Not Perfect: A Novel

by Elizabeth Laban

  Tabitha was shocked to find that Levi didn’t mind going to see the rabbi. It was almost like he felt he deserved the punishment of it, or at least that was what Tabitha gathered when he nodded once at being told they had a meeting that afternoon. She told him before he left for school, before she went back to the hotel to meet Toby for another wonderful hour full of sex and room-service pancakes and bacon. But now that they were here, sitting in the rabbi’s office, Tabitha could see it was something else.

  “I just don’t want to do it,” Levi said, leaning forward in his chair, his hands on his lap. His voice was clear and strong, not that mumbling sort of response that a young teenager often gave in the presence of authority.

  “I hear what you’re saying,” the rabbi said gently. He leaned back in his chair. “But can you explain to me why, so I can understand it better?”

  Levi looked at Tabitha. She had to pull herself back to the moment. She was thinking about Toby and how he focused on her for most of their time that morning, completely undemanding, wanting only to know what made Tabitha feel the best. Her cheeks flushed red now as she nodded toward Levi.

  “Well, my dad has been gone for a long time,” Levi said. “And I don’t know when he’s coming back. He always works a lot, and I thought this would be something we could do together. I tried, I really did. I’ve even started my mitzvah project, the one he suggested, but without him here, I just don’t want to do it.”

  “What about your mom?” the rabbi said, nodding toward Tabitha. “What if she helps you? What if you can do it with her?”

  “It’s not the same,” Levi said, sounding more like a whiny teenager.

  “It’s not the same,” Tabitha agreed, backing him up. “I never had a bat mitzvah—I’m learning as he does it. Stuart had a bar mitzvah. This is something he always wanted for Levi.”

  “Well, let me ask you the obvious question,” Rabbi Rosen said. “What does Stuart have to say about this? Is he willing to have Levi give it all up so he can continue to stay away taking care of business? Might he consider cutting his trip short, or at least making a few trips home here and there to help? We’re not that far away from the big day.”

  Levi looked at Tabitha again and raised his eyebrows. Yes, yes, she wanted to say, These are all very good, obvious questions. I just don’t have the answers.

  “Well,” she said after a too-long pause. “He is extremely hard to reach.”

  She did not want to blatantly lie to the rabbi. She thought, at this point, he would see through her and know she was lying. He probably already thought she was nuts and undependable, if rabbis thought things like that.

  “Can I give it a try?” Rabbi Rosen asked.

  Tabitha wondered if Stuart would answer his cell phone if the rabbi called. She doubted it. She flashed back to the other day and Fern’s strange conversation with Stuart, still not at all sure what was going on there.

  “Look,” Tabitha said, after she ran three other sentences through her mind: I’ll try him again. Let’s give him more time. I don’t think it will make a difference. “To be perfectly honest, as far as I can tell, he is unreachable.”

  It was the first time she’d said anything like that in front of Levi. He didn’t even flinch or look up at her. Was this not a surprise to him?

  “Well, he must be pretty caught up in whatever he is doing,” the rabbi said in his gentle voice. “Here’s what I propose. Levi, let me know if this might work for you. You are so close. You know your Torah portion, you’ve probably already done plenty for your project. Let’s keep it simple. Don’t even think about a party or celebration if you don’t want to. You can do that down the road—when everyone you want to be here is here.” He paused, and Tabitha took note that he didn’t say, “When your dad is here.” But he also didn’t not say it.

  “I’ll call you to the Torah, we will do the barest minimum. You don’t even have to give your D’var Torah. But once I call you to the bima, and you have read from the Torah, you will officially become a bar mitzvah—anything else you want to do or don’t want to do is up to you. And that will be something that can’t be taken away from you. Believe me, it isn’t easy to get back to this place, learn a whole new Torah portion. Once people let it go, they rarely do it again.”

  “Fine,” Levi said, looking up from his lap. “That sounds okay.”

  “Great,” Rabbi Rosen said. “I’m so glad to hear it. And I’ll work with you from here on out. No need to set up appointments with the cantor. Just come to me. We’ll keep it very simple.”

  “Thank you, Rabbi,” Tabitha said. It was just dawning on her what this meant. No invitations, no party. It was such good news. But then she looked over at Levi, and he was crying. He didn’t even try to hide it. Tabitha leaned toward him at the same time the rabbi did, so she leaned back, hoping he’d have something better and wiser to say than she did.

  “I know this is hard,” the rabbi said to Levi. “I wish I had more answers for you. But please know, I am here for you if you want to talk or if you need anything. Here is my cell number, call me anytime.”

  He handed Levi a card, which he took and stuffed into his pocket, sniffling. The tears seemed to be subsiding.

  911—I need you. Our son is CRYING—he hasn’t cried in front of me since he was eight.

  Tabitha put her hand on Levi’s knee. She didn’t touch him much anymore, she realized. Why did people stop touching each other? She half expected him to brush her away, or to stand up, so her hand would be forced to move. But he just sat there, letting her touch him, and it made her feel so sorry for him, she could barely stand it. Much worse than when his room was neat, so much worse than the time he knocked out his front tooth when he was three, too old to have a pacifier still but did anyway, and the dentist said he couldn’t have it anymore, that was it, cold turkey. He had turned in the dentist chair and cried, serious, sad tears, and for a minute, Tabitha thought she might never be mad at him again. She felt that way now, times twenty.

  “Monkey,” she said gently. “I promise, I’m never going to leave you.”

  He nodded, sniffed a little, then stood slowly, so her hand was moved but not aggressively; it was a natural falling away. She stood, too. The rabbi stood, then, and reached out to shake Levi’s hand but instead hugged him. Tabitha thought this might make him start to cry again, but it didn’t.

  “Thanks, Rabbi,” he said.

  “Anytime, Levi,” Rabbi Rosen said. Tabitha wondered if she could ask him to come home with them. His presence was so ridiculously soothing.

  “Tabitha, please know I’m here if you need anything,” he said, turning to her. She felt like she didn’t deserve his attention—she wasn’t really Jewish—but she wanted it.

  “Thank you,” she said. She wanted to add that she was going to try to sort this out, she would bring Levi’s father home for him, but that was all so silly. Obviously, if she could have, she would have.

  When Levi was out the door but Tabitha was still inside, she felt the rabbi’s gentle hand on her shoulder.

  “Is Fern doing okay?” he asked. “With all of this?”

  Tabitha shook her head and then nodded, one after the other.

  “She seems okay,” Tabitha said. “Thanks for asking.”

  “Can you drop me at Butch’s?” Levi asked, once they were in the car and the doors were closed. All signs of the tears were gone.

  “It’s dinnertime, and Fern is . . .”

  “Please?”

  “Fine,” she said, going right instead of left, so she could go to Butch’s house.

  Ten minutes later, Levi was dropped off and she was alone in the car. She called Rachel.

  “Hey, I’ve been thinking about you,” Rachel said in her warm voice.

  Tabitha immediately began to cry.

  “What’s wrong? Are you okay? Are the kids okay?”

  Tabitha couldn’t get a word out. She worried about Rachel’s worrying in the time it was taking her to speak.

  “
Yes,” she finally spit out. “Pretty much.”

  “Where are you?”

  Again, it was a long few seconds before she could talk.

  “I . . . just . . . dropped . . . Levi . . . off,” she sobbed. “Now . . . I’m . . . going . . . home . . . to . . . Fern.”

  “I’m just getting off,” Rachel said. “Can I meet you at your apartment?”

  “No, no,” Tabitha said, thinking of the state of the place. There were eleven burned-out light bulbs in the kitchen and only one that still worked. Now, though, now she could start to replace them. She had Nora’s money. She pictured herself reaching into that strange jar and pulling out the bills, and her crying reached a whole new level.

  “I’m coming whether you want me to or not,” Rachel said. “I have some stuff to talk about, too. Are you okay to drive?”

  “I think so.”

  “Have you guys eaten?” Rachel asked, but before Tabitha could answer she added, “I’ll bring dinner.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Somehow Tabitha got home, and somehow she found a parking spot. She was walking in toward the apartment when she saw Rachel, and she had to work hard to hold it together until they were in the elevator together.

  “I’ll talk first,” Rachel said, shifting the big bag she was carrying from one hand to the other.

  Tabitha waited for her to say she was pregnant. That was the obvious news, though it seemed a little soon. Had she even been inseminated yet? Tabitha was having a hard time keeping track of time. They went up higher and higher: five, six. The door opened, and she still hadn’t said anything.

  “So, here’s the thing,” Rachel finally said when they were out of the elevator.

  “Stuart’s gone,” Tabitha said, before Rachel could continue. Then she felt bad. “Wait, sorry, god I’ve been holding that in for so long. I wanted to tell you but, well, there’s a reason I didn’t. We are all pretty much falling apart. I just—”

  “He’s gone?” Rachel asked. “I thought he was sick. I thought maybe, I mean, it didn’t make any sense, because if that were true, you would be with him, but I imagined he was sick somewhere, with some awful mystery illness, getting treatment.”

  “I think that would be better,” Tabitha said. “Than this.”

  Rachel leaned against the beautiful, fully-maintained, recently painted wall in the brightly lit hallway and sank slowly to the carpeted floor. She looked like she was getting ready to settle in for a while. But already Tabitha regretted what she’d said. The threat—“I’ll tell them what you did”—was now screaming in her head. It was always there, whispering, reminding her. But now it felt like she had unleashed it and there was no holding it back. “I’ll tell them what you did.” Why? She wanted to scream. Why will you tell them what I did? And more important, what did I do? Which thing? Was it the peanut oil or the morphine? Or both?

  Tabitha could smell the food in the bag. She guessed some kind of stewed chicken in a Marsala sauce with mushrooms and noodles. That was one of the store’s specialties. But despite her having eaten so little today, she wasn’t hungry. She couldn’t imagine putting a piece of chicken on a fork and bringing it to her mouth, chewing. Fern must be hungry, though. Poor Fern, who had been alone for hours now.

  “Let’s go inside,” Tabitha said, leaning over to offer Rachel a hand, which she took. “Besides, I sort of jumped in there. You said you wanted to talk to me about something. What is it?”

  Levi did not have any intention of going to Butch’s house. He just couldn’t stand the thought of being with his mother for one more second. Why had he let that happen—to cry in front of her? What was he, like five? He didn’t even recognize himself anymore. So when his mother dropped him off just down the block, because there were no spots closer, he was glad. She might stay to make sure he got inside, but she was so distracted these days that he didn’t think she would.

  He walked as slowly as he could toward the stoop leading up to Butch’s perfect house with his perfect family. He hadn’t talked to him all day—in fact Butch wasn’t even in school today—but he could just imagine them in there, all four of them, playing board games or watching some show together on the nature channel. Probably something about how animals stuck together, or how the male of the species rarely abandoned his young, and when he did, there must be something pretty defective about his offspring. After that, they’d go into their brightly lit kitchen, not a single light bulb would be blown out in there, Levi was sure of it, and they would eat something wonderful that Butch’s mother properly shopped for and maybe even spent much of the day preparing. Something like lasagna or brisket. No way, he couldn’t stand to see that today. But his mother didn’t leave. He could still feel the car behind him, he could hear it. He turned back toward her, just to get a sense of what she was doing, and he could see she was on the phone, and was she crying? Oh man, this couldn’t get any worse. He looked ahead again, fairly sure she hadn’t seen him. He was just going to have to keep walking, past Butch’s house, and if she called him on it, he’d deal with it then.

  Butch lived on Mt. Vernon, two houses shy of Twenty-First Street, so if his mother wasn’t paying close attention, he might be able to make it look like he was moving toward his house when he was really going around the corner. He held his breath as he passed his false destination, waiting for a honk or to hear his mother call his name, but nothing happened, and then he turned right on Twenty-First Street and was out of sight. He moved fast and made the first right onto the next block, one he didn’t know at all, and waited. What he was waiting for, he didn’t know. So he decided to keep going on that block, back to Twentieth Street and beyond. At Nineteenth he started walking south toward the Ben Franklin Parkway and home, even though he had no intention of going home. There was the chance his mother would see him. It would be plain old bad luck if she did, but it wasn’t impossible. He kept his eyes open for their car, and he walked.

  He was just across the parkway, near the main branch of the library, when he saw him. He was facing the other way, but it was him. His hair looked thinner, but that could be from all the stress, or something. He would have an explanation. He always had an explanation. Levi walked faster. He could see his shirt, a shirt he knew so well, mostly blue with red checks, it looked almost purple from a distance. He could see his hands. They looked like the hands he remembered. He couldn’t get to him fast enough. He started to run.

  “Dad!” he screamed. “Dad! Dad!”

  His father didn’t turn around, but he didn’t go the other way, either, which was what Levi was afraid of. Where had he been this whole time? Had he been this close? He was almost to him, and he could see that the shirt had a big hole in it. The khakis had an ugly brown stain on the butt.

  “Dad!” he screamed again, and this time the man turned around. For a second he thought, how could he look so different? Could a person change that much? And then he knew. It wasn’t his father at all. He slowed just enough to get a good look, to be sure, before speeding up again. He kept running, right toward Logan Square, where the light for the westbound traffic had just turned green.

  Inside, Fern was watching television. When Tabitha got closer she could see she was watching The Walking Dead, and her first instinct was to yell at her. What was she doing? She shouldn’t be watching that! But then she felt so utterly sorry for her that she just sat down next to her and didn’t mention the content of the show. She knew Fern had watched all the DVDs they had over and over again, she probably held off on this one for as long as she could. It was a gift Tabitha had bought for Stuart last year. She thought at the time it might be something they could watch together, something that had absolutely nothing to do with their lives, something that might make their own lives seem not so bad. They never watched it. Tabitha could see the clear plastic on the coffee table that Fern had peeled off of the DVD.

  “Hey, Fernie Bernie,” she said soothingly. “Aunt Rachel is here. She brought dinner.”

  Fern nodded, her eyes on t
he screen. A man with a beard was hacking away at a zombie.

  “Here, turn that off for now, come eat.”

  Fern didn’t respond. Tabitha sat back to get a better look at her. Her bad leg was stretched out, completely stiff, and her other leg was tucked under her. She looked thin, and there were purplish circles under her eyes. Tabitha was doing a terrible, terrible job of taking care of her.

  “Come on, Fern,” she coaxed. “Come into the kitchen. You must be starving.”

  “When this is over.”

  “How much longer?” Tabitha asked, hoping this was one of the less violent episodes, if there was such a thing.

  Fern sighed and pushed a button on the remote to pause it.

  “Eleven minutes,” Fern said.

  “Okay, fine, but come in when it’s over,” Tabitha said. “Don’t start another one.”

  Again, Fern didn’t respond. Tabitha got up and walked back into the kitchen. Rachel had pulled the containers out of the shopping bag and placed them on the granite island. Tabitha was wrong, it wasn’t chicken Marsala. It was meatballs and lasagna and some kind of parmesan: chicken or veal or eggplant. It all looked so good. Now she could imagine eating this, chewing, swallowing.

  There was literally one light bulb illuminating the big, grand kitchen. Tabitha knew Rachel would normally say something about this, but she didn’t now. She pretended to not notice, or that it was normal, something. Tabitha took a seat on one of the stools and let Rachel do all the work, set the table, hunt for napkins that weren’t there. Again, she didn’t ask.

  “Okay, so please tell me what’s going on with you,” Tabitha said, leaning her chin into her left hand. “I’m so sorry I stole the thunder.”

  “Yeah, well you did that,” she said, but nicely. Thank goodness for Rachel. “Okay so here’s the thing. And my thing is not as important as your thing, I think, even though an hour ago it seemed very important; it seemed like the most important thing in the world. I can see now, my thing is something that doesn’t exist yet, while your thing exists and needs help.”