#1 Dad

TW for implied child abuse and mentions of suicide.

Mark Allen was the perfect father.

He’d dedicated his entire adult life to fatherhood, so it only stood to reason that he was exceptional at the job. Every move he made was for his son. He’d sacrificed everything to secure for him all the opportunities of life he’d never had himself.

It hadn’t been easy as a single father. But he’d worked long hours to ensure his son had all he needed, not just to survive, but to thrive. They had an apartment in a major city, rich with opportunity. Their kitchen was always stocked with fresh, healthy food, and he required his son to join a sport of his choosing at school, so that he’d maintain a strong physique. Their home decor was books, which actually got read—in fact, whenever his son misbehaved, reading and then writing book reports was his punishment. He paid for extra tutoring, to help him maintain his place at the top of his class at an elite school, and he gave him a fair amount of chores, to guarantee he’d grow up an independent, self-sufficient adult. Mark was adamant about that final point. His own father didn’t know how to clean a bathroom, cook a meal, or do laundry. Without Mark’s mother to take care of him, he would probably fall apart.

Mark had made sure his son would never end up like that, reliant upon a woman to survive.

That wasn’t to say his son would be alone. He did what he could to help him in the romantic sphere, too, after all. Part of it was his education. His son didn’t care for math, but Mark insisted upon it, with rewards and punishments in measure. Math was where the money was, after all. As far as being a perfect father went, Mark figured securing wealth for your child was the topmost priority. Those with daughters surely understood that, too. Some might call it an old-fashioned idea, but Mark figured those people were just trying to be politically correct. At the end of the day, women flocked to men with money.

Of course, looks played a part too, and Mark had done what he could there as well. He’d picked a beautiful woman for his mother, and he’d done so purposefully. He was a humble man, but even he could admit he was good-looking—he might not have been able to seduce a woman like his son’s mother otherwise—and so, supported by the genes of two attractive parents, his boy was handsome. A man rich in money and looks would never be alone.

Mark had done literally everything to guarantee his son would hold the world in his hands.

So why had things turned out like this?

It certainly wasn’t Mark’s fault. Sure, maybe he’d pressured him a little over his grades, but that was because they were in such a competitive country. Practically the second that gorgeous mother of his had told him she was pregnant, he’d begun looking for jobs in Japan, with full intentions to uproot his life and move. She said she’d been born in America, but ethnically, she was Japanese, making Mark’s son half. And the Japanese were the smartest in the world, weren’t they? They had all the best schools.

That was why he’d started sleeping with Asian women in the first place: so he could have an Asian son. After all, going to a school in Japan probably wouldn’t mean much if you didn’t fit in. You needed to look the part. And so he’d made a sacrifice for the sake of his unborn child; while other men were looking for romantic partners to share their lives with, Mark played a different game. He sought out beautiful Asian women, and he only bedded the ones who struck him as the type not to want a child.

He didn’t need some woman tagging along with him, interfering with his plans. Raising a perfect child required a perfect environment. A mother was a variable he couldn’t afford.

He met Wendy at the grocery store, and even though she had dark bags under her eyes, and her hair was unkempt, and her eyes were dull and depressed, Mark could tell she was beautiful. She was thin with clear skin, her features were symmetrical, and she had fantastic bone structure. He imagined other women would tear her apart for her cheekbones alone, if they believed they could be stolen.

She had a baby with her, but otherwise, she was alone. She seemed beautifully miserable; the kind of woman who regretted motherhood. Before Mark could even think of how to approach her, fate intervened; she picked up a container of cherry tomatoes and promptly fumbled them, sending tiny spheres of red rolling across the floor. She started crying, obviously at a breaking point, and Mark swooped in to help.

From there, it was just a matter of bumping into her again and again and trying to make her feel good about herself. He never asked, but he was mildly suspicious she had postpartum depression, which served him well. Even though she was married, it didn’t take too long to convince her that he should come over and help her put her groceries away. He’d heard once that women were most fertile shortly after giving birth, and he figured that might have been true, because he impregnated her almost immediately.

When all was said and done, Wendy told him her husband was leaving her, which he thought was fair. She’d cheated on him. That wasn’t Mark’s problem, though.

No, Mark’s problem was gaining sole custody of his child, and it was a problem he solved almost effortlessly. Depressed and newly single, Wendy was in no state to care for a second baby. She signed the paperwork without a fight.

It was uncanny how perfectly each domino he’d set up had fallen into place. Despite his humility, he couldn’t help but wonder if he was perhaps a genius. He could only imagine where he’d be in life if his parents cared about his success half as much as he cared about his son’s.

Of course, his son didn’t always see things his way. He didn’t always appreciate everything his father did. But that was just a natural part of growing up, wasn’t it? All children tried to rebel. With his son, his moments of defiance always centered around gender roles. It began when he was very young, five maybe, when he’d attempted to watch a girls’ cartoon on TV. He only managed to watch a few minutes before Mark changed the channel. He explained, clearly and succinctly, in words a child could understand, that watching shows meant for little girls would warp his mind. He told him he would turn into a girl himself.

He’d thought he’d nipped things in the bud with that incident, but then he came home from work one day, back when his son was thirteen, and found him wearing a skirt. It was a cheap thing from a general store. Something he’d bought himself, with his own money.

Mark did what he had to do to ensure nothing like that ever happened again.

Being a perfect dad wasn’t a perfect experience. Sometimes he had to do things other fathers didn’t have the strength to do. But he did them. For the sake of his son’s future, his happiness, he did them.

Which brought him back to the question of how things had come to this.

He’d been at work when he’d gotten the call. A woman—some secretary, probably—called him and informed him that his son—sixteen now—was in the hospital. She refused to give him any details over the phone beyond informing him he was currently safe and stable.

When he arrived, a doctor took him aside and told him his child, whom he’d reared and loved and raised, had tried to end the very life given to him by his father.

“He’s lucky he has such good friends,” the doctor had said. “They found him and forcefully dragged him off the edge. A four-story fall…he’d be dead if he’d managed to jump.”

Mark thought that was a little ridiculous, that his son was “lucky” to have his friends. His real luck was having Mark.

Why would he want to end his life when he had such a father? When he had everything in the world a person could want? All the things Mark himself never had?

He asked his son in the hospital, but he was too shaken from his experience to give a proper answer. He tried again when they got home, and he didn’t receive a sufficient response then, either. He mumbled things about stress and grades, about volleyball practice and afterschool tutoring and chores, but he didn’t complete any of his sentences. Mark decided it had to be an outside influence, and so he forbade him from leaving the apartment. His school was out for summer break so he had some time to figure out what to do, before he was forced to relinquish him back into the cruel world that had tried to destroy him.

And he would figure out what to do. All of his hard work wouldn’t be for nothing. His son, his progeny, was going to bounce back.

Mark believed that with all his heart. After all, how could things not turn out for the best?

His son had the perfect father.