Then she hung up before he could say, “What time shall we expect you?”
Crawling through traffic in the Brightleaf District, Felix stared at the giant Liggett & Myers Tobacco Company sign. The early lunch crowd, muffled up against the day’s windchill factor, drifted in and out of historic tobacco warehouses now filled with trendy shops and restaurants. The century-old red brick buildings always pulled him back into the past, into life before Ella. Not unlike London’s docklands, downtown Durham smelled of rejuvenation and reinvention. And survival.
Felix took a deep breath and turned right. When he’d left the hospital, he’d told himself he was going to run errands until school pickup, but that wasn’t true. Neither was he avoiding an empty house that resonated with Ella’s absence. Although that was partially true. No, he was navigating city streets that would lead him back to Harry. Even while listening to Dr. America explain that Ella was making slow, steady progress, Felix had been worrying about Harry. Quite simply, Felix could not move through his day, could not progress down his to-do list, until he’d reassured himself that he had not traumatized their son.
“You were torturing me.”
Felix turned onto the tree-lined residential street behind Harry’s school and formulated a plan. He would ring the doorbell, tell the school secretary he needed to give Harry an update on Ella, and take it from there.
He was pulling into the car park when sounds of recess assaulted him—the wild screams and explosive energy of children out of control. This changed everything. Suppose Harry was on the playground? Would he embarrass his son if he strolled across the gravel and said, “A word, Harry?” Felix reversed into a space under the spreading branches of a gnarled old oak, turned off the engine, and watched. It began spitting with rain. How very brutal to make children go outside when it was cold and drizzling. How very British.
Spotting Harry was easy. Other kids were in motion—chasing, jumping, shooting hoops—but there was something about Harry’s bobbing head that singled him out, that screamed, I am not normal. Felix tapped his palm. Was there a new, more complex element to Harry’s head tic that meant his son was indeed traumatized?
Wow. Felix’s hand dropped to the steering wheel and he leaned forward for a better look. Wait a minute.
A blond girl sitting next to Harry at the wooden trestle table edged sideways to whisper into his ear. She was extremely pretty. In fact, she and Harry made a handsome couple. At least his son was good-looking. Think how hard life would be if you had a face like Max’s. The girl touched Harry’s shoulder, and he turned toward her with a lovesick puppy grin. Felix felt his mouth flop open as if his jaw had magically unhinged. Why hadn’t Ella told him their son was besotted? What other secrets had she kept from him? Was Harry failing calculus, too?
Were Harry and this girl sexually active? Did he and Harry need a man-to-man talk about sexual responsibility? Felix tightened his grip on the steering wheel.
Harry dangled his arm behind his back and reached for the girl’s hand. They linked fingers in a way that suggested they were attempting to avoid detection. Being the product of a single-sex boarding school education, Felix had no point of reference for dating behavior on school grounds, but he could only assume this sort of activity was banned. Which probably explained why Max sat on the wall behind them, watching.
Harry reached around with his other hand and touched the girl’s shoulder. Another of Harry’s embarrassing habits: if he touched a person’s right side, he had to touch her left side and vice versa. Something to do with balance. The girl seemed not to notice or care.
A pair of crows cawed, and the drizzle now smothered his windscreen, impeding his view of the children. The scene on the playground took on an oddly dreamlike quality. His son, who had never—to his knowledge—expressed interest in girls, was in love. And those feelings were reciprocated. Truth be told, he had never expected teenage Harry to have a girlfriend. Did that make him, Felix, shallow and judgmental? Yes, it did. Because here was a beautiful teenage girl who could accept what Harry’s own father could not.
Why had he promised Ella he’d make his life all about Harry? Clearly, he wasn’t wired for parenthood. Maybe he should forget the tasks Ella had assigned him and go into the office to do what he was meant to do: put together deals.
Felix had been a working stiff his whole life and had never once used up his quota of paid holidays. He’d been earning a salary since he’d taken up carpentry at sixteen—Harry’s age.
“Coming from money doesn’t mean a bloody thing,” Pater had always said. “I don’t care if you want to follow in your grandfather’s footsteps and be a banker. Haven’t you studied the Great Depression in American history? You need manual skills so you can provide for your family whatever the situation. You don’t want to be some slacker sponging off the welfare state.”
Slacker was not a word associated with the Fitzwilliam name, even though Mother had happily lived off the family inheritance for decades. Felix had never been a slacker, nor was he about to become one.
He glanced at his watch. Three hours to school pickup. Should he head to the office? Eliminating travel time and the obligatory chat with Nora Mae, that would leave two hours at his desk. Less if he ended up in a confrontation with Robert. Hardly worth going into work, then.
What he did need to do, however, was exit the parking lot before Harry turned and spotted the Mini. After all, it was evident that he had not tortured his son.
His phone chimed with a text from Ella.
You need to collect your dry cleaning. Forgot. Sorry to give you one more thing to do. Feeling pretty useless and exhausted. Dr. Beaubridge was a ray of sunshine, wasn’t he?
Felix texted back:
He’s an arrogant prick. Every time you look at him, imagine a giant penis.
Ha! That’s a good one!
Had he made her laugh? When was the last time he’d made her laugh?
Going back to sleep, Ella typed.
Good night, Sleeping Beauty.
He started the engine. Back to the errand-running plan, then. He should begin with the dry cleaner’s before he forgot to write it on his to-do list. Wait. Where the hell was the dry cleaner’s?
NINE
The nurses had dimmed the lights at her request, but Ella couldn’t sleep. Light found its way into her room, seeping under the door and through the venetian blinds. After seventeen years of sharing a bedroom with Felix, she, too, could no longer sleep with the slimmest crack of light. He had trained her well. The nighttime sounds of Duke Forest—the occasional owl hooting, deer padding up to their bedroom doors to nibble her azaleas, raccoons nosing around—were replaced by traffic, sirens, and trolley wheels squeaking along the corridor. She missed her woodland garden; she missed her morning power walks with their elderly neighbor, Eudora. She even missed their house, which she’d condemned to Katherine as a twisted fairy-tale nightmare cottage after a record number of copperheads had slithered out of the forest and onto their patio one spring.
Ella had wanted to live in the country, in a modern colonial with a wraparound porch and enough land cleared for a sun garden, despite being vehemently opposed to clear-cutting. Felix had been the one who’d lusted after the 1950s fixer-upper bungalow trapped on the edge of civilization.
She had never liked that dark, hidden house, and now all she wanted was to hear the birdsong in the forest—the wood thrushes, the mockingbirds, the eastern whip-poor-wills, even the jeer of the blue jays. The shadows from the trees, the flickering sunlight that lay across her bed mid-morning, the Monet-inspired bridge that led over the creek to their front path—she missed them all. And soon her camellias and hellebores would be blooming.
There was so much to look forward to, if only she could get home.
Dr. Beaubridge had told her to be patient, but relearning basic self-care was slow and demoralizing. She wanted nothing more than to rise up like Lazarus and go pee unaided, but the effort tied her to the hospital bed with imaginary rop
es. All day she’d felt suspended in a weird in-between state of existence. Her mind would tell her to wake up, shake off sleep, move, and yet her body refused to cooperate—except for her heart, which danced a never-ending rumba.
Ella closed her eyes and imagined the softness of her goose-feather duvet. They’d brought it back from London in the days when you could check two fifty-pound bags for free on a transatlantic flight. They used to return home with such precious loot: Dr. Martens, chocolate, candy, Wellington boots, English bone china . . . Would she ever have the strength to travel again?
She had done nothing for two days; nothing had become her new normal. If she had the energy to care, she would be crazier than a shit-house rat. Maybe she was already, since whenever she slept, in snatches, she heard, smelled, and touched her mother. Not a single haunting or symbolic dream in twenty-three years, and now her dead mother was flesh and blood living in Ella’s subconscious.
Maybe she needed a brain stent.
How were the boys coping this evening? They were so different, her guys: Harry, tactile and demonstrative; Felix, someone who lived life with hands firmly in his pockets—unless he was reaching for her. Felix had always been a tender lover, a generous lover who took his time. When had they last hugged with passion, not obligation? And whose fault was that—who was the one who’d reset the ground rules in the bedroom? She might just as well have spray-painted back off, buddy on the bedroom walls.
Ella picked up her cell phone and hit “Favorites.”
“Hello, darling,” Felix said. After all these years, his smooth, quietly sardonic English accent still surprised her, still warmed her with desire. Even now, when she was confined to a sterile hospital room.
“I was missing you.”
“Me too,” he said.
“How’s homework going?”
“I have a double single malt in my right hand. Does that answer your question?”
“You don’t have to supervise. Just check his assignment notebook, write due dates and deadlines on the dry-erase board, and vaguely oversee.”
“Vague isn’t in my repertoire, Ella.”
She smiled, imagining his lips on her breasts.
Ice chinked against his glass. “How can he accomplish anything when he won’t sit still?”
Ella sighed as their shared moment slipped away. “It might look as if he’s not working, but movement is part of Harry’s thought process. He literally cannot think if he sits still.”
Felix slugged his drink. “How the hell does he manage in school?”
“Legally, the teachers have to let him get up in the middle of class, so I established a code word to make it less distracting for other students. Then he goes outside and runs a few laps.”
“Oh,” Felix said. She could almost hear him frown. “I should have known that, shouldn’t I?”
“No, Felix. We chose to be on different tracks because we did what works for our family. Life isn’t perfect, but we’ve been managing, haven’t we?”
Three days ago, she wouldn’t have asked that question because she wouldn’t have cared how he answered. But this evening, here in this ugly hospital room that wasn’t dark enough for sleep, it mattered. She wanted it back—her life. All of it, the way it was.
Felix seemed to be walking around; a door closed. “Why did you never leave me, Ella?”
“Why would you ask that? I love you.” How could he doubt her?
“Is marriage really that simple?”
“It has to be. How else would couples survive? Marriage never runs on an even keel. We love each other and we’ve created a life together. What else matters?”
“Do you ever wonder what might have happened if we hadn’t both been on the Tube that day, in the same carriage, six feet apart?”
“Of course not. It was destiny and it led to Harry.”
“Right.” Felix drew out the word as if he were trying to make sense of it. “Do you want to speak with him, say good night?”
“Not just yet.” Ella held the phone as close as she could. She had to compose her next sentence with care. Felix was overly sensitive about anything he classified as criticism.
“I’m pretty anxious—about everything. You worry,” she said quietly. “A lot. How do you cope?”
“One has to face one’s demons and keep going. Channel the British war mentality.”
“I’m not British.”
“Close enough.” He hesitated. “We will get through this, darling. Despite your cardiologist and his God complex.”
“You’d have one, too, if you held people’s hearts in your hands.”
The void slunk back into place and threatened to swallow her whole. “I’m pretty beat. I should talk to Harry. ’Night, Felix.”
“’Night, Ella.” Felix paused. “Harry! Come talk to your mother.”
And Felix was gone. Ella rested the weight of the phone against her cheek and waited.
“Mom! How’re you feeling? How’s the food?”
“Crap and crap. How’s school?”
“Awesome. Everyone’s being fantastically nice. And I got one hundred five percent on that calculus test.”
“One hundred five percent?”
“Bonus questions. Didn’t you get my texts?”
“Sorry, baby. I must have been asleep.” He’d sent so many, and she didn’t have the energy . . .
“That’s okay. I wondered why you didn’t answer them, but Dad said they keep you busy in there. So. Whatcha doin’?”
“About to go back to sleep. I’m training for the world sleep record.”
Harry giggled. “Mom . . .” She knew that tone. He had a secret. “Remember the new girl in tenth grade?”
“Sammie Owen?”
“Yeah. I think she likes me. You know, like likes me.”
“I hope you’ve asked her to a movie or something.”
“I’m thinking about it.”
“Sweetheart—this is one of those cases when you should act first, think later. What if you hesitate and someone else asks her out? Do it. I dare you. No, I double dare you.” Ella stopped to breathe. Such exhaustion. “How are you and Dad getting along?”
“He’s a little scary as Mr. Mom. Cuts the crusts off my sandwiches.”
“Ask him not to.”
“But he’s trying really, really hard, and I don’t want to, you know, upset him.” Harry gave a Harry sigh, which was more of a warp-speed snort. “When’re you coming home?”
“We’re shooting for Saturday. Have you talked with Dad about the sleepover?”
“No, I figured I’d cancel it.”
Harry clicked his tongue, a tic she hadn’t heard in a while. Was he regressing? Were Felix and Harry not trying hard enough to connect? Her heart picked up its pace, pounding as if through a megaphone.
“Ask Dad what he thinks. He might surprise you.” Maybe she should interfere, issue them a hold-the-damn-sleepover directive.
“I dunno, Mom. Me and Dad? We’re like that Simple Minds song you played for me the other week, ‘When Two Worlds Collide.’”
She and Harry were always sharing music. Ella closed her eyes and listened to the dissonant bleep of her monitor. “You should play Dad some Simple Minds.”
“Why?”
“Just something from way back when . . .” But she couldn’t grasp the memory. Even thinking drained her energy. “Listen, baby, I’m fading. It’s been another action-packed day for us cardiac patients. Finish up your homework and get to bed.”
“’Kay. Love you.”
“Love you too.”
Ella lay back down, but within seconds her phone trilled with a text alert.
can you ask dad about the sleepover
No.
please ☺☺☺☺
Nice try. Answer still no. This week you and Dad have a special assignment: figure out how to deal with each other without me playing piggy in the middle.
She flopped back. Texting was exhausting.
suppose he yells at me<
br />
Dad doesn’t bite, you goon! He’s just a little quirky.
i’m a lot quirkier
Yes and no. Dad needs a lot of support right now. Be nice. HUGS. xox
The pale gray bubble came up, the one that meant Harry was still typing. Ella groaned. She never said no to Harry, but she needed rest. And really, if Felix was willing to put his life on hold, Harry had to meet him halfway.
If she was ever going to get home, she had to start listening to her body; she had to start rethinking life as a woman with a heart condition. Katherine had nailed it when she’d told Ella to stop worrying about Harry and put herself first. She needed to unlearn her mothering instincts, become a bad mother. And she needed to believe in Felix, trust that he could be the father she’d always hoped he would be.
The gray bubble was still pulsing. Harry had more to say, and she was making the decision to ignore him. Midconversation, and she turned off her phone. The worst part? She had no guilt.
TEN
Harry gobbled a large smiley-face cookie—crumbs shooting everywhere—and stopped briefly to slurp hot chocolate. He swallowed with a gulp before hunching forward to resume his maniacal munching. Felix watched. Could his son not slow down to eat? In fact, could he not slow down for life?
The Mad Hatter had been Harry’s choice, not his. Felix would have preferred a café with less buzz and fewer students, but at least they had a satisfactory view of Duke. Parts of the campus always reminded him of Oxford.
Felix crossed his legs and brushed a piece of lint from his thigh. Fifteen minutes until they had to leave for Harry’s after-school voice lesson. Plenty of time to ask about the girl and throw in a quick tutorial on table manners. Should that preempt the condom conversation?
“Dad, I want to—”
“Harry, please. Not with your mouth full.”
The waitress squeezed past to deliver a plate of scrambled eggs, home fries, and toast to the old geezer sitting next to them. Breakfast food at three thirty in the afternoon? How utterly absurd. Maybe it wasn’t just his son who confounded him. Maybe it was people in general.
The Perfect Son Page 9
