The Perfect Son Read online

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Text copyright © 2015 Barbara Claypole White

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Lake Union Publishing, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Lake Union Publishing are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781477830048

  ISBN-10: 1477830049

  Cover design by Shasti O’Leary-Soudant / SOS Creative LLC

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2014921694

  For my agent, Nalini Akolekar, because thank-you notes are never enough

  CONTENTS

  START READING

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  TWENTY-SIX

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  TWENTY-NINE

  THIRTY

  THIRTY-ONE

  THIRTY-TWO

  THIRTY-THREE

  THIRTY-FOUR

  THIRTY-FIVE

  THIRTY-SIX

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  THIRTY-NINE

  FORTY

  FORTY-ONE

  FORTY-TWO

  FIVE YEARS LATER

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  BOOK CLUB DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

  A CONVERSATION WITH THE AUTHOR

  LISTENING GUIDE

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  No one is perfect . . . that’s why pencils have erasers.

  —author unknown

  What was silent in the father speaks in the son, and often I found in the son the unveiled secret of the father.

  —Friedrich Nietzsche

  ONE

  Passengers in the row behind muttered the Lord’s Prayer. Ella, however, had no plans to make her final peace with God or die in the clouds. She had a battle to conduct on the ground, after she’d cleared baggage claim at the Raleigh-Durham International Airport.

  The plane lurched and a baby screamed. Eyes closed, Ella inhaled through the heartburn that had stalked her since Felix’s text had dinged over the flight attendant’s directive to power off electronic devices. Delivered with perfect timing—no possibility of retaliation—her husband’s message had been a declaration of war. Signed without a kiss.

  The young man next to her grabbed the armrest. “Rough flight,” he said. “Think we can blame the polar vortex?”

  The fuselage rattled as if about to rip into a billion fragments.

  “Flying, still the—” Words clumped in her windpipe like a drain clog; statistics memorized to soften her son’s fear fogged up her brain. She forced out a breath. “It’s still the safest way to travel.”

  “No offense,” the guy said, “but you don’t look too convinced about safety records.”

  A stereo of heartbeats thumped in her throat. Boom, boom; boom, boom; boom, boom.

  “Heartburn. Killer attack.” Ella tried to smile, but her stomach began to bubble worse than a cauldron of boiling acid.

  “I don’t mean to be rude”—he glanced up at the call button and back at Ella—“but you’ve gone a strange color. You sure you’re feeling okay?”

  “Bit churned up with all the—” Ella made exaggerated roller-coaster movements with her arm, then paused to breathe. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to start projectile vomiting.”

  “Good to know, because I might.”

  “A guy unafraid to discuss puking.” She pressed her palm against her chest. “Admirable.”

  “Could you explain that to my wife? She thinks I’m a total wuss.”

  Ella gave a sympathetic huh that seemed to say, Spouses, eh? Felix had always believed she was strong enough for both of them, and he’d been wrong. After seventeen years of marriage, she was so tired of being the family fulcrum.

  The stranger stared at her from behind thick, black-framed glasses—very Elvis Costello, very late-seventies London pub scene. Very Felix. She turned to the window, faking interest in cloud formations. The memory flashed anyway: a muggy Saturday on the London Tube; a wave of light-headedness followed by the certainty that she was going to faint; a different stranger with thick, black-framed glasses. A beautiful young Englishman with floppy hair and a hesitant smile: Felix Fitzwilliam. Who could resist that name weighted with authority, with nobility, with ancestors—she would learn later—who had signed the Magna Carta? Who could resist the laserlike intensity of concern channeled through those huge blue eyes? He’d caught her; he’d stopped her from falling in more ways than one. But that was the past, and nostalgia had no place in the present. Not after Felix had texted:

  Talked with the president of Harvard about Harry’s admission.

  Ella coughed back nausea. For sixteen years, seventeen next week, she alone had been responsible for the decision making that affected Harry’s life. She had been his advocate and mental health coach, his full body armor. The parent who’d educated teachers and set up code words that enabled Harry to leave the classroom when he had excess energy to burn; the parent who had battled the family’s health insurance provider over services, drugs, and appointments; the parent who had monitored Harry’s sleep, nutrition, stress, and meds. She alone had given their son enough praise for two parents. Felix had been the breadwinning workaholic. That’s what he did: he worked, while she parented to the point of collapse. And then Harry achieved perfect SAT scores, and Felix, no longer content to ride in the family backseat, snatched the parental car keys and reset the GPS for Harvard. Harvard, when she’d been pushing for the University of North Carolina so Harry could stay close to everything that mattered to him, everything that kept him safe. And now Felix had begun to confuse Harry with comments about how only losers stayed in state and attended public universities.

  I’m an Oxford man, Harry. That means something.

  Yes, if you allowed it to mean something.

  The discomfort in her throat and chest eased, but the anger had returned. Good. She would nurse it, stay strong despite the exhaustion that crept into her thoughts, her bones, and her muscles. Had she ever been this weary?

  Maybe she should flag down the flight attendant and order a Bloody Mary. A double.

  What-ifs multiplied like a combat-ready squad of Star Trek Tribbles: cute, furry, and armed with bazookas. What if, when Harry went to college, she took Katherine’s advice and moved out? Every time Ella and her best friend opened a bottle of cabernet, Katherine accused Felix of being a control freak, which he was. But could Ella Fitzwilliam do that—break apart her family after she’d fought so hard to keep it balanced on the imaginary high wire of raising an exceptional child? If not, could she at least rip up every one of Felix’s to-do lists, those neat, color-coded notes of perfection that ruled their lives?

  Her stomach flipped and flopped as the plane took another plunge, this one dislodging her Holly Aiken tote from under the seat in front. She nudged the bag
back into place with her foot. Felix had taken six months to notice the bag, and once he’d discovered that Holly Aiken was a Raleigh designer and the bag was not a T. J. Maxx special, he’d launched into a diatribe on financial irresponsibility and the state of the college fund. She had explained, calmly, that the bag was a gift from her dad. Felix had never apologized.

  “I’m going to hug my little girl so tight when I get home,” the stranger said. A dad who offered hugs and probably declared every piece of finger painting to be a van Gogh—as did most fathers. Not Felix, though. He had never found anything worthy of praise in Harry’s early artwork. One blemish, one flaw, and the whole was ruined.

  Ella shook her head. A bit too hard, given the aura of dancing lights. She turned back to face her neighbor, and the world took a few seconds to catch up. “How old is she, your daughter?”

  “Three.”

  “A fabulous age.” Three-year-old Harry had been all boy, all energy, all the time. Admittedly he’d been more energetic than anybody else’s kid, and there hadn’t been many repeat playdates. And yes, the president of the preschool PTA had publicly denounced Ella’s parenting skills after Harry had charged into the table at the annual ice-cream social and destroyed all the ice cream. But at three, Harry hadn’t been branded or bullied; he hadn’t become the Tourette’s Kid, also known as “Jerky” to less sympathetic classmates.

  “My son’s a junior in high school,” she said. Although if six-foot Harry were with them, he would be squirming worse than a kindergartner trapped inside on a rainy day. Plastic seats triggered his sensory issues. The ones on short-haul flights such as these were the worst. And then—because how could she not share?—she leaned toward her seatmate.

  “He just scored two eight hundreds on the SATs. Perfect scores in critical reading and writing.”

  “Impressive.”

  Doubly impressive given the neurological disorder that doesn’t play nice with stress and the ADHD thrown in for shits and giggles. Plus the quirks that come from a patchwork of other diagnoses.

  The guy fiddled with his wedding ring. “I’m dreading the teenage years.”

  “Don’t. They’re loads of fun. I have the best conversations with Harry—that’s my son—but he still has a little kid’s sense of wonder. I can’t wait to see him at the airport.”

  She and Harry? Their lives had been soldered together by the rainbow of special needs. Five whole days they’d been apart! They’d never been separated that long before.

  “He sounds like a very special guy.”

  “He is.” The two years of rage attacks that had destroyed furniture and left holes in drywall didn’t count. The à la carte menu of Tourette syndrome could offer up anything except choice.

  The plane held a steady path, and people fidgeted in collective relief. Her neighbor, the good father, retrieved a Tom Clancy novel from the seat pocket and began to read. Soon they would start their descent into Raleigh-Durham, and when they landed, Harry would rush toward her with arms akimbo and deliver a Harry hug. He was the best hugger.

  Ella sank back into her seat. Maybe she just needed a break from family stress. The last week had brought such guilt—juggling her dad’s need for a postsurgical dose of daughter love with abandoning Harry to Felix. Although technically Felix had been the parent in charge for less than twenty-four hours, since Harry had been staying with his friend Max while Felix bashed out the prospectus for some bond issue. According to Felix’s business partner, Felix was “a friggin’ rock star at bringing together a syndicate of underwriters.” A syndicate. Amazing how the world of corporate finance co-opted the language of organized crime.

  The muscles in her chest clenched as if squeezing through a contraction; she gasped.

  “Heartburn getting worse?” her neighbor said.

  Pain shot between her shoulder blades, scorching a path along her bra line. “Uh-huh.”

  She was sweating now. Not heartburn, then. Did she have a fever? She felt her forehead. Clammy. Had she picked up the flu?

  She never got sick. Not since she’d quit smoking and started exercising daily. She watched her salt intake, kept an eye on her blood pressure . . . and she’d had her cholesterol checked only last month. Given her family history, she had no choice but to be vigilant. Maybe it was just menopausal crap. The last few days in Fort Lauderdale, she’d been sweating enough for a whole mob of middle-aged women.

  I am not sick, I am not sick, I am not sick.

  She couldn’t get sick. Not right before Harry’s birthday and the weekend college trip she’d planned to Asheville. And what if she’d passed on germs to her dad’s caregiver? Or to her dad? He was still going to physical therapy to build up his muscles, to break through the scar tissue, to get the new knee working. He couldn’t get sick. She couldn’t get sick.

  Felix would freak out if she got sick. He couldn’t cope with anything that wobbled the building blocks of family life. Crap, what if he had to take Harry to the UNC Asheville open house? No way was she letting that happen.

  She shifted, pushing down on her seat. The plastic had become hot and sticky; she peeled her palms free. Even though it was January, surely this dilapidated plane had air conditioning. And the oxygen, was it thinning? Ella sat still as everything around her slipped into slow motion. The hum of engines faded. The flight attendant, who had remained seated through the turbulence, glided backward down the aisle, holding up a white trash bag, claiming refuse. Her bangles jingled, chiming a death knell.

  Judgment Day.

  Sounds receded as Ella slipped into a dream, holding the armrests with weak arms, heavy arms that refused to move. A body no longer controlled. Pressure built between her breasts, an imaginary parasite swelling as it drained her oxygen, as it crushed down, as it suffocated her.

  A fire-burst of pain shot through her jaw. Her eyes popped open; her breath came in short, sharp jabs. Her chest was being squeezed in a vise. Tight, tight, tighter.

  Her heart began pumping adrenaline, pumping pain, pumping death.

  “No,” she whispered. No.

  A deep voice, a stranger’s voice from another time. Felix? “What’s wrong?”

  She had to stand, had to get air, had to get out. Couldn’t free herself. Why was she wearing a seat belt? Why was she burning up? Who was the man clutching her arm too tightly?

  Dying, she was dying. Was it too late to join the other passengers in the Lord’s Prayer? No, no. History was not repeating itself. “You’re so like your mom,” her dad had said that morning. No, she had tried so hard to not be like her mom. Her heart was not meant to fail after forty-seven years. She was not her mom; she would not die and leave her child. She couldn’t. No one loved Harry the way she did; no one knew how. Who would keep Harry safe, protect him from people who were stupid or cruel or both? Who would protect him from his own father?

  “Can’t . . . breathe.”

  A guy, fuzzy at the edges, faded in and out. He yanked her up; they were in the aisle, moving forward into first class. Felix would never make such a bold move . . .

  “Miss!” the man shouted. “We need help!”

  Someone reached for her. Women’s voices—two of them. Good, that’s good. Women will understand: we aren’t our mothers. History doesn’t have to repeat itself. Mothers and daughters can share shoes. They don’t have to share defective genes; they don’t have to both die of heart attacks before their fiftieth birthdays.

  A narrow, metal space—everything stored away, everything secured. Except for her. Was she floating? No, someone was holding her by the waist, keeping her upright.

  “Ma’am? Are you okay? Can you tell me what’s happening?”

  Burned coffee, she could smell burned coffee. Tried to cover her mouth; tried not to gag. The baby cried again. Harry; was Harry okay?

  “Dizzy. Very dizzy. Short”—she sucked in air—“of breath. Pressure in chest. Pain in jaw.”

  “I don’t think she’s been feeling well since we took off,” the good father sai
d. Now she remembered him.

  “How long have you had these symptoms, ma’am?”

  “An hour? Maybe longer. Suddenly got worse.”

  “Do you have any current medical conditions? Are you on any medications?”

  “No.” Ella’s legs buckled.

  “Let’s get her out of the galley—move her to the door where there’s more room. Are you traveling alone?”

  “Yes,” the good father answered. “I think her son’s meeting her at the airport.”

  Arms eased her to the floor.

  Someone called for a doctor over the intercom. Three times.

  “Ma’am? Can you hear me? Have you consumed any alcohol?”

  Her head lolled to the side. “No.”

  “Get the oxygen and the AED. Call the cockpit, tell them we have a medical emergency.” The voice softened, became angel-like. “Ma’am, I’m going to put an oxygen mask on you.”

  A plastic mask covered her face. It smelled funny.

  “No one answered the PA,” a woman said. She sounded worried. Why? “We can’t use the enhanced medical kit.”

  “Call for a first responder. A fireman would do.”

  “I used to be a lifeguard.” The good father again. He took her hand.

  “Let’s get the defibrillator on,” the angel said.

  Couldn’t die on dirty, fake carpet, staring at a splat of gum. Couldn’t die looking at anonymous feet. Wanted, needed . . . to touch Harry’s face.

  Harry. I won’t leave you, Harry.

  A ray of sunlight, and her mother’s voice, singing a lullaby.

  Please, Mom. Help me get home to Harry.

  Hands ripped her shirt open; cold fingers stuck cold patches on her skin.

  Then the world went black, silent but for an electronic echo: “Stand back. Monitoring heartbeat. Shock advised.”

  TWO

  “You do realize, Harry”—Felix kicked his son’s Union Jack Dr. Martens boot into the shoe cabinet, even though he’d been aiming for a nudge—“that this delightful piece of Scandinavian ergodynamic design has one job and one job only. To keep the hall clear of shoes. Hall, empty. Shoes, in here. It’s a simple rule.”