Not Perfect(50)

“Was it really him?” she asked, her teeth gritted. She sounded like a crazy person in a crazy movie. “Did you really talk to him?”

Fern was in a ball now, holding on to her knee.

“Yes,” she said quietly. “Why are you so mad? Didn’t you want me to?”

Tabitha backed off. Fern had no idea what had been going on. For all she knew Tabitha had been talking to him all this time.

“Yes,” Tabitha said, pushing her hair behind her ears and wiping the sweat from her upper lip. “Yes, of course I did.”

She turned her back on Fern for a few seconds, then she turned back and hugged her.

“Is your knee okay?”

“It hurts,” Fern said.

“I’ll call about the X-ray tomorrow,” Tabitha said. She meant it.

“Okay,” Fern said. “Will that hurt? I was going to ask Daddy.”

“No, I promise, an X-ray won’t hurt at all,” Tabitha said.

Again Tabitha wondered if Fern had become delusional. In fact, she decided that was really the only explanation for this. That was worse than almost any other scenario. It was one thing to have a bad knee, it was another thing completely to be living in an imagined universe. She decided to let it go, she simply couldn’t deal with it now.

“Hey, did your brother say anything about what he was doing after school?”

Fern smacked her hand to her forehead.

“I forgot to tell you,” she said. “He and Butch were going to the library, the big one. He said he would be home by dinner. Or maybe he said by six. One of those.”

Normally Tabitha would be livid that Levi relied on Fern to tell her where he was, and that Fern forgot to share the information, but she let that go, too. Fern could also handle only so much, she knew that.

“Next time tell him to text me, okay?”

“Okay.”

“I’ll be right back,” Tabitha said, hoisting herself up.

“Okay.”



As soon as her mother left, Fern took a minute to look at her knee. She pulled up her pant leg and studied it. It hurt way more than she had let on. It felt like people were pushing sharp nails into it—sometimes it felt like the nails were on the inside and sometimes it felt like the nails were on the outside. She was going to tell her father about it, ask him what to do, and ask him especially if it was okay to tell her mother, who seemed to have too much to worry about already, not counting the knee or the too-small shoes, but there was no time. He had to go. That wasn’t the first time she tried him, but it was the first time he answered. She hadn’t been able to get all the things right before—like making sure the number wasn’t blocked and calling from the phone they kept in the kitchen. She knew she needed her mother’s help, but she was pretty sure her father would be mad if he knew that her mother knew. Except she wasn’t sure how she knew that. What she did know was that her mother was mad, and that seemed worse, since her mother was right here. Fern wanted to make her mother be not mad anymore, but lately she seemed so mad, or like she was always thinking about other things. She didn’t seem to care about or do the things she usually did, and that worried Fern, who wanted to think of a way to make her mother happy.

She got up slowly and limped to her bed and sat down. She reached under her mattress and pulled out the tattered, white envelope. The one she found on the morning her father left. She hadn’t looked at it in a while. It never changed. It was always the same. But this time when she pulled it out fifty dollars came along with it. She had forgotten about the money. First, she spread out the letter to make sure she had done it the right way, that she hadn’t made any mistakes. At least not big ones.

Dear Fern,

I am so proud of you. Everything you’re doing, especially in school, is exactly what I hoped you would do. I have to go away for a while, and you’re sleeping now, so I don’t want to bother you, but I wanted to tell you a few of my ideas. It might be hard to not talk, and I don’t know when I’m coming back, so I have a pattern we can do if you need to talk to me. Here’s what it is. Call from the home phone—make sure I can tell it’s the home phone—and call once, then hang up, call again, then hang up, then let it ring through. That way I’ll know it’s you calling—because I’m so busy with work I don’t want to talk to most other people right now. But don’t tell anyone—it will be our secret. I am not telling anyone else this pattern—it is just for us. If you can, try to listen to Mommy, it might be a hard time for her. Also, be nice to Levi if you can. Even though I’ll be away, I’ll be thinking about you. I already miss you, and I love you every day.

Dad

Yup, she did it pretty much right. The only bad thing was that her mom knew. And right there it said her mother might be having a hard time, so she guessed he did tell her something. She had done the right thing by not telling her mother about how much her knee hurt. Her father would be even more proud of her than he was before he left.

Fern folded the letter again and put it in the envelope. Then she looked at the money. She had an idea. She kept the money out, but put the envelope back under her mattress. She thought about hearing her father’s voice. It sounded the same, maybe a little quieter. She felt good after talking to him. She’d worried he might not recognize her voice.

She moved to the edge of the mattress and put her weight down slowly. She could stand it. She got up and put the money in her pocket. Then she went in search of her mom to tell her she wanted to pay for dinner tonight.