Not Perfect(10)

Tabitha had told Levi to text when he got to school, but he never did. She had already called the school to let them know Fern would be absent, and she didn’t want to call the front desk again and draw attention to herself. So now she was going to have to spend the entire day just hoping he made it and would then get home safely. It was only 8:55 in the morning. It was going to be a long day.

She dialed Julie’s number.

“Hi! It’s Tabitha,” she said. “I am so sorry, but Fern is really sick and I can’t leave her, so I’m not going to be able to get the cheese plate together or the nondairy alternative.” She couldn’t resist throwing that back at her. Julie hesitated, then quickly thanked her and said she would go in search of another snack provider.

Tabitha had elaborated on her initial lie last night and told Fern that Rachel wanted to show her the rotting food because she thought it was cool. Rachel made a few references to a school assignment, but Fern just let them go by, looking vaguely confused. Tabitha had banked on the fact that Fern wouldn’t correct Rachel, and she had been right. Tabitha was starting to think she was a better liar than she gave herself credit for. Fern had been polite and accepted some old cheese that Rachel offered her after the tasting. Tabitha brought it home and put it in the fridge, but even if it was still good enough to eat it looked awful, smashed and slightly discolored, with the faintest smell of ammonia. Tabitha had briefly thought about plating it nicely and dripping the luscious balsamic vinegar on the really bad spots, but it would have taken too much, the whole rest of the bottle maybe. Besides, she wouldn’t dare present that to the school. Or maybe she should, then they would never ask her to bring food in again. But no, she wouldn’t do it, despite her seemingly desperate state. She was especially glad now that Fern had eaten only the fresh cheese last night and not any from the possibly rotten pile. Rachel had wanted Fern to taste it, going along, Tabitha knew, with her phantom supermarket project, wanting her to see the different stages of cheese decline. Tabitha had wondered at the time if Rachel was onto her, if that was Rachel’s way of pushing her to the point of having to confess there was no assignment, that it was something else. But Tabitha had said, “No, that wouldn’t be necessary,” and Rachel had let it go.

At noon Fern was still sleeping and Tabitha was going crazy—stuck at home with that stupid notebook demanding her attention and worrying about Levi making it to school. She tried for the tenth time that morning to use her Find My Friends app, but the cursor just spun and spun, never settling on a spot. She pushed on Stuart’s face, right next to Levi’s—she couldn’t resist. And as it always did, as it had since the minute she realized he was gone, she got a big fat Can’t be located. Great, nobody could be located. She returned to her room, made the bed, and pulled the list out again.

Back to item number two—no talking once he left. She tried. It was only 7:00 a.m. when she found the note. And they had been up until just a little after midnight. She had crashed—in fact, now that she thought about it, he had encouraged her to take a Xanax that night, the evening had been so hard. She added that to the list—item number seven: The encouraged Xanax. So when she fell asleep, she was really asleep, and when she woke up she was groggy. Still, how far could he have gotten by then even if he’d left the house as soon as she’d conked out? She imagined he would be at the airport, or maybe on the other end of the flight, renting a car and starting that long drive north, assuming he was going north, which in this case made more sense than ever—though maybe not—there were so many unanswered questions. He could have been going south, or west, or east. Whatever the case, her calls kept going to voicemail, over and over again. Finally that stopped, and it just rang and rang. And of course he didn’t call. Maybe he wasn’t ever going to call her.

Part of the reason she wanted to reach him so much was the fight. She had thought they were going to be able to sort things out, together, to finally be honest with one another. And if she had been able to reach him that next morning, she would have asked him if he felt the same way. She could see now that he had given her the answer in the most dramatic way possible.

Stuart and Tabitha didn’t fight much in their marriage. Did they really fight at all? That one time over the wedding cake—Stuart had wanted plain, plain, plain, and Tabitha had asked for a basket-weave design, something she had always imagined she would have on her wedding cake, ever since she was a little girl. He had finally given in, but he never embraced it. He never seemed to have liked their cake. She had had boyfriends along the way, before Stuart, with whom she had huge yelling fights, sometimes throwing things, blowouts that ended with one or the other storming away. One boyfriend had even left her alone at the movies and never came back. But she and Stuart never did anything like that. She had always thought it was a good thing—a stable home for the kids, and really, who had time to fight like that anyway? Now, though—now she wondered if the not fighting was the bad part. She started to think about the specifics of the fight; she even considered outlining it, but she wasn’t ready. Not yet.

Next item on the list—the T-shirt in the closet. His University of Michigan shirt—maize and blue and old and tattered, something he never, ever traveled without. This time he did. It was still folded on the middle shelf in the closet. Why would he leave that? Or a better question might be: Why did he usually feel he had to take it? Well, now she could probably guess, but for years she had wondered about the significance of that shirt. After he left this time, she was shocked when she first saw it there. Now she went into the closet and touched it, as she often did lately. Usually, she didn’t want to disturb it, but she pulled it out and looked at it. It was clean and creased where the folds were. She couldn’t make any sense if it. Instead of folding it and putting it back in its place on the shelf, she brought it out to the bed with her, pulled back the covers, and shoved it to the bottom on Stuart’s side. She was just pulling the comforter back into place when she heard Fern.