Not Perfect(45)

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.