Not Perfect(23)

“It’s okay,” Fern said. “I was just having a bad dream.”

It was alarming to Tabitha that even in sleep Fern didn’t bend her knee. It must be much worse than she was letting on.

“Levi, you go get ready, I’ll call and say you’re coming but going to be late,” she said. “I have to make sure Fern is okay.”

Fern did not seem to be okay. Tabitha was absolutely sure that she was trying not to cry. Tabitha looked at her leg. It looked red in a way it hadn’t yesterday. She reached out to see if it felt warm, and it did. She got a cool, wet washcloth, which she handed to Fern, but Fern refused to use it; she just kept saying that she was okay.

“Let me just call school,” Tabitha said. “I’ll be right back.”

“Okay,” Fern said. Tabitha was sure she was sniffling a little. Was that from trying not to cry, or did she have a cold? Might she have a virus that settled in her knee? Tabitha thought she’d heard of that happening before. She went to the bathroom, just a few feet away, and slowly closed the door to make her call.

“Larchwood School,” a woman’s voice said.

“Rhona?” Tabitha asked, hopefully.

“Yes?”

“It’s Tabitha. Brewer.”

“Oh, Tabitha, I was just about to call you. The kids aren’t here yet,” she said.

Tabitha pulled the phone away from her ear and glanced at the time. It was almost quarter to ten. She had no idea it was so late.

“Yeah, sorry, we overslept,” she said. “Levi is coming—he’ll just be late, obviously. I wanted to ask you about Fern. She’s having pain in her knee. It looks okay to me, maybe a little red, but she didn’t injure it in any obvious way. Can I bring her in to see Monica?”

Tabitha knew the answer. She’d been to enough committee meetings to know using the school nurse this way was out of the question, something that was completely frowned upon. But she’d do anything at this point to have Fern looked at, and avoiding the co-pay at the pediatrician’s office would be helpful, too. In fact, she regretted asking. If she had driven Fern to school, she could have pretended it came on suddenly when she got there, and Fern could have gone to the nurse. Too late for that now. Fern would never have agreed to it anyway.

“Hold on,” Rhona said, surprising Tabitha. While she waited, she peeked out the door and saw Fern testing putting weight on her leg. Finally, Rhona came back. “Hey, sorry, I just wanted to ask Monica since she was right here, but I’m sorry to say that won’t work. Monica suggested a warm bath and also to call your pediatrician. You know how it is, if it happens separate from school, Monica can’t look at them. But I really hope Fern feels better soon.”

“Thanks for asking,” Tabitha said. “It seemed worth a shot. I hate to have Fern miss more school—since she was just out with that stomach bug. Also, I called our pediatrician and they have a wait, so . . .”

“Oh, how long is the wait?” Rhona asked.

“I don’t know,” Tabitha said. “I’ll call back now.”

“Good idea,” Rhona said. “And I’ll keep an eye out for Levi.”

After hanging up, Tabitha punched in the numbers for Stuart’s cell phone. It connected, the name STUART came right up, and it rang. Once, twice, three times. Now was when it would normally go to voicemail but no, it didn’t. It kept ringing, and Tabitha wanted to scream, Where are you! How could you just disappear like this! There wasn’t even a place to deposit a message that he might listen to later. There was just empty space. Didn’t he wonder what was going on with his children? With her? She pushed the red button to stop the call and went into her messages. She texted him something she had never thought to text him before. If he didn’t respond to this, he wouldn’t respond to anything. She clenched her teeth, which she knew would give her a headache within the hour, so she unclenched them. She looked at her phone, at the message waiting to be written, and she typed 9-1-1. Then she pushed “send.”

Somehow, she thought if she really got desperate, if she couldn’t stand it anymore and wrote the worst possible, most frightening message, Stuart would respond. To her, 911 meant something was very wrong, someone could be in serious trouble. It was far worse than a painful knee and being late for school. Still, she felt fine about sending it. But then nothing happened. It looked like it was moving toward being delivered, but there was no confirmation. She shook the phone up and down, waiting for the tiny word of satisfaction—Delivered—to appear below her text, but it didn’t. The words no cell-phone service ran through her head. She sank to the floor and waited a minute, maybe two. Then she got up and went back to her bedroom.

“Fern, let me just check on Levi, okay?” she said. “You aren’t going to school today, so just sit tight. We’re going to figure this out.”

Tabitha found Levi at the front door, his hand on the knob. She wanted to say, Really? Were you just gonna leave? But she didn’t. All she wanted was for him to get to school okay.

“I spoke to Rhona,” Tabitha said. “She knows you’re coming.”

“Okay.”

“Please be careful,” Tabitha said. She had a moment of thinking better of it, calling him back, and taking him in a cab. Somehow, it seemed, he had gone from being walked every day to being totally on his own. Was that what the phrase “he grew up overnight” meant? She hoped not. She walked out into the hall and waited while the elevator made its way to their floor.