Free Fiction Ruined My Family by Jeanne Darst

over five hundred dollars, and I went up ten whole points after taking it (not the kind of dramatic improvement they advertised). My father then decided I needed more one-on-one help, since that had worked such wonders with April Dean. He hired a tutor named Mr. Burnham to come on Sunday mornings. The first Sunday he came I forgot he was coming and had been out at some swanky party in the woods near the Metro-North train tracks with my friends. There was a knock on my bedroom door.
    â€œJean-Joe, are you decent? Mr. Burnham’s here. Throw some sweatpants on and get downstairs. Posthaste.”
    I made my way downstairs and met Mr. Burnham. Unbeknownst to me, I had a giant hickey on my neck.
    â€œJesus, Jean-Joe, it looks like you were attacked by Cujo last night.” My father put some spit on his finger and tried to rub the mysterious red blot with teeth marks off my neck.
    â€œWhat in God’s name is that?” my father said before I pushed him away and ran to the toaster to get a look.
    The summer before my senior year in high school I got a break from SAT mania by going to Nantucket to be a mother’s helper for my mother’s friend from college. I had my driver’s test coming up but I was supposed to be in Nantucket on the day of the test and I couldn’t leave the job and come back and take my test for one day, so I came up with the logical solution of getting someone else to take it for me. If I had asked Eleanor or Katharine to take my road test, a felony, they would have thought of their futures, their ability to get jobs, have a clean record. Julia simply said, “Yeah, okay. What time?”
    She did great. She passed. My dad was especially proud, mailing my new license to me with a short note, “Congratulations, Jean-Joe. You passed! Love, Dad.”
    Patty Henley had two boys, Christopher and Simon. They were five and eight. Mrs. Henley had just been left by her husband for a younger woman and she was fairly wrecked over it. Man, these class of ’62 Manhattanville grads could cry at night. She had been spending summers in Nantucket for years, always renting the same house near her friends. This family had three gorgeous daughters, one of whom was an actress on a soap opera. That summer one of them was on crutches, and to me being a beautiful woman on crutches was an unbeatable combination. My sisters and I weren’t allowed to break anything as we had no health insurance. I really envied anyone with a broken arm or leg. So extravagant! Maybe someday. I was friendless on that pink and green isle, so one night I decided to party by myself. Mrs. Henley was having dinner across the street at the Murphys’, and Christopher and Simon were riding their bikes up and down the street. I went through the hall closet and found a big bottle of vodka, something I had never drunk before. I was a beer drinker, usually via funnel. I got drunk and wandered over to the Murphys’ house and entered the living room, where people were sitting around enjoying a glass of wine, and in a blackout I started yelling, “Simon! Christopher! Get your bathing suits on! We’re going to the beach!”
    â€œIsn’t that your mother’s helper, Patty?” Mrs. Murphy said.
    And then, according to what Mrs. Henley told me the next morning, the two women carried me back to the house and put me to bed. The next day at breakfast when Mrs. Henley asked if I had been drinking, I said, “No, why?”
    Dad could relate to my situation, I guess; in Bronxville he had no one to talk to, either—there were no artists around. (Local newscasters Bill Beutel and Chuck Scarborough lived there, hardly the Algonquin Round Table.) Mom was a phone person, but talking on the phone wasn’t possible for me in Nantucket, there was always someone around. So writing letters became a way to tell my family about my job, my boss, a way to be miserable and have fun at the same time. Dad was the