Never Been Better

1

"Crazy in Love"
-Beyoncé ft. Jay-Z (3:56)

When my invitation for Matt and Misa's destination wedding arrived in the mail, Tilley pinned it to the dartboard in our kitchen.

"'Accept with pleasure or decline with regret,'" she snorted as she read. "Why is there never a check box for 'drain the open bar with relative apathy'? Especially if they're not even giving you a plus-one."

She yanked a couple of darts from the board and took five steps backward, bumping into the kitchen table. Narrowing her eyes, she whipped a single dart at the wall, then turned to me, noticing my pursed lips. "Are you okay?"

I surveyed the damage. My sister had punctured the palm tree crest, but the perfectly staged photo of Matt and Misa on the invitation remained intact. Burly in an ink-blue suit, Matt had his arms wrapped around Misa, who was beaming in a blush satin dress. She glanced over her shoulder at him with a warmth that made me think of breakfast in bed, shared bottles of dinner wine, joint bank accounts-all the things I could barely imagine for myself.

"He looks like he's going to absorb her," murmured Tilley, suddenly beside me. "Like a matrimonial sponge."

"It's fine," I said a little too loudly. "I'm fine. I knew this was coming. I have prepared myself for this moment for months. Actually, excuse me because I have to go do this thing in the bathroom."

I could feel the bad thoughts coming, so I panicked and deeply bowed at Tilley before speed-walking out of the kitchen and down the hall to our shared bathroom. Keep your cool. Keep your cool. I slammed the door just as I heard Tilley let out the largest sigh known to humankind. Ignoring her clomping footsteps coming toward me and the waterfalls building in my eyeballs, I scrounged through the medicine cabinet for a very old bottle of Listerine. Hands shaking, I poured a full serving into the lid, then scrunched my face as I tipped the shot of antiseptic into my mouth.

Tilley knocked on the door. "Dee, can I come in?"

"Nrghh," I said, swishing furiously. The mouthwash burned and my eyes teared up, but it felt good to control the discomfort. I spat into the sink, stuck my tongue out, and poured another capful.

"Okay, so I mostly asked if I could come in to be polite, but you know I had to take the lock off the door after the last incident," Tilley continued. "So, I'm going to come in now, and I want you to promise me that you're not doing anything . . . you know, suicide-y?"

I swished faster in defiance. "Nrghhh, nrghhh!"

Tilley swung the door open and bashed me with it as I stuck my arm out to hold it shut. I couldn't manage a mouthful of chemicals and a bruised elbow, so I turned and spat into the sink again. Tilley stared at the open bottle of Listerine, then back at me, and folded her arms.

"What?" I said. "Can't a girl value good dental hygiene?"

"Tell me you're not doing some weird self-punishment thing right now."

"I don't know," I said, sticking my head under the tap for a quick drink of water before elaborating. "I was trying to frame it like exposure therapy. Like maybe I'll handle the wedding better if I get really good at being uncomfortable."

"Dee, you met these people in a psych ward," she said into the mirror, examining her nose pores. "I think between the three of you, you've already got the uncomfortable thing covered."

I opened my mouth to retort but nothing came out. It had been many months since my discharge, and I still didn't know how to tell Tilley that I'd never been more at home than in the hospital with Matt and Misa.

She watched my shoulders droop in the reflection of the glass, then turned and threw her arms around me. "Hey. I'm not saying it's a bad thing," she mumbled into my shoulder. "You'd have killer small talk for cocktail hour."

"Who needs it?" I said, gently disentangling myself from her grasp. "I'm sure everyone will be busy gossiping about the whirlwind engagement."

"I guess there's no established pipeline from involuntary commitment to marital commitment, especially in the span of a single year."

"Most of the guests only know half the story," I said. "Misa didn't even tell her family where they really met."

Tilley arched an eyebrow. "So you're just going to show up as a physical manifestation of their biggest secret?"

I gestured helplessly toward the bottle of mouthwash. "Like I could even make it through the flight without having a total breakdown. I want to be there for them. And, you know, be halfway normal. But I don't know if I have it in me."

"If you're not well enough, they'll understand better than anyone," she said, her voice softening just a touch.

"It's not that," I said, pouring one last cup of Listerine for good measure. "It's just that I'd rather shave off my eyebrows than watch Matt Costigan marry someone else."

As the final shot of noxious mint hit the underside of my tongue, I couldn't help but notice Tilley's pained expression in the mirror-as if she too was battling both gingivitis and certain heartbreak.


Here are five good reasons why I-and not Misa-should have ended up with Matt:

                1.            Dibs.

Not to brag or anything, but I wound up in the psych ward first. On night one, Matt rolled into the hospital with bandages wound around his forearms and a crooked smile that lit up the ER. Ruggedly handsome and built like a teddy bear, he wore two hospital gowns tied together at the waist for comfort.

"I'm making a fashion statement," he said when he noticed me staring from the cafeteria. He was the first shiny thing I had seen in such a long time, and I wanted to scoop him up like a magpie, take him back to my depressing white hospital room.

                2.            We can laugh about anything . . .

"What are you in for?" I asked, like I was auditioning for Prison Break.

"I decided to play my last live show yesterday," he replied breezily. "Only problem is my band interpreted last as 'hang up your guitar' and not 'slice yourself open after the encore.' Bit of a miscommunication on my part, I guess."

I nodded emphatically. "Semantics, am I right?"

                3.            But still get to the heart of a conversation.

I told Matt how I threw myself-winter coat and all-into the swimming pool where I taught little kids how to blow bubbles just to see if I would sink. "I only did it because I thought I was immortal," I explained.

"Well, I don't know about that," he said, his eyes crinkling. "But you must be pretty tough to wind up here the first time and put a good spin on it. That's a different kind of endurance, if you ask me."

                4.            We've always made a great team.

"Lucie does the best bloodwork, but Marc does a mean Robert De Niro impression," Matt explained as we sprawled across the common room sofa. "So, it's all about what you want out of your tax dollars."

"You sure know your way around here," I said.

He grinned wryly. "I guess you could call me a repeat customer. The last few years haven't been the easiest." He scratched at one of his bandages. "You know, the first time I landed here, I thought this place would change my life. That it would be some symbolic turning point. But after this many failures, I guess it just feels like I need to shake it up somehow."

"Maybe now's your chance," I offered, and his eyes met mine.

"Why not?" he said. "We've got nothing left to lose."

                5.            He can make me feel at home, anywhere.

That first night, he walked me to my room and leaned against the doorway.

"So, you got any breakfast plans?" he asked.

I laughed. "I could squeeze you in before group therapy."

Matt surveyed the sterile decor of my dorm and gave a low whistle. "Nice place you've got here. The bars on the bed are a real homey touch."

"It's been a long time since I slept somewhere other than home," I admitted. "I'm a little nervous about it."

"Don't be," he said. "This is the best part of the whole day. No one's watching you or analyzing your next move. You just get to feel what you feel for a little while." He doubled-tapped the edge of my door, then shot me an encouraging grin before heading toward his own room. I watched him walk away, holding on to every snippet of our conversation. But the warmth that I felt that night, and every week we spent together after-it never quite seemed to fade, even when I needed it to.


Tilley and I reconvened in the living room, sinking into the comfort of our couch. A few streets away, our parents were toting a Tupperware packed with cabbage rolls over to a harvest potluck with some of the neighbors. They didn’t gather for the food, even though the Johnsons made the best sweetbread on the block and Mrs. Sato’s chow mein was the stuff of legends. Everyone just liked to complain about how the neighborhood was changing-the bungalows getting knocked down for gray mini mansions, longtime families moving out at a record pace to districts you couldn’t even get to without a car. I noticed it too-the last time Tilley and I climbed the roof of the local grocery store with a six-pack of beer, we discovered that someone had destroyed the couch that we had hauled up there to watch the sun set. It’s a story I would have told the whole backyard congregation, had I been invited. But ever since my late-night sit-in on the highway overpass when Matt and Misa got engaged, my dad preferred that I steer clear of the neighbors. My sister and I were lucky to still be in the neighborhood at all-Tilley had nabbed this subleased bungalow through a friend of a friend, and she was letting me live here out of the goodness of her heart (and the steadiness of her waitressing paycheck).

With an impeccable sense of balance earned from years of serving patrons at Scarborough's favorite sketchy sports bar, Tilley carried bottles of cheap prosecco and Fanta plus two glasses to the TV table. She motioned for me to shove over and we settled in front of the screen, a reality show about drunk people on yachts filling the background. Outside, we could hear the kids across the street playing basketball, the murmurs of their trash talk punctuated by the occasional yell for a pass.

"I appreciate that you're trying," said Tilley, topping up my orange soda with prosecco. I glared at her and she tilted the bottle more, rolling her eyes. "But I don't think you can mouthwash away your problems. Even though I give you ten out of ten for creativity."

On-screen, a yacht honked its horn as it floated past a lush and empty island. "What else am I supposed to do?" I asked. "My doctor thinks I'm a drama queen. Mom and Dad are ashamed of my existence. I'm too broke to get a proper therapist-"

"Or to pay me back your half of Mom's birthday mani-pedi-"

"Exactly," I said, waiting for the fizzing to subside. "I've been trying my best, and the last thing I need is a calendar hold for the worst day of my life."

"At least you got an invite," said Tilley. "It's almost like they care about you or something."

I knew I was lucky to have an anchor of a friend in Matt, and in my better moments, I was grateful to be on the receiving end of Misa's protective nagging. But these days, that wasn't the kind of care I craved. Sure, having friends who understood your manic episodes and medication shakes and general malaise was great. It just didn't change the fact that at the end of the day, they also had this whole life together and I was stuck with Tilley, a sister with the gravitational pull of Jupiter. All I wanted was to find my own corner of the universe.

"I'm just saying, if I could have pegged anybody for a psychiatric meet-cute, it would have been Matt and me," I grumbled. "We were great, just the way we were."

"You mean deeply depressed?"

"I mean real as hell with each other," I said. "And then Misa showed up and everything changed."

The first time I saw Misa, she was standing in the ward hallway, swathed in a wrap dress that was definitely dry-clean only. I appreciated that she had put makeup on to come to a psychiatric hospital. Only the best for Scarborough's best-kept secret. Beside me on the couch, my ward neighbor Harsha sucked in her cheeks like a kid with a helium balloon. "That girl is so pretty. I bet she's a model too. Models just recognize other models sometimes, you know? It's like a sixth sense."

I didn't have much of a sixth sense, but even I could tell that the dynamic was about to shift as Matt rose to greet Misa. Her warm smile and quiet confidence made it suddenly feel like she was welcoming us into her home, even though we'd been there first. Harsha and Matt were immediately mesmerized, and I wondered if a few weeks alone with him was enough of a head start to make a lasting impression. The thing is, I think I wanted Misa to like me almost as much as I didn't want Matt to like her.

Tilley cleared her throat loudly, trying to keep me from drifting away. "If you'd like to be 'real as hell' for five seconds, can we just remember that this is the same 'great guy' who got you kicked out of the hospital in the first place?"

I tried to focus on the bubbles rising to the top of my glass, the sleek sounds of a perfume commercial flashing across the television, the angular tilt of Tilley's cheekbones-something to keep me fixed in this moment. But as usual, nothing could suspend that gnawing feeling in the pit of my stomach that accompanied the memory.

The day I got kicked out of the hospital, Matt sat with me in the common room while I waited for Tilley to pick me up. Down the hall, doctors cycled in and out of patient rooms with a briskness that matched the sterile decor. This was an ongoing theme-no one here wanted to touch us, but a few of us definitely wanted to touch each other. We heard the cafeteria window clank shut to announce the post-breakfast lull. The television was blaring a nature documentary on penguins, but the ward's longest-running patient, Jermaine, was fast asleep in his favorite armchair. He had been in and out of the hospital for years now. I wanted to wake him up to say goodbye, but he didn't need to be reminded that he wasn't getting out anytime soon.