Better than Perfect. Melissa Kantor

She was alive and resting comfortably. I stumbled in my relief, and Ms. Phillips gripped my arm to steady me.

      “Juliet!” I snapped my head around and saw my father racing across the waiting area.

      We’d talked and texted, but I’d only seen my dad once since he’d moved out. In July, I’d had a Wednesday off from Children United, and I’d met him at his office. We’d gotten sandwiches and taken them to a shady spot between two buildings with a waterfall and some benches. My dad called it a park, which seemed like a stretch. As we’d opened our sandwiches and settled onto the bench, I’d tried to remember the last time it had just been the two of us, and the only memory I could come up with was the previous summer, when he and I had done an ice run right before my parents’ big Fourth of July party. Sometimes when I pictured my dad, I pictured his signature on his email.

      It was a broiling day, and my sundress stuck to the backs of my legs. My dad was wearing a tie, but even though he was sweating, he didn’t complain about the heat. He’d grown up without a lot of money and without a lot of the things that my brother and I took for granted, like central air conditioning and sleepaway camp and not having to have jobs after school. It drove him crazy when we left lights on if we weren’t in a room or turned the temperature in the house down to below seventy in the summer.

      My dad asked about my internship and my classes for the fall, but all I really wanted to talk to him about was what was going on with him and my mom. Halfway through my sandwich, I asked him if it was true that he’d gotten tired of being married, which was what my mother said.

      “Juliet,” he’d said, wiping some mayo off the tip of his finger, “does that really sound like me? Do I strike you as a quitter?”

      “No,” I’d answered. Rather than look him in the eye, I watched him open the paper bag on his lap and push his napkin into it. “But it’s not like being married is the same as working.”

      My dad crunched the bag into a ball. “In some ways it is, Juliet. You have to work hard to get through the bad times. But you need someone to meet you halfway.”

      I snapped my head up to look at him. “So you’re saying it’s Mom’s fault? She wouldn’t meet you halfway?”

      “I’m not blaming your mother,” he said patiently. “This is nobody’s fault. I know that’s hard to believe, but it’s the only answer I have for you.” It was what he always said when I asked him to explain what was going on, but this time I stared at him, not saying anything, a terrifying idea suddenly overwhelming me. Was there some awful secret that my parents were keeping from me?

      I kept staring. Like my mother, my father was very good-looking. His hair had some gray in it, but it was still thick, unlike most of my friends’ fathers’. He wore vaguely hipster glasses and, like my mother, he spent money on expensive clothes.

      Had he been having an affair?

      My dad was still talking. “… and I’m sorry, Juliet. What matters is that your mom and I both still love you and Oliver very much. We’re still your parents even though we’re not together anymore.”

      He was waiting for me to say something, but the possibility that he’d been unfaithful to my mother was too awful for me to speak it. Instead, I cleared my throat, then forced myself to joke, “Did you get that from a book or something?”

      “What gave it away?” My dad grinned at me and reached over to tousle my hair. “Come on. If we walk a couple of blocks, we can get an ice cream cone for less than four dollars.”

      At the end of lunch, my dad had promised we’d see a lot of each other, more than we had when he was living at the house. We’d agreed to have dinner once a week—either he’d come out to Long Island or I’d stay in Manhattan and meet him after work.

      The first week, he’d canceled because of a work dinner. The second week, he’d had to be out of town until Wednesday night, and he’d asked if I could do Thursday, but I’d said I had my SAT tutor. The third week, the same thing had happened, except he’d asked if we could do Tuesday night.

      “I. Have. My. SAT. Tutor,” I’d said, slowly and carefully, like maybe he wasn’t a native English speaker.

      “I know you have an SAT tutor. I’m sorry, but I thought it was Thursday night, not Tuesday night. Last week it was Thursday. So shoot me.”

      “No, Dad. Last week it was Tuesday and Thursday. And the week before that. And the week before that. In fact, I’ve been meeting my SAT tutor Tuesday and Thursday nights for the past six months. So shoot me. Or, wait. You’re probably too busy to do that, either.”

      He ignored my sarcasm. “What about Saturday night?”

      “Dad, I want to see my friends on Saturday night. It’s the one night everyone doesn’t have to be home early.”

      We’d agreed to have dinner this coming Wednesday. But now, here he was.

      As soon as my dad was next to me, he reached for my hand. Unlike my mom, my dad didn’t look physically different from how he’d looked before. His hair was the same, and he was wearing a blue shirt and a pair of khakis. He’d probably been at work. He and my mom had sometimes fought about how much he worked. “Are you all right?” he asked.

      “Seriously?” I asked, pulling my hand from his.

      “I’m sorry.” He shook his head. “I meant … well, you know what I meant.”

      I didn’t, actually, but before I could ask him, the social worker extended her hand and said, “I’m Jordyn Phillips.” I wasn’t sure if she was intentionally interrupting my father and me or if she hadn’t picked up on the tension between us.

      He shook her hand. “My sister-in-law called me and said my wife is here.”

      My father used to refer to my mother as his wife all the time. I believe my wife made a reservation … I’m looking for my wife … Have you met my wife? But now his saying my mother was his wife felt dishonest, even though I knew that technically they were still married.

      I said nothing about their separation, not even when Ms. Phillips said, “Mr. Newman, your wife is resting comfortably. Why don’t we go somewhere we can talk in private?” I followed my dad and Ms. Phillips out of the waiting area and down a hallway lit with bright fluorescent lights.

      We hadn’t gone very far when she opened a gray door. Inside was a small room with a table and two plastic yellow chairs. The room was even more depressing than the waiting room. Were all hospitals so relentlessly awful?

      My father didn’t sit down, so neither did I. Ms. Phillips also stood.

      “Mr. Newman, your wife may have made a suicide attempt.”

      Even though I was the one who’d found her, even though it wasn’t like I’d thought she’d just lain down on the floor to have a nap, I made a funny noise with the back of my throat when Ms. Phillips said that. She and my father turned to look at me.

      “Honey, maybe you should wait outside,” said my dad. His voice was soft, concerned, and I didn’t know what to do with that. By way of answering him, I just shook my head. Once again, he reached for my hand, and this time I let him take it.

      Ms. Phillips opened a folder she’d been carrying and started talking, glancing at it as she spoke. “Your daughter found your wife unconscious on the floor of her bathroom at approximately four o’clock this afternoon. There were several bottles of pills on her night table and in the bathroom with her. Given the dates the prescriptions were filled, it’s difficult to know how many pills she actually took today. Because she had Ambien and Valium in her possession, both of which suppress respiration and which, taken in excess, can be fatal, we pumped her stomach and gave her a dose of ipecac, which is an emetic.”

      “What about the blood?” I asked.

      My father turned to me. “What? What blood?”

      She checked