Not Perfect

by Elizabeth Laban

  “You’re in great shape, Levi,” the rabbi said kindly, reaching across the table to shake Levi’s hand. “Your next meeting should be with the cantor. Just call to set that up. Will you just give me a minute with your mom?”

  “Sure,” Levi said. He jumped up and walked toward the door. Tabitha saw him pull his phone out of his pocket just before the door closed behind him.

  “So,” the rabbi said, leaning in toward Tabitha. “How is this process working for you?” He stopped short of saying that she was awfully quiet, but she could hear it there, hovering over them.

  “It’s working,” she hesitated. “Well.”

  “Levi seems to be in great shape,” Rabbi Rosen said. “He’s right on track. And The Family Meal is a superb place to give his time. I just want to make sure you don’t have any questions.”

  Twenty things ran through her mind. Where was Stuart? How were they going to do this? What was the terrible thing he thought she did? Was there any way to ever get away from it, make amends?

  “Not really,” she said, not quite meeting the rabbi’s eyes. He nodded kindly, patted Tabitha’s arm.

  “I’m always here if you need me,” he said.

  When Tabitha met Levi in the hall, he was excited.

  “We’re going to The Family Meal on Sunday,” he said. “I just called. The lady who started it answered. Her name is Nancy. She was so nice. She said they have a new group of families coming in on Sunday, so it’s perfect. We have to be there at three. We’re going to serve them dinner and help clean up. We have to wear white shirts and black pants. Next time we’re going to help cook. We all have to go. You, me, and Fern, and Dad if he’s back.”

  “Great,” Tabitha said, meaning it. With all of her stealing, she’d be happy to do something nice for someone.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  For the first time since her mother had died, Tabitha wished she could talk to her, and it surprised her. She once saw an article on Facebook about the relationships daughters have with their mothers through the years. She had seen it when her mother was the sickest, the least like her old self. The article listed different ages—age five: can’t get enough of your mother; age fifteen: can’t stand your mother. It went on to talk about when daughters had kids of their own they would finally understand their mothers and appreciate everything they’d done. Then age sixty—when the mothers were presumably dead and gone—the daughters would do anything to talk to their mothers. At the time Tabitha thought, No. She was ready to let go. She was so spent. Her mother was draining so much out of her, and all Tabitha wanted to do was be with Fern and Levi, and in theory Stuart, though now she wondered how much of a factor he really was. When she had read the Facebook post, she thought the article had missed a phase of life, when, around age forty or forty-five, your mother will be sick. You will be stuck in an impossible middle situation: caring for your kids, caring for your mom, and the one person who used to be there for you will be an endless fountain of needs herself. Needs that you know you are duty bound to take care of. Needs that you wished you wanted to take care of, only you are just one person, and one person can only do so much. This phase of the relationship would be defined as “the daughters will have a strong desire to be rid of their mothers.” But it wasn’t in the article. Was Tabitha alone in this? She couldn’t be.

  But now she wished she could pick up the phone and call her mother. She’d say, Hi, it’s me. And her mother would say, “Hi, sweetie pie,” as she always did, no matter what age Tabitha was. She wasn’t even sure what she wanted from her. To ask her for help? Advice? Until her mother had gotten sick, she had always been the person Tabitha went to first. But then her mother had turned into a baby, introducing Tabitha to people as her mother, which Tabitha hated more than anything. It hurt her to be around her mother—this wasn’t her mother anymore, it was someone else, like a body imposter. And it got so hard to be nice, almost impossible. And she hated that, too.

  She thought back to that dinner more than six years ago. It was the exact moment when everything started to change, but it took a while to understand what was going on. They were talking about New York, and Tabitha’s mother thought Yonkers was part of the City, not part of Westchester. Tabitha was shocked at the time; her mother had always been so sharp, and she got really frustrated with her. What was wrong with her? She had lived in Westchester County for thirty years before moving to Pennsylvania! Her mother had gotten flustered, suddenly she wasn’t sure. Tabitha had no idea it was all a blueprint for everything that was going to unfold over the next few years—her mother’s getting more and more confused, Tabitha’s getting more and more mean. There was also the emphysema from all those years of smoking, the forgetting to use the oxygen or to turn off the oxygen when she cooked, and the impossibility of keeping track of her medicine. Once, Tabitha’s mother had taken double the proper dose of steroids for an entire month before anyone realized. Or worse, the inability to open the top of the pill bottle and never telling anyone, so that after days of not taking her medicine, she would be so sick she would need to be rushed to the ER, and Tabitha would spend endless days at the hospital with her, trying to get her well enough to go home, so they could do it all over again.

  “We have to go,” Levi said, coming into the dark kitchen, startling her. “Nancy said we should be there by three.”

  Tabitha stopped herself from saying Nancy, Nancy, Nancy in a mean voice, the way Jan had said, “Marcia, Marcia, Marcia” on The Brady Bunch. All Levi talked about lately was The Family Meal and how Nancy told him how important it was for him to know and use the kids’ first names, how that gave them self-esteem. Wow, maybe Tabitha was just mean overall. Mean to her mother, mean to her son, mean to a woman who was trying to feed the hungry. Just mean. Maybe that’s why Stuart did the things he did. Maybe that’s why he left. But she knew that wasn’t true. As more time went by, she feared she had very little to do with why Stuart disappeared. She worried she didn’t factor very prominently into many of his choices at all.

  “Okay, Monkey man,” she said soothingly. “I’m ready.”

  She looked around for her purse and her phone, checked that she had her car key.

  “Fern!” she called.

  There was no response.

  “Fern!” she called again.

  “Come on!” Levi said. “It’s for my bar mitzvah!” He made it sound like he was leaving to save the world. Tabitha knew it was because Stuart was always so excited about Levi’s bar mitzvah, so into it. If Levi ever uttered the words to Stuart about anything that might someday prepare him for his bar mitzvah, Stuart always gave him his full attention. Tabitha didn’t care as much about the actual bar mitzvah, she never really had. But she was relieved to see Levi caring about something. She sighed and went looking for Fern. She found her in her room, sitting with her back against her bed, one leg bent, and the other one, the bad one, as Tabitha had now come to consider it, stretched out and twisted ever so slightly outward.

  “Hi sweetie,” she said, imagining the ghost of her mother finishing her sentence with “pie.” “We have to get going for Levi’s project.”

  “Do I have to go?” she asked. “I stayed home that other day. I’m old enough. I just want to stay home.”

  “Absolutely not,” Tabitha said. “That was an exception. Plus, you aren’t just coming because I don’t want you to be home alone. You’re coming because you are part of the project. The whole family is supposed to participate.”

  “Daddy isn’t participating,” she said.

  “That’s true, but he would if he were home,” Tabitha said.

  Fern sighed and groaned, then moved in a funny way, putting weight on her good leg and swinging the other one around, then leaning heavily on her bed as she stood up.

  “Does it still hurt?” Tabitha asked. It had seemed a little better, less inflamed and less sensitive, so she was just hoping it would go away. But now she wasn’t so sure. She was ready to take Fern to the doctor, had even called and left
a message for the triage nurse, but the second it seemed to be getting better and not worse, she let it go. When the nurse called back, she tried her best to describe what was going on with Fern’s leg, but she definitely downplayed it and too easily accepted the nurse’s suggestion that it might be a pulled muscle and to just wait a few days and see. She didn’t know what it was, but she was pretty sure it wasn’t a pulled muscle.

  “Not really,” Fern answered sweetly. Okay, Tabitha thought. She’d keep an eye on it and if it wasn’t one hundred percent better by Friday—no, Thursday—she would call and take Fern in before the weekend. She meant it, no matter what Fern said.

  They took the elevator down and walked to the car without anyone saying a single thing. Tabitha plugged the address into Waze, and suddenly they weren’t alone anymore as the woman’s voice gently told them which way to go. They ended up somewhere in Kensington and finally turned into what looked like an abandoned parking lot of what might be, or might have once been, a school. As soon as Tabitha pulled into a spot and put the car in park, Levi opened the door.

  “Whoa,” Tabitha said. “You have to wait until I turn the car off. You know that.”

  Levi pulled the door shut again, but not all the way. Tabitha thought about telling him to close it properly but really, she didn’t plan to move anymore. She waited five seconds, she wasn’t sure why, then turned off the car.

  “Okay,” she said. “You’re good to go.”

  Levi got out and walked toward a big door that looked like it was anything but open. He pulled, but it didn’t budge.

  “Are you sure this is the right place?”

  “Yes,” he said, annoyed. He pulled out his phone and read something, probably an email from Nancy, Nancy, Nancy, before heading around to the other side of the building without a word. They followed him, and sure enough, there was another big metal door, propped open with someone’s old flip-flop. Tabitha wasn’t at all certain about this, but Levi pushed the door right open, and they found themselves in a big, industrial kitchen. They just stood there as people moved around them, cleaning dozens of green peppers and sautéing something that looked like a mixture of rice and tomatoes in two big pans on the stove. Suddenly, Levi looked like an unsure little kid again, and something snapped in Tabitha.

  “Is Nancy here?” she asked the man at the stove.

  “That way,” he said, pointing toward a door. Now Tabitha led the way, and Levi followed, head down slightly, shuffling. Fern was in the back, extra slow. They walked into the school cafeteria, where the big round tables were covered with tablecloths and the places were set. A woman with short dark hair was placing tiny vases of fresh flowers in the center of each table.

  “Nancy?” Tabitha asked.

  “That’s me!” she said, looking at them, and Tabitha worried briefly that she might not know if they were a family in need or volunteers. Nancy looked at Tabitha’s shoes, then at Levi, and walked over, hand out.

  “You must be Levi,” she said. “I am so happy to meet you.”

  “Thank you,” Levi said, shyly, but he took her hand and looked her in the eyes. “I’m happy to be here.”

  Then she looked at Fern.

  “Are you the little sister? Dragged along I bet,” Nancy said in an especially nice way. She really seemed to have a way with people. Fern perked up.

  “That’s me!” she said in almost the exact same way Nancy had said it a moment before, and Tabitha was surprised by her comic timing. They all laughed a little.

  “And I’m Tabitha,” she said, reaching out her hand. “Thanks for letting Levi do his bar mitzvah project with you.”

  “The pleasure is all mine,” Nancy said. “Families will be arriving soon. Fern—would you mind continuing to put the flowers on the tables? And there are some more over there that still need to be put in the vases. Levi, I want you to get ready to serve, but I would love it if you would spend time with the kids, so over there I have that list of names next to pictures. As I mentioned, nothing is better for a kid’s self-esteem than being called by name by someone they admire. And Tabitha, come with me. There is a lot to do in the kitchen.”

  “I already know their names,” Levi said proudly.

  “Wonderful,” she said, smiling, allowing a moment to let that sink in. Again, Tabitha was impressed. Then Nancy turned to lead Tabitha back toward the kitchen.

  Tabitha looked around, wondering if it was okay to leave the kids, and she decided it was. So she followed Nancy, accepted an apron, and got to work stuffing the peppers with the tomato-rice mixture and topping them with cheese. They looked and smelled so good, Tabitha wondered if volunteers got to eat some, too, but she didn’t think so. They were supposed to be done before seven, plenty of time to get their own dinner. Great.

  The families arrived, and Tabitha was surprised to see how into it Levi was, laughing with the kids, taking his serving duties seriously. Even Fern seemed to enjoy herself, talking to a little girl who was about her age and checking to make sure the flowers still looked good. Nobody looked particularly destitute. Tabitha wondered how each one became involved with the organization. How was it determined that they needed this help? Then each family had a chance to tell their story, with one representative member taking the floor at a time. There were about fifteen families. Tabitha thought, Really? I have to sit through each one of these sob stories? I can add my own sob story to the bunch.

  As the first woman started talking, Tabitha moved to the back of the room, close to the kitchen, and leaned against the wall. She listened as the woman described her kids and how they were doing so much better in school. When Nancy prompted her to talk about how things were before they came to The Family Meal, Tabitha ducked into the empty kitchen and looked around. Nancy had said they saved the leftover food or let the hungriest families take it home, even though the point of the organization wasn’t really to feed people but to teach them how to feed themselves through healthy choices, good budget strategies, and learning to cook. But now she eyed the four cooling stuffed peppers in the pan. Would anyone really miss those? She found a ziplock bag and gently placed one pepper at a time at the bottom of the bag. They fit perfectly. If she got caught, she’d just say she was getting them ready to send home with someone, or she was cleaning up. She heard a loud round of applause from the room next door, and she wondered, briefly, what had been said. She looked around to make sure she was totally alone, pushed the air out of the bag, and placed it in the bottom of her big purse. She took a few deep breaths and waited to make sure nobody had seen it, and then she relaxed. She wandered over to the shelf. Salt, pepper, dried thyme. All of that would be nice, but she could live without it. Salt and pepper were easy to get from really any fast-food restaurant that had the tiny packets. Nothing else on the shelf really grabbed her, and she told herself she never had any intention of actually taking anything, until she saw a full bottle of cinnamon sugar—Fern’s favorite. In one motion, she grabbed it and dropped it into her bag, on top of the peppers, which were really starting to smell. She snapped it shut and waited again, but nobody said anything; there was nobody there. She just hoped there weren’t any security cameras, and if there were, she hoped there would be no reason anyone would look at them. She thought about opening the refrigerator, or even searching for a few pieces of fruit. A banana would be so nice. But she didn’t dare. She went to the door and slipped back into her spot in the cafeteria.

  “. . . for six days, I think it was,” a man said, clearing his throat. Was he crying? “We were just thinking we would have to go to the emergency room and fake something, or not even have to fake anything, since Daniel was really starting to feel bad. His stomach was distended, and he said he thought he might throw up, but we were going to say something worse—something like he fell, or just something so we could settle in for a few hours and hopefully he could get a meal once they figured out he was pretty much okay. Maybe we all could—some hospitals have sandwiches and snacks for the parents when they wait.” He said t
his as though he were saying some hospitals had unicorns and gave out winning lottery tickets. Tabitha really looked at him now. He was tall with dark, neat hair. His yellow shirt had a stain on it, but his jeans looked clean. If she walked by him on the street, she wouldn’t think anything of him, she wouldn’t think he was starving. “That was the lowest point. Then we got some government assistance and that helped so much. And now this. I think everything is about to turn around for us.”

  Tabitha felt a moment of terror and regret, all mixed up into one bad feeling. Terror because she wasn’t that far away from that moment of not being able to feed everyone, of having to fake an injury to go to a hospital for a meal. But no, it will never come to that for us, she told herself. She would ask for help before it came to that, wouldn’t she? If it really came down to it, she would ask Rachel for help. And the regret because how was it possible that she was stealing from these people? She touched her bag and felt the warmth of the peppers and the hard glass of the jar. She could sneak back in there right now and return everything, but she didn’t want to. They’d worked hard, maybe she could think of it like payment, though she knew that minimized their roles as volunteers and do-gooders. She thought of being able to offer Fern cinnamon sugar on her toast tomorrow, and she decided she didn’t care. She’d just keep it.

  “Hey,” Nancy came up next to her, and Tabitha immediately worried she’d smell the peppers. She shifted her bag to her other shoulder, the one farther away from Nancy. “That’s one amazing boy you have there. And girl, of course, but Levi is really something. I rarely see teenage boys follow through the way he has with me, or jump in the way he did today.”