Felix stared at a discarded Christmas tree on the curb, with a solitary strand of tinsel bobbing like a snared snake. No, he would not comment.
“I’ve decided we’re both . . . incorrect about your mother.” See, Ella? I’m trying. “She’s more like Annie Lennox.”
Harry cracked his knuckles. Twice. Felix sucked on his bottom lip. Of his son’s many irritating behaviors, this, surely, was the worst. And one, surely, that he could control.
“Harry. Please stop doing that.”
“Doing what?” Harry jiggled worse than a squirrel planning an attack on the bird feeder. “And Annie Lennox? No idea who that is, Dad.” Harry’s face twitched, again and again.
How many tics in five seconds? The first trip back to England after Harry had been diagnosed—after they’d lost a year to misdiagnoses—Felix counted and charted the tics every day, seeking nonexistent triggers that could solve the mystery of where the Tourette’s came from. He stopped when Ella pointed out that his hovering made the tics worse. The holiday had been ruined then, lost to the knowledge that he’d inflicted pain on his child.
In the power lines above, a murder of crows cackled.
Felix cleared his throat. “Annie Lennox is an English rock star. Cropped peroxide hair like your mother’s. Drop-dead gorgeous.”
“Gross,” Harry said. “Next you’ll be telling me Mom’s sexy. Don’t you think I spend enough of my life in therapy?”
An image formed of Ella wearing nothing but lacy red knickers. Felix eased his jeans away from his groin, but the sensation coiling in his gut was not desire.
How long since they’d had sex? She was in bed by ten thirty, and he never finished work before midnight. Her alarm went off at six so she could go on a power walk with some retired neighbor; his alarm went off at eight, when she was weaving through Durham’s historic tobacco district, driving Harry to school. Could he blame conflicting circadian rhythms for their dwindling passion, or had something fundamental shifted in recent months? And if so, why was his gut hinting that the failure was his, that he was the one at fault?
The Coheed and Cambria song from Harry’s iPod continued playing through the car stereo as Felix slowed down for the exit ramp off I-40. Music had always been problematic—so many wrong notes and bad lyrics. He’d faked an interest in punk and new wave as a teenager because doing so seemed appropriate, but until New Order’s “Blue Monday” hit the charts in the early eighties—with its orderly, repetitive pulse—no song had resonated. Music, however, was a sedative for Harry. Although that screamo stuff Harry and Mad Max blared through the house could hardly be classified as music.
In the passenger seat, Harry was folded in half. What a gift to sleep that way, as if his constantly flailing body were finally unplugged. Once he’d become mobile, young Harry had stopped napping, and the broken nights had lasted through most of middle school. This new ability to conk out anywhere seemed to have coincided with Harry’s starting high school. On random nights, however, he still shuffled into their bedroom, whimpering, “Mom, I had a nightmare. I need a hug.”
Felix’s own mother had stopped hugging him when he’d turned five. Mother. She had never been the easiest of people. Since turning eighty, she had become downright unpleasant. Harry had nicknamed her Moaning Myrtle, which was kinder than her cleaning lady’s mumbled miserable old trout.
As Felix turned right onto Airport Boulevard, sirens advanced toward him like an approaching thunderstorm. He pulled over and stopped, and a bright-orange ambulance shot past, heading back toward the highway, lights flashing, siren howling.