Counting to Perfect

by Suzanne LaFleur

  “It was spaghetti day.”

  “Your favorite.”

  Through my good eye, I had seen the spaghetti spattered all over the floor. And I had been so hungry.

  Julia wiggled to get her phone out of her pocket. She swiped around a little, put the phone to her ear.

  “Yes, this is Julia Applegate. I would like to speak to the principal. Now, please….Regarding? My sister came home injured….Thank you.”

  Julia was quiet again for a few minutes; then she exploded.

  “Yes, hi. My sister Cassie came home from school with a black eye, of which we were not informed. I was under the impression it was school policy to call the parents in the event of any injury to the head. Furthermore, my sister informs me that she was injured during the lunch hour and no one thought to see that she had anything to eat. This is unacceptable….Yes….Yes….Not at all….No….”

  For the first time in hours, I smiled.

  “I would consider this negligent, wouldn’t you? What if my sister had needed to see a doctor immediately?…Yes….I don’t think so, not at all….I’m sure you will be receiving another phone call from my parents, and possibly a message in writing….Yes….Goodbye.”

  Julie ended the call.

  “You have my school’s number in your phone?”

  “Yeah. Mom put it in there. In case you weren’t on the bus one day.”

  “You were awesome. You sounded like a lawyer.”

  We rested in a heap for a few more minutes, until the ice pack went warm.

  “I’ll make you some spaghetti.”

  “Really? In the afternoon? What about dinner?”

  “Who cares. I’m sure you’re hungry.”

  “Can you put meat crumbles in it?”

  “Meat crumbles? I guess, if we have some, I could figure that out. Might just not be as disgusting as in the cafeteria.”

  “It’s not disgusting.”

  “I know, pet. I know.” She nuzzled my cheek with her nose, and I turned and kissed her. She set me on my feet.

  While we waited for the pasta water to boil, I sat on a barstool at the kitchen counter, and Julia stood across from me, patiently teaching me the math I’d missed. By the time Mom came home, I was swinging my feet, happily working on a huge bowl of spaghetti and meat sauce.

  “What’s going on in here?”

  “I made Bolognese.”

  “You can make Bolognese?”

  “I just followed the recipe. It was easy.”

  “Well, I guess we can all eat that. It smells good.” Mom leaned in to kiss me but paused, her hand under my chin. She turned my face, studying my eye. “Is there something else you girls want to tell me?” She looked at Julia.

  She probably thought Julia and I had been fighting. She probably thought Julia had made dinner to make up for it, to dig herself out of trouble. She probably thought she needed to get me a different sitter.

  “She got off the bus like that. Fell at school. They didn’t call you, but I called them and the principal is expecting an irate call from you later.” Julia met Mom’s eye with a funny, tight smile.

  Mom nodded. “I’ll do that. Homework?”

  “Cassie’s is done; mine’s barely started, and I have a bunch of proofs due tomorrow.”

  “Go, darling. Thank you.”

  Julia set up in the dining room.

  I found her there, hours later, still working. I climbed into her lap, and she rested her chin on my head, not even interrupting her concentration as she copied things from her math book onto her paper.

  “Your math looks different than mine.”

  “Yes.”

  “What are you supposed to do?”

  “You list things you know on one side, and the reasons you know them on the other.”

  She didn’t want to talk, so in my head I listed the important thing I knew, and the reasons I knew it:

  Afternoon cuddles. A brave phone call. An hour spent making Bolognese. Doing my homework first.

  I stayed put in her lap until Mom came to tell me it was time for bed.

  I heard them.

  I guess I’d never really gone to sleep. I’d tossed and turned and twisted my blankets around and around.

  But I heard her up with Addie. I heard her come out of her room and shut the door.

  It was clever, really….She could be up with Addie at any time. Unless things sounded seriously wrong, like Addie wouldn’t stop shrieking, Mom and Dad let them be. Not like when they first came home and Mom and Dad got up with them all the time and I hid in my room with a pillow over my ears.

  Julia came back to her room a couple times.

  Then the front door opened downstairs. She seemed to be going in and out of that, too.

  I went to my window, trying to peer out, but I couldn’t see them.

  I stood at the window, frozen.

  Then I grabbed my duffel bag. I reached into each of my dresser drawers just long enough to grab a fistful of whatever was there. Undies. Socks. T-shirts. Shorts. I yanked on jeans and pulled a sweatshirt over the T-shirt I’d been sleeping in. I snatched the pillow off my bed, grabbed my phone, strapped the bag across my chest, and ran—but quietly, quietly—down the stairs. I dragged the front door shut behind me and ran to the driveway.

  I stood there, panting.

  Julia turned in the driver’s seat to look behind her before backing up.

  She saw me, standing there.

  We looked at each other.

  Then she leaned toward me, reaching all the way across the car to open the passenger door.

  I hopped in.

  I woke to sunshine, a stiff neck, and Addie whining in the backseat.

  “Morning,” Julia said.

  I squinted out the bright window.

  Where were we?

  “She’s hungry,” Julia said.

  That was all? That was all she had to say?

  “Are you going to feed her?”

  “I’ll have to. You, too, though; you’ll be hungry. Ready to stop for breakfast?”

  She sounded like Mom.

  Or at least, a mom.

  Which she was.

  “I’m going to look for a diner,” she said.

  Addie took her wailing up a notch.

  “It’s too bad she still nurses,” I said. The driver was the only one who could feed her.

  “Too bad? It’s terrific. She’s not going to cost anything to feed. Maybe just some jars of baby food, like fruit or something. Squash maybe. I’ll get some when I see a grocery store.”

  I didn’t see any grocery stores out the window. Just trees. We were on a highway. Julia pulled off where there was a sign with pictures of a knife and fork, a bed, and a gas pump. At the end of the ramp was a street with a diner.

  She stopped the car and got out, but she didn’t go into the restaurant. She climbed into the backseat, unbuckled crying Addie, and started to feed her.

  What are we doing here, Julia?

  “You don’t want to do that inside?” I asked, my stomach rumbling.

  “I don’t want people asking questions.”

  “Oh…hey, did you leave a note?”

  “A note?”

  “At home. Did you leave a note?”

  “No. Did you?”

  “No. There wasn’t time.”

  Julia watched a couple headed into the diner. “I didn’t know what to say.”

  “Won’t Mom and Dad be worried?”

  The answer, of course, was yes, but talking about it was going to be an even bigger waste of time than asking where we were going.

  “Did they call or text you?” Julia asked. “Where’s your phone?”

  I dug into my duffel bag and pulled out my phone. Ten texts from Dad. I s
crolled through them. “Um, Dad asks where we are. Then later he’s just like, ‘hope you’re having fun.’ I think he’s decided we’re just out for the morning.”

  “Text him back. Text him back and say…say, ‘Yeah, be home soon!’ ”

  Be home soon, I wrote.

  Be home soon.

  “That’s a lie, though?” I asked.

  Julia switched Addie to her other breast.

  “You feel bad about it?” she asked.

  Do I? I thought as a breeze blew in my open window and played with my hair.

  It was nice out. Green and vacationy. Everyone at the rest stop was on vacation. No one else was running away.

  Was that what we’d done? Run away?

  I looked in the backseat at my sister and her baby. Julia looked tired, but relaxed and also…something else.

  “No,” I said. “I don’t feel bad.”

  * * *

  —

  My stomach rumbled, and after a little while Julia pronounced Addie finished. She burped her, and Addie gurgled, happy.

  “Get my bag?”

  I grabbed her purse from the floor and slid out of the car as she got out with Addie.

  We went into the restaurant. Since Addie could sit up, Julia said yes to a high chair and lined it with a blanket around the front to make it softer and keep Addie from getting germs.

  “Do you think they think all three of us are sisters?” I asked when the hostess had walked away.

  “I don’t care what they think.”

  Well, that wasn’t true. If it were, she wouldn’t have been breast-feeding in the car.

  I pulled one of the huge plastic menus in front of me.

  “Go easy on the grub,” Julia said. “Not like a lumberjack breakfast. You don’t need all that. Something cheaper, like two eggs and toast or something.”

  My teeth clamped together for a second.

  “What?” she asked. “What’s the matter with you?”

  “Aren’t we here on…my money?”

  “We have a…combined pool of money. Which I’m managing.”

  I did the math in my head. “Don’t we have like…three thousand dollars? More than that?”

  “Yes, but no way to replace it, when it runs out.”

  “How long are you planning to be out here?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “And why are you managing the money? I’m a better saver than you. You should let me do it.”

  “Because I”—she raised an eyebrow over her huge, stupid plastic menu—“have a high school diploma and you don’t.”

  It took the pause of a moment, and I don’t know which of us started it, but we laughed. It sounded like such a small, ordinary thing, but getting her that diploma had been a daily crisis for our whole family. We laughed and laughed, and when the waitress came over we were still laughing.

  “Can I get you girls something?” She was smiling, but she looked a little like she wished we weren’t making so much noise.

  “What the heck, we’ll share a lumberjack breakfast, eggs over easy, two plates. And you have those little boxes of cereal? Can I get one of Cheerios?” Julia looked at the waitress sweetly. She sounded like such a grown-up, ordering like that. She handed over our menus like she ate in restaurants every day.

  The waitress brought the Cheerios first. Julia put a few of them on the table for Addie to try to pick up and gum.

  “That should keep her busy for a while,” Julia said. She put the box in her purse. “Maybe this afternoon you can give her the rest in the car.”

  Where are we going?

  The waitress brought over the drinks that came with the lumberjack, which were a glass of orange juice and a refillable mug of coffee. Julia pushed the juice in front of me and kept the coffee for herself.

  That was smart. Maybe she would be a good manager of our money after all.

  “Where are we sleeping tonight?” I asked.

  “How about a hotel? One with a pool?”

  “A hotel with a pool?”

  “Why not?”

  “What is that, like a hundred dollars?”

  “Something like that?”

  “Julia…”

  “Calm down, okay?”

  “Yeah, yeah.”

  “Have fun, okay?”

  Was that what this was about, having fun?

  The food came. Two eggs and two pancakes and two pieces of toast and some bacon and ham and sausages. So much food.

  “We won’t even need to get lunch,” Julia said with a smile. As if that had been part of her money-managing plan the whole time.

  * * *

  —

  We got back in the car and we drove.

  Or, well, Julia drove. Obviously.

  I looked out the window.

  Addie looked out the window.

  Addie fell asleep.

  I didn’t.

  “What do they say about me?” Julia asked.

  “Who?”

  But I knew who she meant of course.

  Everyone.

  My friends.

  The other kids at school.

  Their parents.

  Rude grown-ups.

  The whole wide world.

  “You can tell me. I can guess already.”

  I wiggled my toes in my wearing-out sneaks and pressed the button for my window to go up and down. I took the hair tie out of my hair and shook out my ponytail and then made a new one, high and tight. I risked a glance over at Julia, and she looked mad, defiant.

  But she was the one who’d started the conversation. She must have wanted to talk about it.

  “How…how did Addie happen? I mean, that’s mostly what people say. That there are things you can do to, you know, not have a baby.”

  “So they say I’m stupid?”

  I didn’t answer.

  When she didn’t say anything else, either, I offered, “It’s been hard for me too, you know.”

  “Oh, poor you.”

  “Julia—”

  She looked over at me, managed to smile. “No, I know. It’s okay. I’m sorry.” A few minutes later, she said, “How Addie Happened…,” like it was the title of an English essay. “There are things you can do, and we were doing them.”

  “So you weren’t being stupid, it was really an accident?”

  Her eyes flicked up to the rearview mirror, then took in Addie in the mirror over her car seat.

  “I don’t like that word anymore. I prefer surprise.”

  We sat in silence for a few more minutes, listening to little Adele Cassandra’s soft but steady breathing from the backseat.

  Why had she named her daughter after me? And why had she wanted to invite me along on her silly car trip to nowhere? She could have brought Maya or Carter. Someone she wanted to be with more.

  “We’re going nowhere, aren’t we?”

  “I hope not, Cass. I hope very much that we’re not going nowhere.”

  The sky was suddenly overcast. It poured for five minutes straight, and then, just as suddenly, it was sunny again.

  “Does surprise mean you wouldn’t go back and change what happened? That you’re happy Addie is here?”

  She looked up in the rearview mirror again. I turned in my seat to look at Addie’s mirror, too. Addie was sleeping, with her head drooping, a light trail of drool sliding down her chin and making a puddle on her bib.

  “I wouldn’t trade Addie for anything.”

  I’d gone to the hospital to meet Addie.

  With that jittery feeling like when I had to speak in front of the whole school or when I had to tell Mom or Dad I’d lied about something. Like I had to be torn open raw and put up for everyone’s judgment.

  Mom had stayed at th
e hospital; just Dad came to get me.

  I was very quiet in the car, squeezing and squeezing the door handle.

  “You all right?” Dad asked.

  “Hm.” I fiddled with the knob for the radio, looking for a new station, but nothing seemed good.

  After a minute Dad said, “You know a baby can hear the people around it when it’s still inside its mother? That it knows them by their voices?” He glanced over at me quickly and then back to the road. “She already knows you. She’s wondering where you are.”

  She’s wondering where you are.

  “And our Julia, she’s still our same girl. She’s tired, but you’ll see, your sister’s okay. I know the hospital is scary, but that’s our family over there; it’s important that they see you, that you’re there to support them.”

  Mom and Dad, and even Carter, let me go in to see Julia alone.

  I don’t know if that was something they’d talked about doing, or if Julia had asked them for it, or if they were just trying to keep things calm in her room. Maybe there was a rule about how many people could visit at once.

  I stood in the doorway, clutching the strings of five shiny pink Mylar balloons and a soft white bunny with a pink bow.

  “Come in, silly,” she said.

  I went over to the bed and stared at the little pink-faced creature—mostly just a nose poking out between a hospital blanket and a newborn’s cap—that lay in the clear bassinet next to Julia’s bed.

  “What do you think?” she asked.

  “That came out of you?”

  Julia laughed. “One day very soon, you are going to be too old to get away with stuff like that. Just saying. Really, what do you think?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Pick her up.”

  I knotted the balloon strings at the end of Julia’s bed and set the bunny on the spare chair. I lifted the baby.

  We’d learned how to pick up babies in Julia’s classes. They were whole-family classes, for expectant teen mothers and their families, about baby health and hygiene and safety. There’d been a ton of baby dolls, and we’d had to learn how to hold them and change them and pretend-burp them and all that kind of stuff. Two hours, every Saturday. I’d never got out of a single one of them.