Better than Perfect. Melissa Kantor

I want my dad to fix this.

      But I knew he wasn’t going to be able to. After all, his leaving was the reason everything was broken in the first place.

      

      “Not like the religion,” Sofia said, slapping my foot with the flash card she was holding. “Catholic lowercase c. We’ve done this one already.”

      “Okay, okay, okay,” I said, biting my lip. Sofia was lying on her bed and I was lying on the floor with my legs hooked over the bed and basically draped across Sofia’s lap. Sofia’s room was tiny, which meant that when we were in it, we were always more or less on top of each other.

      “You keep saying okay, but you’re not saying what the definition is,” Sofia said. She leaned on her elbow and looked down at me, her black curly hair tumbling over the edge of the bed. I’d always envied Sofia her hair, but she said it was more trouble than it was worth; all during swim season (and most of the off-season), she just shoved it into a ponytail.

      “Patience is a virtue,” I reminded her.

      She rolled away onto her back. “You know what I think of when I hear stalling like that? I think of all the people who are applying to Harvard early action.”

      “Do I do this to you about Stanford?” Sofia was obsessed with going to California, which she believed was her spiritual home. Her mom’s family was from there, so if she got in, her mom was going to move west with her, which Sofia was actually happy about. I couldn’t imagine my mom moving to Cambridge with me if I got into Harvard. Of course, I couldn’t imagine what was going to happen to her when I left, either.

      It was one of the many, many things I tried not to think about lately.

      “You are competing with hundreds of girls who want to go to Harvard,” Sofia reminded me.

      “Thank you so much, Sofia Taylor.”

      “Thousands of them!”

      “What is your point?” I swung my feet off the bed and sat up, irritated.

      Sofia sat up also and pointed at me with the index card. “My point is they can probably all define catholic. So why can’t you?”

      Like a bolt of lightning, the definition came to me. “Including a wide variety.”

      Sofia held up her palm. “High five, baby. That’s the last of them.”

      I slapped her hand lightly, then lay back down. Sofia was also retaking the SAT, but she only wanted to get her score up by a little bit. Even though we were supposedly both studying, our study sessions had turned into her spending hours trying to drill vocabulary words into me.

      “Do you want to stay for dinner?” she asked. “My mom says she misses you.” Sofia’s mom was a nurse on a maternity ward. She’d started working the night shift when we were sophomores because she said she got to see Sofia more if she worked from midnight to eight a.m. Usually they had dinner together before her mom went to work.

      “Let me call my mom,” I said. My mother and Jason’s mother said they liked Sofia’s mother, but sometimes I got the sense they didn’t totally approve of her. She’d had Sofia on her own, and they lived in a pretty small apartment, and she worked, while both of our moms stayed home. Whenever Sofia and I had a sleepover, we almost always stayed at my house. My mom had never said I couldn’t sleep at Sofia’s. Instead, she’d say, “I think I’d prefer if you two slept here.” Now she could use as an excuse the fact that Sofia’s mother worked at night, but she’d “preferred” our sleeping at my house even when Sofia’s mother was home.

      I was a little nervous about leaving my mom alone, but staying at Sofia’s for dinner wasn’t exactly the same as going to France for two weeks with Jason’s family. I dialed, but it went right to voice mail, and there was no answer on the home number.

      When I’d left the house in the morning, my mom had been about to go play tennis with her friend Laura. She’d been wearing her whites and she’d seemed to be fine. But between then and now, had a Good Day become a Bad Day?

      Suddenly I was mad. Why shouldn’t I have a fun dinner with Sofia and her mom? Why should I have to worry about the quality of my mom’s day?

      I texted her. having dinner @ sofia’s. home later. I hesitated, then added call if u need me before hitting send.

      “Oh my God, Beth, this is amazing.” In front of me was a plate with chicken and apricots, tomato salad, and corn on the cob. As I bit into the corn, I realized it was the first home-cooked meal I’d had all summer—even on Good Days my mom picked up dinner at La Scala or the Garden of Eating. The irony of my mom’s judging Sofia’s mother’s mothering was fully revealed to me.

      “It is good,” agreed Beth, taking a bite herself. She was wearing her nurse’s uniform: white pants and a bright pink short-sleeved top with blue teddy bears on it. Her gray hair was cut short, almost like a swim cap. Unlike my mom, Beth had never colored her hair, and she didn’t seem to worry about how she looked or what she weighed or wore. She always commented on how nice my mom looked, and once Sofia had told me that her mom had said that my parents were glamorous. But it never seemed like Sofia’s mom was jealous of how pretty my mom was or how happy my parents were. Which was probably smart given what my mom looked like lately and the way my parents’ marriage had turned out.

      Beth grinned, pleased with her cooking, and took a bite. “Sofia, the tomato salad is perfect.”

      “Thanks, Mom.” Sofia made her face the picture of exaggerated puzzlement. “I wonder who taught me to make it.”

      “Hmmm,” said Beth. Her smile widened, and she patted Sofia lightly on the cheek. “I wonder.”

      Sofia always used to say she was jealous of my family, but even before my parents separated, I was sometimes jealous of her. There was something so casual and easy about how she and her mom were together. My mom and I used to go out for dinner just the two of us sometimes, but it was always a Dinner. My mom would read about some new restaurant in Manhattan or near our house and she’d make a reservation and we’d get all dressed up, and once we were there, she’d order some seasonal cocktail and then she’d look around and say something like, “Here we are!” and it was like what she was really excited about was the idea of our being there. If Sofia’s mom took us for dinner, it was usually to the Chinese restaurant in downtown Milltown, but somehow it was always more fun.

      As if she could read my mind, Beth asked, “How’s your mom doing?”

      I didn’t want to lie, but I knew my mom would be embarrassed if Beth knew about her Bad Days. “She’s been playing a lot of tennis, but her back was bothering her the other day, so she might have to slow down a little.”

      Beth didn’t point out that she hadn’t asked about my mother’s tennis game. “Maybe we could have her over.”

      “Thanks,” I said. “I know she’d appreciate that.” I didn’t know if she’d appreciate it, actually. My mom liked to host—she and my father were always throwing dinner parties, and when she went out with friends, she liked to pick up the check. I wondered how she’d feel about having dinner at Sofia’s, if she’d be comfortable letting Beth cook for her. She’d bring an expensive bottle of wine, and she’d ask Beth if she liked it and tell her all the things she was supposed to be tasting in it—oak and cherry and undertones of, I didn’t know, wheat or yeast or black beans or something. The whole thing sounded completely awful, but hopefully Beth wouldn’t follow up on the invitation.