“Don’t hurt them, Dad.”
“I wasn’t planning a squirrel carnage, Harry.” What he was planning, he had no clue.
“Wait! I know. I know! Max’s dad has a wet vac they used when the basement flooded. We can, like, suck them up in the wet vac and release them in the forest. What do you think, Eudora?”
“Well, child—”
Felix closed the bathroom door on the conversation, and the scrabbling got louder. Suppose Eudora was wrong, and it was a bat? Bats carried rabies. He really, really didn’t want a rabies shot. He hated needles even more than he hated squirrels.
He rummaged under the sink for Ella’s bathroom cleaning supplies. Rubber gloves seemed a good idea if you were going anywhere near squirrel afterbirth. He snapped on the purple gloves. A bit small, but they’d work. Were mother squirrels aggressive? He should grab a weapon, too, in case the situation called for self-defense. He picked up the loo brush, and the scrabbling stopped.
“Dad? Dad? What are you doing in there? Should we call in reinforcements? One-eight-hundred-come-get-my-squirrels?” Harry sounded as if he were choking on a giggle.
Felix pressed his ear against the closet door. All quiet on the Western Front. Time to channel Macbeth and be bloody, bold, and resolute. He eased open the door and immediately gagged on the stench of squalid zoo cage. After this, he was taking a long, hot shower in Harry’s bathroom. He wasn’t coming back in here until the entire place had been hosed down with industrial-strength antibacterial cleaner.
In the wall behind the third shelf, half-hidden by sheets, there appeared to be a serious hole with jagged, gnawed edges. The hole at the back of the top shelf was bigger—approximately eight inches wide with twigs jammed across the opening. Rising up on tiptoe, Felix tugged gently on the pile of thankfully older towels. They were shredded and bloodied, and in the middle was a potpourri of leaves and grasses, sticks and insulation, and two baby squirrels.
Squirrels had eaten through the siding, eaten through the drywall, and carried twigs and leaves inside his house. To go forth and multiply.
He looked heavenward. Don’t I have enough burdens? You had to send me squirrels?
A flash of fur shot at him, screeching like a demented Squirrel Nutkin. Felix swatted with the loo brush, missed, and slammed the closet door shut.
“Dad? Dad? Are you okay in there?”
“Not now, Harry—” Where was that little bastard? It had to be in the bathroom. He’d heard it plop to the floor.
The door to the bedroom opened.
“Stop mucking about, Harry, and—”
Too late. The squirrel legged it into the bedroom and began tearing round in circles, squawking like a hellcat. Then it shot under the bed skirt.
Eudora had the sense to slam the bedroom door shut; Harry stood there gawping.
“We have to drive her back in here,” Felix said. “I’m not having a rabid mother squirrel loose in my bedroom.”
“Squirrels don’t carry rabies, son,” Eudora said with another smile.
“It was a figure of speech.” She might be next for the loo brush. Swear to God.
“Let’s chase it back in,” Harry said. “I’ll go get a broom!”
“No!” Felix and Eudora shouted.
“Child, that bedroom door needs to stay closed.” Eudora sucked in her lips and gave Felix a nod.
“This is a great way to spend my birthday!” Harry said.
“Your birthday? My, my. Is anyone baking you a cake?” Eudora said.
“He’s celebrated already with his friends,” Felix said.
“Nonsense. I’ll bake for you this afternoon. What’s your favorite flavor?”
“Carrot cake. I love carrot cake.” Harry grimaced and blinked, grimaced and blinked.
“How many candles?”
“Seventeen.”
Felix held up his rubber-gloved hands. “The squirrel, chaps?”
“On it, Dad.” Harry tossed the duvet onto the bed.
“Working on the assumption that this mother is determined to get back to her babies, here’s what we’re going to do—” Felix turned on all the lights in the bathroom and slowly opened the closet door. “Harry, shut off the lights in here. Eudora”—she shot him a look—“if you wouldn’t mind closing the curtains so we can darken the room? Let’s hope her instincts call her home.” Felix chose not to think about irony.
Harry started giggling again. Felix stood behind the bathroom door and held a finger to his lips. “Shhh. We need to be quiet and still.”
Eudora dropped to her knees and disappeared behind the bed. Was she deaf, senile, or unable to follow basic instructions?
A hand reached up and removed the red glass from his bedside table. A bump and a flurry of squawking came from under the bed, and the squirrel—which Felix noticed for the first time was covered in bald patches and seriously manky—shot from under the bed and tore into the bathroom. Felix slammed the door and dusted off his hands.
“My,” Eudora said, “all that excitement has left me tuckered out. At the risk of ethnic profiling, I’m assuming you’re a tea drinker, Felix? How about a cup of Earl Grey? With lots of sugar to calm the nerves.”
“You’re in luck, Eudora. That’s Dad’s favorite.”
She smiled as if she’d known all along. Had she gained access to their house, snooped in their cabinets, examined the contents of the tea caddy? Felix dragged Ella’s bedside table across the bathroom door.
“Dad, you do know squirrels can’t open doors?”
“I’m not taking any chances. Did you see her bald patches? She’s probably a mutant.”
Harry cupped his hand over his mouth and started shaking.
“Now what’s so funny?” Felix frowned.
“You’re, you’re”—Harry hiccuped with laugher—“still wearing rubber gloves.”
“Would you like me to go fetch Daddy’s hunting rifle, Felix?”
“You’re offering to shoot my son?”
Harry collapsed on the bed, hysterical.
“In case the squirrel escapes again. Daddy used to take me to the range on Sundays. I can hit a squirrel at fifty yards.”
Brilliant. They were living next door to a squirrel sniper.
FIFTEEN
Felix stood in the middle of the cul-de-sac, hand raised in a solitary wave as Critter Rescue drove off with the squirrels. A truck rumbled in the distance, and then silence settled. The air smelled faintly of skunk and warmth. Sixty-five degrees on a Sunday in January, and yet the neighborhood was as quiet as the morning-after set of a disaster movie. He could pretend he and Harry were the only people in this corner of the Bull City.
A rabbit hopped toward a neighbor’s dormant vegetable garden, and Felix’s stomach bubbled and churned. Clearly, he needed an upgrade to something stronger than Pepto-Bismol.
He folded his arms behind his neck and stared up into the cloudless expanse. A hawk drifted overhead, screeching, and a flock of pigeons rose from the power lines and scattered. He blinked against the intensity of blue sky marred only by the laceration of a single vapor trail.
One week earlier, he would have denounced sky gazing as unproductive and self-indulgent. But in the last thirty-six hours, he had become a dreamer, a man who wanted his critically ill wife to come home looking like the woman he’d been preparing to collect from the airport a week ago. In seven days, someone had moved the goalposts of his life; someone had stolen the certainty that his wife would even come home.
A double yellow line divided his marriage into before and after the heart attack. And this person who now lived in jeans and Dr. Martens, who had given up hair gel and aftershave, was not someone he recognized. And neither was the nervous, frail person he had visited in hospital yesterday.
Turning his back on the Carolina sun, Felix stepped onto the wooden bridge and entered cool shade. A solitary toad croaked and water trickled down the small waterfall he had created for Ella out of indigenous river stones.
He crosse
d the periwinkle that threatened year-round to swallow the stepping-stone path, and headed for the clearing around the house. Years ago, Ella had told him that periwinkle was the flower of death. When Felix had suggested ripping it up, Ella had reminded him that the garden was her territory, and periwinkle was the perfect low-maintenance ground cover for the patch of woodland by the creek. The periwinkle had stayed, jostling for superiority with the equally invasive ivy that grew up and around the tree trunks. Felix hoped the ivy would win the battle.
As the sun warmed the back of his neck once more, Felix walked around the side of the house to the small patio that faced untamed forest—a protective barrier that afforded year-round privacy and solitude.
It would have been easier and cheaper to let Eudora blast mama squirrel into pieces. A week ago, he would have done exactly that. After all, he routinely decapitated copperheads without a qualm. Now he was paying Sunday rates to relocate nature’s original psychos. And yet the squirrel invasion had been a problem he could fix. Had it also become an excuse to avoid the hospital? Was there a small part of him that said enough? Katherine had been more than happy to take today’s shift, but it should have been him. Ella was petrified about tomorrow’s meeting with Dr. Beaubridge, convinced he was going to prescribe the knife. Felix was terrified he wasn’t, because if open-heart surgery wasn’t an option—then what?
Inspecting the gray mesh patio chairs, he chose one that had not been gnawed by squirrels, dragged it across the concrete, and sat. He pulled out his mobile, tapped on the phone app, and selected the third number down. As usual, Robert picked up on the first ring.
“Please tell me you’re coming in tomorrow,” he said.
“I’m afraid not. Ella’s back in the CCU.” Explanations seemed irrelevant. The upside of working with Robert was that he never expressed interest in anyone’s personal life but his own. “She’s going to be in hospital for at least another two weeks.”
“Sorry to hear that.”
“Which means that starting on Tuesday, I’ll have to leave the office by two forty-five each day for school pickup.”
“Jesus fucking Christ, Felix. Are you kidding me?”
A nice attitude from someone who was, no doubt, fresh home from taking his family to the weekly service at the First Methodist Church of Raleigh. Robert Sharpe was partial to anything that contained the word first.
“My wife is in acute heart failure. I’m not exactly in the mood to joke.”
“Neither am I, Felix. Do you have any idea what’s at stake here, what will happen if we lose the Life Plan deal? What it will mean for the company and for us personally? The loss of revenue? I’m working my balls off here to hold up my end of the deal, and I need you to take the lead on the bond issue.”
“I’m doing that; I—”
“I need you in the office every second of every day. I need you on call seven days a week. I need you to be the hot shit specialist I once believed you to be.”
“I can deliver.” Felix clenched his jaw.
“And how exactly do you propose to do that if you’re leaving the office every day for school pickup?” Robert made the words school pickup sound like something that should be buried in the middle of a compost heap.
“I’ll work at home in the evenings. As many hours as it takes.” Thwack. Felix snapped the elastic band he was still wearing on his wrist at Katherine’s suggestion. The woman clearly understood a thing or two about stress. “But part of my day will now revolve around my son’s schedule.”
“Have you considered allowing your son to take the bus, Felix, like most sixteen-year-old boys?”
“He’s seventeen, and there is no bus. He goes to a small private school. I thought you knew this.”
“No offense, but I don’t keep up with the personal lives of employees.”
“I’m not an employee. I’m your partner.”
“Then act like one, man! What the hell’s happened to you? You used to be a friggin’ rock star, and now you’re talking about school pickup as if you were a whiny kindergarten parent. This is a crock of lazy, slack shit.”
Lazy. Slack. Felix pinged the elastic band so hard it snapped in two. And stung like hell.
“Hire a taxi service to drive your son to school.”
“He has after-school activities.”
“Then hire a fleet of taxis. God knows you earn enough money.”
“No one is driving my son except me.”
“Man up, Felix. Your son is sixteen—”
“Seventeen.”
“My eldest had his first DUI at that age. When family shit happens, people like us hire domestic help, caregivers, whatever the fuck you call them. I am not losing this deal, do you hear me?”
To think he’d lost his temper with Ella a few weeks ago after she’d called his partner a philandering scumbag. Robert Sharpe was a man who didn’t see obstacles, who saw only the prize, who had moved his mistress to an apartment five miles from his wife and kids to cut down on commute time, never once questioning whether the women would cross paths.
“I am not handing over the care of my wife, my son, and my house to strangers.”
“Your son, Felix, is sixteen—”
“Seventeen.” Felix spat the word out. “My son is seventeen.”
“And he doesn’t drive.”
“No. And nor does he drink. He’s a straight-A student without a police record.” Unlike your delinquent.
“When I took you on board, I made it clear that family came second. That’s why our wives are full-time wives.” Robert’s southern drawl grated on Felix more than usual.
“My wife”—Felix bristled—“was a talented jewelry designer who made a choice to stay home with our son because of his needs. Now I am making the same choice. My son is not your average seventeen-year-old. He has issues.”
“We all have issues. Hire a therapist.”
“He has several.”
“Good, then let them do their jobs.”
In the forest, a dog howled—an eerie yip and a yowl. Or was it a coyote? According to the local news, coyote sightings in Durham were increasingly common. The creature howled again, but this time on the move. Felix stood.
“This conversation is pointless. Need I remind you that if we were a bigger company, I would be quoting the family and medical leave act and taking twelve weeks of unpaid leave?” He would be chewing through his own siding if he had to leave his job for twelve weeks.
Robert momentarily turned away from the phone to talk to someone. How rude.
“Am I interrupting you, Robert?”
“Curt’s here. He has some concerns about the Life Plan deal.”
“Concerns that are unqualified. I’ve got this.” Felix dug his fingernails into his left palm. “I have to hang up now and go buy industrial-strength cleaning supplies.”
Robert gave a snide laugh. “You’re cleaning your own house, too?”
“Squirrels ate through my cedar siding. I have to de-squirrel the inside of the house and squirrel-proof the outside.”
“For Chrissake, Felix—”
“I’ll see you on Tuesday morning. Nine o’clock sharp.”
Robert, the tosser, hung up. What had happened to common courtesy? Did no one say please, thank you, and good-bye anymore?
A squirrel rushed out from the undergrowth, stopped with its front paw raised, and looked at the house.
“Piss off,” Felix said. “Otherwise, my next call is to Eudora.”
The squirrel waved its tail frantically and then shot back into the forest.
Could this whole mess get any worse? If he lost his job, they’d lose their health insurance. God only knew what their medical bills would amount to when all this was done. And if he quit the partnership, he’d have to start over. At fifty. And do what? Become a corporate financial consultant—if he could brush off the stigma of failure? He would have nothing left but his reputation, which Robert was more than capable of shredding out of spite. Felix sighed. Everythi
ng he’d worked for since coming to North Carolina could flush down the lavatory if he crossed Robert.
The glass doors slid open and Harry appeared, carrying Felix’s Merton College mug. “Thought you might need a refill.”
“Thank you.”
“You okay, Dad?” Harry plopped down in a squirrel-deformed chair. He didn’t even bother to check.
“It appears my partner has become, to use your Uncle Tom’s favorite word, a tosspot.” Felix cradled his mug. “Although that is privileged information not to be shared.”
“No offense, Dad, but Robert’s always been a jerk. I mean, c’mon, he called on Christmas Day.”
“He did?”
“You don’t remember Mom going nuts?”
Felix nodded slowly. Work had never come with barriers. It had always spilled over into all aspects of their lives.
Harry cracked his knuckles; Felix ignored it. He just didn’t have the energy.
“You’re not going to lose your job, are you?” Harry grimaced and blinked.
“Robert stole me from Morgan Stanley because I’m an expert in my field. He needs me.” Not strictly an answer, but close enough.
“That’s a relief. I’ve never really understood what you and Robert do, Dad.”
“We’re investment bankers. We help corporations get financing by issuing stocks and bonds and arranging loans. Robert specializes in stocks and loans; I handle the bonds. Up until now, it’s been a match made in heaven.” Felix paused. “If you’re worrying about the college fund, you needn’t. It’s safe, and so are your school fees. In fact, your school fees are paid through the end of senior year.”
Harry sat up, rigid, and began kicking the legs of the table. Again and again.
“Harry, please. Stop that.” Felix scraped the small metal table along the concrete, out of Harry’s reach.
“I don’t care about the college fund, Dad.”
“You should.”
“I was thinking about Mom’s health insurance.”
“Harry, I’m not going to lose my job.” He couldn’t afford to—on any level. “I won’t allow that to happen, do you understand?”
Harry nodded. “So why did you become a corporate banker?”
The Perfect Son Page 14