Not Perfect

by Elizabeth Laban

  “I’ll be right back,” she said, handing Nora the pills and glass and going into the kitchen to google “$500 bills.” She learned they do exist, but haven’t been printed since 1945. She went back in and looked again at the game. The money was all still there: ones, fives, tens, twenties, fifties, one-hundred-dollar bills, and five-hundred-dollar bills.

  “Can I fill your bank, dear?” Nora asked.

  “Fill my bank?” Tabitha asked. She had to get out of there. Nora seemed fine. She was happy, now she’d had her Advil, the oven was off. “I have to go.”

  “No, dear, please play a little,” Nora said, and for the first time Tabitha heard something other than playfulness in her voice. Sadness? Hopelessness? It sounded awfully familiar.

  “Okay, just a little,” Tabitha said, taking a seat across the board from Nora. It was all set up with the Scottie-dog piece ready to play on the Go space and the rest in a pile waiting for Tabitha to choose. She reached for the thimble. She felt she needed protection of some kind and this seemed like the best choice.

  “I’ll go first,” Nora said, rolling the dice.

  Tabitha couldn’t stop looking at the money. She knew there should be fifteen-hundred dollars in front of her, if Nora had counted right. She fingered the dollar bills then went to the far left of her stash and picked up a five-hundred-dollar bill. It looked funny to her. Real but unreal. How hard would it be to take it? To drop two bills on the floor and come back up with only one, after pushing the other one into her shoe? Would Nora notice? Five hundred dollars would buy a lot of everything bagels. But then again, was there any way to spend a five-hundred-dollar bill today? Was that part of the setup?

  “Your turn, dear,” Nora said.

  “I’m so sorry, but I have to go,” Tabitha said quickly, standing up too fast and jostling the board. Nora’s dog fell over onto its side.

  “Okay, dear,” Nora said matter-of-factly, righting the dog. For a very brief second, Tabitha felt slighted that Nora didn’t ask her to play for just a little while longer, that she didn’t seem to care anymore if Tabitha stayed or went, but then she told herself again that this was not her mother. Her mother was gone.

  “Come back soon, dear,” Nora called, picking up the dice and rolling. She moved the Scottie forward.

  “Thank you,” Tabitha said. “Thanks for the muffins.”

  “Speaking of,” Nora said. “Please take the rest. I can’t stand cranberries.”

  Tabitha hesitated, then went back to the table and lifted the muffin pan, which she could see was disposable.

  “Take the whole thing,” Nora said.

  Tabitha hesitated again, even looked over her shoulder, wondering if there were cameras capturing this exchange. “Will she or won’t she take the muffins?” A television host was whispering into the microphone in a control room somewhere. “Well, folks, she takes the muffins. That’s how desperate she is. But at least she didn’t take the money.”

  “Thanks again, Nora,” she said.

  She pulled the door closed and leaned against the wall while she waited for the elevator. She had to get a grip. Offered muffins were one thing, money was an entirely different animal. That could have been bad.

  “What’s for dinner?” Fern asked the minute she saw Tabitha in the schoolyard. She must be so hungry. Tabitha presented her with the muffin tin, four big cranberry muffins. Fern’s eyes went wide, and kids swarmed around them, as they always did when there was food in a schoolyard. Tabitha had the urge to aggressively push them away. But Fern was parceling out the muffins, and the kids were cheering and skipping off. In the end, Fern had just one muffin to herself, and it took all of Tabitha’s energy to not grab them all back.

  “So what’s for dinner?” Fern asked again in between crumbly bites. Her question didn’t sound as urgent as it had a few minutes before.

  “All things goat cheese,” she answered, pushing Fern’s hair out of her eyes.

  “At home?” Fern asked.

  “No, at Aunt Rachel’s store,” she said.

  “Oh, that reminds me, they need you to bring a snack tomorrow. They want a cheese plate,” Fern said. “With some nondairy alternatives.”

  If that weren’t such an impossible request, Tabitha would have laughed. With some nondairy alternatives? Why do a cheese plate in the first place?

  “I’ll be right back,” Tabitha said, leaving Fern in the yard.

  She went through the school’s front door and stepped into the lobby, feeling normal for the first time all day. Here she was just Tabitha Brewer, Fern and Levi’s mom. She was not the poor little rich girl she now felt like out in the world or the recently abandoned wife.

  “Tabitha!” Julie called to her. Julie was the head of the parents’ association, one year into her two-year term. It seemed to Tabitha to be the most thankless job out there. Sure, she was acknowledged at all the meetings and luncheons, but really, she didn’t get paid and she spent her days trying to find volunteers to help her with events that most people could live without.

  “Julie!” Tabitha said back, hoping she sounded nicer than she felt.

  “Did Fern tell you we need a cheese plate for the parent reception tomorrow? It’s at lunch, after the string ensemble concert. I don’t know how many parents will be present, hopefully a bunch, so make it nice, and make it feel like a meal. Okay? Baguettes are always a good addition, some fruit. Oh, and there has to be something for those who can’t tolerate the dairy—hummus maybe?”

  Tabitha just stared at her. Last year at this time she would have marched into Di Bruno Bros. and gathered all of that and more, charging whatever it cost—$100? $150?—to her credit card without a thought, telling herself it was a donation to the school. Now it felt like Julie was asking her to go to the moon and collect some moon rocks to bring back in time for lunch tomorrow.

  “I’m so sorry—” she said, just as Julie spotted another potential target.

  “Judy!” Julie called, even though Tabitha was in midsentence. Can Judy gather the cheese plate? Tabitha wondered.

  “Thanks,” Julie said back to Tabitha, as she walked over to Judy. Tabitha listened while she asked Judy if she could provide breakfast for the teachers during conferences next month, “Preferably something homemade.”

  Tabitha wandered back toward Fern. She knew almost every single adult she passed. Both Fern and Levi had been going to Larchwood since preschool, and that gave Tabitha great comfort. Of course, no one at the school had any idea what was going on. Would it be so bad to ask for help? She even turned slightly toward Esther, the warm third-grade teacher. Esther would never judge, she would help. If she knew what Tabitha was dealing with, Esther would probably buy her a dozen everything bagels and invite them over for a meal. She would offer them a big pot of beans and rice and tell Tabitha to take the rest home. It would likely be enough to feed them for days. But then Stuart’s letter resurfaced in her mind and Tabitha walked away.

  “Hey, Fernie Bernie, you ready to go?” Tabitha asked. Fern was sitting with Sarina, their backs against the side of the brick building. Sarina was still wearing her birthday crown, but it was wrinkled and ripped, and she looked tired. “Hi Sarina, happy birthday!”

  “Thank you,” the little girl said politely.

  “Just five more minutes, Mom, please.”

  Tabitha smiled and pulled out her phone. She walked to the far corner of the yard and called Rachel.

  “We’re definitely in for the tasting tonight,” Tabitha said when she answered. “So we should come hungry?”

  “Yes, come very hungry.”

  “Okay, good,” she said. “And I have a strange question. What happens to all the food that is past the sell-by date and you have to pull from the shelf? Cheese and stuff? Hummus?”

  “Generally we put it in the staff room for the taking,” she said, somewhat suspiciously, Tabitha thought. “Most of it’s still totally fine to eat. Why do you ask?”

  For the hundredth time since Stuart left, Tabitha thou
ght about telling her the truth. It would be so much easier. She opened her mouth as if she might say something like, Do you have a minute? Or, Can I tell you something? But she didn’t. She just couldn’t.

  “Fern is studying supermarket safety—how they date stuff, how they sometimes even redate items to give them more time on the shelf, how they determine how long it will be good,” Tabitha said, cringing as she continued to lie to her best friend. “So I thought it would be interesting to see, maybe she could take a few things with her tonight that she can bring in tomorrow? Her teacher seems especially interested in food that is still good to eat but deemed not good enough to sell.”

  “Sure—there’s a fridge with all that stuff, but I have to warn you, some of it has probably been there for too long. I’m the one who’s supposed to clean it out. Hey, maybe Fern can help me later. Maybe she can bring some of the really moldy stuff in tomorrow. The kids will love to see it! It can turn some surprising colors!”

  “Okay, sure, and maybe some not moldy stuff?”

  “Tabitha, what is going on with you? I mean really, what is the deal?”

  “What? Nothing. It’s just this annoying assignment,” Tabitha said, feeling a burn behind her eyes. She could hear Fern and Sarina laughing behind her. Thank goodness for Sarina.

  “Okay, okay,” Rachel said, backing off. “Be here by five forty-five. You don’t want to miss the best dishes.”

  “We’ll be there,” Tabitha said, wondering what she could say to Fern to explain the fridge cleanout. “In fact, maybe we’ll be early.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  Tabitha woke up exactly seven minutes before the alarm was set to go off, just as she had done every day since Stuart left—well, really, just as she always did whenever Stuart wasn’t at home. She had that brief moment when she realized Stuart wasn’t there, had not come back in the middle of the night as he sometimes did from his long trips. Though, she had to admit, after almost two months, that moment was less and less surprising. She sat up, opened the drawer next to her, and pulled out another list. All her stupid lists. She blamed her mother for it. She always used to tell Tabitha that when she was stressed she should write it down and forget about it. Well, she could do the writing-it-down part, the forgetting about it wasn’t so easy. And what would her mother have said about the constantly-referring-to-it part?

  This wasn’t a list of all the things she had stolen; it was a list of clues. Or at least a list of information. She hadn’t started it right away. Those first few days she had been so shocked: shocked that Stuart had lied, letting her think he would still be there in the morning to continue the conversation . . . or, rather, the argument. She told the kids he was on a business trip, which he often was, and she waited. He would be back, she was sure of it. He wouldn’t dare not be.

  When five days had gone by, long enough to have her concerned, she started to consider what might be going on. The night before he left, she’d learned things that she never knew. Really, she saw a completely different side of him that night, one she had never seen during their marriage. Now, despite her efforts to find him, she still had no idea where he was.

  She looked at the list.

  Item number one: The Note.

  The note was mostly the same as they always were, though of course completely different. The other notes, which he left when he embarked on a work trip, began with My Dearest Tabitha. The other notes were neatly written, almost like he had written a first draft and subsequently taken a long time to write them perfectly, prettily even. They usually fit nicely on the piece of paper, centered right in the middle. This one, the most recent one, began Dear Tabby. He did sometimes call her Tabby, when he was being playful, which was more and more rare as the years went on. Had he even called her Tabby since they had moved into this apartment? It was what he had called her when they first got together and into the beginning of their marriage. Her maiden name was Taylor, so growing up she was Tabby Taylor. Her parents wanted her to have a cute, perky name. When she married Stuart Brewer, they laughed. From a Taylor to a Brewer. The Tabitha came when the playfulness left. When had that been, exactly? But now again, with the most recent letter, Dear Tabby.

  This note was scrawled, so messy that it was hard to read some of the words. It looked like it was written in a hurry, definitely not written and rewritten. She had folded the letter up so she didn’t have to look at the last sentence every time she pulled it out along with the list, looking for clues. His other notes certainly didn’t end the way this one did.

  Item number two: No talking once he left. Cell phone already turned off, and no call from a landline.

  The other times she could usually still reach him while he was traveling, before he got to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula or whatever other far-flung place he was headed, where his lawyerly skills were needed and his clients resided mostly, it seemed, without cell-phone service. When she woke up and found a note, she would call and he would answer, either still in an airport or in a car. They would talk quickly, he would explain where he was going, real or not real, and she would let herself believe him and tuck it away, get through the next two or three weeks without him. She wanted to believe him, it was so much easier that way.

  Item number three: No sex for four months, and then sex the night before he left.

  This item was initially just as perplexing, though maybe not quite so now that she knew what she knew. They had never had a great sex life, but it seemed okay. They did it at all the times she thought they should—their wedding night, when they wanted to get pregnant, when too much time had gone by—but they were rarely spontaneous, rarely moved by a true sexual attraction. She had been aware that they hadn’t done it in a long time, the longest they had ever gone as a married couple. But then the night before he left he came to her, and they had sex, good sex, or so she thought at the time. But that was when everything started, at least when her true awareness of it all began, and even though it was on her list, she wasn’t quite ready to unravel that yet, though she was fairly certain it was one of the keys to where he was now.

  Item number four: The last supper.

  This item referred to the fact that he had not eaten dinner with them for weeks, months. He always had to work late, and their normal pattern was that Tabitha would eat with the kids and Stuart would eat at the office or on his way home. Only on weekends did they sometimes eat dinner together. The truth was, Tabitha didn’t mind. It was easier to eat with just the kids. But the week leading up to what Tabitha was now thinking of as The Disappearance, Stuart came home for dinner every night. Every single night. He just showed up, looking drained and, now that she thought about it, somewhat shell-shocked. He wasn’t demanding or even opinionated about what they ate—hot dogs, macaroni and cheese—he just slipped in, took his seat at the big wooden table in the kitchen, and ate with them. There was no discussion about what had changed or if it would continue. In the way she spent much of her marriage, she just didn’t know what to expect, didn’t know what Stuart was thinking, didn’t feel like she knew Stuart well at all. And Tabitha was surprised to see that she liked his being there and looked forward to it. On the last night, a night that she did not, of course, know would be the last night, she began to think of Stuart when she decided what to cook for dinner. That evening she made cherry chicken—chicken rolled in bread crumbs and french-fried onions, topped with a sweet-and-sour dark-cherry sauce. It was Stuart’s mother’s family recipe from his childhood in Michigan, where cherries were abundant. He had eaten every bite, and when he was finished she thought for a second that she saw tears in his eyes. She still wondered if that was, in some way, what set everything in motion. No, she told herself now, it was already set in motion, wasn’t it? She quickly glanced at the last three items.

  Item number five: The fight.

  Item number six: Stuart’s Michigan T-shirt in the closet.

  As she read through each one, she immediately went on to the next one. She just didn’t have the energy to dissect
these now. Also, there were other items she should put on the list, two in particular. She knew that. But she wasn’t ready to yet.

  Tabitha looked at the clock and realized it was late, very late, and the kids were going to miss the whistle. Where was Fern? She usually came in to get Tabitha up before getting herself ready. She was such a good girl. But where was she now? Tabitha put the notebook back in the drawer, covered it with random stationery and pencils. She didn’t want one of the kids to find it. She went to Fern’s bedroom. It was still dark. Tabitha pushed the door open and walked to the bed. Fern was out cold, breathing through her mouth as though congested. She reached out to touch her forehead. It was hot.

  “Hey, Fernie Bernie,” she said gently.

  Fern stirred, then moaned.

  “Hey, Fern, it’s time to get up for school. Are you feeling okay?”

  Tabitha thought about her day, what it would mean if Fern had to stay home sick. Thankfully, she didn’t have a job interview, but she had planned to walk through the city to see what there might be for the taking. She had canceled her membership to the gym, which automatically charged her credit card each month. She still had the six yoga classes left, but after that, walking was going to be her only exercise. She might as well combine it with a hunting-and-gathering mission. She was sort of excited about what she might find. She had noticed a robust rosemary bush on Emerson Street.

  Fern twisted, so that she was lying on her back, then quickly flipped over and threw up on the floor. It wasn’t too much, and Tabitha tried not to be relieved that it might not require many paper towels and instead to be more concerned about what was going on with Fern. Fern retched again, and again, and Tabitha started to worry. She tried to sit her up a little, but Fern resisted, apparently unable to get any relief. Levi stumbled in.