The Perfect Man

The Perfect Man 

By 

Sydney Richelle 

Dr. Carson White was the perfect man. He lived in a perfect house with the perfect family and had the perfect job. He was a paediatrician who worked long hours to afford his habits of getting his shoes shined every morning and taking his family on extravagant vacations to Rome, to Africa, to Dubai. He had met Marie in Italy during a family trip. She was a nurse who just so happened to be transferring to his hospital back in America. She was sassy and stubborn and had scars on her arms from old cigarette burns. She was an ex-Marla Singer type and Carson White’s favourite person. She wore her hair in a tight bun now and had wrinkles around her red lips and was not very well this Tuesday morning. Her eyes looked heavier and sadder than usual. “How are you, really?” Carson asked. She said she’d been lonely since her husband’s passing. He put his hand on her shoulder and asked if she might enjoy dinner that night at his place with the family. Perhaps some company would do her good, and surely his wife wouldn’t mind. “I have about seven guests in town for the funeral who are staying at my house.” “Bring them!” She clasped her sun-spotted hands around his and agreed, thanking him for his generosity. The people of Santa Monica truly loved Carson White. 

Carson’s wife had immigrated from Mexico for a chance at a better life. They met when she was eighteen and hitchhiking to California one humid summer evening and he had promised her a ride if she’d let him take her on a date. She agreed, and a year later they were engaged. She used to describe him as mysterious, exciting, and almost hypnotic. They used to ride motorcycles. Her name used to be Ximena. Now her name was Kathleen and she was a stay at home mother of three. She had dreams she didn’t talk about and a garden that she did. It grew carrots and tomatoes and a fancy mint that tastes like chocolate when she would blend it into the smoothies that she made every morning for Dustin, Charlie and Sasha at precisely 8:00am. Kathleen would’ve preferred Spanish names. When she was pregnant with their first child she had found Carson’s brown leather journal open to a list of twenty two names while putting a book away in his study. When she asked him about it, he replied bashfully that he had been dreaming about making her a mother for some time. He wanted all of their future children to have one of the twenty two names because they all meant something to him in some way or another. He wouldn’t elaborate very far, but said that each one was after a person who had moved him. She didn’t have the heart to discard his idea after he had put so much thought and care into the names; the names that they would sing into the wind to call their children inside for supper after a long day of playing games in the backyard. She knew better than to argue. Besides, being a good mother was all that truly mattered to her; names were only names. 

Dustin and Charlie were nine years old and very close with their father. He would take them to baseball games and art galleries and for late night drives through the woods while he told them scary stories that made their eyes widen and their toes curl. They admired their dad and tried to act tough, but they couldn't help but let out a little scream when Carson would suddenly roar and a voice low and guttural, “BOO!” Friends of the family had trouble telling them apart, as they were identical twins, but in interest and character they couldn’t have been more opposite. Charlie was a gifted artist who liked to stay inside and draw, while Dustin couldn’t be outside enough and hated everything that wasn’t related to sports. Sasha on the other hand was three years older than the boys. She was sweet and soft spoken and generous for a child. She liked to save bugs from the pool and help her teachers in the classroom and hold her mother’s hand without asking questions when she would cry after family dinners. She was always a bit withdrawn from her father, although he at times seemed to prefer her over the boys. Perhaps it was her intellect, or her sweet and quiet nature. Perhaps it was something else. They had a perfect dog who went to the local pet spa about four times a week and wore a different bandana in the mornings than she did in the afternoons. Everything looked very perfect indeed from the Christmas card’s point of view. 

Carson was highly respected in his profession. He wrote the textbook on paediatric nursing and was the founder of the Beaming Buddies Foundation that raised at least a million dollars a year for sick kids. Even his seniors would stop to shake his hand when they’d see him walking smoothly down the hallways of the hospital in his freshly shined dress shoes on his way to his next patient. Carson would hold the door open with his, “after you!” as they’d approach the office together and they would all go through thanking him courteously. They would smile as he’d depart and talk amongst themselves about the wonderful man with the wonderful life and wonder why they themselves could never get their shoes as shiny as his. 

Carson would greet his young patients by pulling them in tightly with a kiss on the cheek. He would lift them up by the waist and sit them on his lap and ask them about their favourite food. The answers were usually ice cream, pizza, or candy; funny what a child would do for a little bit of sugar! He would make them laugh with that rhythmic high pitched wheeze that falls from the lips of happy or manipulated children. The mothers would smile at how sweet and caring he was and shake his wrinkled hand and leave the room at his request. He was such a perfect and trustworthy man. The children often left the examination room with candy and a secret. 

The sun was setting at the house in Santa Monica in a particularly beautiful way that evening. Kathleen ushered the children outside to witness the shades of purple and orange colliding and caressing each other in the cotton candy sky. Charlie said he wanted to paint it. Dustin asked to be excused. Sasha sat in a silence that was almost mournful, as she often did. “That’s just Sasha”, Carson would often explain to friends. “Always in her own world.” Friends would laugh and drink and exchange stories about their perfect lives at those patio dinners and not think about Sasha and her silence again. Kathleen had the same sweet sadness about her, and it pained her to see it mirrored in her only daughter. She wanted to take it away but didn’t know how. The phone rang just as the last bit of colour faded away from the sky, leaving it dull and grey in comparison. The kids went off to the play room and Kathleen answered the phone. 

“Hello?”

“Hi honey, we are having a party in a couple hours. We’ll need dinner and wine for about eight guests. It’s Marie and her people. The loss has been hard on them, so filling their bellies is the least we can do.”

Kathleen started in on the cooking and brought up boxes filled with expensive whiskey bottles that she began keeping in the basement for occasions such as this. She thought he must be somewhere public, he spoke to her too kindly. She minced the garlic and roasted the potatoes and rinsed the lettuce. Funny how kind they think he is, she thought. She set the table and put on makeup and kissed the children. If they only knew. She lit the candles and took out the steak and accidentally started crying. So she re-applied her mascara and waited by the door with a tray of drinks for her perfect husband to return home with his perfect friends. 

That is until she felt a pull on her dress. It was Sasha, she looked ill. She was shaking and tense and had tears in her big green eyes. She said she was scared. She said she didn’t want her daddy to come home anymore. She said he had been coming into her room at night. Kathleen felt fear infect her and spread under her skin like a parasite. She felt the guilt of a thousand sins and threw up on the shiny marble floor. The dog trotted over to eat up the mess and sweet Sasha picked her up so that she wouldn’t get sick. Kathleen gathered the family in the minivan and left the house with the oven on and the table set and the vomit on the floor. 

They drove in the darkness for thirty six hours. Kathleen had no family in California. All her friends were Carson’s friends. He was in charge of the credit cards too. With no money and no place to go, the darkness of the night seemed to be their only blanket of protection. They listened to the radio and the boys asked a lot of questions and they complained of boredom and they asked for their dad. Sasha and Kathleen sat in silence. The sun rose with an orange glow and a promise of a new beginning. The boys were hungry. Kathleen passed them the melted chocolate chip granola bars she had stored in the centre console and kept driving. She thought about going to the police but thought they might find out that her papers were fake, turn on her, and return the children to Carson. She banged on the steering wheel in frustration. She felt stuck and helpless. The boys started to cry. Sasha was still. The dog peed on the floor of the car. Everyone was scared. 

When the sky went dark again Kathleen couldn’t drive any longer. Everyone needed to get out of that foul smelling car. She pulled into the driveway of a nice looking house with tricycles and a basketball hoop standing like statues in the front yard. Surely she was far enough away. Surely this family will be sympathetic. Her frantic knocking was answered by the confused but seemingly kind face of a dark haired woman named Lorraine. Kathleen asked for help. Lorraine agreed and invited the family to stay in the guest room. They washed up in the bathroom, they changed into clean clothes, and they crawled into the safety of the comfortable bed.

Carson got in an hour after his family had fled. He opened the door to his eight guests and the smell of vomit hit them like a cement truck on the freeway. They stepped over the vile spill and walked into the newly renovated kitchen with their brows furrowed in confusion. The dinner was made. The table was set. What had happened? Where were the children, the dog? Where was Kathleen? Carson apologized to his guests and told them to make themselves comfortable. He cleaned up the vomit and told Marie and her guests not to worry and to stay and enjoy the meal. They sat hesitantly, but the issue was soon washed away with a few glasses of wine. They had a great meal and laughed together and didn’t talk about the death for the first time in a while. Marie felt better, although she was still curious about the strange situation. Only when the last pair of feet stumbled out of that house in Santa Monica, Carson finally picked up the phone. 

The next morning he was on TV. “Kathleen was unstable,” he began, “and as a doctor I should have seen the signs, but I was blinded by my love for her and our children. But now she has kidnapped them, and I fear that she will hurt them. She has hallucinations. Please help me find my children.” Everyone everywhere was looking for Kathleen and the children; including kind-faced Lorraine. Who wouldn’t trust the charitable, respectable doctor? Who is going to sympathize with the young immigrant woman?

The police came within the hour. They didn’t listen to her when she told them he was a bad man. They didn’t listen to her when she said he had promised her marriage and a proper citizenship, but instead he gave her fake documents and called her his wife only to keep up appearances. It was something to hold over her head, she told them, something to keep her quiet. Carson had told them that she told many stories as a result of her mental illness, and that he couldn’t trust her to know her own past. They listened sympathetically to the perfect man’s story. They didn’t listen to Kathleen when she said he was a pedophile. They didn’t listen to Sasha when she said she was scared. Maybe the orange glow of that past morning wasn’t so promising after all. Maybe sometimes you can’t even trust the sky. 

Carson remarried an eighteen year old runaway named Darla only a year after Kathleen was deported and institutionalized in Mexico. Marie attended the wedding with her heart on a string and a loving smile. Many of Carson’s patients and their parents attended as well, three of whom had the same names as each of the White children. Perhaps they were the children that had moved the doctor so deeply that he wrote their young names down in his notebook. They all sat in the same silence as Sasha, with secrets and sugar in their pockets even still. Darla wore a handmade wedding dress and a veil of delusion. Charlie and Dustin shared the duties of the ring bearer. Sasha stood in her silence in a pink bridesmaids dress at the altar. She was emotionless now, her eyes dry and her hair brushed and her mind detached from her body; and the doves flew and the wedding bells rang and Carson kissed his bride and everything looked perfect in the family photo album.