The Perfect Plan

by Bryan Reardon

  The hive of activity that had descended upon my father’s return home never seemed to end. The ambulance left and the neighbors arrived. My father spoke gravely to people over the phone, accepting their condolences with the words of a heavy heart. My brother played the strong son, always at his side, lowering his head as people spoke fondly about a woman they could not have known.

  I emerged only out of necessity. My hood drawn around my burning cheeks, I walked the hall like it was another dimension. I could see and hear this world, but it passed me as if I was nothing more than air. I didn’t eat. I don’t think I drank. Instead, I sat on the edge of my bed listening to the cadence of heavy conversations through the thin walls of my room.

  Sometime past midnight, the house quieted. I waited, for how long I am not certain. Eventually, I rose and slipped downstairs. Cold, fresh air blew against my face as I stepped into the foyer. In the front room, the curtains billowed out.

  Even today, as things seem to barrel toward a full circle, I relive this exact moment. I stood, my bare feet on the frigid tile. My eyes closed, I tilted my head back. I took that cold air in through wide nostrils. Up until that moment, I had wanted my old mother back. That sweet, beautiful woman who held a gypsy moth on the end of her finger. Yet, as I smelled the sterile emptiness that would swallow my life, I found myself aching for my mother’s sour scent instead.

  * * *

  —

  THE NEXT NIGHT, a man in a black suit visited. He and my father sat at the kitchen discussing the funeral arrangements.

  “She would like that,” my father said, and my blood boiled.

  I took a step back, away from the corner from which I had been eavesdropping. A hand landed on my shoulder and I jumped.

  “Where have you been?”

  I spun around to find Drew. He was dressed in real clothes, not his typical lacrosse shorts and sweatshirt. I felt oddly little, even though I could almost look him in the eye by then.

  “What?”

  “Dad’s been looking for you.”

  “Me?”

  The look of disgust on my brother’s face as he pushed past me might have crushed me if I hadn’t felt so off-balance. I remember trying to make sense of what he said, asking myself if my father had been looking for me. Could that be possible?

  I stood there, frozen, as my brother entered the kitchen. My father introduced him. The man in the suit, like everyone else, offered his condolences. I took a step toward them, feeling the need to join this, to be a part of my family. But I couldn’t. No one wanted me in there. No one cared whether I lived or died.

  So, instead, I slipped back up to my bed and waited. For what, I had no idea. Not yet.

  3

  Lauren and I hover near each other like betrayed lovers. As if our intimacy, turned dark and dangerous, is now over. And neither of us knows what to think. How to feel. I look away, at the crumbling walls of this long-forgotten building. She stares at the floor, anything not to see what I have done.

  Like so many times before, when I feel the adrenaline seeping from my body, I try to find the innocence. I reach out for those moments of childhood that invoke the nostalgia I hear others speak of. I try to re-create some cliché of a relationship between me and my big brother. We’d run through the neighborhood, laughing and wrestling in the clover. We’d sit in the darkness watching a movie on the television, one that our father never would have allowed us to see. We’d whisper and conspire while playing cards for hours.

  Those things aren’t real. They didn’t happen. I think they didn’t. But when I press, when I try to be sure, the images slip away like sand through my fingers. The memories behind me fade away. I try to focus on Drew’s face. He is on one knee before me, my shoelaces wrapped around his fingers. I look up at him and I feel something so real, so primal. Maybe it is something, as the older brother, he has never felt. He is just a boy, yet my eyes see him so differently. I see a force, something almost inhuman. I watch his every move and my fingers mimic without my knowing. I see the size of his hand compared to mine. I see his straight back and his thin smile. He speaks, telling me a story about a rabbit and a hole, and each word changes me, but not in any way he can know. I let his voice wrap around me and all I can do is wish that one day I can be as strong, as smart, as brave, as cool.

  I have heard people say that they do not want to be a role model. That they never asked for someone to look up to them in awe. In those words, I have heard the fear of responsibility, the rawness of guilt. Maybe no one wants their every action scrutinized. No one wants to feel like they have to be perfect for someone else’s benefit. Their hesitancy means nothing, though. For they have no more choice in the matter than those looking up to them in the first place. No one chooses to be a role model. And no one chooses who their role model may be. Instead, people pass through our lives. Some like weather, changing things, sometimes turning things upside down, yet leaving nothing permanent behind, like they never existed. Others pass through like time, leaving nothing behind unchanged. For those, their presence, their influence, simply grows, merging with our souls, making us who we are, like words make up the past.

  Why couldn’t it end there? Why couldn’t I just freeze time? I could sit on the forest floor, looking up at my big brother, worshipping him like an idol. His strength could mold me into the man I should have been. His caring could have guided me as a husband. His patience as a father. If only it had ended in that moment. If only one of us had died right then and there. Then, maybe, things would be different. Maybe not perfect, but better.

  4

  Virginia Brennan is the love of my life. She was my high school sweetheart. The mother of my two boys. Together we built a home. And promised to share it forever.

  “She was kind and thoughtful. Smart and compassionate. She loved to read under the covers on winter mornings. Some of you might know that she played piano like an angel. And she was the best teacher I have ever known.

  “But there were sides to my wife that very few people knew. She flared with a wild joy, like a summer carnival. Like a burning flame. But like both, time would pass and the light would flare out. And the darkness would fall over her. Over all of us.

  “Virginia was stolen from us. She was pulled away bit by bit. The demons that haunted her never truly let go. They dug their claws in deeply. Even in the end, when a glimmer of hope returned, they stormed back, laughing and screaming and tearing. They stole her from us.

  “Alcohol. Maybe I shouldn’t name the beast here, in this church, in front of so many people. Maybe, instead, it should remain in the shadows, sheltered safely behind shame and pain. But I can’t do that. I can’t let it have that final victory. It took our Virginia away. And I pray that she be its last and final victim.”

  I sat in a wooden pew as unforgiving as my thoughts. Drew was near me, strong and stoic, a constant reminder of everything I wasn’t. Neighbors filled the seats to my right and behind. They listened in rapt silence to my father’s eloquent eulogy. Nodding along. Brushing away tears with furtive fingers. As he fed on their emotions, all I felt was anger and hate.

  * * *

  —

  THE PEOPLE IN that church followed us home. They mingled through the rooms of my house, speaking softly and taking sips of cola and fruit juice. I moved among them, my arms limp at my sides and my throat so dry that I fought the need to cough every minute. And I stared at my brother as he strode at our father’s side, chest out and eyes bright, his face a pantomime of grief.

  I wandered from room to room, avoiding them as I moved among relative strangers eating sandwiches and potato salad that someone else had brought over. Having loosened my tie and unbuttoned the top of my white dress shirt, I continued to tug at the fabric like it threatened to strangle the life out of me. I moved slowly, silently. Sometimes, I would catch myself up on the balls of my feet.

  An adult stopped me. I honestly had n
o idea who she was.

  “Are you okay?” the woman asked.

  “Yeah,” I muttered, looking at the floor.

  “Do you need . . . ?”

  Then my father was there, Drew by his side. He spoke to her with gravitas. When I glanced up, I saw the way he affected this stranger. She fell under the spell and left feeling like the Brennan family would rise like a phoenix. To do more than simply survive; to conquer the world.

  As he spoke, my eyes darted left and right. I searched for her without realizing that was what I did. But Marci Simmons wasn’t there. She hadn’t come to save me. Like everyone else’s, her pity turned to indifference once she left our house that day.

  When my father was done and the strangers left, so did my family. I watched as my father’s hand came to rest on Drew’s shoulder. My eyes burned. My stomach tightened to the point that I felt dizzy. I stared, the edges of my world fading into a bloody red haze. And I hated them both. A deep unrelenting hate, unlike anything I had ever felt before.

  5

  Without a word, I stand. Lauren still won’t look at me. But I don’t want to touch her. Not again. Ever.

  “Come on,” I say, my voice harsh.

  And to my surprise, she rises, straightening her glasses. I grab her bag as I head to the door. Like a ghost, she seems to float along behind me, out of the cabin and down the steps. We move like halves of a long-married couple, separating without a word, Lauren going to the passenger side of the Mazda. I climb behind the wheel and start the engine. We drive away from the cabin and I know that she will never come back to this place. But I will, soon.

  When I reach the apartment parking lot, I get out of the car and replace the chain. I can’t have anyone finding the cabin at this point. Not after everything. When I turn back to the car, I see Lauren watching me. But her eyes are vacant. Staring past me, maybe back up the road. Back to what she saw under the tarp.

  I get in and drive. She doesn’t ask where we are going. And she sits as far away from me as she can. I can’t care about that now. Any more than I could before. So I let the familiar roads guide me until I reach the entrance. I see her stiffen when I turn onto it and we pass the sign.

  ALL SAINTS CEMETERY

  I keep driving, moving along the bottom of a gentle rise. Headstones spring from the perfectly kept grass like the fingers of the dead, all pointing up to a perfect blue sky. As I always do, I read some of the names as I pass.

  MARION SMITH

  JEFF LEVINSON

  PATRICIA CAMPBELL

  The road splits. It runs in a long one-way loop. I take the right side and follow it. A single car sits not far from the fork. I see a woman tending a grave near the tree line. She seems to be talking to herself. I drive past her, craning my neck.

  At the far side of the loop, I pull to a stop. As I get out of the car, I grab Lauren’s bag from where I placed it in the back. She still won’t look at me. And her legs are shaking.

  I stand outside the rented Mazda for a moment, Lauren’s bag dangling from one finger. So many memories flood my consciousness, like a mudslide of smells and sights, colors and jagged strikes of emotion. I see the shade of my brother standing over me, fists balled and bruised. I feel the weight of my father crushing me, reshaping me to his will. I look down at my hands, large and callused. At the tattoo, at the phantom stain of blood that it has never been able to truly cover. I look up to the top of the rise, at the stone I’ve visited so many times. I miss her so much.

  6

  After my mother’s funeral, the weeks passed and my rage grew. Every word my father spoke to Drew cut through me, tearing through old scars and leaving me weaker and more alone. My emotions pulled in so many directions. One minute, I would despise everything about my father, blaming him for Mom’s death and for everything that had gone wrong in my life. The next, I would yearn for the attention he gave to my brother. I would pore over my psyche, trying to find what was so wrong with me, what part of my person caused everyone to shy away in disgust. I tore at myself as much as I hated them, silently crying in the darkness of my room and slamming my fist into the cinder-block walls of the basement when no one was home.

  These feelings festered and burned. Simmering up but remaining below the surface for a time. Then one night, the most mundane act sent me over the edge. My father came home with a pizza. He called Drew and me down. I sat at the counter as my father lifted the box top so my brother could pull out a slice. Then he closed it without even a glance in my direction.

  Of all the things that had happened in that house—all of the pain and the loneliness and the confusion—it was that pizza that broke my back. It was as if I slipped out of my own body as I leaned across my father, slamming my shoulder into his arm as I reached for the box. He staggered back. Maybe he just didn’t expect the contact. Maybe I caught him off-balance. But I moved him, easily. A horrible feeling of strength surged through me. He glared at me and for the first time I saw a damaged, frail old man instead of the domineering force of my past.

  Our eyes met. I swore that he felt it, too. And in that moment, maybe his anger and hatred matched mine. Even as I considered this, though, I looked to Drew. The envy I felt, though I still can’t understand it, burned even darker. And maybe my father saw that, as well.

  “When’s your game tomorrow, Andrew?” he asked.

  Drew looked up from his pizza. “Tomorrow . . . ? Three.”

  He nodded. “Great. I can cut out of work early. I’m looking forward to it. Understand it’s a big one.”

  Drew looked utterly confused. His eyes shifted for just an instant, looking to me as if he was putting the pieces of a puzzle together.

  “Conference rivals,” he said.

  My hand hit the table harder than I meant it to as I quickly rose from my seat. The sound echoed through the kitchen. It may have rattled the window over the sink. Yet neither my brother nor my father even flinched as I stormed away.

  * * *

  —

  AT THREE O’CLOCK the next morning, I rose from my bed. I had not slept for a minute. My mind had raged, plotted, and fantasized, eventually settling on something I had never truly considered before.

  It started with Carter. How my father had reacted that day. Then I saw him standing outside with my mother. I remembered how he had devoured that neighbor’s attention. My mother’s funeral. The look of hunger in my father’s eyes.

  Then it came back to me. I remembered the one time that my father turned on Drew. The one time he spoke to Drew the way he spoke to me. It was when I beat that stranger up. When the police brought me home. Their car parked out front. The lights flashing for everyone to see.

  I told you, he screamed, to make sure he stops embarrassing this family.

  More of my father’s words came back to me then. Words from the day when I was ten and I hit Carter with a stick.

  This is my neighborhood. I work hard so we can live here. And I’m not going to have the mothers telling stories about my son.

  I closed my eyes again and I saw my hands wrapped in athletic tape. The vision felt so real. Like it was happening in the moment, all over again.

  Why would my hands be taped?

  As the question formed in my head, I felt it. I felt the first slamming into the side of my head. I felt my brain shifting, compressing against my skull. I felt the cement floor, painted blood-red and as cold as ice, striking the side of my face.

  My eyes opened and the darkness was gone. My bedroom was gone. I was in the basement. Instead of looking up at the ceiling fan above my bed, I was looking at Drew’s face, and that thin half smile. At his fists, taped like mine, balled up and threatening between us. The cold basement floor against the bottom of my feet. And my father’s half smile as he watched.

  No!

  The dream, if that is what it was, flashed back into the ether. Although disoriented, I was
back in my room. I rose from my bed, an eerie calm falling over me. I made no sound as I moved out of my bedroom and into Drew’s. It was dark, but I could see him in his bed. I could make out his face through the gloom. His eyes were closed. He breathed with such a slow regularity that the envy flared again.

  How can he sleep so peacefully?

  I pushed it down and stepped up to the side of the bed. I hovered over him, my fists balling up at my sides, and I pictured my fingers wrapping around his throat.

  7

  Still lost in thought, I move over to the passenger-side door and open it. Lauren gets out. I dig through her bag and find her phone.

  “I need your passcode.”

  She just looks at me. My hand reaches behind my back. She flinches. The code, 1-1-0-5-7-1, spills out of her mouth. It sits in my head, each number like a blinding light. It is my brother’s birthday. I look at her and fight the urge to really see who Lauren is. For all her bravado. For all her intelligence and strength. She is no different from me. She is just another one of his victims.

  In truth, it just doesn’t matter anymore. So I enter the code and the phone unlocks. Then I hand her the bag. She takes it, her eyes locked on the pavement. I go into her messages and the first thing I see is Drew’s name. Even now, I am tempted to open the thread, read their story. Maybe I could understand what she saw in him. What everyone does. For a second, I wonder if I could be wrong. If I’ve made all this up. If what I believe to be true is just more lies. How could I know if it was?