Better Than Perfect (8 page)

“Sweetheart, she's still your mom,” Kathy started. “She's still the person you thought she was.”

I raised my eyebrow and stared at Kathy. “Are you serious?”

“What I mean is she still loves you.”

I had no idea what I was supposed to say to that, so I just sat there and let Kathy talk. She toyed with the pad of paper as she spoke, turning it around and around on the table. “They're still trying to figure out how much of everything she was taking so they can start weaning her off of it. These medications are serious, and you can't just stop taking them on a dime.” Abruptly she pushed the pad away, as if she hadn't realized she'd been touching it. “The doctor is recommending that your mom be transferred from the hospital to a long-term facility. Someplace she can get some help.”

The word
long-term
felt like a punch in the stomach. I swallowed and forced myself to sound calm. “How long-term are we talking about?”

Kathy reached over and put her hand on mine. Her fingernails were cut short and unmanicured, nothing like my mom's perfect, oval nails with their sheer polish. And unlike my mom, who wears a lot of jewelry, Kathy only wore a plain gold wedding band. It was easier to look at my aunt's hands than at her face.

“My guess is once they find a space for her somewhere, we're talking about six weeks to three months.” I didn't say anything as the time my mother might be away washed over me like a huge wave, leaving me shaky and scared. Kathy took my other hand in hers and leaned forward. I could tell she wanted me to look at her, but I stayed focused on her fingernails. “Juliet, I want you to consider something. I want you to consider coming to stay with me and Sam and the boys until your mom's better.”

Now I did look at her. “What?”

“I'd like you to think about moving to Portland.”

My lips were dry, and I licked them. “You're not serious.”

“I am.”

There was silence, and then I said as calmly as I could, “You think she meant to do it. To kill herself.”

Kathy shrugged sadly. “I can't say that for sure. I don't know enough to know. I don't even know how we got to this
point. I blame myself. I knew she was in bad shape, but I was busy, and I put off coming out . . .” She shook her head. “The point is I want to make a real plan. I want to take care of you.”

“Aunt Kathy, it's my senior year. I can't just pick up and go to another school.”

“I know this is hard,” she said, her eyes bright. “If you were younger, it would be so much easier. I'd be upstairs right now packing your suitcase. Not neatly enough for you, of course.” We both laughed at that. Once, my parents went away to Vancouver for a weekend while Oliver and I stayed with Aunt Kathy and Uncle Sam and my cousins, Andrew and William. I was eight, and apparently I organized and color-coordinated Andrew and William's drawers. I also delivered a lecture on tidiness to the whole family.

I guess you're never too young to be type A.

“I'm worried about you, Juliet.” Aunt Kathy's voice was gentle. “I know you're super competent and responsible. But I'm worried. Your dad travels so much. . . .” She bit her lip and looked around the kitchen. A few years ago, my parents had done a big renovation on the house, pushing out the back wall to create the eating nook we were sitting in now. I remembered them sitting with the architect, looking over the plans in the dining room, cheese and crackers and a bottle of wine open on the table. “Think about it,” Aunt Kathy finished. “Just tell me you'll think about it.”

I stood up, walked over to the window, and stared out at
the line of trees that marked the far border of our perfectly manicured backyard. “Okay,” I promised. “I will.”

The hospital didn't allow psychiatric patients to have visitors who were under eighteen, so only Aunt Kathy could go see my mom. She suggested I might want to write my mother a note, so I went upstairs to my room and tried to think of something to say.
Dear Mom.
I sat and stared at the paper for a while. Then I wrote,
I love you and I miss you.
I looked at the words. They seemed so meager on the page. I ripped the paper up and started again.
Dear Mom, I really hope you're okay.
That was worse; obviously she wasn't okay. I ripped up the second draft also, and when Kathy headed to the hospital, I just told her to tell my mom that I loved her.

I went on autopilot.

Every morning I woke up at seven, had breakfast with my aunt, got dressed and took a train into the city. Then I walked across town to the UN, where I snapped on my ID badge and got my agenda for the day. Some days I sat in on low-level meetings. Other days I listened to the General Assembly debate. There were information sessions about specific countries and there were lunches in the glass-walled cafeteria overlooking the East River. Meetings with NGOs working on girls' education. Papers to read and discuss. Access to the UN's library and database. Sitting on the 5:48 train headed home, I would realize I had no idea what I'd seen or said or done all day. I would get off the train and it would be raining and I'd think,
Was it raining this morning when I left the house?
and I wouldn't be able to remember.

Aunt Kathy went to visit my mother at the hospital every day. Apparently she was still fairly dopey from the different medications they were giving her. I couldn't see why the doctors couldn't just figure out what she needed to clear her head and ask her if she'd tried to kill herself, but Kathy told me I needed to be patient. I reminded her that patience was not one of my virtues. Oliver finally arrived at some spot in the Adirondack Park with cell service, got the ten million messages we'd left for him, and came home. He went to visit our mom, then met our dad for dinner in the city and stayed with him. Somehow his choosing to stay in the city instead of at the house felt like a decision to align himself against me and Aunt Kathy, and when he called and asked me to have dinner with him and our dad, I said I had plans. He asked me how I was and I said I was okay. I asked him how he was and he said he didn't know. Part of me wondered if he might offer to stay at the house with me after Aunt Kathy left, but he didn't. I guess I shouldn't have expected him to. It wasn't like he didn't have a life in New Haven. And school was starting for him soon, too. We promised to talk in a couple of days, but after I hung up, I had the strangest feeling—so strong it was like a premonition—that I would never see him again.

Friday when I got home the house was empty. I tried to do my SAT homework. Glen, my tutor, was on vacation, but when he came back, he was going to want to see all the progress I'd made while he was away. There was also preseason coming, which
I was totally unprepared for. Out my back window, I could see the pool. It was pristine, shimmering red and gold with the light of the setting sun, and I thought about the pool guy and how he kept coming every week even though nobody used the pool and how he'd keep coming even though soon nobody would be living in the house. The pool guy, the gardener, the housekeeper . . . my house was its own little economy. All these people working so hard to make everything clean and pretty and well-manicured.

And with all that, my parents still hadn't been able to be happy together.

I turned away from the window. The thought of motivating myself to get off my bed, go outside, and swim laps was exhausting, and instead I lay down and tried to get through a reading passage on the creation of the EPA.

I must have conked out, because the next thing I knew, Aunt Kathy was shaking me awake gently. “Juliet,” she whispered.

I sat up, sweaty and disoriented. She was sitting on the edge of my bed, smiling at me, and she looked so much like my mother that it hurt to see her. I closed my eyes and leaned back against my pillow.

“You were really asleep there,” she said, patting me.

“I was having the strangest dream. . . . I was on a boat, and you were there. And Mom. And we'd forgotten something, and I think we had to go back to get it, but I couldn't figure out how to work the sails. . . .” I shook my head. “I can't remember.
Maybe you weren't there.” The dream receded, leaving in its wake the sense that I'd done something wrong.

“Come on,” she said, when I didn't say any more. “Let's go have some dinner.”

Downstairs Kathy stood at the counter chopping while standing on one foot, her other foot against her knee, like a flamingo. I sat on a stool, watching her and trying to wake up. “Have you given any thought to my suggestion? About coming to Oregon.” She was leaving Sunday morning. I wondered if she'd made me a reservation just in case.

“I have.” I wasn't lying, either. I'd imagined packing a suitcase and taking a plane to Oregon with Aunt Kathy. Waking up in the guest room. Going to the high school Andrew and William would go to in a few years.

“And?” She dropped the tomato cubes in a bowl and sprinkled some feta in with them. I got up, went over to the cabinet, and took out two plates.

“I can't,” I said. I tried to explain why. “I'm already registered to take the SATs here and—”

“Juliet, you must know that you can take the SATs in Oregon.” For the first time since she'd arrived, Aunt Kathy sounded impatient with me. She shook the colander holding the pasta roughly.

“But I'm taking them at Webster High.” I put the plates down on the table more heavily than I'd meant to. “Because everyone knows you have to take them at Webster High, not at Milltown, because there's always some kind of problem
with the proctoring at Milltown. And if I come live with you, I won't know the right place to take them.” She started to interrupt me, but I talked over her. “And there
is
a right place to take them in Portland, Kathy. Trust me. You just don't know about it. Plus I've got all my AP classes
and
swimming
and
debate
and
my SAT tutor—I can't leave all that behind. You have to understand that.”

She added the pasta to the feta and tomatoes. “Is this about Jason? Because I know he's a wonderful boyfriend, and I'm sure the idea of living with him is very exciting, but you can't let that cloud your decision.”

“It's not about Jason,” I said firmly. “I'm not even sure I'm going to live with the Robinsons.”

Kathy didn't look completely convinced, but she didn't push it. Instead, she brought the pasta over to the table and gestured for me to sit down. “There's something else I'd like to talk about. And that's your seeing someone.” She reached behind her and took a piece of paper off the counter, then slid it across the table to me. “Her name's Elizabeth Bennet, and she's apparently terrific.”

I made a face. “Her name's Elizabeth Bennet? Like the Jane Austen character?” I'd done an independent study with my English teacher last year, and we'd read
Pride and Prejudice
,
Emma
,
and
Sense and Sensibility
.

Aunt Kathy laughed. “You know, I didn't even notice that.”

“I'm not seeing a therapist named Elizabeth Bennet.” I rolled my eyes. “Please.”

“Juliet, don't be like that. She's a good therapist. I think she could help you.” Kathy turned the paper toward herself, like maybe the woman's name would have changed since she wrote it down.

“Aunt Kathy,
I'm
not the one who needs help. My
mother
is the one who needs help, okay?” It came out really nasty.

“It's okay to be angry,” said Aunt Kathy, her voice quiet and calm. “Even if all she was was irresponsible about her medication, your mother did a horrible thing.”

“No, she didn't,” I corrected her. I was embarrassed by how emotional I was being, and I tried to get my voice under control so Aunt Kathy wouldn't think I was freaking out. “It's not her fault. I feel bad for her, not angry at her.”

“Juliet, it's not your job to take care of the grown-ups in your life.” Aunt Kathy reached her hand across the table. “And it's okay to be angry.”

“Don't tell me how to feel,” I snapped. “I mean . . . I know it's okay to be angry, okay? But I'm not angry. Not at Mom, anyway.”

She studied my face for an uncomfortable minute. “I'd feel better if you'd see someone.”

“If it's not my job to worry about the adults in my life, then it's not my job to see a therapist so you feel better, right?” I raised an eyebrow at her to show how impressed she should be by my flawless logic.

Kathy threw her napkin up over her head. “Okay. I surrender. You win.” She stood up and walked over to the refrigerator,
clipped the piece of paper with Dr. Bennet's name on it under a magnet, and came back to the table.

“Just so we're clear, you know you can always change your mind, right?”

It wasn't clear to me if she meant I could change my mind about Dr. Bennet or about moving to Oregon, but since neither of those things was going to happen, there was no reason to ask which she was referring to.

“I know,” I told her. And this time I was the one who reached my hand across the table to hers. “Thanks.”

That night I put on my bathing suit for the first time in weeks. I was planning on swimming laps, but I just ended up sitting by the dark pool with my feet dangling in the water, trying to make a decision.

My dad kept leaving me voice messages about apartments the HR person at his consulting firm had found for him. Some had pools. One had a tennis court, which his mentioning as a selling point was kind of hilarious given the fact that my mother was the only person in our family who played tennis. I tried to imagine living in some random apartment complex with my father and the college girl he'd found to stay with me while he commuted back and forth to Ohio where a hospital had hired his firm to restructure it. Would she try to be friends with me? Would we all have dinner together when he wasn't traveling? Would the two of them fall in love?

Could my life possibly get even more melodramatic than it already was?

Sitting there, staring at the few brave leaves that had fallen since the pool guy had cleaned, I knew that I was going to move in with the Robinsons. I made the decision without making it, just like the summer Sofia and I vowed we weren't going to eat any refined sugar and then we'd been at the diner one night and found ourselves ordering dessert.

I sat back on my hands, looking through the glass doors at my aunt, who was sitting at the kitchen table talking to my grandparents on the phone. From the little bit I'd overheard before coming outside, I could tell they wanted to come down and that Aunt Kathy was trying to get them to wait. I hoped she would convince them not to come. I loved my grandparents, but my grandmother was fairly nervous and my grandfather's idea of intimate family conversation was asking you what route you'd driven to his house in Connecticut and how much traffic there'd been. I couldn't exactly see them being helpful in the midst of a mental health crisis.

As I watched my aunt, I wished it were my mother sitting there instead of her sister. I understood that the social worker was right, that now my mother was going to get the help she needed. And I knew I should be happy about that. But if I was being honest, I had to admit that I wished my mom were sitting at the kitchen table, buzzed on muscle relaxants and white wine, while I swam laps, blissfully ignorant of all the sadness inside her pretty head.