Not Perfect: A Novel

by Elizabeth Laban

  “He is amazing,” Tabitha said, letting a good feeling replace the bad one, even if it was just for one minute. She glanced at Levi. He sat at one of the tables between two boys and laughed as one of the kids poked at him. She scanned the room for Fern and saw her sitting on the floor rubbing her knee. Tabitha shifted her deadline for calling the pediatrician. If it wasn’t better by Wednesday, she’d call. She meant it.

  They helped clean up and got back to the car. They hadn’t eaten anything, and Tabitha felt strange about pulling the peppers out of her bag. Better to put them away at home and serve them like she had made them. She didn’t think the kids would buy it, or forget that they were the exact same peppers they’d helped serve, but at least there’d be some distance. It took an extra minute for Fern to bend her knee and get it inside the car before pulling the door shut, but she didn’t say anything or complain about it. Tabitha waited for the kids to say they were starving—they must be, she was—but neither said anything.

  “So, I was thinking,” Tabitha said. She had been considering offering this since talking to Nancy about what an amazing kid Levi was. He deserved a treat, and she could put a little something on her credit card—just this once. “I was thinking we could go for pizza on the way home.”

  “Really?” Fern asked.

  “Cool,” Levi said.

  Tabitha planned to find any cheap, corner pizza place where you could probably get a large pie for fifteen dollars. But now she thought, as long as they were doing it, they might as well really do it. First, she considered Tacconelli’s. She took out her phone, which she’d been worrying about lately. She knew all their plans were on Stuart’s credit card, it was an automatic monthly charge, and she hadn’t heard anything about the charges not going through, but she worried that at some point service would stop. She held the phone in her hand for a second, then she typed in Tacconelli’s. The first picture that came up looked amazing. She was just about to tell the kids when she saw the Cash Only detail at the bottom of the page.

  “How about Nomad?” she asked, and the kids cheered in unison. She drove back into Center City and continued south to one of their favorite pizza places, one that took credit cards. And she didn’t try to manage them, she just let them order. A movie about animals played on the big screen at the front of the dining room; Tabitha ordered an icy beer. They ate pepperoni pizza and a special pie with creamy sweet corn. Tabitha wished they could stay there forever. The bill was eighty-four dollars after adding a 17 percent tip—15 percent seemed cheap and 20 percent extravagant, so 17 percent it was.

  Fern didn’t even seem to limp that much as they headed back to the car, drove home, and finally entered the apartment, which was dark and getting darker. The stupid peppers were in her purse that whole time. There was a time when she would never eat something that was left out so long, but the peppers were still slightly warm and smelled good, so she put them in the fridge. She put the cinnamon sugar on the shelf where they used to keep it when they had plenty of it, when it was hard to find room to fit everything. Now there was plenty of room. The kids went to sleep, and she settled into bed thinking it was a good day, maybe the best they’d had in months.

  But that night she was restless. She dreamt that she took one thing after another off a shelf, her arms hurt from all the reaching, then put it all back on the shelf—one thing down, one thing back up, over and over again. When she finally woke up for good, seven minutes before the alarm was set to go off, all the contentment from the evening before was gone, and her head pounded. She felt achy and drained. And so mad at herself for the day before—the stealing, of course, but also charging eighty-four dollars! Why had she done that? If only she could get that back. She felt around the bottom of the bed with her feet and latched her toes onto the Michigan T-shirt. When she heard Fern coming down the hall, her gait still slow with a definite hitch, she let the shirt go and sat up. She was the only one in charge, after all. She better act like it.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Once the kids were out for the day—Tabitha hadn’t bothered to walk them to school in a week now—she literally didn’t know what to do with herself. She knew she should be looking harder for a job—that’s what her plan was for the morning—but she couldn’t stand the thought of sitting down at the computer. She needed to keep moving, to talk about yesterday, confess her sins, but to whom? And then she knew. It was crazy, but she didn’t even care. She got dressed and walked toward the huge apartment building on JFK Boulevard. This time she didn’t bother to stop at the desk, and nobody questioned her. She took the elevator to the second floor and knocked. No answer. She waited a few seconds, then knocked again, wondering if she could get into trouble for this. Was it trespassing? Soliciting? No, it was neither of those things. She ran through the worst-case scenarios in her mind. Maybe Nora was inside, sitting on the floor in her bad, altered state. Or maybe another aide was there. What would Tabitha say then? She considered leaving, just going back home, but something tugged at her. She was so desperate to talk to someone, to confess the cinnamon sugar.

  She took a deep breath and pushed open the door, which she was counting on being unlocked.

  “Hello?” she called. “Nora?”

  No answer. She was reluctant to walk deeper into the apartment without permission. It just didn’t feel right.

  “Nora?”

  “Boo!” Nora said, coming around the corner.

  Tabitha jumped back, clutching her chest and breathing hard. It took her a second to recover. Nora just stood there, smiling wide.

  “It’s you!” Nora finally said, and Tabitha wondered if she really remembered; she seemed to.

  “Yes, it’s me,” Tabitha said, trying to mimic Nora’s cheerfulness.

  “Well, it is perfect timing,” Nora said. “My son just left, and he doesn’t like me to be alone.”

  “Oh, okay,” Tabitha said, wondering what the plan was then. Was someone else coming? “Why doesn’t he want you to be alone?”

  “I don’t know,” she said coyly. “I think he worries I’m gonna have a keg party.”

  Tabitha laughed.

  “Well, are you? Going to have a party?”

  “No,” Nora said seriously. “I don’t like beer, and kegs are too heavy for me to carry these days. But I do have marijuana. Want some?”

  Once again, Tabitha had that sensation that she was being watched or filmed. This couldn’t be for real, could it? At any second a television host would pop out with a microphone. Maybe they were permanently set up in Nora’s apartment, since she was so entertaining. Maybe her bedroom was the control room; Tabitha hadn’t seen her bedroom yet. It could be that show where one person is told to say crazy things through a small receiver in her ear. She looked at the side of Nora’s head, but didn’t see anything, not even a hearing aid. Besides, there was no way they could have known Tabitha was coming.

  “Sure,” she said.

  “Oh fun!” Nora said. “I hate to do marijuana by myself, and my son never wants to.”

  “Why do you have it?” Tabitha asked, wondering if she was going to roll a joint or bring out a bong. She just couldn’t picture it.

  “Medical purposes, dear,” Nora said. “Follow me.”

  She followed Nora into the kitchen, where Nora grabbed an old-fashioned-looking tin off the counter. Tabitha looked closely, and there were two ice skaters on the lid, dressed in colorful sweaters, with Christmassy pine trees all around them. Nora lifted the lid to reveal a handful of caramel candies wrapped in wax paper. Oh, Tabitha thought, Nora probably thinks these caramels are edibles, even though they looked like normal caramels to Tabitha. She leaned in for a closer look. She hadn’t actually ever had an edible, and she hadn’t smoked pot in years, possibly a decade, though it was one of her favorite things to do in college. No, she told herself, these look like normal candies.

  “Help yourself, dear,” Nora said, holding out the tin. “But I suggest only one, or maybe half of one to begin. They can be strong.”r />
  “Thanks, Nora,” Tabitha said, reaching in to grab one. She could play along. “I’ll just take one and eat it slowly.”

  “Good thinking,” Nora said, choosing one after Tabitha. She put her piece of candy on the counter and opened the refrigerator, pulling out a bright-blue bowl covered in plastic wrap. She pulled off the wrap, then reached into a cabinet below the counter and pulled out a small, disposable muffin tin already lined with six bright-pink paper holders.

  “Cranberry again, dear?” Nora asked. “I do know how you like cranberry. Today I can also offer you cherry, blueberry, butterscotch, or chocolate chip.”

  Tabitha looked around. She chose to come here, but what were the chances that an entirely stocked muffin factory would just be waiting for her? It made no sense; there must be a catch. She thought of Fern, who would love chocolate-chip muffins more than anything.

  “Chocolate chip?”

  “Chocolate chip it is,” Nora said. “But first, let me take a bite of the candy. It can take some time to feel anything.”

  Nora peeled back a small bit of the wax paper and took a bite of the caramel. She closed her eyes and chewed, then swallowed.

  “I like to let it sink in,” she said, with her eyes still closed.

  “Huh, okay,” Tabitha said, worrying that she was intruding. “You know what, Nora, you don’t have to make muffins for me. I just stopped by to see if there was anything I could do for you. Do you need anything?”

  Nora opened her eyes and looked right at Tabitha.

  “I need to feel busy and not old,” she said. “The muffins help. The marijuana helps. Company helps.”

  “Well,” Tabitha said, wishing she’d been able to think of another place to go to confess her sins, “chocolate-chip muffins would be so nice. My daughter would love them.”

  “You have a daughter?” Nora asked, wide eyed. She looked like a little kid. “I always wanted a daughter. I have a granddaughter, which is lovely, but it isn’t the same as raising a daughter.”

  Tabitha’s mind flashed to the last time she took her mother out to dinner, though of course, they didn’t know it would be the last time. How do you ever know it’s going to be the last time? Tabitha cringed. Her mother had always been a little obsessed with “last times”—the last time Tabitha nursed each baby, the last time Tabitha carried them, the last time her mother had carried her as a child. There always had to be a last time. Tabitha hated that, but now she let herself think about it for a second while she nibbled at her candy and Nora mixed chocolate chips into the batter. That dinner had been so, so hard and really the last thing in the world she wanted to do. There was not one tiny ounce of her that wanted to be eating out with her mother. She wanted to be home with the kids and Stuart. She wanted to be reading in bed, or binge-watching Friday Night Lights. She did not want to basically carry her frail, wrinkled mother into Sang Kee, the best Chinese restaurant near her mother’s apartment in Wynnewood. Of course, the table was up a few steps, so everyone came running to take an arm and carry the walker up, while Tabitha stood behind her mother with her arms outstretched, just in case. Her mother had been wearing a light-blue sweater, with a scarf neatly tied around her neck, and those strange black pants that Tabitha always suspected were really pajama bottoms, even though her mother insisted they were not. They finally were seated at the table, her mother smiling, so happy to be there, and Tabitha being curt, rushed. But her mother had pretended not to notice. She ordered her favorite—moo shu chicken—and she had a drink, a scotch. Had that been her last scotch? The last one of thousands she’d had in her lifetime?

  “Can you open the oven for me, dear?” Nora asked, the filled cupcake tin in hand. Tabitha noticed that she had sprinkled sugar on top and made smiley faces with the chocolate chips: two eyes, a nose, and a happy mouth.

  “Wow,” Tabitha said, leaning in to get the door. She pulled it down and waited for Nora to slide the tin in, then she shut it a little harder than she meant to. She reached for her candy and took a sizeable bite.

  “Oh dear, that’s a lot,” Nora said seriously. “You aren’t driving home, are you?”

  “No, I walked here.” Tabitha continued to play along. “But thank you for your concern.”

  “Those will be ready in about twenty or twenty-five minutes,” Nora said. “Can you keep track of the time?”

  “Sure.”

  “Let’s retire to the living room,” Nora said, grabbing her piece of candy.

  They sat down, and Nora turned her full attention to the caramel, pulling tiny bits off and placing them in her mouth, then closing her eyes. Tabitha watched, taking another nibble of her candy and wondering if thinking and believing something had special powers was enough to give it special powers. Nora seemed completely uninterested in conversation, and Tabitha didn’t mind. She was just thinking that the muffins must be close to being ready when she started to feel a little light-headed, and then she was filled with this great feeling, like everything was going to be okay. She put her head back, smiled. Oh my god, she thought, I’m high!

  “Oh good, dear, it must be working,” Nora said, surprising her. Maybe Tabitha hadn’t thought that. Maybe she had actually said it.

  Tabitha wanted to say something nice, like she was sorry she had doubted Nora in the first place. Also, how stupid of her. Of course, she knew edibles were a real thing, she just hadn’t had the chance to try any. How hilarious was it that an old lady introduced her to them? She wanted to talk about all of this, but she couldn’t find the words. Where were her words? She’d find them eventually. What was important now was to take another small bite of her candy.

  Tabitha could sit here all day. There was something magical about this apartment with its funny-candy tin and muffin-making oven. Suddenly, she didn’t feel like she had to confess anything. So what if she took a few stuffed peppers? Nobody was eating them anyway. And as for the cinnamon sugar, she’d replace it as soon as she could. It was totally worth it to see Fern’s face that morning when she presented the cinnamon toast—sure the bread was old, but once it was toasted you could barely tell. Really, she was doing her best; she didn’t have anything to own up to. Everything was great, perfect even.

  Tabitha wasn’t sure how much time had gone by, but she smelled something. She sniffed and looked around. Nora appeared to be asleep. Tabitha forced herself up and tried to follow the smell, which eventually reminded her of the muffins. She scrambled to find oven mitts and pulled them out just in time. Another few minutes and they would have been all-out burned. But they looked good, like the best muffins she had ever seen. Fern was going to love them. She put them on the top of the stove, turned off the oven. She saw the candy tin, which was still open. She took a caramel and put it in her pocket, for later. She helped herself to a muffin, which was quite hot, but she couldn’t get it down fast enough. She looked at her watch. It wasn’t even lunchtime yet. She was planning to call the pediatrician today about Fern’s leg. She thought she could hear her moaning a little during the night, and putting it off didn’t seem right, but now that she thought about it, it seemed a little better this morning. Didn’t it? And Fern hadn’t complained about it at all that morning. In fact, Tabitha was pretty sure it was going to be completely back to normal soon, if it wasn’t already. You know what, she said in her head, or at least she thought it was in her head, I’ll wait and see how it is today, and then I’ll call. Or maybe she wouldn’t have to call at all. That was a very likely scenario. Everything was going to work itself out. Wow, she felt good. Why did she ever stop smoking pot? It was like she was free. What was she worrying about earlier?

  She went back to the living room and sat down, laughing a little, or was she laughing a lot? She wasn’t sure. Nora opened her eyes and laughed too. Her face looked so much like Tabitha’s mother’s, didn’t it? Those strong cheekbones that were now hard and prominent, no longer padded and soft, making her look a little stern. All those wrinkles around her eyes. But it was really the neck, or the lack of
it. Why did people seem to lose their necks when they got older? They looked like their heads were placed right on their shoulders.

  “I have to go now, Nora,” Tabitha said. She had to pull herself together.

  “Don’t forget the muffins, dear,” Nora said, her eyes closed again.

  “I won’t, thank you,” Tabitha said. “I’ll come back soon.”

  “Please do, dear,” Nora said. “Nobody else will do the marijuana with me, and I don’t like doing it by myself.”

  “Well, I like doing it with you,” Tabitha said, feeling only slightly guilty about the extra candy in her pocket.

  She went back to the kitchen, found a ziplock bag in a drawer, and piled all the muffins in. Then she grabbed one back out and ate it quickly. It was still warm and gooey and everything she could ever possibly want a muffin to be. She wanted another—would that be her third? But she also wanted to save them for Fern. She zipped the bag shut firmly, went back to the living room.

  “I’m leaving now,” she said. “Can I tell you something before I go?”

  “Sure, dear, anything,” Nora said sleepily.

  “I’m worried that I might be responsible for the death of two people.” There, she said it. It was nagging at her, bringing her down. It was so easy to say things when she was high!

  Nora opened her eyes. She didn’t look worried or even concerned. She looked amused—no, that wasn’t right—she looked interested.

  “Oh, dear, I doubt that’s the case,” she said nicely, barely lifting her head. “But if you come back again, we can talk more about it. I’d like that. I can make more muffins. And maybe we can play some Monopoly.”

  Tabitha’s business had been running for a solid five months when it happened. She was already thinking about what she could do to celebrate the six-month anniversary. She was leaning toward a drawing to give away a free meal—the only caveat was that the customer couldn’t choose the menu. She would do something crazy, exotic. It would be so much fun.