“Darling! How’s my beloved grandson?”
Mother’s one saving grace was her devotion to Harry. Although she blamed his energy levels and tics on lackadaisical parenting. As if she would know.
“He’s fine.”
“Terrible line. Are you in a wind tunnel?”
“I’m at the hospital. A minor setback with Ella. Nothing to worry about.” His voice—flat, emotionless, disconnected—was not his own. “Shouldn’t you be asleep, Mother?”
“After hours of tossing and turning I have simply abandoned all hope.” She gave a labored sigh. “I decided I might as well start my day at three in the morning. Of course, my GP is responsible. That dreadful man is utterly determined to sabotage my sleep patterns and refuses to prescribe tablets. Personally, I think he’s on the sauce.”
“How about I send you some more melatonin tablets, Mother?”
“I suppose that would do. But the National Health Service is not what it was.”
“Mother, you have private health insurance. If you don’t like your doctor, find someone else.”
“But the family has been with the practice for generations.”
Felix tapped his palm. “I can’t have this conversation right now. I’m in hospital with Ella.”
“I thought Ella was back at home.”
“She was. As I said, a minor setback. She’s been readmitted for a few days.”
“I suppose I could get on a plane if you need me to come and help out.”
Help out. How would that work when Mother didn’t cook, didn’t clean, didn’t parent, and hadn’t driven since the eighties? She smoked, drank gin, and pottered in her garden shed. Tom dead at forty-one because his long-term partner had strayed once; Ella fighting for life at forty-seven because of faulty genetics; Mother in prime health at eighty-two despite her pack-a-day-plus-Hendrick’s habit. Maybe all the cucumber slices soaked in gin kept her healthy.
“Felix, are you there?”
Felix balanced the phone between his shoulder and his neck, and put his thumb on his pulse. Yes, racing like the clappers.
“Felix!” she squawked.
“Yes, Mother?”
“If it’s absolutely necessary, I can ask my travel agent to book a flight.”
“Thank you, Mother, but it’s not. Harry’s in school most of the time and we’re coping adequately, thanks to Ella’s friend and one of our neighbors. Besides, I’m afraid there would be nowhere for you to sleep since I have decamped to the spare room.”
“Did you say a neighbor?” His mother’s tone was loaded with accusation.
“Eudora, yes. You’ll approve—she’s a retired horticulturalist. She also happens to be a gourmet cook.” He emphasized the word cook. “We’re eating extremely well.”
“A neighbor is feeding you? Most unorthodox, indeed. I would like to point out that I am also retired. And I have the added benefit of nursing skills.”
Retired from what? Mother had never worked—even inside the home. And volunteering in the cancer ward had hardly classified as nursing. One morning a week, she’d served tea and biscuits to family members and shuffled magazines around the waiting room.
“Mother, I appreciate your concern, but we’re managing.” Somehow.
“And just how poorly is Ella?”
“She’s in heart failure and waiting for a transplant, which makes her pretty sick.”
“Oh, dear me.”
He had told his mother this several times. Maybe she’d been drunk. “Mother, I really have to go. I’ll call you tomorrow when we can talk properly.”
“Don’t forget to post the melatonin. I need two bottles.”
Felix said good night, hit “Call End,” and sat. Just sat. He needed to get back in his car and drive to work—the deal must go on—but his legs no longer functioned. Maybe he could stay in a hospital corridor for the rest of his life. That would really push Robert over the edge.
“May I join you?”
Felix looked up and frowned at Dr. Beaubridge. “I had you pegged for a nine-to-five man.”
“Hardly.” Dr. Beaubridge sat next to him. His white coat made a rustling sound that took Felix back to Sunday matins at All Saints Church and the starched white surplices of the choirboys. The hell of sitting still, sandwiched between Pater and Mother; the pretense of being the family that deserved the front pew. “I’m glad you requested the ambulance bring her here.”
“I’m sure our insurance will make us pay heavily for the privilege.”
“It was a good decision,” the cardiologist said. “How are you holding up?”
“I no longer know.” Felix spread out his hands and looked at the hairs, the creases of skin, his wedding ring. “Stress can really do that to someone with a heart condition?”
“When your heart is weakened, anything can be the enemy: too much salt; an infection; emotional stress leading to a panic-attack type setting, as appears to have been the case with Ella . . .”
“Now what?”
“I know this is not the answer you want, but we continue to wait for a donor.”
“But for how long?”
“I can’t answer that. It could be months; it could be longer. In the meantime, I’d like to keep her in for a few days’ observation, start her on an antidepressant, and then send her home again. Here.” He handed Felix a card. “Waiting can be a difficult, frustrating time. There are support groups for families such as yours.”
Felix wanted to rip the card into tiny pieces and scatter them like ashes. Support groups—the touchy-feely stuff of nightmares. Felix handed the card back. “We don’t need outside help.”
Dr. Beaubridge refused to take it. “You might change your mind.”
“I’m not a fan of dissecting my feelings in front of strangers.”
“I was that way.” Dr. Beaubridge paused to greet a nurse. “Until my wife died.”
A phone rang behind them at the nurses’ station, and a patient’s call alarm went off.
“How?” Felix said.
“Car wreck. Five years ago.”
“Do you have children?”
“No.” Dr. Beaubridge tried to smile. “My greatest regret.”
Felix collapsed his arms onto his legs and hung his head. “How do you do this day in, day out?”
“I make sure I’m the best.”
“Level with me. One husband to another.” Felix rolled his head sideways and stared at Dr. Beaubridge. “How bad is this?”
“It’s not a situation I would have hoped for, given how tenuous her heart failure is.”
“Can you be more specific?”
“Given all that has happened in the past four weeks and today, Ella is now in the highest category of heart failure.”
“Class four?”
Dr. Beaubridge nodded. “There’s no way to predict whether she’ll have another episode of heart failure or an irregular heart rhythm, either of which could prove fatal, or not. She doesn’t meet standard indications for implantation of a device to predict irregular rhythms—an internal defibrillator—in part because she’s not far enough out from her heart attack for us to know if the heart muscle will recover or not. And since she’s stabilized, she doesn’t yet meet indications for an LVAD, the implanted pump we talked about earlier. Bottom line? We’re in limbo. And we could stay this way for months while we wait for a transplant. I’m sorry.”
Felix put the card in his pocket and stood. “Thank you,” he said, and walked away.
Finally, Dr. Beaubridge had been honest, and he had nothing worth saying.
THIRTY-ONE
Felix used to brag to Saint John that spring in North Carolina began on February 1. Not this year. February 8, and record lows had kept the furnace rattling all night. The weather was moving backward into the grip of full-blown winter. The house was definitely not constructed for such temperatures. Since the panic attack, Ella had complained endlessly of being cold, and Felix had bought several space heaters. The master bedroom was now stuff
ier than a National Health Service waiting room in a heat wave, and still, she couldn’t get warm.
The humidifier made some strange gurgling noise and struggled to disperse moisture into the brittle atmosphere of the house. Felix snapped the new elastic band around his wrist and returned to his Dear Robert letter.
A week had passed since the Life Plan deal had gone through. It was time to step down from the partnership and offer to train Curt, and Felix wanted everything in writing. After ten years of partnership, he didn’t trust his soon-to-be-ex partner. Nor did he trust Curt. Quitting in the summer was still plan A, part B, but that was a secret shared only with Katherine.
Ella coughed and appeared in the hall wearing her fuzzy gray slippers, yoga pants, and a ratty old cardigan he didn’t recognize. She tucked the cardigan under one arm, then the other; it resembled a huge chest bandage.
“What are you doing out of bed?” Felix closed his laptop and jumped down from the kitchen stool. The wood floor was cold under his bare feet.
Ella smiled. Her face was gray; the roots of her hair were gray; she matched the gray Saturday morning sky beyond the sliding doors. “I thought I’d try moving around.” She caught her breath. “Prove to Harry I’m not a sloth.” She reached for the doorjamb.
“Ella, please, you’re doing too much.” Taking her elbow, he guided her back to bed. “Did you use the sleeping pill last night?”
“Yes, Papa Bear.” She paused, her breathing still whistling as if she had asthma. “I am now the good patient who takes every pill known to womankind.”
Felix was firmly of the belief that sleep deprivation had been a contributing factor in the panic attack. After she came home the first time, Ella had catnapped during the day and slept poorly at night. Dr. Beaubridge had prescribed sleeping pills, which she’d refused to take: “Because I wake up with my heart pounding, Felix. I wake up terrified and have to relive it all.”
But sleep deprivation could be dealt with, could be fixed. Could be cured. This was a positive step involving forward motion. And now they were tackling the depression. It was early days for the antidepressant, and yet Ella seemed less adrift.
“Morning, Mom! Morning, Dad!” Harry skidded into their bedroom doorway. “Shall I make everyone french toast?”
“Lovely. Thank you.” Ella’s smile wavered.
“Dad?” Harry looked hopeful.
“Yes. Thank you.”
Felix had eaten breakfast—brain food to help compose the letter—but Harry needed to feel useful. Felix had discovered this about his son. Besides, he could always skip lunch and squeeze in twenty minutes on the treadmill.
“I’ll bring you a tray, Mom!”
“How about I do that, Harry?” Felix said as he watched Harry trip over nothing.
Two hours later, Felix was scrubbing the griddle that Harry had supposedly cleaned. Why, oh why, had he let Harry cook? Simple. Concern for his son’s emotional well-being. He’d squeezed in an emergency appointment for Harry with the child psychologist after the panic attack, and everything had seemed fine. But you never knew. The young brain had a way of assuming guilt.
It was hard to say which came first—the doorbell or the sound of the front door opening. His house was no longer his castle.
“Yoo-hoo. Anybody home?” Eudora entered, followed by Katherine, who was carrying a huge Moses basket.
“Good morning, ladies.” He wiped his forehead with his arm, brushing back his hair. Ella had told him she liked it longer, that it made him look younger, sexier. He wasn’t convinced it was anything but untamed and irritating. “Did I miss something?”
“You and Harry are having the college talk today, right?” Katherine said.
His phone, buried in his jeans pocket, buzzed with a reminder.
“It appears so,” Felix said. How had he forgotten?
“Well, hon, since Harry believes talking about college caused the panic attack, we thought we’d keep Ella occupied with a girls’ day. English and southern style!”
Katherine dove into her huge wicker basket and held up two DVDs. “Love Actually and Notting Hill,” she said.
Eudora rootled around in the basket, too. “Plus Fried Green Tomatoes and Steel Magnolias.”
“Also, popcorn,” Katherine said.
“Two bags, since I can’t bear anyone picking at my popcorn. And this.” Eudora pulled out a bottle of champagne.
“What’s that for?” Felix said.
“The best reason of all, son. To celebrate life.”
Harry came rushing in. “Hi, Katherine! Hi, Eudora! Dad, when we’re finished with the college powwow, can Sammie come over?”
Felix glanced up at the ceiling. His quiet, secluded hiding place was suddenly bursting with women and busier than Clapham Junction.
“Why not?” he said, too exhausted for argument.
Harry rocketed off toward his bedroom, and after five minutes, rocketed back. They settled at the dining room table—Harry with a glass of milk and a six-pack of Krispy Kreme Original Glazed Doughnuts and Felix with a mug of black Earl Grey. Harry twitched through a concerto of tics, then devoured a doughnut. Felix lined up his legal pad and two pens—one black, one red.
“We’ll start with a list of your top ten choices and go from there.”
Harry turned beetroot.
“What?”
“I’d like to discuss an idea. I mean, a proposal. About college visits.” Harry reached for another doughnut but pulled back.
Felix crossed his arms over his chest. “I’m all ears.”
“Max and I have been doing some research,” Harry said. “Brandeis—you know Brandeis, up near Boston?”
Felix nodded.
“Brandeis has an open house in two weeks, and we’d like to go. By ourselves.”
Felix bolted upright into a coughing fit. “The two of you want to fly to Boston? A-lone?”
“Yup.” Harry clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth.
“You can’t possibly expect me to agree.”
“Why not?”
“A thousand answers, most of which hinge on two facts: you’re phobic about flying, and you’ve never flown without your mother. What happens if you freak out and some airline employee assumes you’re a terrorist?”
“Look at me, Dad.” Harry’s fingers strummed the air. “I’m a blond American teenager. No one could mistake me for a suicide bomber.”
“Need I remind you about that appalling airline woman who wanted to call security because you were ticcing? What if something happens that’s out of your control? Suppose the flight gets delayed or diverted?”
“Then I’d have to deal with it.” Harry rocked back and forth in his chair. Felix put out a hand to stop him before he snapped the chair legs in half.
“You guys want me to be more independent, tackle my future, right? Then you have to give me the space to try.” Harry fired a manic smile. “And let’s face it, at some point I have to take my show on the road. If it makes you feel better, I’ll type up little cards I can hand out to people on the plane that say, ‘No, I’m not an escaped lunatic, I have Tourette syndrome.’”
“Let me get this right. You want to go on your first college visit alone. Even though you have no clue what to ask or what to look for?”
“How hard can it be, Dad? I listen, I ask questions. I like a place, I don’t. After talking with Sammie, I’ve decided to investigate small liberal arts colleges. She’s the one who suggested Brandeis.”
“I will not fund any college decision based on where your girlfriend is going.” Felix began tugging pills off his black cashmere sweater.
Harry clicked his tongue again. “I’m not asking you to. She wants to go to NC State, but she suggested I look at small liberal arts colleges. I think she’s right.”
Felix’s lower leg swung back and forth, back and forth. He stopped when he accidentally kicked the table. “And what about Ivy Leagues?”
A part of him doubted he should even push for Ivy Leag
ues anymore. Could Harry cope with the pressure? Could Ella? But if you didn’t aim for the top, didn’t push yourself to be the best, what did you have except unfulfilled potential? And what kind of a father didn’t want the best for his son?
“The way I see it”—Harry snarfed down another doughnut and continued to multitask through chewing and talking in a most unpleasant manner—“if I can’t get on a plane without Mom, then considering any out-of-state college is pointless. And I’m not talking Russia. Boston’s a plane ride away, and there are direct flights. I checked. And doesn’t Mom’s old roommate live in Boston? We could stay with her.”
“I see you’ve done your research.”
“If I can do this one college visit with Max, an easy trip with a direct flight, it could give me the confidence to think bigger.” Harry’s voice was high and slightly squeaky, a sign he was overstimulated. “Harvard bigger.”
Felix paused before answering. “Do you honestly think you can do this, Harry?”
“Do you think I can do this?” Harry stared at Felix, his chest heaving and his eyelids blinking in rapid fire.
“Yes. I think you can. But here’s the deal—if you take the trip with Max, you agree to a weeklong college tour with me over spring break. It’s going to be in the Northeast, and it’s going to include Harvard.”
“Really?” Harry beamed as if he were standing on a winner’s podium with a gold medal. “Rad! Thanks, Dad, thanks.” Harry shot up and spun in different directions. “I’ve got to go call Max, I’ve got to—”
“Harry, please sit down so we can finish this conversation.”
“Yeah, sorry, Dad. I’m just, you know.” Harry grimaced and blinked, grimaced and blinked. “Excited.”
Not a sentiment Felix shared. This was going to be expensive and probably a complete waste of time. On the other hand, Harry had used convincing logic. He did need to learn independence. Also, this would be a good test, a dry run before the real college tour over spring break. Although he had yet to raise the issue of a week’s absence with Robert. Would it be easier or harder to negotiate vacation time as a worker bee, not a partner?
The Perfect Son Page 25