Not Perfect

by Elizabeth Laban

  There were no seats at all, so she went to the wall of windows and sat on the bench that ran the length of the room.

  “Hey, Justin!” someone called, and the head of the alumni association turned around. “Go Spartans!”

  Justin looked confused, then he saw there was a whole contingent of people in green right next to them. That didn’t usually happen. Generally there was some effort made to put two opposing teams as far apart as possible in the big bar, or even better, they met at another bar, but apparently not today. Maybe it had been done on purpose. She could see Justin furrow his brow, like he was thinking who to complain to, then he turned his back on the perceived interloper and climbed up onto a table in the center of the Michigan crowd.

  “Wolverines!” he screamed. “I need your attention.”

  Tabitha was happy to have something to focus on. She felt silly sitting there without anyone to talk to.

  “I want to sing one rousing round of ‘The Victors,’ and after that I have an announcement. Are you with me?”

  “Yes!”

  “Are you with me?”

  “Yes!”

  “And I want them to be able to hear us in East Lansing—do you hear me?”

  “Yes!”

  “One, two, you know what to do!”

  Just as everyone started singing “Hail to the Victors,” Tabitha saw Toby push his way through the crowd. She was so relieved, it caught her off guard. Sure, she came here to see him, she knew that. But she didn’t realize how much she wanted to see him, how disappointed she would have been if she hadn’t seen him. He was wearing a basic sweatshirt, navy with the word MICHIGAN spelled out in maize. The whole fight song went by and she didn’t even hear it, she didn’t sing along like she usually did, she just watched Toby stop at the beginning of the Michigan section and look around, scanning the crowd. When his eyes settled on her, he smiled. She smiled back.

  “Now, I am going to make my announcement,” Justin screamed. Both Tabitha and Toby looked at him. Justin turned his back to the crowd, then he took green confetti out of his pocket and scattered it from his green butt. Tabitha thought it looked like unicorn poop. The crowd went crazy. It was a recurring theme here, obviously: the opposing team was always shit—in one way or another. She looked over at Toby, who was laughing. Two minutes to game time. Toby moved toward Tabitha, and she felt all sorts of strange twinges and butterfly effects. She worried her mouth was twitching slightly, and she tried to control it; she didn’t want to look like she was having a seizure, or, worse—that she was actually nervous.

  “Hi!” he said when he reached her.

  “Hi!” She hated the way she sounded—breathless and eager. “Hi!” she said again, more firmly.

  He swung his backpack around to his front. He looked at Tabitha and scanned the space around them like he was looking for something. There wasn’t a single inch on either side of her.

  “I figured it would be crazy crowded today,” he said. He unzipped the pack and reached in, pulling out what looked like a folded maize-and-blue umbrella or a scrunched-up hammock. She watched while he unfolded it, and it became a tall, skinny chair with MICHIGAN written across the back. He put it down, just to the left of Tabitha, and gestured to it.

  “For you, madame,” he said.

  “Thank you,” she said, jumping down off the ridiculously crowded bench. Someone immediately squeezed into the spot she just left. These Michigan people were so spirited. Or maybe it was just some of them. Stuart was a fanatic when it came to Michigan football, but he wasn’t fun, he wasn’t lighthearted.

  Toby turned his attention back to his bag and created another chair, basically out of nothing, which he put as close to her as possible. There was very little room, and Tabitha was sure they were breaking fire code. Toby climbed up onto his chair and adjusted it slightly with tiny hops, so that he faced the big screen. He surprised her by patting her knee gently, as if to say everything was okay. It was a gesture Tabitha’s mother used to make when they would get settled somewhere—at the movies, in the car, at a dinner—and it conjured up so many emotions in Tabitha, not to mention the fact that she had not been touched much by an adult for months. She fought back the tears she felt forming in her eyes as they watched the coin toss and the first play of the game.

  Immediately, Michigan State was off and running, and the wind was taken out of their small corner of the bar. Justin jumped up and frantically sprinkled maize-and-blue confetti on everyone, possibly under the impression that the green-poop confetti was bad karma. He ran between the chairs and tables with a seemingly endless supply of tiny paper pieces in one hand. Maybe he was magical. When he got to Tabitha and Toby, he actually stopped and looked at them, like for some reason they demanded more attention than everyone else, or else maybe he got the sense she didn’t belong there, or worse, that their chairs were illegal, but he reached into one of his many pockets with his free hand and pulled out small pieces of maize-and-blue ribbon with tiny red hearts among them, which he gently threw at them for a good twenty or thirty seconds. He just stood there and tossed.

  “Just a feeling,” he said over his shoulder as he finally walked away and went back to sprinkling heart-free confetti on everyone else.

  “What was that about?” Tabitha asked, not sure she liked that but also sort of liking it.

  “Sometimes he thinks he spots Michigan couples in the crowd, or should-be couples, I guess. He often gets it wrong.” Toby didn’t say anything else, and Tabitha felt surprisingly unsatisfied. She had that awful response humans have when they think someone isn’t giving them enough, even if they didn’t know that they wanted it in the first place. She wanted more—from him.

  “How’s Yo-Adrian?” she asked.

  “Wow, you remembered her name,” he said, smiling but not moving his eyes away from the screen. “Nobody ever remembers it.”

  “Seriously?” she asked. “Because it’s a pretty easy name to remember.”

  “Yeah, well,” he said.

  “How is she?”

  “Oh, she’s good. Really good,” he said.

  “Can I have your number?” she asked, surprising herself. It was always her intention to get his number if she saw him here again, but she had planned to work up to it a little. Ever since she spotted him on the street and realized she had absolutely no way of getting in touch with him other than running into him, she knew she wanted to get it.

  “Sure, give me your phone,” he said, still smiling.

  She unlocked it and went to the contacts, then she handed it over to him. She watched while he typed, then he handed it back. The contact name was Toby T. and there was a number following it. She pushed on it, and a few seconds later his phone rang. He smiled, reaching for it in his backpack and ending the call.

  “Now you have mine,” she said, feeling her cheeks go red.

  “Yes, I do,” he said. “And I’m happy to have it.”

  “What does the T stand for?”

  “Tarrabay,” he said. “Toby Tarrabay.”

  “No way!” she said. “You had parents who liked the T-T sound, too! What are the chances? Growing up I was Tabitha Taylor, or Tabby Taylor.”

  “Guess what my daughter’s name is?”

  She was quiet for a second. Somehow, learning his daughter’s name seemed like a big step.

  “What?” she finally asked.

  “Tara Tarrabay.”

  “That’s a beautiful name,” she said.

  “So, are you still Tabitha Taylor?” he asked.

  “No, I changed it, and at first I was glad to, it always seemed so perky. But lately, well, lately I miss it.”

  Now he looked at her.

  “What did you change it to?”

  “Brewer,” she said. “When I got married.”

  “I’ve been meaning to ask you more about your, I don’t know, your situation,” Toby said, but the crowd was going crazy, and they both turned their heads to the screen in time to watch Michigan score the first touch
down of the game. It took a few minutes to get through the cheering and another round of “The Victors,” and Tabitha wasn’t sure if she hoped Toby would remember what they were talking about before, or if she hoped he’d forget.

  “You don’t have to tell me,” he continued, when the immediate excitement was over. Tabitha knew she should help him, but she wasn’t even sure what her answer was going to be. “I guess what I’m asking is, are you, I’m not sure how to put this, are you happily married?”

  Even though he was clearly going to ask something about her marriage, she was not prepared for such a direct question. And she thought the question might be more about what she wasn’t than what she was. Was she married? Yes. Happily? That was a whole other story, more complicated than she had even realized until recently.

  She was relieved when Michigan intercepted the ball, and it gave her a few seconds to think. He turned back to her, waiting.

  “Well,” she said, stalling. “That requires much more than a simple yes-or-no answer, but I can tell you that my husband and I have not been living together for a while now, and our lines of communication are very bad, as bad as you can imagine. I guess I’m not ready to talk about it all yet, and I don’t even understand a lot of it at this point, so maybe we should just—” The rest of her words were swallowed by the crowd as Michigan scored another touchdown. Toby was on his feet. As the sound died down, Tabitha heard a phone ring. She realized it was Toby’s phone, which he had propped on his backpack. She could see the display had a local 215 number but no name.

  “Hey, your phone’s ringing,” she said, pointing.

  “Oh, thanks,” he said, leaning over to grab it. He looked, then answered quickly.

  “Hello?” he said. “Wait, I just need to go outside.”

  He pointed to the phone as if to say, “I have to take this, I’ll be right back.” She nodded. He pointed to his backpack. She nodded again.

  As soon as he was gone, she let out a huge breath, which she didn’t even know she had been holding. What the heck was she doing? She had to get out of here. She looked toward the front of the restaurant where the buffet was usually set up, but there wasn’t anything there. Maybe they waited until halftime; she didn’t know. What she did know was that she wanted to bring the kids a good-enough dinner. Fern had been so sweet the other night, wanting to buy dinner. But Tabitha had told her to save her money, though she did wonder later where the money had come from in the first place. When she asked her, Fern just shrugged it off without an answer, and Tabitha decided to let yet another thing remain unknown.

  In a few minutes, Toby was back, looking pale.

  “I am so sorry,” he said, turning his chair into a tiny ball again and stuffing it in his backpack. “You can keep sitting there, I’ll get it from you another time.”

  “Are you okay?” she asked. “Is your daughter okay?”

  “Oh yeah, thanks, she’s okay, thank goodness,” he said. “It’s my mother. She fell, and her aide is taking her to the emergency room. I’m going to meet them there.”

  “Can I do anything?” she asked. “Please, take the chair.”

  “No, no, really, I have to get going,” he said. “I’m so sorry. I’ll call you.” When he said this last thing, he lifted up his phone and pointed. She smiled, but then felt bad about smiling if his mother was suffering.

  “Okay,” she said. “I hope your mother’s okay.”

  Once he was gone, she felt silly sitting in the chair, and she realized she had no idea how to dismantle it. There was still no sign of the buffet, and she started to worry about dinner. The kids were going to be starving when she got home and, worse than that, they were excited about the food. She stood and tried to fold the chair into itself, but it just didn’t budge, and she kept knocking into people in the process. She gave up and stood there, feeling stupid and stranded. She shoved her hands into the pockets of the jacket she was wearing and felt a piece of paper. She pulled it out. It was a tiny square of yellow, lined paper that looked like it was torn from a bigger piece. In green pen there was a phone number written out in Stuart’s handwriting. It wasn’t a local number, but she didn’t recognize it. The area code was 906. It looked familiar, but she couldn’t place it. She pulled her phone out of her pocket and googled it. Oh, Marquette, Michigan. All that frantic searching for a number, and it was right there in the closet all that time. She stuffed it back into the pocket, lifted the chair like it was a mannequin, and worked hard not to hit anyone as she left the crowded bar. Once she was outside, she tried again to see if there was some secret lever or something that might fold it up, but she couldn’t see anything. She thought of texting Toby to ask, or sending a silly picture of her sitting in the chair on the sidewalk, but of course she didn’t do it. She imagined him getting it while he was at the ER with his injured mother.

  She decided she’d take the chair home, and then they’d figure out what to do for dinner. Maybe Levi would want to keep the chair in his room until she could get it back to Toby.

  Thankfully, the chair was light. Tabitha got a few strange looks on her short walk home, but she didn’t care too much. Just as she entered her apartment building, her phone rang. It was in her other pocket, the one that didn’t have the slip of paper in it, and it seemed so hard to get to. She ignored it and headed to the elevator. It rang again just as the elevator doors closed, but then it stopped. As she got to her door it rang again. She put the chair down and pulled out her phone—it was Levi. She fished her keys out of her pocket and rushed inside, leaving the chair in the hall.

  “Hi, you guys, I’m home,” she said, jogging toward the living room where she had left them. Levi was standing up, his phone in hand. Fern was sitting on the floor with her back against the couch, her leg straight out, looking panicked.

  “What is it?” Tabitha asked. “What happened?”

  “We were fine, just watching, but suddenly Fern started crying, and then she stopped, which was worse, and she’s been like that,” Levi said, pointing.

  “Sweetie, what is it?” Tabitha asked, kneeling in front of her. “Is your knee worse?”

  “It’s burning,” she said. “I can’t stand it.”

  Tabitha reached out to touch it and Fern yelped.

  “You have to do something,” Levi said.

  “Come on, let’s go,” Tabitha said. “We’ll go to the hospital.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  The decision was made, but getting to the hospital was much easier said than done. Fern couldn’t walk on her leg, and Tabitha couldn’t carry her anymore. She was too big, and anyway, Tabitha was afraid to lift her and bang her knee on something. She knew there was a solution to this, but she didn’t know what it was.

  “Can you call Dad?” Levi asked, and Tabitha was surprised by the urgency she heard in his voice.

  “Yes,” Tabitha said. “Sure.”

  She picked up her phone, found his number, and dialed. If there were any chance in the world he actually answered for Fern, maybe he’d answer for her. Then she remembered that Fern called from the house phone, so she put her cell phone down and dialed his number from their landline. She hadn’t told the kids that she had not spoken to Stuart since he’d left, and they never asked, directly. She just made it seem like it was a series of missed calls and bad times. But now she needed him. 911—our daughter can’t walk! 911—I can’t handle this alone. 911—I’ve been flirting with a strange man.

  It rang and rang. No answer. No voicemail. Fern continued to whimper. Tabitha hung up the phone and walked over to her.

  “Here, can you bend it?” she asked, moving to gently grab her foot.

  “Nooo!” Fern screamed.

  Tabitha picked up her cell phone again and began to text Holly, the emergency room doctor who was also the mom of Fern’s friend. Maybe even she and Holly were friends at this point. She was so helpful when Fern was sick earlier in the year. Tabitha worried about bugging her, but she didn’t know what else to do. She needed help, and she ne
eded help from someone who was a professional at giving help. But texting could take too long. She decided to call instead. She would normally text something like, Hi! This is Tabitha, Fern’s mother, so that she could identify herself right away. Calling was a little harder. She doubted Holly had kept Tabitha’s contact information in her phone, so it would just come up as an unidentified number.

  “Hello?” Holly answered. Tabitha thought of hanging up for a split second. Then she looked at Fern.

  “Holly, hi! It’s Tabitha, Fern’s mom,” she said quickly. “I am so sorry to bother you. Really. But I just wasn’t sure where else to turn. Fern has had a bad knee for, well, for a long time. I guess I just kept hoping it would go away. We did see the pediatrician and they ordered tests, which I haven’t followed through with yet. But now she is in a lot of pain, tremendous pain, I think, and I was considering an emergency room visit since the doctor’s office is closed. I wanted to check in to see if you think that sounds appropriate. And also, we’re stuck. I can’t move her, but she doesn’t seem so bad that she needs an ambulance. I thought you might have an idea about how to transport her.”

  The other end of the line was quiet, and Tabitha wondered if they’d been disconnected, but then she heard Holly whispering to someone, the sound muffled by a hand over the phone.

  “Sorry, I was just checking with Mitch,” Holly said, kindly. “I’d be happy to come over and take a look.”

  Tabitha felt such relief, such appreciation, that she had to work hard not to cry. At the same time, she knew it was too much to ask.

  “You guys are right on the Square, right?” Holly said. “I was just heading out to the grocery story, literally right there. Let me come up and just see. No need to make a trip if you don’t have to.”

  “Thank you,” Tabitha said, quickly giving her the address. “Thank you so much.”

  Levi looked at her, Fern was too distracted by her pain to care.

  “Holly’s coming,” Tabitha said, like that was the answer. “She’s a doctor.”