Mount Auburn. He needed to figure out the location of the hospital. He sat up, flipped open his laptop, typed, and read.
“Mount Auburn Hospital is a vibrant regional teaching hospital closely affiliated with the Harvard Medical School.” Harvard Medical School? He clicked on “About Us” for the address. Mount Auburn was in Cambridge? Why had Harry been sent to a hospital in Cambridge? Did he need special care? Or had the boys been in Cambridge when the incident occurred? Today was their down day, a day to sightsee around Boston. Clearly, they had decided to go into Cambridge. A flashback to Harry’s apology for calling him a Nazi. Felix had said, “My experience is that people normally speak the truth when they’re angry.” Angry or upset.
What exactly had Max said earlier? Slowly, Felix replayed their conversation.
Max had mentioned a campus cop. Cambridge plus a campus cop added up to one thing—Harvard. The boys were at Harvard. Harry was on a college visit and he had included Harvard. But why? Why fight the idea every step of the way, and then go to Harvard in secret? Harry didn’t have a devious bone in his body. What the hell was he up to?
The flight attendant came back with his drink, and Felix forgot to say thank you. He’d just lost the one good thing to come out of his childhood: perfect manners.
Harry’s at Harvard; Harry’s in trouble.
Everything that had happened between them since Ella’s heart attack had boiled down to his own bullishness about Harvard. Why could he not get his mind off Harvard? Was it merely socioeconomic programming, the belief in the old school tie network and the do-what’s-expected-of-you model that had been bashed into him during his formative years? Even now, was he still acting in ways that would have gained Pater’s approval? Pater had sent him to hell, and still young Felix would have walked across broken glass barefoot if he’d thought it would have made the old man happy. All he’d ever wanted was to be the perfect son. Nothing he did was ever good enough for Pater; nothing Harry did was ever good enough for him.
Had Harry visited Harvard for the same reason Felix had gone to Oxford—to make his father happy? Felix thumped his head back into his headrest and stared at the airplane ceiling. Why could he not be proud of his son? A straight-A student who would likely graduate valedictorian. A straight-A student who was a good kid. A kid who just wanted to make his father proud. And where had it led him? To the ER.
Max’s parents didn’t care that Max looked like Marilyn Manson on a bad hair day. Why should he care that his son had Tourette syndrome and couldn’t sit still through a movie? Why should he care that his son was messy and chaotic and an indiscriminate hugger? Why should he care that his son was not perfect?
Felix returned to his laptop, typed in perfectionism, and hit “Enter.” He paused on the fourth listing: “Perfectionism—Personality Disorder.”
Personality disorder? Like Pater? Tom had said once, “I don’t know whether he’s a psychopath, a sociopath, or he just has a personality disorder, but our father is not of sound mind.”
Like father, like son?
Swirls danced across his laptop screen—a generic pattern he’d never customized.
His head spun; his heart spun; his stomach spun somewhere up near his throat. The ringing in his ears blocked out the sound of everything but his thoughts. Harry had accused him of being fucked up. What if his son had been right? What if he was stark raving mad? A genuine, certifiable lunatic?
No. Felix took a deep breath. He would be calm; he would be rational. He would be in control. He flexed his fingers and hit the “Return” key. The screen came back to life. He scrolled down. A book was listed: Too Perfect: When Being in Control Gets Out of Control.