The Perfect Plan

by Bryan Reardon

  He pulls back. He looks into my eyes. I try to play dumb. I try to look the way he needs me to look. Not because I am scared of him. But because I need more time.

  “Liam,” he says. “Don’t . . .”

  Just then, a woman appears through the crowd. She is sharply dressed in a deep blue suit and wears stylish glasses. Her steps are compact and quick as she greets people. I see her first and then Drew does. His grip immediately loosens and I’m able to free myself and take a step away.

  “My favorite brothers,” the woman says, smiling perfectly.

  Her name is Bethany Warner-Jones and she is running for lieutenant governor on my brother’s ticket. Young and rocketing upward like Drew, she is the perfect distraction. As she puts her hand out to my brother, I walk backwards, my eyes locked on his.

  “I see your wife is handling press today,” she says. “Finally came back to your senses, I see. She’s a rock star.”

  Drew smiles. “Yeah. I’m the luckiest guy in the world.”

  “I have to go,” I blurt out.

  Bethany looks offended but I don’t care. As they stand there, staring at me and shaking hands, I turn and walk away as quickly as I can.

  8

  When an officer took me home after I beat that stranger on the street, my father stood at the door. I walked past him into the kitchen as they spoke softly. Eventually, I heard the door close and he walked into the room. I was petrified to the point of numbness, but I remember being surprised when Drew followed behind him.

  “Stand up,” my father snapped.

  I don’t know where I found the strength, but I rose out of the chair. My legs shook, so I shifted my weight from right to left and then back. I tried to keep my eyes on him but my vision tunneled. As the blackness crept toward the center, the lines of his face faded, but his eyes flared like black fire.

  “What did you do?” he said.

  “I . . . I—”

  My father cut off any defense I may have attempted, not with words but with his hand. He lunged at me, his fingers wrapping around my throat. He squeezed so hard that I felt like my spine might snap. Then he pushed me across the kitchen, slamming me into the far wall.

  “What did you do?” he screamed at me, his face not an inch from mine.

  For the first time, I thought he might kill me. As my lungs burned and my eyes bulged, I resigned myself, in a way. I didn’t fight back. I didn’t cry tears of fear or pain. But I did think about my mother, and how I might not see her again. When I did that, the sadness felt as crushing as my father’s hand.

  To my surprise, though, he let go of me. Coughing, my neck feeling like it had been crushed beyond repair, I fell to the kitchen floor. But I saw him turn on Drew. When he spoke, I went silent.

  “What is wrong with you?” he hissed at my brother. For the first time in our lives, his tone to Drew matched the one he’d previously saved for me.

  I sat up. In a way, I was perversely fascinated. I half expected my father to lunge at Drew now, grab him by the throat, too. But he didn’t. In fact, he looked wary of touching my brother. But he laid into him with words, a scalpel in the deft hands of a practiced surgeon.

  “I told you to fix your brother, didn’t I? I told you to make sure he stops embarrassing this family. Make him less pathetic. And you couldn’t do that. Just too hard for my little prima donna. Too busy with his lacrosse. You suck, by the way. Do you know that? All the other goddamn parents tell me that all the time. Every time I have to watch you ride the bench.”

  Drew just stood there. That smile, so like my father’s, drained from his face. And I liked it. I liked not being the target. I liked the feeling that I was no longer utterly and completely alone. So much so that I failed to hear his words. To understand them. But when my father continued, everything changed. His words cut both ways, deeper than they ever had before.

  “Well, I guess at least now I know. I can’t trust either of you. There’s just too much of your mother in both of you. Too much of her weakness. And her stupidity. Maybe I always knew that. Understand this, both of you: If I could go back in time and do things over, neither of you would exist. I’d never make that fucking mistake twice. Believe me.”

  My father left us then. He walked out of the kitchen and down into the basement. I got up to my knees, looking at my brother.

  “You okay?” I whispered.

  “Shut the fuck up,” my brother snapped, and walked away.

  * * *

  —

  I WENT BACK to school and, as I sat in that art class, Steinmetz’s words came back to me.

  Paint whatever’s in here.

  I remember closing my eyes, reaching into my heart, and seeing my mother lying in her bed. I saw her sallow face, her clawing fingers. The stains on her blanket and the thickness of the air. The darkness that hung over her for almost my entire life became a living, breathing thing. And I captured it on that canvas, perfectly, in shades of green and blue and black and gray and yellow. In swirls and lines and dips and cuts. I felt something in me, traveling through me, out onto the edge of every brush I touched. My pain etched and stroked and finished until I stood spent and staring at what I had done.

  “Wow,” Steinmetz said.

  I wouldn’t speak. He wanted me to. He told me about an after-school program. A contest in the coming months. I nodded but didn’t listen to a word. When the bell rang, I took the painting under my arm. Ignoring his protest, I carried it home with me that day, leaving it in the kitchen, waiting for my brother to get home from practice.

  When the front door opened, my mouth went dry. I sat in the family room alone, listening to his footsteps. They stopped in the kitchen and my heart raced. I forced myself up. I moved to the doorway and saw him looking at my work.

  “What the fuck?” he said.

  It felt like something struck me. All that emotion rushed up, catching in my throat. I didn’t know what I expected. Or even what I wanted. But when my brother looked at me, I felt so empty and alone.

  “Are you stupid?” he asked.

  “What?”

  “Did people see it?”

  “Just my art teacher.”

  “Great. You want Dad to see it?”

  “No, I just . . .”

  “You just don’t think,” he said.

  “Sorry,” I whispered.

  He shook his head. “Get rid of it before Dad sees it. Understand?”

  Drew walked away. His words infected me, turning the passion that birthed my art into a festering blackness at my very core. I stared at what I’d done. Those same lines and curves and swirls became cuts and gashes and gaping wounds. Every brushstroke became razor claws tearing through my chest and gouging my heart.

  I started to shake. Once again, my vision tunneled, turning red at the center. My fists balled, the fingernails cutting into my palms. Then I lashed out. My first strike tearing a jagged hole through the canvas. I grabbed it, throwing it against the wall. The wood frame splintered and the remains fell to the tile floor. I stomped it, grinding it into the ground with my boot.

  When it was all spent, I stared at what I had done. And I swear I heard my brother laughing at me in the other room. I stormed into the garage and buried what remained deep in one of the trash cans. I would not touch a paintbrush again for a very long time.

  9

  I hit the revolving door at a full run, my palms striking the glass hard enough that the receptionist lets out a chirp of surprise behind me. The door spins and I burst out onto the street. I sprint the four blocks back to the truck. I can see Lauren through the back window and I curse softly to myself. When I throw the door open, she looks at me.

  “What’s wrong?”

  I ignore her, focusing on getting the key in and starting the engine. The tires squeal as I pull away from the curb and race down Orange. Within a minute I am on the i
nterstate, my eyes darting from the road to the rearview mirror.

  “What happened?”

  “We need to get out of here,” I say.

  “Why?”

  “The police,” I answer.

  She pauses, then lets out a scoff. “He won’t let that happen.”

  I shake my head. I consider upending her ignorance, but I can’t.

  “He’s the one making it happen,” I say.

  As I barrel down the highway, I try to think. Maybe I should take her to the cabin now. But I can’t risk the police finding that place and what is under the tarp. Not yet.

  I have options. I can amend the plan. But that thought feels painful. Life has played out like a decades-long chess match. After so many years, any attempt at a checkmate has to be perfect. And it isn’t. Not any longer.

  I scratch at my arm, hard. I have to stop. Nothing has changed. In a game of chess, there is always the countermove. I can’t even say this is unexpected. Because I’m not sure I am being honest with myself. Did I go to the event to bide time? To convince Drew that I was just as stupid as he thought? Or did I go for another reason? To taunt him. Push him off-balance.

  Sometimes, the only way to truly win is to get in your opponent’s head. Drew knows this better than anyone. Except, maybe, me.

  “I heard some stuff,” Lauren says, and her voice grates on me before I can even comprehend the words. “That you’ve hurt people pretty bad, people who wanted to hurt Drew. We’ve all heard it. People are scared of you.” She laughs nervously.

  “I—”

  I see the flashing light up ahead. It takes me a second to realize the cruiser is across the median, heading north, not south. It races past, the siren rattling the window.

  My phone goes off. I pull it out and read the message from Drew’s burner phone. The only one I’m supposed to contact him on.

  Give it up bro.

  Lauren leans in and reads the text before I can turn the phone away.

  “What does that mean . . . ? What are you doing?”

  “He’s just pissed at me.”

  “Seriously! Seriously?” She pauses, looking at me. “Oh, shit, you’re not screwing this up, are you?”

  I don’t say anything right away. I can sense her agitation. I glance over at her and see her shoulders tightly hunched. And I see her for the first time as a human being. Not a piece in this endless game. I had thought I would tape her up once again. Bind her ankles and wrists. Gag her with duct tape. Carry her over my shoulder if I had to. Anything to keep her from ruining the plan.

  Now I see a young woman with quick eyes and a practiced tongue. Along with the privilege evident in her straight back and expensive clothes, I see the tense muscles of her neck and the nervous thinness of her lips. I have the power. I can call the shots. But her humanity might as well be a mirror. In it, I see myself. And I see my brother. Two sides to the same story, one that she could never understand.

  I’m about to tell her the truth, the part she doesn’t know. Not all of it. Just hers. But I stop myself. I rage against her humanity. She is nothing to me. Just a pawn in the bigger game. So I stay quiet, for now.

  10

  My mother survived that second trip to the hospital. She came home three days after I destroyed my painting. But she was not the first woman to come through our front door. Not three hours after I jammed the remains of the tattered canvas to the bottom of the can in the garage, someone else paid our family a visit. If she knew that she was actually the spark that lit the fuse, she would never have been able to live with herself.

  When the doorbell rang that night, I was in my room. I assumed it was another neighbor, there to ask after my mother and shower my father with compassion. I had no interest in watching him feed on their vapid goodwill. So I remained behind my closed door.

  When the bell rang a second time, though, a warning turned inside my gut. He would never keep a visitor waiting. Curious, maybe anxious, I crept out of my room and to the top of the stairs. I saw my father standing by the door, his hand on the knob. He turned and looked at me. It was like I could feel his fingers on my throat.

  I took a step back. My father opened the door.

  “Can I help you?” he asked, his tone short.

  “Mr. Brennan?” a woman’s voice asked.

  I inched out into the hallway, trying to get a better view.

  “Yes,” my father answered.

  “My name is Marci Simmons. I work for the Division of Family Services. I wonder if I could ask you a few questions.”

  My father did not answer right away. When he did, his words were soft yet unreadable. “About what?”

  “Your son,” she said. “And your wife.”

  I flinched, pulling back in anticipation of his inevitable eruption. I even closed my eyes. But what happened next didn’t surprise me at all.

  “Come in,” my father said.

  His voice changed. I could tell even from up the stairs. It was subtle, and I’m sure Marci Simmons could not have picked up on it. But he became the man my neighbors knew. He was wounded, deeply, somewhere so deep that even he couldn’t find it. My mouth slowly opened as I listened.

  “Can we sit?” he asked.

  “Of course,” Marci Simmons said.

  He led her into the living room. I slid down the stairs one at a time, as silently as I could.

  “How is she?” I heard him ask, his words paper-thin.

  “Your wife?”

  “Yes. I . . . I want to go see her. It’s killing me. But . . .”

  He sniffled. I almost made a sound of disbelief when I heard that. Emboldened, I moved quicker, reached the bottom, and peered around the railing. I could see him in his chair, hands covering his face. His chest heaved. He was crying.

  “I just can’t see her like this. I’ve tried so hard. I’ve tried everything. Her disease is tearing our family apart. It’s leaving me so broken. I just don’t think I can fight it anymore.”

  Marci Simmons did not rise from her seat. She did not rush to my father and comfort him. I think, in a very real way, I loved her for that.

  “There are things we could help you with. A program here in the city. I can get her in once she’s out of the hospital.”

  “She won’t go,” he said, his voice cracking. “I’ve tried.”

  “I spoke to her today, Mr. Brennan. I think she’s ready.”

  “You did? She said she would go? Oh, God, thank you. I . . .”

  His head lifted as he spoke. He turned and, midsentence, he saw me. His eyes locked on mine and I thought I might get sick. I froze. His expression remained unchanged as he stared at me.

  “I don’t know what to say.” A tear rolled down his cheek. “Only . . . thank you.”

  My entire body shook. I saw the tears. I heard his words. But I felt his focus on me like a pointed gun. I sensed his finger itching the trigger. I have never been so frightened in my life.

  Then he turned away, back toward her. “Thank you, Ms. Simmons.”

  The spell broken, I tore back up the stairs and slammed my bedroom door behind me. Then I heard my dad’s voice.

  “Drew, someone is here. She’d like to speak to you.”

  * * *

  —

  LATE THAT NIGHT, a soft knock sounded against my closed door. I was awake, staring at my dark ceiling. When I heard it, I gripped my sheet in a tightly closed fist and prayed that it was a dream. Maybe I had been asleep after all.

  I lay in the dark, holding my breath. I willed the silence to last forever. But then I heard it again, a little louder but still tentative. I sat up, holding my breath. And my door creaked as someone opened it.

  I hoped it was my mother. I had this idea that she would come into my room and sit on the edge of my bed. She might pet my head and tell me that she loved me. That’s all I really wa
nted. But I knew right away it wasn’t her. The shadow in my doorway was taller, stronger. So much more alive.

  “Liam,” my brother whispered. “You awake?”

  I felt fear in that moment. I don’t know what I thought he’d do. But my body reacted. My back pressed against the headboard. My head swiveled, as if I searched for an exit, some way to flee.

  “Liam?” he repeated.

  My mouth opened, although I still couldn’t say a word. His voice sounded so different. Not just soft, but tentative, like the knock. In a way, it reminded me of our mother’s. Which was weird.

  After that thought, I finally answered. “Yeah.”

  “Can I come in?”

  My eyes narrowed but it was too dark for him to see that. “Sure.”

  He walked across my room and sat on the edge of the bed. I fought the urge to slither away from him. He wasn’t too close, and he never touched me, but it was like there was a current of electricity between us, one that only I could feel.

  “I . . . I’m sorry,” Drew said, his voice cracking.

  I couldn’t believe it. I heard an emotion in him that I’d never dreamed could exist. And it was directed at me. I fought the urge to reach out, to hug my brother.

  “What?” I asked instead.

  “I just . . . He makes me do it, Liam. He . . . there’s something about how he talks to me. I don’t want to, but he makes me. I like you. I really do.” Even in the darkness, I saw his head tilt a little. I felt him considering me like he might a dumb animal. Or a fellow character in some overwrought drama.

  “I didn’t want to hurt you,” he continued. “I never want to do that. I just don’t know what to do.” He paused, like he needed to get ahold of himself. “When that lady came today, and I talked to her, I wanted to tell her. Everything. All the stuff he does to us. To Mom. But I couldn’t. I tried, Liam. I swear I tried.”