Better Than Perfect Page 11

“Whatever,” Declan said finally. “It was no big deal.” I watched him follow Rob outside and head to Rob’s BMW, the little bell dinging when the door of the deli swung shut.

  The car was cool, and I slid gratefully into the smooth leather seat. I took the bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich out of the paper bag and handed it to Jason.

  “Thanks, J,” he said. “Where’s your coffee?”

  I looked out the window. Everything on the other side of the glass looked as hot and wilted in the September heat as I felt.

  “J?” said Jason.

  “Yeah?” I asked, startled.

  “Your coffee?”

  “Oh I . . . I realized it wasn’t what I was in the mood for,” I said. “I should probably drink less coffee anyway.”

  Jason took a bite and put the sandwich in his lap. “Not first semester senior year you shouldn’t,” he said. He put the car in drive and pulled out of the parking lot. “Now is not the time to make major changes to your routine.” We eased into the traffic on Judson Road.

  “You’re right,” I said, still looking out the window. “Now’s not the time.”

  14

  I sensed Declan everywhere.

  Tuesday, he walked into English, and my heart slammed against my chest as he looked over and nodded at Sofia and me and then went and sat in the back of the class next to Christian Donaldson. Even though he was on the opposite side of the room and behind me, I could feel him back there, as if there were an invisible thread connecting us. The whole first week of school, as soon as I forgot about him even for a minute, I’d pass him in the hallway or I’d see him across the lawn or he’d walk into Mr. Burton’s class and I’d feel the gentle tug. Declan. Declan. After that morning in Jaybo’s, though, we never spoke to or looked at each other.

  I was glad that Elise had been right—my schedule was nearly killing me. I spent my days racing from class to class, then to practice, then home for homework or tutoring sessions with Glen or writing drafts of my supplemental college essays. I’d collapse into bed long after midnight, setting the alarm for six so I could finish whatever I hadn’t done the night before. I barely had time to think about Declan. I barely had time to think about my mom and the countdown to my visit with her. When my dad called, I barely had time to tell him I didn’t have time to talk on the phone.

  How u holding up? my brother texted me. Don’t stress college 2 much.

  The summer before my brother’s senior year of high school, my mother drove him up to Yale so he could meet with the squash coach. All fall, on the kitchen calendar, she kept a list of his major assignments and when they were due. She cross-referenced his applications so that if he didn’t get into Yale early, he would know which parts of which supplemental essays he could use more than once. In late October, when he got strep throat, she emailed his teachers to make sure he got every assignment, and then she emailed them back, attaching the work he’d done while she brought him soup and Ritz crackers so he could keep up his strength. Until he got the letter saying he’d gotten into Yale, she made sure he never missed a class, was never late with a paper, was never unprepared for even the most minor reading quiz, and even after he got accepted and we celebrated with a huge family dinner, to which we all wore Yale T-shirts, hats, and scarves that she’d had FedExed overnight from New Haven, she stayed on top of him so that he wouldn’t be one of those kids you heard about whose grades dropped so much that a college rescinded his acceptance.

  And now she was in a mental hospital and he was texting me not to stress college too much.

  Thanks, Ollie, I texted back. I’ll try not to.

  Two weeks into school, when we were talking about trying to squeeze in an extra debate meeting before the competition the following weekend, Kenyatta suggested some of us get together at his house on Saturday.

  “I can’t do morning,” I said. “I have a practice SAT. Oh, and then I’ve got a meet. What about afternoon?”

  “I can do that,” said Sebastian, who was a junior and probably going to be captain next year. “But only from three to five. I’ve got my math tutor after.” A few other people said they could do Saturday and took out their phones to write it down.

  Jason cleared his throat. “Saturday afternoon’s not really good,” he said. “What about Sunday?”

  “What’s wrong with Saturday?” I asked.

  He was staring at me, his eyes bulging unnaturally. “Don’t you have that, um, thing?”

  Macy was studying her iPhone. “I could do Sunday between twelve and two,” she said. “Or I could stay late next Thursday.”

  “I can’t stay late next Thursday, I have my SAT tutor,” I said, still looking at Jason. What? I mouthed.

  Your mom, he mouthed back.

  “Um, let’s do Sunday, guys, ’kay?” I asked quickly.

  “Sure,” said Sebastian. “What time? I have squash at five.”

  Later, when Jason and I were walking to his car, I mock-slapped my forehead. “I can’t believe I almost forgot to visit my mother in the mental hospital.”

  He shook his head and took my hand. “I’m glad you think it’s funny.” He’d offered to come with me to Roaring Brook, but only immediate relatives were allowed in the hospital. I was glad the choice wasn’t mine to make. I wouldn’t have thought there was something more intimate than sex, but if there was, it was definitely visiting a person’s mother in a mental hospital. I wasn’t sure I was ready to share that part of my life with anyone, not even Jason.

  “Well, I mean, it’s not funny funny,” I corrected him. “It’s, you know, crazy funny. It might be the definition of crazy funny, actually.”

  He clicked his key and the alarm gave a brief squawk. Then he opened the car door for me. “I love how your mind works, J,” he said.

  “Translation: You think I’m a nutcase.”

  “I’m saying I wouldn’t change a thing about you.” He kissed me and gestured for me to get into the car.

  Unfortunately, my sense of humor deserted me on Saturday afternoon, and for the life of me I couldn’t remember what I’d found funny about visiting my mother in a mental hospital.

  Roaring Brook was on a wooded piece of land next to a brook that trickled more than it roared. Something about the elegant private road reminded me of the drive up to the Milltown Country Club, and thinking about that drive made me think about everything that had happened before I saw Sofia and everything that had happened after.

  Once upon a time, my mind had been a happy block where all the kids played together and nobody locked their doors at night.

  Now it was a bad neighborhood I tried to avoid going into alone.

  The road forked, and I followed the arrow on the sign that read VISITOR PARKING, which landed me in a small but surprisingly crowded lot. All these people know someone in a mental hospital, I thought. I wondered if any of the other visitors had taken a practice SAT that morning. What was the Venn diagram of people with a mentally ill family member who took the SATs?

  It would have made a good SAT question.

  The hospital was an odd building—the stairs leading up from the parking lot took me to what looked like an old house, but there were more modern wings coming off on both sides. Had people gotten crazier over the years, so they had to make the place bigger? Was there a tour guide I could ask, like in Colonial Williamsburg?

  Our family had taken a trip to Colonial Williamsburg the summer I was fourteen and Oliver was sixteen. Standing on the wooden porch of Roaring Brook, I had a sudden, powerful memory of my dad lifting his glass at an old-timey restaurant where we’d eaten. There had been some kind of crisis that day. Had we booked a hotel room and it hadn’t been available? Had the car broken down? I couldn’t remember what had happened, just that my parents had been on their cell phones a lot and it had been very tense and then we’d finally gotten to the restaurant. Both of my parents ordered drinks before dinner, which they didn’t normally do, and neither of them said anything when Oliver and I attacked the basket of rolls
the waitress put on the table.

  When my parents’ drinks came, they lifted their glasses at each other and my dad made a toast. He said, “To my beautiful wife who never loses her head in a crisis,” and then my parents kissed.

  I remembered the toast because at the time it had embarrassed me that my dad had called my mom beautiful, and when he’d kissed her, I’d only been more embarrassed. Was it because Jason and I had already started going out, so I knew more about what kissing meant than I had before? Whether or not that was why, the memory had stayed with me—my dad smiling at my mom, his glass raised in her direction. My mother’s glass clinking gently against his. Their kiss.

  Had they been unhappy then? Because that moment looked a lot like happiness to me.

  I pushed open the thick glass door, glad that the place felt more like a house than a hospital. Behind an elegant wooden desk was a youngish woman, maybe in her thirties, who looked up when I walked in.

  “May I help you?” She reminded me of a salesclerk in a store.

  “I’m here to see my mo—sorry. I’m here to see Barbara Newman.”

  “Of course,” she said. She stood up and came around the other side of the desk. “She’s expecting you.” The woman led me down a corridor lined with small old-fashioned tables and chairs. The floors had antique runners, and there were small, glass-shaded lamps along the walls. It really did feel like we could be in somebody’s home until we got to the end of the hallway and she had to type a code into a keypad in order to open the door.

  On the other side of the door, an older woman in a nurse’s uniform was waiting for us. “Thanks,” she said to the first woman. And then she held out her hand. “I’m Grace.”

  It was startling to hear Jason’s mom’s name come out of the nurse’s mouth. I shook her hand and said, “I’m Juliet.”

  “Come,” she said briskly. “Some of the patients are at therapy now, and others have time to themselves. We have group sessions in the morning and the afternoon. It’s a chance for the patients to get to know one another and talk about . . . well, some of the issues that brought them here.” Grace was acting as if I didn’t know what I was walking into, like maybe I thought my mom really was out of town looking at jobs.

  We must have crossed over into the newer part of the building, because all the charming molding and carpets of the corridor were replaced with linoleum floors and walls painted a flat, institutional pale blue. There was a faint smell of some kind of cleanser. Along the corridor were doors, each one with a small window in it. I was scared of what was behind the doors, but when we passed an open one, I saw that there was just a bed and a table and a small chest of drawers in the room. I felt better until I saw that the large window had bars on it.

  “Here we are,” said Grace, stopping in front of another door, this one glass without any keypad. She turned to me, and her voice was cheerful. “When’s the last time you saw your mother, honey?”

  “When she was in the hospital. The night she . . . was admitted.” As I said it I felt guilty, but then I reminded myself that I couldn’t have seen her between then and now because no one would let me.

  “Well, you may find her a little changed,” Grace continued in the same chipper voice.

  Given the fact that the last time I’d seen her she’d been tied to her bed and the time before that she’d been half-naked and unconscious on the floor of her bathroom, changed didn’t exactly seem like a bad thing.

  “Okay,” I said. “Thanks. I’ll be ready for that.”

  Grace placed her hand on my arm. “I’m going to suggest that we keep the visit brief. I’ll be back in half an hour.” She patted me lightly, then turned and headed back down the corridor.

  As soon as she was gone, I realized there were about ten million questions I should have asked. Were there things I wasn’t supposed to talk to my mom about? How was I supposed to act? If she started getting upset, what was I supposed to do? Change the subject? End the visit?

  The realization that I was scared to talk to my mom made me feel heavy and tired in a way that even my swim meet and practice SAT hadn’t, and I had to work to push open the door, which led into a sunny room with walls and windows that were almost entirely glass. It made me think of the greenhouse in the botanical garden.

  I spotted my mom immediately even though she was sitting in a chair that was slightly hidden by a large potted tree. She was wearing a blue cotton sweater and a pair of linen pants, and the New York Times was open on her lap. I hadn’t realized until this minute how much I’d missed her, and I crossed the space between us quickly, almost at a run.

  “Mommy!” I cried. I hadn’t called her that in years, but the word flew out of my mouth. There she was. My mommy.

  She turned her head slowly. Except for the long roots of her hair, she looked totally normal. I figured she’d stand up and hug me, but she just took my hand and squeezed it. “Hi, sweetheart,” she said.

  I felt weird standing—almost looming—over her, but she didn’t make any move to get up and there wasn’t another chair nearby. Finally, I went over to a card table where two people were playing chess while a third one watched. One of the guys playing was young, maybe even my age. Was he a visitor or a patient?

  I decided I wasn’t going to think about that.

  “Can I take this chair?” I asked.

  “By all means,” said the older guy who was playing. The younger guy didn’t look at me.

  “Thanks,” I said, sliding it out from under the table.

  “Our pleasure.” He smiled at me. I smiled back. He seemed totally normal. Everyone in the room seemed totally normal—the older woman knitting in the corner, the guy watching the chess game. No one was rocking back and forth or moaning or shouting.

  Maybe none of them were crazy at all. Maybe all these people were locked up because of some kind of clerical error.

  I pulled the chair up next to my mom’s. The newspaper was still on her lap, but she wasn’t reading it. I realized she was sitting in the same position she had been when I first saw her, which meant she probably hadn’t been reading it then, either.

  “So,” I said, excitement at seeing her still running through my veins, “how are you? I’m sorry,” I added quickly. “Do you not want to talk about how you are?”

  “No,” she said, “it’s fine to ask.” Her voice was thick, almost as if she’d been drinking, which seemed unlikely.

  “I just took a practice SAT,” I said. I thought she would ask about the test, but she didn’t, so I said, “Do you like it here?”

  She looked around as if she needed to be reminded of where she was before she could answer my question. “I do, actually. It’s very restful. It reminds me of summer camp.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Well, that’s . . . you must like that.” My mom had gone to the same summer camp practically her entire childhood, first as a camper for a million summers, then as a counselor for about a million more. She’d seemed a little disappointed when neither my brother nor I was especially into the summer camp we went to.

  I had one question and only one question that I wanted to ask my mother. Did you mean to do it?

  But the words stuck in my throat.

  There was silence. It was an awful silence, something cold and dark with tentacles that were pulling me down into it.

  “Mom?” I whispered. “Mommy?”

  I looked at my mom. She was facing me, but her eyes were focused on something just above my head, as if she were looking into the eyes of a taller version of me.

  I reached out and touched her hand. It was dry and cool, and I was startled to see that she wasn’t wearing her wedding band or her engagement ring. Her engagement ring was a huge diamond, and she took it off to play tennis and wash dishes, so it wasn’t weird to see her without it on, but I’d never seen her hand without her wedding band, a thin ring of diamonds set in platinum that she’d kept wearing even after my dad moved out. Had she had it on the night of her . . . the night we went to the hospit
al? I tried to picture her hand that night, but all I could see was the blood on the floor, her thigh, naked up to her underwear.

  “Mom,” I said quietly. “What happened that night? What . . . happened?” I repeated vaguely.

  If she heard me, she didn’t indicate it. The minutes ticked by until it became clear that if I wanted an answer I was going to have to repeat the question. I opened my mouth to ask it again and almost immediately closed it. This was insane. The woman sitting here was not my mother. She didn’t know any more about what my mother felt than I did.

  Time seemed to have stopped, and when I finally saw Grace out of the corner of my eye, I felt as if decades must have passed since she’d left me at the door to the glassed-in room.

  She came over to where my mother and I were sitting. “I hope you had a nice visit.”

  My mother turned her eyes to Grace and gave a vague smile. I recognized it.

  It was the same smile she’d smiled at me.

  I stood up. “Mom,” I said. “I have to go.” I reached down and took her hand. She gave me an anemic squeeze back.

  “Thank you for coming,” she said, as if I were a guest she’d just met at a cocktail party.

  I could feel tears burning at the corners of my eyes, and I just turned and walked out, several feet ahead of Grace until I got to the locked door, where I had to wait until she punched the code into the pad.

  At the front desk, the woman smiled at me. “I hope you had a good visit,” she said.

  “Not really,” I said. I pressed my fingers to my lips to stop their shaking, then added, “My mom’s pretty out of it.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said, and she seemed genuinely sorry.

  “Thanks,” I said, and I raced out the front door so she wouldn’t see me bawling.

  As soon as I got outside, I dialed Kathy’s number. She picked up on the first ring.

  “How’d it go?” she asked.

  “She’s like a zombie.” I was crying hard enough that I wasn’t sure if my aunt would understand what I was saying.

  “I’m really sorry, honey. I’m so sorry you had to see her like that. The doctors are trying to get her medication right, and it’s tricky. Psychotropic drugs are an art, not a science.”