limit. He began spotting signs for Terminal 2 hourly parking. It was easy to get distracted by the traffic flow and end up in the wrong lane heading for the wrong car park. And when that happened? You had no choice but to exit the airport, circle back to the beginning, and start over. Another ten minutes would be wasted.

Five minutes later he found the ideal parking space adjacent to the pedestrian walkway and lined up the car perfectly between the parallel white lines.
Brilliant.
The car juddered into silence, and Harry slept on. Ella always woke him gently, easing him through the transition. Even so, Harry often woke up with fists clenched as if ready to box his way through another day.

Felix took a deep breath and squeezed Harry’s knee. “Time to wake up.”

Harry shot awake. “Mom?”

“It’s Dad. You need to wake up now so we can—”

“Where’s Mom?” Harry’s head jerked from side to side. “She was calling my name. Something’s wrong, very wrong—”

“Just a bad dream. You’ve been asleep since we left Durham. Come on.” Felix unbuckled Harry’s seat belt, but his son cowered.

“Harry. Shake off the dream. We need to find your mother.”

Eyes glassed over with fear, Harry stared at Felix as if he were a stranger. Had Ella ever talked to the psychologist about these nightmares? Felix glanced at his watch. Ella’s plane had landed ten minutes ago. The luggage would already be spewing down onto the carousel.

“Hazza—time to go.”

Harry blinked, the spell broken. “You haven’t called me Hazza in years.”

“Because you’re a little old for nicknames.”

“You really believe that?” Harry cleared his throat. Part of his original tic repertoire, this vocal tic had been the one constant in the ever-changing world of Tourette syndrome.

“Harry, you’re—”

“Nearly seventeen, I know.” Harry opened the car door. “Old enough to start mapping out the rest of my life. So you keep reminding me.”

What?
Felix got out of the car. What had he said? Now he was the bad guy for trying to prepare his son for the future? Fatherhood was an active minefield.

A plane roared overhead, zooming up into the heavy blanket of gray clouds. Felix shivered and snuggled into the cashmere scarf knotted around his neck. For a nanosecond he was back in London, trapped in one of those gloomy January days when summer was an unattainable dream and you believed sunlight would never again warm your skin.

Heads ducked against the glacial wind, they crossed the road and entered Terminal 2. Felix patted Harry’s arm to signal a change of direction, and they headed for the down escalator. People buzzed around them while an announcement drummed from invisible overhead speakers. Harry winced, then stopped to listen.

“Dad?” He grabbed Felix’s arm, nails digging in as his elbow started to flap.

No. Not now. Not in public.
Could Harry not hold in the tic for two more minutes so Ella could deal with it?

“Dad, why are they talking about Mom? Something’s wrong, I told you. I told you. Something’s wrong!”

“Harry. Stop this nonsense right now and—”

“Would the family of Ella Fitzwilliam please go to the Air Florida desk? Would the family of Ella Fitzwilliam please go to the Air Florida desk?”

Felix stood still and tried not to let his mind tumble through a series of worst-case scenarios as Harry’s always did, but the thought trickled out like slow-working poison:
Who was in the ambulance?

THREE

Mom was in trouble. Even without the nightmare, Harry knew, he knew. This wasn’t the wacky part of his brain flashing through catastrophe. No, this was tangible fear; this was certainty. Mom was big on constant contact:
Text me when you and Max get there so I know you’re safe; text me as you’re leaving; just text me, okay?
Truthfully, it could get a bit annoying, but that was her way: to worry about him. All the time. And now he was worrying about her. She hadn’t texted him when her plane landed. She wasn’t safe.

A herd of travelers split around them and scattered. Everyone was going someplace except him and Dad. Why was Dad standing there not moving? What was he waiting for?

“Would the family of Ella Fitzwilliam please go to the Air Florida desk? Would the family of Ella Fitzwilliam please—”

“D-dad!” The stammer vibrated through his chest, through his arms, through his fingers. Pressure built in his throat: an unstoppable urge, an itch that had to be scratched.
No.
Now was not the time for a new tic. Dad couldn’t deal with, with—

“G-go!” Harry tried to say more, but the words stuck in his throat.

Dad’s chest rose and fell like he was panting. Beads of sweat escaped from his hairline like he was melting. He leaned up close, so in-your-face close that Harry almost gagged on the aftershave. Shouldn’t a father know that his son was practically allergic to perfume?

“Harry, please, don’t do this to me. I can’t cope if you start ticcing.”

Seriously? Mom needed help and this shit was still pushing Dad’s buttons? Did he ever consider anyone but himself?

I have Tourette’s, get over it already.

Harry tried to push against the mudslide of demeaning sound, tried to focus on those years of habit reversal therapy with Mom when she’d refused to quit, refused to let him quit no matter how hard they’d both been crying.

And where were you, Dad? Always wherever I wasn’t.

Harry’s head jolted sideways and his jaw made a cracking sound, like a bone breaking.
Ow.
Then he clucked. Twice. Always in pairs, had to be pairs. Relief—warm, comforting relief. He grabbed his jaw. Yup, still in one piece.

“I’ve got this,” Harry said. “Go, help Mom.”

The pressure regrouped, turned around for a second swing. But it was okay, okay because Dad was heading for the Air Florida desk. Finally, he was going to help Mom.

Harry’s jaw popped in and out, popped in and out with sharp, jarring movements. Shockwaves of pain raced up through his face.
A clusterfuck of motor tics, a regular clusterfuck.

He shoved his fist in his mouth and bit down. Blinding pain—Harry rocked back and forth—he would focus on the blinding pain. A woman grabbed her little boy’s hand and yanked him away. The kid continued to watch over his shoulder, mesmerized. Two girls in skinny jeans giggled. Did they think he cared? He had no inhibitions—how could he? But they were cute girls, popular girls. And their stares hurt worse than the tics.

If Max were here, he would walk toward them, jab his finger, and say in the loudest voice possible, “
Eeew.
What’s wrong with you, you fucking weirdos?” Then he would look around to make sure he’d drawn the fire from Harry.

Without Mom or Max as buffers, Harry was trapped in his own worst nightmare: just him and Dad against the world. He concentrated on walking, not hopping, twirling, or kicking. Most of the time, he didn’t know when he was ticcing. But the complex tics that manifested as demonic possession? Those built up inside like tremors warning of a volcanic explosion.

Good, that’s good, Harry. Focus on science. Focus on anything other than Mom.

Dad had reached the desk. He was talking to some airline lady with carrot-colored lipstick. Now they would get answers. Women responded to Dad—to that arrogance everyone mistook for aristocratic Brit, to those razor-blue eyes that could gut you.

Lipstick Woman watched Harry walk toward them, her eyes huge and white.

“Sclera!” Harry shouted. “Sclera!” Sclera—the white of the eye. A word he’d learned in biology; a word he’d never used until now. His jaw popped again. Pain ricocheted up into his eyeballs. He clamped both hands over his mouth and tried to hold his jaw still.

Her jaw, Lipstick Woman’s jaw, kept moving as if she were some actress in a silent movie.
For real?
Lipstick that color and she thought
he
was the freak show?

Tell us about Mom.

Dad balled up his fists but didn’t turn round.

“I’m sorry to have to tell you this, sir—” Lipstick Woman leaned over her desk, eyes flicking toward Harry. Her right hand hovered as if waiting to pound on some imaginary panic button. “But your wife collapsed on the flight from Fort Lauderdale.” The woman lowered her voice. “I’ve been told she’s on her way to Raleigh Regional.”

Collapsed? Raleigh Regional?
The pressure built again—hot, bubbling lava.

“Can you be more specific?” Dad used his monotone voice, the one that gave nothing away.

“The crew thinks”—more eye flicking in Harry’s direction.
What is her problem?
—“it may have been a heart attack, sir. Obviously we don’t know for sure.”

Heart attack? How was that possible? But his grandmother had died of a heart attack at forty-seven. Mom had just turned forty-seven. But Mom couldn’t have a heart attack. Mom couldn’t die.

The volcano erupted and Harry started spinning.

“Sir, I realize this is a difficult time for you, but I need you to control your son.”

“Control my son?” Dad’s voice was jagged ice. “And how do you propose I
control
a young man with Tourette’s after you just informed him that his mother may have had a heart attack?”

Did Dad have to repeat the words
heart attack
?

“There’s no need to take that tone.” The woman picked at her tightly fastened top button. “You need to calm down. Sir.”

“I’m perfectly calm.
Ma’am
.”

Spinning around and around. Spinning, clucking. Repeat, repeat.

“If you can’t control your son, I’ll have to call my supervisor.”

Shit, no. Dad would go ballistic and make the situation a thousand times worse. Could it—Harry strummed his fingers, pranced on his toes—get any worse?

The tics ended like a twister hauling ass back into the sky. Exhaustion replaced chaos.

“Harry.” Dad stalked past him without making eye contact. “Ignore this woman. We’re leaving.”

Poker players had tells; so did Dad. No other way to read him. Dad did quiet anger, suppressed anger, with his fingernails digging into his palm. Until he blew. What to say that wouldn’t set Dad off? Not the truth. Not,
Are you as scared as I am?
Because this was Dad, not Mom. Dad didn’t believe in trading emotions.

“Dad?”

“Mom’s tougher than a marauding Celt in a kilt. She’ll be fine.”

“You really believe that?”

Dad slowed to a normal pace, but he didn’t answer, not even as they walked back out into the gray Carolina afternoon. Drizzle fell from the sky; pinheads of rain marked the lenses of Dad’s glasses. Dad, who wiped his glasses so frequently that Harry often wondered if it was a compulsion, seemed not to notice.

The cop on traffic duty blew his whistle, and Harry imitated the sound. Sometimes it was easier to give in and release the tic before it transformed into a full-blown hurricane. The tic lasted only a few seconds; the stare from the cop, longer.

“I have to go to the hospital.” Dad stepped into the crosswalk without looking. “Can you handle this, or do we need Max to pick you up?”

Mom had taught him to ignore critics, but how did that line of thinking work when your toughest critic was your own dad?

“You remember about me and hospitals?”

Dad sighed. “I’m your father. I know that you’re phobic about hospitals, being behind the wheel of a car, spiders, and flying.”

Right, like Dad knew much about that last one.

“But you never sit with us on a plane. How do you know?”

“I don’t sit with you because Mom—” Dad swallowed a sob.

Can’t fool me. I’ve been disguising vocal sounds for years
.

“I don’t sit with you because your mother insists I don’t. She can focus better on you that way. She knows I don’t like to fly, either.”

“But you fly all the time for work.”

“It’s part of my job, Harry. Failure isn’t an option.”

For a moment, Harry had almost believed they were having a father-son confidence. But Dad was wrong. Failure was always an option, because the knowledge that you couldn’t win every time gave you the courage to try. Effort should always be enough to earn gold stars. Ask anyone with a shitload of defective brain wiring.

Dad fumbled in his pocket, took out his car keys, dropped them, picked them up. His hand shook. “Can you do this, Hazza—come to the hospital?”

There it was again,
Hazza
. A name once spoken with affection.

“Yes,” Harry said, leading the way to the car.

He would force himself to go to the hospital for Mom—the ultimate exposure to his phobia; she would be so proud. But he would also do this with the hope—a hope he’d never been able to ditch—that one day Dad would be proud of him, too. For something other than fucking SAT scores.