Better Than Perfect (3 page)

The emergency waiting room was freezing cold. I shivered in my tank top and jean shorts, totally underdressed for the over-air-conditioned hospital. All around me, people slouched in their plastic chairs; it was impossible to tell who was really ill and who was just sick with waiting. The ambulance driver had told me to go to the desk and fill out paperwork, but I hadn't been able to answer any of the questions on the form. Even looking at the blank line under
date of birth
left me confused. March twenty-second. I wrote in the numbers: 3. 22. But what was the year? My mother was how old? She was forty-eight. Wait. She was forty-nine. No. Forty-eight. My father was forty-nine. My mother was forty-eight. So what year was she born? I tried to subtract forty-eight from the current year, but I kept losing track of the numbers.
Carry the one,
I thought to
myself, and then the one would disappear and all I could see were the paramedics pumping my mother's chest and shooting her full of something and sitting in the ambulance next to her still, still body and the woman asking me who to call, who to call and me just staring at her and thinking,
No one. There's no one to call.
Because my brother was camping and was I seriously going to call my father and my mother would never forgive me if any of her friends saw her now and my grandparents were too old to be able to help. Finally I told her to call my aunt in Oregon because my aunt was someone who always knew what to do.

“Juliet Newman?” My head shot up. A woman with long, braided hair extensions was surveying the room. “Juliet Newman?”

“Here!” I shouted a little too loudly. A few heads turned in my direction, but most people were too caught up in their own troubles to worry about mine. I made my way down the aisle to the woman.

“Hello, Juliet. I'm Jordyn Phillips. I'm the social worker. I was just with your mother.” She put her hand on my arm gently.

My mother was dead. That was the only reason she was holding my arm the way she was: because my mother had died. If I hadn't slept at Sofia's, my mother would be alive, but now she was dead. The floor dropped out from under me, and I could feel myself falling, falling down into the center of the
earth. I stared at the woman, my mouth hanging open.

“She's resting comfortably,” said Ms. Phillips.

My mother was alive. 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 the folder again, then looked up at me. “There is no evidence that your mother had any self-inflicted wounds, though the bottom of one of her feet had a fairly deep cut on it that looked as if it might have been the result of her stepping on a piece of glass. The paramedics said there was water and a broken glass on the floor of the bathroom.”

Even in the midst of my confusion, I felt a wave of relief so
powerful my knees buckled. “So you're saying she
didn't
try to kill herself?”

But Ms. Phillips was looking at my father. “Do you know anything about your wife's medication? We're trying to figure out if she might have accidentally taken more than she was prescribed or if this was an intentional overdose.”

“I'm not living at home right now,” said my father. Ms. Phillips nodded and made a note on her paper. “But she has sometimes . . . abused prescription medication in the past. And she's not always careful about mixing drugs and alcohol.”

“
What?
That's not true.” I turned to Ms. Phillips. “It's not true,” I said again.

“Juliet,” said my father firmly, “I'm sorry, but it
is
true.”

I kept talking to Ms. Phillips. “She's been depressed off and on all summer because my father
left
.” I spoke quickly, as if I might not have the chance to finish before my father cut me off.

“I see,” said Ms. Phillips, and when she wrote something down, I felt like I'd convinced her to believe me and not my dad.

“Juliet, you are mixing apples and oranges,” said my father. “I'm sorry. I want to respect your mother's privacy, but this is something the people who are treating her have to know.”

I stared at my father, seething, as Ms. Phillips finished writing. Then she flipped the folder closed. “The attending psychiatrist has suggested your wife be admitted to the
hospital's psychiatric unit so we can evaluate her. He'll be out to speak to you soon, but I'd like to get us started on the paperwork so we can transfer her as soon as she's ready. If you could come with me, I'll get the insurance information I need.” She nodded toward the door.

My father rubbed the side of his face as if he had a headache, then realized Ms. Phillips couldn't get past him. “Sorry,” he said, and he opened the door and held it politely for Ms. Phillips and me to pass through.

In the hallway, Ms. Phillips started to head back the way we had come, but I said, “Wait.” She turned around.

“I want to see her.”

My father and Ms. Phillips were both looking at me. My father spoke first. “Juliet, I'm not sure that's such a good idea.”

I kept my eyes on Ms. Phillips. I knew if I looked at my dad, I'd lose my courage. “I want to see her.”

“I understand,” said Ms. Phillips. She put her hand on my arm again, and I had the crazy urge to ask if she would let me go home with her.

I followed Ms. Phillips back into the waiting area, through an enormous set of double doors, and down a wide corridor. There were empty stretchers and gurneys up against the walls, and I wondered if one of them was the one my mom had come in on.

I'd assumed Ms. Phillips was taking me to a hospital room,
but she led me through another, smaller set of double doors, which opened up onto a space bigger than the waiting room. There was a central island with doctors and nurses in it, and all around the outer wall were beds, some of which were curtained off. A symphony of rhythmic beeps filled the space. An older man was on a bed directly in front of me with two elderly women, one on either side of him. One of the women was crying; the other was rocking slightly. I wondered what was wrong with him, and then one of the women turned slightly and saw me watching them. I looked away, embarrassed to have been caught spying.