Not Perfect: A Novel

by Elizabeth Laban

  She pulled open one of the double glass doors and stopped. It was chaos. It sounded like three phones were ringing at once; every seat was taken in the waiting room, mostly, she noticed, by very old people. One man was standing and banging his cane. Another pounded the side of his walker. There didn’t seem to be anyone in charge. She wanted to go back into the hall and take some time to research what this place was. A doctor’s office? No, she wouldn’t have picked that, too many germs. What was it?

  She read the sign over the desk. WE MAKE IT POSSIBLE FOR YOU TO STAY WHERE YOU BELONG—YOUR HOME. Right, that made sense. They provided in-home care for people who needed it, mostly old people, she guessed. How bad could that be? Obviously they were in desperate need of a receptionist. Maybe she’d actually get the job. So far she had gotten three rejections—a men’s clothing store on South Street that catered to tourists, an offbeat movie theater, and a vegan bakery, though that last one had her worried she would run into people she knew. Better that she hadn’t gotten it. Maybe this would be the one.

  A man with bright blond hair walked quickly out of a back room right toward Tabitha.

  “Are you here about the job?” he asked.

  “Yes, I’m . . .”

  “Thank goodness,” he said, interrupting her, and waving a file around just out of her reach. “Everyone has called out today. I don’t know who’s going to do the interviews, nobody’s even answering the phone.”

  The phone stopped ringing and it was quiet for the first time since Tabitha walked in.

  “Do you have time for the interview?” Tabitha asked. “If not, I can come back tomorrow.”

  “No, no time for the interviews,” he said. She wondered why he hadn’t introduced himself. She assumed he was Kirk Hutchins. “But I think this is the most pressing.” He thrust the file toward her, then looked around the room. “Yep, these people look okay for now. But that woman is home alone and waiting. Her son’s called three times already—my cell! I tell them not to call my cell unless it’s an emergency. So I guess he thinks it’s an emergency. He’s out of town.”

  Tabitha glanced toward the waiting faces, which were all turned in their direction. They were quiet now, too. What was going on here?

  “I’m Tabitha Brewer by the way,” she said, reaching out her hand for a shake.

  He looked at her sternly.

  “I know that,” he said, half-heartedly shaking her hand. “The address is here, not far, take the bus if you have to, you can expense it, you know how that works. And call me when you get there. You have my cell, right?”

  “No, actually, I don’t because . . .”

  “Let me write it on the file,” he said. He leaned over and scribbled the numbers. Tabitha squinted to make sure she could read them. “Okay? Now go, quick, before the son calls again.”

  Tabitha looked behind the man to see if there might be someone else she could talk to, someone who might be more coherent. But there was no sign of anyone. She thought about calling out, Hello? Anybody back there? but she didn’t, it wasn’t worth it, this place was crazy.

  “Listen, I . . .” she tried to say.

  “Please, go, she’s waiting,” he said, pushing the folder into her stomach. She sighed, grabbed it, and walked out, back to the elevator. Should she call the office and reschedule? No, because no one would ever answer her call. She wasn’t sure how she had gotten through in the first place. This was not an office she would want to work in, anyway. She would have to keep looking. She walked slowly out of the building and toward the cheap-looking coffee shop she passed on her way in. There were big windows and a counter in a double-U shape with spinning aqua stools. Tabitha could see the coffee in glass pitchers on a hot plate. That had to be cheaper than Starbucks down the street. And she hadn’t had any coffee this morning. She hadn’t quite decided what to do about that yet. Withdrawal would be hard, but she’d save a ton of money once she was off coffee. But what about the Advil she’d need in the process? She counted last night and there were ten left—that was five headache’s worth, fewer if it was a bad headache that required three at once.

  “How much for a cup?” she asked when she walked in. It was late, she’d missed the morning rush, so it was quiet. She almost said, How much for a cuppa? Maybe if she sounded like a tourist they would take pity on her. The server turned to look.

  “Buck fifty,” she said after a pause.

  “Seventy-five cents for one cup, no refills?’ Tabitha tried. She had been telling herself lately that you don’t get what you don’t ask for.

  “Sure,” the woman said, surprising Tabitha and going for the pitcher. She placed a cup in front of Tabitha and poured. Tabitha could see it was weak—it would probably taste like tea. But it smelled good.

  “Thanks,” she said.

  “No problem,” the server said. “And I’m happy to give you a refill. The place is empty.”

  “Thanks,” Tabitha said again, hoping she had more than the three quarters she knew were in her bag so she could leave a tip, too. She took a sip, let it absorb into her body. Good. Withdrawal was not an option.

  There was a newspaper on the counter, and as she reached for it she realized she’d been clutching the manila folder she meant to leave on the desk of the Home Comforts office. She put it down in front of her, opened it up. From the top of the first page the name NORA BARTON jumped out at her. Really, it startled her. Nora was her mother’s name. It was a name she had rarely come upon except in relation to her mother. She kept reading. The woman was seventy-nine years old, a widow, lived in an apartment building on JFK Boulevard, not too far from there, actually closer to home for Tabitha. Her list of problems was divided by mental and physical. Mental: memory loss, confusion (frequently believed she was a nineteen-year-old girl), occasional agitation. Under physical it just said headaches. Tabitha looked through the other pages. That was it? Headaches? She probably didn’t need any help today. But then in the comment section she read: Nora needs company. When left alone she sits on the floor, thinking she is still a teenager, and becomes so stiff she sometimes needs paramedics to get her up. She vacillates between being happy and thinking she is at a picnic, and being distraught because she thinks the love of her life just broke up with her and left her in the park alone. Christina (night nurse) said she once found her sobbing, dehydrated, stiff and hungry after being alone for just a few hours. SHE CANNOT BE LEFT ALONE. If we can’t provide service, we must call another agency.

  Tabitha picked up her phone and dialed the number scrawled on the folder. He must think she was going so he wouldn’t call another agency. She waited while the phone rang, her precious coffee getting cold. It rang and rang. It didn’t even go to voicemail. She hung up, looked through the folder again. She thought about going back up to the office to try to find Kirk, but something stopped her. Did this woman’s name have to be Nora? She gulped the coffee and looked up to see the server waiting to pour another cup.

  “Any chance I can get it to go?” Tabitha asked sheepishly.

  The server sighed, then nodded.

  “Sure,” she said, “that will be seventy-five cents.”

  Tabitha fished around in her purse. She knew she had the coins in a pocket, and she found them easily, but there must be something else in there. She felt tissues, one tiny stick of gum. Her hand rested on a cufflink—pure gold. She had put it in there for a moment like this. And she realized there were more where that came from at home, in Stuart’s still-very-full closet. She put the coins on the counter along with the cufflink. She knew she could keep it and try to sell it, and she planned to do that with some of the other stuff, but right now she did not want to only take, she wanted to try to give, too. So she left it. The server would probably just throw it away, think she was some crazy lady who was a bad tipper. But maybe she wouldn’t. Maybe she’d get five or ten dollars for it, or even more from one of those gold-melting places. All Tabitha could do was leave it and hope.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Walk or ca
b it? Or wait for a bus? Tabitha was pretty sure she wasn’t going to get reimbursed or paid for this—whatever it was. A job? No, not a job. She was still going to have to get a job, obviously. She certainly wasn’t certified to do this and briefly wondered if she could possibly do more harm than good. She shook that off and decided to walk; she didn’t want this detour to cost her money. Besides, if she took her time, there was the chance someone else would have arrived by the time she got there. That would be the best-case scenario.

  Two blocks away from Nora’s building her phone rang. She had that moment of grabbing for her phone, hoping it wasn’t about one of the kids, then thinking hopefully it might be Kirk Hutchins calling her back. It was her best friend, Rachel.

  “Hey, Rach,” she said, slowing down—she hated talking in indoor public places: coffee shops, stores, lobbies—and would rather walk around the block five times instead to complete the conversation.

  “I have a good one,” Rachel said.

  “A good what?”

  “Joke!”

  “Oh, okay—lay it on me,” Tabitha said.

  “What do you call a cow that just gave birth?”

  “I don’t know, what? Happy? Full of milk?”

  “No! Decaffeinated!”

  Tabitha laughed. “That’s pretty funny,” she said. “Another one in your cheese-joke arsenal?”

  “Well, I have to say something while the customers are tasting and browsing,” she said, referring to her job as head cheesemonger at Di Bruno Bros., a gourmet market near Rittenhouse Square.

  “No you don’t,” Tabitha said, walking past the lobby entrance to the building. If she kept going she could be home in ten minutes.

  “Well, anyway,” Rachel said. “Where were you this morning? I thought you were coming to yoga.”

  Tabitha stopped walking. She’d completely forgotten. Usually she would text Rachel with an excuse, to avoid any questions. It wasn’t like Tabitha to just not show up.

  “Oh, sorry, I had a dentist appointment,” she said casually. “I started having this awful feeling on the top of one of my bottom teeth, so I wanted to have it looked at.”

  “What did they say? Did you need X-rays? I know how you always refuse them.”

  “Oh, well, actually the X-ray machine was down, so now I have to go back. They didn’t say much.” Tabitha was a terrible liar.

  “You missed a great class,” Rachel said. “Maybe the best one yet. How about tomorrow?”

  “Maybe,” Tabitha said. She still had a reserve of six classes already paid for before she had to reenroll. She wanted to save them. But yoga did sound good.

  Tabitha was now at the halfway point between Nora’s building and her apartment. If she didn’t turn back, she’d be home before she knew it, and then she’d never go. She stopped and glanced at the file again, pushed it open, and saw NORA BARTON. She turned around and headed back toward Nora.

  “Are you there?” Rachel asked, clearly annoyed. “Did you hear what I said?”

  “About yoga?”

  “No, about the tasting.”

  “Oh, a tasting?” Tabitha asked, trying not to sound too excited.

  “Yes, I said we’re doing a goat tasting tonight at six, bring the kids. We’ll have cheese and crackers but also other stuff: goat-cheese crepes, mini goat-cheese sliders. Can you come?”

  “We’ll be there,” Tabitha said, sounding more enthusiastic than she meant to. She was hoping to have a chance to stop by Rachel’s apartment to pilfer some dish soap, but a free dinner was better, much better. She didn’t want to sound too eager, though, or Rachel was going to really start to wonder about her. “Let me just check with the kids and I’ll call you back.”

  “Sounds good,” Rachel said.

  Tabitha tried not to think about her mother, or those horrible last three days of her mother’s life, as she trudged back along the same path she had just walked. Instead, she kept her eyes on the storefronts, always thinking about what might be there for the taking—not shoplifting, of course—but what she was starting to think of as “light stealing.” Not much, she realized as she got close to the building. It was huge. There must have been at least two hundred apartments, maybe more. She had walked by this place so many times but never had a reason to go inside. She entered the lobby, which reminded her of a shabby hotel. There were people sitting in various places, many of them on the older side, and she wondered if Nora could be here. She wouldn’t know Nora if she tripped on her. She walked over to the desk. She was glad Nora didn’t have a complicated last name that she would have to pretend to know how to pronounce.

  “I’m here to care for Nora Barton,” she said when the man smiled at her. She was ready with a million excuses—Her usual nurse is out sick today. I’m from a different agency. Her son hired me—but she didn’t need any of them.

  “You know where she is?” he asked.

  Tabitha knew it was listed in the file, so she opened it and looked, not sure if that made her look more official or less, and even more unsure why she cared so much.

  “Yes, I see here she’s on the second floor, apartment 206.”

  “Elevator’s over there,” he said, pointing. “As far as I know, her door is always open.”

  Huh. That didn’t seem safe, but maybe necessary?

  “Thanks.”

  She took the elevator to the second floor and walked out directly toward Nora’s apartment. It was right across from the elevator. Now that she was here she wanted to leave. This was crazy. This Nora was not her mother. She was not her responsibility. She was a stranger who would probably die soon anyway. She turned around and hit the “down” button for the elevator. But then she had an idea. Nora probably had dish soap. If she was sitting on the floor thinking she was a teenager having a picnic, it might not be that hard to take. No, she told herself. That was the lowest Tabitha had sunk yet. And even if she wrote it on her list to repay one day, Nora might not live long enough to be repaid.

  When she turned back and put her hand on the doorknob, she told herself she was curious and wanted to see if there was anything she could do for Nora since she was here anyway, which was all true. The dish soap need was true, too, but she would get it some other way. She knocked lightly before turning the knob.

  “Hello?” she called. She opened the door slowly, expecting to find some awful scene, but she was hit with the sweet smell of something baking. “Hello?” she called again.

  “In here, dear,” a voice called.

  “Nora?”

  “In here, dear,” the voice said again.

  Tabitha closed the door behind her, wondering if maybe someone else had gotten here to help since she’d left the Home Comforts office. She followed the smell and came upon a bright kitchen, more from the lights inside than the sun outside, and a woman standing at the stove holding a small muffin pan with six muffins.

  “Would you like a cranberry muffin, dear?” the woman asked, not seeming to be at all surprised by the stranger who had just arrived at her apartment.

  “Nora?” Tabitha asked slowly.

  “You found me!” the woman said. Tabitha couldn’t believe Nora was fully dressed, hair in place, baking—not sitting on the floor thinking it was sixty years ago.

  “I’m Tabitha,” she said. “The agency . . .”

  “Yes, yes I know,” she said. “They called to say someone new was coming today. What took you so long?”

  Tabitha expected someone to come out from behind a door or sweep in from another room and tell her it was all a big joke, some reality-based television show about people who were looking for jobs and how far they were willing to go. Or maybe it was an attempt to catch people at their most desperate. Tabitha would be a good candidate for either of those setups.

  “Come in, come in,” Nora said, leading her into a big living room. A large table close to the window was beautifully set for two with china, a teapot, and a light-blue tablecloth. Nora seemed quite sturdy on her feet, and Tabitha continued to wonder
what the heck was going on. But the muffins smelled so good, and she hadn’t had anything yet besides the coffee. So she followed Nora to the table and dutifully sat down. She looked around the room and wondered where Nora sat when she thought there was a picnic going on. The room was tidy and clean. There didn’t seem to be a single thing out of place. There were no pill bottles or pillows or even a rumpled throw blanket for that matter.

  Nora handed Tabitha a muffin, which she ate in four bites. Then she handed her another one, pouring tea while Tabitha gobbled that one up, too.

  “Aren’t you going to have one?” Tabitha asked, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.

  “Oh no, I made these for you,” she said. “Plus I have a bit of a headache.”

  Oh, okay, a headache. At least one thing went along with what Tabitha read in Nora’s file.

  “Can I get you anything?” Tabitha asked. “Maybe some Advil?”

  “Yes dear, that would be lovely,” Nora said, leaning back and closing her eyes. “On the kitchen counter please. Then we can play a game!” She opened her eyes and smiled.

  Tabitha found the Advil just where Nora said it would be. She reached for a glass on an open shelf and saw the oven was still on. She turned it off. At least she was helping in some way. She poured out two Advil into her palm, wondering if she should slip two into her own pocket. That way she would have enough Advil to get through six headaches. But she didn’t. Instead, she placed the bottle back on the counter, filled the glass with water from the tap, and went back to find Nora.

  A Monopoly game was open and waiting for her. Nora did that quickly. Tabitha didn’t particularly like Monopoly, but Nora seemed sweet. She could play for a few minutes. As she got closer, she saw stacks of money that didn’t look like the usual Monopoly money—it looked much more real. Did Nora replace the fake money with more realistic fake money? But as she got even closer, it looked very real, so real that Tabitha thought it might be actual money: stacks and stacks of real money next to the Monopoly board. Then she saw five-hundred-dollar bills. Do they even exist? she wondered.