Not Perfect

by Elizabeth Laban

  Tabitha knew before she got the response, but she had to try.

  “Oh, I’m so sorry,” the voice said. “But we can’t provide any information about our graduates, no matter what the reason is.”

  “Well, I can tell you she will be very happy to hear from me,” Tabitha heard herself saying. The words on opposite day ran through her head. It was something she heard Fern say sometimes, and it struck Tabitha as a perfect use of the phrase now.

  “I’m so sorry,” the person said again. “My hands are tied.”

  Tabitha wanted to say something snarky like, Are they, are they really tied? Clearly not, since you answered the phone. But she didn’t. She knew it wouldn’t get her anywhere.

  “Thank you,” Tabitha said, and ended the call.

  She sat there for a minute just looking at the computer. She shook her head, trying to move away from this place of searching for something that she couldn’t find. She decided to stop looking for now, and instead wrote to Kaye to thank her for the night before—which had been great in every way. Fern had been thrilled and smiled so much; Tabitha realized how little she had been smiling lately. She would have to find ways to make Fern smile more.

  She got dressed and made the beds. After that she had nothing to do, and she felt a strong need to get away from her computer. She walked outside, thinking that a walk would do her good, and before she knew it, she was standing in front of Nora’s apartment building. She looked up at the window she thought might be Nora’s—though it was truly a monster of a building, and she could be off by four or five windows. She didn’t see anything, any lights, any movement, but she wouldn’t really expect to.

  It was as though a rope were pulling her forward as she walked in and moved by the desk to the elevator. She could easily say she just wanted to say hello to Nora if there was someone else there. She went to the second floor, feeling a little excited, like she was finally going to do something to improve her situation. She was going to ask to play Monopoly, and she was going to steal some money. She had to be able to pay for Fern’s X-ray if their insurance was defunct. She didn’t want Fern to be in pain.

  She crossed the hall and knocked. No answer, and there was no sound of movement inside. She knocked again. Her phone rang, startling her. It was Rachel. She felt like she’d been caught in the act, like Rachel could see her. She didn’t answer but went back across the hall, this time going down the stairs to the left of the elevator and out into the lobby. She touched Rachel’s name on her screen and heard the call go through.

  “Sorry,” she said casually, as soon as Rachel answered. “I was in the shower.”

  “I’m so glad you called back!” Rachel said. “I need you. I should have called you sooner, but I didn’t want to jinx it. I finally got an appointment with the sperm bank. Will you please come with me to look at possible donors?”

  “Sure, are you at the store?”

  “Yeah, I’ll leave here in about fifteen minutes.”

  “Okay, I’ll be right there.”

  She walked out, feeling like she’d been saved from something, and the idea of reading profiles to choose a possible father for Rachel’s baby sounded exciting. She was happy to do something that had nothing to do with her immediate situation. She walked a block on JFK Boulevard, then headed south to Chestnut. Someone familiar caught her eye. Toby. She didn’t want to admit it, but she’d been thinking about him, wondering when she might see him again. Her first instinct was to call and wave, but that passed quickly. He was on the phone, having what looked like a heated conversation. He didn’t see her. She ducked her head and crossed the other way, so they wouldn’t walk by each other. Across the street, she stopped and watched him walk in the direction she just came from.

  She felt an overwhelming sense of regret as soon as she couldn’t see him anymore. She’d never be able to find him, unless she was lucky enough to run into him again at another game. She wished they’d exchanged numbers, or email addresses, or some sort of information. She shook her head. What was she thinking? She was married.

  As she walked down Eighteenth Street toward Rachel’s shop, she saw a man sitting on the sidewalk up against the building. That wasn’t unusual, there were a lot of homeless people on the streets of Philadelphia. It was his sign that caught her eye. It read IN NEED OF A LITTLE KINDNESS. She wasn’t sure why that got to her more than any other sign someone might hold up—more than the ANYTHING HELPS sign or the PLEASE HELP ME I HAVE KIDS sign. The ones she usually walked right by, except on those rare days when she and the kids had nothing to do, and she thought it would be a good lesson to them to notice and acknowledge homeless people. On those days, she’d had them make peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches—lots of them—and she put each one in one of her boxed-lunch boxes, along with a napkin, utensils, and a cookie. They would go all around Center City, asking first—Always ask first, she would say, Don’t ever assume. They would hand them all out, and then head home feeling like they had done something nice. Now she didn’t have any peanut butter to spare. As she walked by the homeless man, she realized he was so young. He couldn’t be more than twenty, maybe twenty-five. He was shirtless. His eyes reminded her of Levi’s. She looked at his body and decided he was about the same size as Stuart. She wished she had some extra change or some extra food to give him, but she didn’t. She crossed the street and practically ran into Rachel, coming out the door of Di Bruno’s.

  “What took you so long?” she asked.

  “Sorry, one thing after another,” Tabitha said, and switched course so she could follow Rachel away from the store and down Chestnut Street, toward a potential sperm donor.

  That night, after Tabitha spent hours looking through profiles with Rachel, she and the kids had frozen lima beans and the last of the peanut butter on Ritz crackers for dinner. She poured a tiny bit of the vinegar onto the beans and swirled them around. When the kids came in to sit at the table, they looked at the offerings and then looked at her. Fern chose three crackers already smeared with peanut butter and scooped a pile of lima beans onto her plate. She immediately started eating. Levi didn’t move.

  “This is dinner?” he asked.

  “Come on,” Tabitha coaxed. “It’s surprisingly good.”

  “Crackers for dinner?” he said, his tone getting harsher.

  “You know what?” Tabitha said, trying to keep it light. “I’m doing that thing where you completely clean out the cabinets once a year—clear it all out.”

  “You mean for Passover?” Levi asked again, now sounding incredulous.

  “Well, I’m doing it early,” Tabitha said, thinking she better look up the term for what Levi was talking about. What if someone at the synagogue asked her about it, or mentioned it casually? She wanted to be ready. Stuart would know the term. But then, as she always did these days, she realized if Stuart were here to tell her what the word was they wouldn’t be eating crackers for dinner.

  Levi scowled at her, but he took some and ate. She could hear the crackers being chewed. She took one cracker so she could look busy but waited until they seemed to have their fill before eating the last two crackers and the tiny bit of lima beans that was left. That was it, there was nothing left in the freezer.

  After dinner she cleaned up, then saw that the kids were watching TV together, which was unusual.

  “I’m running out for about twenty minutes,” she said.

  “Where are you going?” Levi asked, sounding alarmed.

  “Just up the street, I have to drop something off,” she said. “I’ll be right back.”

  She grabbed the backpack she packed earlier and headed out, past the night doorman and into the cool city air. She turned right up Eighteenth Street, hoping he would be there. As she crossed Chestnut she saw that he was, sitting with his sign that said IN NEED OF A LITTLE KINDNESS. She might not have peanut butter or supplies for her boxed lunches anymore, but she had kindness.

  “Hi,” she said as she approached him. He looked up, and it seemed like
he was out of it, like he was just going to look through her, but then his eyes adjusted and he looked at her. “I don’t have food or money to offer you, but I have two blankets, a warm bathrobe, slippers, a pair of shoes, and some clothes. In here.” She handed him the backpack. He hesitated, then he took it from her.

  “And these,” she said, reaching into her pocket for a handful of Stuart’s gold cufflinks. She handed them out to him like she was offering change. He put his hand out and accepted them. At first he looked annoyed.

  “They are all real gold,” Tabitha said quickly, suddenly aware that people were looking at her. “They’re worth something. I’m not sure what, but something. It’s worth a try.”

  He nodded and pushed them into a tattered box that sat next to him.

  “Thank you,” he said, sounding so normal. Totally normal. She would have thought that he would sound croaky, or not be able to speak at all. But no, he sounded just like anyone else. That bothered her more than anything.

  “You’re welcome,” she said, and then headed home.

  On what Tabitha now thought of as the terrible night—though again, she still wasn’t sure if it was the most terrible night, and she still couldn’t bring herself to put it on the new list—the call had come around eight forty-five. She had finished early, since she’d had so many orders and had run out of some of the ingredients. She had sold her last meal at around eight to those people who called late, the ones with the birthday, who she’d almost said no to. They had come to pick it up at the front desk. They lived nearby, they said—it would be easier that way and the food would be hotter. It was the customers’ picking up and her accepting the payment while standing there in the lobby that always felt especially questionable to her, and that night it had more than ever for some reason. She told herself again and again that she wasn’t alone, she was jumping on the bandwagon of a whole new era of food takeout. One of her friends from cooking school had started turning his home into a pop-up restaurant a few times a week. He lived in the Italian Market and made some of the best Italian food she had ever had. There was a waiting list to eat there! People called weeks ahead, and paid a fair amount of money, to have a chance to come to his home to eat his home-cooked offerings. And there were other takeout apps out there. There was Shepherd’s Pie, of course, another called Dinner Is Ready, and one called The Kitchen Sink, not to mention the ever-popular Food Truck. Tabitha’s was growing, she could feel it. It was much talked about on Facebook and Twitter. She had seen some amazing pictures of her food on Instagram—it looked even better in the pictures than she remembered it looking when she packaged it up. She was starting to worry she wouldn’t be able to keep up with the demand.

  When the phone rang she almost didn’t answer it. Stuart was there with her, he had come home early, at least early for him, and they were talking about Fern’s teacher who, Fern had told them, had been falling asleep in class on occasion. They both found it odd and were just deciding if they should go to the head of school to voice their concerns when she heard the ring. She didn’t recognize the number, but something made her reach for her phone and take the call. That was one of the moments that distinguished before and after—before the call things weren’t great, they were . . . something else. But after the call they were—what? Always up in the air with the possibility of something truly awful constantly looming out there? That about summed it up.

  “Hello?” Tabitha had said.

  She heard shuffling, some breathing, she was about to hang up, thinking it was a wrong number or a butt dial.

  “Were there any peanuts in that food?” a woman’s voice said, clear panic in her voice.

  “Who is this?” Tabitha asked, getting a terrible feeling in her chest.

  “We read the menu, it didn’t say anything about peanuts. Were there any? Any at all?”

  Tabitha could hear the unmistakable sounds of a hospital through the phone.

  “No,” Tabitha said quickly, running through the ingredients in her mind. “None at all.”

  “Ethan can’t breathe,” the woman said. “It happened right after we ate. About three minutes after. I had to call an ambulance. I don’t know what else it could be. But no peanuts? Are you sure?”

  Tabitha thought again. Beef, scallions, ginger, sesame.

  “I’m sure,” Tabitha said.

  “Oh, thank God,” the woman said. “Thank you.” The call ended.

  Tabitha held the phone in her hand. The feeling that she was forgetting something was so strong. As she turned back toward Stuart, putting her phone on the granite counter, she saw it. Right there, next to the stove. Clear as day. Peanut oil, and not particularly refined oil, she knew that, because she preferred the way this one cooked. She liked to use peanut oil, especially for Asian dishes. And it was perfect to fry the spring rolls. It left them light and crispy, without a hint of grease. That was why she was so careful with the app—there was a place to write allergies. It was not optional. It was part of the required field. She did that on purpose. The order wouldn’t go through unless someone either filled it out or checked the box that said no allergies. Then she had a program that cross referenced any allergies with the ingredients of the day—and if there was a problem it would alert her and she would cancel the order. But they hadn’t used the app. When they called she never even asked them about allergies. Had they told her? She didn’t think so. She reached for the peanut oil, then pulled her hand away. She picked up her phone.

  “What? What is it?” Stuart asked.

  She didn’t answer him. She found the most recent number on her phone and called back. It rang and rang. She hung up and tried again. Still, no answer and no voicemail.

  “Tabitha, what is it?”

  “I have to reach them,” she said, finding it hard to breathe herself. She thought of the man, he had been young—what could it have been, his twenty-ninth birthday? His thirtieth? He had just the hint of facial hair, the kind that looked good, that was there on purpose. And his hair was dark and a little long, hanging over his eyes when he paid her. She thought about him not being able to breathe. Where was he now? What was going on? She tried the number again. Still nothing.

  “It was about a customer,” she said, feeling sick, feeling like she wanted to go back in time and change something, anything, but mostly the peanut oil. “He’s allergic to peanuts but I didn’t know because he didn’t use the app, he just called to place the order. That was someone—his girlfriend, maybe—asking if there were peanuts in the dish. I didn’t list it. I realize I didn’t list it with the ingredients. He’s having an allergic reaction. They’re at the hospital, I heard a hospital through the phone. I said no. When she was talking to me I couldn’t think of any peanuts. But—” She stopped. Stuart’s eyes moved to the peanut oil.

  She picked up her phone again and was about to dial when she felt Stuart’s hand on her wrist.

  “Don’t,” he said.

  “What?”

  “You’ve tried,” he said. “And you meant no harm. There are a million things he could be allergic to.”

  “What? That’s crazy. If they know what it is they might—” She stopped midsentence when she saw Stuart bend down to get a plastic bag from under the sink. “What are you doing?”

  “What’s done is done,” Stuart said. “He’s getting help.”

  “I have to tell them,” she said.

  “You’ll lose your business,” Stuart said. “Or worse.”

  It was the or worse that got her. Stuart was the lawyer in the family. He knew about the things that could happen even when you didn’t mean to commit a crime. She watched as he put the peanut oil into a plastic bag. She couldn’t stand it. She let the number ring through again. She had to tell them. The words There were peanuts, I used peanut oil, I am so sorry, god, I am so sorry were right there in her mouth, waiting to be said. Stuart gently took the phone out of her hand and ended the call. As it was they were going to see that she had tried to call back. That could be bad, right? P
lease let him be okay, she chanted to herself, Please let him be okay.

  Stuart held the bag casually, with his hand around the neck of the bottle wrapped in plastic. He kept it at arm’s length, just at his hip.

  “Come with me,” he said.

  “Where to?” For a brief second she thought they would go to the hospital. She should bring the oil. She knew the oil itself could make a difference in determining his reaction—the more refined the less likely to cause a problem. There were only two logical hospitals someone would go to from the neighborhood, maybe three, possibly four. They could go to each one and track him down, bring answers, somehow fix everything. But really she knew that wasn’t what Stuart was doing. They walked to the door, but he didn’t even put on his shoes. He left the door slightly ajar, not even calling to the kids to tell them they would be right back. She followed as he walked down the hall to the garbage room, pulled the door open, and dropped the bottle in. They heard it rush through the chute and explode at the bottom.

  Tabitha didn’t sleep that night, but Stuart was strangely and unusually solicitous toward her. He kept checking in with her, telling her it would all be okay, to never mention it again, to try not to think about it. He wanted her to just keep going as planned, to make the cilantro chicken and rice that she had on the menu for the following day. But she knew she wouldn’t. She was pretty sure she would never do it again. Still, she felt like he was looking out for her and protecting her in a way he didn’t usually bother to do, not that she usually needed protection. He held her hand the whole night, she knew because she didn’t doze off once, and in the morning she felt closer to him than she had in a long time, maybe ever. She felt like they were a team.

  Still, the next morning after Stuart left for work, she tried the number one more time. By then she knew it was either okay, the man had survived, or it was the worst possible outcome she could ever imagine. Again, there was no answer. And this time she was glad. She had gone against Stuart and she was sorry, not because she thought it would make him mad or that she felt she had to listen to him, but because she liked the feeling that he was looking out for her, and she wanted him to keep doing it. Why did it take such an awful situation for him to do that? Why couldn’t he just do it in their normal life? It was what she craved. What she thought married life was supposed to be. She thought it was what she had always wanted. She never tried the number again.