The Perfect Family

Poor behavior is not tolerated in my family. Nor are any mistakes that might hinder our progress. Father always says that mistakes are similar to rebellious recruits in marine boot camp. Father works as a drill sergeant in one of these camps, you see. It was where he learned the lessons that he now passes on to us. Father said that when he was a recruit in the corps, as he refers to it, he had all sorts of rebellious ideas, as did his fellow recruits. One day, Father’s bunkmates thought it would be amusing to carry one of the drill instructors, a man named Eric, out of the bunkhouse during the night. They carried him into the woods, and tossed him into a small lake that was near the edge of the base. Father was asleep while the prank was carried out, so he had no role in it. But it seems that because of his previous behavior, he would be blamed anyway. 

It so happened that the following day, Eric was operating the machine gun during an exercise. As they crawled through the mud, Eric was careful to keep the gunsight trained just above the barbed wire ceiling, so as not to accidentally hit one of the recruits. As he was crawling, father happened to glance up at Eric. The look in Eric’s eyes is forever burned into the deep recesses of father’s mind. It was inhuman. There was no hint of anger in them, only hunger. It looked like a wild dog that has just confronted a small, defenseless child in an alleyway, and is contemplating how good he will taste once he is dead in a matter of seconds. There was no human emotion behind those eyes, only the insatiable greed of someone who has been possessed by the worst possible manifestation of the human id, if it could even be called human. 

Father felt the impact of the 50-caliber slug a split second later. His ears rang with the impact, despite the standard-issue kevlar helmet which had saved his life. Father instinctively ducked as a second shot skimmed the top of his helmet. As he cowered in the mud, father heard a third shot, but he felt no impact this time. Suddenly, the shooting stopped. Father looked up at Eric. He was on his feet, staring at father, his face emotionless. No not at father, something next to him. Father turned to Dietrich, one of his friends, and noticed he was no longer moving. Father slowly reached out to Dietrich and turned his face towards him, revealing the hole in his forehead where the machine gun slug had passed cleanly through, stopped only from hitting father by the kevlar helmet which impeded its progress as it traveled out the other side of Dietrich’s head. As father stared at his friend’s now lifeless body, completely numb with shock, he heard the other drill instructor, a man named Monroe, shout “All right, everybody back to the bunkhouse. We’re done with this exercise.” While father was walking back to the bunkhouse, Eric walked up beside him. Father, still too numb to speak, did not object. “Let me tell you something, boy,” Eric muttered. “That’ll be you next time, if you don’t shape up.” And then he walked away to join the other drill sergeants at the front of the group. 

Father told me that story today. It was late in the evening, after a school day in which I had fought with another boy about a soccer ball that we both wanted to play with during recess. The teachers had to pull me off him, and the school called father afterwards. Something funny happened when we were in the principal’s office. As we were sitting in front of the principal, listening to her go on about something or other, the little boy with whom I’d fought began crying and blubbering something about how his parents would kill him if they found out he’d been in trouble at school, as though he were begging the principal not to tell them. After the boy had finished, I looked over at him, and asked him why he was so upset that his parents were going to punish him. I explained to him that punishment was good, and that only parents who really love their children correct them when they are bad, so that they will grow up to be good people who behave properly. 

“So Timmy,” he said to me afterwards. “Are you going to be a good boy from now on?” he asked in a voice that was dead calm. “Yes sir” I responded, equally calm. Of course I knew he would correct me, but I was not afraid. I had behaved badly, and deserved to be punished. It was the only way I could learn to behave properly, as father had told me many times before. Without a word, father removed the revolver from waistband and pressed the cool steel of the barrel to my forehead. I didn’t flinch. Father was just correcting me, as all parents should do for their children. To not do so would be doing them a disservice. “Do not disappoint me” he said in a deadly voice. His pointer finger slowly grasped the trigger, but I was still not afraid. “Or you might end up like…” The barrel moved off of me at the last second as the shot rang out throughout the house. I turned toward the sound, and to my amusement, the bullet had left a hole in the baseboard. “...Like Dietrich” he finished, and got up from the chair. He turned to walk out of the room. I stared at the hole in the floor, and wondered vaguely how father would fix it. 

Before father cleared the doorway, he was assailed by mother, who looked extremely harried. “Patrick, what the hell was that?!” she demanded. Her eyes traveled to me, and then to the hole in the floor. “Is that a bullet hole?!” she screamed. father looked at her boredly. “Madam, refer to me as sir” he said with concealed irritation. Normally, he would have corrected her for such an infraction, but tonight, he seemed to be either too tired or simply not in the mood, as he tried to push past her out of the room. However, she got in front of him, and pushed him back into the room. At that moment, something changed in father’s face. It was as if all the air had gone out of a deflated balloon, and his normally calm, composed complexion turned dark and ugly in a matter of seconds. “Timmy, go to your room.” “Yes sir” I replied quickly, and hurried out of the room. Although I knew that punishments were good and necessary for good behavior, I didn’t wish to witness my mother being punished. By the time I had reached my room, I could hear screaming down below, even with the door closed. At first, I could hear my mother tearing into father about how he treated me. 

That made me angry. Father was a good father, and he treated better than any other parent in the world. “How dare she say those things” I thought. Then suddenly, she cut off. After a moment, she began to scream like a banshee, and I could hear objects falling over and shattering repeatedly. I heard the chest of drawers that they keep in their bedroom for their clothing fall to the floor with a giant crash. What sounded like a window breaking. One final ear-splitting wail. And then silence. I was glad my sister was not here to witness the punishment. She is more sensitive than I am about it, and I think, although outward appearances say otherwise, she does not fully agree with father and his system of discipline. I once mentioned this to father, and he responded simply that only parents know what is best for their children, and even if they do not agree with it at the time, it will make them better people in the end. I know he is right, of course. Because he is father, and he is a wise and kind man, and a loving and caring parent. 

When mother came to breakfast the next morning, I said hello without looking up. She didn’t reply. I continued eating, more curious than concerned. When she sat down across from me, I looked up, and noticed some sort of black thread criss-crossing over her mouth. The threads also appeared to be entering and leaving her skin, sort of like those “thread-the-needle” games that small children play where a picture forms when you put the needle through the right holes. I looked quizzically at father. At first, he said nothing and continued eating. I went back to eating, figuring he didn’t want to talk about it. “Stitches” he said after a few moments of silence. I looked up at father, still puzzled. “Your mother has proved to be quite bothersome lately, isn’t that right, dear?” My mother nodded slowly. I nodded at father, understanding now why the correction was unusual in its nature. 

We continued to eat in silence for a few moments, until a car pulled up into the driveway. I looked out at the driveway at the sound, and my mouth nearly fell open in shock. A silver porsche cayenne. It was my sister’s car. I had not seen Erica in many years. She was a child actress when she was my age, before I was born. She moved away when I was 4 years old, to work on the set of her first major film project at the age of 16. The three of us watched as Erica stormed up the driveway, and slammed the front door on the wall in anger as she entered the house. Father jumped up, and started to speak, but Erica was quicker. “I’m here for Timmy. And mom if she wants. Don’t get in my way, just let them go.” She then caught sight of mother, and gasped. “What the fuck…” “She was corrected,” I interrupted. Father spun around and slapped me hard enough to make me fall off the chair. “Don’t interrupt,” he said calmly, as though nothing had happened. I nodded, knowing I had behaved improperly, and I was thankful for only a minor correction. 

“Dad, you need help,” Erica said placatingly. “Just let me take mom and Timmy, and I promise, I will get you to a doctor…” She was cut short as father struck her across the face. She fell on the floor, a small trail of blood running from the corner of her mouth. “Is this how I taught you to behave?” father said calmly. “All the lessons I tried to teach you, were they all for nothing?” Then, something happened that stunned both me and Erica. Tears formed in the corners of father’s eyes. He wiped them away immediately. “You’ve become bad” father said in a way that suggested he was the parent of a juvenile delinquent that he was finally giving up on. “They made you a bad person. I…” he began to sob silently. “I failed you.” 

“No Dad,” Erica replied. “You failed me.” Then I saw it again. The same thing that had happened the night before with my mother. Father's complexion went from one of hopelessness and sorrow to something dark and ugly in a fraction of a second. “This is not discipline,” she continued, oblivious to father’s reaction. “This is abuse, and you know it. You can’t treat people like this because of what happened to you in the marine corp.” Without any prompting, I ran up the stairs to my room, not wanting to see what would happen next. I heard Erica’s voice continue from up in my room. Gradually the pitch of her voice escalated until it had reached a high pitched scream. This went on for almost 10 minutes, until I heard her scream, “We are not bad people, you are!” And then dead silence. Deeper than I had ever experienced. I felt weightless, as though I might simply float away into nothingness. I barely registered the footfalls on the stairs. I didn’t look up as the door to my room opened. Father stood there, still holding the gun in his hand. I didn’t look at him. 

“Timmy, we need to talk,” he said. He turned around and walked out of the room. Wordlessly, I followed him. For the first time in my life, I was torn. Erica needed to be punished for her behavior, of course. I knew that. But something about killing felt wrong. Father had never killed anyone before. The more I thought about it, the more I thought about Dietrich, and how he had died. I had always assumed before that he had deserved it. Had he? We passed through the kitchen. Two bodies were lying on the floor. I saw Erica’s body, the bullet hole in her forehead. And then I saw my mother. I stopped. I just stopped. Father looked at me, but he did not order me to continue walking. I wouldn’t’ve listened if he had. Finally, after what seemed like hours, I looked up at him. I pointed to mother. “Why?” I said accusingly. Father did not correct me for speaking out of turn this time. “Timmy,” he said shakily, pointing to mother, and then to Erica. “I failed them. I tried to teach them, but they became bad all the same. I let them down.” And then I saw father do something he had never done before. He fell to his knees, and began to sob into his hands, uncontrollably, tears flowing freely. 

I stood there, looking at him, doing nothing, feeling nothing. Finally, he looked up at me through tear-filled eyes. “Timmy, I’ve been bad.” I stared, not sure I’d heard correctly. “You have to discipline me.” He slowly reached for the gun. I winced, but quickly realized it was not meant for me. He slowly held out the gun to me. “Punish me, Timmy. Please.” At first I did nothing. I wanted to run from the room, from that house, from that neighborhood, from that life. But something held me in place, something that 7 year old me couldn’t put into words. “Please!” he screamed, pulling me from my thoughts. “Discipline is good, Timmy, you know that right?” he begged. “I need to be disciplined, Timmy.” I hesitated for another moment before I reached a shaking hand for the gun. I stared at it for another moment. “Please, Timmy,” father whispered. “Daddy has been bad.” I slowly lifted the gun to his forehead. We both closed our eyes. I saw them at that moment. My mother. Erica. Both of them alive and smiling. The most loving people I had ever known. I felt tears come to my eyes. I felt my finger apply pressure to the trigger, and despite the recoil from the shot, when I opened my eyes, the barrel had never moved away from father’s forehead. 

I opened the garage door and found a weathered shovel lying in the back next to my childhood tricycle. “Had I ever had a childhood?” I thought rather dazedly. I was too exhausted, physically and emotionally, to come up with an answer. The bodies side by side in the backyard. I pressed the shovel into the hard earth, and began to dig. The work was brutal. My arms shook from the effort of forcing the shovel in and out of the earth, and blisters began to form on my palms, but I did not stop. I continued to dig until I had made three holes large enough to house the bodies. I lay the bodies of my mother and sister gently into two of the holes. I looked down at their bodies for a long time, and then I began to cry uncontrollably, like I had never been allowed to do when father was still alive. I felt hollow, as though I was an empty plastic bag just drifting in the wind, and all my organs had deserted me. Eventually, I regained enough control to begin to shovel the dirt back on top of them, more slowly this time due to the mass of blisters that had formed on my hands, tears still flowing freely into the dirt below. When it was done, I came to my father. I bent down to push him into the grave, then stopped myself suddenly. I picked up the body, but instead of laying it in the grave, I carried it back into the house. 

I took the box of matches that father always kept on the mantle, and tossed one into the fireplace. Within a few minutes, a fire was blazing inside. Normally, the warmth might have comforted me. I dragged my father’s body over to the fireplace, and heaved it into the flames. I watched my father’s lifeless body gradually blacken and smolder away, feeling nothing but contempt for the man that I had once loved and respected. I watched this go on for several hours, not moving the entire time, determined to see it through. When he had more or less completely disappeared, and I finally began to walk away from the fireplace, I heard something outside. Sirens. Police sirens. I could see them on the street outside our house. The officers began to exit the vehicles, guns drawn. Wordlessly, I walked out of the room and up the stairs. As I reached my room, I heard the officers banging on the door downstairs. I opened up my window and stepped out onto the windowsill. I looked down at the pavement below, and I heard the terrified cries of people from my street as they noticed me. As I let go, my last thought was “I must be punished, for I have been seen doing bad.” Old habits die hard.