Project Pallid

by Christopher Hoskins

  Drawing inspiration from my own, he’d decided to hold a family dinner that began promptly at 5:00 each evening. Comparable to my own, he’d also initiated his own tradition, but he called it the “Good” and the “Bad” of your day, in a weak attempt to sound less contrived than it actually was.

  I looked at him and nervously turned the pasta over and over in my bowl, waiting for him or Catee to break the silence of our first, awkward “Family Dinner”. I certainly wasn’t going to be the first to do so. As close as I was to her, he was nothing like family to me. I detested him. I hated him. And I wanted to jump across the table and jam my fork in his throat. But I stifled the urge, twirled as much pasta onto it as possible, and crammed my mouth full to pack-down the words that fought to fly out.

  “So, Catee,” he began. “Tell us about your day. What was the Good and what was the Bad?” he asked the question like his approach was something completely novel to us. We looked to each other with disproval before she bought in and began.

  “Okay,” she started. “Well, the Good of my day was that I got my phone back. Thank you, Dad.” His title came out artificially. “And the Bad of my day is that I see you’ve been packing, and I’m worried it’s going to take me away from Madison and away from Damian.” Her look to me, to him, then back to me, was one of genuine sorrow that he couldn’t ignore—not without ruining the sickly-sweet persona he’d undertaken and coming across as the heartless monster we knew him to be.

  “Now, Catee,” he approached his words with caution. “We’ve talked about this already, and now that we’re all sitting down together, it might be something good for us to clarify as a group. That includes you, Damian,” he turned and said as I swallowed an almost suffocating forkful of carbs.

  “I’m not trying to keep the two of you apart, and as much as I might try, I know I’ll never be able to do it. Absence only makes the heart grow fonder, and my damnation of your relationship will only fuel it more. I’m old enough, wise enough, and experienced enough to understand that much,” he revealed. “That’s how it was with your mother and me, Catee, so I understand it very well.”

  We looked to each other with relief at his empathetic understanding of what we were feeling.

  “What I want is for Damian to join us. I want his whole family to join ours. To be a part of something new—something bigger—something purer.”

  “Purer”? What was he talking about? What was PURER supposed to mean?

  “I want us to be one, big family. And as that, we’ll make a new beginning. For everyone. Everywhere. It’ll be our chance to remake things in our own vision.”

  His glossy eyes looked back and forth between us with maniacal passion for whatever twisted utopia he was envisioning. I couldn’t wrap my own head around it. What was he talking about? What was he hoping for? None of it made any sense at the time, and it’d be months more before the unfathomable magnitude of his words registered to either of us.

  He sounded like a madman and, judging from the horrified look on her face, Catee saw it, too. But neither of us said anything in response to it. We didn’t dare ripple the tranquility of whatever wacky waters his head was drifting on, so we simply nodded with his prompting, added nothing, and delved no deeper into his sea of insanity.

  By the time we’d finished our sharing (I said something trivial and without any thought or feeling behind it, just to get my turn over and done with), and we were beginning to clear the table, Mom honked cheerfully from the driveway. Mr. Laverdier prepared dessert in the kitchen, and though I wanted nothing more than to slip out the door and escape home to Platsville, I couldn’t. He wouldn’t allow it. Not without inviting Mom inside.

  She graciously accepted the invitation, and the Laverdiers’ table more superficially mirrored my own: capped with a mom and a dad at each end. Albeit, my dad was more of one than Mr. Laverdier could’ve ever hoped to be, he was Catee’s father, nonetheless.

  “It’s wonderful to have you in our home, Mrs. Lawson,” he spoke.

  “Please, David, call me Martha,” she insisted.

  “Very well. It’s wonderful to have you in our home, Martha,” he repeated with a thin-lipped and forced smile. Her responsive one came across awkwardly uncomfortable, and he moved to calm her as she picked away at her strawberry shortcake. Catee and I watched with dumbfounded amazement at the stage that’d been set, barely touching our own desserts.

  “So, I was just telling the kids how I want them to feel as comfortable in our home as they do in yours. I hope you don’t mind, but I even borrowed a bit from some of your own, family traditions.”

  “No, David. Not at all. I’m quite flattered, actually,” Mom admitted. “After all, I’ve worked so hard to make my family what it is, and anything I can do to help someone else’s is my extreme pleasure.”

  Mr. Laverdier rested back to process her words, and in mock flattery and admiration, he replied, “And that’s why I told your son he’s welcome here anytime he likes. You’ve raised a good boy, Martha. And you’re a good woman. I can tell. You’ve got strong values, and I admire that about your character.” He delivered his lines with an unwavering look that caused her to blush for one of the only times I can remember. He’d found her soft-spot—family—and he was using it to his advantage.

  “It’s not all perfect at our house either,” I piped-up to throw a wrench in Mr. Laverdier’s wheel, but it deflected back at me in an instant.

  “No family is without its flaws, Damian.” He turned and addressed me as if he were my own dad, while Mom just sat there and allowed it to happen. “Your mother can only do so much, and from what I’ve observed, she’s doing a real fine job raising you and your sister right. She deserves great praise for that, Damian. You should be appreciative of everything she’s given and done for you.”

  I turned and looked to my mom for support, but the look I got back was complete vacancy. So enamored by the praise she’d been saturated in, she couldn’t think straight enough to notice that I’d been reprimanded by a guy who was basically a complete stranger—someone who, for all we knew, was a complete psycho.

  “I’m just saying,” I continued. “Things aren’t so perfect at our place, either. We’ve got our own problems.” I dug deep to unearth whatever those might be, knowing I’d need definitive proof to support my case.

  “Family laundry is nothing to be aired at someone’s else’s dinner table.” Her dad continued his rebuke while Mom sat silently by. “And for you and your family’s sake, those are things that are best left to be worked out in the privacy of your own home … like Catee and I do here. Isn’t that right, Catee?” he prodded.

  “Sure, Dad. Right.” Catee continued to turn her shortcake in front of her. She listened, but didn’t eat a bite. She knew better than to voice what she was really thinking. Anything said would’ve only fallen on deaf ears, or worse, ones that would’ve distorted her words to create even more tension than we were already feeling.

  “With that settled,” Mr. Laverdier returned to my mom, “I’d like to invite you back, Martha. Anytime you like. Not just for dessert, but for Family Dinner. We’ll be meeting each night at 5:00.”

  Still transfixed by his indulgent exchanges, Mom accepted his invitation and agreed to return the next day.

  I didn’t know what to say. What would come of our own Family Dinners? What would Dad do the next night when he got home and there wasn’t a home-cooked meal waiting for him? When Mom and I weren’t waiting there for him? What was she planning to do? Bring home leftovers from Catee’s place? Throw together some heartless, ten-second, microwave meal for him?

  I worried how Mom’s acceptance of Mr. Laverdier’s offer might dramatically alter the family dynamic I’d always known, and I couldn’t help but loathe Mr. Laverdier even more than I already did—if that was even possible—for the very active role he was starting to play in my own family’s dismantling.

  February 15th:

  “So, your mom’s coming back over tonight?” Catee asked
. Her hands clasped my own, and we sat in an almost photographic repositioning of our exchange from the day before. The library was silent around us.

  “She says she’s coming by at 4:30 to help with dinner before we all sit down.”

  “That’s crazy.”

  “Right?”

  “Why does my dad want anything to do with your mom? I mean, we’re moving away, no matter what, so why would he even bother getting to know her?” she asked.

  “I can’t explain it. I don’t know.”

  “Well, does your dad know?” she asked in a hushed whisper, though the library was entirely empty.

  “Yeah, he knows. They were talking about it in the living room last night. She told my dad that your father needed her. That he wanted her expertise as he tried to move his own family forward. A bunch of crap like that.”

  “We both know he doesn’t want that, Damian.”

  “Hey, I know it. You know it. She doesn’t. And my dad doesn’t. It’s like we’re seeing totally different things than them. He’s got them totally fooled. I tried saying something. I did. I jumped in when they were talking. I told them he was completely nuts. I tried to repeat everything—how he’s like, fourteen different people—but they wouldn’t listen. Even my dad said she was doing a good thing. I tried to stop it from happening, but I couldn’t. She’ll be there. Tonight. At 4:30, sharp.”

  “It’s crazy,” she said. “He doesn’t care anything about your mom or your family. Nothing. The only person he cares about is himself. I don’t know what he’s up to or what sick fascination he’s got with your mom.”

  “Hey, my mom’s not that bad,” I interjected in her defense.

  “I’m not talking like that, Damian. There’s something else going on, and it’s not sexual. He’s up to something. I’ve never seen him be so nice to anyone before. I’ve barely even seen him talk to anyone else. I don’t get it. I don’t know what he’s doing.”

  “Maybe he’s being genuine,” I spoke in his defense—more for the false sense of security it brought than anything else. “Maybe he really does want to be a better person and a better dad.”

  “Fat chance of that,” Catee jumped. “That’s the last thing he cares about. As far as he knows, he’s the best person already. Trust me, I’ve heard it with my own ears; he’s not looking for anyone’s guidance.”

  “So, why’d he invite her over? What does he want?”

  “I don’t know, but it’s got me worried,” she said. “It’s weird.”

  “No, it’s crazy,” I declared. “And we’ve got to make sure we’re there to control it, and him, however we can.”

  The trivial ins and outs of high school lost any significance they had left that day. The people around me concerned me less and less, and I became inexplicably more worried for if they weren’t there at all. Call it a prophecy, a premonition, or whatever; it was a thought I couldn’t shake.

  At lunch, Catee and I hunkered even closer to each other. It was an intrinsic and irrepressible response to the darkness that crept in around us. We didn’t have a safe-haven anymore. Everything we did, all we were, and whatever we were becoming, it was all on display for our families to see and judge. That had to have been what her dad was after all along, when he first recruited my mom; she was additional surveillance to keep the two of us in line and to stifle our nosing around.

  We sat side-by-side in geometry class, impervious to Justin’s stares from across the room. After months and months of harbored resentment, his output had lost all gravity, long before. It was childish and inconsequential to the times at hand. In months of trying, he could’ve never reached, nor would he have liked where he found himself, had he hit the depth of clarity I’d reached with Catee and her dad. He wouldn’t have been able to handle it and, looking back, I wouldn’t have wished it on him anyhow.

  And at the 2:30 bell and dismissal from last period, Catee and I reconvened at our locker—both burdened by the possibilities of what the evening might have in store. We didn’t know what might come of it, but based on everything we’d learned, we understood that we were powerless to redirect its energies.

  “So, what now?” Catee repeated what had become a trademark line.

  “What now?” I asked back. “Now, we make sure they don’t get too close. I don’t know what your dad’s up to, and I’m not sure what my mom’s hoping to get out of this, but we’ve got to make sure they both leave tonight, completely unsatisfied. We’ve got to make sure they don’t go planning any more cozy get-togethers. It’s better for us if we keep those worlds apart,” I declared with absolution.

  She looked almost hurt—for the insinuation that my world was somehow better than her own—but she agreed anyhow, and recognized that in context, I was probably right. Her dad had shown us countless times before that he was a loose cannon who couldn’t be trusted. We knew his decisions had no weight in anyone other than himself, and we knew that whatever was happening, we’d have to figure it out quietly, and for ourselves; he wasn’t about to discuss it with anyone—not even my mom—and Catee and I had to do everything we could to protect her from what she couldn’t see coming.

  Sure enough, Mom pulled into Catee’s driveway at 4:30 on the money that night; she was prompt, if nothing else, and she climbed from the car to make her way toward the foyer door.

  I met her there, invited her in, and after a quick hug, she moved briskly by me and into the kitchen, where Mr. Laverdier bounced between stove, cutting board, counter, and oven. Mom adorned an apron of her own and began to move rhythmically with him to put final touches on what would become an uncomfortable, three-course meal. Catee and I watched, listened, and exchanged only few words that wouldn’t disrupt the semi-organic flow in which our parents went about their sickeningly symbiotic, pre-meal performance.

  “Well,” my mom said, “when Damian got to high school, I told myself I was going to start letting go some.” She spoke like I wasn’t even there, on a bar stool, strategically positioned at the island, and observing from beneath a row of cabinets.

  “I thought the same thing when Catee started,” he returned.

  “But it wasn’t that easy, right?”

  “Nope. Wasn’t easy at all, Martha,” he said. “It still isn’t easy, but I’m trying to allow it to happen. To just step back and let nature take its course.”

  The lines he spilled were all complete bullshit. He hadn’t done, or even tried to do anything that would let nature takes its course. Until then, he’d done the exact opposite, and everything possible to have his hand in every move that Catee and I made. The falsity of his professions made me want to scream, but I squeezed harder onto Catee’s leg instead, concealed behind the protective shield of the counter.

  “Ever since her mom passed away,” Mr. Laverdier continued, “it’s been like this dark cloud hanging over my head. Every day is marked by this perilous rain that could pour down at any time to wipe away everything I’ve got left. It’s terrifying,” he said and stopped mid-kitchen with a large roasting pan in-hand. “I never thought it could be this hard.”

  His face, torn with loss, beckoned a sympathetic response from my mom.

  “David, I know I’ve said this before,” she halted, mid-chop at the cutting board, “but if you need anything. Anything at all. You just let me and Darryl know, and we’ll be there for the both of you.”

  His satisfied look showed Catee and me that he was getting exactly what he sought: support. It’s all he needed, really: just that one, first person on his side. My mom was the chosen one. And whether she saw it or not, and whether I liked it or not, and in spite of how I tried to alter her course from there, that single moment of submission to him marked the beginning of an end.

  Mom had been recruited, and her enrollment in Mr. Laverdier’s campaign would secure the enrollment of tens, then dozens more, as the infection started its spread and everyone grasped for a lifeline.

  And by the peak of outbreak, and as people discovered that the only sure-fire protec
tion from the pallor was allegiance to him, devotion to Mr. Laverdier turned to law. Only he held the vaccine, and only his mercy could decide who lived and who went white.

  It was scripted and executed like a well-written play. He put all the characters into place; he introduced the perfect, incurable catalyst; and then he sat back to watch his cast lead themselves to the only obvious conclusion: that he was their savior, and that he, and only he, held the vaccine for salvation.

  He became like a god.

  But then, that’s how he always saw himself anyway.

  It’s what he set himself up to become.

  March 12th:

  Catee and I mulled over our parental connection for the better part of the next month. We wondered what her dad’s fascination with my mom had to do with anything. Did it? Or had he just turned a corner after being fired from work? Maybe the new him was actually genuine; maybe we were reading more into it than we should’ve been.

  But, truth revealed, and like my mom always advised, you’ve got to go with your gut. And even though we couldn’t say exactly what he was up to back then, the next obvious sign came weeks later, in mid-March, when he closed off their garage with a series of locks that shamed the earlier ones he’d installed on his office.

  It’s not like Catee and I ever used the garage for anything to begin with, but neither did he. Not until then. Not even for parking. It’d been nothing more than a space, attached to their house, for trash and storage. We hardly paid it any attention at all until three, hanging locks suddenly appeared on its door, and its windows turned papered in yesterday’s news.