Better than Perfect. Melissa Kantor

and my brother or I started complaining about something or making a fuss, one of them would say, You’re making a scene, and we were pretty much guaranteed to keep quiet.

      My father put his hand on my shoulder. “I want you to come home with me,” he said.

      I stared at him. “Do you mean my home or your home?”

      He looked surprised, like he’d just assumed I’d know what he meant but also like now that I’d asked, he really wasn’t sure. “Well, why don’t we go back to the house? I mean back to your”—he stumbled over the word, but only slightly—“house. And tomorrow, once we know more, you can come with me to Manhattan. And we can take it from there.”

      I shook my head.

      “Juliet.”

      I was still shaking my head, faster now and more violently. “No,” I said.

      “Juliet, I know this has been a horrible ordeal. But we need to be practical.”

      “Mom wouldn’t want you staying in the house,” I said, which seemed as practical as anything I might say.

      “She won’t know I stayed there.”

      “I’m not lying to her,” I said, and then I started to cry. “Why did you say that about her?” I put my hand over my eyes.

      He put his other hand on my other shoulder. “Sweetheart.”

      “Stop touching me,” I snapped, and I jerked away from him. A few heads turned our way.

      His hands hung in the air briefly before he dropped them to his sides. “You’ve had a terrible day. I know that. And I’m sorry we haven’t had a chance to talk about … everything. It’s my fault. I know that. But right now I am trying to think of what’s best for you.” He kept his voice calm the whole time he was talking.

      I’d always liked having a handsome father, but tonight his edgy glasses and crisp, perfectly fitted oxford just irritated me.

      “I’m not going with you, Dad,” I said, still shaking my head. Snot and tears were dripping down my face, but I didn’t care. “I’m not.” I took a step away from him and toward the exit.

      “Juliet, we need to talk.”

      “I can’t talk to you,” I said, walking backward toward the exit. “I’m going to Sofia’s.” I turned around and started walking faster.

      “Juliet!” he called.

      He didn’t run after me, though. I’d known he wouldn’t.

      It would have meant making a scene.

      

      Standing in the parking lot, amazed that so much had happened and yet it was still light out, I realized I didn’t have my car. It reminded me of being an underclassman, when Sofia and I would go to Roosevelt Field Mall or the Miracle Mile and then have to call one of our mothers to come get us. Well, it wasn’t like my mother could come get me now. I crossed the street and walked into a pub with MCMANUS’S written across the front in loopy green neon. Inside, everything was either dark wood or green. It was the kind of bar Sofia and I had discovered we could usually get served in even without fake IDs. Standing next to the hostess’s podium, I couldn’t imagine how walking into a bar, ordering a glass of wine, and getting it handed to me had ever made me happy and giggly or how it ever would again.

      I was seventeen years old and my mother might have just tried to kill herself. How would anything ever make me happy again?

      The hostess asked if she could help me in a way that made me think she’d asked more than once. I snapped to attention and asked if she had the number of a cab company.

      “Island Taxi’s right around the corner, hon. You’re probably better off just going over there rather than calling.” I must have looked like a crazy person, because she offered to get somebody to take me, but I thanked her and said I was okay. She didn’t seem convinced, and she watched me as I headed to the door. I thought maybe there was blood on my tank top, but when I got onto the sidewalk and checked, I didn’t see any.

      The cab dropped me off in front of my house. I paid the man and got out, then stood on the lawn trying to force myself to go inside. I was usually pretty self-disciplined—in swim meets, if the stakes were high enough, I could push myself past the point where my lungs felt like they were going to explode, and even though public speaking terrified me, I was one of the best debaters on the team. But standing on my front lawn, which was damp from the early evening sprinkling it automatically got every other day, I knew there was no way I could take my key out of my bag, put it in the front door of my house, and walk through it.

      Because what was I supposed to do once I got inside my house—clean my mother’s blood off the bathroom floor?

      I took my phone out of my bag even though I wasn’t thinking about calling anyone. Jason’s email was still unopened. I’d gotten it only a few hours earlier, but thinking back to that moment in my hallway when I’d decided to open it after waking my mom was like remembering something that had happened to someone else. Still, I automatically clicked on it and started reading.

      J, I love you and miss you more than I can say. But right now I am digesting an unbelievable meal and I have to admit that it is making the pain of your absence easier to bear …

      I hit reply without bothering to finish reading what he wrote.

      Dear Jason, I have something very bad to tell you. Last night or early this morning, my mother might have tried to …

      But then I stopped typing. Had she or hadn’t she? I deleted might have tried to and instead wrote swallowed some pills. The words looked bizarre. And anyway, my mother had been swallowing some pills all summer. What she’d done last night was swallow too many pills. But how many? One too many? Two too many? A bottle too many?

      And how was I supposed to put what I’d just seen in an email anyway? I tried to imagine Jason, his stomach full of some insanely delectable meal, sitting on the terrace at the villa the Robinsons had rented and getting an email from me in which I said my mother might or might not have tried to kill herself. There was just no way. I had to call him.

      But he didn’t have service on his cell phone in Europe. Neither did Grace. Mark had service on his work cell phone, but I didn’t have that number. My mom’s phone might have it, though. I reached into my bag for my keys, but once I had them in my hand, I couldn’t bring myself to put them in the front door. Opening the door would mean going into the house. Going into the house would mean going upstairs to get my mother’s phone. Getting my mother’s phone would mean going into her room and seeing … everything.

      And anyway, Jason had been sitting on the terrace after dinner hours ago. By now his family was sound asleep. You didn’t call people up in the middle of the night in the middle of their vacation and tell them your mother had taken too many pills. You just didn’t do something like that.

      I put the keys back in my bag and walked across the lawn to the driveway and got into my car. I put my hands on the steering wheel and turned it gently from side to side, like I used to do when I was a little kid and my parents would let me pretend to drive. I wanted to be someplace—anyplace—that wasn’t my house, and I turned the ignition and backed out of the driveway, not even sure where I was going, just desperate to keep moving.

      Deciding to find Sofia at the club happened when I’d already been driving in the opposite direction for almost twenty minutes. There was nobody behind me and nobody coming toward me, so I made an illegal U-turn so sharp my tires squealed in protest and headed toward the Milltown Country Club.

      It was hot in the car, so I rolled the windows up and put the air conditioner on, but that only increased the sensation I