Not Perfect: A Novel

by Elizabeth Laban

  Fern went to get the house phone but then couldn’t remember how to unblock the number, or was it not blocked in the first place? She wasn’t sure. She put it down on the couch and ran to her room. She came back with a folded piece of paper which she unfolded carefully. She read it, and then lifted the phone, unblocked their number, and dialed. She waited a few seconds then hung up. She did it again and hung up again. Finally, she didn’t hang up, she held on and waited.

  “Hello darling.”

  “Daddy?”

  “Is that really Dad?” Levi asked, grabbing the phone away from her. Or at least trying to. She held on tight.

  “Is that Levi?” Stuart asked. “Fernie, I asked you not to tell anyone about . . .”

  “Levi got run over by a bike. He was in the hospital for days, but now he’s home,” Fern spurted. “And I don’t know if you know that his bar mitzvah is coming up. It’s soon. I wondered if you plan to miss it.”

  “Back up a minute, Fern,” Stuart said. “Levi got run over by a bike? Is he okay?”

  “Yes, I told you he’s home,” Fern said impatiently. “What I need to know is if you are coming for his bar mitzvah.”

  “Does your mother know you’re calling me?”

  “No,” Fern said. “She went out. Do you want to speak to Levi?”

  Levi reached again for the phone, but Fern held on. There was a long silence.

  “Yes,” he finally said.

  “Dad?” Levi called into the phone. He was crying, which for some reason surprised Fern. She didn’t feel like crying. She didn’t feel much like anything. She waited. She couldn’t hear what her dad was saying now, and she was sorry she had given up the phone and her power. Also, this was ruining the movie that she had bought to cheer up Levi. Maybe she should have waited until it was over. She lifted the remote and pressed the “pause” button.

  “Okay,” Levi said into the phone, sniffling. “Okay.”

  He hung up. Fern was so mad—she had wanted to talk again. Now she had lost her chance. There was so much she needed to tell him.

  “Well?” Fern asked, pouty and annoyed.

  “He’s coming for the bar mitzvah,” Levi said. “He said he’ll be there.”

  Tabitha arrived at the Fox & Hound much too quickly. She wasn’t ready, and she didn’t have a plan. Before she left she had put on Stuart’s Michigan T-shirt, and now she wished she hadn’t. With it on, she was clearly coming here, to watch the game. If she didn’t have it on, she could say she was walking by and happened to see him through the window, or maybe she could have just stood out there and hoped to run into him. No, she told herself, No more lies. She couldn’t stand all the lies.

  She went to the big window facing Spruce Street and tried to appear casual as she looked inside to see who was there. The window was smudged, and it was pretty crowded, so after a few minutes of pretending she wasn’t really looking, she stepped closer and put her hand around her face to keep out the glare. She saw the head of the alumni association chapter standing on a chair, talking to everyone. As usual, he was completely covered with Michigan gear and body paint. She wondered if the walls of his home were painted maize and blue. She looked to his left and to his right. She recognized a few people she’d seen there before, including Stuart’s friend Henry, the slow talker, but no one else.

  “Are you looking for me?”

  Tabitha jumped and turned. Toby was standing in front of her.

  “I, um, was deciding if I wanted to go in or not,” she said. “Did you just walk by and see me here?”

  “No, I was inside,” he said. “I saw you doing your Peeping Tom impression. I thought I would save you the trouble.”

  She wanted to say something like what made him think she was there for him? But it just seemed so tiring.

  “Thanks,” she said.

  “Do you want to go inside?”

  Now that she was here with him, she didn’t know what she wanted. Well, she wanted to reach out and touch his hand, and she wanted to lean in for a kiss, one like the many they had shared at the hotel, but she couldn’t do any of those things.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I’m not sure why I came here.”

  “Well, are you sure about why you haven’t answered or returned any of my calls?” Toby asked, and even with his accusing words, he still sounded kind and gentle. “Because I would love to know.”

  Tabitha looked around. It seemed it would be hard to talk here, but she wanted to be with him so much that it also seemed worth it. She nodded toward the wall, just below the windows, and she sat down. He followed her. They heard cheering come from inside the bar, so presumably Michigan had scored or done something good, but neither turned to see what had happened.

  “There are so many reasons I didn’t answer your calls or return them,” she said. “First of all, Levi was in the hospital last week, and then he’s been home this week. He was hit by a bike. It was the scariest thing in the world. He’s much better now.” She stopped. Just saying it was hard. While she talked, he reached out and grabbed her knee. Now his hand rested there and he waited.

  “Here is the hard part, the part that is going to make you never want to call me again,” she said. “I know your mother. This is one of the craziest things I have ever done, I mean that, though I realize you don’t know me very well, so you really just have to believe me on that. I went for a job at Home Comforts. It was chaos there, they thought I was an aide and sent me out to your mother’s apartment. I wasn’t going to go, of course, but the file they gave me said she had problems and couldn’t be alone and, this is really why I went, she has the same name as my mother. I mean, what are the chances of that? So, first we just hung out; she made me muffins. But I could see she had a lot of cash. When Fern’s knee started acting up, I never even told you about that, but Fern has had knee pain for months now, and we had to see doctor after doctor. I went back and took a little cash—she literally has cash lying around everywhere, I’m not sure if you realize that. But that doesn’t make it okay; that isn’t what I’m saying. Then the other night, after Levi’s accident, I went back again and took a lot. I told her, and she said she didn’t mind, that’s what it’s there for, but I know it isn’t right. Who steals from an old lady?”

  Tabitha stopped talking. She hadn’t meant to say that much, but once she got started she couldn’t stop. Now, though, now she readied herself to say good-bye to Toby. She expected he would get up and walk away.

  “You’re the lady?” Toby asked. “Oh my god, that is truly the craziest thing I have ever heard. I mean, what are the chances? My mother told me about you, but she didn’t know your name. I thought she must know it but couldn’t remember it. Did you ever tell her?”

  “No,” Tabitha said. “I mean, I think I said my first name when I went there the first time, but she didn’t even seem to acknowledge it. After that, my name never came up.”

  They sat in silence for a little while. Toby had removed his hand from her knee. People walked by. The crowd inside roared again. Tabitha moved to stand. Toby just watched her but didn’t move. He stayed sitting on the dirty sidewalk.

  “So, Levi is okay?” Toby asked.

  Tabitha nodded. “Yes,” she said firmly, deciding a nod wasn’t enough to express how important that was.

  “And Fern’s leg?”

  “Also okay,” Tabitha said. “Thankfully.”

  “I’m glad,” Toby said.

  “Well, now you know,” she said. “I’m sorry it didn’t work out better—between us, I mean.”

  “That’s it? That’s all you have to say? There must be more,” Toby said gently.

  “There is, so much more,” Tabitha said. “I hesitate to tell you this because you are going to think I’m making an excuse, but you know my husband took off, right? Well, some things were paid for—school, the apartment—but so much wasn’t. His checks stopped being deposited, the insurance was cut off—I was desperate.”

  “Yikes,” Toby said in such a way that T
abitha thought she really had to get out of there. All this was doing was making her like him more, and there was no scenario in which she could imagine this working out.

  “There’s even more,” Tabitha said solemnly. “But I think I’ll leave it at that. At least this way you can remember me with a little fondness. Though probably not.”

  “What?” he said. “Where are you going?”

  “Home, to my kids,” she said. “And by the way, our time at the hotel did not push me away. Not one bit. If anything, it is just making all of this so much harder.”

  “How did you figure it out?” Toby asked. She could tell he was stalling, trying to keep her there.

  “What?”

  “That Nora is my mother.”

  “The picture,” Tabitha said. “Of the Uranus birthday.”

  Toby nodded.

  “I just want you to know that I’ll never do it again,” Tabitha said as she backed away. “And one day I will pay it all back—all of it.”

  “I’m not worried about that now,” he said, and she thought he must be as crazy as the rest of them. How could he not be worried about it? “Please, come inside.”

  She shook her head. At this rate, she was going to end up confessing everything, and then not only would he spend the rest of time thinking she was a thief but also a murderer.

  “I can’t,” she said. “And this really has nothing to do with you. Please know that.” She turned and walked quickly away from him, leaving him sitting on the sidewalk.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Stuart Brewer looked out the window of his Hampton Inn hotel room and wondered what it would be like to start swimming across Lake Superior and never look back. How long would it take him to panic? Would that time ever come, or could he just keep going, to the deepest part of the deepest lake, and fade away?

  He knew now that he had been going through the motions, not feeling anything, for years. He was barely present. He worked, had dinner, came home. He did that over and over again for so long. And then a few years ago, he couldn’t stand it anymore, and he went searching for Abigail. How was it that he could be two completely different people, one warm and fun loving with Abigail, at least that’s what he remembered, and another cold and impersonal with Tabitha? He didn’t want to do it anymore.

  He thought Tabitha would have called him on it so long before—really, she never truly pushed him on why he chose to start his own firm to work specifically with the miners, or why he had to go to the Upper Peninsula so often. It took a long time, but he finally found her. It was the lucky shirt, he was sure of it. The old Michigan T-shirt she had given him so long ago that he always kept. He started packing it for all his trips, but that day he decided to actually wear it. That was the day he ran into her in Marquette. It was a crazy, crazy moment, when years and years of feeling came to the surface, and he burst. That’s what it felt like. He was walking into a coffee shop and she was walking out. It almost seemed like she was going to walk by, away from him, and he gently grabbed her wrist, feeling a jolt the likes of which he hadn’t known in years. She had stopped then and smiled at him. He convinced her to go to a park nearby, and that’s where she finally told him everything. Suddenly the big mystery of his life was solved. He learned about her cancer, and that the reason she had called off the wedding was because she had been diagnosed just days before with a bad prognosis. She had not wanted that to be their new married life. She didn’t want to drag him down into a sick life with a sick house and a sick bed. Those were her words, exactly. Instead, she had decided to set him free. How could she not have known that setting him free, as she called it, was forcing him into a life of unhappiness? How could she not have known that? Eventually she had beaten it, she told him, and she had been in remission for years, but it had come back, and she was in and out of the hospital again. Yes, she told him without his having to ask, she had thought about calling him so many times, but by then he was married with a baby on the way. How many times could she rearrange his life, stop it midstream? She knew that she had made a terrible mistake letting him go; that the years they could have had together would have been worth anything. If she could go back in time, she would make a different choice, but there was no going back.

  Even then, even after not talking for years and years, even after marrying another woman and having two children with her, being in Abigail’s presence and hearing her voice was the best, most comforting thing he could ever imagine. And the saddest. It made him feel full and empty at the same time. It made him feel like he had everything and nothing in those few minutes they were together. She begged him to forgive her for what she had done, for what she had kept from him, for what she had taken from him, from them. But she had to go to an appointment. He wanted to go with her. “No,” she had said, but she was glad to have that all out in the open. She thought that would help somehow.

  He created more excuses to go to Michigan, and he always tried to see her. He went to the hospital, where she was on occasion, the only place he knew to find her since she would not give him any more information, and when she was there, she would let him come visit, sit with her, hold her hand. Other times he would go looking, and she wouldn’t be there, and he would spend those days hoping to run into her but he never did. There were six months in there when she was not in the hospital at all, which under normal circumstances would be a good thing, but for Stuart it was awful. He hired a private investigator—he was desperate and felt there was only so much time left. That was the beginning of the end of the money, and with the spending and the working less and less, it just drained away.

  Abigail was finally found. She was living in a tiny cabin, just miles from the spot they had once called their home, on the shore of Lake Superior. A cabin that didn’t have a landline or a proper address. Stuart never would have found her on his own. That was the week before he told Tabitha. He had completely given up on work by then, and once he found Abigail, he had nothing to do except figure out his plan. So he went home early that week, night after night. He knew he had been a disappointing husband, that he had basically allowed Tabitha to buy into something that didn’t exist. He had never loved her in that way. But he loved the kids—so much. On that last night, he came home to the most familiar smell. Tabitha had made his mother’s cherry chicken. It tasted exactly how he remembered it, the oniony combination of salty and sweet. He realized in that moment, he just couldn’t do it anymore. This was not his home. Abigail had always been his home, and he had spent most of his adult life being homesick.

  He wanted to say he was sorry. Tabitha hadn’t done anything wrong. But now, at least for the near future, he had to be with Abigail. That night he went to Tabitha to say good-bye. She mistook his kindness and pushed to have sex, which he let happen—he still wasn’t sure why—and after, he went to the bathroom. She found him there, crying. She was so confused. What was wrong? She wanted to know. And he told her, he uttered the word that had been rolling around in his mouth for so long by that point—pretend. It all felt like pretend. That’s when the first hinge snapped in her. He kept going, he told her about Abigail, about how he had always loved her. And Tabitha got the most awful look in her eyes. She knew then that he had never loved her the way she had hoped, the way she thought he might one day, the way she deserved to be loved. What he had wanted to say was, Is this really a surprise?

  “How could you take so much from me?” she had said to him, or some version of that.

  He had been surprised; somehow he had expected her to be more sympathetic. They had fought, and then Levi had come in. Levi needed him. When he got back, she was asleep, and he had time to book a flight, check in on the kids, and write notes to each of them. He wasn’t sure what he would find in Michigan—he was so scared. It felt like such an unraveling of everything—of his lifelong love with Abigail, of his home, however much he didn’t feel like he belonged there. And he was so mad! How could Tabitha be so harsh? Say the things she had said? So as he finished her note, he scribbled t
he words that would come to haunt him at the bottom of the page—“I’ll tell them what you did.” He knew Tabitha well enough to know that a small threat would keep her wondering and probably prevent her from telling anyone he was gone. She was always so ready to blame herself for things, it was almost too easy. He knew he was doing something bad, he knew ultimately he was to blame for beginning the possible dismantling of his family, but Tabitha was far from perfect; she had done some very bad things, too. He wanted to keep things on a somewhat even playing field, until he figured out where he stood, and that seemed like one way to do it.

  He had intended to keep paying for everything, to get back to work and let the direct deposit checks be available to Tabitha. When he got to Michigan, however, Abigail seemed fine. He was so surprised. But he was so happy to see her that he didn’t question it, and she welcomed him. He settled into her lakeside cabin, each day thinking, Tomorrow I’ll go back. Or, at the very least, Tomorrow I’ll call the kids. Or, Tomorrow I’ll call a client. But he never did any of those things. And he completely stopped working, stopped making money. Two weeks later, she was back in the hospital. She declined rapidly. She died a week later, on the twenty-first of September.

  That was when he totally dropped out. He went back to her cabin. He simply existed there, taking walks on occasion, barely showering, fishing every other day. He was just going to let himself go—slowly starve or walk himself into the ground. None of it mattered anymore. He took his cell phone and shoved it under the couch, let it drain completely and didn’t give it another thought. He didn’t even know where his computer was. It was like he had truly disappeared.

  One night, over a month later, he had a dream about Fern. She was walking through a tunnel, calling for him, screaming, and he couldn’t get to her. He couldn’t answer. That was when he finally realized the magnitude of what he had done to his family, not just these last few months, but always, the whole thing had been built on nothing. But Fern, sweet Fern, he knew from the beginning he had to have her be able to reach him if she needed to. He had given her a way. He had considered giving the same option to Levi, but he knew he would be okay. He was a big boy now. And besides, Levi wouldn’t have been able to keep it from Tabitha. Not in a million years.