The Perfect Son (9 page)

He zigzagged onto a thick layer of shells that crunched and splintered under his boots. Walking became easier, and he marched across the flat grayness as if he were the last soldier on a battlefield.

Mad dogs and Englishmen
.

Except not even a stray dog was crazy enough to walk on the beach in this weather. There was no one around, just the mad Englishman. He laughed, actually laughed. But there was nothing funny about the sound. His hands tingled with cold, and he shoved them deep into his pockets. Maybe he should walk into the ocean and disappear. Would that be so hard? If he removed himself from the picture, maybe Ella would come back to her senses and be the Ella who would never do something as desperate as hand over care of Harry to him.

That was the truth she was hiding, and the reason she had met with Dr. Beaubridge alone. Rightly or wrongly, she believed her life was in danger. Which left Felix facing the real ghoul under the bed—his true self. If he did what Ella was asking of him, would he discover the cause of the anger that bubbled constantly under his skin? Would he discover he was indeed his father’s son?

Colors leaped up from the compacted sand. Warm colors of amber and mauve, tan and russet. Felix stopped, bent down, and reached for a shell streaked with tones of caramel, vanilla gelato, and iced coffee with whipped cream—colors from another season. Brushing off the sand revealed not a whole shell but a fragment. The elements had turned the edges smooth like a river stone or a piece of sea glass. When he closed his fingers over it, the shell that wasn’t a shell fit snugly into his palm.

More colors called to him from the sand. Soon his palm was filled with four, five, six shell pieces—each different in size, shape, and pattern. They chinked together like loose change in a trouser pocket, and he started walking again. These broken remnants made no sense. They weren’t perfect, they weren’t symmetrical, and yet, as he rubbed them, they became as warm and as comforting as his wife’s wedding ring.

Ella might never heal, but maybe time would smooth out her broken edges, make her even more beautiful. Because the heart attack could never alter the truth: she was Ella Bella. Mrs. Felix Fitzwilliam. The only woman he had ever loved.

Eyes watering heavily, Felix planted his feet wide apart and turned to confront the Atlantic Ocean. The crash of waves obliterated the thunder of the wind. Of the two titans, the sea was stronger, an unharnessed force of nature that could rise up and annihilate him on a whim. And yet. Even the strongest wave was powerless to do anything but sigh and retreat when it reached the shore. He could do that; he could roar and retreat. Wasn’t that what Pater always did? But he wasn’t Pater.

His wife was critically ill; his son would never be classified as normal. But this damaged family was his family.
Mine.
He shuffled the smooth shell pieces until he had three in each palm. Coins from the ocean. Currency to buy back a life.

“Mine.”

The wind took his word and carried it into the ocean, maybe all the way back to England. Back to Pater’s grave, to his bones.

I will never be you. I will do better.

He pulled out his phone. It was one thirty already. He should get some lunch before driving back to Durham. He turned, and with the wind at his back other sounds broke through the din of the waves: a seagull crying, a distant car horn. Even the waves were less ferocious. He had two phone calls to make: the first one to the school secretary, to explain that Harry would need to stay for after-school care; the second to Robert. To tell him that he was taking the rest of the week off and would not be joining him for the client meetings in Charlotte on Friday night and all day Saturday. Curt would have to take over the Life Plan meeting, too, but Felix could finish hashing out the details from home. Curt would merely have to present his boss’s work with confidence. Confidence was never a problem for Curt. But first, he stopped and typed with one finger:

I promise to make my life all about Harry.

Then he hit “Send.” He’d done it. There was no going back. His word, once given, was a titanium seal. Ella replied immediately with the symbol Felix now recognized as a heart. A shape that had new meaning.

Felix slipped his mobile into his back pocket. If he was going to do this, if he was going to prove to Ella that he could raise their child single-handedly, he needed to reassess his role in the family, step out from behind the desk job, and sign up for the frontlines of active father duty. If he was going to master the nitty-gritty of being an at-home parent, he needed a battle plan. A bloody good one.

Starting tomorrow? There would be no more after-school.

SEVEN

Harry was freeing his calculus textbook from the disaster that was his locker when the spitball thwacked him upside the head. He hadn’t been targeted since second grade, but it was a feeling he’d never forgotten. Little kids could be unconscionably cruel. But there were no little kids around. Hardly any kids, period. Just after-schoolers, and none of them were meant to be up here except to get stuff from their lockers. One of those rules that made no sense, considering the upstairs hall was a huge room crammed with everything that didn’t fit in the rest of the school. Kids and teachers were in and out constantly.

He bobbed his locker disco ball with his index finger, twice, and turned to corner his attacker with well-armed Tourette’s facts. But there, on the other side of the big table that doubled as the art room, was Sammie. Wearing those skinny jeans that were tight enough to make him want to roll out his tongue and pant. She was also grinning at him like he was special. And not special in a challenged way. Which she might think if he did pant. With good reason.

Harry, you dork. Just say hello.

Harry grinned back, and for one whole glorious moment, his body did exactly what he wanted it to do. Nothing.

Then she gave a shy wave and skipped off toward one of the classrooms.

Shit, she was even hotter than she’d been in his dream. If that was possible. Why hadn’t he said hello? That wasn’t so hard. One word:
H, E, double L, O.
Guys had been saying it to girls for generations. No big deal.

His head jerked in the crazy-ass sideways nod, the new tic from the airport, and his neck cracked.
Vagina, vagina
. The word threatened to spew out like a hazmat spill.
Vagina, vagina.
He cleared his throat, made some weird gagging noise, swallowed the word.

The door crashed open, bringing a wave of cold from the stairwell. “Hey, man. What’s up?”

Harry shrugged at Max. “Not much. Getting my stuff.”

Max adjusted the messenger bag slung low across his torso, then plopped down in one of the wheelie chairs lined up around the table and slid back and forth, like he was about to start a bobsled race. And Dad thought
he
never sat still. Harry dumped himself into another chair.

“Any more news from your dad?”

“Just that he drove to the beach to clear his head, which is why I have to go to after-school.”

“Your dad’s a weirdo. You know this, right?”

Harry nearly replied with “Your dad is creepily normal.” Which was bizarre. Never wandered into a pissing match over dads before. Max’s parents were joined at the hip—always touching each other, which was gross. And Max’s dad, Pete, was everything Dad wasn’t: spontaneous, fun-loving, wanted to be friends in a slightly annoying, hey-I’m-the-cool-dad, have-a-beer kind of way. A parent should be a parent, not a friend.

“You’re ticcing worse than a howler monkey on meth,” Max said. “What’s going on? I mean, other than your mom being in the hospital and your dad being MIA at the beach.”

“Dad says she’s going to need a long recovery time even after she gets home. What if Dad loses his job because he has to look after Mom, and I have to go back to public school? I can’t go back to public school. I mean, this shit-hole is falling down around us, but it’s home, you know? Like being part of the von Trapp family.”

One hundred kids, kindergarten through twelfth grade, in a haunted, historic house in downtown Durham. Needed a complete renovation job, but what was not to love about their school? Best of all, the teachers totally got how Mom could fuss. After the parent-teacher conference when Mom had insisted on giving everyone the full update on how spectacularly he had flunked drivers ed, Ms. Lillian had taken him aside and said, “She just wants to keep us all in the loop, so we can be part of team Harry.” But hadn’t he outgrown team Harry?

“C’mon, dude,” Max said. “Your dad probably has a whole to-do list of backup plans. Besides, hasn’t he already paid next year’s school fees to get that price break? I remember my dad bitching about it, and then being all excited because it meant they were down to one set of school fees. If my parents have done it, your dad has.”

“I guess.” Harry cracked his knuckles. “I miss talking with Mom, too. Trying to talk with Dad’s worse than falling into a copperhead’s nest. You know me, I like to talk things out. But Dad starts tapping his hand and says—” Harry cleared his throat for his upper-class Brit voice. “You have already told me that
twice
.”

Max cracked up. “I know, dude. But you can always talk to me. Want me to drive you home so you can become a latchkey kid like the rest of us?”

“Nah. I’m good. Why are you still here?”

“George asked me to help out this fifth grader. Poor kid is practically math dyslexic.” Max elbowed him. “Oh wait, I get it. You
want
to go to after-school. Doesn’t Sammie Owen go to after-school?”

“Does she?” Harry looked at his groin.

“When’re you gonna actually talk to her, man? Say, ‘I think you’re super hot. Want to hook up?’”

“Max!” Harry glanced around. “Walls have ears.”

“Dude, it’s not complicated. You like her, I’m pretty sure she likes you. One plus one equals earth-shattering grope session. If you don’t make a move, I will.”

Harry scowled. “What the—”

“On your behalf, dude.” Max punched the air. “Ha! I knew you had the hots for her. Well played, Max. Well played.”

Harry blushed. He and Max talked about everything. Mom always said they were two halves of a whole; the teachers joked they were Siamese twins separated at birth. They didn’t keep secrets from each other, but this was different. The way he felt about Sammie was different. Fragile and private. Not for sharing. But Max had figured it out anyway. That’s what best friends did, figured out life when you couldn’t.

“I really like her,” Harry mouthed.

“Well, duh. Tell me something I don’t know. By the way”—Max leaned closer—“she thinks you’re pretty chill.”

“How do you know?” Harry whispered.

“Can we stop whispering like little girls?” Max pushed back his chair and put his feet up on the table.

“She’s super hot, isn’t she?”

Max shrugged. “I guess. Not dark and twisted enough for me. I bet she’s a virgin.”

“Come on, so are you.”

“Yeah, but let’s be real. We’re the only two people in the eleventh grade who haven’t done the deed. And I, my friend, plan to fix that next weekend.”

“No! She said yes?” With the Mom Situation, he’d forgotten about Max’s date.

“Oh, it gets better, dude.” Max winked. “Her parents are out of town.”

The door banged open a second time, and Mr. George, the math teacher, barged into their tête-a-tête. “What are you boys doing up here? And Max—feet off the table.”

“Harry needed some quiet time, Mr. G.” Max sat up as if he had all the time in the world. “We’re talking about his mom.”

“Of course.” Mr. George held up his hands in surrender and backed out of the door.

Harry tried to hold in the giggle, but it escaped through his nose.

“As I was saying before we were interrupted”—Max frowned at the door—“unlike you, I actually talk to Sammie.”

Max had better luck with girls than Harry, which didn’t mean a whole lot. But Max could catch their interest because he was funny and smart and an awesome lead guitarist in a punk band called The Freaks. Teenage girls, however, seemed to care more about the packaging than the contents. And Max’s features looked, well, to quote Max, “splattered together on a supersized pumpkin.”

But now that he’d dyed his hair black, grown it over his sticky-out ears, and started creating full-sleeve tattoos up his arms with Sharpies to tick off his dad, Maxi-Pad was looking pretty rad. He would definitely get serious girl action soon. Enough to blast his giant-sized math brain into orbit.

“Tell her about your mom,” Max said. “Play the sympathy card. Chicks love that shit.”

Harry squeezed his eyes together in a series of deliberate, exaggerated blinks. An aftershock of pain from his neck snap migrated up into his temple. He imagined a dwarf on a stepladder pounding a mallet into the side of his head. Could he bash out the recurring images of Mom in a hospital bed, too?

“Sorry, dude. That was way off base.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“She’s going to be fine, your mom. She doesn’t take shit from anyone.”

“But this is different. This she can’t control.” Harry rested his face on the table. “I’m scared, and I know Dad is, too, but he won’t talk about it . . .”

Max patted his back and then leaned over him. “Man hug.”

“Guys? Am I interrupting?” Sammie entered the room.

Harry shot to his feet, rubbing his eyes. Suddenly, he just wanted to be alone.

“His mom’s in the hospital. He needs a little TLC, you know?”

“Omigod.” Sammie put her head to one side.

“Yup. Heart attack,” Max said in a slow, exaggerated way.

Harry turned in circles. Needed out. Couldn’t breathe. “She—she’s going to be fine.”

“She sure is, buddy,” Max said. “You should meet Harry’s mom. She’s great. You know, for a mom. She likes me way better than my own mom.” Max stood, straightened his messenger bag, picked at his nail polish. “Well, kids, gotta run. You look after him for me, Sammie.”

The fucker! Was Max smirking? He
was
. He was smirking.

And then they were alone. Him on track to graduate as the most fucked-up kid, and Sammie Owen, hands down the most beautiful girl in the school. In the town of Durham. In the state of North Carolina. On the planet.

Sammie stood in front of him and placed one hand on his shoulder, and then pulled it back. He wanted to grasp her wrist, shove her palm into his face, inhale the essence of Sammie Owen.

“How can I help?” she said.

A simple question that told him she was the one. The one and only. His first true love. Random acts of kindness—his favorite thing in the world.

“I-I don’t know.”

“Maybe we can be there for each other.” She paused. “My dad has lung cancer. Stage four. Incurable.”

Harry stood still. “I didn’t know.”

“No one does. I wanted it that way, so I could have a normal life.”

“Why tell me?”

“Because I knew you’d understand. Even without—”

“Yeah,” Harry said, and his head did the sideways tic again. Her gaze didn’t falter.

“We moved down here so he could go to Duke hospital. They don’t know how long he has. He responded pretty well to the chemo and radiation. They think he could have as long as three years. Or he could be gone before spring break. But I don’t want to think about that. I want to be a normal teenager, you know, thinking about this beautiful junior”—she paused and her cheeks glowed—“called Harry.” She twisted her feet. “Can we sit together at lunch tomorrow?”

He was a lot to handle. More energy than a whole power plant when the meds ran out. That was a turnoff for most girls, at least the ones who’d been classmates since third grade. No one had asked him for a lunch date before. (It was a date, right?) No one had ever called him beautiful, either. Except for Mom. She always said, “You’re going to grow up to be such a heartbreaker, Harry.” But moms had to say that crap, didn’t they? And his wasn’t exactly impartial, since she overcompensated for the fact that he was, well, Harry. She never judged him, never criticized. But then again, Dad did enough of that for both of them. Why was he thinking about his parents? He didn’t want to think about anything except Sammie Owen. He moved toward her slowly, focusing on her lips. Shutting out the world.

“Stop right there!”

They jumped apart and Mr. George waved a heavy-duty stapler at them. “No PDA. Time to come downstairs. Both of you. Now.” And then he held the door open and shepherded them through, still waving the stapler.

Sammie looked at Harry and they both giggled. And in that shared moment, nothing mattered beyond the school rule about personal displays of affection. And his
almost
first kiss.

When could he try again?