Perfectly Perfect Day

Perfectly Perfect Day
By Aaron Barnes

         But when Alex Johns woke up in the morning, his spirits were lifted by the fact that he was going to talk his mother and father. His birthday party had been great, the cake excellent. He had baked it himself, using his own mother’s recipe. He couldn’t believe he used to dread walking down the stairs to look at their sagging faces and ugly temperament. He hated them, they hated him. Such is life in the world that is Alex Johns. But now that things had changed, and he wasn’t going to let a few memories of how things used to be ruin his perfectly perfect day. No sir.
His mother was a woman without a care in the world, including a care for her friends or family, least of all Alex. He could see her how she was yesterday. Sitting in her pale green robe, slippers still on her feet. Her hair would be in disarray, her feet on the chair next to her. A Pall Mall Menthol in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other. She would not eat breakfast, although, by looking at her, you’d know she hadn’t missed many meals. Soon she would be screaming at Alex Johns to get his “ass downstairs and put out the dog.” The Johns’ hadn’t had a dog in over three years, but his mother never noticed. “Get up you son of a bitch.” A great man once said “My mother never found the irony in calling me a son of a bitch.” Man, Mr. Twain were you ever right.
She had told him he was an accident when he was young, maybe four or five. He dreaded those words; it meant that his beating was coming. She often hit him when he was younger, sometimes for no reason but because she was bored. He had once bled upon her carpet. The sacred carpet in the pale green room that he wasn’t allowed to step foot in. The Sitting Room. There was furniture in there that hadn’t been sat upon. Books on the shelves that had never been opened to read.  No one was allowed in that room. The Queen of England wasn’t allowed in that room. As he stood in the room, all eight years of him, his muddy tracks marking his route into the room, he had realized where the baseball had landed. In the Sacred Room, the room no one was allowed. She shrieked with all her might as he stood, all eight years of him, got the first of many punches to the face. And Alex Johns, eight years old, bled on the carpet.  As she beat him with the belt she kept on a hook in the kitchen, she shrieked, punctuating each lash on his eight year old ass with each of those words
‘You”
Whack
         “Were”
         Whack
         “An”
         Whack
         “Accident”
         Whack
         “I’
         Whack
         “Hate”
         Whack
         “YOU!”
         whack
         He was thirteen when he understood what those words meant. He wasn’t shocked. They had treated him like this his entire life. The beatings, the shouting, the glaring, and most of all, the incessant mind games Mr. and Mrs. Johns had played with him, hell, against him. He swore he would get revenge. But now there was no way he was going to let something like revenge ruin his perfectly perfect day. No sir.
         His father was like his mother, just as mean, but twice as strong. The spankings, or “lessons” as Mr. Johns called them, were agonizing, often leading to lies told in the emergency room. “He fell down, doctor,: His father said on more than one occasion, “you know how boys get.” He said this with a wink.
         Mr. Johns was an aspiring novelist. At least that’s what he told people. He was really a used car salesman. He had wished to get away from what he called the “ass-reaming business” long ago, but due to a lack of writing talent, or a complete grasp of the English language, he had been forced to let go of his dream of becoming the next James Patterson. But his realization of his problem had not stopped him from writing. No sir, it had only brought on more problems. He had a drinking problem and a nasty demeanor. He was a wife beater. The only person he hit more than Mrs. Johns was Alex Johns, and at least when Mr. Johns hit Mrs. Johns, he was mad at her.. He would beat Alex Johns because he was. Just because Alex Johns existed. He would beat Alex Johns because he was mad at his boss, at a customer, at his wife, at the neat stack of paper he kept his desk. He once beat Alex Johns because he had broken his shoelace. He had taken his shoes to “teach him a lesson on conservation.” When Alex Johns went to school the next day without shoes, he had told Mrs. Johns “What the hell? Go without.”
Alex Johns hated his father, and if it was possible, He hated him more than his mother. His father didn’t use a belt to beat his son. He used the cane he carried around with him. He had been the lesser of the two evils in the Johns household.
         He was ten years old, the cold Colorado winter wind coming in the window his mother had just broken. The room was the study; the place Mr. Johns called “My smoking room.” The Smoking Room was also off limits. Even to the evil that lurked in the Sitting Room. It contained mountains of books that had been opened, yes, but never finished. This is where his father worked until the wee hours of the morning writing his breakthrough novel. His “Work,” he called it. Too bad you couldn’t read it. If you weren’t allowed to enter the Smoking Room, you most definitely not allowed to read the Mystery Work. But, as luck would have it, it was the very room that Alex Johns took shelter in to hide from the storm that was his mother. He had spilt the glass of water he drank with his lousy lunch. And it had gotten the table runner wet. Now Mrs. Johns had to dry it. She had hit him four times by the time he came to the door to his father’s Smoking room.
         He locked the large oaken doors and prayed that there wasn’t a key, a way into the large room. He peered around, noticing the wood paneling, the leather covered books in the floor to ceiling bookcases. He could smell the ink and the paper within those book’s covers and they mingled with his father’s cigarette smoke. The three horrible smells would mix to bring the wonderful aroma of old libraries. If only he was allowed in this room. He would stay here all the time.
         He looked at the typewriter and saw what was over 300 pages of his father’s Work. He strangely felt something he had never felt for his father. Pride. He hoped he would finish it and bring good times to the house that Alex Johns lived in. He hoped it would settle his parent’s marriage problems and he hoped it would make them forget the accident they brought into this world.
         He was about to begin reading when he heard the crash. His mother was in the backyard, holding one of his baseballs. He had two and they were never apart. He looked around the room, and his heart sunk. He could see the white leather on the surface of the ball. The cold winter Colorado wind swept through the room, scattering his father’s Work around in a jumbled mess. And Alex Johns, like so many times throughout his life, began to cry.
         His father had come home drunk, as he usually did. And Mr. Johns had beaten him so severely that he couldn’t sleep on his back that night. He had called him a sneaking thief, accusing him of trying to steal his ideas, trying to sabotage Mr. Johns rise to stardom. Trying to destroy the work.  It was one of Alex Johns’ worse days.
          But today was not the worst day of his life. Today was going to be the first of many good days. So, as Alex Johns’ woke up that morning, a day after his birthday, he couldn’t wait to go downstairs to talk to his mother and father. He sat up, looking at his hands. He was filthy. Need a shower. He thought. After his shower he opened his window and saw his father’s car. The October sun shone on his face, lifting his spirits. He hoped the day would be better than yesterday. But if it’s just as good, I’ll be okay.
         He stomped downstairs, skipping over the blood at the base of the stairs, ignoring the blood covered cane leaning against the banister, and saw his parents sitting at the table. Together. Well, this is a change. He thought. “Hi mom, dad.” He said “How did you sleep? Neither of answering. Maybe not so strange, after all.  He wasn’t about to let the strange feeling ruin his perfectly perfect morning. No sir.
         He got himself a bowl of cereal and the milk and walked lightly into the dining room, hardly noticing the construction stapler on the table. He nearly slipped in the pool of blood that had formed at the base of the table. But he wasn’t about to let that ruin his perfectly perfect morning. No sir.
         He sat down, brushing away some of the flies that were covering his mother’s face. He could see the fishing lined stapled to the ceiling keeping her head from falling in her piece of last nights birthday cake. You could hardly notice the nails that kept her face in a perfect smile, displaying her broken teeth. Alex Johns frowned at that. He had removed the hatchet from the back of her head last night, over dinner, when she said something about a headache, but how was he going to finally make her smile a decent smile? What did he have to do? But what the hell? Breaking her teeth had been his fault. It was an accident.
         “Dad, how should I make my beautiful mother smile?” Alex Johns said. He looked at his father, leaning over, as if confiding a secret with the man to his right. Mr. Johns was more ornately decorated than Mrs. Johns. The air compressor hummed in the corner as if to convey this point. A three inch construction nail was protruding from Mr. Johns' eye socket, the head staring at Alex Johns. The look of horror was impossible to erase from Mr. Johns face. His right hand was sitting on the table next to him. The rest of his arm was still lying in the garage, with the circular saw that Alex Johns had used to get his father to let him throw the party last night. He had only twisted his arm a little bit. Alex Johns couldn’t figure out how to staple the arm back on, and didn’t want to expel the effort to do it anyway, so what the hell? Go without. He wasn’t going to let that ruin his perfectly perfect morning. No sir.
         He began to eat his cereal, bite by bite, talking, really talking, to his parents. For the first time in his life he was allowed to talk, he was listened to. And he loved it. He loved his parents, and they loved him. And as he heard the sirens from the police cars outside, he reached for the pistol he got off of the officer that had come in to visit last night, the officer that was currently residing in the guest room. The police were banging on the door. He heard his fathers name and clutched the gun tighter. He wasn’t about to let these men ruin his perfectly perfect day. No sir.